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James S. Jackson and the program for research on Black Americans

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James S. Jackson is remembered as a groundbreaking social psychologist whose career contributions in scholarship, research, and service were fundamental to the field of psychology. David R. Williams outlines his career-long work and contributions.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 5, 2023

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James X. Jackson was a notable social psychologist at the University of Michigan, renowned for his impactful research on Black Americans. He was instrumental in developing a comprehensive program that conducted landmark studies such as the National Study of Black Americans in 1979-1980, which was the first scientific social study of the African-American population. This video video research devised new sampling strategies to ensure a representative sample, addressing prior shortcomings in public opinion surveys that oversampled Black individuals in areas of high concentration.

Jackson aimed to explore the diversity within the Black population rather than merely comparing it to Whites. His work highlighted the variation in views and experiences among Black individuals. He later conducted the National Survey of American Life, which not only repeated some questions from the earlier study but also included an oversample of Black individuals of Caribbean ancestry, providing deeper insights into this subgroup's experiences.

Furthermore, he led studies examining mental health among Black individuals using standardized measures, allowing for comparisons across diverse groups. Jackson also initiated a Black election study, focusing on the political views of Black Americans. His comprehensive research approach covered various aspects of Black life, including mental health, family dynamics, and experiences of discrimination.

Another significant contribution was the incorporation of measures to assess everyday discrimination, which helped to illustrate the adverse effects of racism on health outcomes. This video video research, particularly the everyday discrimination scale developed in collaboration with another scholar, has garnered widespread use and citations globally.

Jackson is celebrated not only for his research contributions but also for his mentorship and training of numerous students in social science. His legacy includes shifting the paradigm in psychology from a race-comparative framework to recognizing the legitimate study of the Black experience itself, embracing the variation and complexity within this community. Overall, his work has greatly influenced the field and laid the groundwork for future social science research.

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So James X. Jackson was a social psychologist.

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Um, at the University of Michigan,

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he developed a program for research on black Americans

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that had, several accomplishments.

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Um, one of them, was that

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this program conducted the national study

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of Black Americans in 19 79, 19 80.

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This was the first, scientific study,

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social scientific study of the African-American population.

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Um, and, and,

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and there were, there were several contributions.

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One was James Jackson

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developed new strategies, in terms of

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what we call service sampling, in terms of

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selecting a sample to be fully representative

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of the population.

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So, for example,

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Mo there had been prior public opinion surveys

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of the black population, and, and,

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and some prior studies, but not, not quite a national study.

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Uh, many of them would over sample blacks in areas

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of high black concentration

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that then did not provide coverage of the blacks

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who were in areas where there were relatively few,

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blacks.

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And one of the strategies he developed is, is called, was

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WASB wide angle, survey.

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What does the P stand for?

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I don't recall, but it's a wide

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angle, survey.

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So what he would do, he discovered

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that if you could identify, you know,

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a number of blacks in an area, they could tell you

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who the other black people were in the area.

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And so that he then had a sample that represented

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both blacks in areas of high black concentration,

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but also blacks in areas where there were relatively few,

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a few blacks.

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So that's one of his contributions.

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But more importantly, it

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provided one, one of the, the, I, I think,

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one of the concepts that that motivated,

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professor Jackson was that much of the

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social psychological

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or social science research on blacks in the United States up

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to that point compared blacks with whites.

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So on whatever attribute or

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or factor, how does the white population look?

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How does the black population look?

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And what Professor Jackson wanted to do was looked at the

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heterogeneity, the variation within the black population,

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and, and,

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and contextualize the black population across the range

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of views and beliefs

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and characteristics, for the black population.

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So in that way, hi.

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His work was, past break in,

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no one had ever done anything like that.

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Um, and, the, the findings out of

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that research built a foundation on which a, a number

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of social scientists have benefited from

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and have, you know, extended his work.

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What I would also mention is that, some,

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79 80, so some more than 20 years later,

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James Jackson, conducted a second survey,

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which was called the National Survey of American Life.

