There is considerable debate in the sociology of race relations over how social inequality based on class and that based on race intertwine or intersect. Are these separate dimensions of inequality that simply coexist? Or are they part of the same reality?

Efforts to develop an understanding of the relationship between class and race have a long history in sociology. In the 1930s and 1940s it was common to conceptualize the issue as "caste and class" (Davis, Gardner, and Gardner 1941). Studies were conducted in southern towns of the United States, and a parallel was drawn between the southern racial order and the Indian caste system. Class differentiation was observed within each of the two racial "castes," but a caste line divided them, severely limiting the social status of upper-class African Americans. This view, while descriptively illuminating, was challenged by Cox (1948), who saw U.S...