Everyday Sociology Blog

Text Messages and Privacy

By Janis Prince Inniss

About 15 years ago I probably only knew one person with a cell phone, but today I probably only know one person without one. I caved in several years ago, making my peace with a new bill by vowing to stick to the cheapest plan available. But that’s where I draw the line; I am not a texter. This is my logic: Why would I spend money to say something for even a few additional cents, if I could say it for less? 

This is the main reason that I rarely use the text messaging (short message service or sms) feature on my cell phone. I could pay 10 to 20 cents per text message which is not an enormous amount—unless I send lots of messages, or I could pay about $10 per month for unlimited text messaging. Again, not a lot of money, but I’m already paying for a plan to talk to people, so why would I pay an additional charge to send them a text message? Adding to my irritation at such consumption is the fact that I would have to type using the tiny keys on a phone–not very efficient or ergonomic. I can talk much faster than I can type, even on a full size keyboard so why try to text my thoughts, feelings, and opinions when I could just call folks?

Evidently, I am in the minority on this though because texting is big business. About 116 million or 52 percent of American subscribers are active texters. And as I mentioned in a previous post, teens text at a rate of about 50-70 per day. Amazingly, not only are people texting a lot, but the kinds of things they ”say” in texts is mind-boggling. For example, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff Christine Beatty denied that they were having an affair (both were married to other people), but their lie was brought to light by text messages detailing an intimate relationship. In case you’re not familiar with the case, Kilpatrick denied have the extra-marital affair with Beatty in a costly police whistle-blower case. Yet, steamy text messages were found rehashing their sexual encounters and their plans for additional romps. Here are two of the less explicit text messages that leave no doubt about the nature of their relationship:

Beatty: I still want to be in your arms, kiss you, hug you, love you. Listening to you speak and wishing you were my husband.

Kilpatrick: You were my girl for as long as I can remember. I was too young and stupid to know. I promise for the rest of my life you will be my girl.

Further, the text messages indicate that Kilpatrick and Beatty had fired a deputy police chief, which means that they both lied under oath that the intent was to remove the deputy police chief from that particular assignment and that he was not fired. However an email from Beatty to Kilpatrick states: "I'm sorry that we are going through this mess because of a decision that we made to fire Gary Brown. I will make sure that the next decision is much more thought out. Not regretting what was done at all. But thinking about how we can do things smarter." To this, Kilpatrick replied: "It had to happen though. I'm all the way with that!"

In another case of a female teacher and student engaged in a sexual relationship, Stephanie Ragusa, a Tampa middle school teacher is accused of having sex with at least four underage victims. Ragusa and a sixteen-year old she’s accused of having sex with exchanged hundreds of text messages of a steamy nature: 

Ragusa: Do u have a movie u want to watch at ur house? U know. In addition to… Wink wink.
Victim: No…
R: So no “date” … Which is what we really need. Bedroom girlfriend?! Baby. Lets try to do something romantic, different.
V: Like wat?
R: Idk. Can you think of anything. Maybe…giving each other massages.? Candle light. Music. Or pleasant/romantic movie”
V: Then come over
R: With massage oil? Candles? Towels? Movie?
V: Idk whatever u want?
R: Tell me what u want.

Another time Ragusa sent the student a note which read:

I loved today. The sex was amazing.

Ragusa even sent a text to the teen with the knowledge that the police were on the way to her home to investigate vandalism of her (adult) boyfriend’s truck, saying: “There are major problems here now. Tony and the police r on the way. They want to fingerprint the truck and take me down to the station.”

Why do people send such incriminating text messages? What are your thoughts? Here are some possibilities. With the distance that technology can provide, people may be emboldened to say things they would not in person—which can lead to even more incriminating texts being sent. And people can text while doing almost anything and from most places. I imagine that Kilpatrick was both serving as mayor and texting. Ragusa was texting as she awaited the police. And we don’t think of text messages as the written documents that they are. People are probably more careful about what they say in a personal letter, given its material existence. But a text just disappears and is gone. Where does it go? It disappears from your screen and that’s that, or so we think. Apparently that’s not the end of them as these cases indicate.

Unfortunately for Kilpatrick and Beatty, SkyTel, the provider for government and corporations stores all text messages for legal purposes. What about your carrier? Do you have any idea what their sms storage policy is? Is your carrier storing every text you ever sent? Might that cause you embarrassment or even jail time? Aspects of our lives in this technological age are being recorded without our knowledge; do you behave differently with that knowledge in mind?

Meeting "The Other" David Wilson

By Janis Prince Inniss

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

Martin Luther King

I have heard that portion of the famous “I Have A Dream” speech delivered by Dr. King at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, or portions of it many times, particularly in February (Black History Month). Exactly 45 years after that stirring speech the first African-American made his acceptance speech, becoming the first presidential nominee from a major party, indicating that at least some of Dr. King’s dreams are on the way to being realities. 

But never has that particular sentence been so alive as when I saw a documentary broadcast on MSNBC entitled Meeting David Wilson. The documentary chronicles the meeting between David A. Wilson, great-great-grandson of an enslaved Ghanian, and David B. Wilson, great-great-grandson of the Ghanaian’s slave owner. The film captures the emotional journey taken by 28-year-old David A. to meet David B. in North Carolina. Through genealogy research David A. found David B. and decided to make the trek from his New Jersey/New York home into the world of his ancestors who were enslaved in North Carolina. David B. Wilson was 62 when the documentary was made; he grew up on a farm and graduated from a segregated North Carolina high school in 1961. Their first interaction, however, was by telephone when David A. called David B. and said:

Hello, Mr. David Wilson? Well, my name is David Wilson, and I believe your family once owned mine.

With that memorable beginning, and after spending some time together, the men had the following conversation: 

David B: What about the idea that your family was still in Africa—had you not gone through the difficulties of slavery you might still be entrenched in poverty with no chance for improvement in America?

David A: Had we not been here and not taken to America, there a real possibility that America might too be entrenched in poverty, because we helped structure this country.

Here, the men grapple with an issue that many blacks and whites probably think about, particularly in the heat of racial animosities. Usually such sentiments are left unspoken, but in this case, the feelings were expressed and discussed. David B. wonders—aloud and on camera—about what might be called a major benefit of slavery to enslaved Africans. According to this line of reasoning, being forcibly brought to the U.S. improved the lives of Africans, by giving them a chance at the American Dream. Moving people out of poverty for a shot at the American Dream sounds like a noble cause, and casts slavery in the light of a social welfare program. But can we really put aside the forcible nature of slavery? Perhaps it is the brutality to which David B. refers in speaking of “the difficulties of slavery”.

