Everyday Sociology Blog

Space Cadets: Human Society and Its Discontents

By Sally Raskoff

When do humans cease to be human?

I was with some friends and astronomers looking through a telescope the other day and the conversation turned to space colonization. As the astronomers went on to talk about terraforming Mars and other fascinating topics, I wondered how life off the planet would affect humans and human society. 

We have a few examples of real humans living in closed environments for limited time-- the NASA International Space Station, Antarctic science stations, and Biosphere 2 -- and we have plenty of fictional examples of humans in such situations, like Star Trek and most science fiction writing.   

But if we create space communities where human lives are spent entirely off of this planet, we should consider how human societies may differ -– and whether or not we can consider such people still human.

Societies are based on interactions with not only each other but with our environment. When we send people to live in a closed environment, they take their culture with them, yet a new culture emerges the longer they stay in the new place. 

If you have ever gone camping or traveling, you experience a similar phenomenon. As you take your cultural expectations, you set up what feels comfortable in the new setting. You may have a new bed to sleep in and different food to eat but we often seek comfort in familiar clothing or ritualistic behaviors. 

Culture shock, which you might experience when traveling, offers some insight into how we change when immersed in new cultures. However, in a space colony, especially for the first group of inhabitants, the new culture must first be created! Thus some elements of the off-planet culture will most likely retain aspects of our earth-bound society. 

Whether human society is sustainable on another planet remains to be seen. Containing conflict and violence would be one challenge, and there are many other issues that we may not realize until we try it. This is not just a sociological question. 

Biologically, we may not be capable of reproduction in the same manner as we do here on earth. Our bodily cycles are tied to the rotation of the earth and to others. Our physical reality emerged and evolved from our experiences and resources here. If reproduction were possible on another planet, would people born there still be considered human beings? What if their births were dependent on new reproductive cycles emergent in space living and/or technological assistance that replace human gestation?

Current space programs have very specific psychological criteria for selecting space-bound participants. People must be very open, communicative, and flexible to deal with living in such confined spaces with others for any length of time. Clearly not every person is well suited to thriving or even surviving in such a situation.

Would we have a new way of stratifying humans? Instead of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and age, we could use on-planet and off-planet birth distinctions to distribute power and wealth, opportunity and education. 

Do I have a good science fiction story going here? I’m not so sure it’s only fiction, as people have been working on how to live in a closed environment for some time – we haven’t yet figured it out yet and it is dependent upon technology that has not yet been invented. However, technology isn’t the only factor for a successful off-planet venture. Nor is it even the most important.

Setting up an intentional society would prove to be difficult, especially considering the lack of success we have in existing here. Can we really engineer a self-sustaining society without creating a totalitarian culture? 

Different sociological perspectives offer very different answers. Structuralists assume the need for structure, viewing people as interdependent, yet dysfunctions threaten the balance of the system. Conflict theorists acknowledge the potential for power abuses among the different positions and relationships in sustaining their existence. Symbolic interactionists focus on how meaning varies for the human participants and how difficult and exciting such experiences would prove to be. 

How would post modernists weigh in? Since French social theorist Jean Baudrillard wrote that the (first) Gulf War didn’t happen as it played out in the media, would such lived experiences be interpreted as surreal since earthly contact would also play out via media connections? From the perspective of those in the colony, would an earth-bound existence be the unreality?

Can we effectively design a society with a minimum of social problems? Considering space colonization really focuses us on society back here on earth – if we could design such a society, why don’t we do that here on earth? If we can’t figure it out here, how on (or off) earth can we do it elsewhere?

Statistics and Myths about Immigrants

By Sally Raskoff

A friend sent me an e-mail that I found very alarming. Although I consider this person a friend, we have never really talked about politics. But I was still surprised when the missive below came from her.

Her email was obviously a chain letter expressing frustration about California’s problems, allegedly due to illegal immigrants. The  content of the “evidence” is supposed to be from the Los Angeles Times and lists many statistics that lay blame for scary and negative situations squarely upon illegal immigrants.

As a sociologist who teaches statistics, I could not let this go without a response. While I included in my email response a tactful discussion of the reasons why these statistics are problematic, I’d like to invite you to help identify what the problems are with this message.

I’ll start with the source – stating that these came from the Times isn’t sufficient to give them credibility. No date, page, research source or author is mentioned. These could have come from an advertisement in that newspaper or, more likely, never appeared there to begin with. Searching the LA Times online, even with quotes from the text, no connections appear.

Many of the statistics are illogical: “95% of murder warrants … are for illegal ‘aliens’”? The 95% is a big red flag. Few human patterns, especially crime patterns, are so simple that there can be an easy explanation.

