The following post was contributed by Laurie Gleason, student in my Fall, 2014 Social Stratification class. With the ongoing concern over illegal immigration, Hispanics still find themselves routinely overlooked for decent jobs, regardless of their citizenship status. Many Americans feel immigrants serve a "worthwhile" purpose by taking unskilled labor positions like field work or housekeeping--backbreaking, under-compensated work which most Americans feel is beneath them.
Cate Matthews in a recent Huffington Postarticledescribes José Zamora's futile attempts to obtain gainful employment until he Americanized his name. As José, he claims he did not receive a single inquiry, despite placing as many as 100 applications per day. However, "Joe," sporting the same résumé, received job offers from the exact same companies shortly after he applied.
In this modern age, where applications are submitted online, does a person's name become the simple key for unlocking the door to a decent job? The video "Jose vs. Joe" clearly relates to the larger question of the continuing role of status ascription as critical for achievement in societies, such as ours, that purport to be meritocracies.
Students interested in exploring this issue further should address research that has been done in this area, such as the Bertrand and Mullainathan study conducted over a decade ago that is now a classic.
Consider teeth as a significant marker of class division in the U.S. We have a dental system that provides excellent care and treatment, but only if you have money or insurance. Preventive-care coverage is available to poor children through Medicaid, but such coverage, as well as dental disease treatment, is largely inaccessible to the balance of low-income Americans.
For a scientific assessment of role of class and race, read Social Class and Dental Health PS - FYI for OITNB non-watchers: Pennsatucky only received dentures after suffering a prison beating.
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.”
"Netropolitan: The online country club for people with more money than time" is being offered for a first-year membership fee of $9,000 ($3,000 annual renewal thereafter) as a Facebook of sorts for the rich.
Why should you join? As noted on website:
Netropolitan is:
- Worldwide: Meet like-minded individuals from across the globe who share your lifestyle and interests
- Private and Secure: The entire service is inaccessible from the public Internet, including search engines. All member transmissions to and from Netropolitan are encrypted
- Ad-Free: Absolutely no third-party or display advertising is sold or shown, and the service pushes no paid promotions to its members. (However, we do allow businesses to create groups and members to advertise to each other, under strict guidelines)
- Moderated: The Netropolitan community is continually monitored by the company’s own professional moderators, ensuring readily-available help and a pleasant and courteous experience for all
- Always available: In addition to polished desktop and laptop interfaces, members can connect via special versions for tablets and mobile web browsers and also via apps (coming soon) for Android and iOS phones
You can use The Netropolitan Club for any purpose – personal, business, professional.
Netropolitan is what you make it. Welcome to The Club.
Is this where the rich and powerful engage in conspiracy? This recent TestTube.com video examines The Bohemian Grove, a summer playground in northern California for members of America's power elite. The secretive nature of the Bohemian Club's annual 16-day July meeting is further addressed in this Washington Postarticle and in this Spy Magazine expose mentioned in the clip. For sociological treatment of the retreat's role as a nexus for fostering social relationships, aligning views, and setting political agendas, see this detailed study by G.William Domhoff.
Check out the special May 23 issue of Science devoted to examining the science of inequality. According to editors, Chin and Culotta: This special issue uses... fresh waves of data to explore the origins, impact, and future of inequality around the world. Archaeological and ethnographic data are revealing how inequality got its start in our ancestors (see pp. 822 and 824). New surveys of emerging economies offer more reliable estimates of people's incomes and how they change as countries develop (see p. 832). And in the past decade in developed capitalist nations, intensive effort and interdisciplinary collaborations have produced large data sets, including the compilation of a century of income data and two centuries of wealth data into the World Top Incomes Database (WTID) (see p. 826 and Piketty and Saez, p.838).
It all makes for great reading, so check to see if your library subscribes to the journal.
This post was contributed by Carol Walden and Earl Venne, students in my undergraduate social stratification class.
Hidefumi Ito was
an art gallery director, selling high-priced items to the richest people in the
world. The economic recession quickly killed the business and his job. Ito
lived in a five-bedroom house and owned two cars, an incredible level of
financial wealth in space-starved Japan. He lost his home in months to bankruptcy. Disgraced, his wife divorced him and now his three children won’t
speak to him (Lah, 2009).
Due to his
extreme downward mobility, Ito faced several dilemmas including the loss of
side bets. He lost his family, his house, and vehicles. Additionally, Ito’s identity stake was challenged; he lost his place in society and is no longer able to convince others that he is who and what he once claimed to be (Schwalbe, 2008).
Many individuals in
Ito’s position reside at night hotels, such as Tsukasa which costs about 20
USD per night. The net rooms are small closet-sized
spaces of about 100 square feet. The rooms are designed for the unemployed in the sense of having a computer and an internet connection. Several companies have
jumped into the market and are taking advantage of the economic turmoil and the huge profits to be made off them. Net rooms like those of Su Casa are always at maximum
capacity.
In today's Japan, staffing agencies are on the rise, and corporations are less
likely to employ full-timers than ever before. In an economy
where there is a much greater supply of workers than there is demand for
them, this type of action by employers no doubt causes employees to fear for their jobs, given the fact they can be quickly replaced by temps. It
may also contribute to the lesser likelihood that employees will blow the whistle on unfair
or unsafe employment practices. Given the poor job situation, only one-third of college graduates are now able to find work.