Examining that perspective further, how many of us have credible information regarding the material life of Africans who were enslaved before being captured? Are we making ethnocentric and/or Eurocentric assumptions when we proclaim life in the U.S. was better? 

Another aspect of that argument is the notion that descendants of enslaved Africans receive a chance at the American dream. With the largest black middle class in American history, today many African Americans are experiencing the bounty of the American dream. Yet, the life chances of far too many African Americans continue to be reduced. And many social scientists attribute the major social ills that plague segments of the African American population to ongoing struggles as a result of slavery. 

David A.’s belief that the U.S. might be “entrenched in poverty” without the aid of enslaved Africans in its building is also worth examining. What reliable information do we have about the role of enslaved Africans in America’s wealth building? How could we determine whether enslaved Africans played a critical role in the wealth building of the U.S.?

In essence, each racial ”side” represented by the two Davids, thinks he has done the other a favor by being in the U.S. How much of the tensions between blacks and whites in America is related to this belief, which ultimately keeps each on an opposing side as if on competing teams? 

And how much of the racial tensions is a result of non-communication? Before they meet, David Wilson of New Jersey, with only stereotypes to draw on for his namesake, says that he believes the North Carolina David will be “a tobacco-chewin’, straw eatin’, rifle totin’, rockin’ chair sittin’, lemonade drinkin’ redneck”. However, after they spent time together, David B. saw David A. less in the role of slave owner, but as “more of a decent and kind-hearted human being”. Clichéd as it is, the role of communication in beginning to see a different point of view is critical.

Meeting David Wilson depicts one of Dr. King’s dreams: The descendants of a former enslaved African and that of a former slave owner sat together, walked together, and talked together. In talking about difficult topics such as slavery and its impact on America today, reparations, segregation, guilt and blame, the men discovered that they were both “decent” men. In fact, David A. took about fifty members of his extended family members with him to North Carolina to meet the other Wilsons on the plantation where both sets of ancestors had lived their separate and unequal lives. The willingness of the two David Wilsons to tackle difficult subjects in a harmonious manner seemed to have a profound impact on their lives and those of many family members. Do you think conversation can create change?

Racism, Police, and Self-fulfilling Prophecies

By Janis Prince Inniss

In many quarters, if I say that I am happy that I was not born or raised in the U.S., Americans of many stripes would a) become angry; b) become defensive; and/or c) wonder why I don’t go back to where I came from! (As a tax-paying naturalized American, I am exercising my option to live in the U.S.) 

But there are times when this fact of birth affects my life more than others. One time, for example, I was attending a meeting in which we discussed the horrendous birth outcomes for black women in America. When I consider the fact that black immigrants to this country have infant mortality rates that are on par with white women, but that after just one generation of living in America, foreign-born black women have the same kind of outcomes as African American women, then (but not only then) I am grateful for my place of birth. Perhaps this kind of comparison gives you some idea of why I am glad that I was not born or reared in the U.S. 

In my twenties, a natural point at which I began to think more seriously about what I wanted in terms of marriage and children, I always became terrified at the mere thought of having children in the U.S. – particularly by the thought of raising boys here. Recently, I was reminded of those fears at a gathering in which black women talked about the stresses they endure because of their fears for their black sons. One woman talked about having to respond to her teenage son who had been called a n***** not once, not twice, but three times during a short walk home in a Tampa suburb. This is exactly the kind of scenario that worried me when I thought about having children—particularly a son-- in the U.S. 

I used to wonder how I would help my children deal with racism. Although I did not grow up in a "race free" society, my racial and ethnic identifications were formed in a much different environment. I wondered whether that very different experience would make it impossible for me to help my children successfully navigate race in the U.S. context. 

Fast-forward from my fears years ago to last month. As she was promoting her six hour show, Black in America on the radio, a comment by CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien struck me. O’Brien described being surprised by the fact that just about everyone she interviewed–regardless of their station in life—talked about having “the talk” with their children and teenagers. No, not the one about s-e-x! The talk about what to do when they are pulled over by the police, often called “DWB (Driving While Black)! That O’Brien heard about this important conversation across class lines struck me for many reasons. First, that she did hear it repeated so often. And second, I have never had that conversation with either of my step-children, nor did I think their father had. (I checked and although they are old enough to drive now, he has not.)

Which brings me back to the beginning of this piece—and to my fears of not being American born and of being afraid that I wouldn’t be able to prepare my potential children for the prejudice they would face here. Maybe not being as familiar as African Americans with racism is a good thing in that I don’t always expect it or see it. The flip side of that is that not recognizing racism may be to my detriment. But what if having “the talk” and other such experiences carry with them an element of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

What if the expectation that an interaction with the police encourages a negative interaction with law enforcement from African Americans? Note, that the self-fulfilling prophecy in this example could be in effect for both the citizen and the police: What if expecting a negative interaction with a black motorist encourages the police to have a negative interaction with him or her? In more than twenty years each in the U.S., neither my husband nor I have had negative interactions with the law. Of course our individual experiences do not mean that countless others have not, or that graphic examples such as the Rodney King beating do not give us pause. 

Although we are both aware of instances of police brutality that seem the result of racism, apparently neither of us expect it, or assume it to be the exception rather than the rule. Maybe we are foolish because it means we are ill prepared for what may happen to us, and as a result maybe we have in some way handicapped our kids. As a student of sociology you know that neither my experience, nor those commented on by Soledad O’Brien, is the empirical evidence needed to know whether there is a relationship between expectations of, and actual experiences, with police. What kind of data would you gather to answer to learn more about this?

Phones, Families and Parental Control

By Janis Prince Inniss

A few weeks ago, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to find my eighteen-year-old house guest chatting on her cell phone! She was laughing and talking like it was 4:30 in the afternoon. I had to force myself to close my gaping mouth. I’ve had teenagers in my home so I know many like talking on the phone late at night, but this was 4:30! 

Even if you’re young, you probably grew up in a home with one phone line—a landline. Although at home, telephone calls were “public”: Usually the phones were in public areas such as the family room or living room. Anybody was liable to answer incoming telephone calls, so friends might have an encounter with parents calling for their children. Parents could, and some did ask, “Who is calling please?” For many years, few homes had extra extensions and if they did, if a teen was speaking from the privacy of his or her bedroom, there was always the possibility that Mom or Dad might pick up the other extension and hear what she hoped would be a private exchange. 

