Everyday Sociology Blog

Drawing Lines in the Sand for Interracial Dating

By Janis Prince Inniss

Boy and girl meet. Boy and girl decide to wed. Boy (Terence McKay) and girl (Beth Humphrey) decide to marry. Girl calls justice of the peace to arrange for them to seal the deal.

And that’s when what may be a fairy tale romance came to a screeching halt: The justice of the peace was Keith Bardwell who refused to marry the pair because McKay is black and Humphrey is white. Bardwell said his refusal to marry the pair was not due to racism, but because of his concerns for children that the union might provide According to Bardwell, neither group accepts such children.

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Boy and girl did marry, but no thanks to Justice Bardwell.

What do you think of the justice of the peace’s decision? Even if we agree with Bardwell, how would we decide who should get married? I take it that this justice of the peace would not have married President Barack Obama’s parents: The president’s mother was S. Ann Dunham, a white woman from the American Midwest, while his father was a black Kenyan, Barack Obama Sr. (Click here to have a look at some of the President’s family tree in pictures.)

The president self-identifies as African American and to most of us probably “looks” black, so I take it that if President Obama showed up at this justice of the peace’s with a woman who was the same color his mother was, the justice of the peace would refuse to perform such a marriage.

But what about Malia and Sasha Obama, the daughters of the President and his wife? Only looking at their recent paternal genealogy, we know that one of their grandparents and two of their great-grandparents were white. What if one or even both of the Dunhams was really “passing” for white?

Hmm, to simplify our thinking, let’s put aside the idea that one or both was really of mixed race. So going ahead with the idea that their paternal great-grandparents were white, would a prohibition against interracial marriage mean that neither girl should marry a white person?

Now factor in their maternal ancestry. The New York Times recently published a family tree of First Lady Michelle Obama. Included among the First Lady’s ancestors are Dolphus T. Shields, Michelle Obama’s great-great grandfather whose mother was an enslaved African. Perhaps that’s not surprising given that Michelle Obama is African American. However, Mr. Shields’ father was white!

And how would the “American Indian” strands of the First Lady’s ancestry that the The York Times mentions factor in to the equation? Exactly how much ”white blood” would the younger Obamas need to have to marry someone white?

Going back to the case of boy and girl being asked to wed elsewhere by the justice of the peace in Louisiana, a look at the video of the groom being interviewed about this dust-up suggests to me that the new husband, McKay, is “mixed”. (Given our tangled ancestries, such terms really should have “recently” as a prefix.) Suppose McKay has white ancestors, how recent would they need to be for his marriage to Humphrey not to be considered interracial and therefore problematic?

President Obama once would have been considered mulatto (of one white and one black parent) —a term formerly employed by the U.S. Census Bureau. In fact, in 1890 the Census Bureau tried to be more specific by adding the terms quadroon (one-fourth black blood) and octoroon (one eight black blood) to mulatto and black.

What ”portion” black are Malia and Sasha? Are you dizzy with the amount of math this way of thinking requires? More dizzying to me is that all of these terms and prohibitions (such as those from the justice of the peace) suggest that we know who is “fully” white or black or whichever race. In the context of trading enslaved Africans, the desire and need to “measure” black blood makes sense, at least economically and politically.

But given that we often don’t have to look very far to find “race mixing” in America, how can we make even attempt to regulate such unions? (Have you heard of Strom Thurmond? Thurmond was the longest serving Senator in U.S. history at the time of his death in 2003. He vehemently opposed Civil Rights but after his death, the daughter he had with a black woman revealed he was her father.)

As you might imagine, the Louisiana case has attracted lots of attention, including a call by the state’s Governor for Bardwell’s removal. Interracial marriage has long controversial, enough so to gain a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court: In the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, the Court struck down state laws against interracial marriage. The ruling reads in part: “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state." Just as well…unless you have a bright idea of how we could, with great efficiency and clarity, actually define someone’s race. This case and others like it highlight that race is not as clear-cut of a concept as many of us might think. While we often view race as a biological construct, it is a social construct that we constantly struggle to define and make meaning of, often with serious consequences.

Institutional Review Boards: Why Do We Need Them?

By Janis Prince Inniss

So you’ve been reading about various sociological theories and ideas. And about some sociological studies. But have you given any thought to some of the ethical issues sociologists might face as we conduct research? Have you learned anything about the issues that we face in dealing with human subjects?

Much of the research that I have conducted has involved interviews and other qualitative methods. And I have found that people love to talk when they’re being listened to. Think about it, how many people in your life really listen to you? And pay you to tell your story?

This means that sometimes I learn intimate details about people’s lives. One such example is a study I worked on to identify strategies to improve the mental health care of children in the child welfare system. Our goal with this research project was to identify individual, family, and systems-level factors and circumstances that impact the psychotropic medications and services that children in the child welfare system receive. To conduct the study we used a mixed-methods approach that included analyses of some Medicaid databases and in-depth case studies of children in the child welfare system who received mental health care.

