Ronald Hall: Racism and Obama's Candidacy    • Share   • Read
Later Chip Somodevilla / Getty  Supporters at an Obama rally  As
a result of Barack Obama's groundbreaking candidacy, American
attitudes about skin color have been put under a microscope this
year. Michigan State University Social Work Professor Ronald
Hall had a jump-start on that debate; he has been studying the
social consequences of skin color for more than 20 years. He is
the editor of a new scholarly book, Racism in the 21st Century:
An Empirical Analysis of Skin Color (Springer). TIME senior
reporter Andrea Sachs spoke with Hall about race and its impact
on the current campaign.  TIME: How did you first get interested
in the subject of skin color?  Ronald Hall: Before I got into
academia, I worked in a mental health clinic. Ninety percent of
the patients were African-American, because it was in Detroit.
Sometimes we would get at their underlying problems. It seemed
it would always have something to do with skin color, but they
never would wa