For privacy, kids hung around the phone to try to keep their parents from answering calls that might land them in trouble, and used the phones when their parents were not at home or were sleeping. When kids monopolized the telephone, in the pre-call waiting days, how much time 'tweens and teens spent on the phone was more than an issue of how they occupied their time; it also impacted parents’ ability to use the telephone.
Ah, but technology churns on. During the 1990s many households started installing multiple landlines to have dedicated lines for dial-up internet service, and during that time many kids got their own telephone numbers and phones in their rooms. Kids could talk to whomever, whenever, with much less parental “interference”. 

Today, many homes don’t even have landline phones. Cell phone use has skyrocketed in this century and about half of all children aged 10 to 13, and 83 percent of teenagers in the U.S. have their own. Having cell phones takes the ability to communicate wherever and whenever to new heights. Today’s kids can talk from just about anywhere-- including while driving or sitting in a classroom. Increasingly, kids are using cell phones for text messaging, even more than for voice calls. Armed with the unlimited texting plans that parents have selected (after being shell shocked by exorbitant bills), many teens text into the wee hours of the morning, averaging 50-70 texts per day. Texting allows for even more covert communication than talking on the phone as it can’t be overheard. Researchers found that one quarter of kids in relationships admitted communicating with their partner by voice or text hourly between midnight and 5 a.m. Just as I would have been without my trip to the kitchen that morning, parents are pretty clueless about this all of this; 82% were unaware that their kids were being contacted 30 times an hour by text or email. 

How do cell phones and the freedoms that come with them affect parents’ ability to supervise their kids? Tipping my hand at my belief that parents should be authoritative—mind you, not authoritarian—shouldn’t parents know who their kids are spending their time with? How do parents do this in the cell phone age? 

Hopefully, the telephone was never the main way that parents met their children’s friends, but it kept them in the loop. “Nicole and Suzy seem pretty close. They talk on the phone most days after school.” Or, “Roger and his girlfriend Marilyn must be having a fight because she hasn’t called in a week.” Sometimes younger siblings gave up the goods with announcements such as, “It’s for Mary! And it’s Derek again!” 

The flip-side of all of this is that today, parents can read a transcript of their teenagers’ thoughts! Modern technology permits parents to peer at the backstage lives of their kids in ways that used to be impossible. GPS technology for cell phones allows parents to monitor kids’ every movement. Snooping parents scroll through text messages or purchase software that gives them transcripts of instant messages. At first glance, the cell phone seems to be a tool of independence for kids. They can communicate with anybody just about anytime and parents may be clueless about it. But considering the techno-trail that parents may follow, teenagers are knowable in a way that they never were in the past. How does a parent’s ability to know about these “private” communications affect their relationships with their teenagers? And for those parents who refrain from such spying, does it matter that they may be out of the loop? Does it matter if parents know who their kids are spending time with on the phone?

The Politics of Double Minority Status

By Janis Prince Inniss

As the competition for the Democratic nomination seemed to wage on endlessly between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, much was made of their historical bids to be the Democratic Party candidate for the White House: he as the first African American contender with a realistic chance to become President of the United States, and she as the first female in serious contention for that job. Each time I hear or read these descriptions, however, I think about who is missing in framing these firsts in this way.

Clinton herself pointed out these twin themes of “first woman” “first African American” in her concession speech: 

When we first started, people everywhere asked the same questions:

Could a woman really serve as Commander-in-Chief? Well, I think we answered that one.

And could an African American really be our President? Senator Obama has answered that one. ..

As the “woman candidate” Senator Clinton’s White House bid highlighted feminist themes and much was made in the news about her heavy support among women. Senator Clinton’s concession speech itself drew heavily on such themes; she thanked older female supporters who were born before women in the U.S. could vote and said:

(W)hen I was asked what it means to be a woman running for President, I always gave the same answer: that I was proud to be running as a woman but I was running because I thought I'd be the best President. But I am a woman, and like millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often unconscious...Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it.

Regarding the “first African American” angle of this saga, we saw headlines such as these: From ABC News, “Obama Becomes First Black Democratic Presidential Nominee”, and from the New York Times, “First Black Candidate to Lead a Major Party Ticket”. Senator Obama himself gave a speech on race that has been called “historic” in which he spoke of his racial heritage, addressed the brouhaha regarding his former pastor, and also about the complexity of race relations in the U.S.

What is concealed from the way these public discussions have been framed in describing how far we’ve come? The absence of those of double minority status— women “of color” is concealed by describing Senator Clinton as the “first woman” rather than “first white woman” and Senator Obama as the first African American as opposed to the first African American man. If the combined race and gender of the candidates were happenstance this would all be irrelevant, but is it?

Is it equally likely that the first African American presidential nominee would be a woman as it is a man? Sociologists who observe double minority status and its impact on women of color would predict that the first black candidate to reach such heights would be male. (I am differentiating between realistic versus symbolic presidential runs such as Shirley Chisholm’s in 1972; Chisholm made history by being the first African American to run for president of the U.S.; she won no primaries.) 

Almost three-quarters of all U.S. presidents were senators or governors before claiming the top prize: fifteen of the country’s 43 presidents were U.S. senators while sixteen parlayed being governor into being president. Because being senator or governor is a major pipeline to the presidency, I decided to have a look at how well African Americans and women are represented among these two groups. Currently, Barack Obama is the only African American senator and he is only the third African American to ever hold that position. (Carol Mosley Braun, the one woman in this exclusive circle announced her intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2003, but dropped out even before the first major electoral event in that process.) 

How about governors? When disgraced New York governor Eliot Spitzer resigned, David Paterson became the nation’s fourth black governor; notably, only two (Douglas Wilder and Deval Patrick) of the four black governors were elected. So of the few African Americans in the presidential pipeline, only one, Mosley Braun, has been female. 

Is it by chance that the first woman who made it as far as Senator Clinton did in the U.S. presidential race was white? Women in many countries around the world have ascended to the top political ranks for many years (for example, Angela Merkel, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Eugenia Charles, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, and Portia Simpson-Miller), but we need to consider the context of race and gender in American politics. Again, looking at the presidential pipeline of senators and governors is instructive. Of 100 senators, sixteen are women and all of these women are white! There are currently eight female governors of the country’s fifty states and they too are white. 

According to the Census Bureau, the racial/ethnic makeup of the U.S. is as follows: 75.1 percent white, 12.3 percent African American/Black, 12.5 percent Hispanic or Latino, 3.6 percent Asian, 0.9 percent American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. Clearly, the political offices examined here are in no way reflective of the racial make up of the country. Neither does the sex ratio explain any of this. For all of these groups, except for Hispanics, women outnumber men. 

