critiques of labels

This post was contributed by Ayanna Allen,student in my Fall, 2014, Social Stratification class. This post was later cross-posted to The Sociological Cinema.

I had to watch Stayceyann Chin’s video several times before her message began resonating within me. She critiques the notion that we must side with one group over another, arguing that we need to have a sense of understanding about each other that transcends differences. She does a phenomenal job in challenging the common claim that "if you are not for us, you are against us.” She well articulates that we miss the beauty of our being by living in fear of ridicule, and when "people get scared enough, they pick a team" that may satisfy others, but not themselves. Our need to box-in and stereotype what we cannot understand or agree with only limits our ability to see each other as common creatures.

Child star, Raven Symone makes a similar point in her adamant denial about the personal relevance of labels (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAho8vlmAI). Oprah warns her during the interview that she will get push-back for doing this, and she indeed did receive significant adverse publicity in claiming the she is neither lesbian nor black/African-American. Such reactions to a pronouncement from a person who seems before her time, from a generation that believes they are ahead of their time, indicate how uncomfortable people are when group labels are deemed irrelevant for establishing personal identity. It also suggests associated questions, including: What is wrong about failing to identify as either black/African-American or lesbian? Does it betray those who are otherwise like her, but who do see themselves as belonging to such categories? Moreover, are we truly free to be individuals, even in a society held to promote the value of individual autonomy?

Of course, Stayceyann and Raven are not the first to renounce labels, and they will certainly not be the last. And it may well be impossible to rid ourselves of labels, but in my opinion it is not ridiculous to believe that every person has a basic right to define themselves and where they want to fit into society without being persecuted.

I wanted to share these videos because they strongly challenge the substance of what much of social stratification seems to be about. They offer the refreshing counterpoint that humans are dynamic, evolving beings, rather than “social types” who can be easily defined, sorted into categories, and kept in “their place.”

Columbusing

In a recent Slate piece, Aisha Harris points to a new College Humor video, coining the term "Columbusing," i.e., what white people do when they "discover" something that already exists as a reality for nonwhites, as in "Columbus discovered America." The video should stimulate class discussion about other ways members of privileged groups often appropriate as their own those things belonging to others.

racial disparities in drowning

This post was written by Stephanie Medley-Rath and originally appeared in Society in Focus.

I’ve swam in ponds, lakes, and creeks. I’ve swam in chlorinated backyard pools, public pools, and hotel pools. As an adult (who has spent most of my life in the landlocked-Midwest), I’ve managed to swim in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Swimming has always been a part of my life. As a child, I took swimming lessons for one week each summer. It never failed that the week of my lessons, the weather would be about 70 degrees and overcast (i.e., too cold), but I still went. I was never very good. I like to say, that I knew enough not to drown. That may sound a bit over-confident, but I did know how to swim and learned some basic survival skills.

Little did I know that my access to public swimming spaces, swimming lessons, and risk of drowning had something to do with my race or the legacy of racial discrimination. This is what white privilege looks like. As a child, it was easy for me to assume that most people had similar opportunities as me. As an adult (and trained sociologist), I know that most people did not have similar opportunities as me. I also know that these opportunities differ not only on obvious factors like social class, but also things like race and gender (for this post, we’ll focus just on race).

For the first time, the 2012 U.S. Olympic Swim team had three members of African-American descent (two of which medaled) out of 49 total members. These three swimmers account for 6.12% of the swim team, while African Americans account for 13.1% of the population overall.

While African Americans (and people of African American descent) are underrepresented at the elite levels of American swimming, they (along with American Indians/Alaska Natives) are overrepresented in the number of drowning victims.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that racial disparities persist in risk of drowning:

• “Among non-Hispanics, the overall drowning rate for American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/AN) was twice the rate for whites, and the rate for blacks was 1.4 times the rate for whites.”

In other words, there is a statistically significant difference in the likelihood of drowning by race. (Also of note, drowning risk varies by age and setting–pool, bathtub, natural water.) Statistically significant means that this difference is not due to chance, but is correlated with race (along with age and setting). But why? In particular, why are African Americans more likely to drown compared to other racial and ethnic groups?

