Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss the California Supreme Court's 5/15 decision to overturn the ban on gay marriage, focusing on social movements.
By Karen Sternheimer
Recently, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, a regional southern California newspaper, was bought out and will basically merge with a local competitor, suffering many staff cuts in the process. This prompted letters to the editor of the Los Angeles Times (another struggling southern California paper, but that’s another story) from 
readers mourning the demise of smaller papers like the Press-Telegram. One letter told of boyhood years delivering newspapers, and how smaller papers like this one gave kids “a first taste of what it meant to earn money that didn’t come from their parents” and a chance to run “their own micro-business.” These opportunities go away along with smaller newspapers.
This letter struck a chord with me; but it wasn’t a nostalgic one. I (briefly) had a paper route myself when I was about twelve for a regional paper called the Cleveland Sun-Press. Being an enterprising kid—I sold stationary, held my own garage sales, and sold homemade candy at school—a paper route seemed like a great idea to make some more money.
In order to have a paper route, I had to give the Sun-Press a deposit (about $30, if memory serves) to pay for papers that I would deliver. Then I would get to keep whatever I collected when I went door to door asking to be paid at the end of the month. This seemed like a great plan…until I actually started.
The paper came out once a week, and had to be delivered early in the morning before school. I got up well before dawn, at around 4:00 on the first day. My father didn’t like the idea of his twelve-year-old wandering the streets in the middle of the night, so he got up to come with me. Although he drove me, I had to trudge up unplowed, icy driveways in the middle of winter, and barely finished to make it to school on time. My dad thought we would need to get up even earlier the next week, so we were up well before three and did it again.
When it came time to collect my hard-earned pay I was in for a big surprise. Turns out most of the people on the streets I was told to deliver to never subscribed to the paper in the first place. I remember a lady slamming the door in my face, telling me she wasn’t going to pay for the paper and not to bother her again. I didn’t come close to collecting the money I had invested.
I came to the realization many other entrepreneurs do: I had to shut down my business since I was losing money (and sleep) in the process. After some shame I told my parents. I felt like a quitter, but they supported my decision, and were probably glad not to wake up in the middle of the night any more.
Having a few decades of distance from this “micro-business,” I think this arrangement was exploitive rather than a business opportunity. Aside from the questionable practice of making a child pay to work for them, and providing an invalid subscription list, this task could have put me in significant danger had I not had a parent willing and able to help me do my job (unpaid…thanks again, Dad).
In hindsight, it is easy to see “working children” as a vestige of a less-informed past. Fortunately, my family was not dependent on my wages so they didn’t insist that I keep the paper route.
Sociologist Viviana Zelizer, author of Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children found in her historical study that perceptions of working children vary by the economic needs of society. When a large number of children are needed in the labor force, work is seen as character-building, and their productivity is seen as moral, rather than exploitive. She contends that when children were no longer needed en masse in the labor force, this construction shifted to view children as emotionally priceless but economically useless. At this same time, child stars on the stage and screen began to emerge, as their “child-like” qualities ironically became valuable commodities.
In many developing countries today, it is commonplace for children to work to help their families survive. It’s very likely that the clothes that you are wearing now were made by a girl not too much older than I was when I had my paper route.
Let’s not think that young children only work for wages in “other places.” Have you seen I Know My Kid's a Star on VH1? The latest of a genre of stage parents trying to get their kids into “the business,” this show follows the latest conventions of so-called reality television, where the contestants all live together in a
house and are eliminated week by week. The real characters on this and the other shows like it are the parents (mostly moms) who seem way over-invested in getting their kids work in Hollywood.
It’s easy to caricature these parents as monsters, but we are all involved in children’s labor in some ways. We watch them on television, in movies, buy their CDs and ask them who they think should be the next president. Yes, this is different from working in a factory or walking the streets before dawn to deliver papers, but we might ask whether these kids are as free from exploitation as we might think. If we watch them, criticize them when they stumble into adulthood, or buy the products they work 14 hours a day to produce, we are in some ways benefiting from working children.
And what about kids—do they benefit from work? And if so, what kind? Remember, I wanted my paper route, and many children who pursue careers want them 
too. Even children who helped support their families a century ago liked the autonomy of having jobs, says historian David Nasaw in his book Children of the City.
Parents also often think children should have chores to help around the house, babysit, or earn their allowance. Teenagers, of course, often work part-time because they or their parents want them to earn spending money, learn valuable skills like responsibility, or have work experience to include on their college applications. Beyond “good” parenting, how do these ideas about working children reflect our economic realities at the start of the twenty-first century? How do they create the meaning of childhood itself?
By C.N. Le
Sociologists and other scholars around the world are increasingly talking about how the world in general and American society in particular is becoming increasingly globalized. But to many students, these concepts are rather vague and abstract. With that in mind, I'd like to use two examples that relate to my areas of specialization -- Asian/Asian American culture and higher education -- to illustrate how globalization works in our society these days.
The first example concerns a Chinese-born immigrant who was educated in the U.S., became infatuated with American culture, then went back to China to start an American-style college for Chinese students:
The school has more than 16,000 students and nearly 50 buildings -- including a Roman amphitheater, French and Italian restaurants and an
administration hall with a domed Capitol-like facade on one side and a Forbidden City tableau on the other. A swimming stadium, with an Olympic-size pool, is rising amid lotus and wheat fields.
The school's faculty of about 700 includes 119 foreign instructors, mainly from the U.S. They teach English, history and literature and help students with debate club, cheerleading and marching band -- things unheard of in this country.
[Shawn] Chen went to the United States in 1985 and got a master's degree in education at Linfield College in Oregon. After attending a typical no-frills, monochrome college in China, he basked in campus life in the Pacific Northwest. . . . Chen was so taken by American culture he named his children Brandon and Brenda, after the two characters in the early 1990s TV hit "Beverly Hills, 90210."
In illustrating one example of globalization, this story is a great example of the kind of new Asian American identity that I've been doing more research on -- Asian Americans using their cross-national cultural ties to achieve success for both sides of their identity -- Asia and America. In the process their "foreignness" is an asset, rather than a liability.
The second example also involves Asian Americans, higher education, and international migration -- but in the opposite direction. We know that the competition to get into the top colleges and universities is quite intense these days. With that in mind, many Korean American students have decided to skip the U.S. entirely and instead, attend top universities in South Korea.
A year ago, 19-year-old Korean-American Choi Joo-eun chose Korea's Yonsei University over the prestigious University of California system in her home state. Having gotten into both UC San Diego and UC Irvine, she had earned a place in two schools even many California teenagers dream of entering.
So far she has no regrets. On campus, she takes classes taught entirely in English while spending her spare time learning Korean culture and language. Off campus, Choi, who had never visited Korea before deciding to study here, keeps busy building a new network of friends and pursuing her dream of working for the United Nations one day.
While it is well known that many Koreans opt out of the highly competitive race to get into a top local university like Yonsei for an American university, an increasing number of Korean-Americans and overseas-educated Koreans are heading in the opposite direction.