The candidacies of senators Obama and Clinton do stand in contrast to the domination of white males in U.S. politics. However, there has been little public dissection of Obama’s gender or Clinton’s race, and this lack of analysis conceals the challenges double minorities, such as black women, face in American society.

Culture and Globalization

By Janis Prince Inniss 

When people talk about globalization, they’re often referring to the reality that we live in an interdependent world in which shifts in one part of the world are felt in another because of globally-driven economic factors. Often discussions of globalization focus on the economy and other big picture issues. Have you given any thought to how globalization impacts your life in a personal way? As the following examples illustrate, globalization has very real impacts on individual, everyday experiences. 

  I never saw a television until I was ten! It’s not that I wasn’t allowed to watch television until I was ten years old, but that I never even knew what that magic box looked like until that age! This is because until age 13, I lived in Guyana where there was no TV. No one I knew had a TV and given that the country had no TV stations (this was before the days of satellite TV) I don’t know what they would watch if anyone had one anyway. I saw my first television when I left the country for a summer vacation.

Fast forward to Guyana twenty years later…. I went back to Guyana on a visit and everyone seemed to have a TV! And they all seemed to have them on all the time, and loudly. (I don’t know that TV viewing in Guyana is any more popular there than it is in the U.S., but apparently the number of per capita TV sets is far fewer than it is in the U.S. I imagine that economic factors are greatly related to this difference.)

In Guyana, windows tend to remain open so sounds escape readily making the television sounds obvious to me even as I walked past homes. This was more than a mere observation; it greatly impacted my visit. I found this change vexing because the noise of the televisions got in the way of conversation as I tried to cover years of distance in a few days. On many visits with friends and family, I found their attention divided between me and their televisions. And I was poor competition for the box, as it seemed to win most of the time! (Not kind to my ego.) And mostly they watched U.S. channels (with CNN the hands-down winner), not programs that covered the local stories and issues I might not have minded learning about on my vacation. The American shows on those TVs in Guyana are another example of globalization.

Recently, I drove across a northern border to Canada. Starving after my trip, I was looking forward to some new and different cuisine. But all I saw were American restaurants around me. For a moment, I had no sense that I was in a foreign country with the same stores and restaurants all around. As I sat down for my first meal on Canadian soil, I realized that the TV was on…CNN! More U.S. news! I’m not anti-news (well, I don’t really care for television news but that’s another story) but American news is certainly not what I expected the minute I set food across the border.

 

The CNN domination is also evident when I telephone family and friends around the world. I continue to be amazed by how much the U.S. presidential race dominates conversations with people regardless of which country they live in. People I talk with in Europe and Canada are very tuned into CNN and so are very familiar with the twists and turns taking place with the elections. They are as conversant on any election issue as anyone I know in the U.S. 

Why do you think CNN is watched around the world? There are several reasons. I think one is the dominance of the American market and of American culture. For many non-Americans, CNN symbolizes the U.S. American restaurants and politics are also popular around the world because they are part of this dominant American culture and marketplace. 

Some might argue that these are examples of the Americanization of other countries, and that this is an effect of globalization. What do you think? How do you feel about this aspect of globalization? Will a global culture—and given America’s size and might this will be a mainly American culture—replace local cultures? My comments about seeing American restaurants and CNN upon arriving in Canada do not negate the fact that the country has its own thriving culture. Nor does the popularity of CNN in the homes I visited in Guyana indicate that Guyanese culture is dead, but there’s no denying the influence of American culture on these other countries. 

The presence of TV did change the way I experienced conversations in Guyana, but maybe such experiences lead people to want to hold on even more tightly to their culture. If so, in a roundabout fashion, globalization may strengthen rather than replace local culture. Or maybe different cultures can and do peacefully exist next to each other. Based on your experiences, which seems most likely?

Judging a Book by its Racial Cover

By Janis Prince Inniss

 On Easter Sunday, my husband and I took my mother to church in her neighborhood. (We live about 25 miles from her.) My rationale for this was to introduce Mum to a church, and perhaps to some church-goers, in her neighborhood; she only attends church when her visits with us include Sundays. As we headed into the church, I realized that we were the only ones doing so, which was odd especially on Easter. Undaunted, we  headed into the sanctuary, sat in the back and happily joined in the singing of one of my favorite hymns.

As I looked around the church, I was reminded that it serves a largely white congregation. I had attended a few services at this church when we first moved to this city but had not returned once we moved out of that general area. As I sang, I noticed a black man in a suit standing next to the white minister in his robe at the front of the church. Given the racial makeup of the church, and because the black man seemed to be assisting with the service in some way since he was up front, he was noteworthy. To my dismay, when we finished that wonderful hymn, the service was over! 

Down the aisle came the procession of church officials, followed by the congregation. We had traveled that distance for less than one whole hymn! Somewhere between annoyance and amusement, I stumbled back outside with my family. As we stood outside the church trying to figure out what had happened, my husband said that the black man had given him a note that read, “Follow me to the auditorium.” Who was that man? And why were we to follow him? 

We followed the man and found ourselves in the building next door to the main sanctuary where the service was about to begin. We found seats and I noticed that the man who had directed us to this service seemed to be taking part in the proceedings once again. I guessed he was there in his supporting role once more and that the white man I saw on stage was the minister. 

Turns out I had the roles completely reversed. The black man was in charge of this service; he preached a wonderful sermon. Ah, so he must assist with the traditional service and preach at the contemporary service. During the service a few people mentioned Dr. Smith (not his real name of course), pastor of the church, and I wondered whether we had seen him in the few minutes at the earlier service. 

Service over, I asked someone about arranging transportation to the church for Mum. She directed me to Dr. Smith. I explained that I did not know him so she showed me to his office. To my surprise the black man in the suit was Dr. Smith, senior church pastor! I was stunned! My assumptions about Dr. Smith were based on his being a black man at a church with a mostly white, affluent congregation; they were also shaped by the fact that I have never been a member of a church with a black pastor in America. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I have heard sermons delivered by black pastors in the U.S. This is because I have never been a regular attendee of black church denominations or black churches that fit under white denominations, so my churches have been predominantly white. 