Part of the answer lies in the history of racial segregation as it relates specifically to swimming. Racial segregation of pools was strengthened about the same time that pools were integrated along gender lines in the 1920s and 1930s because swimming pools are perceived as an intimate space. In a culture that has long feared the intimacy of white women and black men (and has inflicted deadly violence at the thought of it), pools could not be both racially and gender integrated.

During the 1940s and 1950s, pools were racially desegregated, but like other arenas that desegregated, whites fled. Whites chose to build their own pools at home or in private clubs where they could restrict access by blacks. What America is left with is a long history white Americans limiting access to swimming pools by African Americans. Now, think about what you know about socialization. What are the implications of past segregation of swimming pools on present circumstances? If your own parents did not grow up swimming, how likely is it that you are going to grow up a swimmer? Moreover, the legacy of whites fleeing racially-integrated public pools (along with changing priorities) can still be felt in the declining public-support for public swimming pools. In other words, access to public swimming pools is still wanting.

This is the classic sociological lesson. Who you are and what happens to you is often a product of where you are within our social system. That is, if you grow up with parents who know how to swim and in a place with ample opportunities to swim, you are less likely to drown. This is just one of the many examples of how your social location can have impact your life and death.

Dig Deeper: 

1. Did you learn to swim as a child? If so, ask your parents why they made sure you learned to swim. If you did not, ask your parents why you never learned to swim. What role (if any) did your race, class, or gender play in you learning or not learning to swim as a child?
2. What opportunities did you have to swim as a child? What role did your race, class, or gender play in your access to swimming? In other words, was there a public or private pool you had access to?
3. What role did discrimination and prejudice play in limiting the swimming opportunities of African Americans in the past?
4. What strategies could be used to ensure that a greater percentage of all children learn basic water safety (including swimming lessons)? Read this article on the challenges of increasing access to swimming among low-income children to help develop your strategy.

knockout game, media, and race

Racial political controversy is heating up again as the conservative press recently began keying off on the "knockout game," a pastime presumably perpetrated by black youths against unsuspecting whites encountered in public space. Two recent articles put this phenomenon into context. These NPR and NY Times pieces address it in terms of larger issues of violent assault and youth crime. The latter article also suggests it may well be simply "urban myth."

intersectionality

What about those of us who belong to more than one subordinate group? For example, are you perhaps, black, poor, and female? This relates to the concept of "intersectionality." Check-out this great information graphic by Miriam Dobson that appeared several months ago in The Sociological Imagination: 
http://sociologicalimagination.org/archives/12975.

code switch

NPR has a great series running since last week relative to the changing nature of race and ethnicity in the U.S.  Check it out at http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/

As I Am: poverty in Memphis

Check out this incredible Alan Spearman video about high school student Chris Dean's poetic take on life in his impoverished Memphis neighborhood. It was recently named winner of the NAPPA "Best Use of Multimedia" award (see story at https://nppa.org/node/60194).

as black as we wish to be

Hear a fascinating audio documentary about a county in Ohio where racial identity has been historically defined by place of residence and exceptionally ambiguous for generations. This State of the Re:Union story is comprised of interviews about local racial formation practices and attitudes, where physical features and ethnic identity often do not match. The interviews are set within a historical narrative on racism within the locale. In this area
"...residents have shared the common bond of identifying as African-American despite the fact that they look white. Racial lines have been blurred to invisibility, and people inside the same family can vehemently disagree about whether they are black or white. It can be tense and confusing. As a result, everyone’s choosing: Am I black? Am I mixed race? Or, am I white?"

stratification on the dance floor

This is a slightly edited version of a post written by Stephanie Medley-Rath that appeared recently in Sociology in Focus.

As well as being big business, prom night also holds important meaning for both individual participants and American culture overall. This rite-of-passage makes regular appearances on film. Consider the importance of prom in Grease, Carrie, American Pie, and more recently, Prom.

In my own life, I devoted the night before taking my ACT, not to preparing or resting for the exam, but instead had a friend over who practiced styling my hair for the big night.

We can think of prom night as a fun, expensive evening in formal wear, but this is not the only way to think about it. As sociologists we can see much more going on; and most clearly we can see a lot of stratification.

In the book Prom Night (2000), sociologist Amy Best points out how racial divides are recreated through decisions made regarding the music played during the dance and in more extreme cases, by holding racially segregated proms. More recently, Morgan Freeman paid for a Mississippi high school's first racially integrated prom as documented in the film Prom Night in Mississippi (view above).

For gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) students, attendance at prom with a same-sex date may prompt the school to cancel the prom altogether. In 2012, a student body president was removed because he proposed allowing gay and lesbian students to compete for prom king and queen, while other schools have elected gay and lesbian king and queens. Straight students may stress out over who they might ask to the big dance, but GLBTQ students face the additional difficulty of wondering whether their schools will allow them to attend with their date of choice.

For many high school students, prom is a rite-of-passage. For others, prom is a rite-of-passage fraught with obstacles. Will they be allowed to attend the dance? Will they be selected to royalty? Will they be able to dance with their date? Will the event itself reflect their cultural practices?

1. Did you attend prom or another school dance? Describe what it was like. Does it conform to popular portrayals? How? Consider how the dance was stratified based on race and sexual identity. Describe.
2. For other students, religious beliefs may prevent them from attending their school’s prom. Read about an all-girl prom that took place in Michigan in 2012.
3. Due to the expenses related to prom, how is prom stratified by social class?
4. What changes, if any, would you suggest to make prom less stratified and more inclusive of all students? Explain why you believe these changes should be made.

MLK and class

Today offers an appropriate moment to reflect on Martin Luther King within the context of a class analysis, and TheRealNews.com provides just that. The interview with Anthony Monteiro of Temple University holds that King had grown beyond racial politics near the end of his life to embrace a much larger, penetrating critique of America as a capitalist / imperialist nation. In the second interview, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report argues that the successes sowed by King and the civil rights movement were effectively subverted by the black upper class to their own narrow interests. Both interviews suggest that if still alive, King would not likely be celebrating Obama's inauguration today, but at the forefront of protest against many administration policies.

Django won't tell you (nor will Lincoln)

Although two movies centered around American slavery were nominated today for "best picture" Oscars, neither will give you the "big picture" about that system. Imara Jones alludes to what Django Unchained "won't tell you" in her recent Colorlines article, but her observations quoted below equally apply to Lincoln.

1) Slavery laid the foundation for the modern international economic system.

2) Africans’ economic skills were a leading reason for their enslavement.

3) African know-how transformed slave economies into some of the wealthiest on the planet.

4) Until it was destroyed by the Civil War, slavery made the American South the richest and most powerful region in America.

5) Defense of slavery, more than taxes, was pivotal to America’s declaration of independence.

6) The brutalization and psychological torture of slaves was designed to ensure that plantations stayed in the black financially.

7) The economic success of former slaves during Reconstruction led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. 

8) The desire to maintain economic oppression is why the South was one of the most anti-tax regions of the nation. 

9) Many firms on Wall Street made fortunes from funding the slave trade.

10) The wealth gap between whites and blacks, the result of slavery, has yet to be closed.

color grading

This blog post was contributed by Tichana Griffith, student in Miller's SOC 3013 class. 

I wanted to share this video with the class because the topic was not touched on a lot over the semester. The video addresses skin-color preferences, among a number of concerns related to racial identity. Despite the late-1960's Black Power claim that "black is beautiful," even today black teen girls still seem to believe that light skin is better than dark skin. This idea appears to have been prevalent since slavery when lighter blacks were given preference and permitted to work inside slave-owners' dwellings, while those who were darker remained outside to toil at hard labor in the fields. This video brings me to question actual changes in racial identity. Do we black Americans today really see our blackness in ways that radically oppose traditional racist definitions, or do we just think we do?

For a similar discussion about skin-color preference, see this clip from Dark Girls.

evolution of equality

This useful infographic places a variety of events relevant to inequalities of race, sex, and sexual orientation on a historical timeline.

race and wealth inequality

This post was written by Paul Dean and originally appeared in The Sociological Cinema. 