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And what he sought to do in that survey was to, one,

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repeat some of the questions

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that were had been asked in 79 80,

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and see to what extent had there been changed within the

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black population, but it is something else

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that was also innovative.

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For the first time in a major national study,

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there was an over sample of blacks of Caribbean ancestry.

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So now he was looking at one other dimension

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of variation within the black population in the

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United States, and,

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provided an opportunity to look not just at black Caribbean

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immigrants, but also at the children

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and grandchildren of immigrants.

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So to see, the, the variation

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that exists within the, the black population,

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and also more specifically, the,

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the population of black immigrants.

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So tho those, two of its contributions,

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let me, let me mention another one.

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Uh, another contribution

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of the National Survey of American Life.

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It was the first time that there had been a national survey,

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of the mental health

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of the black population that used measures

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of what's called the DSM.

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The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual are measures

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of defined psychiatric disorders.

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It was not looking at the symptoms of,

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mental health symptoms or depressive symptoms

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or anxiety symptoms,

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but looking at defined psychiatric disorders

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and being able to look at

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that across the entire black population.

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And also to compare

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and contrast the native born African American population

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from Caribbean immigrants and their children

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and grandchildren was something that was also innovative.

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One more contribution that I do not know much about,

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so I cannot elaborate in depth,

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but, professor Jackson also, had conducted

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a black election study that, you know, there's a

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national election study done in the United States

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that looks at, you know,

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the political beliefs and views of, of, of, of Americans.

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And there'd never been a black election study done.

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And, and he did that.

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So there, there are so many

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contributions that he made to the study

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of black life in the United States.

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And I, I would also em emphasize

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that if you look at the National Survey of Black Americans,

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it looked at black life comprehensively.

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There were questions about, about parenting.

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There was questions about family, about relationship.

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There was questions about mental health,

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about physical health, about racial identity.

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Um, there were, questions of discrimination.

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So it, it's, it, it gave a comprehensive view, of,

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of the, the health and wellbeing

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and a social context of blacks in the United States.

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I'll give you an example of one paper that I did

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with Professor Jackson that looked at,

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racial differences in major depression.

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Um,

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and this is define major depression, among blacks.

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And what the study found that both African Americans

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and blacks of Caribbean ancestry in the United States

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had lower rates of current major depression

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and of lifetime major depression than whites.

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So they, they, they were less likely to, to, to meet

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criteria for clinical depression on the one hand,

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although they were less likely to get depressed,

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depre become depressed.

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If they were depressed, everything else was worse.

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So that blacks who were depressed, both African-Americans,

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Caribbean blacks who were depressed, were more likely

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to have severe symptoms compared to whites.

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They were more likely to have higher levels of impairment

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compared to, to, to whites.

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They more likely to be persistently depressed, compared

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to whites, and they were less likely

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to receive mental health treatment.

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So on the one hand, there were some protective resources

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that protected them from being depressed,

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but once depressed, everything else was worse.

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So that's an example of the complexity that emerged, in,

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in, in the work, that he, that he led.

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And, and the findings that came from it.

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I was trained as a, in the Department

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of Sociology at the University of Michigan,

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I worked at the Institute for Social Research.

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I, which is where Dr. Jackson was a faculty

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and had a program for research on black Americans.

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I did not work with him as a student. I knew him.

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He was friendly, he was jovial.

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Uh, I knew him to say hello, but I didn't work with him.

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But I started my career at Yale.

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Everything was going well at Yale.

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And some faculty at Michigan wanted to recruit me back.

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Um, and when I came back

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and visited, Michigan, one

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of the faculty I spent time with, was James Jackson.

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And learned more about what the program

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of research on Black Americans was doing.

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And he was not the only reason,

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but one of the reasons why I went back to Michigan.

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Um, I had spent a d

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almost two days at Michigan visiting different faculty.

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And although I had been very happy with my work at Yale,

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there was so much taken place at Michigan

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that I did not have a professional reason to stay at Yale

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because there were just so much more research opportunities

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for me at University of Michigan.

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And, and the opportunities

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with James Jackson was part of it.

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So I, when I went back, I was now part of the program

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for research on black Americans working with him

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and others scholars on multiple topics.