This Easter Sunday experience was a great lesson in how prejudice works: Using the information we have, based on our often narrow personal experiences, we decide where someone fits in the world. Those prejudices may take the form of race, class, gender, sexual orientation or any other lens that we choose to wear. Also, context matters. Had Dr. Smith been wearing a robe instead of a suit, I would probably have made the same assumptions, especially because I also saw a white pastor at the church. But, had I seen Dr. Smith on campus, dressed as he was, I would probably have assumed he was on the university faculty.

I know that black men occupy all spheres of life. I’m from a large family filled with black men (and women) who have attained the highest professional levels. I am married to a black man who defies just about every stereotype of the African American male. I am a black woman. I am a sociologist who writes about race, ethnicity and culture. And yet, there I was unable to guess that I was looking at the pastor of that church!

Have you had a similar experience? How have you prejudged someone or a situation based on information about their race, class or maybe their gender? Tell us about it.

Marketing Ideas and Fears Through Email: Pass Along Hoaxes and Urban Legends

By Janis Prince Inniss

I love email! I have been exchanging emails with one aunt in Toronto since 1995—long before most people I knew had email. But what drives me absolutely nuts are forwarded emails designed to scare us. You know the ones that offer safety tips and supposed health information? Very few are true or correct. So why do so many people forward those emails, propelling the crazy ideas even faster around the world?

Today, it seems that everybody uses the internet. The reality is that there are great disparities in computer use: Europe, North American and Australia/Oceania are the only areas of the world where internet usage has penetrated about half or more of the population. Within these countries who has computer access varies; for example in the U.S. those who are over age 65, have less education, or are African American are less likely to use the internet.

Email is the number one internet activity in which we engage. On a typical day in 2004, 58 million people in the U.S. alone used email. Ever think about how many people receive the same loopy emails that crowd your inbox? In 2001, MIT graduate student Jonah Peretti, sent an email to 12 friends about his attempts to personalize his Nike shoes with the word “sweatshop”. The email made its way around the world and into international media; the story was profiled in large media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and NBC’s Today Show. In less than a three-month period, Peretti received 3,655 inquiries about his email! He got responses from every continent, and his email was translated into several languages. As Peretti writes: “You send an email to 10 friends, and each friend forwards the email to 10 of their friends. If this process continues just 6 steps the message will reach a million people. After 10 steps, the message would hypothetically reach more people than the total population of the earth.”

Emails help us maintain social networks and build social capital. They allow us to stay in contact with ever growing networks. As people’s networks grow it becomes increasingly difficult for them to stay in contact, except with the use of emails. With email, people are able to stay in contact with more people, more easily. Forwards are one way that people do this. We can forward one note to many people, therefore staying in touch with that many people all at once.

I really like the terms that researchers have come up with to describe some of this: “viral marketing” and “viral consumers”. Business researchers examine the ways that consumers become marketers of products and services through the use of emails to spread—hence the term viral—information to friends and family. Avoiding these forwards feels a lot like I’m dodging a real virus! They are the marketing of ideas and fears through email. How does this happen? One aspect of this phenomenon is that we do not automatically delete forwarded emails from people we know, although we might do so very easily with notes from strangers. Emails from people we know are more persuasive than those from strangers. Many forwarded emails take a dash of truth and embellish the core with scary details, add names and places, along with an emotional aspect guaranteed to scare us. These urban legends and hoaxes often include details that are possible, but highly unlikely. The details make the claims appear legitimate. 

Further, email is quick, and cheap or free. Those passing them along don’t have to write or type anything. They simply hit the forward button. The fact that those forwarding emails mostly don’t write anything means that the messages are passed on unchanged, unlike the “telephone game”. Sometimes there are versions of the same forward, so there is “tampering” at some point. However, because we don’t think of our friends or relatives as note originators, they may appear more authentic. It is not Aunt Mary who said this; it’s some really knowledgeable, albeit unknown, person. We know the immediate sources of these emails—the people who send them to us—and we assume that if someone we know sends a note, it must be okay. People may not realize that they can check the veracity of emails at websites such as Snopes and figure they are doing more good than harm passing on warnings. None of this is a recipe to discontinue the practice of passing along emails. Indeed, researchers found people pass along emails to be altruistic, and to share what seems to be good information regarding warnings about health and safety. There may also be a degree of impression management in passing along forwards; it is a chance to subtly convey to others what we know, and presumably, they do not.

Wombs for Sale? Gestational and Genetic Mothering

By Janis Prince Inniss

I used to think that there are several things we must do ourselves. You know, like die. Even if I wanted to, regardless of how wealthy I may become, I can’t pay someone to do that for me. And what about the basic bathroom functions? Same thing; must do those ourselves, right? 

But what about being pregnant and giving birth? I thought that those were on the “must do it yourself” list with no chance of changing. Having recently seen the film Baby Mama and a few recent news stories on surrogate mothers, I have to rethink my list of “must do yourself” things. 

A surrogate mother is a woman who becomes pregnant with a child to whom she may or may not be genetically related, with the  intention of turning the baby over at birth to others for rearing. A surrogate mother may have sperm or an embryo implanted into her uterus which means she may or may not be genetically related to the baby she carries. 

The first time that I remember hearing about surrogacy was when the Baby M case made headlines in 1986. In that instance, a couple—the Sterns—hired Mary Beth Whitehead to be artificially inseminated with the husband’s sperm. Whitehead was to carry the child, give birth to her and then hand the baby over to the Sterns. In other words, Whitehead was acting as a substitute for Mrs. Stern who had health issues that might be complicated by bearing and birthing a child. Whitehead had a change of heart about the arrangement after she gave birth which led to a contentious legal battle. Eventually, Mr. Stern was granted custody of the baby and Whitehead was granted visitation rights. 

Flash forward to another case in which the surrogate mother, Stephanie Eckard provided the egg; Eckard changed her mind about handing over the baby but in this case the judge ruled against the couple who hired Eckard and gave custody of the baby to the surrogate. Another noteworthy case on surrogacy is the 1990 case of Mark and Crispina Calvert. The fertilized embryo of the Calverts was implanted into the womb of Anna Johnson. Johnson was paid $10,000 to hand over the baby to the Calverts at his birth, but she too had a change of heart and wanted to keep the baby boy. In deciding this case, the court essentially looked at whose idea it was to have the child and gave custody of the boy to the Calverts. 

These cases are all of surrogate mothers in the U.S. but many Americans are turning to India for their surrogacy needs. Why? The almighty dollar! It’s cheaper. 

