Social Science Lite

“Food Deserts”: Fertile Ground for Socially-Minded Entrepreneurs

2010-04-22T17:17:00.007-04:00

Adminstrator's note: The following piece was written by SSL Guest Contributor Ifeoma Ajunwa and was reposted from RightRespect. Ifeoma is about to begin her Ph.D at Columbia University in Sociology. She can be reached at iajunwa@gmail.com for comments.)

In honor of Maryland’s passage of the nation’s first “Benefit Corporation” bill signed into law today, we have collaborated with our contributor Ifeoma Ajunwa to address an area ripe for socially-minded entrepreneurs, eliminating food deserts and promoting the right to food here in the United States.

Access to healthful food is a human rights issue. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[i] which is adopted by the United Nations affirmed that: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food.” “Food deserts[ii]” are community areas with little or no access to affordable, quality, and nutritious food. These communities, found in such cities as Detroit, Los Angeles, Memphis, and Newark, and most of which are largely populated by blacks and Latinos, suffer from a dearth of supermarkets, and can only rely on fast-food chains and corner stores that sell mostly liquor and some produce at exorbitant prices. About 23 million people, of whom about 6.5 million are children, inhabit low-income urban and rural spaces where the nearest supermarket is more than a mile away — keeping in mind that many low-income families can not afford a car. For an extreme example, nearly 633,000 of Chicago’s population live in communities that lack nearby supermarkets[iii].

Recently, First Lady Michelle Obama penned a cover story for Newsweek magazine in which she detailed her fight against the growing rates of obesity in school age American children. Obesity brings with it a host of health problems such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Further, high obesity rates negatively impact the economy as millions of tax-payer dollars are spent each year in treating the chronic diseases that stem from it. Since, as the First Lady noted, a third of American children are either overweight or obese, the fight against obesity is a matter of national concern.

In an effort to combat this problem, the First Lady has launched “Let’s Move[iv],” a program that employs several different tactics to help children and their parents towards the goal of a healthy weight. The strategies include: offering parents the tools to make better food choices for their children; a push towards more healthful food options at schools via the Healthier US Schools Challenge Program and the updating of the Child Nutrition Act; more physical activities for children; and the elimination of “food deserts.”

As part of the Fiscal Year 2011 budget, the Administration proposes the Healthy Food Financing Initiative which will invest $400 million a year to fund innovative projects that bring grocery stores to “food deserts” and other underserved areas. The Administration also plans to use grants to entice farmer’s markets and fresh food services to areas where they are currently lacking.

Not only will the elimination of “food deserts” boost the health of many of America’s population, the financial incentives for doing so will also revitalize the economy by providing new opportunities for entrepreneurship.

There are several pioneers who can serve as positive examples for entrepreneurs willing to take advantage of the fertile business climate of “food deserts.” One such trailblazer is Karriem Beyah[v], who runs Farmers Best Market, a store he recently opened in a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood of Chicago known as Back of the Yards, and which had been abandoned by large supermarket chains. Another is William Allen[vi], a 2008 recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” award who founded Growing Power, a non-profit farming business. Through Growing Power[vii], Allen uses both rural and urban farming — at sites like Merton, Milwaukee, and Chicago — to bring fresh produce and meat products to low-income urban residents at a reduced price. His organization also offers internships that train minorities, immigrants and other interested participants to produce healthful food in their communities.

With the Obama administration wiling to invest millions of dollars to making the steps of all Americans a bit lighter, socially-minded entrepreneurs need only find a “desert” that needs cultivating to get their businesses off and running.

[i] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948.
[ii] http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/AP/AP036/
[iii] http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1900947,00.html#ixzz0kAnplugn
[iv] http://www.newsweek.com//frameset.aspx/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.letsmove.gov%2F
[v] http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1900947,00.html
[vi] http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4537249/
[vii] http://www.growingpower.org/about_us.htm

In (Slight) Defense of Chris Matthews

2010-02-02T13:33:00.007-05:00

Chris Matthews’ blunder following President Obama’s State of the Union Address is by now common knowledge to political junkies. But for those that missed it, Matthews was so enamored with Obama’s speech that, well, he “forgot [the President] was black for an hour:”

It's interesting: he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and past so much history, in just a year or two. I mean, it's something we don't even think about. I was watching, I said, wait a minute, he's an African American guy in front of a bunch of other white people. And here he is president of the United States and we've completely forgotten that tonight -- completely forgotten it.

For Matthews, Obama’s speech was significant because, for that moment in time, he was stripped of his “blackness.” Obama wasn’t race-less, per se, but instead no longer black. The faux pas falls under the heading of colorblind ideology—i.e. the idea that racial inequality and division will disappear if we just stop obsessing over racial differences. According to the ideology’s adherents, adopting a “colorblind” outlook—pretending we don’t notice differences in skin pigment—is the pathway to a more equal, democratic civil society.

The problem with this framework in general, and Matthews’ comment in particular, is the effective whitewashing and subsuming of different cultures. In other words, the colorblind rhetoric can only be realized if all races, creeds and colors simply adopt and are assimilated into the dominant white discourse. The ideology of colorblindness doesn’t call for a new, radical framework of, say, American racial identity. No, by contrast, colorblind ideology accepts whiteness as a given from which “others” must assimilate. As Ta-Nehisi Coates argues, echoed by G.D. in Postbourgie’s recent Podcast, this failure to investigate whiteness is deeply problematic. Colorblind ideology obfuscates the intersection of race, power, and privilege by accepting the dominant racial identity as the standard from which all other races must acclimate. To accept a “colorblind” framework, therefore, is to accept the superiority and dominance of a singular racial identity.

Still, to defend Matthews ever-so-slightly, I do think his heart was in the right place. Look, the guy never thought he’d see an African-American leading the free world. For Matthews and plenty others of his generation, the idea of a black president was—until last year—unfathomable. So, in some respects, the intent of Matthews comment was to laud the normalization of a black man in a position of power. Which, in all fairness, is pretty remarkable. Just because Chris Matthews failed to introspectively challenge his own entrenched racial identity—no small task, if you ask me—doesn’t mean we should dismiss his astute observation wholesale.

Was Matthews’ commentary racist? Maybe—but only if we accept the sophisticated critique of colorblind ideology. Yet the average white American doesn’t exactly think about racial identity like this on a day-to-day basis. And, perhaps, it is this widespread pattern—not Matthews’ individual blunder—that lies at the root of the problem.

The Other Detroit

2010-01-26T09:21:00.005-05:00

Wunderkammer Magazine recently commissioned me to write a piece on Detroit for their Politics and Society section. I took the opportunity to write about a side of the city that gets significantly less attention in the popular media—the “other” Detroit, if you will. It ended up being a bit too long to post here in its entirety, but it’s worth a read nonetheless.

An excerpt:

I take Interstate 96 eastbound from Ann Arbor. It’s the first warm day of 2008, and the combination of a bright sun and light breeze makes for a beautiful spring afternoon. After 35 miles of Midwestern nothing, I reach the city limits of Detroit. Small, decrepit housing lines the edges of the Southfield Freeway as I approach the exit for North Rosedale, a neighborhood located on the northwest side of the city. As I pull into the local Community House and park—the only privately owned park in the city—the smell of freshly cut grass is almost intrusive. A youth softball game is underway, and parents lounge in folding chairs. Along the edges of the park, residents—predominantly African-Americans—walk their dogs by large, single-family English Tudors. Almost without exception, each two-story house on each tree-lined street adorns a perfectly manicured lawn and a large wooden front door. It’s a middle-class oasis. A distinctly suburban feel, in fact. But it’s not the suburbs. It’s Detroit.

[...]

North Rosedale Park is the anti-slum. A middle-class majority remained after racial turnover, separating North Rosedale from countless other urban neighborhoods throughout the country. Homes are large, and social cohesion throughout the neighborhood is strong. Residents are tremendously proud of their neighborhood, and perhaps more importantly, committed to the city they call home.

[...]

No story or investigative report has captured this side of Detroit, the North Rosedale side. It’s not the bombed out train station, nor is it the urban prairie. It’s not the empty factory, nor is it the large housing project. It’s not the homeless man pushing his cart down a desolate downtown, nor is it the young woman waiting in line for a welfare check.
No, it’s the daily struggle of the urban middle class, the plight of a forgotten population. It’s the neighborhood where Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm lived briefly before ultimately moving to the suburbs. It’s half a mile from where Detroit historian Thomas Sugrue grew up, a neighborhood his parents hoped to one day “be wealthy enough” to call home. It’s the tree-lined streets, the well-maintained community park. It’s the colorful gardens and golden retrievers. It’s the uneasy, yet unwavering middle class in an otherwise unsettling and unsure urban abyss.
It’s the other Detroit.

Special thanks to my editor, Dara Lind, for her encouraging comments and thoughtful critiques.

Apple Pies, McDonalds, and Gender O’ My

2010-01-23T19:07:00.010-05:00

Am I the only that finds it a bit ironic that the restaurant that has been criticized as the culinary culprit in the breakdown of the American family has returned to traditional gender roles in their advertisements? Or at least traditional gender expectations? Yes, McDonalds has been pointed out in the lineup as being many families' route, or rather escape, from having home-cooked meals around the dinner table as stable, nuclear family ought to be doing. I do not mean to single out McDonalds as if those who run the company orchestrated this phenomenon by themselves. But given the general ratchet effect that has taken effect in the number of activities we cram into a single, 24 hour period and changing expectations of members of society as whole, fast food restaurants in general have been seen as enablers of this decline. And when you're the biggest and baddest bully of them all, you tend to take the rap more so than the others.

So what is this post about? Well, my apple pie wrapper pictured above. The apple pie has been a staple and trademark American food since the days of our grandparents. You may recall the old saying, "As American as apple pie." Though mostly a white, middle class story, it did not stay within this demographic group alone. It was not only a gastronomic creation; it was a symbol of American domestic life for many years, both here and abroad. Many home economics books of yore typically employed different depictions of the apple pie on their covers while inside they outlined how women ought to fill their roles of wife, mother, and homebody. I took my favorite oldest niece (our running joke as I only have two nieces and she's the oldest. Get it? Good) to McDonald's for lunch when I was in Miami. We both got apple pies and I saw the wrapper. And I was like, wow. Seriously. "Mommy didn't have time." Really. Kind of pissed me off: I'm not lovin' it.

The kitchen, even in the advertisement for the quintessential fast food restaurant, remains the woman's domain. In fact, one may can interpret the reading as sanctioning women for bring to busy. Though some conservatives, as I say above, demonized these restaurants for allowing women to spend even less time at home, and especially in the kitchen, McDonalds and traditionalists seem to be of one mind. McDonald's has not gone as far as the old saying, "A woman's place is to be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen," but the general picture, I argue, is still there.

As a practical matter, it takes time to bake an apple pie when you do it right. But, as this advertisement suggests, let's put a child and/or husband not having solely one on mommy.

This post is not meant to be particularly earth-shattering. Rather, it fits with my general thinking about how reified our thinking about gender roles and expectations are and how best are we to continue moving forward in contesting, blurring, and crossing these boundaries. Personally, I feel that there is still much work to be done. However, I know that this is preaching to the choir members who also serve on the usher board on alternative Sundays and volunteer for the Sheppard's care ministry (to use and extend that old adage). In commenting on my post "How Not So Far We've Come: (Still) "Doing Gender"" where I discuss the gendered picture on baby changing stations in bathrooms, one of our more insightful readers said that things will change only when men start to care. I partially agree with her. I think that things will change when both men and women no longer take pictures, phrases, or depictions like these for granted.

The Insolence of Understanding: Part II

2010-01-16T10:30:00.006-05:00

It has been a while since my last post. Reason: graduate school is, for lack of better words, no joke. Nevertheless, we prevail. A few weeks ago I wrote a post entitled, "The Insolence of Understanding," as a reaction to seeing an advertisement for wearing baldcaps in support of those with cancer. The post was not to question their motives or intent; personally, I believe their cause (raising money for cancer research and support of those with cancer) is admirable. What I questioned was the idea and/or action of dawning on another's identity, persona, or physical characteristic for a cause when one has the freedom to eschew any such constraint, hindrance, or restriction it places on one's abilities. I update my thoughts on this with another example that I think makes my point clearer. Thus, I turn to one episode from my favorite show of the Fall season: gLee!*

In the episode, "Wheels," the members of the gLee club are ordered, or rather sentenced, to be confined to a wheel chair for at least three hours a day while at school. At first, I was like "LOL ROFL" because this "exercise" was supposed to create team unity as the other members did not show any concern for not having enough money to rent a wheel chair accessible bus so that one of their group member's, Artie, who is wheelchair bound could come. Yet when I watched the show again, the same feeling that I had when I saw the baldcaps on the T and Will Smith's fat suit on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It was supposed to be both a comedic as well as a teaching moment. I mean, at the end of the show, they sung Ike and Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" in wheelchairs, starting it off with Finn saying, "This one's for you Artie." I mean, they did a good job, but the feeling did not leave me. Were the wheelchairs more to help Mercedes, Rachel, Puck, Finn, and the others understand Artie's plight or just props or accessories for the group to use while performing? The inability to separate the two options from one another or even choose the former as the right question to ask shows evidence for my questioning of these "moments."

I ask again, what exactly is being said when we use other people's situation as teaching moments for privileged individuals. The directors had Artie seem enthusiastic about the fact that his friends will be joining him in being wheelchair bound. I am not sure exactly what his response is supposed to mean. As I argued in part I, "we must realize that we do not become who we pretend to be but also that who we pretend to be are real. It is the mismatch between the show of solidarity and the reality of the life of those individuals that I find most troubling. The insolence of understanding." One key example is the moment when Finn became frustrated with Quinn's constant nagging for money for the baby and mounting doctor bills, GOT UP out of his wheelchair and left Quinn and the others behind, invoking his latent, ever-present ability to walk.

To speak more generally, I think there is a difference between detailing the life experiences of others and walking a few days, in this case, hours in someone else's shoes and then reporting it as one's lived experiences. This may be a fine line, but I believe that it is a concrete line nonetheless. When we begin to speak of other's experiences as our own without questioning the distance that exists between oneself and others, we begin to get into murky waters.

*(Shani, Community is Good, but gLee is Definitely Way Better)

There’s No Such Thing as Stupid People

2009-12-22T10:42:00.008-05:00

But there are certainly stupid, asinine attempts at “investigative” reporting:

A few factual corrections:

“Detroit sucks, but why? Well to start, it’s no secret that Detroit is run entirely by Leftists. Every single mayor of Detroit since 1961 has been a liberal. It is the city of entitlement programs.”

Yeah, and every mayor of Boston and Chicago has been a Democrat since 1930 and 1931, respectively. But Boston has the 8^th highest housing prices in the nation, and Chicago is currently the 3^rd most populous American city. Both Boston and Chicago have enjoyed Democratic dominance far longer than Detroit, yet continue to be prosper at the aggregate level. The obvious rebuttal to Crowder’s report is the classic “correlation does not mean causation” statement, but that would imply Crowder actually illustrated a correlation between, well, anything.

“How did it get this way? It all started with Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh in 1961.”

Yeah, well, no. Crowder is about 30 years late in his pseudo-historical analysis, as the well-documented decline of Detroit began with the major auto manufacturers—not the auto unions—in the 1930s and 40s. Federal highway construction as a military mobilization tool aided industrial decentralization and the racially restrictive postwar housing boom, and, you guessed it, Detroit’s affluent residents fled en masse. Unfounded fear of a growing murder rate combined with racial resentment over school desegregation measures and the Detroit metro region morphed into a chocolate city with vanilla suburbs by the late 1970s. This meticulously documented social and economic change—the actual root of the city’s decline—came well before contemporary UAW bargaining agreements, the housing crisis, or even Kwame Kilpatrick’s indiscretions.

To suggest that Detroit somehow represents the archetype of Democratic leadership is either grossly dishonest or insanely stupid. A cursory view of any map of home foreclosures, population loss, or median household income decline illustrates a clear geographic pattern: The deindustrialized Rust Belt, northern Florida and much of California have been the hardest hit by our most recent recession. The states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Florida and California are all in serious trouble, and their respective histories and contemporary troubles run much deeper than simple party politics.

Oh, and that scene at the end? The one of the Michigan Central Depot, a bombed out former train station? That building is actually owned by a billionaire trucking tycoon, and closed down in the 80s during the Reagan era of, er, prosperity. It has nothing to do with auto bailouts, or Democratic politicians, or teacher’s unions. If anything, it represents the effects of economic excess and corporate neglect.

Like many journalists before him, Crowder is a lazy opportunist. I understand his schtick—the cutesy, hip young conservative that serves up clever quips against liberal politics. But if this simplistic garbage is any indication of the relative intellect of young conservatives, well, their "movement" leaves a lot to be desired.

Dangerous Implications

2009-12-21T12:47:00.008-05:00

In the months preceding December’s blockbuster explosion, two films have been dominating the box office: Lee Daniels’ Precious and John Lee Hancock’s The Blindside. Both films are based on critically acclaimed books and both take issues of racial inequality head-on. Albeit for different reasons, both films have also been lauded as inspiring stories of racial uplift.

I’d love to offer glowing reviews of both films, noting their sophisticated and nuanced take on contemporary race relations. I’d love to submit my own adoration for their careful depictions of disadvantage, dealing with complex and often contradictory emotions with honest realism. Most importantly, I’d love to express my satisfaction with their innovative explorations of solutions—some policy-relevant commentary, perhaps—to the problems of urban poverty vividly portrayed in each film.

But in reality, Precious is more of a shortsighted journey into insulated dysfunction, while The Blindside is closer to a condescending fairytale of Christian charity cure-alls.

Precious portrays internal, inner-city pathos like no film before it. The film’s main character, Precious, is morbidly obese, sixteen years old in the 8^th grade, pregnant with her second child from her father, living in abject poverty with her physically and emotionally abusive mother, and HIV-positive to boot. The film itself follows her through a particularly difficult period in her life, from the welfare office to the fried chicken spot to the alternative school where she can finally express herself—through writing in a journal, of course. But it rings of reality, and, anachronisms aside, speaks a few truths of urban poverty.

Yet the excessive focus on internal dysfunction and pathology ignores the role of external forces—be they shifts in the economy or social policy reforms—in perpetuating the conditions from which Precious emerges. For viewers ignorant to criminal justice reforms in the last two decades or AFDC or economic decentralization or employment discrimination, Precious provides a simplistic message of fried chicken loving, psychologically disturbed welfare queens. The system failed Precious well before her birth, but this reality of poverty is all but obscured by flying frying pans and hairy pigs’ feet. And the uplifting ending? Precious’ triumphant awakening as she exits the welfare office, finally standing up to her mother? It’s hard to forget that she’s still 16, with two mentally retarded children, homeless, no job, and slowly dying of AIDS. Forgive me for not feeling empowered.

The Blindside provides a glimpse into what Precious’ life could have been…had rich white people in Tennessee adopted her. The Blindside is based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless black teenager who’s athletic ability found him enrolled in a Memphis prep school. The gentle giant is ultimately adopted by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy after the Good Christian family discovers that poor Michael is, well, poor. They take Michael into their home and find him a tutor, raising his GPA to make him eligible for a college football scholarship. Michael ultimately “chooses” a scholarship from Ole Miss (his adopted parents are alums and boosters), and, as of the 2009 season, suits up for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. For two hours of racial Kum Bay Ya, the white family accepts the black teenager without so much as an inkling of reservation, and the black teenager accepts the “crazy white people” without ever seriously questioning their intentions.

That’s not to say that The Blindside doesn’t include flashes of racial brilliance. In one scene, Leigh Anne (Michael Oher’s adopted mother, played by Sandra Bullock) has lunch with three of her affluent, white, female friends. One friend asks her how she can possibly feel comfortable with a big black boy in her home—she does have a teenage daughter, after all. Leigh Anne looks her square in the eyes, and with piercing subtlety, quietly states “Shame on you” as she leaves the restaurant. Later that night, she pulls her daughter aside and asks her—in a far less subtle tone—if she feels comfortable with Michael sleeping next door. She’s cool with it, but this mother-daughter awkwardness isn't the point of the scene. Rather, it illustrates the daily internal negotiations among socially conscious whites, constantly balancing pervasive stereotypes with their own moral inclinations. Racial literacy is a process, not a character trait, and this honest scene is quite powerful.

Ultimately, there are good scenes and bad scenes in each film. Yet both end with deeply problematic, insidious implications: Precious relegates disadvantage to internal pathos, and The Blindside perpetuates the dubious fairytale that a little bit of individual charity can solve group-level social problems. Why does concentrated poverty persist? Must be because the lives of poor African-Americans are in disarray as a result of drug abuse and parental neglect. And what can we do about it? Find some nice white people, and adopt all the helpless black children.

Internal dysfunction, solved with external charity. Not exactly the sophisticated portrayal of racial inequality I had hoped for.

Representing Reality with Integrity

2009-11-09T07:35:00.006-05:00

Few television shows have received as much academic praise as HBO’s The Wire. From City Hall to the classroom to the street corner, The Wire brilliantly captured the heart and soul of urban America—the same heart and soul meticulously detailed in countless academic studies of urban inequality.

Yet the scholars that research urban America rarely come into contact with the actors that portray urban America in television or film. That is, until two weeks ago when three actors from The Wire—Andre Royo (Bubbles the junkie), Sonja Sohn (Kima the detective), and Michael Williams (Omar the stickup artist)—sat down with three scholars—Harvard sociologists William Julius Wilson and Larry Bobo, and Yale graduate student/Baltimore native Brandon Terry—to discuss the social policy implications and lessons from the show.

After the panel, Royo, Song, and Willams were escorted to a private after-party at The Harvard Lampoon, a building that houses the Harvard undergraduate humor magazine of the same name. Since the panel’s moderator is also my colleague in the Sociology department, I received a highly coveted (and much appreciated) invite to the party.

As a huge fan of the show, I could barely contain myself. I tried my best to keep it cool, keeping my camera in my pocket and resisting the urge to ask for an autograph. But when I sparked a conversation with Andre Royo, my composure started to fade. See, Bubs was my favorite character on the show, and Royo’s brilliant and careful portrayal of the homeless drug addict made my admiration for the character that much stronger. After a geek-out session about the show’s integration of professional actors with actual Baltimore natives (we went back and forth for a good five minutes listing each and every B-more local that appeared on the show), we started to talk about the inherent difficulty of portraying junkie.

Of course, playing a junkie isn’t that difficult, if the whole twitching-and-randomly-scratching-yourself caricature is your thing. But fans of The Wire know that Bubbles wasn’t your average junkie. There was an art to the way Royo played Bubs, a unique take on a classic character that fundamentally changed the way we approach “the junkie:” We never pitied him when he fell, but rather rooted for him to rise back up. In a strange way, the down-and-out junkie was the show’s most consistent hero.

According to Royo, a few unpaid consultants helped him develop the character. These consultants showed up at his trailer each morning, followed him and the production crew throughout Baltimore, and advised him through each and every scene. When he threw away a cigarette before smoking it to the filter, for example, they were quick to correct his mistake. How were they privy to the intimate details of life as a junkie? Because these consultants weren’t really consultants at all: They were the men and women that lived their lives on the streets of Baltimore. The very men and women Royo’s character was based on.

After each day, he’d retire to his trailer and remove his makeup. “And when I’d walk out,” he told me, “I looked at these people that had helped me all day, and I could see the betrayal in their eyes. At the end of the day, I could get cleaned up and go home, while they spent the night on the street. They looked at me like a sellout. It [messed] with my head for a long time.” Royo would feel depressed, and after particularly long days he often needed to spend time alone, away from everyone, to gather his thoughts. Here were men and women that could barely get by, struggling with addiction, and Royo was exploiting their lived experiences to get a paycheck. I asked Royo how he dealt with the guilt. “I just tried to portray the character—their world—with humanity. That’s all I could really do,” he replied. “But it was hard for me, emotionally.”

Detailing the lives of marginalized and disadvantaged communities requires a profound responsibility—a responsibility to be humble, compassionate, and above all else, honest. When Royo waxed philosophical, introspectively analyzing his role as both actor and representative, I couldn’t help but connect. As a qualitative researcher of urban inequality, I’m constantly dealing with the label of “privileged white guy that studies poor black people.” One the one hand, I feel a moral obligation to fight for those that are systematically disadvantaged. But on the other hand, such analyses can quickly become deeply paternalistic. Those that are familiar with my work and ideas know that I reject fetishizing “the other,” taking a comprehensive approach that avoids a singular focus on poor people of color. Still, the risk of exploitation never leaves the back of my mind. I never forget that I am making a career out of someone else’s life. I never forget who I am, constantly problematizing my ability to ever fully understand someone else’s world. And I never forget why I do it in the first place or why these issues matter. Like Royo, I constantly question myself, my work, and my role as a researcher.

Representing reality—be it on television or in academic research—requires a commitment to the craft of storytelling. But more importantly, it requires integrity. It was that integrity that made The Wire so powerful, and it is that critical honesty that makes good research. Urban polemics notwithstanding, this was the show’s most valuable lesson.

Republicans Wear Sneakers, Too

2009-10-16T09:06:00.005-04:00

In 1990, Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt opposed Republican incumbent Jessie Helms in North Carolina's Senate race. Gantt, an early civil rights leader and Mayor of Charlotte, ultimately lost the election, thanks in part to a racially charged advertisement from the Helms campaign. The now infamous ad, “Hands,” depicted a white man crinkling up a piece of paper after losing his job to a minority, implying, of course, that unfair racial quotas were to blame. Written by Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, the ad would go down in political history as one of the more egregious (and successful) exploitations of white resentment for political gain.

When asked to endorse Gantt for the Senate seat, NBA legend and North Carolina native Michael Jordan refused, stating, “Republicans wear sneakers, too.” The implication was clear, and the message came through loudly: As an avid businessman and superstar athlete, Jordan was happy to shelve his politics—and self dignity, for that matter—in favor of merchandise sales.

Flash forward nineteen years. Last week, conservative radio personality and former ESPN NFL commentator Rush Limbaugh announced interest in buying the beleaguered St. Louis Rams. Rejecting Michael Jordan-style political ambivalence, players across the league openly expressed dissatisfaction. Mathias Kiwanuka of the New York Giants, for example, was quoted as saying:

"I mean, I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play […] I am not going to draw a conclusion from a person off of one comment, but when it is time after time after time and there's a consistent pattern of disrespect and just a complete misunderstanding of an entire culture that I am a part of, I can't respect him as a man."