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But one of the things that was

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my kind of scientific motivations

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and area that I wanted to more deeply explore was

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to document the ways in which racism,

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had adverse impacts on the health of blacks

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and others in the United States.

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I had, in 1993, I published a, a review of a book,

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black issues and Health Issues in the Black community,

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that I had been asked by a journal to review.

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And I noted that almost every chapter in that book said

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that racism or racial discrimination was a factor adversely

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impacting the health of blacks in America.

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But none of the chapters provided any data.

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Um, they were just making the assertion,

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and I, I agreed with them that racism was a factor,

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but felt that this was not good enough.

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And I remember speaking at a conference where I said, one

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of the priorities for the future is for us

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to develop measures

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and document the ways in which racism

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has adverse effects on health.

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And remember a gentleman raising his hand

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and saying to me, what I'm saying is important,

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but it's impossible to do.

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We could never measure racism.

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And I recall saying to him, if you ask me today,

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do we have valid and reliable measures

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to capture discrimination, for example, I would say no,

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but I said, we measure self-esteem.

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If we measure self-esteem, why can't we measure racism?

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We just haven't put our minds to it.

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And I went back to University of Michigan

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where I was a faculty then,

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and I immersed myself in, in qualitative

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research from Mino, a Dutch scholar in the Netherlands

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who had studied, black immigrants to the Netherlands

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and African-American women in California.

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And, a another scholar from the United States

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who had studied, you know,

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African-American middle class

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and the discrimination experiences they had.

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And I started to think of,

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how do I take this qualitative data

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and develop survey questions

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that could be used in a questionnaire

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To capture it?

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And I mentioned one day to James that I was thinking

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of this, and, you know, he was a senior scholar.

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I was just early career. And he says, yes, let's do it.

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And he was so excited, and he, he just expanded the project.

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Uh, he said, I'll work with you.

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I, I we can raise money, to, to do the, the study.

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And, I, I have written about this way.

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I said, he was the wind beneath my wings

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because I did a lot of the early work,

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and I would come up with ideas

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and, you know, how do we word the questions?

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Um, we were concerned of, for example,

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I'll give you one example of the issues we struggled with.

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We could ask people, have you ever been unfairly fired

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because of your race?

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Where it's one question we put race into the question,

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or in your entire life, have you ever been unfairly fired?

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And if you said, yes, we could say how many times.

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And then later on we can ask you,

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what do you think was the main reason?

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And so it, it is called a one stage versus two stage.

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One stage. You built the race into the question or,

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or separately just get a clean description of

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what has happened and later on then ask what it was.

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And so we had struggles like that.

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What's the best way to word these questions? And so on.

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And James was the, the person who provided feedback and,

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and, and, and co-taught, there's a, a practicum

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and survey research seminar that we were using as the, the,

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the, the mechanism to, to design this survey.

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And he co-taught the survey, class with me

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and raise money to increase the sample size.

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So we'd have a large sample

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and the paper that I co-publish with him, which introduced

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to the scientific field, the everyday discrimination scale

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is the most cited paper in my career

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of over 5,000 citations, to this paper.

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And, one of my students here did a meta-analysis at two

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years ago, and they were more, 450 papers from

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around the world have used the everyday

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discrimination scale.

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And it's something that I developed co I had the idea, but,

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but he provided the ingredients that

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that helped it to flourish

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and made it, made it

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what is today the most widely used scale globally

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to assess the impact of discrimination.

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And I would say the findings,

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for the scale have been stunning.

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There are studies used in the everyday discrimination scale

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that finds higher levels

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of discrimination are linked not just to higher levels of,

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mental health symptoms,

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but are linked to new cases, incident new cases

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of breast cancer, of, of, of,

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type two diabetes of hypertension linked

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to subclinical,

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Uh, disease process, like high levels of cortisol

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and other markers of inflammation linked

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to heart rate variation, linked to obesity,

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linked to visceral fat.

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It's, it's just the, the, the research evidence,

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it has documented now that this measure of discrimination

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as well as others, it's not the only one use,

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but this measure of discrimination predicts poor health,

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not just for African Americans,

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but for aboriginals in Australia and the MA and New Zealand.