Still, regardless of Korea being the land of their parents, it is far from home, and the students have to overcome their share of hardship and difficulties in adjusting to a new country and culture.
The article highlights the many advantages associated with such a process -- reconnecting with one's ancestral ethnic roots, exposure to an international climate, and becoming bilingual in English and Korean. But as the last line of the quote above reveals, there can also be loneliness and cultural adjustment issues for those studying overseas.
This particular trend of Korean Americans "going back" to Korean schools is likely to accelerate in the coming years, as globalization continues to evolve and permeate more of American society.
But as the article points out, being Korean American does not automatically mean that you will have an easy time in Korea; being Asian and Asian American are two different things.
Nonetheless, being Korean American does provide another avenue of personal and academic enrichment, and that can be seen as an asset rather than a liability as we move forward into the 21st century.
As you can see, gas in Los Angeles has risen above the $4 mark. Can sociology help us understand why?
Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss a few ideas of how sociology explains rising gas prices. What are your ideas? (Yes, the steering wheel symbolizes consumers being choked by high gas prices...or it just got in the shot accidentally).
By C.N. Le
As the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing draws near, countless news organizations and bloggers have been covering the controversy over protests surrounding the Olympic Torch relays that have taken place all over the world, including its only U.S. stop in San Francisco.
I have previously stated my position on this complicated issue by trying to take a moderate approach: I do not support calls for a blanket or total boycott of Chinese goods or other products, but I wholeheartedly support keeping the pressure on China (and the corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) to improve its record on human rights, environmental protection, safe products, and freedom for Tibet.
This particular issue has become rather prominent here at UMass Amherst recently, where there was a demonstration on campus that pitted pro-Chinese graduate and undergraduate students against pro-Free Tibet and other students opposed to China:
"We're in support of peaceful coexistence and against the violence and media distortion in Tibet," said Gorge Liu, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts. "It is reported as if the Chinese police are creating the violence, when in fact it is the civilians."
Waving the Chinese flag and chanting, "One China," and "Go Beijing," the participants handed out leaflets with what they described as educational material on Tibet to passing students. . . .
Members of the Students for a Free Tibet group circulated in the crowd, handing out bags of candy with informational leaflets attached to
stopping students.
"We're talking about current issues in Tibet, where people are getting killed for speaking the truth," said Lhakyi Lokyitsang, vice president of the student organization. "Tibetans in Tibet are not only protesting, but they're risking their lives to do it."
I was not on campus that day and therefore did not witness the protests, but I understand that this is an emotional issue for members of both sides. This is also an issue that deeply divides the Asian American community in general, particularly Chinese Americans.
Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams and an icon of social justice and activism in the Asian American community, wrote about why she will participate by carrying the Olympic Torch when it reaches San Francisco:
Unfortunately the calls to boycott the Olympics and to label everything about China "evil" can only isolate China and the United States from each other. China is not a monolith and blanket condemnations of China and its people are as simplistic as blaming all Americans for the U.S. human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Such rhetoric, however, is driving many Chinese bloggers into a nationalistic response. Attitudes like these hark back to the Cold War days, when the U.S. and China were completely shut off from each other. . . .
Someday China will join the United States as a world superpower – but the American and Chinese people do not have to retreat back to those Cold War corners. The world will be safer if China, the United States and other countries can address human rights and other critical issues in the community of nations and peoples, not in isolation.
This article includes comments from readers who support Helen Zia's position and from those who are critical of it. These reactions sum up the range of opinions that many Asian Americans and others have on this issue, and reflect the level of emotion that is involved.
One of my favorite quotes of all time is one attributed to Bill Cosby: "I don't know what's the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." At the risk of contradicting that maxim, I again will try to assert a moderate position. I deeply respect Helen Zia and agree with her stance that isolating and a mass boycott of China is not the answer -- I believe that the best change happens through engagement and inclusion, not separation and discrimination.
At the same time, I support and defend the rights of China's critics to express their opposition and to use protests against the Olympics and the Torch Relay to urge China to improve its human rights abuses and to allow Tibet to become independent. I support their use of the Olympics as a legitimate forum within which to engage and criticize the Chinese government.
However, expressions of opposition have a limit -- I have no problem with mass protests and demonstrations, but I do not support threats of violence or physical attacks against people like Helen Zia who disagree with them and have chosen to participate in the torch relay.
This is clearly an emotional issue for many of us, but I hope that members from both sides remember that freedom of expression also entails responsibility of expression. People can have any opinion on this issue that they want, but participating in a democratic society also means exercising these freedoms appropriately.
This is also what sociologists can contribute to the debate: a balanced -- but not necessarily a completely impartial -- look at many sides of an issue in order to create proposals that can help to bridge those divides.
By Janis Prince Inniss
In a speech many hailed as historic for its frank discussion of race in America, Barack Obama, Democratic contender for the presidential nomination, said: “At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either ‘too black’ or ‘not black enough’."
What does it mean to be considered “too black” or “not black enough”? And who decides the answers to these questions? In a previous post, I discussed the challenges biracial people such as Sen. Obama (son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas) pose to our understanding of race, so I won’t touch on that issue here. Given the Senator’s racial self identification as African American, however, who authenticates his blackness? Is there a Department of Black Authenticity (DBA) whose job it is to stamp him or anyone else “unequivocally black” or maybe “just right”? Do some black aspirants get notification that they are “not black enough” or indeed “too black”? As I imagine such deliberations, I can’t help but wonder whether the head of the DBA would make those decisions or whether there would have to be group consensus.
What does it mean when someone is described as “not black enough”? Likely, you have heard tales of 
African Americans (particularly males) who “dumb down”: They make a conscious effort to do poorly in school so as not to be seen as “acting white”. In other words they will never be described by those apparently dreaded words “not black enough”; this construction of blackness emphasizes ignorance. Describing the other Democratic candidates as he was announcing his own presidential bid, Sen. Joe Biden described Sen. Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."
I’ll avoid dissecting Sen. Biden’s words here except to make one point—that Sen. Biden seemed to be voicing what he and many others perceive as differences between Sen. Obama and many African Americans, and between this candidate and previous African American candidates. Many of these differences—his parentage chief among them—have caused even some African Americans to say that Sen. Obama is “not black enough”.
In a 1998 New Yorker article, writer Toni Morrison provides an interesting description of what constitutes blackness. Morrison described Former President Clinton as America’s first black president because “Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.” (I reserve commentary on issues related to the conflation of blackness with being African American—as opposed to being African, for example—for another blog.) Morrison acknowledges the over-representation of African Americans among “the truly disadvantaged”, and also makes reference to the cultural orientation and "style" associated with blackness, at least in America anyway.