Kiwunaka was not alone. In 2003, Limbaugh resigned as an ESPN commentator after making racially charged remarks about Donovan McNabb, suggesting that the Pro Bowl quarterback only reached stardom due to the media’s irrational desire for “a black quarterback [to] do well.” Current players, like New York Jets linebacker Bart Scott, have not forgotten these statements:

“It’s an oxymoron that he criticized Donovan McNabb. A lot of us took it as more of a racial-type thing. I can only imagine how his players would feel. I know I wouldn’t want to play for him. He’s a jerk. He’s an —. What he said (about McNabb) was inappropriate and insensitive, totally off-base. He could offer me whatever he wanted, I wouldn’t play for him. … I wouldn’t play for Rush Limbaugh. My principles are greater and I can’t be bought.”

In a league that’s between 60 and 70 per cent black, it’s more than a little insulting to imagine a man that once suggested the NFL “all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapon s” could become a team owner. In fact, it’s absolutely outrageous. That a man with such overt, explicit contempt for African Americans could purchase and control an organization that profits from the labor of black athletes signals far too much historical baggage to be appropriate. Sports hold a special, unifying place in American culture, and as a result shouldn’t be a venue that rewards bigotry and divisiveness. Limbaugh’s disrespect of the league, its players, and African Americans in general are all legitimate grounds to oppose his involvement with the NFL—all opinions, I might add, that exist above and beyond any objection to his political views.

Given Limbaugh’s long history of racially charged remarks, it’s not surprising that players were offended by his announcement. But what is surprising is the public nature of their comments. Normally, team owners work to thwart political activism and diffuse dissent among their players. Bad for business, per the Jordan model of merchandise sales. But with the controversy over Limbaugh’s announcement, professional athletes may be moving toward a new model of political discourse, rejecting the Jordan template and re-embracing self dignity. The recent news that Limbaugh was officially dropped from the group bidding to buy the Rams only underscores the potential power of civically engaged professional athletes. Maybe this is the dawn of a new era—an era of renewed self-respect, moral integrity and civic engagement—in professional sports.

Tony Kornheiser of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption made this very point earlier in the week, suggesting, “We are out of the Michael Jordan era where everyone wears sneakers, and back to the Jim Brown era of social activism.”

No complaints here.

Come Out, Come Out Whoever You Are(?): Outings in Popular Media

2009-10-14T22:54:00.007-04:00

To be upfront about this post, it is a response to Bryan Safi’s video That’s Gay: Coming Out. Upon a cursory viewing of the video, one does get a sense of how coming out on popular shows has been constructed in a way to amp up the drama. On this point, I agree. In his comical framing and colorful presentation, however, I question if he does just as much of a disservice to coming out, or rather the choice/experience of coming out, by his depiction of the examples he uses. I will only say two brief points that I believe are overlooked in his “analysis.” And it must be noted that both points grapple with the same question: what about the nonmoments?

To begin, I quote one contributor over at Womanist Musings, the blog where I found this clip. She states that

Once again, [Safi] is so bang on correct. The way that coming out is constructed in the media is absolutely ridiculous. I mean seriously…they make it seem like someone is admitting to murder. Heaven forbid the media just have GLBT people going on with their lives just like everyone else. Oh no, we cannot possible portray being gay or lesbian as anything other than an oddity.

However, I wonder if the contributor to Womanist Musing listened/watched the entire clip. Safi mentions that there has been a proliferation of “outings,” both voluntary and involuntary, in recent history in the media (in this case speaking only to TV sitcoms). He states that “coming out” has been depicted in a number of ways and through various avenues and the like. In fact he outlines, again in a colorful manner, some himself. The question I have is, does this not speak to reality more than fiction? Is it a sign of times getting better and not worse? Though Safi doesn’t include clips from Grey’s Anatomy, for instance, there was an occasion with Cali where the more fanatical, hysterical “outing” didn’t happen. To use one example Safi uses himself, Glee, wasn’t Kurt’s coming out—both to Mercedes and his father—one of the modal occurrences? What about Calvin in Greek: Ashleigh thinking Calvin is hitting on her and she makes a move (a kiss) only to be stopped with the news that he is gay? I am not saying that this is in fact how everyone who is outwardly gay came out, but Safi’s portrayal, at least to me, sullies and minimizes those experiences.

Though I agree that “coming out” has been incorporated into scripts to draw in the crowds, I have to ask about the assumption that we are making about the entire cast of characters being heterosexual save for those who will be somehow marked as gay. I know that some will say this is a statistical fact; there are more heterosexual individuals than homosexual. This may very well be the case but we still see instances in popular sitcomes where we are left in surprise when we find out someone is gay and it is not an instance of the “Flaming Kamikaze” or the “Kanye West Swift Kick.” I think about Grant from Greek, a show that Safi himself uses twice as evidence for his producers using coming out as an attraction to lure viewers in. No one on the show knew that Grant, Calvin’s new boyfriend, was gay until he and Calvin started hooking up. It seems to me that from the position Safi puts himself in is one that assumes everyone is straight until proven otherwise. That, to me, is problematic in and of itself though I do understand that given the history of LGBQTI individuals in the media, it is a reasonable assumption.

When speaking of such an important life event in people’s lives I think we have to be a little smarter in our analysis even when trying to be snarky and comical. Sadly, Safi sensationalizes the outings in the same manner he vilifies the media for doing. Is that the pot calling the kettle black? Instead of taking a more exhaustive, panoramic view of the presence of LGBQTI individuals on television shows and their “outings” and lack thereof, Safi lets us all down, gay and straight alike.

What Up?!

2009-10-14T13:02:00.007-04:00

Watching the GOP scramble to rebrand their party’s image following President Obama’s election has been a fascinating development in American politics. But nothing has been quite as interesting as the GOP’s new website, launched yesterday, aptly found at GOP.com. In a dramatic push to make the Party appear more inclusive, the site depicts a wide range of “Faces of the GOP”—not surprisingly composed primarily of women and racial minorities.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele runs his own blog on the site, originally titled “What Up,” but later changed to “Change the Game” following ridicule from folks on the Left. Steele used his first blog post to laud the Internet’s mobilizing potential and prompt readers with the age-old question, “What makes you a Republican?” Judging from the Party’s current organizational schizophrenia, I can only imagine the range of responses Steele’s going to get.

Still, Steele’s efforts are admirable, if a little suspect. He really is committed to “changing the game,” making the GOP more inclusive in an era of multiculturalism and diversity. And GOP.com is a much better effort than Steele’s last push to attract more diversity to the Republican Party. When asked a few months back how he plans to bring more minorities to the GOP, Steele replied, “My plan is to say, ‘Ya’ll come.’” A member of the audience then shouted, “I’ll bring the collard greens,” to which Steele added, “I got the fried chicken and potato salad.” There’s no fried chicken recipes at GOP.com, but there certainly are many pictures of black faces sprinkled throughout the website. Dropping the racial stereotypes in favor of symbolic inclusion is, at the very least, a step forward for the GOP.

That said, it’s an understatement to interpret the site as a feigned, superficial attempt to promote racial diversity within a Party that still supports policies of racial inequality. It feels forced, to say the least. The fact that the website lacks a Spanish language conversion option only adds credence to its symbolic—rather than material, substantive, or tangible—purpose. We are talking about a Party with a long, storied history of racialized politics, after all. You know, the same Party that coined the term “welfare queens,” used Willie Horton for political advantage, and sent around emails depicting President Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose. Yeah, that shining Party of racial inclusion.

It is at GOP.com that we truly see race, politics, and racial politics collide and intersect. Steele—the first black Chairman of the RNC—is desperately trying to respond to America’s changing demographics, pandering to a slice of the electorate that, at least in part, affected the outcome of last November’s historic election. That folks (often from the Left) are questioning Steele’s blackness only emphasizes the infusion of race in American politics. And it’s not just “racial politics” at play—you know, politicians catering to different racial groups—but an example of how race and racial considerations inform political messages and campaigns. Race is omnipresent in American politics, just as it is omnipresent in American culture. The content of GOP.com illustrates the political imperative of racial inclusion, but it’s difficult to imagine how the Party can reconcile this lofty goal with the politics of white resentment that has historically formed the Party’s base. Factor in Steele’s racial identity, and the RNC emerges as a social laboratory of racial dynamics, balancing multiculturalism with implicit racism and operating within the context of our nation’s first multi-racial President. Symbolic gesture or not, GOP.com is a window into a layered world of race and politics.

It’s unclear how Americans, minority or otherwise, will react to GOP.com. There are, indeed, plenty of racial minorities that believe in limited government, states’ rights, and many other aspects of the Republican Party’s platform. But I imagine it’s hard to get on board with a Party that fans the flames of racial resentment for political gain. Will GOP.com “change the game?” Maybe, but it will be an uphill battle for the RNC. Unfortunately for Steele, a few black and brown faces on a website—the same site that beckons minorities by asking “What Up?!”—can’t exactly make up for decades of racial animus and exclusionary policies. The RNC’s racial conundrum may ultimately prove too difficult to overcome.

More on Obama & Gay Rights

2009-10-13T18:47:00.020-04:00

Yesterday's post on Obama and gay rights deserves an addendum following Jamelle's insightful critique over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen. On the whole, I think Jamelle makes some important points about social equality and politics.

To wit:

President Bush, if you remember, supported a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, and was generally supportive of state-based efforts to strip gay Americans of their rights. Indeed, stoking fear and hostility towards gay Americans was part of the Bush administration’s reelection effort. I mean, to just sort of underscore the degree to which it was open season on gay Americans, the White House consistently opposed the extension of hate crimes legislation to gays, even as the country saw a sharp rise in the number of hate crimes targeted at gays. Activists are well within their rights to criticize Obama’s speech as “just words,” but in doing so, they miss an important fact about presidential rhetoric: it makes a difference. It further brings gay concerns into the mainstream and gives them a sense of urgency.

This is certainly not to say that the gay community should ignore the fact that Obama has yet to really move on gay rights, but on the whole, I that it’s far more productive to at least acknowledge that Barack Obama is an ally, and – slow-walking notwithstanding – is openly supportive of gay rights. Tearing him down politically – as opposed to lobbying and pressuring – only makes his job that much harder.

Presidential rhetoric, though largely symbolic, definitely makes a difference. America's general disdain for identity politics often makes such rhetoric politically damaging, so going out on a limb for gay rights is certainly commendable. Attacks levied against President Obama, as Jamelle notes, do in fact lack historical perspective, as the last eight years were pretty atrocious as far as civil liberties and social equality are concerned.

That said, I think much of the defense of Obama on this issue also lacks perspective. I doubt many Obama defenders wake up each morning to a partner they can't call "husband" or "wife" because of some laughable "sanctity" of marriage. I doubt many people arguing "Just wait, your time will come" have to suppress their identity among men and women they share the ultimate wartime bond with. I doubt many people ignorantly claiming "Congress will defend gay rights when they have time" live with an identity that's caricatured in pop culture and historically rejected as immoral and perverse. I doubt many people suggesting "He's done a lot for gay rights already" face a culture where accepting your sexual identity is referred to as "coming out"--suggesting that your very existence represents a rejection of social norms. In judging a President's record on social equality, this is the perspective we need to keep in mind. This perspective--the human element behind the politics of social policy--is, in my opinion, a critical measure of our progress as a nation. And it is within this context that many critics are (rightfully) a bit frustrated with the Obama administration.

But Jamelle's also right: There's a fine line between attacking President Obama on this issue and pressuring him to move forward with his promises. Political criticism, when done tactfully, is healthy--but criticism can very quickly become an unhelpful attack. Obama's symbolic gestures are magnanimous, yes, but most of us can agree there's still a long way to go.

Meghan McCain Continues to Impress, President Obama Continues to Disappoint

2009-10-12T00:23:00.007-04:00

Fresh off his Nobel Peace Prize announcement, President Obama addressed thousands of gay right protestors marching at our nation’s capital this past Saturday night. It was a rousing speech, as always, filled with promises and strong, assertive language.

But it was an empty speech, void of action, conviction, or credibility. He promised to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the controversial Clinton-era policy of identity suppression in the military. But it was a promise he’d made before. And it was a promise he has thus far utterly failed to act upon.

As Andrew Sullivan writes:

All I can say is: the president gave a speech he could have given at any point in the last three years. No one in that room could disagree with any of the things he said. I sure don't (with the exception of the hate crimes hooey). And he said it well and movingly. Like we didn't know he could do that.

But the point of electing a president who pledged to actually do things is to hold him to account, and to see if he is willing to take any risk of any kind to actually do something. I had a few prior tests of his seriousness or signs that he gets it, a few ways to judge if this speech had anything new or specific or clear. He failed every test.

Meghan McCain, equally appalled, writes:

Obama offered no timeline for phasing out this policy and, as usual, no real specifics. But the president verbalized his commitment to ending it—which is not insignificant [...]During the election, Obama pledged that the very first thing he would do as president would be to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Although I thought it was an ambitious promise, I believed him. It's now almost a year into his presidency and other than making speeches, nothing has happened.

There’s no two ways around it: Sullivan and McCain are spot on. This administration has thus far been absolutely abysmal in promoting social equality. Abysmal. Crumbling economy notwithstanding, don’t get on a pulpit and expect us to be happy with negligence. Don’t say all the right things and expect us to be satisfied with gross inaction. Don’t try to appease the progressive electorate that struggled to put you in office. Don’t make empty promises you have no intention of honoring.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the daughter of Obama’s Republican challenger from last November has a better stance on gay rights than our own Democratic President. If the Nobel Peace Price was intended to push Obama to, you know, actually promote peace by ending our two wars, what award do we need to give him to promote gay rights? What will it take, and how much longer must we wait?

As Meghan McCain continues to assert herself at the forefront of the fight for gay rights, Obama continues to disappoint. Maybe he thinks repealing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" is unwise politically, regardless of his personal beliefs. Maybe he thinks a gay rights agenda will hurt him in the future. This may be so, but his insulting failure to act—on the eve of National Coming Out Day, no less—certainly isn’t winning him any new progressive allies.

Obama has the potential to promote real, substantive change. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he'll be acting on that potential any time soon.

God-Given Rights

2009-09-30T16:09:00.005-04:00

I may be too young to remember past Presidential transition periods, but there seems to be something unique about public opinion over the last few months, something that defies reason or logic. Across the various “tea party” protests and town hall disruptions, a plethora of arguments have been levied against Barack Obama, the federal government in the abstract, and, well, whatever happens to bother protestors at any given moment.

Dissent vacillates from the understandable, if wrongheaded (fear of big government) to the outright outlandish (the government wants to kill old people). One of the most glaring issues with the “tea party” protests is the ridiculous claim of growing socialism, fascism, and (un)American-ness. One protestor glibly quipped at the recent 9/12 event in Washington, “Barack Obama is an eloquent speaker. But you know who else was? Hitler.” Well for what it's worth, Hitler wasn't exactly an "eloquent" speaker. He was a fiery speaker. An angry, erratic, and emotional speaker. A bit of a difference. Opposites, in fact.

But no argument is as egregious as the idea that we need to return to the vision of our founding fathers—a vision that includes so-called “God-given” rights. A vision from the same founding fathers that owned slaves. A vision from the same founding fathers that institutionalized rights for all men. If we are supposed to follow the intentions of our nation’s founders, shouldn’t we get rid of all the constitutional amendments that altered their original vision? Can I own slaves, and realize my right to life, liberty, and property? Why move forward and progress, when we can revert back to the glory days?

Recently, Glenn Beck offered his own take on our founding fathers’ vision of God-given, inalienable rights. We’ve entrusted too much in government, you see, and instead need to rely solely on our God-given rights. We don’t need government handouts because God has handed out everything we need. Interestingly, conservative blogger Allahpundit, of conservative pundit Michelle Malkin’s Hotair.com, disagrees with Beck’s empirically vacant, inaccurate historical argument:

“[…] If the key to American governance is the passage in the Declaration of Independence about god-given inalienable rights, why’d the authors of the Constitution go ahead and enumerate some of those rights anyway? And why, if they’re inalienable and god-given, weren’t those rights made exempt from amendment or repeal via Article V? The touchstone of the Constitution isn’t God, it’s rule by popular consent; religion may well influence the public in deciding which rights are so critical that even the popularly elected government should be forbidden to touch them, but when push comes to shove, it’s your call, not God’s. Slavery was once a right too, after all, and I’m sure there were plenty of apologists who found religious backing for that, fair or not. […]”

Politicians, in fact, create laws and rights. Different nation states enforce different laws and protect different rights because, of course, they contain different politicians and govern through different political structures. God didn’t bestow the democratic process; people created different ideas of governance.

The gospel of the Constitution has been romanticized to such an extent that pundits and citizens alike are deifying a man-made historical document. Whether or not you believe in God or any other spiritual entity, the fact remains that rights are not “God-given.” We fight for rights. We struggle for rights. We—as in, “we the people”—create rights for ourselves: We define what exactly constitutes a right, mobilize and pressure politicians to enact them, and then rely on our leaders to protect them.

Rights aren’t uniformly deployed, decontextualized, from a spiritual construct that may or may not exist. They emerge from the bottom up, from the same “ regular people” Beck and others claim to represent.

How (Not So) Far We’ve Come: Still “Doing Gender”

2009-09-29T08:07:00.004-04:00

Last week I attended an Inequality Seminar here at Harvard. An attractive bonus to attending these lectures beyond exposure to work from scholars across the country is, to be honest, the free food. And due to the old habit of practicing good hygiene and the fear of Swine Flu, I went to the restroom to wash my hands before fixing me a plate. When I was leaving the bathroom I noticed that there was a baby changing station (pictured above) in the men's room. I smiled. For someone who was a Women's and Gender Studies major undergrad, I was happy to see that there was a baby changing station in the men's room as I have noticed the lack of them in many of the sporting, movie, and entertainment venues I frequented in the last year. And I think it is safe to say that I have only seen a few of the baby stations in men's bathrooms over the course of my life (of course more on this side of year 2000). This was, to me, was a step in the right direction. Go Social Progress!

The smile, however, faded quickly after I looked pass the family of elephants and saw the stereotypical, gendered depiction. Before I continue, I want to point out that the elephant family is a normative one—father, mother, and child—which is, to some degree, problematic in and of itself. Now I am not trying to make a mountain out of an anthill but one cannot (or at least should not) ignore the more subtle undertones of the seemingly "innocent" and "innocuous" depiction of the parent changing the child. This was a men's room yet still it was "Mommy" changing the child. Even in the quintessential, gender segregated location to which we all must abide lest we are called perverts or some kind of outcast by others in society, gendered norms and expectations are still as present, alive, and strong as ever. If one takes gender as a masternarrative, an ever-present entity in the background influences interactions between individuals in a myriad of ways, one sees the ways in which our actions and the behavioral expectations others have of us are scripted. Furthermore, we are looked upon to abide by those scripts. Where is Daddy elephant while Mommy changes Jr.? At the watering hole with the other bulls?

I think this cartoon on the baby changing station is an example that gives even more credence to the argument that we all do and are expected to "do gender." To paraphrase their 1987 article where Sociologists West and Zimmerman developed their revolutionary hypothesis that one can "do gender," gender is something one performs. This idea is important because it states that gender is not natural, not an innate characteristic of men and women. Rather, they assert that gender is

A routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment. We contend that the 'doing' of gender is undertaken by women and men whose competence as members of society is hostage to its production. Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits of masculine and feminine 'natures.'

In essence, gender is determined not by one's biology, but by society's reaction to and perception of one's biology. Gender is one's conduct that affirms one's sex category. In other words, if one is male then one must act like a male, and if female, one must act female. A person's sex is a "biological fact;" sex categories reserve certain activities and characteristics for particular sexes, but gender consists of the "routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishments" of everyday life. West and Zimmerman argue that accountability plays a key role in producing gender, because not only are we responsible for "doing gender" on a daily basis, we are held socially accountable for all our actions—all decisions must be made as if being watched because each action either affirms or disproves our gender. But what do examples like this say about the expectations we have for women and men to perform in 2009?

I bring up West and Zimmerman here specifically because I think this picture shows the inertial force behind deeply held gendered expectations. Rubbermaid could have easily drawn one cartoon depicting a male caregiver changing his child and one showing a female caregiver doing the same. To my knowledge, very few places have only one single sex bathroom in their establishment. Even all girls all boys school have both men's and women's bathrooms. I would assume you have to buy the pair anyway. Or why not leave off the "human side" of things all together and remove oneself from the question of who to put changing the baby? If this post is seen as a one where the author is being nitpicky then so be it. But as the slogan from years ago simply and emphatically states, men are caregivers too. The last thing I will say is this: I believe it is time for us all to move beyond these false binaries which based on unfounded constructions of reality that are themselves the result of sociomental processes aimed at alleviating cognitive dissonance for living in a blurred instead of a dichotomous world.

What The Notorious BIG Can Tell Us About Race and Immigration

2009-09-24T09:22:00.007-04:00

In Black Identities, Harvard sociologist Mary Waters analyzes the racial and ethnic identities of first and second generation West Indian immigrants in New York City. At its core, Black Identities is a study of paradox. Waters eloquently states, “[For West Indians], America is a contradictory place…a land of greater opportunities than their homelands but simultaneously a land of racial stigma and discrimination. Immigrants readily buy into an image of American affluence, but are grounded in American racial and economic realities. One respondent noted despair that America is a “white world” in which “white people have all the money,” but in the same breath rejoiced in the fact that America is “a place where everyone has opportunity.” This is the inherent contradiction of the “American dream:” First generation West Indian immigrants must reconcile their lofty expectations of achievement with the myth of American social mobility as they grapple with structural and interpersonal racism in their day-to-day lives.

Second generation West Indian immigrants are also directly confronted with uniquely American race relations, resulting in contradictory immigrant identities. On the one hand, some immigrants embrace their Caribbean ancestry and construct social boundaries separating themselves from black Americans. On the other hand, many young, second generation West Indians (a plurality of her sample) buy into the uniquely American racial caste system and self-identify as black, abandoning other “ethnic options.” There wouldn’t be anything wrong with indentifying as “black,” if of course a slew of disadvantages and prejudices didn’t follow as a result. When race collides and interacts with social structure and culture, West Indian immigrant identity precariously wavers between ethnic loyalty and American assimilation. Paradoxically, the choice to remain loyal to their West Indian heritage affords these immigrants more social mobility than direct incorporation into American culture, as buying into American stereotypes often means downward mobility.

Sound familiar? Oddly reminiscent of a certain Brooklyn born rap legend? Indeed, The Notorious BIG represents an interesting case study—and exemplar—of Waters’ extensive empirical data. Biggie was born to a hardworking, loving Jamaican immigrant mother. While his father was largely absent from his life, Biggie’s mother held steady employment as a pre-school teacher and by all accounts was an involved parent. She enrolled her son in a private middle school in Brooklyn where he thrived academically. This scholastic success, of course, came to an end when Biggie began selling drugs at age 12. A (pun intended) notorious crack dealer, he eventually dropped out of high school, only to reach temporary stardom but ultimately suffer an untimely death.

A scene near the beginning of the recent biopic Notorious, in which Biggie’s character exhibits admiration and lust for the life of a street hustler, is telling. Waters’ research suggests that Biggie’s identity as a second generation West Indian immigrant could have, presumably, led him to continue his studies and perhaps achieve upward mobility—distancing himself both from the general stereotypes of American blacks and the actual hustlers in his immediate surroundings. But, when confronted with the reality of American race relations—in this example, Bed-Stuy/Clinton Hill in the early ‘90s—Biggie could have just as easily been propelled to identify more with the black Americans selling drugs on the corner by his house. Like many poor second generation West Indian immigrants, Biggie lacked local models of success, a disparity caused by urban economic marginalization and resulting in a push to identify with a certain type of black American.

Big had an ethnic “choice,” sure; claim his Jamaican roots, or step in line with America’s vision of race. But it was a structured choice provided under economic duress and within the context of a uniquely American racial order. The problem is, both paths of ethnic identity formation have problematic results for blacks as a whole. By distancing themselves from the “black underclass,” many West Indians reaffirm long-standing stereotypes of blacks as lazy, violent, and generally inferior. In this model, immigrants achieve individual mobility at the expense of group advancement. In other words, individual immigrants can use this boundary work to catapult themselves toward success, but it negates the possibility for the advancement of blacks as a group. West Indians face American stereotypes and norms of black insolence, and their rejection—and even acceptance—of this identity solidifies white preconceptions. This puts West Indian immigrants in a uniquely difficult position—a Catch-22 in which either path of identity formation reinforces a firm black-white color line.

Biggie’s life story dovetails nicely with Waters’ analysis, complicating traditional studies of race, immigration, and assimilation in the United States. Of course, Biggie’s life obviously doesn’t reflect the experiences of all second generation West Indian immigrants. Still, Waters’ analysis in Black Identities does help explain, in part, why “G-E-D, wasn’t B-I-G.”

The White Racist Meme

2009-09-22T08:52:00.014-04:00

It would be an understatement to argue that the mass media has taken on racial analysis with unprecedented zeal since the election of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, in attempts to present fair and balanced news coverage, cable news programs have typically included panels with representatives from both sides of the Left-Right ideological spectrum.

The problem with this method, of course, is that subsequent analyses usually follow the same tired pattern: “That was racist!” vs. “That is ridiculous! Race was not a factor!” At best, this produces unproductive exchanges. At worst, it woefully simplifies complex social process and interactions, institutionalizing diametrically opposed ideological camps instead of offering nuanced analysis.

Luckily, the Washington Post has Eugene Robinson, who wrote an important op-ed last Friday:

“Of course it's possible to reject Obama's policies and philosophy without being racist. But there's a particularly nasty edge to the most vitriolic attacks -- a rejection not of Obama's programs but of his legitimacy as president. This denial of legitimacy is more pernicious than the abuse heaped upon George W. Bush by his critics (including me), and I can't find any explanation for it other than race.

I'm not talking about the majority of the citizens who went to town hall meetings to criticize Obama's plans for health-care reform or the majority of the "tea bag" demonstrators who complain that Obama is ushering in an era of big government. Those are, of course, legitimate points of view. Protest is part of our system. It's as American as apple pie.

I'm talking about the crazy "birthers." I'm talking about the nitwits who arrive at protest rallies bearing racially offensive caricatures -- Obama as a witch doctor, for example. I'm talking about the idiots who toss around words like "socialism" to make Obama seem alien and even dangerous -- who deny the fact that he, too, is as American as apple pie.”