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And I've used it in national data in South Africa

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and in countries around the world.

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It, it's not only captures racial discrimination,

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it captures discrimination of the L-G-B-T-Q population

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because we came up with a strategy of just asking,

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has this happened to you?

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So we get a clear description from everyone.

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And then what do you think was the main reason?

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So that his work in helping me

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and mentoring me,

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to develop the everyday discrimination scale,

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and other measures of discrimination, I would say

15:54.465 --> 15:57.005
was the single biggest impact on his career.

15:57.225 --> 16:00.405
On the other hand, I would say when I looked at my cv,

16:00.405 --> 16:03.525
there are 38 papers on my, CV

16:03.715 --> 16:05.405
that are co-authored with James.

16:06.185 --> 16:08.845
And, I learned something about him.

16:08.905 --> 16:11.765
He, he's, he, he was more generous than he had time.

16:12.185 --> 16:13.925
So sometimes we talk about a paper

16:13.945 --> 16:17.325
and he said, he'd say, I, I'll, I'll write the first draft.

16:17.765 --> 16:20.605
I soon learned, don't wait for James to write a full draft.

16:21.075 --> 16:23.165
He's still busy, it's not gonna happen.

16:23.965 --> 16:25.285
So I would write the first draft,

16:25.345 --> 16:28.885
and every paper I have ever written with James was

16:28.945 --> 16:32.525
so much better after I shared with him the first draft,

16:32.545 --> 16:34.325
and he gave me additional feedback

16:34.665 --> 16:36.925
and enriched the quality of what I was doing.

16:37.265 --> 16:41.765
So I would say he had a profound impact on my career,

16:42.445 --> 16:47.005
and I am very grateful, for, what he did for me.

16:47.145 --> 16:48.685
And, and can I say something else

16:48.685 --> 16:49.925
about James that's important?

16:51.335 --> 16:54.765
James was a mentor par excellence.

16:55.695 --> 16:59.875
He probably more than any other social scientist

17:00.095 --> 17:04.835
of the last 40 years provided training

17:05.095 --> 17:09.315
and mentoring to more students studying the black

17:09.325 --> 17:11.035
experience in the United States.

17:11.175 --> 17:14.995
Um, and clearly in the social sciences, he had a number of,

17:15.055 --> 17:18.635
of summer programs that would provide summer workshops

17:18.735 --> 17:21.995
and summer training for individuals in addition to the many

17:22.675 --> 17:26.075
students and, and early career scholars who would come

17:26.135 --> 17:29.835
as a postdoctoral fellow and spend a year or two with him.

17:30.255 --> 17:33.715
He, he, he had that influence on, on the field

17:33.815 --> 17:37.115
and literally on a generation of,

17:37.415 --> 17:39.835
of scholars in multiple disciplines,

17:39.835 --> 17:41.795
because I talk about this work on health,

17:42.215 --> 17:44.275
but it's work of scholars who study family,

17:44.455 --> 17:47.355
who study black life, who study black politics,

17:47.735 --> 17:48.795
in, in so

17:48.795 --> 17:49.795
Many areas.

17:49.865 --> 17:51.445
Um, he, he

17:51.765 --> 17:54.205
provided, what I would say was visionary,

17:54.355 --> 17:58.165
visionary leadership, maybe, maybe his single biggest legacy

17:58.825 --> 18:01.325
was shifting the study of psychology

18:02.155 --> 18:05.525
from thinking only in a race comparative framework.

18:05.905 --> 18:09.165
Blacks were only useful to study if you compare them

18:09.165 --> 18:11.285
to whites or you compare them to some other group.

18:11.825 --> 18:14.165
But saying it's, it's legitimate

18:14.545 --> 18:17.565
to study the black experience in the first place

18:17.985 --> 18:20.725
and to recognize that there's variation,

18:20.725 --> 18:23.165
there's heterogeneity within the black experience,

18:23.165 --> 18:25.685
and that all black people don't see lives

18:25.685 --> 18:29.365
through the same eyes, maybe if there's any single thing.