In an essay entitled “Free at Last? A Personal Perspective on Race and Ethnicity”, Glenn C. Loury recounts the tale of how, for fear of being seen as an “Uncle Tom”, he betrayed his friend Woody by failing to vouch for Woody as a “brother” at a black political rally. (Woody was so light-skinned that he could “pass”, but self identified as black.) This is another dimension of being viewed as “not black enough”—the extent to which blacks are friends with, or married to, non-blacks. Another marker of this tag is being Republican. Since the civil rights era, African Americans have historically supported the Democratic party; African Americans such as Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice are consistently derided for having political ideologies that brand them “not black enough”.
What constitutes being “too black”? Is being associated with anything or anyone strongly associated with notions of black exclusivity “too black”? One major aspect of the firestorm regarding Sen. Obama and his former pastor, Rev. Wright is the fact that the pastor has operated from an Afrocentric focus. This makes the Rev. Wright, and by extension Sen. Obama, “too black” for some.
Policing blackness includes scrutiny of food, film, music, clothing and other preferences. The scrutiny also extends to pastimes, the way we talk, our places of residence, the way we wear our hair (mainly for women), and this is not an all encompassing list. As Loury describes, the impact of having his authenticity policed had a profound impact on many aspects of his life:
I now understand how this desire to be regarded as genuinely black, to be seen as a “regular brother,” has dramatically altered my life. It narrowed the range of my earliest intellectual pursuits, distorted my relationships with other people, censored my political thought and expression, informed the way I dressed and spoke, and shaped my cultural interests…I have learned that one does not have to live surreptitiously as a Negro among whites in order to be engaged in a denial of one’s genuine self for the sake of gaining social acceptance. This is a price that blacks often demand of each other as well.
It is ironic that as much we think of race as fixed and real, questioning African American authenticity points to the socially constructed nature of the concept, given how easily racial authenticity can be challenged. This is also another example of how race and ethnicity are used interchangeably: use of this authenticity yardstick belies the fact that there are different constructions of blackness in other parts of the world; this yardstick is really an African American one.
Why do you think there are questions about black authenticity in the U.S.? Is there a fear related to keeping people in or might it have to do with keeping “impostors” out? How similar or different are these issues for other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.? As for whether Sen. Obama is “too black”, “not black enough”, or “just right,” I think the fact that the question is even being asked is revealing.
But I’m not just an avid consumer of political news; as a sociologist, I’m also a media analyst. And something has been bothering me as this presidential campaign has played out: the frequency that the media have talked about the “cult of Obama” (see this Time magazine story, and this Los Angeles Times op-ed for just a few of the many media examples of this worry; and also this blog by a supporter that might offer some evidence for the media’s concern).
It’s the word “cult” that troubles me. Media commentators seem to imply that the enthusiasm and energy of the Senator’s supporters, their commitment to his vision for America, the world, and each other, is somehow worrisome and menacing. 
It’s made me realize once again that sociology is not only a way of thinking about the social world we live in, but that as sociologists, we talk in a distinct – and distinctive – way. For students learning sociology, I think that learning our sociological way of talking can sometimes be hard. Doesn’t it seem like sometimes we sociologists use a lot of words to make some rather simple points? I think that too once in a while! I believe, however, that it’s sociologists’ scientific preciseness that fuels our wordiness – at least that is my hope!
“Cult” is one of those words that means one thing to sociologists and often quite different things to non-sociologists. Here’s how the text for my Sociology of Religion class defines it:
A cult is similar to a sect in its rejection of the religious patterns and formulations of denominations–or of whatever the society’s dominant form(s) of religion happens to be. Cult members were either not attracted to dominant religious groups in the first place or, like sectarians, became disenchanted with commonly-accepted religious forms. The cult differs from the sect, however, in that it does not call for a return to the original, pure religion, but rather emphasizes the new–a new revelation or insight provided by a supernatural power, say, or the rediscovery of an old revelation that had been lost and unknown for many years (and which is, therefore, new to this age) (Johnstone 2007:78)
But is this what you think about when you hear the word “cult”? I doubt it. Since the 1970s, popular culture, led by the press, has come to define the word as a religion that many people do not like; one which uses recruitment techniques unlike many traditional Protestant denominations (i.e., “brainwashing”) in order to ensnare impressionable young adults in its grasp. Cults are often portrayed as being “alien” to the U.S., run by manipulative messianic figures who are really all about lavishly spending the monies their followers raise.
In fact, this pop culture definition of “cult” has even altered our sociological vocabulary. Nowadays sociologists of religion tend to use the term “new religious movement” instead of “cult” because we recognize how pervasive this pop culture definition has become.
So when commentators write about the “cult of Obama,” they are both tapping into this negative connotation while simultaneously helping it persist. I find it interesting that it is Senator Obama’s followers who have come under such media scrutiny and not, for example, Huckabee’s Army of college-aged activists. Barack Obama is the upstart, the unexpected Democratic candidate who has more delegates than the presumptive nominee has. He is the candidate who, because of his parents’ cultural backgrounds and nationalities, has had his patriotism questioned by some opponents (i.e., the worry about an “alien” cult leader, resurfacing).
If words matter – and as a sociologist, I absolutely believe that they do – how social institutions such as the press talk can shape the public’s social construction of reality. Words like “cult” are now perceived to be, in our culture, inflammatory. So next time you read a headline or hear political commentators talk about “the cult of Obama” – think about it for a moment. What is that reporter/analyst trying to get you to believe? And perhaps more importantly, why? How does such a negative construction of Senator Obama’s followers shape the political environment of this presidential campaign? Who might the construction help?
[Full disclosure: In my state’s primary, I did not vote for Senator Obama.]
Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and others in politics have recently been part of very public sex scandals. What are the sociological implications of these stories? And what can we learn about relationships, gender, sexuality, and power from these political scandals?
Here are some of our ideas...tell us about yours!
By C.N. Le
One of the main themes in my research as a scholar in Sociology and Asian American Studies is the process of assimilation. As I've written about in various posts on this blog, assimilation can take many different forms.
One form that I've recently started to follow more closely concerns anti-communist political activism among Vietnamese Americans. In fact, I've just completed a chapter entitled "'Better Dead Than Red': Anti-Communist Politics Among Vietnamese Americans" in a book titled Anti-Communist Minorities in the US: The Political Activism of Ethnic Refugees, edited by Ieva Zake (Palgrave-MacMillan Publishing) that will be published early next year.
In that chapter, I write that while the forces of assimilation are likely to result in a moderation of fervent anti-communist sentiment among younger Vietnamese Americans, there is still a strong level of ethnic solidarity within the Vietnamese American community. Combined with continuing incidents of human rights abuses in Viet Nam, I conclude that anti-communist activism among Vietnamese Americans may evolve into different forms but is unlikely to be eliminated or even notably lessened any time soon.
Recent examples illustrate the power of symbols and visual images to illuminate the legacy of the Viet Nam War.
The first incident, as the Orange County Register reports, involves a community college in Irvine, California (located only a few miles from Little Saigon) that recently decided to remove the Vietnamese flag from public display after local Vietnamese Americans threatened to demonstrate:
The 144 miniature flags have hung from the second-floor atrium for many years without controversy, in a gesture designed to symbolize the diversity of the college's student body. On Thursday, college officials removed the display in the wake of threats that busloads of protesters could arrive to disrupt the campus if the Vietnamese flag were not removed.