Of course, the Medicaid database had lots of billing information, which is not the kind of information any of us would want displayed publicly if it were ours. The database has the type of services children received, their mental health diagnosis, date of birth, dates and length of service, sex, and race among other variables. Because I was working on the qualitative aspect of the study, I saw none of this raw data; someone else on the research team who was conducting the quantitative analyses and whose computer met extensive university-set security standards was allowed access to the data and would give the results to the rest of the research team.

The case studies included a small sample of children, reviews of their child welfare charts, and interviews with the children and their families, child welfare workers, and other service providers. As we reviewed the charts, we learned very personal details about these children and their families. Because the focus of the study was children in the child welfare system, all of these children had been removed from their homes because of allegations of neglect and/or abuse.

Their charts (oftentimes boxes and boxes of documents pertain to one child because of the length of time they remain in the system) chronicle police reports, child protection investigations, assessments, treatment plans, and home visits by child welfare workers. And of course, during the course of the interviews we learned more about these families –and given our focus on mental health care, we learned about psychotropic medications—exactly what was being taken, for how long, with what results, as well as other mental health care.

What if in this post, I told you about one of the youth in this study? What if I decided to give you a child’s name and told you about the abuse that child suffered and the remedies taken? What if I did that to help you understand how to treat the same condition? Would that be ethical?

Have you heard of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)? Universities and other research institutions have them to ensure that research is conducted in an ethnical manner. There have been some atrocities committed in the name of research. The syphilis study at Tuskegee Institute began in 1932 and allowed African American men to die from syphilis more than 20 years after researchers knew that there was a cure for this disease; these study participants had been mislead about the true nature of the study. Perhaps you have learned about sociologist Laud Humphreys’ book Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Humphreys 1960s ethnographic research on anonymous sex acts between men in public bathrooms is often noted as unethical because his “subjects” had no idea that he was conducting research as he acted as a lookout for them.

Given that these men were in public spaces, would you argue that Humphreys’ description of their behavior was ethnical? What about the fact that later, in disguise, he went to their homes? How did he know where they lived? He noted license numbers of some of their cars and with the aid of an accomplice (a friend who worked at the Department of Motor Vehicles) learned about their family lives.

Today, research participants are protected by IRBs. Researchers must undergo IRB training and take refresher courses annually. And before we can conduct any research, we must apply to our university IRB. The application includes a description of the study and explains in detail what we want to do with participants. The IRB has to have full knowledge of each proposed study: how many participants will there be, of what ages, how will they be contacted, for how much time will they be involvement, will deception be used, how much they would be paid. Risks and benefits of participant involvement must be detailed and if special populations are involved the stakes are even higher. (Can you think of why prisoners, children, and pregnant women might be considered special populations and subject to additional oversight by review boards?)

With all of this information, the IRB decides whether a study can be implemented as proposed. As you read about sociological studies, think about the ethical considerations that researchers must consider and take to IRBs.

Knowledge Matters

By Janis Prince Inniss

On September 8, 2009, President Obama gave a back-to-school speech described by the White House as inspirational and pro-education to elementary, middle, and high school children in the U.S. Even before the speech there were reports of parents who thought this was inappropriate. (President Obama is not the first U.S. president to hold such an address; President George H. W. Bush did so in 1991 and President Ronald Reagan talked politics with students in 1988.)

Some parents worried that the president’s speech would be political, and that it was a way to reach parents through their children. Other parents complained that they were not notified about the event before-hand and asked to give consent via a permission slip as they do with activities such as watching R-rated movies. In response to parental complaints, some school districts allowed parents to opt-out and have their children take part in a different activity while other upset parents kept their children at home.

Some of the furor about President Obama’s speech may have been related to an assignment created by the Education Department to have students write essays to say how they could help the president. When some critics of the president protested that the assignment was too partisan, the lesson plan was revised to ask students to write about how they can achieve their short and long-term goals.

Recently, Former President Carter said “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man”. (The former president was responding to Rep. Wilson’s outburst during the President’s speech to Congress.) Whether President Carter is correct and whether the president’s race is related to the fears parents expressed about him addressing their children is a debate I’ll leave for another time.

The furor over the President’s address does raise the question of what constitutes information that should be central to our education. What should you be learning? Have you ever thought about who decides what you learn? Clearly your teacher does. But what influences your teacher to make the choices he or she does in selecting class materials?

There are the so-called three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are considered the basics, seen as fundamental to other knowledge acquisition. Do you agree that these are fundamental? What about all the other subjects taught in school? I took a music appreciation class as a college freshman. The class was designed to give me an appreciation of classical music. Who decides what classical music is? Turns out that we only studied classical European music (two words that tend to go together—classical and European), but should music from other areas of the world have been included in such a class?