Not to be outdone, Frank Rich weighed in on Saturday:

“But there is a national conversation we must have right now — the one about what, in addition to race, is driving this anger and what can be done about it. We are kidding ourselves if we think it’s only about bigotry, or health care, or even Obama. The growing minority that feels disenfranchised by Washington can’t be so easily ghettoized and dismissed.”

Robinson and Rich hit the nail on the head. To argue one way or another that current debates over healthcare or other social policies are solely “about race” is to miss the point entirely.

Race is omnipresent in this country. Racial distinctions inform policy debates, delineate opportunity, and structure social interactions. But that doesn’t mean that all white people, or all white protestors, are uniformly “racist.” Nor can the omnipresence of race sufficiently and adequately capture the nuance of white racial identity. For different people, different social processes precipitate racial prejudice. Some learn from their parents, while others learn from conflict in the workplace. Some develop prejudices from economic competition with minorities, while others experience blind ignorance as a result of extreme social isolation. Among the so-labeled “racists,” some hold disdain for “welfare queens,” while others fear random violence from young black men. Some are overwhelmingly concerned with illegal immigration and “protecting our borders,” while others can’t even stand the thought of sitting next to a minority. Some believe in the racial profiling of Middle Eastern folks at airports, while others blame blacks for their own disadvantage. Some engage in recreational racism, while others use disdain for social policies like affirmative action as proxies for bigotry. Some whites hold a combination of these prejudices, while others hold none. Sometimes these prejudices are grounded in real life experiences, but sometimes they aren't. At the very least, white racial identity and prejudice is complicated and takes innumerable, varied forms.

To discuss and analyze race is not to revert to an either/or, racist/not racist false dichotomy. Race matters as an everyday reality of inequality, yes, but it’s not as simple as the White Racist Meme suggests. Race matters because it’s always mattered. But racism matters in increasingly complex ways.

The question is not if race matters. The question is how.

The Unintentional Effects of Seemingly Mundane Public Policy

2009-09-17T14:23:00.006-04:00

Tyler Cowen, Matt Yglesias, and Ryan Avent recently engaged in a fascinating back and forth discussion regarding the role of highways in the development of contemporary American suburbs.

The precise causality—did highway construction cause suburbanization?—is, of course, debatable. But the discussion points to a larger connection between metropolitan development, inequality, and seemingly mundane, unrelated public policy.

Interstate highway construction owes its development to Cold War paranoia and military mobilization. With the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the federal government devised a transportation plan that would facilitate easy travel for military equipment and soldiers. An extensive highway system, coupled with the affordable production of automobiles and within the context of a consumer-driven economic culture, precipitated suburban housing development.

Of course, that doesn’t exactly explain the racialization of suburban residential patterns. Indeed, it was purposive, intentional, deliberate policies—particularly red-lining and other discriminatory lending policies facilitated by the Federal Housing Authority and officially sanctioned by the federal government—that laid the groundwork for a metropolitan environment initially typified by “chocolate cities, vanilla suburbs.” Within the context of deindustrialization, decentralization, and other impersonal (read: non-deliberately racial) changes in the urban economy, the basis for metropolitan inequality is clear.

That’s not to discount the role of overt racism—you know, like block-busting, racial steering by real estate agents, violent defense of urban and suburban neighborhoods against black “invasion,” and so on—in the creation of racially homogenous suburban neighborhoods. These processes have been well documented by many talented historians. Not to mention racially-charged, failed political struggles over issues like busing and policing that precipitated white flight. And labor market struggle s, played out in employment practices and labor union policies. But racism alone can’t explain metropolitan development and residential patterns. No, racism and racial animus shape, and are in turn shaped by, public policy.

Highways made residential development both feasible and desirable in the outer metropolitan fringes, as a suburban populace could easily commute to employment opportunities located within the urban core. It doesn’t exactly explain why individuals and business eventually fled from the inner city (we can thank zoning and tax subsidies for that), but it does illuminate the structure that made such residential patterns possible. It created social and physical distance from which many suburban homeowners could leverage political power, acquire economic resources, and cement inequality.

A policy as simple as highway construction—intended to make military mobility across the nation easier—can nevertheless have dramatic, unintended consequences. Mundane policy may not directly cause, by itself, resulting patterns of disparity; most social phenomena are, after all, multi-causal. Still, it can lay the groundwork—the structure—from which metropolitan inequality materializes.

Direct cause, in this context, matters less than unintentional effect.

Beyond The Tramp Stamp

2009-09-16T13:11:00.007-04:00

(x-posted at Feministe)

I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the regular readers of Social Science Lite and Feministe cringe upon hearing the phrase “tramp stamp.” I dug through Feministe’s archives, and found this insightful post from Jill back in ’07. She wrote about an issue many of us are all too familiar with: sexist interpretations and judgments of tattoos on women’s bodies.

But a recent conversation with a friend pointed to another “–ism”—latent classism—that undergirds many objections to tattoos.

The conversation began simply enough. We were walking through a mall and noticed a fair amount of body art. We commented on arm bands, lower-back tattoos, and arm sleeves. Interestingly, our judgments of the tattoos differed dramatically: I liked creative tattoos but disliked some awkwardly placed ink, whereas my friend uniformly disapproved of body art.

Our conversation was relatively rational until a single word was uttered: trashy.

“I just think tattoos look trashy,” my friend innocently stated. Fair enough; the ugly tribal arm band we noticed on a young man’s tanned bicep did look a bit corny. But I pressed further. “Why is it trashy?” I asked. “I don’t know. Tattoos just look lower-class to me.” I swear I saw her nose tip up in the air, ever so slightly.

And with that, the floodgates opened.

She explained how she associates tattoos with working class men and women, a sign of their lack of refinement and sophistication. Moreover, the very decision to get a tattoo pointed to their lack of decorum, which she directly associated with their class position. In other words, all poor people are trashy, and their tattoos merely accentuate this universal fact.

I replied, naturally, by putting her classism in check: Does simply having a tattoo—any tattoo—equate with being “trashy,” which signals lower class status? By extension, does that mean that all lower class people are “trashy?” Is being “trashy”—and thus, having a tattoo—simply a byproduct of one’s class position, implying that lower class people uniformly make stupid, unrefined decisions? And are all tattoos “trashy?” Who are we to decide what’s trash, and what’s art? Are certain civilizations and cultures that engage with body art “culturally trashy” and “lower class?” And so on.

My friend’s objections to tattoos were infused by her own classism and normative assessments of “proper” behavior. I put her nonsense in check, but that didn’t exactly dissolve her prejudices. See, her take on tattoos was so fundamentally ingrained in her mind that she had difficulty breaking from her blanket associations. She was beginning to see her classism, and recognize her privilege—but it wasn’t exactly a “light bulb” moment. She could see how her prejudices were classist, but had trouble letting them go.

The end result of this conversation produced just that: a conversation. It’s often hard to draw firm conclusions when dealing with such complex and subjective topics. But it’s an ongoing process. We can’t expect people, like my friend, to immediately abandon their classism; we are social beings, after all, beholden to larger social forces that often influence our desires and prejudices. It’s part and parcel of moral boundary work—a social process of defining in-groups and out-groups, often predicated on the policing of “proper” behavior—that’s learned from an early age. Many whites, for example, would be simply lying if we said we didn’t get nervous when approaching young black males on the street. No matter how much we tell ourselves “This is really racist to fear them just because they’re black,” it’s a gut reaction—one embedded in larger structures of social relations.

Classism—like racism, sexism, and other –isms—persists, no matter how forcefully we call our friends’ prejudices into check. But we still try. And hopefully, after continued and repeated conversations, we’re able to alter our preconceptions and begin to view the social world in a slightly different light. Dismantling interpersonal prejudices is, of course, an ongoing social project.

Ted Kennedy’s Call to Service (And How I Got Into Harvard)

2009-09-14T15:58:00.005-04:00

It’s not wholly surprising, given the current political climate, that Ted Kennedy’s legacy has been framed by the mass media in relation to healthcare reform. But Kennedy’s political and public impact reached far beyond bipartisan policy legislation. For me at least, Kennedy’s most powerful (and, successful) leadership came in the form of support for service and collective social change.

Following his death, Be The Change founder/City Year co-founder/potential candidate for Kennedy’s vacant senate seat Alan Khazei offered a moving tribute that highlighted Kennedy’s influence on nationwide opportunities for service and civic engagement. In part, Khazei wrote:

Senator Kennedy is the true godfather of the service movement. Without his tireless commitment, this movement as it thrives today never would have come about. He indelibly changed the fabric of America by not just inspiring, but personally enabling millions of citizens to give their time and skills to improve their communities and country. Through his visionary and bipartisan leadership in authoring the National and Community Service Act of 1990, the legislation that created AmeriCorps in 1993, and most recently with his good friend Senator Orrin Hatch, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009, he created the infrastructure that empowers people all across our nation to put their energy and idealism to work addressing critical social needs.

While Kennedy’s service-oriented community development legislation continues to empower and invigorate communities across the country, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the personal impact these organizations had on my own life.

In the summer of 2006, I received a community-based research fellowship through the University of Michigan. The fellowship paired me with a non-profit community development corporation in Detroit, where I created and administered a neighborhood-wide survey. But the non-profit didn’t foot the bill for my services. Nor did Michigan. Instead, my research was subsidized by funds from AmeriCorps. In fact, two other Michigan students also worked at this particular non-profit for the summer, and both were funded by AmeriCorps. One was a graduate student in urban planning, and catalogued the non-profit’s real estate holdings. The other, an undergraduate student in Michigan’s business school, created and organized the Northwest Detroit Farmer’s Market, now in its third year of operation. If you know anything about Detroit, you know how monumental it is to offer fresh produce to the city’s residents. And all this work was made possible by AmeriCorps funding.

My research with the non-profit later became my research on the non-profit, forming the basis for my senior Honors thesis. That research became the basis for my applications to graduate school, which led me to Harvard where I study inequality and public policy. So in a Kevin Bacon-esque “six degrees of social justice separation,” Ted Kennedy helped me get into Harvard.

On a larger sociological level, Kennedy’s commitment to government-funded service organizations and legislation influences two related, critical components of urban poverty: civic engagement and social organization. When work disappears from central cities, as Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson has so brilliantly argued, the rhythm and pulse of neighborhoods are disrupted. A lack of employment opportunities not only influences neighborhood economic stability, but it also removes valuable role models from day-to-day urban life. Social organization—the kind of informal rules and regulations that act as social control mechanisms and structure interpersonal interactions—is undermined when men and women don’t work regular, consistent hours.

Moreover neighborhood poverty, in part influenced by the aforementioned lack of employment opportunities, often reduces levels of civic engagement. Low levels of civic engagement often means less community cohesion and cooperation, which suppresses political power and places formidable barriers against paths to upward mobility. But organizations like AmeriCorps and other service groups empower impoverished neighborhoods and encourage active civic engagement—powerful mechanisms that help reduce inequality.

To be sure, service organizations like AmeriCorps are not without their conservative critics. But that’s probably just a testament to their continued relevance and effectiveness in bringing about social change. It’s also a testament to Ted Kennedy’s lasting legacy, one that stretches far beyond the fight for healthcare reform.

The Insolence of Understanding

2009-09-14T10:15:00.006-04:00

I was on the T heading to Boston Common to watch (500) Days of Summer (amazing movie) when I looked up and saw the above advertisement situated on top of the door. Me being over six feet tall and damn near color blind, the relative “loud” sign stood out on the otherwise dim train. I didn’t think about it that much but when I looked again, it made me uneasy. The picture isn’t the best quality but it is a flyer for the BeBoldBeBald campaign, a call to arms of sorts began by the Small Army for a Cause organization, that is raising money for cancer research. September 17 is the day we are to show our solidarity with those living with or those who have died from cancer by wearing a “bald cap”. I find this "show of solidarity" problematic. Before I continue, I hope what I say below does not come off as my denigration of a group of sympathetic individuals who work for a noble cause. Rather, I question the entire process of dawning on another’s identity, persona, or physical characteristic for a cause when one always has the freedom to eschew any such constraint, hindrance, or restriction it places on one’s abilities (taken abilities to include those things one ordinarily are able to do).

Just to be clear, I had this same feeling when watching My Sister’s Keeper when Cameron Diaz's character dawned the “bald cap” when she opted to show her solidarity with her ailing daughter’s struggles. I remember similar conversations with friends when Will Smith puts on a “fat suit" in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to know what it means to be and feel fat.

I may be jaded in my assessment because of my reading of John Griffin's Black Like Me, a “study” of a white man who wanted to know what the Negro experience was in the South so he chemically darkened his skin and entered the hostile world as dark enemy rather than white friend. I acknowledge that I have grouped physical ailment, body type, and race in the same category. However, I argue that this goes beyond these individual examples. When I look at the show 30 Days, I have the same underlying criticism: walking in someone’s shoes for a while to show solidarity can be a tricky encounter for one must always remember that one is borrowing the shoes and mimicking the walk. And here we arrive at another double-edged component to such an activity. We must realize that we do not become who we pretend but also that those who we pretend to be are real. It is the mismatch between the show of solidarity and the reality of the life of those individuals that I find most troubling: the insolence of understanding.

Furthermore, in the case of this organization, undoubtedly doing work for a good cause, I believe that they make too light of a very serious and, often times, grave situation. They have a feature on their website called the “Balderizer” where you can upload an image of yourself and, basically, make yourself look like one has been through chemotherapy or another treatments that forces one to lose one’s hair. The face that is positioned next to the link that leads to the actual face is a smiling, happy go lucky one. Now, let me be clear, I am not a fan of extremes in any direction: showing the always downtrodden cancer patient is just as erroneous and problematic as the forever, elated smiling one. To make the effect of the treatment into a game of sorts, however, takes it beyond the extreme continuum previously outlined and perverts it in such a way that it makes it more of joke, a fun activity to do, than anything else. I know that there will be those who disagree with this assessment of the computer program (I will call it that and not use a more colorful description) but I stand by my stance that it flattens the reality of the experience of chemotherapy and other cancer treatments has on the body and the family.

I leave with these questions, what are we really saying when voluntarily and temporally “take on” someone else’s struggles in the physical form? What are we to gain or take from those tournaments when healthy individuals voluntarily restricting themselves to wheelchairs for a basketball or volleyball tournament? The fat suit? The bald cap? In my opinion, the experiences between those with the “condition” and those who adopt it for a while are incommensurable for there is always that option, that privilege of exiting from the play that is someone else’s life story.

"The Rest All Look Alike"

2009-09-08T13:44:00.007-04:00

Last week’s episode of Mad Men was filled with thought provoking social commentary. Daniel wrote an excellent wrap-up, but one point deserves deeper context and discussion.

Roger Sterling’s hilarious rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home”—donning sloppily applied blackface—was just one of the episode’s jaw-dropping moments. Sterling’s minstrel performance was timely, airing only a few weeks after rapper Nas and Nick Cannon’s mock minstrel Youtube video went viral.

While Mad Men situates minstrelsy in the late 1950s/early 1960s, blackface remains a staple of American pop culture. Just swing by your local university’s frat row during Halloween and you’ll see my point. And no, this isn’t a false generalization because, yes, I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

That’s not to suggest that dressing in blackface carries a maliciously racist intent, however. Indeed, minstrel shows are just one example of what historian David MP. Freund brilliantly refers to as “recreational racism.” Think of it as the ultimate “What do you call a group of black guys running down a hill?” joke: a collective celebration of whiteness and white superiority at the expense of racial and ethnic minorities. Whites that engage in such rituals of racial entitlement often rationalize their behaviors by noting, “It’s all in good fun”—implying that recreational racism is less incendiary than more overt forms of racial prejudice or discrimination.

The image accompanying this post comes from my own research on a Detroit neighborhood—a community I refer to as Woodline Gardens, to preserve anonymity. It was published in the neighborhood’s local newsletter in July of 1947, quite a few years before Roger Sterling’s fictional performance on Mad Men. Woodline residents were exceptionally proud of their new community tradition, including three separate pictures of their inaugural minstrel show in the community newsletter. The caption of this particular picture reads: “The two white mean are C.R. Richards and C.H. Buckwater, interlocuters. The rest all look alike.”

This picture perfectly (and succinctly) articulates the underlying logic of minstrel shows and other forms of recreational racism. The rest all look alike, as if any race other than Caucasian represented a monolithic group worthy of degradation and parody. The logic of this phrase, rooted in privilege, elitism, and social isolation, wipes any semblance of humanity away from African Americans. Do blacks have individual personalities, morals, or feelings? Nope; they all look alike.

Understanding social isolation is paramount to placing minstrel shows in the proper context of American race relations. Residents of Woodline Gardens, like Roger Sterling, were socially and spatially isolated from poor, black, and poor black communities. Part of this isolation stemmed from physical boundaries (residential segregation), but cultural boundaries (styles of life, patterns of consumption) were also important. This isolation fueled racial stereotypes and precipitated the communal embrace of recreational racism.

Your everyday American probably doesn’t know the historical context behind blackface or minstrelsy. Movies like Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Nas & Cannon’s awkward public service announcement largely fall on deaf ears as a result. To the average person, blackface appears to be a theatrical device employed sporadically across film and television, whitewashed of its less than wholesome history.

But blackface is not without a history firmly nested in contentious race relations and struggles for racial equality. As David Freund argues, it’s recreational racism, but that doesn’t make its continued use any less problematic. Hopefully, with each reference to minstrelsy in pop culture, we move that much closer to a clearer understanding of blackface in its proper historical context. Widespread, accurate historical knowledge is never a bad thing.

Faith, Family, and Football

2009-09-04T07:19:00.008-04:00

Ask any former high school football player to reflect on his playing days and you’ll undoubtedly notice a certain sparkle in his eye. He’ll crack a smile, look off into the distance, and wave his hands as if he were fending of blockers or stiff-arming a potential tackler.

But sometimes high school football means more to a community than just a game.

It may sound trite, but in Parkersburg, Iowa—a deeply religious community in America’s heartland—high school football is an institution. Each Friday night is a community event. Football is the source of community identity. Football is a community lifeline. Indeed, the Aplington-Parkersburg Falcons have helped unite the sleepy Iowa town after two devastating tragedies. First, in 2008, tornadoes and floods ravished the community, decimating businesses and homes. Buildings could be rebuilt, but nothing shook the foundations of Parkersburg more than the destruction of the Aplington-Parkersburg High School football stadium.

The community rallied together, ultimately placing a priority on rebuilding the football stadium rather than their own homes. You see, a return to normalcy in Parkersburg was defined more by their Friday night community routine than any other aspect of their lives. As one parent eloquently put it, “They might not have their home or their car or their X-Box or any clothes, but they still have each other. They still have football.”

A second tragedy beset the community a mere two months ago: Falcons head coach Ed Thomas was murdered by a former player in the high school weight room. After 35 years of coaching, Thomas was as much a Parkersburg institution as high school football itself. But the team—and the community—pulled through. ESPN ran a special on the tragedy, showing footage from Thomas’ emotionally charged funeral. In one of the most poignant gestures I’ve ever seen, countless Iowa high school football teams, all dressed in their respective team jerseys, lined the road as the funeral procession drove to the cemetery.

Last Friday, the Falcons took the field against archrival Dike-New Hartford for the first time since their coach’s murder. ESPN carried the game nationally, and I tuned in. The play-by-play commentators discussed both the tornado and the murder, noting Parkersburg’s unique resilience. Reese Davis mentioned that university researchers have recently descended upon the community, studying how Parkersburg was able to rebound from adversity so quickly and so successfully. Herm Edwards replied that the answer was simple: “Faith, family, and football.”

But the scene at Thomas’ funeral procession, with hundreds of local football players paying the ultimate respect to a coach they never knew personally, points to a larger phenomenon. What sets Parkersburg apart from other communities isn’t so much their profound religiosity; rather, it’s strong community cohesion and extraordinarily high levels of collective efficacy that distinguishes Parkersburg from comparable communities. Unlike other communities, local residents here are more engaged, more willing to help their neighbors out in times of need. Political scientist Robert Putnam has made a career analyzing this social process, studying how civic engagement affords social capital, which in turn can be leveraged for political power and other resources. Faith may be important, sure. But it’s strong social organization and a collective identity—defined by the local football team—that makes Parkersburg so unique, and so resilient.

When I played high school football, I distinctly remember gazing up into the stands, thinking, Where are all these people were coming from? I mean, they couldn’t all be parents cheering for their sons, or former gridiron giants reflecting on their glory days. In fact, the majority of fans were local community members, old and young, coming together each Friday night to collectively embrace the local team.

I never really grasped what prompted them to put their lives on hold and come watch us play week after week. Now I do.

Racial Inequality and the Rhetoric of Responsibility

2009-08-19T10:19:00.010-04:00

Last Spring, Brown University economist Glenn Loury presented at Harvard sociology’s Workshop on Race and Black Youth Culture. He titled his talk “Culture, Causation and Confusion: Why Bill Cosby is Wasting His Time,” engaging with the pervasive “rhetoric of responsibility” frequently applied to blacks in the United States. As Loury argued, our public discourse is saturated with demands on the so-called black community to police its own ranks. This rhetoric of “black communal responsibility” suggests that the solutions to racial inequality are cultural, and the ill-defined “black community” should therefore bear the burden of “fixing” its collective deficiencies.

The rhetoric of black communal responsibility is a common response to discussions of racial inequality, and black folks seem to be hearing it from both sides. From within, you have Bill Cosby, John McWhorter and even President Obama stressing the role of black parents in the cultivation and education of black children. From the outside, you have a slew of white conservatives, wide-eyed and incredulous, wondering why the black community just can’t lift itself out of disadvantage.

The problem, as Loury astutely pointed out, is that categories such as “black community,” “black culture,” and “black leaders” are political constructs void of intellectual definitions. So-called “culture talk” imputes a sense of groupness where no such political collectivity exists. African-Americans, as a race, have no institutional structures to police themselves and bring about the kind of solutions culture critics (like Cosby) demand. They don’t hold conferences or summits—at least, none that all blacks are required to attend by virtue of their racial identity. There aren’t any meeting minutes we can rifle through to make sure they are working to “fix” their collective culture. This notion of an aggregate “black community” was invented ex post facto with a distinctly political motive: impute agency on a racial category where none exists, and wipe our hands clean of any societal responsibility for inequality.

That’s not to say that racial groups don’t share certain histories, privileges, or disadvantages by virtue of their socially constructed racial identity. Moreover, many racial and ethnic groups often share certain traditions, rituals, and affinities. As a Jew, I frequently refer to myself as a “member of the tribe,” implying both a shared allegiance and shared history with my fellow Tribesmen. Such is the general case for other races and ethnicities in the U.S., African-Americans included.

But that doesn’t mean they can be expected to act like a civic collectivity or a civic organization and, by extension, engage in civic action. Who elected Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson to be the spokesmen for the so-called black community? I don’t seem to recall a campaign or election for these self-appointed leaders. Yet the “black culture” rhetoric, purported so frequently in public discourse, assumes their civic appointment. The ability of blacks to act as a distinct group is taken for granted—an assumption of their collective agency. But a racial category is not a group with civic powers. Nor is it a collective body with a unified political or cultural agenda. As University of Chicago sociologist Mario Small has argued on countless occasions, there are multiple black communities and multiple black cultures.

The rhetoric of black communal responsibility imputes collective agency where none exists, assuming group-level cultural deficiencies while ignoring the society-level creation and maintenance of racial inequality. The logic is problematic and condescending at best, dangerous and incendiary at worst. It at once obscures the tremendous diversity among African-Americans and distracts our attention away from the actual causes of inequality. Whatever “the black community” is, we can’t exactly depend on “it” to solve, or do, anything without the institutional means to solve, or do, anything. Assuming communal responsibility is dead-end rhetoric, promoting a self-fulfilling prophecy of disadvantage. It serves a political purpose, but does little to advance our intellectual understanding of inequality.

Individual communities can certainly make important contributions toward greater social equality. But you just can’t expect an artificially constructed group, based on an arbitrarily constructed racial category, to solve inequality at the national level by itself. You can’t expect action where no institutional ability to act exists.

Monday's Musings: New Name, New Look But Same Old Neighborhood, Same Old Politics

2009-08-17T11:11:00.008-04:00

I am not one much for looking down on new initiatives that aim to help others. In fact, it is usually quite the opposite, especially when it comes to education initiatives (one of my areas of academic interest). On Sunday, Kathleen McGrory wrote about the changes to Edison Senior High School in Miami in her article “Miami Edison Senior High Gets New Name, New Look.” A little background as to why these changes are so important and worthy of attention. Edison Senior High (aka Haiti High) is a school in one of Miami’s most economically disadvantaged areas, Liberty City, is predominately Haitian (the area is generally called Little Haiti), has made headlines for its deplorable performance on state exams (the FCAT—a grade of F in 7 of its 8 last performances) and tensions between students and staff recently culminated (or rather degraded into) in a riot.

McGrory reports that the new initiatives are aimed at adding that spark, providing that incentive, to get students to take education seriously. To use her words, “the challenge [is to] take one of the state’s lowest-performing schools and transform it into a place the county’s best students are clamoring to attend.” She is right to call such an ambitious goal a challenge. It is herculean task for even the most ambitious of us all. I applaud Miami-Dade County Public School officials for embarking upon such an arduous journey; they are surely to be commended.

One of the key changes to the school that may prove to be its more attractive and efficacious features, to students and teachers alike, is the internal restructuring of the curriculum, broadly defined. More specifically, Edison will now be structured like a university with four colleges within it where students get to choose the college that best fits the academic and extracurricular activities. I believe that this is important because it at once empowers students through their ability to choose and also matching teachers with students actually interested in the material being taught. The former should not be taken lightly; having control over one’s life, in this case, one aspect of one’s life, is empowering. The latter deserves equal credit as having engaged teachers with equally engaged teachers is something special.

However, as the old adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Again, I am not arguing against the program; I am simply being and arguing for others to be cautious of accepting such new initiatives blindly for in our zeal for progressive and promising projects, we can become shortsighted. The reason I go along this cautionary road specifically in the case of Edison and its changes is best explained using a car metaphor (bare with me). The oil is the lifeblood of the car; without it, you are not going far. The dirtier the oil, the worse the car runs until it finally breaks down. So far so good. Well, to me, the kids are the oil. The school, the car—literally and figuratively the engine of social (im)mobility. If the students only interacted with the school things would run smoothly (or at least smoother than they do now). The problem is that the oil—these students—must first run through the muck, the dirt, the filth that is the remains of Liberty City, a part of Miami that is poor, hostage to criminal activity, and still recovering from race riots of generations past. It goes without saying that this areas is also as political disenfranchised as it is economically. I am not making an argument against the individuals who attend Edison or live in this area. What I am saying in connecting the students, school, and community has been posited by many immigration and race scholars like Harvard Sociologist Mary Waters and Princeton Sociologist Alejandro Portes: the immediate location of these immigrant and native communities matter with respect to the students’ well-being and how they come to formulate their identities and their connection (or lack thereof) to schooling and mainstream routes to upward mobility.

