This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of our current class of Visiting Scholars.
Ann Morning (New York University) is currently collaborating with Marcello Maneri (University of Milan-Bicocca) to investigate the ways that Americans and Italians assess group differences such as race and nationality. In her time in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation, she is researching how national conceptions of culture and biology shape individuals’ beliefs about what distinguish descent-based groups from one another. As non-white immigration to the U.S. increases, are Americans’ conceptions of racial difference are coming to resemble those held by Italians and other Western Europeans?
In a new interview with the Foundation, Morning discussed the changing nature of racial perceptions in both the U.S. and Italy, and how a cross-national comparative approach to thinking and talking about race could aid policy efforts to combat racial inequality.
Q. Your current research compares perceptions of race in the US and Italy and assesses the claim that racial attitudes in the US are coming to resemble those found in Western Europe. To start with, what did you find in your interviews with students in the US? How were they most likely to talk about group differences?