According to this MSNBC story, hiring a woman in India to act as a surrogate is almost a third cheaper than it is in the U.S.—about $30,000 compared to about $80,000 in the U.S.. Another reason to choose a surrogate in India: Indian women have no legal right to change their minds about babies they carry because they sign documents giving up their rights to the children. The U.S. has no across the board legal stand on this issue – some states have legalized surrogacy, others have outlawed it, while others refuse to recognize surrogacy contracts.

If the “commodity” under discussion was not such an emotional one, it might be reasonable to ignore emotions. But it is not. Can carrying a child simply be a transaction? 

Apparently, Whitehead’s contract specified that she would “form no ‘parent-child relationship’ with the baby. But doesn’t carrying a child constitute some form of parenting? If I raise a baby I adopted the question of motherhood—when asked of me and the birth mother—may be clearer. But at the time of birth in the surrogacy cases, it’s hard to imagine who else could have had a greater impact on the baby than the surrogate. This conclusion, assumes that nurture trumps nature even when the surrogate is unrelated to the baby.

Is surrogacy a version of asking my girlfriend to hold my purse while I go to the bathroom? (“Hold my baby until he’s born”). Is it reasonable to expect that a woman can carry a child—even if she is not genetically related to that child—and simply hand that child over and feel no bond? (Women who decide to give their babies up for adoption have described the difficulty some of them feel in giving up their babies, and some change their minds and keep their babies.)

Surrogate mothering is unique in that unlike other kinds of mothering, surrogate mothers exist to allow another woman to be a mother. So is that mothering at all or merely renting a womb? What else would we call this “service”?

Surrogacy forces us to think about what parenting is and about what we should be able to buy and sell. Should genetics trump gestation? Does gestation hold a superior claim to parenthood that genetics can’t touch? What principles do you think should decide these issues?

Racism as a Risk Factor for Infant Mortality

By Janis Prince Inniss

One segment of the PBS documentary Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? examined infant mortality in the U.S. Infant mortality is a measure of the number of babies who die in their first year of life, a figure expressed as a portion of 1,000 live births. 

What causes babies to die so early? Congenital abnormalities, being born too early and too small, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), are the leading causes of infant death. According to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook’s 2007 estimate, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. is 6.37; according to this report 41 countries reported better rates than the U.S. 

In fact, according to the State of the World's Mothers report, the U.S. has the second worst infant mortality rate in the developed world! Although there may be many good reasons for the rates of other countries to appear better than they really are, a few things are clear about the U.S. rate. 

First, the infant mortality rate has decreased significantly over the last four or so decades; it was 26.0 in 1960. Second, among all women in the U.S., African American women have the highest infant mortality rate. Third, infant mortality rates for African Americans are almost two and a half times that of whites (13.6 compared to 5.6). 

If you’re familiar with the relationship between class and race, this disparity in infant mortality might not be particularly surprising. It might make sense that African Americans would experience higher infant mortality rates as result of factors related to their lower socioeconomic status (SES); for example, low-income pregnant women might not seek prenatal care due to a lack of health insurance and tight finances. However, research on the topic finds that increases in SES and education do not erase this racial gap. As you will see in the video, infant mortality rates for white college graduates is 3.7 per 1,000 while that for black college graduates is three times as high (10.2 per 1,000). Infant mortality rates for black college graduates are on par with that of whites without a high school education—who have a rate of 9.9 per 1,000. 

Another hypothesis put forward to explain the differential infant mortality rates is a possible genetic component responsible for the disparity. Researchers reasoned that looking at the infant mortality rates of other black women should confirm such a “prematurity gene”. Yet, black women from Africa and the Caribbean do have not have the same kinds of infant mortality rates as African-American women; African women have infant mortality rates similar to that of white American women and babies born to Caribbean women are heavier at birth than those of African-American women. 

Further, after one generation of living in the U.S. these immigrant groups have infant mortality rates similar to that of African Americans, suggesting that there is something about the black American experience that leads to poor infant mortality. Hmm.

But how could race impact infant mortality? In a word, racism. Researchers have found that women who perceive racial prejudice are two times more likely to have a very low birth weight baby. Social scientists are now examining the relationship between the stress that racial prejudice produces and its adverse impact on the body; such stress may cause the release of stress hormones that trigger labor, for example. Watch Drs. Lu and Jones discuss the life course perspective and the impact of this kind of stress over a lifetime:

In a number of previous posts, I have discussed issues related to race, ethnicity, culture and related concepts. Perhaps like you, readers have questioned whether race is even relevant in today’s multiracial, multiethnic world. More than forty years have passed since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred segregation in public places in the U.S. So racial prejudice is history! But is it really? 

Most young Americans grew up before the passage of this act. Many of your parents, professors, ministers, and doctors, can tell personal stories of what life was like before the passage of that legislation. History doesn’t seem so ancient then. And what are the present day remnants of racial prejudice? Is that history too? Just as we may begin to feel comfortable that race and related concepts are simply well, historical concepts, the findings surrounding infant mortality suggest remind us that while we may argue about definitions and the utility of these ideas, people’s experiences demonstrate that none of this is simply academic flexing. Racism and its perception impacts lives, including—perhaps most especially—the smallest lives among us.

Black Ethnicity: The Foreign-Born in America

By Janis Prince Inniss 

Recently I completed an online form that asked for my race. Not that unusual. What was unusual is that there were 15 choices! Among other options, I could choose from: 

 

Black-African	Black-West Indian
Black- African American	Black-Tanzanian
Black-Jamaican	Black-Haitian
Black-Caribbean	Black-Nigerian

And so on…You get the idea. There is much that is note-worthy about this list, but I will focus on one aspect of it: The list was made long mostly by the writer’s wish to accommodate a variety of foreign-born blacks. 

What does the term foreign-born mean? The U. S. Census Bureau definition of the foreign born includes all people residing in the U.S. who are not American citizens at birth, immigrants, legal non-immigrants (such as refugees and students), and people who are living in the U.S. illegally. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the largest number of foreign-born persons living the U.S. in the first half of the 20^th century was 14.2 million in 1930 (11.6 percent of the total population at that time), although the largest proportion of this group was 14.7 million in 1910. The last 30 years or so have been marked by increasing numbers and proportions of foreign-born persons in the U.S; in 2000, there were 28.4 million foreign-born people estimated to be living in the U.S. This figure is exactly twice as many as the previous high period in 1930, and this time the foreign-born were estimated to be 10.4 percent of the total population—the highest proportion since 1930. 

Of course, the U.S. is not the only country hosting immigrants. We live in a world of tremendous movement. According to the New York Times, in 2005 about 190 million people lived outside of their countries of birth. 