What about in your English literature classes? In my overview American literature course, we read from an anthology that is more than 2500 pages thick. (Yes, I still have the book and just checked!) Given the racial/ethnic make-up of America, should such a course include non-white authors? (About four African Americans are included in the edition we used.) Who makes decisions about what is considered classical literature and decides what books you should read?

A 16 year-old International Baccalaureate (IB) student in Florida objected to passages in the highly regarded book The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, a book on the list of the prestigious IB English class curriculum. The student objects to sexually graphic content in the Haruki Murakmi novel and has been allowed to select an alternate book. Have you or your parents ever objected to any material that you were being taught? On what grounds? How likely do you think it is that you would be able change the information you are responsible for knowing in any of your classes?

While most of us now take education for granted, schooling is a relatively recent phenomenon—its modern form was developed in the early nineteenth century. This change was related to industrialization which created a need for an educated workforce. In the modern era, job opportunities have increased with education; today higher education is associated with increased income and less likelihood of unemployment (see chart in previous post). Is this how what is taught is decided—based on the kinds of information that are likely to keep us employed?

If you think about some of the more recent changes to curricula it seems that what is “worth knowing” changes. For example, after the civil rights movement and student activism, fundamental changes were made that resulted in the inclusion of more information on people of color and the creation of ethnic study departments on several university campuses. As you may recall from an earlier posting, standpoint theory suggests that even what we know depends on our affiliations. And is all knowledge ”equal”? Do you think there is an objective way to decide what knowledge matters?

What Does War Cost?

By Janis Prince Inniss

(Spoiler alert: In this post, I describe important plot lines of the movie In the Valley of Elah as well as some grisly details of a homicide.)

Recently, I saw the film In the Valley of Elah. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, the film tells the story of a retired Vietnam veteran named Hank (Jones) who is informed that his son Mike is absent without leave (AWOL) having just returned from a deployment to Iraq. Finding this to be out of character for his son, Hank quickly heads from his home in Tennessee to his son’s base in New Mexico to investigate. Because he was a military police officer, Hank spots a number of holes in the stories he is told about his son who has apparently vanished.

When police find Mike’s body dismembered and burned in a field, there is the usual silence and stonewalling from various military officials . How did this happen? Who would have done such a thing? Was Mike a drug dealer? What might Mike have been involved with that might explain his death? What happened to him in Iraq? Hank finds Mike’s cell phone and with the help of a technician is able to look at some of the video on the phone. The videos on the phone are jarring to say the least but they provide a lens by which Hank—and movie goers—see some of the grim reality that Mike experienced before his death.

Hank realizes that Mike’s buddies in his military unit are lying about their last night together, but Hank knows that this does not suggest their guilt because soldiers do not kill each other. Or do they? The truth is that Mike’s comrades murdered him and then lied about that night, the night after they all returned from Iraq.

Initially, I was surprised to learn that this film was based on the real life murder of Army veteran Specialist Richard T. Davis in 2003. As in the movie, Davis was reported AWOL to his retired veteran father who then investigated his son’s disappearance. One night after returning from Iraq, Davis and some other soldiers went out; they drank and fought and one of the soldiers stabbed Davis (Alberto Martinez) at least 33 times. The soldiers then bought lighter fluid, returned to the crime scene, lit Davis’ body on fire and then buried it in the woods.
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How is this possible? Why would soldiers “on the same team” commit such a heinous act on one of their own? Martinez’s defense lawyer says the solider was delusional at the time of the killing. Another is said to have been experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during this time. Recent research on the issue indicates that 37% of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have sought care at VA medical centers were diagnosed with mental health problems—primarily PTSD and depression and another 10% have alcohol and drug use disorders. A RAND study of veterans found that 14 percent screened positive for PTSD and the same number screened positive for depression, rates higher than found in the general U.S. population (3.5% and 7.0% respectively). Further, RAND extrapolates that if these rates hold for all military deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan , 300,000 people are experiencing depression and PTSD.

As alarming are the numbers of suicides by U.S. soldiers which have skyrocketed since the start of the Iraq war to more than 2,100 attempts in 2007 compared to 350 in 2002, the year before the war began. The New York Daily News headline “More soldiers committed suicide in January than killed by Al Qaeda” highlights the fact that the suicide rate in the Army is the highest it has been in 30 years—143 in 2008. The other leading concerns discussed—PTSD, depression, and drug use—might both be related to these suicides as returning soldiers find their relationships unraveling as they struggle with untreated, maybe undiagnosed mental health problems. They turn to drugs and alcohol for comfort and some finally commit suicide. (Thirty-one year old veteran Josh Barber’s suicide illustrates some of these complex relationships among these factors.)