Westminster Councilman Andy Quash and Garden Grove Councilwoman Dina Nguyen said they met with college officials Wednesday after receiving calls from numerous constituents about the flag display. "We reminded them that in 1999, in the city of Westminster, that flag hung in a video store led to a 49-day protest peaking at 50,000 people," Quash said. . . . "It's offensive because this flag represents a regime that is very dictatorial and does not respect human rights," Nguyen said.
The second incident, described by the San Mateo County Times, involves artwork created by a young Vietnamese American that was intended to pay tribute to the refugee experience of Vietnamese Americans but instead has been interpreted by many as pro-communist.
The offending photo was of a piece of art by a University of California, Davis, graduate student and Vietnamese immigrant who saw the creation — a yellow-and-red foot-spa tub — as a salute to Vietnamese refugees like her mother-in-law who toiled in a nail salon after the family came to America.
But the protesters saw something far more menacing.
The tub was yellow with three red stripes, which the protesters said must be a reference to the flag of the fallen country of South Vietnam. And the spa's yellow power cord was plugged into a red outlet, which seemed to resemble the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, now under communist rule.
"Why is the South Vietnamese flag on a thing that people wash their dirty feet in?" asked Uc Van Nguyen, 70, who attended some of the rallies, which began in late January. . . .
Meanwhile, the artist said she had no intention of offending anyone when she bought a foot spa from a nail shop, painted it yellow and red. . . . She saw the art creation as a way to honor Vietnamese women who have "toiled and sacrificed enormously for the future of their children and family," she wrote.
It would be easy for many Americans to criticize the Vietnamese American protesters and to say things like, "You may find the images offensive, but as Americans, you should respect the right of people to freely express themselves however they want. If you don't, you're just replicating the same kind of authoritarianism that you blast the communists for committing."
While there is some truth to this particular argument, I would point out that first, in the same way that the artist or school has the freedom to express themselves however they want, so too do others have the right to criticize such expressions. In other words, freedom of expression is a two-way street -- express yourself however you want, but be prepared to receive potentially critical expressions in return.
This is not to say that I always agree with the protesters. In fact, I do not share their interpretation that the "foot tub" artwork shown above is offensive and 
an insult to the Vietnamese refugee experience. There are other instances in which I disagree with many anti-communist opinions. At the same time, though, I respect and defend their right to express their interpretations that may be counter to mine.
In fact, it is this right that allows historically marginalized groups to criticize recent media portrayals that many of us find offensive, including a college newspaper column meant as "satire" or the anti-Filipino Desperate Housewives episode.
Secondly, when people (particularly non-Vietnamese people) criticize such protests, in many cases they have little or no connection whatsoever to the refugee experiences that form the basis of such strong anti-communist sentiments. In other words, it is easy for others to say, "Come on, that was 30 years ago -- just let it go already" without truly understanding the level of suffering that many Vietnamese endured and still endure in the form of friends and family who have been killed or made into refugees.
In the same way we need to acknowledge and respect the historical impact of past experiences of injustice and suffering experienced by other racial/ethnic minority groups, so too should Americans be careful not to minimize the impact of the Viet Nam War and the forced exit of the Vietnamese people from heir ancestral.
At the same time, Vietnamese Americans should understand that there is a limit to their protests. Verbal criticisms and mass demonstrations are perfectly legitimate expressions of dissent, but threats and acts of violence are not. In those cases, the laws of this country are clear and there are no exceptions, regardless of how angry one feels or how much one has suffered in the past.
Political activists have the right to freedom of expression. We have broad opportunities to express our experiences, our grief, and our anger, but there are limits that we need to keep in mind. This is ultimately part of what it means to become assimilated, to become Vietnamese American.
By Sally Raskoff
How many people do you know in your community? Beyond your friends and family, how many people can you name or at least recognize? We may see some people repeatedly if we visit the same places regularly. Though we might recognize them, we may not know their names or think to introduce ourselves, even if we see them every week.
In my neighborhood, because people walk their dogs regularly, we know most of our neighbors by sight as they walk by our windows: the guy with the Great Dane, the gal with the lab, the guy with the two schnauzers. I may not know all of the names of these neighbors, but their presence helps make my neighborhood a community rather than just a place to live. I like to think that we’d all come together if something were to threaten the community.
If you haven’t yet seen Be Kind Rewind, see it as an example of how neighbors can rally together for their community. This movie has many levels of complexity that make it perfect for sociological analysis. If you haven’t seen the ads or the movie, the main story involves two neighbors, Mike (Mos Def) and Jerry (Jack Black), who ruin Mr. Fletcher’s (Danny Glover) video rental business by accidentally erasing all the tapes. Mr. Fletcher’s character is away on a journey to see if he should revive his business or give it up since his building is about to be demolished. Mike and Jerry attempt to save themselves and the store by re-taping their own short versions of the movies that people want to rent.
Although I’ll try not to give everything away, if you want to keep the rest as a surprise, read no further until you’ve seen it.
Before the clerks erased the tapes, Fletcher’s video store was not doing well; his crumbling building and business are a symbol of the dysfunctional community. The few people who do come in for videos here (rather than go to the larger chain video store some distance away) are angry, rude, or not entirely functional, which is another reflection of the disintegrating community life.
Mike, Jerry, and Alma (Melonie Diaz, a neighbor who joins their adventure) discover that their film process, which they call “sweding,” takes off after Miss Falewicz’s (Mia Farrow) nephew and his friends find the new versions entertaining. When Fletcher returns and decides to close the store, the whole neighborhood is in line to rent the sweded movies.
The building itself is a central character in the film, as the supposed birthplace of jazz pianist Fats Waller. Mike proposes that developers make the building an historic landmark because of the Waller connection. But Mr. Fletcher tells Mike that he had just made that up years ago to help him feel better; not deterred, the neighborhood comes together to make a sweded movie about their history as Fats Waller’s birthplace.
There are many other movies that use a crumbling community as a backdrop for a storyline, and the community is saved by 2some action of the lead characters. For example, in Two Weeks Notice, Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant bicker but eventually save her parents’ neighborhood center. In Life Stinks, Mel Brooks’ slumlord experiences homelessness and brings the community together.
In those two movies, the main characters purposefully organize the solution to saving their communities. However, in Be Kind Rewind, the entire community knowingly fabricates the “fact” that their building/neighborhood/community is the birthplace of Fats Waller. This is an example of self-fulfilling prophecy and the social construction of reality.
Robert K. Merton defines a self-fulfilling prophecy as a false belief that is acted upon and becomes real in its consequences. When we believe something is real and we act accordingly, we make that thing real because “it” changes our behavior. If we didn’t act as if it were real, it wouldn’t exist as more than a thought.
The social construction of reality is a theory that members of a society create (or construct) for that society, and then forget that they do so. Society then seems like it has a reality outside the people, and the society then perpetuates itself by creating (socializing) more members. The members and the society are busy creating or maintaining each other, although the members are not conscious of their part in the process.