18:29.365 --> 18:33.925
And, and, and that was such a, a, a dominant cannon,

18:33.955 --> 18:36.285
that that was the way psychology

18:36.745 --> 18:40.165
and social science thought about the, the black experience.

18:40.165 --> 18:42.285
And, and he changed that paradigm.

18:42.295 --> 18:44.405
Maybe that's his single biggest thing.

18:44.785 --> 18:48.005
But I think he has, he has shaped what so many of us do

18:48.545 --> 18:51.405
and has had such enormous impact in so many areas

18:51.465 --> 18:52.205
of social science.

00:00 - So James X. Jackson was a social psychologist. at the University of Michigan, he developed a program for research on black Americans that had, several accomplishments. one of them, was that this program conducted the national study

00:24 - of Black Americans in 19 79, 19 80. This was the first, scientific study, social scientific study of the African-American population. and, and, and there were, there were several contributions. One was James Jackson developed new strategies, in terms of what we call service sampling, in terms of selecting a sample to be fully representative of the population.

00:57 - So, for example, Mo there had been prior public opinion surveys of the black population, and, and, and some prior studies, but not, not quite a national study. many of them would over sample blacks in areas of high black concentration that then did not provide coverage of the blacks who were in areas where there were relatively few, blacks. And one of the strategies he developed is, is called, was

01:30 - WASB wide angle, survey. What does the P stand for? I don't recall, but it's a wide angle, survey. So what he would do, he discovered that if you could identify, you know, a number of blacks in an area, they could tell you who the other black people were in the area. And so that he then had a sample that represented both blacks in areas of high black concentration,

02:05 - but also blacks in areas where there were relatively few, a few blacks. So that's one of his contributions. But more importantly, it provided one, one of the, the, I, I think, one of the concepts that that motivated, professor Jackson was that much of the social psychological or social science research on blacks in the United States up to that point compared blacks with whites.

02:36 - So on whatever attribute or or factor, how does the white population look? How does the black population look? And what Professor Jackson wanted to do was looked at the heterogeneity, the variation within the black population, and, and, and contextualize the black population across the range of views and beliefs and characteristics, for the black population. So in that way, hi.

03:04 - His work was, past break in, no one had ever done anything like that. and, the, the findings out of that research built a foundation on which a, a number of social scientists have benefited from and have, you know, extended his work. What I would also mention is that, some, 79 80, so some more than 20 years later, James Jackson, conducted a second survey, which was called the National Survey of American Life.

03:44 - And what he sought to do in that survey was to, one, repeat some of the questions that were had been asked in 79 80, and see to what extent had there been changed within the black population, but it is something else that was also innovative. For the first time in a major national study, there was an over sample of blacks of Caribbean ancestry. So now he was looking at one other dimension of variation within the black population in the

04:15 - United States, and, provided an opportunity to look not just at black Caribbean immigrants, but also at the children and grandchildren of immigrants. So to see, the, the variation that exists within the, the black population, and also more specifically, the, the population of black immigrants. So tho those, two of its contributions, let me, let me mention another one.

04:48 - another contribution of the National Survey of American Life. It was the first time that there had been a national survey, of the mental health of the black population that used measures of what's called the DSM. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual are measures of defined psychiatric disorders. It was not looking at the symptoms of, mental health symptoms or depressive symptoms

05:19 - or anxiety symptoms, but looking at defined psychiatric disorders and being able to look at that across the entire black population. And also to compare and contrast the native born African American population from Caribbean immigrants and their children and grandchildren was something that was also innovative. One more contribution that I do not know much about, so I cannot elaborate in depth,

05:45 - but, professor Jackson also, had conducted a black election study that, you know, there's a national election study done in the United States that looks at, you know, the political beliefs and views of, of, of, of Americans. And there'd never been a black election study done. And, and he did that. So there, there are so many contributions that he made to the study of black life in the United States.