The crash of the
economy and resulting downward mobility for many also have exacerbated suicide. Government statistics indicate that
30,707 people committed suicide in Japan in 2009, with the largest numbers between the ages of 45 to 65. The Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mt Fuji
has earned the nickname "suicide forest." Another favorite place is the Cliffs of Tojimbo, where volunteers patrol the area to keep people from diving off. The suicide rate is currently 24 per 100,000
people, the second highest in the world. According to public-health researcher Yutaka Motohashi, suicides today are strongly linked
to unemployment and bank-loan request rejections. The government has been running campaigns on television to educate
people about depression and suicide, but suicide is
still seen by many Japanese as the honorable way out (Motohashi, 2012).
References
Lah, K. (2009,
February 27). Net rooms boom with Japan’s jobless. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from
Tune in to MSNBC on July 27 9:00-10:00 PM to see a documentary on sex trafficking in Houston. The film features Dottie Laster, an incredible woman totally devoted to rescuing trafficked victims and bringing law enforcement down on the bad guys. Dottie also has been featured in a number of other media stories, including this article in More magazine. PS - In response to the common question: what can you do with a sociology degree? I always point to Dottie; she graduated from UTSA with a bachelor's degree in sociology in 2003.
While generating windfall fortunes for a few, economic booms typically create a host of dysfunctional consequences for many others. This is certainly the case for those living in the Texas towns just south of San Antonio involved in the current Eagle Ford oilfield "play." This New York Timesvideo documents the efforts of one resident, a former ranch hand now roughneck, to supplement family groceries by hunting feral hogs in the brush country. This related Timesarticle addresses the especially adverse economic effects of the boom for the many poor living the region, while also producing in general, uncontrolled population growth, an upsurge in traffic fatalities, and rampant environmental degradation, among other problems. Note also a recent series of articles appearing in The Texas Monthly about Eagle Ford, including this extensive piece by Brian Mealer on boom-related social issues.
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.
This post was contributed by Calandra Silvestro, UTSA student in SOC 3013, Social Stratification.
As a child, I remember hearing the term "catlady.” I thought, until recently, this referred to a woman who was an
empty-nester; she was alone since her children had left. Today, it appears the word means you never had any children, you just have cats.
Having children is a choice; just like any
other choice. Would someone look down on you if you decided never to eat out?
That’s also just a normal choice. Sometimes it’s a smart decision to wait and
have children when you are more settled and established. Some women don’t want
to have children until they are successful. Some may want to finish school and
get a decent job that pays the bills and can also take care of a family. Also,
children are- very expensive (according to the video, in 2011, the cost of
raising a child until the age of 18 was $234,900 on average); they also need to
be cared for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
The article “Check your
‘Cat-Lady’ Preconceptions About Childless Women” suggests new thinking about childless women. It appears more women are choosing not
to have children. The birth rate dropped to 8% in 2010. 1 in 5 women, ages
40-45 choose not to have children. This number has doubled since 1976. This
article also mentions that some women who decide not to have children have very
fulfilling lives. Radhika Jones, the executive editor of Time Magazine says in
the video “different opportunities come up and you start to realize that you
have different fulfilling and rewarding relationships that maybe don’t involve
you being a mother”.
“If you want to be successful in your
career, don’t have children”, says Kristen Houghton, in her article “Why (Most) Successful Women are Childless.”. She addresses
both sides: having children and not having children. Houghton says about
working, “whether in the corporate, financial, or even artistic realms, to
reach the top in your career requires a single-minded drive, dedication and
passion.” If you decide to become a mother, you won’t have this drive and
passion for working as you would for your children. Houghton also states, “The
truth is that most women who have achieved professional success have chosen not
to have children”. Houghton references an article titled “In Corporate America,
Still a Struggle for Female Execs”. This article mentions several big companies
and how many “women on board” and “women named executives” they have.
Women who have children are 44% less
likely to be hired and are paid $11,000 less than women without children,
according to Kelly Hagan, who wrote the article titled ‘New Study Shows That
Childless Women Succeed More Than Mothers in the Workplace”. This study (that
found the 44%) was done in 2005 by Cornell University. Hagan mentions the
study in her article. According to Hagan, men’s incomes rise to 75% more than a
women’s income 15 years after they finished college, even if they had the same
income and worked the same number of hours after finishing college.
I am still not quite sure if having
children or not having children affects women’s hiring or not. I understand why
some companies would not want to hire a woman with children. Children need care
and they take up a lot of time. Some companies might need you to travel and if
you have children that might be a problem. Also, most work places don’t want
you to take time off. What happens if your child gets sick or has an appointment?
You would have to take time off for that. Also, women would have to take
maternity leave. I can certainly see both sides. Some women just have that
motherly instinct and have always wanted to be a mother and some have passion
and drive for a certain career.
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).
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.
“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:
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?
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?
What role did discrimination and prejudice play in limiting the swimming opportunities of African Americans in the past?
The phrase poverty porn has become increasingly employed in the UK to describe film medias' growing tendency to exploit poor people for entertainment value (see this recent article in Tonight.) The most popular of this genre based on a reality-show format focuses on residents in a Birmingham neighborhood in the Channel 4 series, Benefits Street.
The New York City Rescue Mission recently distributed a video to suggest just how invisible the homeless are--even to presumably well-meaning people. Close relatives, who dressed and posed as homeless, went unnoticed as their loved ones passed by on the street. Their reactions to being informed of their failure to recognize them are most compelling. The video does not suggest how many passers-by actually recognized pretending-to-be-homeless relatives. See the Rescue Mission's project at http://www.makethemvisible.com/.