The concept of self-fulfilling prophecy is typically applied at the micro level, focusing on people’s behavior, while the social construction of reality is a macro theory focusing on entire societies and their overall structure. However, both of these are apparent at the community level in Be Kind Rewind.
The community decides to believe that Fats Waller was born there. They pursue historic status and once they do so, it appears that it becomes “true.” The once distant and demoralized community rallies around that idea and becomes a vibrant community once again (at least for the closing scenes).
By Janis Prince Inniss
The number of children taking psychotropic medications has sky-rocketed in recent years. This increase is not evident across all categories of medications, but primarily due to the exploding numbers of children given atypicals– a new class of antipsychotic drugs. 
What is driving the increase? If the stigma associated with seeking and treating mental health has diminished, this is great news. If more children who need treatment for mental illness are receiving benefits from medications, that is more good news. There are, however, indications that this spike is less a response to the needs of children, than drug companies and physicians profiting from a lucrative—and until recently, mostly untapped—market.
The rise in medication being prescribed to children is taking place at a time when Medicaid and insurance companies have become increasingly less likely to pay for psychotherapy. Psychotropic medications, on the other hand, are reimbursable. This means that for financial reasons, parents seeking help for their children see talk therapy as less of an option than drug therapy.
In order to understand these issues, it is useful to consider the role of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.)—the governmental agency charged with regulating drugs. The F.D.A. approved the use of atypicals to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in adults, but the drugs have become popular in the treatment of children. The FDA oversees marketing by drug companies, but not prescriptions by physicians. Therefore, in a practice known as “off-label” use, physicians are free to prescribe FDA approved medications for populations and conditions not approved by the FDA. Because many of the psychotropic medications that are prescribed to children have not been studied for children’s use, there are many unanswered questions about their effectiveness and side effects. Because children are continuing to develop, they can be particularly vulnerable to the sometimes very serious side effects of medications.
Another issue is the over diagnoses and misdiagnoses of mental illnesses in children. For example, despite a tremendous rise in the number of children being diagnosed as bipolar, many mental health practitioners question the existence of this disorder in children. (Chapter Four of Frontline's “The Medicated Child” offers video of a five year old diagnosed with bipolar disorder; viewing it may give some sense of the desperation parents may feel about the behavior of their children and why they would be willing to try drugs despite their side effects.)
Adding to the suspicion that financial concerns may motivate some diagnoses is The New York Times analysis of drug company financial relationships with psychiatrists in Minnesota (the only state that makes it mandatory to report such relationships). The analysis revealed that between 2000 and 2005drug company payments to doctors increased six-fold, to $1.6 million, while prescriptions for antipsychotics to children receiving Medicaid increased nine-fold. The doctors who received the most money from drug companies are the same ones who were most inclined to prescribe medications to children. Psychiatrists are not the only physicians who receive payments from drug companies, and some high prescribers receive no money from the companies. But the Times analysis found that between 2000 and 2005, psychiatrists received more money from drug companies than doctors of other specialties. For example, payments to psychiatrists in Minnesota ranged from $51 to $689,000, with a median of $1,750.
The relationship between drug companies and physicians is further complicated by the fact that drug companies finance research on their medications. In some cases the companies retain control over the data, leaving room for doubt about the truthfulness of their reports.
It’s also important to consider the drug company budgets devoted to advertising psychotropic medications to the public. In 2000, money spent on such advertising skyrocketed to $1.5 billion—a six-fold increase from 1996. Television and other advertisements have armed parents with the names of medications for any number of disorders and some physicians bow to pressure from parents to provide a medication they have seen marketed. Much of the prescriptions for psychotropic medications are written by pediatricians who lack the expertise needed to treat and monitor children on these drugs.
It is hard to escape the profit motive in medicating children; these drugs are not cheap and their manufactures earn billions. Figures of what Medicaid spent in only two states illustrate the kind of money at stake: In 2006, Medicaid spent $27.5 million for atypicals for children in Florida, while Minnesota spent $7.1 million in 2005.
Drug companies reap billions of dollars with “off-label“ prescribing, so there is little incentive for the companies to learn more about the impact of their medications on children. And how much of this increase in medication, is an unwillingness of some parents and teachers to accept what is in fact normal—if highly challenging—childhood behavior? There does not have to be an either/or choice—psychotherapy or medication—in responding to the mental health needs of children; research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health indicates that a combination of psychotherapy and medication is best for some mental health issues faced by children.
By Bradley Wright
There are countless social movements in society, and they want you to pay attention.
In a social movement, a group of ordinary people come together to advance a social cause, and there are countless movements in society. In the early twentieth century, women activists banded together to promote women's suffrage —the right to vote. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement promoted justice for African-Americans. The anti-nuclear movement protests the development of nuclear energy. Mothers against Drunk Drivers advocate tougher laws against drunk driving.
A common goal of most social movements, whatever their focus, is to get the public’s attention. Sociologists understand this via resource mobilization theory-- how being in the public’s eye helps movements accomplish their goals. It brings in workers for the cause, it helps collect money, and it might result in changed laws. In fact, more than a few social movements have as their explicit goal raising public awareness about their cause. For example, the National Children's Cancer Society (NCCS—a worthy cause if ever there was one) explicitly states the importance of raising public awareness. They write:
“Take action against a disease that has been ignored for too long. Raising awareness in your community about childhood cancer and the survivorship issues surrounding it is critical to our mutual mission. Awareness can inform and change minds. It can change public policy and raise more funds for crucial patient services. Awareness of the programs of the N.C.C.S. can give hope to families facing the chaos of a diagnosis of childhood cancer.”
As a result, social movements work hard at having distinctive approaches. The movement for breast cancer awareness has the ubiquitous pink ribbons. Not to be outdone, other movements have adopted their own ribbon colors. For example, white ribbons are for lung cancer and violence against women. Yellow ribbons are for deployed soldiers and suicide awareness. Blue ribbons are for child abuse and Hurricane Katrina. Purple is for lupus and showing religious tolerance. Green is for environmental awareness and Lyme disease. Puzzle-piece ribbons are for autism. Ribbons with the words “publish me” are for untenured faculty--okay, I made up that last one.
(As an aside, some have criticized ribbons and wristbands as “slacktivism”—doing things that make us feel good about helping others without actually spending any of our time or money in doing so).
In addition to distributing ribbons, social movements do lots of other things. They can hold demonstrations. The million-man march in 1995 brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to Washington D.C. to promote unity and political participation among black men. They also get celebrity endorsements. For example, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) regularly features actors and actresses in their commercials, sometimes taking off their clothes (a time-honored method of getting attention). Sometimes they just advertise on television and in print, similar to a business seeking customers.
There’s a problem, however—there is only so much public attention to go around, and there are a lot more movements wanting attention than there is attention to give. As such, movements compete with each other for the public’s attention. In this sense, groups like the National Children’s Cancer Society are fighting against not only the disease but also against other disease-related groups. If, for example, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation does a particularly good job of raising awareness, then there may be less to give the NCCS.