06:20 - And I, I would also em emphasize that if you look at the National Survey of Black Americans, it looked at black life comprehensively. There were questions about, about parenting. There was questions about family, about relationship. There was questions about mental health, about physical health, about racial identity. there were, questions of discrimination. So it, it's, it, it gave a comprehensive view, of, of the, the health and wellbeing

06:51 - and a social context of blacks in the United States. I'll give you an example of one paper that I did with Professor Jackson that looked at, racial differences in major depression. and this is define major depression, among blacks. And what the study found that both African Americans and blacks of Caribbean ancestry in the United States had lower rates of current major depression and of lifetime major depression than whites.

07:26 - So they, they, they were less likely to, to, to meet criteria for clinical depression on the one hand, although they were less likely to get depressed, depre become depressed. If they were depressed, everything else was worse. So that blacks who were depressed, both African-Americans, Caribbean blacks who were depressed, were more likely to have severe symptoms compared to whites. They were more likely to have higher levels of impairment compared to, to, to whites.

08:00 - They more likely to be persistently depressed, compared to whites, and they were less likely to receive mental health treatment. So on the one hand, there were some protective resources that protected them from being depressed, but once depressed, everything else was worse. So that's an example of the complexity that emerged, in, in, in the work, that he, that he led. And, and the findings that came from it. I was trained as a, in the Department

08:31 - of Sociology at the University of Michigan, I worked at the Institute for Social Research. I, which is where Dr. Jackson was a faculty and had a program for research on black Americans. I did not work with him as a student. I knew him. He was friendly, he was jovial. I knew him to say hello, but I didn't work with him. But I started my career at Yale. Everything was going well at Yale. And some faculty at Michigan wanted to recruit me back.

08:58 - and when I came back and visited, Michigan, one of the faculty I spent time with, was James Jackson. And learned more about what the program of research on Black Americans was doing. And he was not the only reason, but one of the reasons why I went back to Michigan. I had spent a d almost two days at Michigan visiting different faculty. And although I had been very happy with my work at Yale,

09:25 - there was so much taken place at Michigan that I did not have a professional reason to stay at Yale because there were just so much more research opportunities for me at University of Michigan. And, and the opportunities with James Jackson was part of it. So I, when I went back, I was now part of the program for research on black Americans working with him and others scholars on multiple topics. But one of the things that was

09:53 - my kind of scientific motivations and area that I wanted to more deeply explore was to document the ways in which racism, had adverse impacts on the health of blacks and others in the United States. I had, in 1993, I published a, a review of a book, black issues and Health Issues in the Black community, that I had been asked by a journal to review. And I noted that almost every chapter in that book said that racism or racial discrimination was a factor adversely

10:28 - impacting the health of blacks in America. But none of the chapters provided any data. they were just making the assertion, and I, I agreed with them that racism was a factor, but felt that this was not good enough. And I remember speaking at a conference where I said, one of the priorities for the future is for us to develop measures and document the ways in which racism has adverse effects on health.

10:54 - And remember a gentleman raising his hand and saying to me, what I'm saying is important, but it's impossible to do. We could never measure racism. And I recall saying to him, if you ask me today, do we have valid and reliable measures to capture discrimination, for example, I would say no, but I said, we measure self-esteem. If we measure self-esteem, why can't we measure racism? We just haven't put our minds to it.

11:18 - And I went back to University of Michigan where I was a faculty then, and I immersed myself in, in qualitative research from Mino, a Dutch scholar in the Netherlands who had studied, black immigrants to the Netherlands and African-American women in California. And, a another scholar from the United States who had studied, you know, African-American middle class and the discrimination experiences they had.

11:44 - And I started to think of, how do I take this qualitative data and develop survey questions that could be used in a questionnaire To capture it? And I mentioned one day to James that I was thinking of this, and, you know, he was a senior scholar. I was just early career. And he says, yes, let's do it. And he was so excited, and he, he just expanded the project. he said, I'll work with you.

12:11 - I, I we can raise money, to, to do the, the study. And, I, I have written about this way. I said, he was the wind beneath my wings because I did a lot of the early work, and I would come up with ideas and, you know, how do we word the questions? we were concerned of, for example, I'll give you one example of the issues we struggled with. We could ask people, have you ever been unfairly fired because of your race?