Other statistics mentioned are more about prejudice than serious social problems, like this one: “21 radio stations in LA are Spanish speaking”. 

Since these statistics are all about Los Angeles and California, the research reported by the Public Policy Institute of California provides a good contrast to these figures. In their June 2008 “Just the Facts” report on “Immigrants in California,” they state that “Immigration has directly accounted for 40% of the state’s population growth since 2000,” which is a figure much less than the e-mail’s purported 90%. 

Finally, checking the text of the email on snopes.com (a site devoted to investigating hoaxes) this message has quite a history as it has been circulating since 2006. 

Questioning those email forwards and considering the accuracy and source of information that comes our way are crucial steps in critical thinking and forging a pathway based on accuracy rather than ignorance. Do you see any other problems in this email snippet? How would you go about finding unbiased and accurate sources to check this information?

 

(Photo courtesy of the National Archives www.nara.gov)

Is Marriage Under Siege?

By Karen Sternheimer

You know it’s summer when celebrity divorces become the biggest news stories of the day…they are easy to digest, gossip about, and there is always at least one happening at any given time. You can probably name at least two couples who have been in the news lately. Are they symbolic of the declining state of marriage?

In 1996, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). From the name of the legislation, it sounds like it might support marriage counseling, provide encouragement for staying together, or even make it harder for couples to divorce. Instead, this bill ensures that no state need recognize same-sex marriage, not exactly something that will “save” individual marriages. But its name, and those of many laws passed by states in recent years with similar intent, suggests that marriage needs defending.

The idea of “marriage in decline” has become a cliché. Let’s see what the data tell us about marriage in the United States, past and present.

 

As you can see from the data collected by Administration of Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), divorce rates jumped significantly between 1960 and 1980. Also notice that divorce rates spiked in the 1940s before falling after 1945. What’s likely behind these changes?

The obvious answer to the 1940s increase is World War II—separation, coupled with women’s increased participation in the labor force meant that more couples were no longer financially interdependent. Women’s earnings gave them greater ability to financially survive outside of marriage. Prior to the 1940s, it was common for couples to live separately but not divorce due to the costs going to court (there was no such thing as no-fault divorce yet) and have a judge grant the divorce. 

California became the first state to offer no-fault divorce in 1970, and other states followed suit. This meant that couples did not need to sue the other for divorce or prove any reason to a judge; if one spouse wanted out, that was enough. And clearly many did; rates tripled between 1960 and 1980, peaking in 1979 with nearly 23 divorces per thousand married women.

According to the U.S. Census, 5.3 per thousand Americans eighteen and over were divorced in 1979, roughly double the 1950 rate. But since that time, the rate has been declining: to 4.7 per thousand in 1990, 4.1 per thousand in 2000, and 3.6 per thousand in 2005, a rate similar to early 1970s levels.

Let’s also be clear on another point: the lack of divorce does not mean that a marriage was happy or even functional. My grandmother once told me a story of a friend of hers from early adulthood. The woman was married to a man who threatened to break her hands if she ever touched his money, which he kept in a box in their home. Apparently this was just one example of his cruelty and controlling personality, and she tried to obtain a divorce. But the judge ruled that this did not meet the legal definition of cruelty since she had no evidence he actually had struck her. So many marriages that ended by death instead of divorce were not necessarily success stories.

There are also several important predictors of divorce. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a comprehensive report in 2002 that examines who is more likely to get married and divorced. 

One key factor is age. Teens who marry are most likely to divorce within ten years (48 percent of those who marry before eighteen, and 40 percent of those who marry at eighteen or nineteen divorce) compared with 29 percent of those 20 to 24 and just 24 percent of those who marry after the age of 25. If couples grew up with parents who remained married, the likelihood of divorce is also lower (29 percent versus 43 percent). Also, the timing of children matters. Couples who have a child before they are married or within seven months of marriage are less likely to remain married after ten years than those who have children at least seven months after their wedding. 

One of the report’s findings is that race is also a significant factor. As the graph on the left details, African Americans are the most likely to divorce, and Asian Americans are the least likely to divorce after fifteen years. 

It’s hard to know exactly why this is the case, but it might have something to do with the fact that on average, Asian Americans have higher incomes and perhaps less money-related stress than other groups. While the graph below excludes Asian Americans, we can see that income level is related to divorce, and divorce levels are particularly high for African Americans. 

These racial disparities are very visible if we look at long-term trends, where African Americans were much more likely to experience divorce within ten years than whites.