Among the millions of foreign-borns living in the U.S. are black people from all over the world. In fact, the proportion of foreign-born blacks among blacks in the U.S. has risen to 7.8 percent from 1.3 percent between 1970 and 2000. Black immigrants come from all over the world, but are primary from the Caribbean and Africa. Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic are the top three sending countries of blacks to the U.S. And where do the foreign-born tend to live? New York, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, California and Illinois host most of the foreign-born population in general, and this is true for the black foreign-born population as well. Florida has experienced the most growth in the number of foreign-born blacks in the last 30 years, although with a quarter of its black population being foreign-born, New York is now home to the largest share of this group. 

To state what is not always obvious: All black people in America are not African Americans. Some have become American citizens, and others have not. Black immigrants do not necessarily see themselves as having much in common with African Americans, and vice versa. They may have grown up in widely differing circumstances—so called third world versus North American countries and all their attendant disparities—so why would we expect them to be the same? Given that Americans of different races often find themselves focused on their differences despite their many similarities, why would a group of newly (or even not so newly) arrived immigrants be assumed to share much with African Americans? 

This discussion is not meant to ignore the fact that on American soil, with regard to race, and regardless of place of birth, blacks may encounter identical experiences. I recognize there may be no difference in the ways that people with dark skin are perceived or treated. Similarly, the reference to recent historical differences between African American and foreign-born blacks is neither meant to diminish our shared African origins nor the overlap in current socio-political concerns. 

A recent study found that for blacks, having foreign-born parents is related to attending selective colleges and universities. Based on data from 28 such institutions, researchers found that 27 percent of blacks students had at least one foreign-born parent—a significantly higher percentage than the national average. As we might imagine given the data presented earlier on the origins of the black foreign-born, this study found that 43 percent of these students had Caribbean roots and 29 percents were of African parentage. Many of us –including sociologists—focus on the race of blacks to the exclusion of ethnicity among blacks. With the naming of all immigrants of African descent, “black/African American”, our ethnicity becomes subsumed beneath our race, propelling race to dominant status. 

Findings such as these highlight the role of ethnicity in all its complexity and serve as a reminder that race is not all that matters.

Is Stealing "Mad Money" a Crime?

By Janis Prince Inniss

A few days ago, I saw the film Mad Money. (Spoiler alert: The movie is summarized here, ending and all.) The film is about three women (played by Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes) who work at the local Federal Reserve Bank. Queen Latifah is Nina, the single mother of two boys while Katie Holmes plays Jackie, a gum smacking, head-phone wearing married kook. Diane Keaton plays Bridget, the stay at home wife of Ted Danson (Don). 

When Don is laid off and their upper middle life class life is threatened, Bridget goes to work at the bank as a janitor. (As a wife and mother, albeit with a college degree, Bridget has no marketable job skills.) Shortly after she starts the job, Bridget has the bright idea of robbing the bank by enlisting the help of the other two women who work with her there. After relatively little resistance to this idea, the three women join forces and despite lots of bank security, the three are successful. 

The women target old money that is being taken out of circulation. With one successful theft completed the threesome steal again. Except a security guard who has a crush on Nina, no one catches on to their crime. His silence is bought and the spree goes on for three years. Finally, an outsider comes along and fingers the group and everyone but the instigator, Bridget, is arrested. The police are forced to release them, however, because the only confession is recanted and because the prideful bank manager insists that there is no way to breach his security. 

At this point in the movie the women don’t appear to have gotten much for their years of stealing, given that they have destroyed most of the money they stole. True, they have spent some of it: The single mother has used her money to put her children into private school and to buy a home in a better neighborhood. Don and Bridget are able to keep their upper-middle class lifestyle and all its perks. Jackie and her husband buy a new trailer and a few other toys and he is able to leave his meat plant job. 

But overall, they haven’t gone mad spending the money—and this is intentional; they do not want to draw attention to themselves and arouse suspicions. Nor do they seem much like criminals, at least as they are generally portrayed on film. They’re well-dressed as only women in film can be, are shown having a good time and living “respectable” lives. It’s not like they’re grungy men with masks, hurting people by robbing commercial banks. I thought the film would end here, with the women having received their own private stimulus package, free to enjoy their cash influx. But no, fast-forward months later, and Bridget gathers the group together to show them tons of money she had stashed at a bar they frequented. So they’re free and rich! 

Deviance is defined as ignoring societal norms. The concept includes a wide range of individual and group transgressions. Stealing is generally considered deviant behavior in this culture, but in this movie none of the thieves received any of the sanctions that deviant behavior typically prompts. In fact it seems a stretch to call them thieves. Any attempt at formal sanctions, such as prosecuting the three women, was abandoned. As for informal sanctions, there is little indication that any of their friends or neighbors view the women differently. The lone source of informal sanction I recall in the film was a neighbor who gave Bridget the cold shoulder. 

Interactionist theorists focus on how particular behaviors receive the label “deviant”, and in this tradition labeling theorists examine the relationship between deviants and nondeviants. Those in positions of power, according to labeling theorists, make the labels. Bridget represents wealth to the other two relatively poor women; she says they are “recycling” because the money they take is old and on its way to being shredded. In the context of this film, it is Bridget’s definition of the group as “recyclers” that explain why the women receive no punishment and are able to walk away with wads of cash. 

A simplistic summary of many movies is that the good guys catch the bad guys. (And they are usually guys, not women). The crimes of the bad guys are often clear-cut and we root for James Bond, Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt to catch and punish them. But if no one is the “bad guy”, what does that mean? Ultimately, does “Mad Money” depict a crime?

"Passing" into Freedom: Being Black and Living White

By Janis Prince Inniss

Do you know the race of everyone in your family? Of your friends? Your colleagues? Odd questions if race is as obvious as we usually think it is. “She’s black.” “He’s white.” “They’re Hispanic.” No confusion there. What about the man and his daughter pictured below? What race are they?

Anatole Broyard was a literary critic and editor of the New York Times. He died in 1990 at age 70, and was survived by his wife and two children. Nothing unusual so far, right?

What is remarkable, however, is the fact that only a few weeks before his death, his adult children learned that Broyard was “part black”. Based on his daughter Bliss’s research, it appears that Broyard made the choice to be white when he sought a Social Security card in 1938.

In that same year, Broyard’s sister had sought employment at the state office and was told that there were no jobs for “colored girls”. For most of his adult life, Broyard had minimal contact with his mother and two sisters who all lived as black, although his wife and a few friends knew of his “secret.”