You may recall that I was initially surprised to learn that In the Valley of Elah was based on a real homicide. Although I found the answer to the “whodunit” in the movie shocking and continue to be distressed by the crime, as a mental health professional and sociologist I have often worried and wondered about the impact of war on soldiers. (This is distinct from issues related to the impact of war on civilians in war-torn countries.) How do soldiers train for and act on that training to destroy others but reintegrate into a peaceful society? What do we owe veterans as they grapple with these experiences? Are these questions related to ideology? In other words, are those “for” either war more or less concerned with these questions than those “against” them?

Surely you’ve heard various dollar figure costs of the war in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan. But what about the psychological toll experienced by soldiers? How do we measure those costs? What other psychological and sociological costs do you think wars create?

Who is Watching You? Surveillance in Society

By Janis Prince Inniss

On the way home from a beach getaway, my husband and I stopped at a national big box chain. I bought about three items including a t-shirt. Later that evening as I moved the shopping bag from that store I noticed that the t-shirt was not in it. My husband had not unpacked the bag and I could not find the t-shirt anywhere. We both recalled that the cashier said that she would put everything into one bag so there was no point in looking for another shopping bag.

Sure that the cashier must have forgotten to include the t-shirt, I called the store. A customer service representative checked to find out whether a ”sweep” of paid for but forgotten items included my t-shirt but that was not the case. When I balked at returning to that location—an hour away from my home—to claim the t-shirt once they found it, I was turned over to another representative. This time, upon request, I gave the representative a number on my receipt and she promised to call after reviewing “the video”. I had no idea there was video that might help resolve this. I know that many stores have video cameras now but I thought they yielded a more panoramic picture, aimed at catching shoplifters.

Within half an hour the representative called back to let me know that upon viewing the video, she saw me pay for the items, and heard the cashier say that she would put them all into one bag. The representative said she saw the cashier put all of the items, including my t-shirt into the bag! None of this explained what had become of my purchase but I was stunned to learn that I had been videotaped so closely and that there was audio. When did I give permission to be on this store’s video? How long will the store keep my image? And can I pop in, give them the number on my receipt, and view it?

The proliferation of security cameras is not confined to stores. Cities like Tampa and London have experimented with recording citizens in public spaces to aid security. In 2001, Tampa police installed 36 video cameras in its nightlife district (Ybor City) to help them find missing children and wanted felons, after using video cameras to support their security efforts for that year’s Super Bowl held in the city. There were signs in Ybor City warning people that the area was under video monitoring but the American Civil Liberties Union described this as akin to being in an (electronic) line-up without knowing it. There were protests against this so-called “face recognition surveillance” in Tampa and after two years the program was dropped—but not before the system falsely identified at least one man as being “wanted”.

When a 57-year old Tampa woman disappeared I sympathized with her and her family. Her son had found her apartment unlocked, but with her belongings intact. Police announced that the woman had bought a bus ticket under an alias and I began to suspect that this was not a typical missing persons case. Soon enough on the news I saw surveillance video of the woman taking the bus from the area of her apartment. And then there was surveillance video of her arriving by bus in Tallahassee. Eventually, according to her family, she called and said she was in Georgia. I have no idea why this woman may have done this, but without warrants for her arrest, apparently she was breaking no laws. Yet, she was being tracked—like all the rest of us in many public spaces that now have surveillance cameras.

On several occasions, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that we do not have reasonable expectation of privacy when we are in public. In private, the court recognizes our expectation of privacy. Outside of the legal arena, where should the lines between public and private lie? Do the needs of society—for crime reduction, for example—outweigh our individual need and desire for privacy? And should it matter that some research shows that video surveillance has no impact on crime? Who should be able to videotape whom in a public space? Now that many cell phones include the video recording feature will our notions of public versus private change? And given that camera operators have been found to focus disproportionately on people of color, and use cameras in a voyeuristic manner when looking at women (the operators are mostly male) are these questions only of concern for segments of the society?

I always feel like somebody's watchin' me
And I have no privacy
I always feel like somebody's watchin' me
Is it just a dream?

This is the chorus of the 1984 hit “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell (with background vocals by Michael Jackson and Jermaine Jackson). In the 1980s that sounded like a paranoid refrain (or based on the video, a paranormal experience) but may be closer to reality today as you shop, attend a football game, or even run away from home.

Professor Gates and the Thin Blue Line

By Janis Prince Inniss

On July 16, Harvard Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates was arrested. The disorderly conduct charges filed that day were later dropped. Seems that Dr. Gates had just returned from a trip to China and could not get his front door opened, so he asked his driver to help him force the door in.

A neighbor saw the two men and called the police to report a possible burglary. Now that recordings have been released from the 911 call, we have learned that the caller was nudged into calling by another woman who saw the men and was concerned. We’ve also learned the 911 caller did not say that two black men were breaking into the home as early news stories and the police report indicated. In fact, the caller did not mention the race of the possible burglars; race was brought up by the person taking the call with the following question: “Are they white, black, or Hispanic?” (Notably, Asian was not offered as an option in a city where they comprise 12 percent of the population.) The caller responded to that question by saying, “One looked kind of Hispanic but I’m not really sure.”

