Matthew Hughey

Associate Professor, Sociology

Adjunct Faculty, Africana Studies, American Studies, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (REP), Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP)

Primary Research Theme

People and the City

Secondary Research Themes

Healthy Cities

Research Interests

Matthew W. Hughey has urban-related research interests rely on his examination of the heterogeneous interpretations of race and the long-term staying power of racism and racial inequality in six areas: (1) identity formation; (2) organizations; (3) mass media; (4) political engagements; (5) science and technology, and; (6) public advocacy.  His investigations are global in scope and he holds affiliate positions in Culture, Politics, and Global Justice at the University of Cambridge (England), the Research Group on Gender, Identity, and Diversity with the University of Barcelona (Spain), and Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela University (South Africa).  His research has enjoyed wide support and honors, such as the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and the Fulbright Commission.

Recent Cities-related Projects

  • White Space/Time: The Relationship between “Race”, Space, and Time: There is now social scientific recognition that different social groups—especially ethnic and racial collectives—are subject to different temporal constraints and hold varied perceptions of time. Simply put, time is racialized. Moreover, how people move about in racially unequal, diverse, or homogenous spaces greatly structures their understanding and perception of time. However, much of this recognition manifests in rather reductionist or racist appraisals of people of color/BAME: from Hegel’s infamous remarks that Africa “is no historical part of the world; it has no movement or development to exhibit” (1956 [1837]:92) to modern anthropological and psychological stereotypes of “CPT” or “Colored People’s Time” (cf. Pardlo 2016; Levine 2008). There is a need for a corrective to these established lines of inquiry. Remedy may be found in the address of four major empirical and theoretical gaps in our scholarly knowledge. First, there is less understanding of how temporal sensitivities help to construct a sense of racial belonging and identity. Second, we know even less about how social participation in racial dominance à la whiteness shapes the experiences, perceptions, and interpretations of time. Third, we lack evidence for how variations in special contexts and interactions shape whites’ perceptions of time. Fourth, how do these inter-subjectively shared temporal understandings relate to the reproduction or resistance of racial inequality and discrimination? I address these issues through an critical sociological framework. I analyze data culled from four all-white organizations (inclusive of ethnographic field observations, interviews [N=149], content analysis, and experimental vignette audit studies [N=8]). Findings account for how understandings of racialized space and time help shape white racial identity and white belonging and how these interpretations serve as crucial mechanisms in the reproduction of the racialized social order.
  • “The Souls of White Folk” (1920-2020): A Century of Peril and Prophecy: Published in 1920, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil contains a provocative chapter entitled “The Souls of White Folk.” The chapter is a tour de force of the relationship of whiteness to the “darker world.” While explicitly addressing colonial imperialism, the first world war, and white supremacy, a close reading of the chapter reveals Du Bois’s implicit dissection of the meanings and makings of “whiteness.” Now a century removed, we hold an opportunity to revisit the “The Souls of White Folk.” I first examine the antecedents of Du Bois’s composition, with careful attention to the preliminary drafts and published articles used to construct the final chapter. Second, I gauge public reception to Darkwater, and especially “The Souls of White Folk,” in published reviews. Third, I critically examine Du Bois’s understanding of the ethno-racial category of “white.”
  • What is “race”? An enduring dilemma: Given the theoretical complexity of the sociology of race, much of the focus on racial flexibility and the socially contested nature of race fail to take into account the actual multidimensional character of “race” and as a consequence does not capitalize on the full promise of social constructionism. That is, structural approaches emphasize macro external social forces and power as the location of “race,” while dramaturgical or symbolic interactionist paradigms emphasize micro situational dynamics as the proper domain of “race,” and still others see race as a dominant ideology while others view “race” as the result of competition over resources. Hence, the definitions (and functions) of “race” differ widely across these perspectives. In what follows, I first provide overview of the sociology of race by covering the field’s recent focus on the fluidity or “plasticity” of race—highlighting particularly novel directions in this scholarship. Next, I then outline the diversity of the sociology of race via its major schools of thought. Third, I briefly review social constructionism and then present a more holistic approach to the social construction of race—what I call the “Five I’s”—whereby race is simultaneously a social construct composed of identities, institutions, ideologies, interests, and interactions. Fifth, I review the strengths of this paradigm and how it avoids the pitfalls of the recent focus on racial identity plasticity. I then conclude with a synopsis and evaluation of where the field must go from here.