Portes with his colleague Min Zhou argue that segmented assimilation occurs when immigrants are blocked from upward mobility by different barriers, whether they be political, language, social, cultural, or any combination of the above. In response to such barriers, subsequent generations of immigrants (the second generation) begin to identify with different subcultures—in the case of the Haitian population in Miami, poor, inner-city blacks who have experienced the effects of both interpersonal and structural racism. This is where I find such an initiative as an amazing step forward but one with the possibility to do more harm than good because it places all its resources in the school to the neglect of the community. The problem is that is that if this program does not succeed with amazing results, then cultural arguments will be everyone’s rationale for why things didn’t work: these people, the individuals and their cultural patterns at writ large, are somehow defective. The comment box for the article already presents itself as evidence for such a prediction. However, such attacks against the group would never take factors like the deleterious effects of residential segregation, the cumulative disadvantages of living in concentrated poverty, the racial politics of Miami with respect to its Cuban, Haitian, Black, and White citizenry, and the like into consideration.

The new name—Edison EduPlex—new look—paint job, planting trees, the works—and new “structure”—transforming the internal running of the school to mimic a university with four colleges within it—addresses structural problems of the school. However, by effectively placing the school in the spotlight and key component of the reform efforts to the detriment of a more critical assessment of the antithetical role the community can play when attempting to create initiatives of this kind, we may find ourselves with the same problem once the attraction of the newness wears off. Is this a recipe for change or one of another cycling of resources with mixed and inconclusive results?

Sporadic Anger is Not Political Insurgency

2009-08-14T11:15:00.010-04:00

The most recent spats over healthcare (or “Obamacare,” depending on your political persuasion) have centered on the “American-ness” of the angered, predominantly middle-aged white folks throwing fits at town hall meetings across the country. Republican commentators are lauding their civic engagement, while Democratic leaders are deriding their uncivil outbursts. The public debate has recently reached the absurd, with each side jockeying for sole control of the ever-effective “Nazi” insult. Apparently, somebody is Hitler incarnate—we just don’t know if it’s President Obama or Rush Limbaugh.

The ensuing public discussion underscores the point I made last Friday: that the GOP’s “anti-community organizing” rhetoric is antithetical to actual political mobilization. I’ve watched the Youtube videos, and it’s almost pathetic to see potential political activists relegated to mere rabble-rousers. With just a skeleton of an organizational structure, these folks could really make a substantial difference in American political culture, shifting us away from the dead-end debate over their patriotism and instead focusing the national discussion on their concerns and misgivings.

Of course, if that were the focus of the debate, their worries might be assuaged with the logic of Obama’s healthcare plan. Or maybe not. Either way, the current state of affairs is producing roadblocks from all angles: from the outside, the visible anger at these town halls is framing the national discussion on emotions rather than substance, while lack of organization is impeding the “protestors” efforts from the inside.

Sean Hannity has called their actions “as American as apple pie." Michelle Malkin has lauded their “counter insurgency.” Other conservative commentators graciously refer to them as “demonstrators.” Real Americans realizing their democratic duty and standing up for what they believe in. A group of modern-day Paul Reveres, they claim.

As persuasive as these pundits are, I can’t say I’m convinced. Without organization, these outbursts are ephemeral. Organization aids sustainability, and there really isn’t a centralized effort to harness their collective anger. Our failure to discuss political organization is in large part due to our faulty understanding of past political action and protest. Many Americans still hold the historically inaccurate, romanticized vision of Rosa Parks as a courageous individual that was just too tired to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus—a single, individualized event that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. But Parks worked as a secretary at the NAACP’s Montgomery chapter for years before her famous act of civil disobedience. In fact, that single, courageous act actually took months of planning—and Parks wasn’t even the NAACP’s first choice to be their poster child for the bus boycotts. The original woman chosen by the NAACP—fifteen year-old Claudette Colvin—became pregnant a few months after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, and the organization feared her pregnancy might delegitimize their cause as a result.

Effective political action occurs after lengthy planning sessions, prolonged mobilizing efforts, and strong leadership. Unfortunately for the Republicans, it doesn’t come through dispersed, decentralized angry outbursts.

Of course, political organizing may be the necessary action to enact change, whereas sporadic yelling and screaming at the town halls may be effective at thwarting change. And at the end of the day that’s what these folks want, after all. But let’s not confuse this for something it’s not. Civic engagement, sure. Political protests? Demonstrations? The seeds of a new social movement? Not by a long shot.

A Different Kind of Concentration Effect: Mental Health in the Juvenile Justice System

2009-08-13T14:18:00.003-04:00

A friend from Amherst passed along a Solomon Moore's NYT article, "Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System," and asked SSL to comment on it. The article speaks to the current state of mental health issues within the criminal justice systems. More specifically, the trend of courts to funnel juvenile delinquents who have documented mental health issues into the juvenile criminal justice system instead of hospitals or mental health facilities. In responding to the request, I will speak on the content of the article and the article itself.

First, this is some depressing material: “About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates—who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999—have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.” These numbers are surprising to me because, admittedly, I tend not to factor in mental illnesses like bipolar disorder when thinking about criminal activity. I think part of the reason why the two are decoupled in my mind is because I always considered (emphasis on the past tense here) certain mental disorders as “problems” of the rich (and white). I am revealing my own biases but when one thinks about how mental disorders, as opposed to physical or medical disorders like diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and the like, are represented in popular media, the news, and even in schools, “illnesses” become stratified by race and class in the mind. To give one example, think back to when the character Kim from Moesha, says something like “Mama always said that the only thing black folks need is Jesus and Oprah.” I do not speak for all; I am simply relating the abstract image of diseases with their social groupings. Reading this article made me realize even more that such stereotypes, as stereotypes always are, obscure reality.

The fact that so many of the youth in the criminal justice system are suffering from mental illnesses is frightening. For if these documented number are this high, what are the projections for those actually suffering but have not received any form of documented help as of yet. However, what saddens me more than the staggering statistics is the slippery slope recent fiscal cutbacks have created for this population. In the article, Moore highlights the fact that since the incorporation of powerful “antipsychotic medications coincided with a national movement to close public mental hospitals” across the nation. What is worse now, given our “we so broke” phase of the recession, more and more youth who are being funneled into the criminal justice system instead of mental health facilities because mental health facilities (both at the community and state levels) are harder hit by budget cutbacks. Even parents have opted to send their children to get help in juvenile facilities because community based facilities are disappearing. In other words, instead of being in an environment with trained mental health professionals, juvenile offenders are instead in a farm environment: prison guards as trained herders, wardens as farm owners, and padded cells as one’s pen.

This “farm” metaphor leads to a different from of concentration effect. In the study of urban poverty, to channel Harvard Sociologist William Julius Wilson, concentration effect is the term used to capture the consequences of the historical social transformation of the inner city which resulted in the disproportionate concentration of the most disadvantaged segments of the urban black population, creating a social milieu significantly different from the environment that existed in all black communities several decades before. This current social milieu is one of rampant crime, high violence, and other social dislocation that plague inner city environments. The prison is yet another one of these institutionalized environments where the concentration of disadvantage leads to increased aberrant behavior.

For those who already suffer from mental disorders being treated like chattel and placed with others who are experiencing the “jail house effect” only places fuel on the fire. To put it simply, it compounds the problem further. It is not surprising that one hears accounts like “he’s been in 130 fights since he’s been with us” (though I think 130 may be an exaggerated number). Such new policy lines by judges, according to Moore, to argue that juvenile are better than mental health facilities ignores such a reality.

With respect to that article itself, I find it troubling that race and class are at once conflated and implicit. I find this problematic because nowhere in the article are we given demographic characteristics to access exactly who the juvenile delinquents are. Though it may not be point of the article, because we are left in the dark (literally and figuratively) with facts about the “who,” we also do not know if even in this disadvantaged population if everyone is placed on the same track into the jails and not mental health facilities. In other words, is there tracking even amongst those who are tracked?

However, the question becomes how do we know that the population is disadvantaged? The answer, which troubles me as well, is because of the offhand comments included in the article. Take for instance, including what the grandmother said about her troubled grandson and then the psychiatrist who Moore uses to close the article. We are left with the picture of abandoned children and helpless (or hopeless) parents.

“I’ve begged D.Y.S. to get him into a mental facility where they’re trained to deal with people like him,” said his grandmother, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma of having a grandson who is mentally ill. “I don’t think a lockup situation is where he should be, although I don’t think he should be on the street either.” (Grandmother)

“Often Daddy is nowhere to be found, Mommy might be in jail,” said Daniel Connor, a psychiatrist for the Connecticut juvenile corrections system. “The home phone is cut off. The parent speaks another language, so it’s often hard to figure out exactly what’s going on with each kid.” (Psychiatrist).

With its faults, I think Moore forces us to look at how the changing policies within the courts are dovetailing with the fiscal reality of communities, states, and the nation as a whole at the expense of those who are in need of help the most. For in this case, the help these young individuals need are beyond changes they can engender themselves.

The Reverse of Discrimination is "Not Discrimination"

2009-08-11T10:04:00.006-04:00

I recently went on a road trip with my uncle, traveling from Boston to New York for my brother’s high school graduation. As we drove through western Massachusetts, our conversation eventually drifted to employment and the economy. In what would prove to be a fascinating discussion, my uncle began to recount his first job interview after college. He graduated from Northeastern University in the ‘70s—right around the time President Nixon institutionalized affirmative action and quotas served as the nation’s predominant employment policy. He had worked in Northeastern’s admissions office for a few years, so when a full-time position opened up at the University of Michigan’s admissions office, he made the 14 hour drive halfway across the country to interview for the job.

A funny thing happened during his interview, however. According to my uncle, his interviewer immediately apologized as he entered the room. ‘Look, I hate to say this,’ the interviewer said. ‘But there’s no way we’re going to be able to hire you. If you were a woman or black, I’d hire you on the spot. You are totally qualified, but we’ve got to fill our quotas.’ Naturally, my uncle was none too pleased, commenting plainly (but forcefully) that acts of “reverse discrimination” are unfair. I did my best to defend affirmative action policies, discussing their historical necessity, noting their negligible affect on white male employment, and even waxing philosophical about the entitlement associated with staking claim and ownership over falsely constructed “spots” in colleges or the workforce. It was all to no avail, though. Cliché as the phrase is, my uncle was “passed up” for the job, and there wasn’t much I could say.

We’d be naïve to trivialize my uncle’s experience or write it off as just another “reverse discrimination” fairytale. It happened. It’s a reality. The problem was not that this was an exaggeration; instead, it was that my uncle forgot about his lifetime of advantage as he harped on that one, single experience.

See, claiming reverse discrimination is a lot like recounting your golf score. It’s always the one or two bad rounds that leave the deepest, most painful impressions. You always remember the bogey on the 9th hole, but never the birdie on the 10th. Somehow, the abundance of good holes are taken for granted, while the one or two missteps are amplified and taken as indicative of the entire round. Sure, my uncle remembers getting passed up for the job with the University of Michigan—an event that (probably) happened the way he said it did. But, in the process of recounting this single experience, he forgot about a lifetime of job interviews in which he directly benefited from his whiteness or his gender. In all the jobs my uncle interviewed for, how many times were applicants immediately rejected for having “black” sounding names? How many women were turned away because employers didn’t think they could handle the stress of the job? How many times did my uncle’s employment prospects benefit from acts of statistical discrimination that weeded out potentially qualified minority applicants?

Still, many others that hide behind the “reverse discrimination” mantra often have few, if any, personal experiences to justify their outrage. But the golf analogy still fits. These folks are the ones that throw a fit over their buddy’s 10-stroke handicap. That’s not fair, they complain. But in their moral grandstanding, they forget all of their privileges that negate—and even surpass—their buddy’s handicap. These privileges may include the country club membership that afforded them hours of practice on the course, the childhood golf lessons their parents paid for, or the hand-me-down Callaways their father didn’t need anymore after he got his new set of clubs. Their buddy with the 10-stroke handicap was just allowed to join the country club recently, had parents that couldn’t afford to invest in clubs or other activities, and never inherited any valuable assets. In short, the two golfers didn’t begin the round on equal footing.

With some folks, claims of reverse discrimination are proxies for implicit assumptions of black or brown intellectual inferiority. The operative word here, however, is some. Other folks have had very real experiences with so-called “reverse discrimination”—it’s just that these isolated instances fill a disproportionate share of their memory. The real problem with the “reverse discrimination” debate (besides the logically incoherent label “reverse discrimination”—what is the reverse of discrimination anyway? Not discrimination?) is our inability to honestly discuss the issue. The question shouldn’t be whether or not this incident—or others like it—actually occurred. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, how often does this happen, and to what effect? Such acts rarely occur anymore, and the effect is almost always minor or marginal. And, of course, the folks that decry “reverse discrimination” have almost always benefited from other instances of privilege. They just tend to forget about them.

Mobilizing Under an "Anti-Community Organizing" Banner

2009-08-07T08:03:00.011-04:00

Reeling after a disappointing November, the Republican Party has suffered a case of organizational schizophrenia as they try to retool the Party’s message. Republicans just aren’t on the same page when it comes to the GOP’s future organizing agenda. On the one hand, you have the election of Michael Steele to the head of the RNC—a wise move politically, if you took it as a sign that the GOP was trying to court favor from our nation’s rapidly expanding minority electorate. If that were the case, Steele isn’t doing a very good job. When asked last month how he plans to attract more diversity to the Republican Party, he replied, “My plan is to say, ‘Ya’ll come.’” A member of the audience then shouted, “I’ll bring the collard greens,” to which Steele added, “I got the fried chicken and potato salad.” Stay classy, GOP.

Then you have the self-proclaimed, awkwardly labeled “birthers.” Admittedly, these folks aren’t a major part of the GOP’s formal organizational apparatus; in fact, quite a few conservatives have distanced themselves from the group as of late. Still, their sentiments represent a very real and influential part of the GOP’s electorate—one that the GOP can’t afford to alienate, politically speaking. However their battle-cry—“Obama’s a citizen of Kenya!”—is a little too specific (among other things) to remain an energizing Party message.

Then there’s the “RINOs”—Republicans in Name Only. RINOs tend to be moderate or even liberal Republicans. Meghan McCain is arguably the most visible RINO, speaking for a generation of young Republicans that tend to believe in traditionally conservative ideals like small government, but also tend to favor socially liberal positions such as gay marriage. While they represent a sizable portion of young Republicans, the RINOs seem too ideologically nuanced in our current two-party system to become the main voice of the Republican Party.

Of course, there’s also a core group of overt racists, typified by folks like Pat Buchanan. In the wake of Sonia Sotomayor’s congressional hearings, Buchanan wrote an article for HumanEvents.com in which he suggested that John McCain would be President if only he had done a little more race-baiting during the campaign. Seriously. Buchanan concluded that the key to future GOP success is simple: court white males disenchanted with affirmative action, using modern day Willie Horton-style images. Seriously. This election certainly brought out vicious racial animus from the Republican side of the aisle, but I don’t foresee the RNC using this as an actual organizational strategy anytime soon.

But no rhetoric has caught as much steam amongst Party loyalists as the Michelle Malkin-inspired “corruption of community organizers” mantra. Indeed, the dominant message of the Republican Party currently centers on a fundamental disdain for community organizing—a sentiment that runs much deeper than simple contempt for the “community-organizer in chief.” While often racially tinged, the rhetoric is certainly pervasive, and every sector of the Party seems to be latching on. But is this really the best Republicans can do?

The problem with anti-community organizing rhetoric is simple: How do you mobilize potential constituents and supporters when your main organizing strategy is to mock organizers? It makes no sense. It’s like trying to sell a product by making fun of your competitor’s marketing division. It reeks of arrogance, assuming your product is so good that it sells itself. The thing is, the GOP’s product just isn’t that good. Forget my snark for just a minute and really think about it: How effective can deriding community organizers be as an organizing philosophy? It’s a logical contradiction. You can’t organize without organizers; you can’t mobilize without mobilizers. Without a centralized organizing structure, you just aren’t going to win many elections. Good luck recruiting constituents when you mock, ridicule, and racialize the act of recruiting.

The Politics of "Othering"

2009-08-04T08:38:00.026-04:00

Frank Rich’s column from Saturday’s New York Times is too good to go unnoticed here at Social Science Lite. Rich brilliantly tackles the “birthers” (proponents of The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World*), placing their rhetoric within our so-called “national conversation on race:”

“Obama’s election, far from alleviating paranoia in the white fringe, has only compounded it. There is no purer expression of this animus than to claim that Obama is literally not an American — or, as Sarah Palin would have it, not a “real American.” The birth-certificate canard is just the latest version of those campaign-year attempts to strip Obama of his American identity with faux controversies over flag pins, the Pledge of Allegiance and his middle name. Last summer, Cokie Roberts of ABC News even faulted him for taking a vacation in his home state of Hawaii, which she described as a “foreign, exotic place,” in contrast to her proposed choice of Myrtle Beach, S.C., in the real America of Dixie.

[…]

One of the loudest birther enablers is not at Fox but CNN: Lou Dobbs, who was heretofore best known for trying to link immigrants, especially Hispanics, to civic havoc. Dobbs is one-stop shopping for the excesses of this seismic period of racial transition. And he is following a traditional, if toxic, American playbook. The escalating white fear of newly empowered ethnic groups and blacks is a naked replay of more than a century ago, when large waves of immigration and the northern migration of emancipated blacks, coupled with a tumultuous modernization of the American work force, unleashed a similar storm of racial and nativist panic.”

Racial panic over minority invasions and challenges to white hegemony is nothing new; the history of “othering” minorities is a long and storied one, with its organizational zenith going as far back as the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. There, white Americans celebrated the supposed supremacy of American culture, collectively embracing whiteness as they mocked and ridiculed “savage” foreign societies. White Americans defined their unstable racial identity in opposition to an ill-defined, uncivilized racial “other.” At the Chicago World’s Fair, whiteness, nationalism and modernity were all intertwined: to be intellectually superior, patriotic, and American was to be white; to be white was to be intellectually superior, patriotic, and American. Sounds familiar, right?

This collective re-drawing of racial boundaries has been a common American practice during times of economic distress and demographic change. Take the influx of African-Americans into manufacturing jobs during the 1930s and 40s. This onslaught of blacks into Northern industrial cities during the Second Great Migration precipitated violent resistance in formerly all-white neighborhoods and workplaces. In more recent decades, the growing Hispanic population in America has spawned a pervasive anti-immigrant ethos with blatantly racist overtones. In each instance, white Americans enacted social, political, and economic structures—such as restrictive covenants, redlining, and political gerrymandering—to limit upward mobility when people of color challenged their hegemonic power.

So-called “birthers”—questioning President Obama’s country of birth—are only the latest in a long line of white Americans dead-set on “othering” minority populations. There's just no way this Obama guy is one of us. This "othering" of President Obama is exactly where we need to focus our discussions of race in America—not on individualized instances of racial discrimination, but on historical continuities and the institutionalization of racial animus. Our “national conversation on race” won’t happen over beers, but through careful historical analyses of racial identity formation and the hoarding of economic and political resources.

The politics of “othering” has long been a dominant facet of public discourse. No “national conversation on race” is going to do much if we don’t address this core aspect of American political identity.

* I'm officially coining "The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World" as my new term for the "birther" claims.

Monday's Musing: Race Makes Scripted Appearance Yet Again

2009-08-02T23:43:00.010-04:00

Quick Point: Race makes Scripted, Ten Second Appearance (Yet Again)

Suffice it to say, Hollywood loves the Hood.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to accompany her to see the film version of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. I had no idea what the movie was about so I checked out the trailer and then researched the book and its author a little bit. I said, sure, it's five dollars, “Why not?” So I go. And yes, like the other millions of people who saw the movie, the tears began to roll well before the movie got going. I was ready to say “job well done” until a short ten second segment came across the screen that immediately didn’t sit right with me but I wasn’t sure why.

I am speaking specifically about the new ending the directors gave to the movie. For those of you who have not seen the movie or read the book, read no further unless you don’t care that I ruin both. First, it must be said that even Picoult did not hold her tongue about the movie’s alternative ending. However, I believe her distaste for the ending came from a different place than my own. She disliked it because they changed which daughter dies. In the book, Kate, the sick daughter, lives because Anna, the younger daughter, gets into an accident where she is deemed brain-dead. Thus, the accident allows Kate access to Anna’s organs and the lifesaving medical procedures they could not do otherwise. In the movie, the family moves on but comes together to remember Kate by traveling as a family on her birthday. The mother returns to work as a lawyer, the son focuses on his art, and the father retires to work with inner-city youth. Picoult argued that it flattened the story and made it too neat of ending. I was troubled by something much more viral.

Race was not a factor in this film. Or rather, due to the racial composition of the family and their surroundings, race is invisible, unmarked, thus white. Sure there were issues of class and privilege—the mother was able to leave work as a semi-high powered lawyer to take care of Kate and the father worked as a fireman with some pull—but even this was not a factor in the movie. To be specific, my reaction did not come from the rescripting of Kate’s death, the son’s artistic rather than arsonist behavior, or the mother’s life post Kate’s death; it was the rescripting of the father’s. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why Brian, the stargazer, would all of a sudden volunteer with inner-city youth (shown as all black), the very few black bodies that you see in this movie besides the one nurse who herself plays the part of the stereotypical “black nurse.” Hollywood Strikes Again.

What are we to make of the fact that in their right to exercise artistic license with the movie, in their freedom to bring this book to “life” in a way they saw fit, they included poor, inner-city youth as the mechanism through which the father regains his life? I say it once more: Hollywood Strikes Again. I spoke about the scripting of race in movies with Pixar’s UP. Although this particular incident in My Sister’s Keeper was less than ten seconds of the total movie as compared to being the “major” minor character that Beta was, it stands as yet another example that the representation of African Americans in different mediums is so often conflated with class—and a specific class (read: lower class)—and place—this time, as with many times before it, the inner city. In other words, in an otherwise good (for its content) and homogenously white (for its cast and setting) movie, the dark birthmark of American race relations and images of racial groups, stands out the same way as it did on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Georgiana from the short story The Birthmark.

I do not believe that I am making a mountain out of ten second molehill. In their concerted and calculated actions to adapt a Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, they casted dark bodies to fulfill that old familiar role of those in need to help, those in need of aid.

Black In America 2: Africanism and Black Divisions by Class and Age

2009-07-31T10:20:00.004-04:00

Many academics, public intellectuals, and fellow bloggers have now voiced their opinions about Black In America 2. Some have praised it as being better than last year while others have said that Black In America 2 and the number 2 had much more in common than CNN would like to admit. I am more on the side of it being better than last year but agree that it is still off the mark. One of the key differences that made it better than last year is that in the first segment (of which I will speak about further below) they grounded the discussion of the poorer students and the problems they face in the historical legacy of and lasting effects of the rapid deterioration of their neighborhood as well as urban decline. I may be giving Black In America 2 too much credit here because even this discussion was short and rather weak. If you are going to begin with such an opening, then structural forces—decline of jobs, residential segregation, and the like—must be put at the forefront and stated explicitly, not in passing. Nevertheless there were some, for lack of a better word, problems with it that stuck out to me beyond what has been talked about in other venues. I focus on two points that I felt slipped under the radar.

The first has to with the apparent Africanism in the first segment but also its place in larger society. Although highlighting the work of Malaak Compton-Rock giving to the community, they presented Journey for Change as a program not to expose inner-city youth to a different way of life per se, but rather to a poorer, more destitute way of life so that they can appreciate what (little) they have back home in Bushwick. I am sorry but if that is not a variation of Edward Said’s Orientalism I do not know what is. One point Said makes of the harmful effects of orientatlism is how “the Occident” began to see “the Orient” and conduct themselves toward the region itself and also those from that region.

I must stop here and say that I am an unapologetic Americanist, though one with humanist tendencies. Nevertheless, maybe because I am an Americanist, I do not jump on the bandwagon of those who go outside the United States to help those in need. If two houses are burning, which one do you put out first: your’s or your neighbor’s? I know that framing it this way makes it an either/or question without moral implications and as one that ignores present day politics and the history of colonialism and the like. However, the question remains that if there is a cancer threatening to destroy your body from the inside from the same mechanisms, through the same actions, and that of someone else, what do you do first?

The way in which it was framed also obscures the plight of blacks, Latinos, and some whites here in the United States. I am sorry, if you wanted to show them more extreme poverty than what they are used to, there are pockets here in the United States that are just as or even worse off economically. Both urban and rural. Let us not forget the work of Amartya Sen who found that even though one may live in a richer nation, one’s life expectancy and quality might be quite lower than those in poorer nations. If you wanted to show them the detrimental effects the AIDS virus has on communities, there are pockets in many Chocolate Cities that have as high or higher concentration of AIDS than many parts of Africa. I mean to speak honestly, the way in which they first introduced Journey for Change overshadowed the positive cultural, educational, and political aspects of the program. It was almost as if they used Africa—since there was so little (i.e. none) conversation about how Africa is more than just South Africa and that it was a heterogeneous place (another form of Africansim with roots in the theme of orientalism)—as a tool to shock, awe, and inspire. I am sorry, but this is both amoral and wrong. As those over at The Retort noted, Compton-Rock spoke as if this trip was to act as a panacea of social and academic ills. I am sorry, it doesn’t work like that.

Before I continue, I must say that I appreciate programs like this and those who invest time into them, the organizers, family, and students themselves. However, I stand with my previous criticism of this program.

The second aspect of the first segment that stuck with me was the lack of parallel between the ages of the low income black students from Connecticut and New York and middle class blacks. This may seem like a minor point but I do not believe it is; in fact, I think it highlights both some of the assumptions and prejudiced thoughts about blacks in America. If you notice, the poor blacks were middle and high school aged individuals. The middle class blacks were college aged or above. Remember, we only saw low-income older adults as parents with medical, mental health, or financial issues. Even though I too appreciated the awareness of racial issues of this year’s cohort of middle class interviewees, I was troubled by this age divide.