So why the major disparity between African Americans and other groups? The authors of the report draw a very important conclusion—it is likely not race alone that matters. They note that “these differences may be related to higher rates of unemployment, incarceration, and mortality among the black population, their lower levels of educational attainment and earnings.” In other words, marriage may not bring 

economic stability to many African American women. 

This finding suggests that the federal government’s Healthy Marriage Initiative might be missing some of the key reasons marriages end. It’s not that people don’t value marriage, but the factors that contribute to stable family life are harder to come by in persistently poor communities. The biggest threat to marriage is probably unemployment or underemployment, experiences felt disproportionately by African Americans.

The prevalence of celebrity divorces may make it seem like every marriage is at risk for divorce, that marriage is just a fifty-fifty crapshoot. But as a 2005 New York Times article detailed, the percentage of marriages that end in divorce is actually lower than we have been told. The fifty percent divorce rate is based on a faulty calculation: there are about twice as many marriages in the U.S. as divorces each year, and that number was misinterpreted to mean that half of all marriages end in divorce. Most people don’t divorce in the same year as their marriage though. It’s like comparing births to deaths in any given year and presuming those that die are the same ones just born. The reality is, as usual, far more complex than we are often led to believe.

Which Immigrant Groups Assimilate Faster?

By C.N. Le

A common theme among my posts on this blog is the ability of immigrant and racial/ethnic minority groups to assimilate into American society. Many Asian Americans, along with other groups of color, struggle to become assimilated as "Americans" in this country.

As we already know, immigration -- especially illegal immigration -- is a very controversial and emotional issue for many Americans. Among critics of illegal immigrants, one of their main complaints and basis for their fierce opposition is the perception that illegal immigrants are not interested in becoming Americans. Instead, critics fear, they are just here to exploit American society and its institutions or plan to turn the U.S. into a "colony" of Mexico.

Within this context, our job as sociologists is to again try to contribute some objectivity and empirical data to try to answer that question. To what extent do immigrants (legal and illegal) assimilate into American society? Diverse Issues in Education reports on a new study of assimilation among various racial/ethnic groups that finds that immigrants today assimilate faster than earlier immigrants, but that some groups inevitably assimilate faster than others:

Newcomers of the past quarter-century have assimilated more rapidly than their counterparts of a century ago, according to a conservative think tank. However, the report from the Manhattan Institute indicates that Mexican immigrants are not assimilating as fast as other groups. . . . 

In an article for The Boston Globe, [the study's author Prof. Jacob] Vigdor said many Mexicans do not have much incentive to assimilate because they strongly expect to return home and they can function in Spanish-speaking populations in the United States. In addition, those without legal status lack a path to citizenship and better jobs.

This new report is not likely to sway many opinions when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration because both sides can legitimately claim that the results of the study support their own positions. 

That is, critics of rights for illegal immigrants are likely to argue that since Mexican immigrants -- particularly those who are here illegally -- are less likely to assimilate, we should continue efforts to exclude them because ultimately, the results show that they aren't interested in becoming American.

On the other hand, supporters of more rights for illegal immigrants will contend that there's an important cause-and-effect issue here -- many illegal immigrants can't assimilate because they don't have the resources or rights to do so.

In other words, their "illegal" status and the institutional barriers and social restrictions in front of them as a result of their status make it extremely difficult for them integrate into the American mainstream. With that in mind, if we allow them to become citizens, they will eventually assimilate.

I belong to the latter group and favor giving illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, although not at the expense of others who have been waiting for a immigration visa for years and even decades. In fact, this is one of those instances in which I have agreed with Republicans who favor comprehensive immigration reform, and not just a total focus on just barricading our borders.

We need to expand the levels of immigration to the U.S., especially considering that immigrants produce many tangible benefits for American society and its economy. I realize that this is a controversial idea and you will find plenty of statistical data that will support both sides of the argument over whether immigration constitutes a net benefit or a net loss for the American economy.

Nonetheless, even while Americans argue about the economic impact of immigration, there is no doubt that American society is becoming increasingly diverse (even without immigration), globalized, and transnational as we move forward into the 21st century. Based on that fact alone, immigrants have the potential to contribute significantly to American culture and its global competitiveness.

Ultimately, that may be the kind of assimilation that can unite Americans from all backgrounds.

The Gloucester Pregnancy "Pact": When Gossip Goes Global

By Karen Sternheimer

Once upon a time, in a land not too far away, when teenagers gossiped about one and other the rumors stayed between teens. Not so today.

Combine a lull in a year of presidential election politics, the start of summer, and a principal’s comment to Time magazine, and voila, a rumor that seventeen pregnant girls from Gloucester, Massachusetts all made a pact to get pregnant and raise their children together spreads under the “breaking news” banner. 