How is it possible to interact with someone and not know their race when we live in a racialized society? Like his parents, Broyard was light-skinned and this allowed him to “pass” as white—that is, pretend not to have a drop of black blood. The consequences of being black at that time could be dire; surely the limitations and other costs associated with being black served as the impetus for Broyard’s decision to “pass” as a white man.

Reading Broyard’s obituary in the Times, I was struck by the lack of reference to race in the description of the man, his family and his work. He was not described as a “black writer,” or the as first black editor or any other historic firsts that he likely accomplished. The obituary told of a man, born here, schooled there, who wrote this and that. It struck me that being black would have shackled Broyard and limited the images I conjured of him as I read his story; it would—perhaps to lesser degrees over time—define him as well as my impression of who he was.

When I initially wrote the paragraph above, I wrote, “his race would have shackled Broyard…”In fact, in the U.S. it is not any race that would prescribe, for example, the topics with which he would be expected to be conversant; it was being black that would be so conscribing; hence his concealment of his black heritage. 

But what of whiteness? That too is a race. White people are not devoid of race, although Broyard’s story reminds us of the freedoms that whiteness facilitates: freedom to live where one wants, to write about what one wants, freedom from feeling (negatively) “raced”. In the 70 years since Broyard made the decision to “pass,” more of these freedoms have become commonplace for all who live in the U.S., regardless of race. Still, as you watch the news on television or read newspapers, contrast how often the race of racial/ethnic minorities is mentioned compared to that of whites.

What images come to mind when you hear racial descriptors? Is your response the same regardless of whether stories reference your own or a different group? If Broyard had been thought of as black, (since that would have to be his racial designation in a “one-drop” system), that designation would have conveyed something that he probably did not want people to think about. Racism creates limits; and without a negatively “raced” label, Broyard had more life options. 

There are many who would see Broyard’s choice as self-hatred, an example of internalized racism. Further his choice to “pass” may be viewed as turning his back on his (black) race when—particularly given his stature at the New York Times—he could have served to help African Americans, by serving as a refutation of stereotypes and by being a role-model. Is this a burden or is it a duty that all racial minorities ought to carry? 

While we usually think of race as a biological imperative, stories such as Broyard’s highlight the socially constructed nature of the beast: race is also how we live: Broyard looked white, had a white wife and white children, lived in white communities, had a white occupation (that of writer, not a black writer), and was therefore white. His being white was less related to his DNA than to the life he led.

It’s arguable that the historical facts that made passing desirable for Anatole Broyard have been transformed at least somewhat over the past fifty years; but are there incentives for any racial minorities to ”pass” as white in America today?

Barack Obama and Racial/Ethnic Authenticity

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.

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day: Symbolic Ethnicity

By Janis Prince Inniss

I’m seeing green! St. Patrick’s green, that is. Everywhere. At the grocery store. At Wal-Mart. At the mall. At my gym. Surely you’ve seen the decorations and a variety of green products such as carnations, bagels, greeting cards, frosted cupcakes, and in Chicago the even the Chicago River!

My introduction to St. Paddy’s day came when I lived in New York City; fitting because New York is home to the first of these parades anywhere, and hosts the largest Irish parade with up to 3 million onlookers. Irish soldiers began the parade in New York in 1762 and it has grown to include more than 150,000 people from a variety of Irish organizations. It is the largest parade in New York, even bigger than the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. 

Is there a parade in your city? Chicago, Boston, and Savannah, along with a variety of other cities around the world have St. Patrick’s Day parades. In the U.S. St. Patrick’s Day is a religious holiday celebrated for centuries by the Irish on March 17^th during Lent. Although the details about his early life differ, Patrick is said   to have died on March 17, 460 A.D., and most scholars agree that he introduced Christianity to Ireland. Traditionally, Irish families’ St. Patrick Day’s celebration involved attending church in the morning and then—with the restriction against eating meat lifted for the occasion—feast on bacon and cabbage in the evening. The focus on St. Patrick’s Day as a religious holiday in Ireland has remained that way until recently; it was only in the 1970s that pubs were allowed to remain open on this day.

Why do Irish Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? This celebration is an example of symbolic ethnicity, characterized by a need to hold on to the culture of the immigrant generation, coupled with a pragmatic desire not to let this culture interfere with everyday life. The “old” culture is converted into ethnic symbols that must be simple enough to be shared by many people and easily understood. Many whites in the U.S. who maintain ethnic identities only do so in symbolic ways that take little time and minimally affect their everyday lives. Ethnicity, then, becomes highly individualized and expressive, although it has little or no impact on day-to-day living. Their ethnicity is tied to voluntary and arguably superficial events such as dishes cooked and holidays celebrated; for many, St. Patrick’s Day can be understood in this context.

Sociologist Mary Waters theorizes that the element of choice available to white ethnics makes symbolic ethnicity appealing. Although their ethnicity does not impact their lives in any crucial ways, Waters argues that it is important to white ethnics because ethnicity combines two important aspects of life. First, ethnicity connotes individuality—a feeling of being special that sets one apart from others. Second, it provides a sense of community, albeit a loosely knit one. This sense of community does not infringe on or restrict personal lives. Attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade, for example, allows Irish Americans to feel a part of the Irish American community but when the parade is over there's no stipulation that their lives have to be guided by Irish tradition or culture.

The traditional Irish focus on the religious aspects of St. Patrick’s Day stands in sharp contrast to the festive American counterpart. Right now, we have a unique opportunity to notice the tensions between the religious and the celebratory aspects of St. Patrick’s Day: This year, Holy Week—the week before Easter that includes Palm Sunday and Good Friday, which memorializes the last week of Jesus’ life—begins on Sunday, March 16^th. This means that St. Patrick’s Day falls on Holy Monday. Many church officials in the U.S. have been asking St. Patrick's Day parade organizers not to hold their parade on this day,in deference to Holy Monday. Some cities such as Philadelphia and Milwaukee are having early parades, but the biggest one of them all, the New York parade, and many others will continue as always on March 17—Holy Monday.

Interestingly, St. Patrick’s is celebrated by many Americans who are not Irish. (Almost three quarters (71.8 %) of Americans 18-24 years old will celebrate the day, and although 34.5 million Americans claim to have Irish ancestry, this number clearly does not account for all of those taking party in the celebrations.) This leads to a staggering amount of money spent on the festivities--$3.6 billion according to the National Retail Foundation.

Why do you think so many people with no Irish heritage celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? Clearly, the symbols (partying and wearing green) are simple enough to be shared my many people

Are Children's Psychotropic Medicines Green?

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.