I think that parallel would have been stronger if they would have went to Exeter, Andover, St. Paul, Deerfield, and the other prep, day, and boarding school in the Northeast to see the experience of same aged middle class blacks at these predominately white institutions. Or, to flip it the other way, found some low-income college black college students to parallel those middle class blacks that spoke of their experiences. Believe it or not, poor blacks (and minorities for that matter) make it to both the Ivy and non-Ivy halls as well. Instead of a smorgasbord of black people and education, CNN, NOT SOLEDAD O’BRIEN ALONE, missed an opportunity for a richer and deeper glimpse inside Black America.

We missed another opportunity to access what it means to be black in America. Though I have to admit this year was a step forward rather than backward (though I admit that would have been hard even for Black In America). I do not know if what I have presented here is more of me responding more to what was in the show or the way it was presented. I am happy if it is both.

He’s Assertive; She’s a Bitch

2009-07-30T07:10:00.029-04:00

A while back, I wrote about the racial privilege associated with speaking forcefully and having your message heard. I argued—and continue to believe—that folks of color are more susceptible to racially charged interpretations of their tone of voice. In other words, a black guy offering the same message as me would, more often than not, be painted as “angry” or “militant,” while I would, more often than not, be seen as “passionate” or “engaging.” When I get into an impassioned rant, my audience—particularly white audiences—may think I’m a bit over the top; I’ll concede that. But my words and tone aren’t going to trigger the racialized stereotype of black male hyper-masculinity and irrational anger, since, of course, I’m a white guy.

A few of our thoughtful (and sharp) readers suggested that the racial privilege I wrote about was also gendered—meaning that women are not afforded the same privilege to speak forcefully without fear of negative stereotyping.

I have to admit, this was a pretty egregious oversight on my part. Given the current political climate—from Hilary Clinton to Sonia Sotomayor to Michelle Obama—it's clear that strong, prominent women haven’t exactly received the most positive national news coverage. Clinton’s been called “shrill,” Sotomayor’s been called a “bully,” and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin begins each post on Michelle Obama with a picture of the First Lady scowling or frowning—a racially charged attempt to depict her as excessively scary and militant.

Such instances are not simply relegated to high profile women; it’s a safe bet that most of our (assertive, thoughtful, vocal) female readers can relate to this pervasive stereotype. Moreover, this isn’t simply an example of a “double standard;” rather, it’s male privilege in action. If I bang my finger on the table during a rant in a seminar here at Harvard, no one’s going to call me “shrill” or “domineering.” These are words used to describe folks that defy stereotypes and resist domination or subservience. These are words used to put them in their place, to remind them they’re not white; they’re not men. These are words that evoke, employ, and perpetuate privilege.

While I can't really speak from personal experience, dating a woman in corporate America has helped make these gendered stereotypes salient. Big business—a male dominated field predicated on assertiveness and team-based problem solving—is probably one of the better examples to illustrate male privilege and the gendered interpretation of tone. Consider a corporate team planning a company’s new investment strategy. The team leader is, statistically speaking, most likely a white man. He’s leading the group in a brainstorming session, and invites input from the team. The majority of the team is, statistically speaking, most likely white and male. Everyone is generally cordial and polite considering they're working together toward a common goal. But when male and female team members assert their respective dominance, they prompt two very different responses.

See, when a male team member speaks out of turn, interrupting the flow of conversation to interject his brilliant idea, he’s a valuable asset to the company. He’s being a good team member. He’s assertive. But when a female team member tries to compete, simply asserting her equality and intellectual evenness with her male counterparts, she’s excessively domineering. She’s overstepping authority, displaying improper professional etiquette. She’s a bitch.

Ultimately, these stereotypes may—perhaps, obviously—fall most severely on the shoulders of black women. Black women that forcefully assert intellectual or physical equality with men are doubly susceptible to negative stereotyping as “ghetto,” “shrill,” or a combination of the two. Privilege isn’t an either/or phenomenon; multiple social identities create multiple structures of privilege, and black women find themselves at the bottom of this stratified order.

Look, this (admittedly oversimplified) example is not meant as an indictment of corporate America, nor is it indicative of every woman’s professional or personal experience. But it most certainly reflects decades of social science research on the perceptions of women in positions of power. And, more importantly, it most certainly underscores an underappreciated mechanism influencing social inequality.

The problem here is when privilege translates into material winners and losers; when privilege affords job promotions, favorable peer evaluations, and wage premiums, and lack thereof results in economic, political, or social ceilings. Privilege is a very real—and pernicious—component of inequality. The measures needed to correct these racist, sexist, and generally misguided notions are, of course, debatable. But the privilege is real, and it carries a material impact. Exposing and recognizing it is a necessary first step toward greater equality.

The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World

2009-07-23T11:06:00.016-04:00

Eat your heart out, Monica Lewinsky. Move over, Kenneth Starr. There’s a new group of political truth-seekers out there, and they just uncovered a bombshell that’s going to shock the world. Were you irate when Clinton lied about his infidelity? Or when Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction? Well these minor scandals pale in comparison to The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World: President Obama is not a United States citizen!

A few brave fellow patriots are joining the venerable Ken Starr in the courageous struggle against lying, deceitful politicians. Thank goodness for Real Americans. They (uh, awkwardly) call themselves the “birthers,” and their ranks range from good ol’ normal folks like this lady in Delaware to high-ranking political leaders like California Republican Congressman John Campbell. Some outwardly question President Obama’s citizenship, while others admirably “just want to see these question put to rest.” Turns out, these inquisitive folks have uncovered President Obama’s true citizenship: He’s not American—he’s African.

Of course, these (incorrect) rumors have been around since the election. Snopes sufficiently debunked them, but folks are still clinging to the pervasive notion that there’s just something not right about this Obama guy. As Liz Cheney noted on Larry King Live Tuesday night—validating and legitimizing the birthers’ invalid and illegitimate claims—Americans are “fundamentally uncomfortable” with Barack Obama. He just doesn’t seem like one of “us.” He’s, well, he’s something other than us.

The process of “othering” minorities remains a fundamental component of our nation’s history. That it is so shocking for folks to associate a black man in power with American citizenship is not wholly surprising. Princeton scholar Mellissa Harris-Lacewell offered a fascinating discussion on this very topic after Obama’s election, detailing the innovative steps his campaign took to overcome racial cognitive dissonance. See, we’ve been so used to a certain style of person (read: white, male) in positions of power that our brains had difficulty making the shift toward accepting a different looking First Family. This cognitive shift—a significant racial barrier, to be sure—was integral to Obama’s success last November.

Yet some folks haven’t fully made that cognitive shift. They’re still pretty reticent to accept that a smart black guy can actually be an American, and, even worse, be their Commander in Chief. But it’s far too easy to condemn their racist ignorance without offering any critical analysis. In the social sciences, we delve into every possible explanation for the behaviors of poor, predominantly minority populations and communities. We untangle their social networks, carefully scrutinize their positions within the economy and polity, and go out of our way to talk to them personally in our research, often letting their own words drive our analysis.

Yet we rarely place that same critical eye on the lives of poor white folks—particularly poor racist white folks. We (correctly) note the lack of mainstream models of success in many urban neighborhoods. We talk about the role of social structure in shaping a group’s worldviews, but rarely apply that same analysis to folks outside the so-called ghetto. It’s unfortunate; in our knee jerk reactions to overt racism, we neglect comprehensive social research and, more importantly, comprehensive pursuits of social justice.

These folks—crazy as we may think they are—are expressing real feelings and real fear. Calling them foolish isn’t productive. Telling them they should know better is ineffective. And, apparently, showing them Obama’s actual birth certificate doesn’t do much either.

But that doesn’t mean we should write these folks off. In Black Picket Fences, sociologist Mary Pattillo writes about black gang members in a Chicago neighborhood. She discusses how these kids have multiple identities; they’re gang members, sure, but they’re also someone’s brother, son, or neighbor. As a white guy from upstate New York, these racist white folks—lawn jockeys and all—could easily be one of my neighbors, friends, or relatives. Well, maybe not one of my friends—but you get the idea. They’re human beings with little access to quality information, born to a world that has taught them to fear blacks.

Questioning their intelligence does little to expand their worldview and educate them on the complicated contours of race and racial inequality. No, Obama’s not a Kenyan citizen. And no, this isn’t the Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World. Sure, these “birthers” are woefully misguided, and yes, their ideological underpinnings are exceedingly racist. But this is an opportunity—an opportunity to tackle racism and inequality head on through careful analysis and education. Who knows, it just might bring us closer to the ever-elusive "post racial America" everyone keeps talking about.

Gay is Not the New Black

2009-07-22T10:51:00.005-04:00

(Administrator's Note: The following piece was written by SSL Guest Contributor Steven Brown, an incoming graduate student in Harvard's department of sociology. He can be reached at ksbrown2@gmail.com)

Gay is not the new black. Black is the new black; gay is the new gay.

Earlier this week, sportswriter LZ Granderson published a piece in CNN entitled “Gay is not the new black.” I one-hundred-percent agree with his basic premise, but totally disagree in the way he argues it. According to Granderson, gay black men identify more with their racial self than they do with their sexuality, a situation exacerbated by powerful white LGBT persons who exclude blacks and criticize Obama.

Apparently, the LGBT movement is dealing with it own issues of racial preference and exclusion. As someone who is not entrenched in this community, I cannot speak to how true or not true this is. But it does appear that the very visible spokespeople for the LGBT community rarely tend to be black (Anthony Woods – the gay, black, Harvard-educated Iraq veteran running for Congress – seems to be an exception).

Granderson uses these racial divisions as the crux of his argument. He notes, “When Proposition 8 passed in California, white gays were quick to blame the black community despite blacks making up less than 10 percent of total voters and whites being close to 60 percent .” I think his language is a little strong, but he makes a fair point. The arguments that black people somehow caused Proposition 8 to pass are demonstrably and demographically false. Even among another minority community fighting for its civil rights, race still matters. Therefore, gay cannot be the new black if black is still black as ever.

Unfortunately, his argument seems to rest on the premise that only race matters, or at least it matters more than sexuality and other identity factors. Race is so important that LGBT-led criticism of President Obama alienates members of the black community – gay or not. “The parade of gay people calling Obama a "disappointment" on television is counterproductive in gaining acceptance, to say the least. And the fact that the loudest critics are mostly white doesn't help matters either.” It is possible to critique the President, and still be supportive. Granderson himself does both in the article. It is possible to inhabit both spaces, to acknowledge multiple aspects of one’s identity.

To make matters even worse, he very distastefully says that blacks have had it worse than gays in the struggle for civil rights, calls the LGBT community leaders “petulant child[ren],” and effectively tells the community they should wait their turn.

“The 40th anniversary of Stonewall dominated Gay Pride celebrations around the country, and while that is certainly a significant moment that should be recognized, 40 years is nothing compared with the 400 blood-soaked years black people have been through in this country. There are stories some blacks lived through, stories others were told by their parents and stories that never had a chance to be told.”

Making comparisons as to which minority group had is worse is NEVER useful (see Holocaust vs. slavery), both because it is pointless and reduces all minority struggles to being one-in-the-same. There is no special prize for being the “most oppressed” group between “competing minorities.” We can acknowledge that the LBGT community, blacks, Jews, Asians, Native Americans (etc, etc) have all struggled at the hands of a more powerful regime and that each group’s struggle is different and complex in its own way. We can and should learn from each other’s histories, not reduce them to slight variations of one another. That only leads to in-fighting, which helps no one’s cause. An extension of this is the idea that whichever minority group cries foul the loudest is the one that will get the most attention. The idea that these issues are relegated to just being special interest issues speaks to a continued belief that these issues don’t concern everyone. I personally long for the day when all these voices can be heard equally and simultaneously – not just one at a time.

While there are obviously similarities in the civil rights movements of the 1910s-1920s, the 1950s-1960s, the LGBT community faces different social pressures (religion and ideas of sexual normativity) and seeks different outcomes (all-inclusive marriage rights, adoption rights, the ability to serve the military openly, and more job discrimination protection more broadly).

But what isn’t different or distinct are the people involved in these different movements. A friend of mine found it interesting that Granderson assumed that gay black men privilege their racial identity. He queried: why does it have to be either-or…why not both? Anthony Jack, one of Social Science Lite's bloggers, has discussed on previous occasions the problematic assumption that people can divvy-up their being into race, gender, sexual orientation, ableness, etc. Indeed, this line of thinking is often decried in womanist literature. Gay black men could be actively involved in both black communities and gay communities equally, or maybe neither if they so choose. On a personal level, to say that gay is not the new black makes sense. If it were, then LBGT blacks would supposedly be forced to supplant one aspect of their identity to the dominant other.

Black is the new black. Gay is the new gay. I could say that being a heterosexual, black man is the new heterosexual, black man, but it would be easier to say that I’m Steven. I am black. I am heterosexual. I am male. I am all of these things, all the time, even in those occasions when I choose to highlight only one part of my identity.

The 40-Year Fall of the Black Middle Class

2009-07-21T12:43:00.005-04:00

(Administrator's Note: The following piece was written by SSL Guest Contributor Steven Brown, an incoming graduate student in Harvard's department of sociology. He can be reached at ksbrown2@gmail.com)

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the mid-60s, large numbers of African-Americans began working for manufacturers like GM and Ford – jobs that did not require college education, but still paid strong living wages. Because of these companies, with their ever-growing workforce and strong unions, the black middle class of the day grew rapidly.

But now, forty years later, that same demographic segment is struggling, according to a piece published in the New York Times magazine in late June – "G.M., Detroit, and the Fall of the Black Middle Class". The article follows one man facing potential layoffs from a G.M. plant closing, highlighting him as representative of the large black middle class supported by Detroit car manufacturers. Marvin Powell is almost 40, married with two kids, with a mortgage, and making about $50,000 a year. He started working for G.M. at age 26, a few years after dropping out of college.

Two things strike me about this article. The first is the claim that Mr. Powell and others like him are middle class, and the second is the argument that the faltering auto industry is causing the black middle class to suffer. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that black auto workers were not at the forefront of upwardly mobile African-Americans. What I am saying is that what defined middle class a generation ago doesn’t hold up so well now.

Back then, earning a living wage and being able to mortgage a home of your own was a pretty reliable way of measuring middle class. Nowadays, being part of the middle class seems to be more about education and occupational prestige than about income. (Think about popular notions of white-collar vs. blue-collar.) Keeping in mind those who discuss the importance of wealth, being middle class today seems more about creating opportunities and weathering storms than about how much you take home every month. Just last year, then-Senator Obama was getting large amounts of press over his inability to court the “white, working-class voter.” A Pew Report described “white, working-class” as those without college degrees, making under $50,000 a year, and were often popularized in the media as living as union-members living and working in the Rust Belt and Texas. In other words, if Marvin Powell were white, he’d be working class. But since he’s black, he’s middle class.

To show my hand, I’ve long suspected the idea that there were different popular and empirical standards for what constitutes a “black” versus a “white” or mainstream middle class. There are indeed grounds for differentiation, like the fact that blacks were only very recently integrated into the middle rungs of the American workforce in any meaningful way. Also, the median household income for blacks in 2000 was only $29,530, compared to a national median of $46,000. By that standard, the auto worker’s salary looks quite substantial. But this differentiation is problematic. Different race-based standards under the umbrella of “middle class” obscure the distance between relatively well off blacks and non-blacks. To use a crude metaphor, if most of the people in your neighborhood are 5 feet tall, just because you’re 5’6”doesn’t mean that you’re actually tall. You’re not that short, but you’re not that tall either.

I mentioned earlier that a generation ago, being a unionized auto-worker would make you middle class, but not anymore. What changed? The explosion of the service economy (along with service economy wages) that required more sophisticated skills and higher levels of education is one reason. The simultaneous fall of manufacturing during the 70s and 80s is another. Think about how difficult it would be to transition to a non-industrial job after 20-years on a factory floor without a bachelor’s degree or technical certificate – a hard task made harder if you happen to be a black man looking for a job.

In addition to employment trends, social scientists developed more sophisicated ways of understanding class mobilty and security, putting more emphasis on education and considering wealth and assets, “last hired, first fired,” and continued job discrimination (not to mention numerous residence-based issues). A revisionist take by today’s methods of measuring class could show that black auto workers were never securely middle class. My guess is that black workers were disproportionately hit when foreign competition ate into the market share and caused layoffs. I would also assume that black workers would have a harder time moving if one plant closed in Flint and another opened in Mississippi.

Furthermore, the “cost” of being middle-class has also risen substantially. The cost of owning and buying a home, the cost of re-locating for work (as many in the service sector do), and the costs of sending children to school have all gone up quite a bit. And then there are the issues that affect the black middle class disproportionately, like owning homes in areas where values rise slowly, if not eventually decline.

My argument is not that the current failures of the auto industry are causing “the fall” of better-off black folks, but that the grounds have been shifting underneath their feet for decades. This segment of the black middle class has been falling for years, first out of the middle class, and now possibly and tragically out of their way of life.

Monday's Musings: I Can Hear Your Shirt, But What's It Saying?

2009-07-20T06:59:00.010-04:00

This is not a traditional post where I present an argument or my opinion about a recent post although the social implications for studying identity, culture, and race are considered (admittedly as backdrop). Rather, I would like to offer something for discussion to the larger audience that I cannot quite come to terms with. So, I start with two simple, yet complex questions: What does this shirt mean to you? What does this shirt mean for society at large? A piece at The Root entitled “Can You Hear My T-Shirt Now?” called these questions into existence. The article highlights the current work of Renee Cox* of Maroon Rebel who wants to make t-shirts “racial and radical” once again with messages like “Bye Baby” with “Emmett Till Died For This” as the subtext (I think it would have been more powerful if she would have quoted Mamie Till, Emmett Till’s mother: “I have not a minute to hate. I’ll pursue justice for the rest of my life”).
**
The old adage goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” What is missing, or rather, what is taken for granted in this old phrase is that each picture means a different thousand words to each individual. Though there will surely be overlap, a plethora of internal conversations between picture and individual are held even when only a few of us come across a single image (Look at the vitriolic comments launched against Malia Obama for wearing a peace sign on her shirt in her last trip overseas with the rest of the First Family).

I am of two minds with respect to t-shirts that claim to be “racial and radical” for a purpose on either continuum of the color spectrum. A host of questions immediately come to mind. Are the shirts just for shock value? Are these shirts made for getting a reaction out of passersby? Or are they to inform? Are they to force us to connect the picture or message—effectively, the representation of reality—to one’s reality? I am not sure. In fact, in writing this post I battled over including the following question as the opening so as to move the question beyond my own limited perspective: are there temporal or contextual constraints or expiration dates (if you will) for different modes of celebrating one’s history, the good and the bad? I changed my viewpoint as soon as the words were on screen because I realized that I was singling out African Americans for implicit in that question is that people should leave history in the past and only worry about the present and future, a perspective I do not subscribe to.

The fact remains that we are forever communicating with a larger audience. The body itself is always in dialogue with others. Taking off of sociologist Erving Goffman, the body both communicates and is communicated in the sense that one is always projecting and receiving social information simply by being copresent. The clothes we wear have cultural roots but they are also an expression of one’s individual and/or collective identity. So, when we wear certain shirts like the one pictured above, what exactly are we communicating?

*The picture headlining this post was taken on someone's person and is not one of Cox's design.
**This particular shirt is one of Cox's design.

"No Excuses"

2009-07-17T13:54:00.009-04:00

“No Excuses”—a simple phrase scrawled across the front pages of the Huffington Post and the New York Times politics section this morning—has proven to be the salient takeaway from President Obama’s speech to the NAACP last night. Unfortunately, the most salient takeaway is not always the intended takeaway, nor is it always the most important takeaway.

Yes, Obama urged black parents to take responsibility for their children. He told them to “[put] away the Xbox and [put] our kids to bed at a reasonable hour.” He noted that every black kid can’t become the next Lebron James, or the next Lil Wayne—“even if they might think they’ve got a pretty jump shot or a pretty good flow.” And yes, he did deride excessive excuses for black underachievement.

But Obama’s message--grounded in sound analysis of racial inequality--was much more profound than these simple sound bites suggest.

Obama correctly noted that there is less discrimination in America today than ever before. Sure, black and brown folks are still getting kicked out of swimming pools—but they aren’t being told to sit in the back of the bus anymore. A new racism built on euphemisms and proxies persists, but overt discrimination is becoming less and less socially acceptable.

Obama went on to detail the extent of structural inequalities that have emerged from past discrimination, specifically citing their pernicious effects on the racial achievement gap. While discrimination remains omnipresent, it is structural inequalities that matter most in determining the life chances and opportunities for folks of color. It almost seems lost in the headlines that Obama’s discussion of personal responsibility occurred only after laying out the root of inequality: unequal access to healthcare, unequal schools, unequal access to quality housing, and unequal rates of incarceration.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates and G.D. at Postbourgie point out, the rhetoric of “no excuses” is common banter heard in black churches, dinner tables and barbershops across the country. The idea is not to absolve racism, discrimination, or structural inequities from blame; rather, it’s a battle cry to work that much harder in the face of profound disadvantage. It's a declaration, a statement of perseverance—a “We Shall Overcome” for the 21st Century. Structural forces are responsible for inequality, but we are culpable for our reactions as we confront this disadvantage. As Adam Serwer notes, Obama's speech was “far more nuanced…than media narratives about race ever seem to acknowledge.”

Above my desk I have a small computer printout of the phrase “Just Shut Up and Do It.” These were the wise words of encouragement my high school football coaches gave me anytime I felt the need to complain about, well, anything: when I broke my finger during a pre-season scrimmage, when I got illegally chop-blocked in pursuit of a tailback, when I threw up after a particularly intense conditioning session, or when I was convinced there was no possible way I could squat 250 pounds. Each excuse I gave was met with a simple rebuttal: “Shut up, and do it.” It didn’t matter if our rival’s tight end kept holding me each time the ball came to my side of the field, nor did it matter that I was the most undersized outside linebacker to ever grace New York State Class AA football. I had to rise up against my disadvantage. I had to shut my mouth, and do it.

After a tough practice or a long game, when my eyes were bloodshot from yelling and my head pounded from throwing my body into players three times my size, the coaches often pulled me aside to praise my determination and willpower. Their tone would be noticeably different; less expletives, more words of encouragement. They knew I was undersized. They knew how much punishment my body could take. But they also knew the formidable foes I would have to face. Excuses mattered little on Friday nights, under the stadium lights and in the eyes of the community.

The rhetoric of “no excuses” has dominated the coverage of Obama’s speech to the NAACP. But there was more to the speech—and more to the rhetoric itself—that shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. Obama exhibited a tremendous grasp of the causes of inequality, a refreshing departure from our past President’s woeful ignorance. Our task now is to listen to the whole message, and resist getting caught up in the sound bites.

You Can Take the Rapper Out of the Ghetto, But…

2009-07-16T13:12:00.015-04:00

A few weeks back, hip hop blogger Jay Smooth offered a fascinating analysis of rapper Charles Hamilton on Illdoctrine.com. Hamilton is a newly famous, up-and-coming rapper—so respected, in fact, that XXL profiled him as one of their top ten rappers to watch out for in ‘09. He doesn’t even have a record out yet, but he’s been able to generate quite a bit of buzz from his exploitation of free Internet promotion.

Yet, Hamilton has found himself in a bit of a media backlash as of late. First, he lied about stealing another producer’s beat—a big no-no in the music business. He lost a few rap battles (badly) to some no-name fans, and was clowned pretty hard for it across the Internets. But nothing hurt his reputation worse than a video showing Mary J. Blige’s stepdaughter punch him in the face after he made a few insensitive remarks about her promiscuity. If things couldn’t get worse, Hamilton recently claimed that J.Dilla would be the executive producer of his forthcoming album (Dilla is dead), and embarrassed himself further after countless journalists and bloggers exposed his lie. Recent rumors suggest that his record label, Interscope, has released him from his contract as a result of these damaging blunders.

Jay’s take on the Hamilton’s repeated missteps is smart, astute, and grounded in his own personal experiences. See, Jay used to work with kids a lot like Hamilton—kids with tough exteriors, disadvantaged backgrounds, and limited views of the wider world. These kids would seek out negative attention, in large part a response to the negative attention they received growing up—be it from parents, teachers, or law enforcement. In short, these kids’ worldviews were shaped by the structure of their neighborhoods and family life.

Later that week, Jay applied this same analysis to the rapper C-Murder. A security surveillance tape recently surfaced showing C-Murder (ironically? predictably?) attempting to murder a room full of employees at a Baton Rouge, LA club. On his Saturday night radio show, Jay lamented the frustration he felt watching rappers devolve to petty street thugs, even after they had achieved widespread stardom. But, he understood where those behaviors came from: cultures of distrust that emerge from profound poverty and isolation.

Jay’s comments on Charles Hamilton and C-Murder point to a hot topic in the social sciences: the interplay between structural and cultural forces in shaping behavioral and material outcomes. Social scientists have long debated which social factors best explain income, incarceration, and health inequalities, and the debate has largely boiled down to two distinctive camps: those that rely on structural explanations—referring to an individual’s social position in institutions such as the economy, polity, and education—and those that prefer cultural explanations—referring to the effects of shared worldviews, outlooks, and behaviors among individuals that occupy the same neighborhoods or social networks. In other words, “structural” explanations relate inequality to an individual’s position in the economy, education system, or electorate, whereas “cultural” explanations relate inequality to the behaviors and worldviews an individual shares with his or her family, friends, and neighbors.

As Jay argues, Hamilton and C-Murder may come from cultures of distrust and dishonesty, but that’s in large part a symptom of the structural conditions of inner-city poverty. A group’s culture is tempered by their employment opportunities and access to mainstream models of success. And when everyone around you is also socially isolated from employment and other opportunities, a mutually reinforcing system of distrust persists, prompting folks to adopt certain behaviors frowned upon by so-called “mainstream” society. Moreover, in the absence of formal mechanisms of social control—you know, like police—residents are forced to develop alternative methods of social organization. Often, respect is gained through violence, as sociologist Elijah Anderson has argued with his concept “code of the street.” In short, cultural adaptations emerge from the conditions of poverty and racial segregation.