Selected Urban-Related Publications

Forthcoming. Hughey, Matthew W. “Gender and Race in the 2020 Election: From the Pathos of Prediction to the Power of Possibility.” Sociological Forum 35(special issue)

Forthcoming. Hughey, Matthew W. “Preface: Foresight in 2020: Race and Gender in the Upcoming Election.” Sociological Forum 35(special issue)

2020. Gonzalez-Lesser, Emma, Rhys Hall, and Matthew W. Hughey. “Production, Distribution, and Consumption: Extending Studies of Racialized Media Beyond Racial Representations.” Humanity & Society 44(1):3-11

2020. Hughey, Matthew W. “Debating Du Bois’s Darkwater: From Hymn of Hate to Pathos and Power.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power

2020. Hughey, Matthew W. “‘The Souls of White Folk’ (1920-2020): A Century of Peril and Prophecy.” Ethnic and Racial Studies Review 43(8):

2020. Parks, Gregory S. and Matthew W. Hughey. A Pledge with Purpose: Black Sororities and Fraternities and the Fight for Equality. New York University Press

2020. Hughey, Matthew W. and Emma Gonzalez-Lesser. Racialized Media: The Design, Delivery, and Decoding of Race and Ethnicity. New York University Press

2019. Hughey, Matthew W. “Dispatches from Along the Veil: Stories of Racial Rejection.” Sociological Forum 34(1):213-35

2019. Gardner, Sheena and Matthew W. Hughey. “Still the Tragic Mulatto? Manufacturing Multiracialization in Magazine Media, 1961-2011.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 42(4):645-65*

2018. Hughey, Matthew W. “Of Riots and Racism: Fifty Years since the Best Laid Schemes of the Kerner Commission (1968-2018).” Sociological Forum 33(3):619-42

2018. Hughey, Matthew W. “Whither Whiteness? The Racial Logics of the Kerner Report and Modern White Space.” RSF: Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4(6):73-98

2018. Rosino, Michael and Matthew W. Hughey. “The War on Drugs, Racial Meanings, and Structural Racism: A Holistic and Reproductive Approach.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 77(3-4):849-92

2017. Laybourn, Wendy M., Devon R. Goss, and Matthew W. Hughey. “‘You’re either one of us or you’re not’: Racial Hierarchy and Non-Black Members of Black Greek-Letter Organizations.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(4):552–65

2017. Gonzalez-Sobrino, Bianca and Matthew W. Hughey. “All the Puertorriqueñidad that’s Fit to Print: UnAmerican Racial Citizens in The New York Times (1948-1958).” Critical Sociology 43:(7/8):1009-28

2016. Rosino, Michael and Matthew W. Hughey. “Who’s Invited to the (Political) Party: Race and Party Politics in the United States.” Ethnic and Racial Studies Review 39(3):325-32

2016. Hughey, Matthew W. “There’s something happening here: A Comment on Hirschfield’s ‘Lethal Policing’.” Sociological Forum 31(1):225-29

2015. Hughey, Matthew W. “We’ve Been Framed! A Focus on Identity and Interaction for a Better Vision of Racialized Social Movements.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1):137–52

2015. Parks, Gregory S., Shayne Jones, Matthew W. Hughey, and Jonathan Michael Cox. “White Boys Drink, Black Girls Yell?: A Racialized and Gendered Analysis of Violent Hazing and the Law.” The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice 18(1):93-158

2015. Parks, Gregory S., Shayne E. Jones, and Matthew W. Hughey (Lead Article). “Hazing as Crime: An Empirical Analysis of Criminological Antecedents.” Law and Psychology Review 39

2015. Hughey, Matthew W., David G. Embrick, and Ashley “Woody” Doane. “Paving the Way for Future Race Research: Exploring the Racial Mechanisms within a Color-Blind, Racialized Social System.” American Behavioral Scientist 59(11): 1347-1357

2015. Hughey, Matthew W. “The Five I’s of Five-O: Racial Ideologies, Institutions, Interests, Identities, and Interactions of Police Violence.” Critical Sociology 41(6):857–71