Cambridge police responded to the call and Sergeant James Crowley entered the residence where Prof. Gates showed him identification, proving that he was in his own home. These basic details don’t appear to be in dispute, but the stories diverge among the principals regarding the interaction between Sgt. Crowley and the professor. Prof. Gates claims that Sgt. Crowley refused his repeated requests for Crowley’s name and badge number while Sgt. Crowley alleges that Prof. Gates became increasingly belligerent, even talking about his Momma—and not in a good way! Eventually, Prof. Gates stepped outside of his home where he was placed in hand-cuffs. According to Sgt. Crowley, Prof. Gates was arrested because of his “tumultuous” behavior; the professor argues that his arrest was racially motivated.

In terms of race in America, much about the case is fascinating. The 58 year-old professor is a renowned scholar on African and African American studies and PBS documentarian. Sgt. Crowely, with more than a decade on the police force, has taught other police officers how to avoid racial profiling for five years. And of interest has been the response to the incident. Mostly, people have responded as expected: Blacks and liberals lined up in support of Prof. Gates and whites and conservatives supported Sgt. Crowley. Prof. Gates has spoken to major news outlets but also to African American ones (Gates started a website featuring commentary from “black perspectives”, The Root in 2008). Sgt. Crowley has talked with major news outlets (Boston Herald) but had his first interview with two white (apparently conservative) radio hosts. A discussion about the encounter on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” highlights some of the peculiarities of public discussions about race in the U.S. The discussants were Mika Brzezinski, Mike Barnicle, Harold Ford Jr., Carlos Watson, Willie Geist, and Andrea Mitchell. (Ford and Watson are identified as African American, while the others are White.)

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Speaking of President Obama’s response to the story, Mitchell said to Mika Brzezinski:

He comes with his own history. He went to Harvard. He knows “Skip” Gates. He is an African American man. And I think that people approach this story based on their own life experiences. And that he has either had experiences or understands and empathizes with people – people of color …who have had the experience…and he can understand this in a way perhaps that either you or I can’t.

Watson argued that regardless of what Gates said, given his age and his use of a walking cane that the interaction should not have ended with Gates being handcuffed by a 42 year-old cop who had been on the police force for some time – even if Gates was “loud and tumultuous as the report said”. Ford agreed and contended that regardless of race, once it was established that Prof. Gates was the home owner, there should have been no arrest.

Barnicle addressed Watson saying, “There is no way I can walk in your shoes! There is no way I can carry the weight of history... And all the evidence is on your side, Harold’s side about getting pulled over, Driving While Black and all that.” Barnicle explained that based on his thirty years of experience it was clear that Sgt. Crowley was responding to a report of a burglary in process, and, not knowing how many people were in the house, he did not want to go into the house. That’s why, he said, there was conflict as Prof. Gates refused to step outside.

Note that the Mitchell and Barnicle both underscore their inability to understand racial profiling, and in fact Brzezinski did as well. In the part of the show I saw, I did not hear Ford or Watson say that they are unable to understand the point of view of whites or police, but it’s possible that they did. But what is empathy if not the ability to understand another person’s feelings? And what hope is there for moving race discussions beyond the expected we are only able to empathize with those who look like us?

How much of this encounter is related to self-fulfilling prophesies surrounding racism and the police? As discussed in a previous post, and despite their training to the contrary, is it possible that both Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crowley were reacting to what they expected of each other?

Is Justice Truly Blind? Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Standpoint Perspective

By Janis Prince Inniss

President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was born to parents who emigrated from Puerto Rico and lived in a housing project in the Bronx. Judge Sotomayor became a summa cum laude Princeton graduate, alum of Yale Law School, and former editor of the Yale Law Journal. Judge Sotomayor has gained lots of publicity not because of her nomination alone, or the fact that she is the first Hispanic nominated to this position, (and, if confirmed, she would be only the third woman on the Supreme Court) but because of two other reasons.

First, in a 2001 speech she gave at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” Second, Judge Sotomayor was on a bench that upheld a lower court decision that allowed the city of New Haven, Connecticut to throw out promotion test results that seemed to favor white over minority firefighters. This ruling has been overturned.

Debate surrounding Judge Sotomayor’s nomination have highlighted two perspectives. One, that seems to be the view of the judge herself and the other encapsulated by the opening remarks of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions at the confirmation hearings. The first perspective can be examined by looking at Judge Sotomayor’s 2001 talk, responding to the notion that judges must “transcend” their “personal sympathies” in which she said:

I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases… I accept the thesis of a law school classmate, Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School, in his affirmative action book that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought. Thus, as noted by …Professor Judith Resnik … there is not a single voice of feminism, not a feminist approach but many who are exploring the possible ways of being that are distinct from those structured in a world dominated by the power and words of men.