Yet, culture can also have a mind of its own, so to speak. Even when certain structural conditions are lifted—like when C-Murder finds himself out of the ghetto and with some cash in his pocket—his learned worldviews may remain. Sociologist William Julius Wilson addresses this idea with great clarity in his new book More than Just Race. Here, he discusses where “codes of the street” come from, and how they persist:

Even though these codes emerge under conditions of poverty and racial segregation, once developed they display a degree of autonomy in the regulation of behavior. The behavior generated by these autonomous cultural forces often reinforces the very conditions that have emerged from structural inequities.

In many respects, Hamilton’s antics are an adaptation, or response to the conditions of his childhood. But his behavior is also an autonomous force that limits his future opportunities. The same goes for C-Murder. His decision to shoot up a room full of people comes from a lifetime of experiences that taught him to equate violence with highly coveted respect in the streets. But such actions have shifted both Hamilton and C-Murder’s structural positions: Hamilton got dropped from his record label, and C-Murder is looking at serious jail time.

The cases of Charles Hamilton and C-Murder are illustrative of the long-lasting effects of structural inequities—the durable, longitudinal, and cumulative nature of inequality. The ramifications of under-funded schools, inadequate social services, decrepit housing and pervasive violence lasts generations. Accumulated disadvantage, as a result, may affect individual-level behavior long after structural barriers are lifted. But that doesn’t suggest we should blame individuals for “dysfunctional” culture; it simply means that inequality is nested in the structural arrangements of stratified American institutions.

Most Americans might be quick to blame black, “ghetto” culture for Hamilton’s missteps and C-Murder’s violent behavior. You can take the rapper out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the rapper. It’s an easy answer, but an overly simple one. In reality, there’s a complex and complicated interaction between structural and cultural forces in shaping individual-level behaviors, worldviews, and life chances. The effects of poverty and inequality don’t just disappear when a rapper gets his first paycheck, nor do they dissolve once he buys a new house in a new neighborhood. Taking the rapper out of the ghetto leaves the physical ghetto intact. And it is this structural reality—not the resulting cultural responses—that represents the root of the problem.

B.o.B. is Your Favorite Feminist's Favorite Rapper

2009-07-15T08:55:00.010-04:00

B.o.B. can best be described as “Andre 3000 Lite.” He’s got Dre’s swagger minus the eccentric style, the flow minus the lyrical proficiency. And that’s not so much a dig at B.o.B. as it is a testament to Andre 3K’s prolific lyrical genius; B.o.B. has real musical talent, no doubt about it. His sound straddles the line between vapid hipster rapper and introspective conscious rapper, with a little bit of southern twang and carefree drug references thrown in for flavor. He was most notably featured in XXL’s “Freshman Ten” issue, a list of the hottest, buzz-worthy rappers to watch out for in 2009.

Yet B.o.B. is a cut above the rest, particularly in regard to his fascinating engagement with issues of feminism. I know, I was a bit shocked when I first heard it too. What’s especially unique here is that B.o.B. embraces themes of feminism, rather than adopting the full “feminist rapper” label. It’s refreshing to listen to a thoughtful guy rap about issues that matter to him—be they feminism, the unforgiving hip hop blogs, or, sometimes, getting high—without the excessive grandstanding usually associated with so-called “conscious” hip hop.

In his new mixtape, B.o.B. vs. Bobby Ray, B.o.B. delivers one of the more poignant depictions of female exploitation on his aptly titled track “Camera.” Verse one profiles an aspiring model that sleeps with photographers and producers in the hopes of making it big in the entertainment industry. She’s used and abused, objectified and exploited, promised stardom but ultimately dropped like a bad habit. Verse two turns to a small-town girl that moves to Atlanta to become a dual threat actress/singer. She tries her best to keep up with the speed of the city, hoping one day to bask in fame’s limelight. Using music videos as her breakthrough medium, she falls victim to the darkest sexual exploitation of the music industry:

She from a town far away,
Then she moved to the A to go to Georgia State
Then she got turned out, yeah she dropped out
Now she’s an actress that wants to sing,
But aint nothing pretty,
She’s just tryin to mimick the life in the city,
Trying to keep up with the limelight-livin
Just wishin, for one audition, the video position
But that aint how she used to be,
At 2 or 3, now she’s a hoochie freak,
So, that aint what the viewers see, just another cutie with a booty, booty.

Kinda makes you view hip hop videos in a different light, no?

Verse three discusses a high school dropout with a young child, struggling to support her family. Much like her own father, her son’s Dad is (all too predictably) absent. After working at Wendy’s for two years, she turns to stripping to make quick cash: “Twerking that bunn-ay/ Just to make her some daycare mon-ay/ And to pay for the rent bill month-lay.” Fifteen years later, she’s past her prime and unable to find work in the entertainment industry. Literally stripped of her innocence, she’s ashamed to look her son in the eyes.

The chorus, taken out of context, could have been lifted from any misogynistic rap song on the radio today: “Watch, her take of her bra/ Posing like star/ Smiling for the camera, camera/ Aw, she’s a movie star/ With that runway walk/ Just smiling for that camera, camera.” But in the context of the three young women B.o.B. vividly portrays, the hook paints a depressing picture of exploitation and despair. It’s a tragic picture, to be sure, but one that captures female martyrdom beautifully and respectfully.

These feminist undertones are not uncommon in B.o.B.’s music. In another mixtape, Hi! My Name is B.o.B., the rapper puts a Lifetime movie to song—and I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. In “Room 34,” B.o.B. offers a compelling story about a young high school girl, wooed by an older classmate. The young man charms her with his smile, offering her a ride home from school. His flirting makes her feel special, obscuring his nefarious intentions. What happens next is heartbreaking: He invites himself into her home, only to overpower her and repeatedly rape her. Beaten and battered, she blames herself for the vicious attack. With the grief too difficult to bear, she ultimately commits suicide by jumping from her bedroom window.

These tracks are certainly explicit, but not in a gratuitously sexual sense. Rather, the words B.o.B. puts to song are explicitly emotional. They convey a feeling of empathy for women that, surprisingly, doesn’t feel contrived or suffocating. To delve into the raw exploitation and degradation associated with being a woman in the entertainment industry—or simply being a woman, period—is nothing short of remarkable. And it’s all the more impressive when it comes from the mouth of one of hip-hop’s most talented up-and-coming rappers. Every now and then your favorite rapper probably cuts a lone “conscious” track buried in a sea of nonsense. It might be a song about his mother, or an ode to a past love. But, more often than not, it’s a distraction from the artist’s overall message rather than a central theme. With B.o.B., feminism appears to be a dominant topic, carefully discussed and artfully analyzed.

B.o.B. may never reach widespread stardom. He may never be your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper. But, with these strong themes, he just might be your favorite feminist’s favorite rapper.

The Monopoly on Impartiality

2009-07-14T16:52:00.020-04:00

A few friends and readers have asked me to comment on the Sonia Sotomayor hearings. I’d love to offer some keen insights, but two things are holding me back: 1) Lindsay Graham’s comment that she’ll get the nomination, barring “a complete meltdown;” and 2) the subtle, yet increasingly salient fact that these hearings are excruciatingly boring.

To be honest, I don’t know much about Sotomayor beyond her general life story and the conservative backlash over the now infamous “wise Latina” comment. I don’t know many specifics about her record beyond the Ricci case, and I’ve never read any of her writings or heard any of her speeches in full.

That said, two things struck me as I watched the hearings: First, Sotomayor has a deft knowledge of the law. My lawyer readers might disagree, but in the eyes of the common social scientist, she obviously knows her stuff. She seemed to have a clear, pointed answer for every question. She didn’t let any senator challenge her expertise, nor did she let anyone bully her into a corner. She let her legal competence speak for itself.

Second, she has a remarkable grasp of the English language—and I don’t mean that in reference to her immigrant background. As the senators fumbled over their prepared questions, speaking in shoddy grammar, Sotomayor spoke with elegant clarity. Look, I have trouble ordering a pizza without half a dozen “um’s” and “uh’s” thrown into my broken sentences. Yet Sotomayor never once—in over two hours of testimony that I watched—sounded garbled or incoherent. She also never spoke with her hands, an unfortunate habit many of us in academia share. She looked cool, calm, and collected; strong, authoritative and poised. She looked—and sounded—like a Supreme Court Justice.

At no point did Sotomayor’s testimony elude to any biases. Yet that seems to be the very point of contention in the weeks leading up to these hearing. Critics on the right—perhaps captured best in Pat Buchanan’s racist, asinine, factually dishonest op-ed—have called her integrity (and intelligence) into question, worried that she’ll ruin the Supreme Court’s long run of impartiality. We wouldn’t want Sotomayor to sully the Supreme Court’s magnanimous, upstanding record with her reckless impartiality, now would we?

Jamelle offers a particularly insightful take on this logic:

What pisses me off is this completely ahistorical sense on part of Republicans that the Supreme Court is and always has been a perfectly just, perfectly impartial institution. For most of this country’s history, the default perspective on the nation’s highest court has been that of wealthy white men, and accordingly, the court’s rulings have reflected the biases and prejudices of its members. The court’s Dred Scott ruling, for instance, clearly reflects the fact that a majority of the Court’s members at the time were slaveholders. Likewise, the Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson clearly reflects a group of men who had – like most of their peers – internalized a narrative of black inferiority and black “difference.”

The problem here is not (necessarily) that Sotomayor’s impartiality is being questioned and scrutinized. I honestly think any candidate for this position would receive similar treatment, though maybe not to the same extent. That said, the real problem with throwing around this concept of “impartiality” is the ahistorical assumption that the Court was ever, in fact, impartial. There’s nothing wrong with wanting an impartial Court, but romanticizing the integrity of past decisions is woefully naive.

The notion that the Supreme Court has always been fair and balanced fails to adequately problematize the decisions of past Courts, which just so happen to be comprised solely of white males. Whitewashing the past takes the impartiality of previous (white male) Justices for granted, a re-reading of history that obscures the reality of gross bias in past Courts. In fact, with the Court's new gender, ethnic, and racial makeup, there's a strong argument that they're more impartial today, identity politics notwithstanding. But as new faces enter the Court, challenging racial and gender hegemony, “impartiality” all of a sudden becomes a pressing concern. And with Sotomayor, the concern isn't necessarily ideological; rather, folks on the Right are worried that her ethnic and gender identity will somehow cloud her judicial vision and influence her sense of justice. Spare me. There's no white male monopoly on impartiality.

Battling the Financial Crisis: Students not Salaries. Really?

2009-07-14T06:33:00.007-04:00

“Salaries and perks not students” should be the slogan for all Amherst faculty members during these troubled, financial times. The reality, however, is that there is a group of faculty who seem to be reversing this mantra.

Amherst College has been one of the front runners in admission and financial aid policies for the last decade. It was the first and/or one of the firsts to go need blind for students whose families make below certain income levels and to offer “no loan” packages to students who come from families who earn less than certain amounts of money. Amherst made history yet again the past two years with two major announcements: No loans to all students and need-blind admissions for international students. It does all this with (before the crisis) an almost two billion dollar endowment. Again, Amherst has been a front-runner in admissions and financial aid. Harvard, with the largest endowment (fifteen times larger than Amherst’s) Yale coming in “close” behind, do not operate under the same principles though their packages are substantially better than other institutions. In fact, only Princeton, Davidson, and now Williams are, I think, the only schools that are now true “no loan institutions.”

The problem now is that now that the financial belt has to be squeezed a little tighter because of the economic climate, people are, if I may use a phrase from home, showing their true colors. As with other schools, Amherst has enacted a number of financial restrictions to save money. For instance, they are in a pseudo-hiring freeze and there will be no raises for faculty or staff this year. These latter two actions are actually quite common for institutions today. I leaned that both President Tony Marx and Dean of Faculty Greg Call reduced their personal salaries until better financial times. The negative side, however, does not come from draconian, top down measures to save money like cutting departments or laying off large number of workers, rather the worst response has been that of a group of faculty members.

To save their money they want to, one may say, roll back time. More specifically, instead of exploring more options, according to some, they want to reduce the moneys dedicated to admission and financial aid, the two departments that make Amherst what it is today, the two departments that keeps Amherst in the news more so than any other, the two departments that uphold the alma mater, terras irradient, more so than any other. This group of faculty wants to restructure how financial aid is done, not universally, but in a targeted manner.

I quote a student who alerted the student body to these suggestions and who has rallied other students to stand against, not this group of faculty, but their recommendations and suggestions:

“In response to the ABC report, which recommended only small changes to financial aid targets, a group of faculty members have circulated [a] letter [sic] amongst themselves to suggest to the Trustees that we end need-blind financial aid for international students, stop recruiting in areas with high aid-eligible students (a.k.a. poor students), and start giving out loans. Although they preach sharing the sacrifice throughout the Amherst community, they don't voice any sacrifice they are willing to make."

Some may consider the latter move racist. I do not necessarily (but reserve the right to revisit this). However, I would be mistaken if I do no state explicitly that such a policy change would have disproportionate effects on minority students who are, just like the rest of the population, disproportionately from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than their white peers, and low-income white students who seem always to be left out of these conversations. With respect to minority students, blacks in particular, this is not mere posturing as in thier book Black Wealth/White Wealth, Sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, studying the sociology of wealth, has shown that even blacks and whites with comparable levels of education and incomes have different levels of wealth with blacks being disadvantaged because of historical and current racial policies. Naturally, this disparity is even more evident the lower one goes down the socioeconomic ladder. Latinos face similar obstacles as well and low-income whites, again, are absent from many of these discusions though both groups do slighlty better than low-income blacks. What I argue, as has been done before, is that such a “nonracial,” economic policy change would surely decrease the number of minority student you attract to your school. To not send admissions officers to disadvantaged areas, to those areas where students, despite being socially isolated, manage to make it, but still host information sessions at Choate, Exeter, Andover and the like will have racial ramifications. Of this, I have no doubt. Again, the intent, I believe, is not racist but the effect will be, with the blunt of the impact being absorbed by those economically disadvantaged minority and white students.

The faculty should ask themselves would Amherst still lead the country in being home to students from Questbridge, arguably the best enrichment program in the nation that helps students get into top colleges without having them leave thier neighborhoods? Would Amherst still lead the nation in Pell Grant recipients? Although focusing on Amherst and recruiting students from disadvantaged populations, this is a much larger problem. We have seen how, because of budget cuts, schools seem to be the most affected. I wrote about the financial times and the changing role of summer schools. But that spoke elementary, middle, and high school education. This related issue is that of the next step: acquiring the credentials needed to acquire middle class jobs (those this is not guaranteed anymore given that the BA is the new high school diploma). Amherst is less than 2000 students but it has the endowment of a much larger institution. The question this raises is what are other, less endowed schools doing whose financial aid and admission policies are not as generous?

With respect to the reversal of the need-blind admission for international students, (as above with respect to the issue of class and race) I am hesitant to come down on either side of labeling such a claim xenophobic. “Xenophobic,” like racist, is a loaded term and labeling this suggestion as xenophobic is complicated. I withhold judgment until conversations, discussions, or debates are held. My lack of familiarity with international issues and tensions with respect to international students and colleges are restraining my judgment. Thoughts are welcome.

Nevertheless, this matter brings up an interesting question. Should many of these elite institutions with very large endowments, that are need-blind for U.S. citizens and residents, remain need-aware for international students? Although this would cost slightly more, it is possible. Unfortunately, this was not even on the table before many of these institutions suffered due to the crisis. In this shrinking and increasingly globalized world, can we afford to keep international students at bay, especially when we preach attaining global perspectives and send students abroad? Should these institutions really show favoritism for U.S. citizens and residents? These are questions that most schools will probably not wrestle with for some time.

I write this post not to bash Amherst or the thoughts of this group of faculty members. Amherst is my alma mater and has opened many doors for me. As I was quoted saying before, it allowed me to rewrite the narrative of my life. However, during these times I propose that we all pay closer attention to the ways in which our alma maters—and colleges more generally—are slimming down their expenditures from their endowments and speak out against policies that will disproportionately disadvantage (in this case in admissions and financial aid) already disadvantaged populations.

Kissing in Public is “Illegal”… If You’re Gay

2009-07-10T10:48:00.017-04:00

It may not be overtly apparent, but I can be a pretty romantic guy. I like to surprise my girlfriend with little gifts, and every now and then I even like to take her out for a nice dinner. And, if the mood strikes, I might even lean over the table and give her a light kiss, expressing my affection. Nothing gratuitous at all. As innocent as holding hands.

Apparently this brazen sign of affection is frowned upon in El Paso, Texas. Well, that is, if you’re gay.

Yesterday, the El Paso Times reported that five gay men were kicked out of Chico's Tacos restaurant when two members of their party embraced with a peck on the lips. The restaurant’s security staff informed the men that their fine establishment didn’t allow “that faggot stuff,” and promptly escorted them off the premises. Well, one member of the group, Carlos Diaz de Leon, called the police to file a report of discrimination.

Surely El Paso’s finest would step in and rectify the situation—or so you’d hope.

Well, apparently not. When the El Paso police showed up, they sided with the restaurant, informing the five men that it’s illegal for two men to kiss in public. According to De Leon, the men were told they could have been cited for “homosexual conduct.” The cops let them off easy by only kicking them out of the restaurant, you see. I mean, they could have been criminally charged for their public display of affection. That is, their gay public display of affection.

Unbeknownst to the El Paso police officer on the scene—a man clearly well versed in the law—the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Texas’s asinine, archaic, despicable sodomy laws unconstitutional six years ago in Lawrence v. Texas. I guess these minor changes—you know, Supreme Court cases—take a while to filter down to local police districts. Even so, Lawrence v. Texas merely upheld the right to sexual privacy—thus it might be reasonable to assume that “homosexual conduct” (whatever that is) might be illegal in public settings in Texas. This is Texas, after all. That might be a reasonable argument, if in fact the city of El Paso hadn’t passed an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation by businesses open to the public in 2003. Somebody must have forgotten to give the El Paso Police Department the memo.

As the facts stand today, no official report was filed, one of the security guards has contacted a lawyer, and the ACLU of Texas released an official statement condemning the incident. The assistant manager of the restaurant refused to comment, and the El Paso Police Department responded to press inquiries by noting that a more appropriate charge for what happened would “probably be criminal trespass.”

There’s a real tension here between a private business open to the public, state and local anti-discrimination legislation, and individual-level homophobia. Blatant refusal of services based on sexual orientation is supposedly barred in most states, yet private businesses have the supposed right to refuse those very same services for any reason they choose. Yet the business’s openness to the public makes any such refusal suspicious, if not outright discriminatory. The compromise in most states seems to be relatively straightforward: You can’t adopt a policy that explicitly discriminates against individuals based on race, sex, or orientation, and any policy you do adopt must be applied uniformly and equally to individuals regardless of race, sex or orientation.

Still, we can’t exactly legislate against homophobia. Systematic discrimination, yes. But with individual-level prejudices, fears, and disrespect, things get a little fuzzy. A new law helps change public perceptions, sure, but a decree from above doesn’t necessarily change individual-level mentalities on the ground. That's just a reality of prejudice and discrimination. An aggravating and sad reality, to be sure.

But even if we fail to legislate thoughts and beliefs, the least we can do is follow the letter of the law. Apparently the El Paso police missed that memo, too.

Philadelphia, PA, or Philadelphia, MS?

2009-07-09T07:18:00.012-04:00

One city is the site of a watershed moment during the Civil Rights Movement. It was in this city that Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney—an interracial group of civil rights activists—died at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan during Freedom Summer, 1964. Coincidentally, this was also the city where Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign for the White House, embracing a racially charged rhetoric of “states’ rights.” The historical legacy of this city stands as a testament to the violence, tragedy, and racism that epitomized the struggle for Civil Rights in the 1960s.

The other city is home to the Liberty Bell. This city, colloquially referred to as the “city of brotherly love,” gave birth to the American Revolution. It was our nation’s first capital, the site of American Independence. This city carries a rich, celebrated history—a history rooted in patriotism, freedom, and lofty ideals of equality.

In which city did white patrons leave a swimming pool in protest as a group of young black campers entered? In which city were these young black children denied access to the open-membership “private” pool, even after paying the $1,900 membership fee?

I’ll give you a hint—it wasn’t in Mississippi.

This past week, The Valley Swim Club in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania revoked the membership of 60 black children from The Creative Steps Day Camp. Their reason? "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," said John Duesler, Club President. That’s not a paraphrase—it’s a direct quote, from a written statement no less. The racist vitriol of this Freudian slip (I don’t think he intended the literal connotation of “complexion”) goes well beyond the club’s discriminatory membership policy. Indeed, the racist logic of Duesler is emblematic of the prevalent, pernicious, dangerously appealing ideology of laissez-faire racism.

A new political culture has effectively barred the acceptance of 1960s era Jim Crow racism—a racist ideology grounded in biological explanations of black inferiority. However the fall of Jim Crow was accompanied by a more passive, yet equally problematic ideology of black disadvantage. The general public now accepts cultural explanations of black inferiority, citing blacks’ collective lack of mainstream values, norms, and behaviors as the source of their deprivation. This is exactly the rhetoric adopted by Duesler and The Valley Swim Club—a rhetoric rooted in the unfounded fear that these black kids simply won’t know how to act right.

This kind of blind discrimination is nothing new, nor is it uncommon, particularly in Northern cities. Segregation—be it explicitly enforced or implemented through proxies and euphemisms—is an everyday reality. Our neighborhoods are segregated. Our nightlife is segregated. Our schools are segregated. Our public beaches and parks are segregated. Economic enterprise and labor markets are segregated. This is not a new development—in fact segregation and racial inequality have been an ever-present facet of American political, economic, and social institutions since, well, as far back as my historical knowledge goes.

Segregation, racial inequality, and racist social policies are not phenomena relegated to the Deep South, nor are they relics of a distant past. Discrimination is embedded in lending practices, ingrained in residential choices, entrenched in the criminal justice system, and woven into the very fabric of our labor markets. The incident in Philadelphia sheds light on an everyday struggle for communities of color—a struggle that most certainly did not end on November 5, 2008.

Some may argue that we are living in a post-racial society. Some may argue that racial discrimination is a thing of the past. Some may argue that racism is fading.

Try making those arguments to the 60 campers of The Creative Steps Day Camp.

Our New Corporate Neighbor Revisited

2009-07-07T08:20:00.016-04:00

(Picture is of construction site for new complex to house Costco in East Harlem.)

About a month back, I wrote on Costco’s plans to open up a new store in Harlem. Of course, there was a catch: The store refused to take food stamps, even though nearly 30,000 East Harlem residents receive such assistance. A corporate spokesperson cited the cost of new technology—you know, the same technology that the corner bodegas have installed without a hitch. The same technology that the state provides free of charge.

Unfortunately, I stopped following this case. Fortunately, some of my readers didn’t. It turns out that Costco is beginning to fold under local political pressure, unfavorable media attention, and, well, the recession. Good. In two New York City neighborhoods—Astoria, Queens and Sunset Park, Brooklyn—Costco will being accepting food stamps on a trial basis. If the transition runs smoothly, the Harlem store will adopt the new corporate policy.

Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that a Costco membership remains $50/year. It goes without saying that this price tag might be a bit steep for some food stamp recipients. That said, I definitely know folks that have been on welfare that can very easily swing 50 bucks a year. With the right information, I really think a substantial amount of Harlem residents will benefit from Costco’s services. Either way, the material effect of Costco in Harlem—in the form of employment opportunities and/or services—has yet to be determined.

Still, this is a positive development, if only symbolic. As Tony has written about a couple of times here at Social Science Lite, symbolic gestures are important. They shouldn’t be treated as the end to inequality, but they’re certainly a start.

Congestion, Isolation, and the Goal of Mass Transit

2009-07-06T10:43:00.011-04:00

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser offered one of the more asinine metropolitan policy editorials I’ve ever read in Friday’s Boston Globe. Glaeser argues that federal transportation funding should be focused on places that “need it”—namely, dense localities with congestion problems. The Obama administration’s plans to construct regional transportation systems in the South don’t fit Glaeser’s criteria for necessary transit, since, I guess, they aren’t in the densely populated Northeast.

But the goal of public transit isn’t simply about alleviating congestion—or, at least it shouldn’t be. This is a terribly passive strategy of urban planning, simply following residential patterns and retroactively rigging the structure of transportation to maximize efficient mobility. It denies the reality that some people need better access to transportation because they have no other means to get around. If you don’t live in a densely populated or resource-rich neighborhood, there’s a high probability that you don’t have great access to public transportation. And there’s an equally high probability that your socioeconomic status and social/geographic isolation necessitates sound public transportation options in order to find employment or other social services.

Public transit exists to transport the public, and should therefore reflect the transportation needs of the populace. So, if residents in under-populated urban neighborhoods are without adequate access to public transportation, these are the exact areas where light rail lines need to be built. This really isn’t a difficult concept to grasp. Public transportation should be expanded to areas where the public needs transportation. Glaeser’s analysis, ignorant to this basic definition of mass transit, represents utility maximization gone horribly awry. Something is very clearly—and very noticeably—missing in his writing.

Let me put this bluntly: The economic solutions that Glaser proposes are ethically and morally vacant. They deny actual people humanity beyond the realm of statistical variables. With Glaeser, social realities are made into vague abstractions. Discussions of “housing” somehow lose sight of the fact that, well, “housing” boils down to “people that live in houses.” Similarly, his discussion of “mass transit” in the Globe is without an acknowledgement of who exactly the “masses” that require “mass transit” are.

Glaeser opens with the line “Mass transit needs mass to work,” implying that mass transit construction follows the masses and should simply reflect where the most people are. With the initial growth of suburbia in the 1950s, and the continued pioneerism into exurbia today, we know this to be unequivocally false. Federally subsidized highway construction created a structure that filtered housing and commercial development into certain (racially exclusive) regions. Mass transit didn’t respond to some nascent need for suburban sprawl. No, transit construction manufactured popular demand. Historically, transit has rarely been a response to popular need, and has instead laid the groundwork for residential patterns and determined the geography of opportunity.

As Richard Layman details in his blog Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, metropolitan transportation policy shouldn’t be considered a zero-sum game. We need mass transit to alleviate congestion, sure, but we also need it to connect socially isolated folks to middle class institutions and areas of employment. Glaeser’s proposal would further marginalize communities with already low baselines of collective efficacy and political power. It’s places like Detroit—a city with severe social isolation and a profound disconnect from its neighboring suburbs—that desperately need public transit options and energy efficient light rail systems. But, of course, Glaeser would never support mass transit in Detroit. He doesn’t even understand why anyone still lives there.