This puts social movements in a bind. On one hand, they are probably sympathetic to the causes behind their competing social movements. I suspect that members of the NCCS are also against juvenile diabetes. On the other hand, these other groups are their competitors, taking resources from them.
It’s in this context that we can understand the following commercial. Pandarescue.org is group dedicated to saving
wild pandas and their habitat. It’s a small group—I’ve never heard of them before this commercial, and so I imagine that they struggled with how to get their message out. They came up with this commercial that explicitly recognizes the resource mobilization model described above. As implied in this commercial, the problem for panda bears is not just deforestation and poaching, but also the public support for whales. Yes, Greenpeace and others portray whales as beautiful, noble creatures, but this video shows the shocking truth! (My guess is that baby harp seals and cute little kittens are also harmful for pandas. Hopefully future commercials will get at that as well).
Well, what did you think? In a way, I appreciate its honesty because I imagine that a lot of social movements think that they are more important than other movements. Still, it is so, so tacky. It certainly does exemplify the social mobilization theory of social movements.
By C.N. Le
One of my core principles as a sociologist is for my academic research to have some kind of relevance to the "real world."
Instead of just conducting research and publishing it in obscure academic journals that few people outside academia read, I want to disseminate my academic knowledge to a wider, more popular audience and to use it to help address real world issues and problems. That is one of the reasons why I started my two blogs in the first place and why I participate in the Everyday Sociology Blog, which demonstrates that sociology has direct relevance to everyday events and people's lives.
More and more social scientists feel the same way. There has been a movement toward making sociology more "public" and in other social science disciplines scholars are increasingly engaging with real world issues that affect society, American and international.
But as Time magazine reports, one particular program of "applied social science research" is creating quite a controversy inside and outside of academia -- using social scientists to help the U.S. fight terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq:
Two years ago, the CIA quietly started recruiting social scientists, advertising in academic journals and offering princely salaries of up to $400,000. But . . . in September, Washington turned a pilot project called Human Terrain Teams into a full-fledged, $40 million program to embed four- or five-person groups of scholars -- including anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists — with all 26 U.S. combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[S]ome preliminary reports are encouraging. From Afghanistan, the 4th brigade (82nd Airborne Division) reported a 60-70% drop in attacks -- and a dramatic spike in capture of [suspected terrorists] after anthropological advisers recommended redirecting outreach from village elders to focus on the local mullahs. One mullah was reportedly so moved after being invited to bless a restored mosque on the nearby U.S. base that he quickly agreed to record an anti-Taliban radio ad. . . .
In the wake of the colossal mishandling of the Iraq occupation, this new partnership manifests the military's renewed appreciation of the importance of culture.
Montgomery McFate, a Navy anthropologist, [was an] early advocate of what she says is best described as anthropologizing the military, not militarizing anthropology.
Yet many in the profession contend that any collaboration of this nature compromises their field's integrity. Anthropology deployed under such circumstances will become "just another weapon...not a tool for building bridges between peoples," argues Roberto Gonzalez, an anthropologist at San Jose State University and member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.
I spent some time thinking about programs like this and trying to decide whether I think they are a good thing or a bad thing for the academic disciplines involved and for American society in general.
On the one hand, I would say that it's beneficial for social scientists to get involved in these efforts because they can fulfill the fundamental professional mission I mentioned above -- using their expertise to address an important social issue and to produce the most benefits for the most people possible.
On the other hand, it would not be beneficial for social scientists to apply their efforts for a "more effective method of killing people," to put it bluntly. That is, depending on how you choose to see it, their knowledge can basically be used for the purpose of perpetuating war and the taking of human lives.
So ultimately, when it comes to the question of whether programs like this are good or bad, I think my answer is that just like life in general, the final answer is not a simple binary of good/bad, yes/no, or moral/immoral. Although this may sound like a cop-out, there are both positive and negative aspects to it, like the 
rationales I just mentioned.
But if I had to pick one side of the argument over the other to support, at this point, I would agree with Prof. McFate's position that I quoted above, that programs like this are about "anthropologizing the military, not militarizing anthropology."
In other words, if used effectively and properly, the expertise of social scientists can indeed help people who may initially be on different sides of the war -- U.S. troops and Afghan or Iraqi civilians or tribal/religious leaders.
The U.S. would get culturally competent knowledge about how to best relate to the native population in order to effectively communicate and build interpersonal connections with them. The native population could also feel that their needs, issues, and concerns are genuinely being heard, understood, and incorporated into the actions of the U.S. military operating in their neighborhoods.
Of course, like I mentioned above, critics would point out that the assistance of social scientists is ultimately being used to promote war and killing. I respect that opinion, but I choose to see a more nuanced point -- that terrorists who target the U.S. military, generally speaking, are likely not to have much concern for the native population of civilians as well.
Therefore, if the terrorists see both of these groups as enemies or at least expendable casualties of war, the native population has a right to join efforts to oppose such terrorists. With that in mind, the U.S. military and the native population can work as allies, not in opposition or suspicion of each other.
Even if that means that some people will inevitably die, I would rather have those people be terrorists who indiscriminately target civilians and distort the doctrines of a just and honorable religion to suit their extremist views.
Sociologists and other social scientists can be useful in helping different groups of people recognize that not everything is cut-and-dry, black-and-white. Instead, every question and every goal have their own subtle and specific points that need to be addressed respectfully, thoughtfully, and competently.
By C.N. Le
In recent months there has been a notable increase in the number and size of raids against illegal immigrants and the businesses that employ them. The Department of Homeland Security, home of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, (or ICE, formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service) has now shifted their emphasis from stopping illegal immigrants as they cross the border to rounding them up and arresting them at their workplaces.
I can understand the need to enforce existing laws against hiring illegal immigrants, although I think there are better ways to address the larger issue of reducing illegal immigration. However, many people fail to realize that families are being torn apart and their lives are being put at risk as a result of such raids. The New York Times reports of babies being ripped from their 
mothers’ arms and separated indefinitely, as was the case of a Honduran family in Ohio:
Ms. Umanzor had been at home with two of her three children, both American citizens, when the immigration agents arrived, along with a county police officer. . . As the agents searched, Ms. Umanzor breast-fed her jittery baby, she recalled in an interview after her release.
She was forced to leave both Brittney and her other American daughter, Alexandra, who is 3, since the agents could not detain them. “Just thinking that I was going to leave my little girl, I began to feel sick,” Ms. Umanzor said of the baby. “I had a pain in my heart.”
In jail and unable to nurse, Ms. Umanzor’s breasts become painfully engorged. With the help of Veronica Dahlberg, director of a Hispanic women’s group in Ashtabula County, a breast pump was delivered on her third day in jail. Brittney, meanwhile, did not eat for three days, refusing to take formula from a bottle, Ms. Dahlberg said. After four days, the county released all six children to Ms. Umanzor’s sister, who managed to wean Brittney to a bottle.