That same point can be made with respect to people of color. No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice. I need not remind you that Justice Clarence Thomas represents a part but not the whole of African-American thought on many subjects. Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives - no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that—it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.

…Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women…

Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

A highly contrasting view is offered by Senator Sessions.

Note that Senator Sessions says:

I believe our legal system is at a dangerous crossroads. Down one path is the traditional American legal system, so admired around the world, where judges impartially apply the law to the facts without regard to their own personal views. This is the compassionate system because this is the fair system…Down the other path lies a Brave New World where words have no true meaning and judges are free to decide what facts they choose to see…I will not vote for—no senator should vote for—an individual nominated by any President who is not fully committed to fairness and impartiality towards every person who appears before them. I will not vote for—no senator should vote for—an individual nominated by any President who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices, or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court.

My personal and professional experiences tell me that although our race/class/gender may not define us—and that may be debatable—it’s hard to deny these do influence us. And that’s not only true for those of us who—like Judge Sotomayor—are of a “different” race/class/gender. What do you think? And what evidence do you have one way or another? Do you think that our backgrounds shape us? Influence us? What aspects of our life do you think continue to impact us, even as adults? Race? Class? Gender?

These are three of the “biggies” that sociologists study. In fact, studies related to gender and race and even academic departments devoted to studying these areas have given us a deep understanding about how race, gender, and class impact our lives. For example, there’s a 2001 study on hiring discrimination which shows that white men with felony convictions receive job offers ahead of black men without criminal histories. Research indicates that being black, male, and of low education and income is related to longer prison sentences. There is the discrepancy in crack/cocaine sentencing. The Judge Sotomayor’s hearings brought my attention to two studies that found that women on state supreme courts and on the appellate benches—more so than men on these courts—tend to uphold women’s claims in cases of sexual discrimination and defendants’ claims in search and seizure cases. Stated differently, men on these courts are less likely to uphold women’s claims in cases of sexual discrimination and defendants’ claims in search and seizure cases. I restated the findings of the studies to highlight that gender influenced male and female judges.

Africana Studies departments, Asian Studies Departments and Women’s Studies departments were at least in part created because these subjects are worthy of study and had historically been excluded from the academy. With the introduction of race, class, and gender studies social scientists started to pay more attention to the person of researchers: their race, class, and gender, for example. We thought about the ways in which what we know had been shaped by the race, class, and gender of those who brought us this knowledge. Does experiencing oppression, for example, provide its recipients with a particular vision? How about growing up with abundance or opulence? In her classic book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, sociologist Patricia Hill Collins talks about the “shared angle of vision” of black women. These ideas are relevant to standpoint theory—simply, the idea that what we see/know/attend to is influenced by our group membership.

In her confirmation hearing Judge Sotomayor responded to concern about her “wise Latina" comment:

She said:

I want to state up front, unequivocally and without doubt, I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences… I think the system is strengthened when judges don't assume they're impartial, but when judges test themselves to identify when their emotions are driving a result, or their experience are driving a result and the law is not.

Although Judge Sotomayor’s nomination hearings frame it that way, the central issue at hand is not whether one perspective advocates being impartial based on personal characteristics while the other promotes impartiality. One perspectives takes as a given that our personal background and perspective matters, while the other says it does not. 

What is Funny? The Sociology of Comedy

By Janis Prince Inniss

In what context is it okay to:

A. Give detailed – and I do mean detailed tips to women on performing oral sex?

B. Use the “n-word” so frequently that it seems to be used after every other word?

C. Talk about “essential” traits of black men, black women, black people?

D. Say that you hope someone’s kidneys fail?

E. Say that a young woman was “knocked up” at a baseball game?

At least with the examples of D. and E. you probably figured out that this is a list of things that comedians have said as those two have been widely discussed in the press. I heard the first three at stand-up comedy performances. Example A. was at a comedy club performance by Sheryl Underwood. The possibilities of who I am referring to in B. are many, but before his conversion away from the use of the word, it was true of Paul Mooney. White comedian Gary Owen seems to have built his career on the basis of C. (Owen says that he is married to a black woman and uses this as his entrée into the ways of blackfolk which he compares to those of whites.)

Listening to him, I am left with the impression that race is a biological determinant. In case you missed the event and the resulting dust-up, example D. refers to the 2009 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at which comedian Wanda Sykes said she hopes Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys fail. (Limbaugh had said that he hopes President Obama’s “liberalism” fails.) E. is an allusion to David Letterman's jokes about the daughter of Alaska governor, Sarah Palin.

How about pretending to be a health official and telling someone that they have “oaktreeitis” and that a tree will grow out of his navel? And that the condition could cause his death! I heard this prank telephone call on comedian Steve Harvey’s syndicated radio show recently. The call was made by his nephew (called Nephew Tommy) who excels at these calls and has done so many that they seem to have enough to play at least one per day. He told one man that his wife, Tina used to be his brother Tim! Nephew Tommy confirmed that Tina has a scar above her left hip and a birthmark on her shoulder and after some more details the man seemed to believe that Tina used to be Tim.