If we take Glaeser’s suggestions at face value—following the masses and easing their mobility—we will undoubtedly reinforce the current ecological structure of stratification and inequality. In other words, such a policy would keep poor, isolated populations poor and isolated.

At the end of his editorial, Glaser succinctly argues, “A rational transportation program would target money to the areas that have the most congestion [emphasis added]." Maybe so. But that certainly isn’t the most equitable policy decision we could make.

Sometimes, Even the Players Have to Watch From the Sidelines.

2009-07-03T10:44:00.004-04:00

Legendary Detroit Tiger Alan Trammell made a career playing baseball at Old Tiger Stadium. But as the stadium’s demolition reached a close last week, the legendary player turned casual spectator, standing by as the stands came crashing down and the field turned to rubble.

There’s something profoundly touching about this photo. Something tragically beautiful about a man peering through the fences, saying goodbye to the structure that once defined his life. Something that is almost too moving for words. Something deeply depressing, yet surprisingly inspiring. Something debilitating, yet invigorating.

A lot of “de-” words epitomize Rust Belt decay: depopulation, decentralization, deindustrialization. Common images include abandoned homes, vacant land, and the jobless. When most of us think of cities like Detroit, we imagine an urban abyss. When many of us envision the post-industrial Midwest, we picture an urban wasteland.

Yet, in a very real sense, this photo captures urban decline better than any other image in the popular imagination could. As policymakers debate urban “shrinkage,” this is the image we need to consider. This is the scene we need to recall as our civic leaders use an army of bulldozers to plow through under-populated urban neighborhoods. This is the moment we need to remember when we debate what to do in America’s cities. This moment, this player turned spectator, captures the gravity and magnitude of urban decline. This photo sets the tone for our discussions, and study, of urban America.

The face of urban decline isn’t really a face. No, it’s an old ball player, watching his former stadium crumble to pieces. The contradictions of this photo—a former star peering through a fence, a historical landmark turned to rubble, a touching moment emerging from decay—define urban decline. The rise and fall of an American city, captured in one brief, fleeting moment. A picture almost too moving for words.

School Is Out

2009-07-02T11:11:00.006-04:00

In today’s New York Times, Sam Dillon wrote about school’s reluctance to use stimulus money to remain open for the summer in his article “Facing Deficits, Some States Cut Summer School.” Dillon reports that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has encouraged schools to use the money for summer activities in the schools so as to ward of the mental/cognitive atrophy—losing what you learned during the year because of doing nothing academic for an extended period of time—of public school students and also to place activities in their lives to buffer against them engaging in potentially troublesome activity. As referenced in the article and noted in sociological and education research, the positive academic as well as social effects of being in school for a longer period of time are well documented. Take for example KIPP charter schools, started by Teach for America alumni, who serve predominately disadvantaged students. These schools have longer school days and academic years and have achieved relative academic success on par with comparable students from middle class homes.

The article goes on to highlight the fact that many schools are not using the money to keep their doors open. It does not say explicitly what the money is being used for but from the comments of school board officials, the money is being used to keep schools up to snuff for the next full, academic school year. In other words, school budgets have been cut so much that even with the current stimulus package, the moneys must be dedicated to activities during the actual school year with little money left over to run summer school.

One issue that comes to mind is overcrowding. The article does not address the fact that summer school for public schools has went through a transition in the last two decades, irrespective of the economic climate. The article speaks directly to the state of summer school in Florida (but also includes discussion of North Carolina, California, and Cincinnati) so I too will speak to the transition in the state with focus on Miami Dade County as an example. Summer school used to be an option: if you wanted to go, you went. If you didn’t, you didn’t. Now, summer school is conditionally-compulsory. It is compulsory if the student wishes to pass as it is restricted to only those who would be promoted to the next level if they attended passed summer school (moving from elementary to middle, middle to high, high to the “real world”). From the combination of No Child Left Behind (and its emphasis on testing) and the current financial state of our schools, there appears to be a funnel effect at certain points in our schools. There are points in the public school life course where “traffic” slows down, not necessarily to a crawl, but definitely to a slow enough pace to cause problems. With summer school closed, there is no safety net to catch students who fall by the wayside or fall off during the year. Those students unable to attend summer school are then required to repeat the entire year even if they fail just one class.

I am not saying that summer school should be used as only a safety net to “get people along” in school for surely both students and teachers need to get their work done during the year so that the summer is used for advancement, not repetition. There are larger issues at play to be sure: the public/private school divide, teacher qualifications, funding for extracurricular activities and the like. My intentions her are just to add another layer of analysis to what summer school means for some student not highlighted in Dillon’s analysis. I am not sure how representative these rules for promotion are for other school districts. Miami-Dade County Public Schools, however, is the fifth largest district in the country so, even if at a “local” level, the impact of such financial constraints has a large impact.
~~*~~
I would also be if I did not point that Dillon falls into that always troubling language trap:

“But this year Florida’s budget crisis has gutted summer school. Brevard classrooms are shuttered, and students like 11-year-old Uvenka Jean-Baptiste, whose mother works in a nursing home, are spending their summer days at home, surfing television channels or loitering at a mall.”

Am I being oversensitive or is this use of loitering colored? Of all the words or phrases that could capture, of all the words or phrases that connotes the connection between being at the mall and one’s age like “hanging out,” “chillin,’” “walking,” “shopping,” or something else, he chose “loitering.” I don’t know why this comment took me back to the coverage of Katrina where certain people scavenged for food while others stole.

"Don't Let Them Jesse Jackson You"

2009-07-01T09:28:00.008-04:00

In last week’s New York Times, Jeremy Peters wrote a thought-provoking article about the lack of visible leadership in the gay rights movement. While Peters is generally fast and loose (read: weak) with his historical analysis, his general point seems accurate: there really isn’t any national spokesperson for gay rights. Sure, Harvey Milk has become somewhat of a household name as of late, but we’d be naive to think that he had any national presence before Gus Van Sant’s award-winning biopic. Not to belittle Milk’s achievements, but let’s be real, he was only a city supervisor.

In the Times article, Peters compares the leadership dynamics of the contemporary gay rights movement with those of past movements for civil rights. According to Peters, social movements of yesteryear were generally associated with a single national leader: Frederick Douglass was the face of the abolitionist movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. defined the Civil Rights Movement, and Betty Freidan epitomized the modern women’s movement. The point here is not that social movements were in fact lead by individuals, but that the general American public looked to these leaders as surrogates for their respective constituencies. Put another way, the media knew exactly who to call for soundbites.

There is no such prominent figure in today’s battles for gay rights. No leader to turn to for direction. No individual to call on for an official statement of purpose or a list of goals. But, is this a bad thing? As usual, Ta-Nehisi Coates offered his own insightful commentary, reflecting on the gay rights movement’s lack of visible leadership:

“And for that, I think my gay brethren should be thankful. There's nothing like media anointing someone as your spokesperson. Don't let them Jesse Jackson you. No disrespect to Jesse. But the notion that one person, in these individualized times, should speak for whole populations is crazy. I think, ultimately, this will be for the best.”

Ta-Nehisi makes a really astute point here. It would be problematic, and perhaps detrimental, for the gay community to define themselves through a single national spokesperson. Associating your movement with a single leader means associating yourself with all of his or her faults, inconsistencies, and contradictions. When an individual represents an entire movement, all of their flaws reflect back on the movement, whether movement participants like it or not.

But there’s another layer of concern here that also deserves analysis. Minority populations are particularly susceptible to criticisms that highlight negative aspects of individuals as indicative of the whole group. Single acts of transgression or immaturity become evidence, or proof, of the cultural inferiority of entire populations. When a black man commits murder, he’s making his entire race look bad, contributing to existing stereotypes. But when a white man commits murder, his act is an individual transgression, rather than a group characteristic. Take acts of domestic terrorism, like this past month’s murder of George Tiller. Or Timothy McVeigh’s bombing in Oklahoma City. No one argued that these actions exemplified a characteristic of an entire racial group, as if domestic terrorism is some sort of a white male trait.

Herein lies the structure of oppression in America. With minority populations, individual-level flaws are interpreted as group-level deficiencies. This common logical fallacy fosters and legitimizes racism and other forms of discrimination. By contrast, when, say, a white male commits some sort of atrocity, his actions are seen as aberrations rather than the norm.

That is not to say that the gay rights movement is better off without formal leadership. Indeed, sustainable social movements require strong leadership and efficient organization. But these leaders don’t need to be the go-to voice when the media is looking for a comment. Sure, a movement needs strong leaders, but maybe they should stay behind the scenes. Maybe the message of the movement would be more powerful if defined by a collective identity, rather than a single national leader.

Still, anointing a national spokesperson may be inevitable. If this happens, the gay rights movement may want to take Ta-Nehisi Coates’ advice, and resist getting Jesse Jackson-ed. No disrespect to Jesse, of course.

The Name of a State, The History of a Nation

2009-06-30T12:18:00.007-04:00

You learn something new every day. I thought my middle and high school history classes glossed over the stories of minorities in America, those considered other. When we learned about the states, being forced to learn the names of them and their capitals, I did not think too much about what the names meant unless they had names not native to the English language, Florida and Tallahassee for instance. But to find out that Rhode Island is the nickname of the state rather than its birth name came as bit of a shock. This is especially so after finding out the state’s full name: Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Abby Goodnough, in her article in The New York Times editorial section, highlighted the story in an article entitled “Rhode Island Weighs Using Shorter Official Name.”

The article highlights the efforts of Joseph Almeida, a Democratic State Representative from Providence. Almeida, working with those outside the political realm but with influence in it, has pushed forward a bill to be considered that will shorten the official name of the state to just Rhode Island and leave the “and Providence Plantations” in the past, literally and figuratively.

One question that came to mind was how frequent are occurrences like these, both hidden and unveiled. I know of two. I thought about Florida. There is a city called Plantation not too far north of Miami. Plantation High School is home to the Colonels. Homestead, Florida is an equal distance from Miami in the opposite direction. Before going off to school, I never thought about these names before because they were taken for granted, just part of growing up in Miami. I wonder how prevalent are such loaded names across the South, the thirteen colonies more generally, and, naturally, the rest of the nation. This is not just for references back to slavery. As historians love to skate over minority groups, I wonder what are the Latin@, Chican@, and Native American parallels. To be clear, what I refer to is not places named after or with the influence from other the different ethnic groups that make up the United States of yesterday and today. Rather, I refer to racially and culturally loaded names that minimize, or to put it honestly, degrades and/or ignores the significance of a people’s history while pardoning the actions of others.

Goodnough reports that

“Defenders of the [full] name say that the word “plantation” did not have a negative connotation when Rhode Island was founded in 1636, and that it referred to the state’s farming settlements. But the state’s early economy did thrive on the slave trade, with Rhode Islanders distilling rum from molasses, trading it in Africa for slaves and then trading the slaves in the West Indies for more molasses.”

Same story, different day. They are right though. Plantation did not have the negative connotation when Rhode Island was founded. The problem, however, is that only one group had the “rights” to do the defining and “connotating.” Thus the selective memory or opportunistic amnesia of the defenders is even more troubling. To posit that no connection exists is tantamount to take a revisionist approach to history (negationism). Ironically, however, this “labeling as revisionist” position is the argument put forth by the defenders against those advocating for the change. Dare I say it? Is this the pot calling the kettle black?

Though the article made me think about this larger issue in connection with official names given to bounded regions that we call cities, counties, and states, Goodnough misses the mark. The article was promising but towards the end, she drops the baton just before crossing the line.

Instead of taking such a change as real, Goodnough automatically relegates the push to change the state’s name to the symbolic realm as if the symbolic dimensions of life do not impact life in real ways. Since when is the symbolic not real? This is the question that the following quote brings to mind:

“The change would be largely symbolic, since the state’s formal name is so rarely used. It appears on some state stationery and on many documents, like elevator inspection certificates and marriage licenses. The official name also appears on the state seal, which is imprinted on the floor of the Statehouse Rotunda and elsewhere around the building.”

Marriage licenses are very real. When one signs on that dotted line one is entering a covenant with one’s partner “till death do you part.” Official documents from the state, in many instances, are as real as real can get when they are connected to one’s livelihood and well-being. Everything from bills to birth certificates, warrants to wills can have the state name on them as they are official documents. Those seven syllables have more than just symbolic meanings. Moreover, whenever you go the statehouse you still have to encounter "Providence Plantation."

I think the change, although no change in how we speak of the state in casual conversations, would mark the unmarked as the saying goes in white studies. The actions of Almeida and others could serve as a prime example of making the invisible visible.

At least BET got ONE thing right (And I do mean one)

2009-06-29T11:11:00.003-04:00

Rarely do I watch BET. Growing up, I thought it just wasn’t a good network, mediocre at best. The news show was sub par, the reporting even worse. And the selection of shows, personally, I thought were lacking in substance and often times talent. As time progressed, and ownership changed hands, it slipped even further into the back of my mind as a station to watch only if, emphasis on the only, they were showing The Color Purple, Harlem Nights, or some other movie of merit. When Aaron McGruder’s "Hunger Strike" Boondocks episode depicted his thoughts on BET was banned I thought that it was censorship taken too far as the episode was, albeit sensationalized in a way that portrays McGruder’s wit and critical tongue, accurate.

Last night, I watched the BET Awards, not to support BET, but to see how they would (mis)handle the death of Michael Jackson. I was not mistaken in my initial skepticism of how they would incorporate the death of Michael Jackson into the makeup of the show. A friend said that it felt as if Michael’s death was used more as a hook to get a larger audience than anything else. In many ways, I agree. I will not touch on that here because the point of this post is to reflect on at least (and sadly at most) one positive thing that I saw at the BET Awards last night: the time taken to honor those whose life story and work deserves more attention that it receives.

I salute those at BET who insisted on including those segments of the show to pay homage to members of the Black community outside of the music and entertainment industry. Jamie Foxx introduced Mayor-Elect James Young who will serve as mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, site where three Civil Rights workers were killed in 1964 and a site where tumultuous, racial tensions persist—in other words, a place where the KKK was once truly king. We, as a nation, heard about those individuals who started and maintain Food from the Hood (FFTH), a community based organization that serves to educate (in the larger sense of the word) others outside the classroom yet still within the community. We heard about how this community based organization is able to provide scholarship moneys for youth to go beyond the boundaries of their neighborhood or city for school. We, as an audience, as a collective body, were also reminded of the three friends—Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt—who beat the odds to become successful doctors and how they then, with their new positions in life, work to help others follow in their footsteps. So, I say, kudos to BET. I also encourage all to look up some of the work of these individuals as it is important to not only be aware of their work but also be cognizant of the work being done.

Rarely are minority groups, especially Blacks, able to control their image. Rarer still do minorities have a medium through which to show our “better half,” our “better side,” for these moments are usually relegated to spaces with smaller audiences and narrower ranges. This is especially true when there is no dancing or singing involved (which is also a topic for discussion). The media harks on the dark side, the side some of wish to forget, to disassociate from: the crime, the desolate living conditions that “the poor” caused to fall upon themselves, the crime, the high dropout rates, and the crime. This small glimmer of light in an otherwise dismally dark show made enduring it worthwhile. I say again, kudos to BET.

Emasculating Environmentalism

2009-06-26T07:25:00.017-04:00

During this past election cycle, it was a bit surprising to see environmentalism embraced by both John McCain and Barack Obama. Of course, this wasn’t the classic form of environmentalism. Indeed, the rhetoric of global warming was all but abandoned as they couched their campaign promises of “going green” in terms of economic recovery plans and a growing fear of “dependence on foreign oil.” It tends to be Democrats that hold a monopoly on eco-conscious policy, but this election cycle suggested that a new era of environmentalism was underway. It’s important to note that it seemed like most of the general public was behind it, particularly when the issue was framed as an anti-terrorism measure. As President Obama continues his economic recovery plan, environmental sustainability and energy concerns remain at the forefront of public policy discussions.

This is a marked shift from previous characterizations of environmentalism. Far too many folks have associated the title “environmentalist” with stereotypical images of weak, overly sensitive, excessively emotional, and self-aggrandizing tree hugging liberals. To be eco-friendly, particularly among men, was to reject rugged individualism and other standard images of American masculinity. In other words, it meant accepting an emasculated identity.

I assumed the political rhetoric of equating eco-friendly policy with national security concerns would shift our national consciousness toward more left-leaning environmental policy. Judging from Volkswagon’s newest national TV ad spot, I think I was very, very wrong. Note the explicit, sexualized imagery, as the hybrid owner's limp hose is juxtaposed with the erect basketball hoop looming over the Volkswagon:

In the ad, the owner of the hybrid is ridiculed as less of a man based on the sound of his car’s engine. I know that this is a basic marketing strategy—I mean, just watch any Ford F-150 ad in the last twenty years. Still, I find this stereotype—measuring a man’s masculinity by the virility of his car—to be a little tired. I’m not sure what’s masculine about carbon emissions. Nor do I understand what’s masculine about global warming. And I just don’t see what’s masculine about overconsumption. I’d never try to dictate what kind of car another man drives, be it a truck, SUV, sedan or sports car. That’s fine. But what I won’t do is challenge a man’s masculinity based on how much gas his car does, or does not, waste. Why is environmental inefficiency a mark of masculinity?

Look, I can be a critic of many eco-friendly efforts, especially when they detract from more pressing concerns related to unemployment, housing, and access to public transit. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to mock an initiative to, say, plant gardens in urban neighborhoods. When I disagree with certain “green” policies (such as urban “shrinkage), it’s because I think they will have a negative effect on the lives of average Americans. When I refer to environmentalism as “political white privilege,” it’s because I think many environmentalists fail to acknowledge the privilege inherent in living eco-friendly lifestyles. While they debate the best way to get to work, far too many Americans—disproportionately of color—are without employment altogether.

But what I do not do is scoff at environmentalists for their lack of masculinity. Volkswagon has the freedom to make wasteful and environmentally damaging cars, but that doesn’t mean they can mock folks that choose alternative methods of transportation. To bask in your own wastefulness and wonton disregard for the healthy lives of others—as Volkswagon does when they mock hybrid owners—is to display a tremendous arrogance and selfishness.

I don’t think I’ll be buying a Volkswagon any time soon.

Taking Mainstream Liberals To Task

2009-06-24T13:42:00.010-04:00

Anti-racist public intellectual (and all-around fascinating guy) Tim Wise is beginning research for a new book scheduled for release in the summer of 2010. He plans to analyze colorblindness and the rhetoric of "post-racial" America on three levels: public policy, private practice, and personal aspirations. While much has been written on the Conservative embrace of colorblind rhetoric, Wise is specifically gunning for mainstream liberals that have avoided discussions of explicit racism in their analyses of racial inequality. He will posit an argument that "universal" policies—such as college affordability or job training programs that target all races—do little to offset racial inequalities. Instead, Wise will argue that a universalistic framework merely perpetuates inequality by failing to address the underlying racism embedded in American institutions.

Here's a description, lifted from his Facebook page:

In April 2009, in his first full press conference, President Barack Obama was asked what, if anything, he planned to do to address the particular hardships being faced by African Americans as a result of widespread economic downturn. In response, the President answered that his economic recovery efforts—such as expanded unemployment insurance and health care coverage, as well as stimulus dollars flowing to job creation and retention—would disproportionately assist people of color, as they are to be found in larger numbers and percentages among the poor and struggling. [...]

While some were shocked at the President’s apparent dodging of the race-specific injury experienced by people of color in general and African Americans in particular, others saw his comments as careful political posturing, reminiscent of his campaign, during which he had deftly avoided racism as a persistent national issue, and sought to build cross-racial unity by “transcending race,” personally and politically. Yet in truth, the President’s position is neither a new, nor merely political calculation. Instead, it is part of a longstanding tradition within mainstream American liberalism; a tradition that has been given new voice and strength by this President precisely because he is a man of color; and a tradition that, unless critiqued forcefully, may only worsen racial disparities and race relations in the United States.

For over thirty years (and really going back even further, to the New Deal) certain voices on the liberal-left have advocated a retreat from color-conscious public policies (such as affirmative action), and even from open discussion of racism as a key factor in the perpetuation of racial inequity in the United States. Rather, they have argued that the barriers faced by black and brown Americans are largely divorced from racism, and that these stem, instead, from economic factors such as deindustrialization, capital flight from the cities, spiraling health care costs and inadequate funding for education, jobs programs and other programs of social uplift. From this starting point, they contend that “universal” programs intended to uplift the poor and working class, are the best means for narrowing the racial inequalities with which the nation is still plagued.

Beginning with William Julius Wilson in the late 1970s, and continuing to the present, otherwise liberal commentators, scholars, and politicians have sought to steer clear of race—as an explanation for deep inequalities in the nation, and as a category to which we must attend in order to eliminate those inequalities—in the hopes that the public (read, the white public) would be more inclined to support progressive policy if it were first divorced from an anti-racist rationale.

Yet in truth, universalism, or what could be called the post-racial public policy consensus, has not markedly impacted public support for liberal efforts. In large measure this is because such efforts have been so thoroughly racialized already—and thus linked in the white imagination with race-targeted uplift for the black and brown—that decoupling them now without a direct challenge to the racist thinking behind the linkage is nearly impossible. Likewise, historically, universal programs of economic uplift have failed to improve the station of persons of color dramatically, or when they have, they have only done so at a slower pace than for whites in the lower economic strata: thus, such efforts have tended to widen racial inequity, even as they may provide some improvement in the absolute status of blacks, Latinos and others of color.

Today, attempts to improve health care availability, public education, housing and job opportunities for all—though clearly warranted and necessary—cannot possibly lessen the racial divide as some claim, for reasons this volume explores. First, the injuries suffered by persons of color in these various realms are not themselves race-neutral. Rather, they are directly related to racism, both in the past and present. To address race-specific injury without addressing the racial motivator or cause for the injury is to misdiagnose the disease, so to speak, and fail in our efforts to cure it. In this volume, I will lay out the evidence of race-specific injury, and explain why it requires a race-targeted response. [...]

As usual, Tim Wise provides some thought provoking and provocative arguments. I actually discussed the highlighted portion of this passage with Tim yesterday over email. In Wilson's new book, More Than Just Race, he does in fact argue for racially-targeted public policy-i.e. policy aimed at a specific racial group, such as better healthcare options in minority communities. Moreover, he has never "steered clear" of race; in fact, he has always taken racial inequality head on. Where Tim and Wilson differ is in their respective diagnoses of contemporary inequality: Wilson argues that impersonal changes in the economy and political institutions has further marginalized vulnerable minority populations, whereas Tim points to latent racism inherent in many public policies. Wilson also points to the ecological components of racial inequality (such as spatially concentrated poverty), whereas Wise focuses more on overarching white supremacy and racist ideology. The main thrust of the book, then, is to push folks like Wilson (and me) further, forcing us all to take a close look at the racist underpinnings of racial inequality. In his own words, Tim plans "to go off on mainstream liberals this time out." This should be interesting.

It wouldn't be fair for me to comment on this synopsis, but I certainly have quite a few thoughts on these issues. Regardless of any quibbles I may have with his ultimate analysis, Tim provides a vital voice in our continued battle against racial inequality. Even when we differ, I firmly believe that these are healthy conversations to have.

Nationwide Urban “Shrinkage” and the Pittsburgh Paradox

2009-06-23T12:37:00.009-04:00

This may be one of the few times that Flint, Michigan provides a model for U.S. domestic policy. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a dubious model. According to the UK Telegraph , the Obama administration plans to replicate Flint’s “urban shrinkage” concept throughout the nation, demolishing vacant homes and replacing them with open green space.

I wrote about the general premise of urban shrinkage a few weeks ago. The basic idea is that neighborhood blight (in the form of vacant homes) spreads like an infectious disease. It’s kind of like a tipping point; after a few houses become vacant and deteriorate, the rest of the block declines like a series of dominoes. Of course, there isn’t a whole lot of empirical evidence on exactly how the process works, but it’s pretty intuitive. Continued population decline, particularly in the Rust Belt, is only making this pattern more common. As a result, many civic leaders are shrinking urban landmass in order to offset dramatic population decline and increasing blight.

Genesee County in Michigan—containing the city of Flint—has established the Genesee County Land Bank Authority (GCLBA) to oversee the shrinking of Flint and other urban areas. The “land bank” approach targets areas comprised solely of vacant homes and other empty lots. The GCLBA then goes through a lengthy process of acquisition that hands ownership of foreclosed properties over to the land bank. The homes are demolished, and the resulting empty lots are “redeveloped, handed to neighbors, or returned to nature,” according to the head of the GCLBA. The dominant trend, however, is to return the vacant areas into undeveloped land and thus reduce the size of the city’s populated landmass.

Admittedly, I was a little flippant when I initially wrote about this issue (though, when am I not just a touch irreverent?). I’ve thought about it more, and I’m willing to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt—for now, at least. The plans for acquisition and redevelopment are so vague that it would be premature to levy any judgments. Part of me wants to see the rehabilitation and revitalization of existing homes and neighborhoods, but another part of me recognizes the utility of starting over. The real debates will occur over what to do with the newly empty green spaces. If—and only if—we can specify a clear vision of redevelopment, I might be able to get on board with urban shrinkage. If the plan follows a community-based approach, similar to the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative’s successful bid for eminent domain here in Boston in the 1990s, I may support the policy.

Still, I have some reservations. The Telegraph reported that the Obama administration has their eyes on shrinking 15 urban centers, including Syracuse, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. The inclusion of Pittsburgh is slightly troubling. It’s just a little paradoxical to include a city in this economic recovery plan that supposedly has one of the strongest performing metropolitan economies (according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution). Pittsburgh has certainly suffered incredible population decline; in 1950, Pittsburgh was ranked number 12 among U.S. cities in total population, but plummeted to number 52 by the 2000 Census. That said, you'd think that one of the strongest metropolitan economies would be able to redevelop existing land on their own.

The “Pittsburgh Paradox,” so to speak, points to my underlying uneasiness with urban shrinkage. How can Pittsburgh—the supposed model for Rust Belt resurgence—require urban shrinkage? Either the Brooking Institution’s measurement of economic vitality is faulty, or urban shrinkage is a haphazard band-aid for urban decline. If shrinkage is part of our economic recovery plan, why does one of our nations strongest metropolitan economies need the help? Something’s not right here. I'm just a little weary of an economic recovery policy applied applied indiscriminately in cities with both weak and strong performing economies. If Pittsburgh requires urban shrinkage, other cities must require a lot more.