On Nov. 7, after two dozen women’s health advocates and researchers sent a letter protesting Ms. Umanzor’s detention, Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for ICE, issued a memorandum instructing field officers “to exercise discretion” during arrests by releasing nursing mothers from detention unless they presented a national security or public safety risk.
In a study released this month, La Raza, a national Hispanic organization, and the Urban Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan research organization, examined three factory raids in the past year, in Greeley, Colorado, Grand Island, Nebraska; and New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The study found that . . . many families hid for days or longer in their homes, sometimes retreating to basements. Although many children showed symptoms of emotional distress, family members were reluctant to seek public assistance for them, even if the children were citizens, fearing new arrests of relatives who were illegal immigrants.
As the article also notes, federal immigration officials and opponents of illegal immigration argue that while their goal is not to victimize children. They contend that illegal immigrant parents are responsible for putting their children in these dangerous and emotionally upsetting situations,.
Unfortunately, this kind of reasoning is a textbook example of what sociologists call "blaming the victim."
Yes, it’s true---that because these parents came into the U.S. without authorization, they are here illegally. But as scholars and other informed observers will tell you, the vast majority of border-crossers come here not because they want to sponge off the welfare system or steal a middle-class job, but because they want to try to earn a decent living by working in jobs that most Americans will not take.
In other words, illegal immigrants come here to work. Once they are inside the U.S., data also show that the vast majority of them obey the laws and pay 
taxes -- sales taxes, property taxes, and even federal and state income taxes that are estimated to contribute $60 billion a year to Social Security funds. It's also worth noting that because illegal immigrants often use fake Social Security numbers, FICA taxes get taken out but those retirement benefits will most likely never go to the illegal immigrants who paid into the system.
More often than not, the presence of illegal immigrants actually results in net benefits to American society. And how do we as a society treat them as a result? By vilifying, demonizing, and dehumanizing them. And by literally tearing families apart and needlessly putting lives at risk.
As the article notes, even the Department of Homeland Security has come to its senses, recognized the inherent brutality and inhumanity in their actions, and reevaluated its tactic of separating mothers from their young children.
I'm not a legal scholar, but I might describe what happened to families like the 
Umanzors as cruel and unusual punishment, perhaps even torture.
There must be a better way to address the problems associated with illegal immigration than to treat them like animals.
That better way is to enact comprehensive immigration reform that addresses the issue on all levels -- stricter enforcement of laws against knowingly hiring illegal workers, creating some legal arrangement to allow temporary workers to come and work in the U.S., giving law-abiding illegal immigrants the opportunity to become citizens and continue their contributions to American society, and efforts to strengthen foreign economies to reduce the push factors that drive many to leave for the U.S., to name just a few.
But to focus the brunt of our country's resources on forcibly separating families and exacting incalculable human costs and suffering is nothing short of barbarism.
By Karen Sternheimer
American corporations are under siege. They are facing a new threat, a threat they are only marginally prepared for.
The falling value of the dollar? Globalization? Global warming?
Not quite. 
According to a November 11th 60 Minutes report, American companies just don’t know how to tame their new young employees. The “millennial” generation, defined as people born between 1980 and 1995, are allegedly too self-centered, too narcissistic, and too fragile to be managed using traditional techniques. Told by their parents that they are special, they need extra coddling and fun in order to do their jobs. Otherwise, they will just quit, according to the people correspondent Morley Safer interviewed.
Aside from overly supportive parents, the other alleged culprit, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, is PBS’s Mister Rogers. You remember him, the guy that told children in a calm, gentle voice that they are special? Actually, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood first aired in 1968, long before the “Millinnials” were born (and very likely viewed by many Millinnials’ parents). 
The notion that young people are uniquely selfish is an old one. As I wrote in my last post, disdain for young people is widespread and dates back to (at least) ancient Greece. And as I discuss in my book Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions About Today’s Youth, adults also thought that young people in the early 1930s and 1940s were too self-centered, too consumed by swing music to care about anything but their own happiness. Famed writer Pearl S. Buck wrote in Harper's magazine in 1935 that young people were “completely selfish” and would never fight for anything they believed in. Of course they soon did, and due largely to Tom Brokaw's book we now often refer to them as the Greatest Generation, thanks to their service in World War II.
Let’s consider some realities of life for young people today before we conclude that they are too narcissistic to work without constant stroking:
1. Many American kids grow up in poverty
Poverty rates have been gradually rising in the United States in recent years,
and a significant number of people in poverty are under eighteen—currently 17 percent—live at or below the official poverty level. Rather than worrying about a large number of kids being self-centered, we might want to refocus our energy onto these young people. We have much higher child poverty rates than many other industrialized nations; instead of focusing on them, we tend to think of kids as spoiled and overindulged. This way we can avoid the reality that many young people have too little, not too much.
We ignore young people in poverty by focusing almost exclusively on the middle class, a group that is increasingly shrinking. According to the 60 Minutes report, “Today, fewer and fewer middle class kids hold summer jobs because mowing lawns does not get you into Harvard.” Just as not all kids are middle or upper class, not all will go to college—and it’s those who have earned a college or graduate degree that the people that the corporations featured in the segment are likely to hire. The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that 66 percent of the class of 2006 entered college; although not all will graduate. As recently as the 2000 Census, only 16 percent of Americans 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree.
2. Young people traditionally have significantly higher unemployment rates
According to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, in the third quarter of 2007 approximately 7,142,000 Americans sixteen and over were unemployed (this is based on the number seeking employment). Of that number, 1,302,000 are between 20 and 24; that means nearly a quarter of those unemployed are young adults. As the graph below from the Bureau of Labor Statistics details (unfortunately only featuring men), younger workers have historically had higher unemployment rates--often double or higher than their older counterparts.
In spite of the assertion that if young workers are not coddled “they will walk,” as a corporate consultant told 60 Minutes, jobs are not as plentiful for entry-level workers as the piece made it seem. Combine job insecurity with low wages, as well as fewer (if any) benefits, and you have a recipe for high turnover. In today’s job climate, many companies layoff workers frequently, outsource workers overseas, and reclassify former full-time workers as independent contractors. As a result, workers of all ages have less incentive to be loyal to one company, especially early in their careers. By focusing on young workers as self-centered, narcissistic, and spoiled, we are encouraged to overlook the broader economic conditions and blame individuals.
The 60 Minutes segment also noted that many young people in their twenties continue to live with their parents. Actually, this is not a new trend at all; previous generations were likely to live with their parents until (and even sometimes after) they married.
Rather than concluding that today’s young people are being spoiled by mom and dad and unwilling to care for themselves, 
shouldn’t we consider the cost of housing in major cities like New York (where much of the 60 Minutes piece seems to have been shot). In 2005, the average rent in New York was $2,400; it was $1,573 in San Francisco, and $1,421 in Los Angeles. A year’s rent of the average-priced New York apartment alone would then be close to $30,000. When you consider those astronomical costs, living with parents in these cities seems more of a sign of financial responsibility than immaturity.