12:40 - Where it's one question we put race into the question, or in your entire life, have you ever been unfairly fired? And if you said, yes, we could say how many times. And then later on we can ask you, what do you think was the main reason? And so it, it is called a one stage versus two stage. One stage. You built the race into the question or, or separately just get a clean description of what has happened and later on then ask what it was. And so we had struggles like that.

13:08 - What's the best way to word these questions? And so on. And James was the, the person who provided feedback and, and, and, and co-taught, there's a, a practicum and survey research seminar that we were using as the, the, the, the mechanism to, to design this survey. And he co-taught the survey, class with me and raise money to increase the sample size. So we'd have a large sample and the paper that I co-publish with him, which introduced to the scientific field, the everyday discrimination scale

13:43 - is the most cited paper in my career of over 5,000 citations, to this paper. And, one of my students here did a meta-analysis at two years ago, and they were more, 450 papers from around the world have used the everyday discrimination scale. And it's something that I developed co I had the idea, but, but he provided the ingredients that that helped it to flourish and made it, made it

14:14 - what is today the most widely used scale globally to assess the impact of discrimination. And I would say the findings, for the scale have been stunning. There are studies used in the everyday discrimination scale that finds higher levels of discrimination are linked not just to higher levels of, mental health symptoms, but are linked to new cases, incident new cases of breast cancer, of, of, of,

14:45 - type two diabetes of hypertension linked to subclinical, disease process, like high levels of cortisol and other markers of inflammation linked to heart rate variation, linked to obesity, linked to visceral fat. It's, it's just the, the, the research evidence, it has documented now that this measure of discrimination as well as others, it's not the only one use, but this measure of discrimination predicts poor health,

15:15 - not just for African Americans, but for aboriginals in Australia and the MA and New Zealand. And I've used it in national data in South Africa and in countries around the world. It, it's not only captures racial discrimination, it captures discrimination of the L-G-B-T-Q population because we came up with a strategy of just asking, has this happened to you? So we get a clear description from everyone. And then what do you think was the main reason?

15:43 - So that his work in helping me and mentoring me, to develop the everyday discrimination scale, and other measures of discrimination, I would say was the single biggest impact on his career. On the other hand, I would say when I looked at my cv, there are 38 papers on my, CV that are co-authored with James. And, I learned something about him. He, he's, he, he was more generous than he had time.

16:12 - So sometimes we talk about a paper and he said, he'd say, I, I'll, I'll write the first draft. I soon learned, don't wait for James to write a full draft. He's still busy, it's not gonna happen. So I would write the first draft, and every paper I have ever written with James was so much better after I shared with him the first draft, and he gave me additional feedback and enriched the quality of what I was doing. So I would say he had a profound impact on my career,

16:42 - and I am very grateful, for, what he did for me. And, and can I say something else about James that's important? James was a mentor par excellence. He probably more than any other social scientist of the last 40 years provided training and mentoring to more students studying the black experience in the United States. and clearly in the social sciences, he had a number of, of summer programs that would provide summer workshops

17:18 - and summer training for individuals in addition to the many students and, and early career scholars who would come as a postdoctoral fellow and spend a year or two with him. He, he, he had that influence on, on the field and literally on a generation of, of scholars in multiple disciplines, because I talk about this work on health, but it's work of scholars who study family, who study black life, who study black politics, in, in so

17:48 - Many areas. he, he provided, what I would say was visionary, visionary leadership, maybe, maybe his single biggest legacy was shifting the study of psychology from thinking only in a race comparative framework. Blacks were only useful to study if you compare them to whites or you compare them to some other group. But saying it's, it's legitimate to study the black experience in the first place

18:17 - and to recognize that there's variation, there's heterogeneity within the black experience, and that all black people don't see lives through the same eyes, maybe if there's any single thing. And, and, and that was such a, a, a dominant cannon, that that was the way psychology and social science thought about the, the black experience. And, and he changed that paradigm. Maybe that's his single biggest thing. But I think he has, he has shaped what so many of us do

18:48 - and has had such enormous impact in so many areas of social science.

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