During one call, posing as an immigration officer, Nephew Tommy informed a Guyanese-born American citizen that she would be deported to Guyana, and that he would be keeping her U.S. born son. On another call, Nephew Tommy told a man that it had become apparent that Tommy and his wife were being treated by the same fertility specialist as the man and his wife. Tommy explained that he had just been notified that there was a mix-up: Tommy’s sperm had been used to artificially inseminate the man’s wife, instead of her husband’s. The husband was shocked and furious. And unbelievably, it was this man’s wife who arranged for the prank call to be made. In every one of the Nephew Tommy prank calls that I have heard people have become so upset that they curse at Nephew Tommy and their words are bleeped out on the air. The man with “oaktreeitis” started crying.

The whole gotcha branch of comedy has grown in recent years. Have you seen Punk’d? I have only see one or two episodes of this television show but the premise seems to be to put a celebrity in an upsetting situation with cameras rolling. I saw an episode in which former NBA player Magic Johnson’s vehicle was vandalized by a young woman who said that Johnson’s son had used her sexually. Funny, right?

Without the settings of comedy routine or comedy bits, many of these incidents would be considered rude, obscene, or even tasteless. Why are they acceptable because they’re funny, or meant to be that way? Is there any other avenue in our lives in which we are allowed to behave like this? Both Sykes’ and Letterman’s jokes drew tremendous responses from people saying they had gone too far, while others said they were simply funny.

But what is funny? And who decides what is funny? What if most of your friends and family think that something is funny and you don’t? Does that mean you are hypersensitive? Think about how context shapes what is and is not funny. Time is an important aspect of context. Compare old comedies with your current favorites. How has comedy changed over time? And how does the setting of a comedy club influence what we find funny? What if Sheryl Underwood undertook her instruction with the woman sitting next to her on a plane? With prank calls and shows, the victims are unaware of the comedy context, hence their distress and heightened comedy. What, if anything, do we learn about our society’s humor when it’s at someone’s expense? Is humor always at someone’s expense?

Losing Youth in Residential Placements

By Janis Prince Inniss

When I first learned of private youth residential facilities (sometimes known as boot camps), I was struck by how ”American” the concept is: pay lots of money to complete strangers to haul away your misbehaving child to parts unknown. I empathize with parents though. It’s the biggest, most important job and yet there are no manuals, licenses or standards to pass before we embark on this lifelong task.

So what’s a parent to do when they “just can’t handle their teen”? What to do with substance using youth and/or those with mental illnesses that may not even be diagnosed, after you’ve done it all? Attendance at boot camps, wilderness programs, and residential treatment facilities has increased dramatically over the last 20 years. Adolescents and youth with disruptive behaviors are more likely to be put in residential facilities and so are those with family problems.

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The tales of abuse suffered by teens at these facilities—particularly the private ones—are growing. Distraught parents realize that their children are not being helped and some suffer abuse, returning home in worse emotional pain than when they left, and many becoming suicidal or substance abusers as a result of their experiences. Youth can be sent to these facilities by their parents or by formal institutions like the juvenile court.

For instance, offending juveniles might be sent to to a boot camp as a punishment. Children in state custody (such as those under the care of child welfare) might be sent there because their behavior makes placing them with a family inappropriate. But with families willing to take in children in short supply, professionals in the child welfare system admit that children are often placed in residential facilities because there is no other placement available.

Take the case of Martin Lee Anderson (click here to see video) . Anderson was a 14-year-old honor student who was sent to a boot camp because he violated the probation he was sentenced to when he went for a "joy ride" in his grandmother’s car. When Anderson resisted orders from facility personnel, seven drill instructors (with a nurse looking on) used “standard law enforcement techniques” on him that led to his death. (In the video of the abuse, the seven are seen punching and kicking Anderson.)

Take a look at the web sites of some of these facilities; they’re easy enough to find but I won’t link to any of them without knowledge of their standards. You’ll see that they entice parents by appealing to their desire to do what is best for their children. (One translation: If you love your child enough, you’ll pay to send him/her here.) These residential facilities cost from about $30,000 to more than $70,000 per year! For parents who don’t have that much money lying around, they’ll help them get a loan!

Where are they located? All over the U.S., although there are also American owned and operated facilities outside of the county. You’ll see many “accreditation” seals on these web sites and glowing testimonials from parents and professionals. But how would a parent know whether the accrediting body is legitimate or whether the testimonials were supplied because the writers were paid?

What entities should monitor these facilities? Undoubtedly, some youth need stringent programs and there is evidence that some facilities do provide treatment for such children. But how can parents tell whether they are handing over their troubled youth to a good or bad program? How do state agencies ensure that children are not being placed in harm’s way?