This CBS news report shows dramatic wealth inequalities across race, and how the inequalities have increased dramatically during the Great Recession. Like Oliver and Shapiro's classic book, Black Wealth/White Wealth, the report documents that in 1995, the median white household had a net worth 7 times larger than black and Hispanic households. Citing Census data analyzed by the Pew Center, the video shows that in 2010 white households ($113,000) now have 18 times the net worth of Hispanics ($6,325) and 20 times the net worth of African-Americans ($5,677). It notes that part of this growing difference is that the net worth of most racial minorities is found in their homes, while whites are more likely to also own financial assets. The news team argues that this asset allocation explains why white wealth has rebounded significantly from its recent losses and increased the wealth divide. While this is true, they largely miss other important factors. For example, Melvin Oliver's 2008 report found that African-Americans were the subject of systematic predatory lending during the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession. He noted that "minorities were steered away from safe, conventional loans by brokers who received incentives for jacking up the interest rate" and that their mortgages had "high hidden costs, exploding adjustable rates, and prepayment penalties to preclude refinancing." This not only lead to a drop in the value of minority wealth, but actually stripped much of their assets as borrowers who defaulted on their loans. The video closes by saying "experts say it could be a decade before the wealth gap closes," although they do not cite any experts that say this. Viewers may question the optimism of this prediction and reflect on why it is likely to take much more than a decade for something like wealth (which is passed down from one generation to another) to be more equitably distributed across race. The video is a great accompaniment to the readings linked to above, and perhaps even this comedic video from Chris Rock on race and the differences between being rich and wealthy.

educating black boys

See video at 
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2012/10/201210249148948252.html 
The following post is a direct quote from that site.

Baltimore, Maryland has come to be known as 'Charm City' because of its harbour, which attracts a vibrant nightlife and thriving tourism business. But just beyond the harbour's calm waters is one of the toughest and most violent inner cities in the US. Baltimore is also home to Al Jazeera presenter Tony Harris and in this episode of Al Jazeera Correspondent he takes us on an up close and personal journey to his old neighbourhood to witness the challenges facing black youth today as they struggle to get out of the dead end of life on inner city streets. Most of the crime in Baltimore is committed by black males with other blacks as victims, making black males an easy target for the police. And many believe that the stereotyping of black kids starts at an early age in the US--as as early as grade school. In this film, Harris examines how the education system has failed black boys and reflects upon why he managed to make it out successfully while so many of his friends did not. A visit to his former high school reveals the desperation felt by both the pupils and the teachers. "School and criminal justice systems biased against black boys; all echoes of my childhood. But I managed to avoid the trap of Baltimore's cycle of poverty and violence," he explains. "But now I was going back to my hometown to get to the bottom of what I considered the new civil rights fight in America--educating black boys."

recent multimedia on modern slavery

In addition to KONY 2012, other multimedia pieces on abduction and modern slavery have recently come online. In the top video, photographer Lisa Kristine gives a TED-talk on modern-day slavery around the world and the abolitionist efforts of Free The Slaves. The bottom clip is from CNNs Slavery's Last Stronghold, examining conditions in Mauritania where a sizable minority of the population remains enslaved.

activists in support of The Help

Despite widespread criticisms among progressives about The Help, Ilyse House reports in a recent article in The Nation that the Oscar-nominated film has served as a positive force for domestic workers by bringing their plight to national attention. According to labor activists, the movie has served to give their cause a significant voice, as well as a yardstick by which to educate the public that conditions among those in this occupation have not appreciably improved since the Civil Rights era a half-century ago.

The Interrupters

The Interrupters, now accessible for online viewing as part of the PBS Frontline series, examines attempts by former gang leaders to stop youth violence in inner-city Chicago.  Additional information on making the documentary and the intervention process itself is available through NPR interviews with directors and an interrupter featured in film.

Slavery By Another Name

Notwithstanding the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery did not end in the south until well into the 20th century.  A host of laws were enacted following the Civil War which ensured the forced labor of black men in mines, fields, and factories.  Now available online, this just-released PBS documentary examines the nature and consequences of the wholesale enslavement of southern blacks through the criminal justice system.  The video website also offers a collection of visual history interviews produced by StoryCorps.

self-deportation and generalized oppression in Alabama

Alabama lawmakers may have done better had they consulted the work of the late sociologist, Robert K. Merton, before enacting recent law against undocumented workers and their families. Specifically, Merton emphasized the fact that intentional change often carries latent dysfunctional consequences, i.e., serious, unintended, undesirable outcomes. The law was supposed to make life so difficult for immigrants without papers that they would simply leave the state. However, as Jack Hitt explains in Alien Experiment, Act One of this This American Life episode, it has made living and working in Alabama far more difficult for many others, in addition to those initially targeted.