I expressed optimism yesterday in my discussion of the interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities—a new federal initiative that coordinates economic, transportation, housing, and environmental policies in a single, unified effort. Yet “urban shrinkage” looks like the regressive counterpart to the Partnership’s progressive goals and proposals. Shrinking landmass without a clear plan for redevelopment just seems like a hasty, reactionary response to a much larger problem. We don’t build stronger communities by trimming the fat and pretending like it never existed. No, we create economically sustainable communities and metropolitan regions with innovative policy that builds urban neighborhoods. Demolition (read: shrinkage) can be a start on the path to economic recovery, but that can’t be where we stop.

Metropolitan policy isn’t a zero-sum game; we don’t need to destroy some neighborhoods just to preserve others.

The Genius of Interagency Metropolitan Policy

2009-06-22T13:40:00.013-04:00

The Obama administration took metropolitan policy in an incredibly innovative direction last week. In what may prove to be a groundbreaking meeting, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the secretaries of Transportation and Housing & Urban Development all appeared together to discuss the future of American economic, environmental, and transit policies.

These leaders came together at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, working out the skeleton for an exciting new partnership. They set three important—though admittedly broad and slightly vague—proposals to govern a new, unified vision of metropolitan policy. First, they established “livability principles” related to transportation choices, affordable housing, economic competitiveness, and stronger communities and neighborhoods. In effect this “proposal” was less of an actual initiative and more of a basic mission statement for the new partnership—a pretty solid mission statement if you ask me.

The next two proposals were far more specific, and far more impressive. First, they set an agenda to integrate transportation, land use, and economic development plans to account for future metropolitan growth. This may prove to be a massive anti-sprawl initiative. Land-use zoning is a major contributor to suburban sprawl, as zoning regulations delineate where residential and commercial spaces are located. Suburban zoning patterns typically establish swaths of land for commercial-only use (which generally become strip malls) and others for residential-only use (which generally become dead-end cul-de-sacs). This creates car-dependent communities that are neither environmentally efficient nor walkable. Nor are they economically sustainable, a fact that is becoming increasingly clear as former exurbs transition into vacant wastelands. A more economically sustainable option includes metropolitan transit systems and mixed-use zoning. Indeed, this points to (arguably) the best aspect of New Urbanism and Smart Growth; mixed-use land zoning is an incredibly effective way to counteract the inefficiencies of suburban sprawl. This coordinated effort would increase mass transit across metropolitan regions, and facilitate walkable urban design so as to preserve a “community” aesthetic.

The final proposal was a plan to redefine “affordable housing” based on transportation availability and energy costs. This makes so much sense I almost can’t believe they came up with it on their own. Far too many “affordable” housing developments are disconnected from reliable transportation, thus negatively influencing their actual affordability. Moreover, many of these homes are incredibly energy inefficient, again affecting their actual affordability. The impact of this small policy change may prove dramatic: If energy costs and transportation access are figured into the cost of living, many so-called affordable housing developments may lose that government distinction. If this happens, the government would be faced with two options: They can either construct more affordable housing, or they can increase transportation availability and reduce energy costs. You can’t really go wrong with either of these choices, and I suspect they would take the smart route and do both.

In many respects this is scary "big government;" just another big federal agency looking to institute sweeping, nationwide policy. But this partnership also counteracts the inefficient communication networks inherent in most bureaucracies. Call it the paradox of big government: Sure, it’s government consolidation and heavily bureaucratic, but it also facilitates information transmission between departments with unprecedented efficiency. They’re coordinating their efforts, which is really the best way to make a substantial impact.

In my opinion, this is government at its best. With one unified, coordinated effort, they are planning to improve access to affordable housing, offer more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while simultaneously protecting the environment. They recognized a problem in metropolitan America, tied it to our continued economic recovery plans, and are taking steps to institute national policy. I can sum up my thoughts on this ambitious project with one word: Wow. It’s nice to have a former community organizer in the White House.

Public Space and Civic Dilemmas: Lessons From The Wire

2009-06-18T13:57:00.006-04:00

“But the corner is, it was, and it always will be the poor man’s lounge.” – Major Colvin

In this scene from Season 3 of The Wire, Major Colvin speaks at the police department’s daily ComStat meeting. The previous night, Officer Dozerman was shot during a failed drug sting. Dozerman had a simple task: ride up to some corner boys selling dope, and buy a few vials. His fellow policemen, waiting nearby, would swoop in for the subsequent arrest after the sale was complete. Yet, the corner boys were wise to the plan, and Dozerman was shot before the sale was made.

In the clip, Colvin discusses a fictional interaction between the Baltimore police and the corner boys—a “great moment of civic compromise,” as he recounts. This compromise involved a simple message from the police to the neighborhood drunks: Put your beer and liquor in paper bags while drinking in public. As long as the alcohol was covered with a paper bag, the corner boys could drink in peace, and the police could “do real police work.”

Later, Colvin would apply the paper bag policy to the city’s drug trade, concentrating all drug trafficking to an area called Hamsterdam. The entire force looked on as Baltimore’s drug dealers moved weight out in the open. Hamsterdam—where drugs were “legal”—became the modern day compromise between drug dealers and the police. All in the name of civic unity and peace.

Major Colvin realized that public space is a highly valuable public good, and battles over the use of public space are a major civic concern. The public drug trade, like public drinking, competes with other routine community activities for control over public space. To diffuse conflict and avoid this competition, Colvin attempted to privatize a public behavior. The paper bag (and the hoarding of the drug trade into an area invisible to the general public) is a way to take a public activity and disguise it as a private act. In short, it’s a compromise.

Middle class folks, with the luxury of private space, are constantly trying to legislate the use of public space. They fail to share Colvin’s wisdom that “the corner is, it was, and it always will be the poor man’s lounge;” poor folks simply don’t have the same access to private space. Middle class people rarely understand why poor folks fix up cars in the street. Or why they barbeque on public green space. Or why they sit on lawn chairs, chatting and conversing in front of the corner store. The need for public space, access to public space, and control over public space are constantly negotiated in mixed income and multi-racial communities.

I wrote about this public/private divide in perceptions of criminality last week, both in relation to drug decriminalization and violence in pro sports. But this also relates to Omar Edwards—the black, plainclothes police officer murdered by a fellow (white) officer that “mistook” him for a criminal.

In light of the murder, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous discussed the changing nature of race and racism on CNN. He noted that perceptions of black inferiority drove racism sixty years ago. Back then, most racists thought blacks simply weren’t smart enough to be coaches, quarterbacks, or presidents. That’s not the case anymore, at least not to the same extent. Today, according to Jealous, racism and racial prejudice centers on perceptions of black criminality.

Unfortunately, contemporary racism runs much deeper than a simple association between race and criminal behavior. Indeed, it is political struggles over public space and our subsequent perceptions of “proper” uses of space that drive many racial prejudices. It’s a collusion of four factors—race, class, criminality, and public space—that influences contemporary racism and inequality. Edwards was shot, in part, because of the problematic, racialized way we view public space and criminal behavior. The media and blogosphere were both quick to mention that Edwards probably wouldn’t have been shot if he were white. This is a perfectly valid point. But, Edwards also probably wouldn’t have been shot if he were “caught,” say, committing online bank fraud. This private act of criminality does not carry the same racial baggage associated with public criminality.

See, public space and private acts are an important part of the equation. The difference between smoking a joint in your parents’ basement and rolling a blunt on your front stoop centers not on the morality of drug use, but on the perception of the “proper” use of public space. Public space is the poor man’s private sanctuary, and our general perceptions (and stereotypes) of race and class are a reflection of this structural reality. So when Brent Staples of the New York Times writes about the continued danger of “driving while black,” he has only identified part of the story. Laissez-faire, free market racism adds new dimensions to existing racial stereotypes that go beyond simplistic assumptions of black criminality. It’s not just about being black, but more about being black in a public, uncontrolled setting.

Major Colvin’s brilliant speech in this scene from The Wire underscores the importance of public space embedded in civic dilemmas. As we think about racial inequality and racism in this country, it might do us some good to pay attention to Colvin’s lesson.

Reflections on Privilege, Guilt, and Identity

2009-06-18T08:31:00.003-04:00

This post is slightly different from my usual contributions to Social Science Lite. Nonetheless, this post is as real as the others. I receive versions of the comments anyone posts on our blog via email whether the comment is for Jeremy’s post or my own. His recent posts on white privilege/white guilt (“This is Where White Guilt Comes From”/"The White Privilege of Anti-White Activists") sparked me to write this “reply post” instead of individual comments on each post so as to explain my position and think about the larger issues at play. I think Jeremy’s comments are honest, well reasoned, and well-argued. I think that activists and scholars like Tim Wise can learn something from Jeremy as he relays his personal experiences and effectively places them in a larger context rather than going for sound bites that, to be colloquial for a minute, grinds people’s gears.

My thoughts on the recent posts on white privilege/white guilt are in part agreement with Jeremy. Let me elaborate and be more specific on what Jeremy has alluded to with respect to my comments on being Black and my (learned) reluctance to “argue” my point with “passion” and also the guilt that sometimes ensues from such inactivity on my behalf. I must say that I do not speak to the experiences of all Blacks, let alone all minorities, but do believe that what follows holds some familiarity with many people of color. To put it simply, I can’t show passion for it will be taken as aggression. I always have to hold back and (try to) be the cool, calm, and collected co-participant in debates or even casual conversations otherwise I am painted as the one who shows emotion with physically expressed enthusiasm about my theoretical findings or just my plain old opinion about the most mundane, quotidian things that populate out lives. For reasons rooted in vicious stereotypes, menacing prejudices, and negative external definitions of Blacks (especially Black males), people equate my bark with my bite. I think this is what Jeremy was getting at when he mentioned the conversations we had backstage about me feeling unable or my hesitance to articulate responses when racist comments are made.

But, sometimes, thankfully, I am more than my race. I will be the first to say that I occupy different social spheres of social dominance and subornation. I too feel a guilt of sorts when around other minorities (and sometimes whites) when racist comments are made. When my friend told me about the “Puerto Rican shower,” referencing when one tries to hide the smell of weed with Axe cologne, I knew the comments that followed could not be good. I am male so when I don’t stand up against sexist comments made against males or females, even when made by women, I feel a little twinge in the pit of my stomach. Though more spiritual than religious, when people make prejudiced statements about those from other religions, I feel that pain as well. I actually felt guilty when I didn’t say anything when Nick Cannon, in his zeal to be savior of all those dark and female, inadvisable and deleteriously employs the female gender as a tool to ridicule Eminem by calling him “Miss.” I am heterosexual and insidious, homophobic comments simply piss me off.

The underlying thing that we get out of talking about privilege and guilt is this false bifurcated world between those with and those without, as I have mentioned before. I think we need to be conscious of the multiple identities which make up who were are. Patriarchy is, in many ways, as dangerous as racism, sexism as dangerous as homophobia, depending on the person (or people in question) and especially the ways in which these prejudices as reinforced by structural factors via the job market, housing, and the like.

However, I recognize that this reality is only* in public. As I told my friends, the public Anthony is PC and docile compared to the more private Tony. And with that said, I argue that the private sphere offers a more complex realm of interactions, both real and symbolic.

I say that the private sphere is more complicated because it usually serves as a safe space where things are said without the worry of being held up to public scrutiny. As we used to say back home, one is not held susceptible to social crucifixion. This is for all races, sexes, creed, classes, and colors. Where I believe the differences are purged is the unique experience of certain populations in this country. Some individuals, because of their phenotypic construction, chromosomal make-up, sexual orientation, know the true meaning behind the old saying, “You got to laugh to keep from crying.” The pains of being Black in America, a woman in America, a non-white, non-middle class, non-male… to be an “other” in America is painful and sometimes we laugh at and make jokes about instances that cause us pain in the public sphere when we retreat to the private sphere just to make it to the next day. A close friend of mine in our cohort talked to me about why she considers drug use as a mental health and not a criminal justice problem for inner city Blacks, for instance. I think about Ntozake Shange's insightful play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. I think about what does it mean when life becomes such a battle that it forces Sam Cooke to say that “It’s been too hard living but I’m afraid to die, Cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky”? I think back to that prolific prophet Malcolm X when he responds to Plato and says, “the examined life is painful.” And who else is under the panoptical gaze of society more than those considered “other”?

This is why it is hard for me to talk about guilt: the private sphere and the public sphere; what is said and where; what is said and why. I appreciate those who attempt to outline the ways in which privilege works to continue the subordination of others but caution us all not to focus on one variable, one component of who were are. It is important that honest, open, and more comprehensive conversations be had.

Teach for America, Teacher Corps, and (Dis)Trust(?)

2009-06-17T00:07:00.009-04:00

I would like to say that this is not a dig at those who dedicate part of their lives serving the most disadvantaged as teachers in some of the most destitute schools that are almost universally situated in impoverished, inner-city neighborhoods. I commend those individuals who opt to serve as educators via the "teaching/teacher corp" programs across the county. I received a phone call today from a friend who is with a number of Amherst alumni and current students who have chosen such a path; they are now enduring both the long days of teaching summer school and Mississippi's sweltering heat. With that said, however, this post expands upon a question that has stayed with me since my graduate seminar, Social Structure and Culture in the Study of Race and Urban Poverty (which has helped me crystallize my thoughts on a number of issues), with Sociologist William Julius Wilson this past semester: what are the unintended consequences of these programs on the populations which they were created to serve and empower?

My co-blogger, Jeremy, was in the class as well and we had some pretty heated discussions about some of the books we read as this survey course touched on topics on urban poverty from cultural continuities and the lasting impact of slavery (Orlando Patterson's Rituals of Blood) to the underground economy of poor neighborhoods (Sudhir Venkatesh's Off the Books). The one book that spawned the lasting thought that pushed me to write this post that I just cannot shake is Columbia University scholar Kathryn Neckerman's Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner-City Education. In Schools Betrayed, Neckerman, analyzing historical data on Chicago public schools from 1920 – 1960, aims to highlight the ways in which schools themselves—taken as individual institutions—were betrayed by intermediary actors—school board officials alongside education policies drafted at the state level but carried out blindly by local actors. She shows that these race-neutral policies enacted did not have race-neutral outcomes: the dovetailing of school policy and ecological conditions sowed the seeds for the then and present-day deplorable conditions of inner-city schools. The installment of tracking or dual time programs in schools, for examples, were not race-based but the implementation of such policies had negative effects on students' academic preparation and future employment prospects, especially Black students because of the schools they attended.

Ok, so why do I bring up Teach for America, The Mississippi Teacher Corp, and the many others across the nation? It was because of Neckerman's particular analysis of the impact of teacher placement on the students, family, school, and community as a whole. Of the policies that she outlines, I believe that one of the most detrimental consequences from these policy changes was that which caused teachers to cycle in and out of certain classrooms and certain schools, principally those which served predominately Black and low-income communities. Trust is an understated factor in schooling. And the way in which policy was carried out severely weakened the trust between teacher and student, teacher and parent, teacher and school, and even the trust between teachers themselves. In other words, after these teachers "did their time," they could transfer to "better" schools and leave their troubles (and the troubled) behind. This is what made me think of the present state of programs like Teach for America and other like organizations. To put it bluntly, this book made me further question the efficacy of programs like Teach for America and the like: the inexperienced teachers (inexperienced with respect to years of teaching experience not intellect or drive), short-term contracts, and location of placement. Some point to the cultural differences between college students and those from inner-city schools. I believe that, although one barrier to be sure, it would be a bit short-sighted to stop there. As I stated above, the cycling of new faces in the classroom via these programs is what concerns me the most.

Clearly there are many success stories for those on the rosters of such organizations. The teacher of the year for Miami-Dade Public Schools is a Teach for America placement. For continued excellence, let us not forget the Teach for America alumni who started the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools where economically disadvantaged students are performing on par with their middle class counterparts. But while we celebrate the success, we must not forget the number of people who stop after a month, a week, or those who make it only one day. I do not have the statistics on this; I just have anecdotal evidence from my interviews with Teach for America representatives before I was offered a position in Miami (I did not accept the position because similar thoughts passed through my mind then).

I bring up this point to caution us to think of the consequences of the short term contracts of Teach for America and like organizations. These programs are so appealing to college students, some of whom use Teach for America as life "pit stops" or use such programs to pad resumes or "give back" without exactly knowing the lion's den they about to enter into. Nevertheless, the students in the schools see eager faces one moment and then look around the next and that face is gone. I am not saying that we are better without these programs. Surely Not! I just do not want to be ignorant of the disappointment of being let down when that the legal contract ends or when that "social" contract runs its course. But, the question becomes, what's the alternative? I would appreciate any comments on the issue brought up here or any thoughts on such programs.

The White Privilege of Anti-White Privilege Activists

2009-06-16T14:15:00.013-04:00

The feedback from my post on white guilt has been both empowering and depressing—empowering because it seems to have touched many folks in a very positive way, but also depressing because so many people seem to find themselves in similar situations. The post has spawned some great conversations, for which I am thankful.

It may come as a surprise that I had a lot of trouble writing the post. Each word I typed brought up memories of that moment of injustice. Each sentence reminded me of my own silence that night in Ohio. And each paragraph reinforced my anger—anger directed at the racial arrogance of others, and anger directed at myself. I even had a physical reaction as I wrote: My shoulders tensed up, my jaw clenched, and my right leg started bouncing up and down. I was fired up.

As an undergraduate, I was known for speaking my mind in class. Sometimes this won me new friends, while other times it elicited a few dirty looks. In graduate school, one of my professors has even nicknamed me “the polemicist”—a title that apparently means “a person that puts forth controversial views” (I had to look it up). I’m not sure if this is intended as an insult or not, but even if it is, he’s right: If I feel strongly about a topic, you’ll know. I don’t—and I won’t—hold back.

My girlfriend refers to my angry rants as “passion”—passion for my work, passion for my studies, and passion for social justice. I just get caught up in he heat of the moment, letting myself go. It’s actually quite similar to the scene in Old School when Will Farrell’s character debates James Carville. Something just clicks in Ferrell, and he launches into a tremendously coherent, eloquent, and forceful position. He wins the debate by a landslide, turns to his teammates and asks, “What happened? I blacked out.” Now, I don’t exactly blackout during my diatribes, but you get the idea.

In part, I model my irreverence after some of my favorite progressive activists. Anti-racist activist Tim Wise, for example, is a fiery speaker. David Simon, creator of The Wire, is probably one of the most charismatic—and hilariously insolent—people I have ever heard speak. Both are tremendous educators on privilege and systemic inequality, both relay their messages with incredible ferocity, and both happen to be white. The connection between their race and the forceful tone in their tirades is not coincidental; they are allowed to be outspoken, angry, and polemic because of white privilege.

See, when I launch into a tirade against inequality in the criminal justice system or discriminatory land-use policies, my audience doesn’t really feel uncomfortable or scared. I can be loud without being threatening. When I get into my rants, my audience probably just thinks I’m passionate. As long as I’m not yelling, and my message is clear, people will listen. No one will write me off, make any negative assumptions about my background, or fear physical harm just because my tone was forceful or condemnatory.

Yet a person of color is not afforded the same privilege. Indeed, a black man with similar credentials and intellect would undoubtedly be viewed differently if he spoke in a domineering tone. Even if they are among friends, there is a fear—a fear I do not share—of being labeled “angry” and fulfilling centuries-old stereotypes of black masculinity. I will never suspect that people are afraid of me as a person; the thought won’t even cross my mind. As whites, we’re far less likely to be labeled “erratic,” “crazy,” or “out of control” than folks of color who relay the very same messages in the very same powerful tone. I never worry about fulfilling stereotypes of being loud, angry, or “ghetto”—stereotypes that might cause my audience to misinterpret or ignore my message. And that’s white privilege.

This isn’t really an abstract concept to grasp—just think back to the months leading up to Barack Obama’s election. Folks on the Right desperately tried to paint Barack and his wife Michelle as “angry” black separatists, while his campaign managers desperately tried to mitigate these stereotypical images. The attacks on Michelle Obama were particularly viscous, and particularly racially charged. Put simply, those same stereotypes of erratic, irrational anger do not apply to me. But the question is not whether all whites enjoy some degree of racial privilege (we do). Instead, we need to ask ourselves, is this a bad thing? Or, better yet, how can we use this for good?

I discussed this issue with shani_o, one of Postbourgie’s many excellent bloggers. She offered some great advice: “I think the key is being loud about the right things, acknowledging privilege, and not getting too far away from the people you're talking about.” There was something about those words that just spoke to me in a way I desperately needed to be spoken to.

Ironically, it is the most virulent, outspoken critics of white privilege that successfully employ that very same privilege they hold with such contempt. But if we follow shani_o’s advice—acknowledging our privilege, getting loud when we need to, keeping the folks we talk about close—there’s no reason to feel guilty. I’m privileged, and there’s not much I can do about it. Nor should I, as long as I use my privilege to educate others and promote a progressive agenda.

France's Urban Utopia

2009-06-15T09:01:00.009-04:00

For those that don’t really follow urban spatial arrangements the same way I do, you might not know that metropolitan Europe has an entirely different spatial pattern than metropolitan America. In the United States, most suburban development occurred as a result of middle-class exodus from central cities. The general pattern in Europe is almost exactly the opposite; the poor live in the ‘burbs, while the central city typically houses the bourgeois class. Paris, for example, is like the anti-Detroit: Imagine Bloomfield Hills as a sprawling slum, and downtown Detroit as home to Michigan’s most wealthy.

In Europe, like America, poverty tends to be isolated from areas of employment, role models of behavior, social services, and other rudimentary, daily needs. This social and physical isolation may change in Paris in the next few years, however. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, has recently employed the services of an international team of urban planners and architects in the hopes of fundamentally changing metropolitan Paris. There are plenty of ideas being thrown around, most captured in this excellent New York Times piece. The most genius idea being discussed, however, involves a metropolitan transit system connecting the city of Paris to its poor suburbs.

I recently wrote about the failures of the American public transit system, far too often focusing on levels of density than on the needs of poor folks without access to other means of transportation. I mean, this whole idea that our transportation system needs to be environmentally sound is great, but we can’t forget why we have public transportation: to transport the public. More importantly, a focus on alleviating density ignores the great social need for sound transit in isolated urban and suburban communities with already low levels of traffic. Our transit system should respond to the needs of our most marginalized citizens.

The plan in Paris takes both of these considerations into account. With one carefully planned transit system, Paris’s poor suburbs could become “greener” and less isolated:

Isolated neighborhoods, which now have little green space, would be intimately woven into the city’s fabric. And the parks would link to a vast new greenbelt defining the city’s edge.

In a phrase, this is urban policy at its finest. Sarkozy and his architects are cognizant of the social, ecological and environmental concerns of metropolitan Paris—and they’re actually going to respond to these needs. Novel idea, I know. If Sarkozy is able to implement his plan, it will be the most ambitious reinvention of an urban metropolis in our generation—an innovative plan that may serve as a model for re-envisioning urban America.

Multi-Racial Coalitions – Lessons From Malcolm X Part 4

2009-06-12T09:02:00.009-04:00

Given my past writings on this blog, it should as no surprise that I’m a proponent of multi-racial progressive political coalitions. It’s pretty simple really: I believe in greater social equality, and I think coalition building is an important mechanism for amassing the political power necessary to enact progressive policy. I’m just idealistic like that.

Most high school level history texts don’t exactly portray Malcolm X as sharing these sentiments. And that’s probably because most high school level history texts aren’t very good. For as much as we learn about Malcolm’s intellectual engagement with blackness, so too was he absolutely obsessed with whiteness. I mean, every few pages or so he’s referencing “the white man” in some capacity. But what’s left out of far too many textbooks is an open and honest discussion of Malcolm’s intellectual growth over time—particularly in regards to race, whiteness, and multi-racial coalition building.

When Malcolm made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1963, he encountered a colorful cadre of Muslims, all expressing their collective allegiance to Allah. He specifically notes how he developed “true brotherhood” with white-skinned Muslims, an experience that forced him to re-think many of his previously held assumptions about whiteness. For the first time in his adult life, he acknowledged the existence of “well-meaning” white folks.

Malcolm internalized these experiences from his pilgrimage, and altered his message and teachings in subsequent speeches:

“We had to approach the black man’s struggle against the white man’s racism as a human problem…[B]oth races, as human beings, had the obligation, the responsibility of helping to correct America’s human problem. The well-meaning white people, I said, had to combat, actively and directly, the racism in other white people."

Malcolm also outlines a specific task for whites that believe in racial equality:

“The first thing I tell [sincere white people] is that at least where my own particular Black Nationalist organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is concerned, they can’t join us. I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are “proving” that they are “with us.” But the hard truth is this isn’t helping to solve America’s racist problem. The Negroes aren’t the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their “proving” of themselves is not among the black victims, but out in the battle lines where America’s racism really is—and that’s in their own home communities; America’s racism is within their own fellow whites. That’s where the sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have to work.” [emphasis added, p. 383-384]

Malcolm—with the underlying logic of this passage—offers a few interesting thoughts on the future of progressive political action. First, he suggests that racial equality in America should be framed under the more inclusive rhetoric of human equality. His use of the words “obligation” and “responsibility” is also telling; he frames the issue of equality as both a civic responsibility and a democratic obligation. In other words, it’s our duty as Americans, living in a democracy, to strive for equality.

There’s also an emphasis on localized, “safe” spaces for oppressed or otherwise marginalized peoples. I think this is where the label of “Black Separatist” is wrongly applied to Malcolm; indeed, he argues that racially homogenous spaces are necessary to hash out certain issues, but only as part of a larger structure—a larger multi-racial structure—focused on battling racism. It’s not like he wanted his organization to go at it alone; he needed whites and other racial groups to complement his efforts, just in their own communities.

Ideally, we can imagine these different groups working both separately and in tandem. I’m not willing to give up on my vision of multi-racial coalitions, but I can understand where Malcolm is coming from. See, Malcolm recognized that starting with interracial coalitions often leads to white co-option. This happens more frequently than we’d like to admit in progressive circles. You know, like when some well-meaning white parents join a PTA in a “majority-minority” public school, and within a couple years the white parents are calling all the shots. Still, there’s a danger in trying to push for social change with disjointed groups: How do we develop a cohesive message and agenda? How do we balance working together, while we work apart?

Had Malcolm lived just a little bit longer we might have a few answers to these questions and concerns. I guess we’ll just have to do the best we can, with the lessons we have. Or, better yet, maybe someone else can pick up where Malcolm left off—someone with charisma, someone that likes to think, someone willing to grow intellectually—and help move our nation toward great racial equality.