3. Millinnials are on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan
Perhaps the most important oversight of the segment—on Veteran’s Day, no less—is that it neglected to even mention the thousands of young men and women wearing our country’s uniform overseas right now. Young people in the military do not have the option to just “walk” when not coddled or if their self-esteem is threatened. In fact, stop-loss measures make it so that young people in the military are serving for longer periods than they signed up for.
As of this writing, nearly four thousand U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and many more thousands have been injured. As is often the case, most casualties of war are young people, many of whom are returning with the loss of a limb, a traumatic brain injury, and/or psychological trauma. To ignore their service and sacrifice says more about the shortsightedness of their elders than young people today. Their elders are the ones who wage war, and they are also able to benefit from claims that young people are spoiled and narcissistic.
Older people can become expert consultants on this so-called trend. They can (apparently) get corporations to pay them to run seminars. They may even get to be on TV. And we all lose by mischaracterizing an entire generation and failing to understand realities of America's young people.
By Karen Sternheimer
Do you hate kids? Okay, maybe not you, but do you know someone who does?
When I was about eight years old, I lived next door to 
an older couple who was very friendly with my parents, stopping to chat with them whenever they saw each other. The lady would occasionally make cookies for us and share the recipe with my mother.
So when my Girl Scout troop had its annual cookie sale, I thought they would be my first customers. My mother allowed me to go to their door by myself, since they were trusted neighbors. I rang the bell, and very clearly heard the man say, “Go away!”
A bit confused, I stood there for a moment. Maybe he didn’t realize it was me. “Get lost, kid!” He yelled.
And so I did. Dejected, I wondered why he would be so mean to me. What did I do wrong?
I told my parents how he yelled at me, and apparently they mentioned it to the neighbors, because one day, the lady told me that they really didn’t like children. “We are all kidded out,” she said, trying to explain that after years of ![clip_image002[2]_thumb_thumb_thumb](http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/WindowsLiveWriter/clip_image002%5B2%5D_thumb_thumb_thumb.jpg)
raising their own and having throngs of grandchildren (now all out of state), they just didn’t want to be near children. She said it rather politely, as I recall, making it seem almost reasonable. But it still hurt. After all, I was more than just a “child,” I was me!
Imagine if they would have said, “no offense, but we just don’t like [insert your ethnic group here].” I suppose people do say things like that, but somehow not liking children is considered a bit more acceptable. Or at least complaining about kids is.
There’s even a website for people to vent their anger towards young people. It features clips like this one of people explaining why they can't stand kids.
As I wrote about in my book, Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions About Today's Youth, disdain for young people is by no means new. The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates complained that kids were less obedient, more 
disrespectful and ill-mannered than in his day. In Robert and Helen Lynd’s classic 1929 study of “Middletown”, people complained about girls dressing immodestly and twelve-year-olds acting like adults. The more things change, the more we complain about kids.
You might have experienced this yourself. Have you ever been treated as if you were a public nuisance, or had your ideas dismissed as naïve and unimportant, or just brushed aside because of your age?
Age discrimination is an interesting thing, especially when it affects young people. Unlike racial, ethnic, or gender discrimination, people who have prejudices against kids have all been in their social position before. They have, to borrow a cliché, walked in their shoes. So much of our ideas about diversity are based on the premise that if only we can see how the “other” is really a lot like “us” we would be less likely to discriminate against them. But in the case of kids, we were all “them” once, right?
That’s where the anger lies. Older people sometimes argue that they were never like kids are today. “Today kids are ruder, more violent, and promiscuous,” some argue. “After all,” the angry elders continue, “look at all the foul language on television. That wasn’t there before. And porn is all over the movies and the Internet, so of course kids just figure sex is like a handshake,” many reason.
But they’re wrong. Social science data tells us that in fact kids are less violent, less promiscuous, and less likely to use drugs and alcohol than their predecessors were.
At the same time, kids today are more likely to live in poverty. They are coming of age at a time when the gap between the richest and poorest is increasing, and costs of college are soaring. Yet many people also claim that kids are self-centered and materialistic. And when young people do try and get involved politically, they are often considered naïve or troublemakers.
Consider the case of Brett McClafferty of Streetsboro, Ohio. At eighteen he ran for mayor, which one could interpret as a sign of interest in public service—something that his elders might commend, right?
Not exactly. In fact, although McClafferty lost, to prevent any other young people from thinking that they should get involved, the city is trying to pass a ![clip_image002[3]](http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/WindowsLiveWriter/clip_image002%5B3%5D.jpg)
law making the minimum age for mayor 23.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, some of the locals felt that McClafferty wasn’t experienced enough to be mayor; one 37-year-old said that he knew that when he was eighteen he couldn’t have been mayor, so McClafferty apparently couldn’t either. Of course, in a democracy people are entitled to choose candidates that they think will best serve the public’s interest. But by focusing on some adults as a disqualifying factor raises important questions. After all, it is the youngest adults who are asked to sacrifice their lives for us during wartime.
Another claimed that “Six months before he ran, he didn’t even know where the City Council meeting room was,” a charge that might apply to many new candidates. But being a political “outsider” is not always a bad thing. In fact, allegations of “insider” corruption motivated McClafferty to run in the first place. One official pled guilty to mail fraud and income tax charges and was ![MPj04074820000[1]](http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/WindowsLiveWriter/MPj04074820000%5B1%5D.jpg)
sentenced to thirty months in prison. The former congressional representative from the district, James A. Traficant Jr., is currently in prison for racketeering and taking bribes. McClaffery told the Times, “I thought I could do better.”
But due to the persistence of age discrimination, we might never know if young people would make better leaders than their elders. That is, until they become older themselves and rage against kids of the next generation.
By Janis Prince Inniss
When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I reeled for a moment and then took her lead and focused on her healing. My husband and I invited her to stay with us after the surgery to remove the malignant tumor. A relative reminded me that attempting to do all of the care taking myself would be emotionally and physically costly, so I got information about the kinds of assistance available and the attendant costs. I was ready!
I thought that while she was in the hospital, I would visit Mum and that would be the ”easy part”—for me. When she came 
home, I would hire an aide to care for her while I went to work and we would excitedly share our days when I came home: She would tell me about the progress she had made, and I would tell her about the world “out there”.
Clearly, I was operating under the impression that the primary role of the sick person is to be taken care of and get well. Sociologist Talcott Parsons defined the sick person’s role this way:
1. Sick people are absolved of blame for their illness.
2. Sick people are excused from “normal” social responsibilities, for example, being responsible for their own care.
3. Under the direction of medical personnel, the sick person does her part to regain her health (following recommendations regarding diet, exercise, and medications, for example).
The staff at the hospital where my mother’s surgery was performed must not have read Parsons, though. Many did not behave as though they were responsible for her care. The experiences my mother and I had at the hospital showed me that some people rigidly adhere to their defined roles no matter what the circumstan