The process of regulating residential facilities is mind boggling. Not only do the facilities differ by mission, size, administrative structure, and funding sources, but each state has its own rules, some of which are far more lax than others. A nationwide survey found that there’s usually some version of the following regulation measures: licensure and certification, critical incident reporting, complaint reviews, announced and unannounced visits, regulations governing selected characteristics, and accreditation. Adding to the chaos, in most states, more than one agency regulates these facilities. Many states never revoke licenses or deny renewals though, and some states offer licenses in perpetuity; what is the penalty for facility violations then? Even a child’s death or serious injury does not necessarily have to be reported in some states. After the death of a 14-year-old and because of other concerns, the Department of Children’s Services in Tennessee stopped placing children there. However the facility did not lose its license so children continued to be sent there from other states. Even when facilities meet regulatory standards, quality and appropriateness of placement are not addressed.

Where is the outrage when these facilities are built as when homeless shelters are proposed, for example? What should happen to the staff of these facilities when allegations of abuse are found to have merit? The staff involved with the Anderson tragedy was charged with manslaughter and gross negligence but found not guilty. What qualifications should facility staff hold? Interestingly, six of the seven drill instructors in the Anderson case were former military men. Should state and federal laws regulate these facilities? Restraints and isolation of youth are areas of most variability among states, yet you can imagine the kinds of torture that youth can endure with the inappropriate application of either. And finally, why don’t we have residential programs for parents to check themselves into that might help with their parenting skills?

What Constitutes a Good Death?

By Janis Prince Inniss

Recently, I received shocking news that a former colleague had died. In a testament to the use of technology in our lives today, her husband delivered this news by text message. I don’t quibble about his form of announcement because since he sent a text, he was able to send the link for a memorial website and provide other details that are more tedious to share by voice.

My colleague (whom I will call Jean) and I had worked together in Florida and although she had moved to another state a few years ago, we kept in touch with annual texts and occasional emails. Once when my husband and I were visiting in the city where they lived, my husband and I met Jean and her husband to socialize. In other words, I was a link—I think the only work related one—between Jean, her new city, and her former work life in Florida.

On the memorial website, I was able to look at a brief timeline of Jean’s life and read tributes to her. From the website, I also learned that she died less than two weeks shy of her 40^th birthday. I spent a couple days feeling dazed about Jean’s death and then it dawned on me that others of her Florida colleagues would want to know of her passing and more than likely I was the only one here who knew of this.

As I shared the sad news with Jean’s former colleagues in Florida, they all asked the same questions: What happened? How did she die? I wondered the same thing but that information was not in the text message from Jean’s husband. And when I spoke with him he did not volunteer any such information, only saying that Jean had been hospitalized for a couple weeks. I made the decision not to ask about the circumstances of Jean’s death because her husband sounded too grief-stricken to want to talk about it.

A few years ago, I learned of the death of another university colleague from a close friend of his. In telling me of someone I’ll call Mike’s death, she revealed that he had committed suicide. Published reports of Mike’s death said that he died of “undisclosed causes” and indicated that his family did not want to talk about his cause of death. In a deeply moving memorial service that lasted about three hours, no one mentioned that Mike had committed suicide.

Should they have done so? I’m still unsure about how many people knew that Mike took his own life, but at the time of Mike’s death, I thought that his suicide could be used to help teach college students about suicide, particularly because college-age people are among the age group (ages 15-24) for whom suicide is the third leading cause of death. I gave considerable thought to ”outing” the circumstances of Mike’s death to help others, but finally decided to respect the apparent wishes of his family.

Do the circumstances of our death matter? Why is that the first thing that we wonder about? Why do family members sometimes feel compelled to hide such information? How does a person’s cause of death impact the way we mourn them or even remember them? Would people’s impressions of Mike have changed if they learned he had taken his own life? Would their testimonials have been less glowing? Would it have made them angry with him? How would learning that he committed suicide color their grief? And without that information, as with Jean, we are left wanting more information.

What does learning someone had AIDS mean for us in thinking of their death? Or if he or she died as a result of a homicide? Even death has to be contextualized for us. In learning of someone’s death, another question that we usually ask about is their age. We have ideas about what is a reasonable age—and way—to die and events that don’t confirm to those notions can be baffling. When a 95 year old dies, that seems to be in the natural order of things (although probably very little, if at all, less painful for their family). When children die or parents outlive their children—regardless of age—this seems “unnatural”. When we learn that a 39 year old woman died, we have many questions. With today’s high life expectancies, we expect people to live long lives.

If you don’t think that the circumstances of our deaths matter, think about whether you would use a special power to decide how you and your loved ones die. Although the end results are the same, we do feel differently about whether people perish at Jonestown, in a plane crash, are murder victims, commit suicide or die of natural causes.