I first heard about this when local radio hosts who usually focus on Hollywood gossip talked about the story, how naïve these girls must have been, and how they probably saw the movie Juno and thought it would be cool to get pregnant. (Of course if you saw the movie it would be hard not to notice how painful and isolating it was to be pregnant in high school, even if Juno did have a sharp wit). No no no, a co-host offered, it’s Jamie Lynn Spears’ fault: she got pregnant at seventeen and because she is famous she made it cool. 

The Gloucester story became a staple on the major networks and cable news outlets, complete with commentators offering their explanations: celebrity culture that gushes over any pregnancy, naïve teens who can’t understand the consequences of their actions, and whether or not there is too much/not enough birth control available for teens.

Left out of the story…the teens' thoughts. That is, until one pregnant girl appeared on Good Morning America with the baby’s father. She said she had been taking birth control pills and had not intentionally gotten pregnant, and there was no pact to get pregnant. Instead she told of a pact to help each other out to deal with the challenges that lie ahead—something that indicates an awareness that having a baby was more than just about buying cute little outfits and having baby shower parties.

The principal later stood by his statement to Time, asserting that there really was a pact to get pregnant. I have no inside information on what the pregnant girls may or may not have said to each other. But I have my doubts that the school principal would have been in on this sort of info either.

Pre-pregnancy pact or not, the reality is that many girls did get pregnant. While blaming Juno and Jamie Lynn make for interesting radio talk, sociologists have studied why teens get pregnant, and there are several more compelling explanations. Let’s consider some of them.

1. Real or perceived lack of opportunity

Yes, it seems counterintuitive, but the less economic opportunity the greater likelihood of early pregnancy. It may appear like an irrational decision, especially since having a child is a pretty expensive endeavor. 

But here’s why lack of opportunity and poverty predicts higher fertility rates in people of all ages (in the U.S. and globally): when people feel as though bearing a child will not jeopardize a clear, concrete, goal they are less likely to take steps to prevent pregnancy from happening. By contrast, when the prospect of attending college seems very likely and a fulfilling, lucrative career will follow, people are more likely to protect those opportunities.

When I was in high school, we had counselors cheering us through PSATs, SATs, walking us through the college application process and peers that we saw enter into the nation’s top universities. Most of our parents and other family members went to college and often graduate school in order to become professionals and top earners. Having a baby then would have been a devastating detour away from a path of near-certain upper-middle class status.

By contrast, in some communities counselors are few in number and perhaps only focus on a handful of the top students. I have had my own students tell me of high school counselors that actually dissuaded them from applying to college, suggesting it “wasn’t for them.” Pair that with little information about the all-important tests, how or when to fill out a college application, and not having a family member who ever attended college. Now higher education seems more like a fantasy than reality, especially in communities where they see few upper-middle class professionals in their daily lives. Yes, many people from working-class and low-income communities do go on to college and most do not get pregnant, but the stakes seem lower for them to begin with. Gloucester has traditionally been a working-class fishing community, and it has been struggling economically in recent years. While again this may seem counterintuitive, higher teen pregnancy rates are more likely in a community like this than they are in more affluent areas. 

2. Overall teen birth rates have been falling

You might have heard about the rise in teen birth rates in 2006. This was a shift from fourteen straight years of decline, but as the Centers for Disease Control(CDC) press release notes, “It’s way too early to know if this is the start of a new trend,” but it of course important to take a look at. 

According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, between 1990 and 2004 the percentage of birth to women fifteen to nineteen dropped from thirty percent of all births to unmarried women to about 23 percent. In 2004 girls under fifteen accounted for .4 percent of all births to unmarried women, down from .9 percent in

1990. By contrast, births to unmarried women in their twenties increased slightly. Between 1990 and 2005 birth rates had fallen by fifty percent for those under fifteen, and by 34 percent for teens fifteen to nineteen. 

The 2006 data tell us that birth rates for those under fifteen continued to decline, and the biggest increase was in births to teens eighteen and nineteen. For fifteen to nineteen-year-olds, the rate rose from 40.5 live births per 1,000 in 2005 to 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006.

As the CDC notes, “The birth rate for older teens aged 18-19 is 73 births per 1,000 population –- more than three times higher than the rate for teens aged 15-17 (22 per 1,000).” As we can see from the table on the right from the CDC, the fifteen- to seventeen-year-old rate was 77 in 1990, and the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old rate was 168, still substantially higher than in 2006. Abortion rates also fell substantially since the late 1980s. The CDC also found that fewer high school students are sexually active now than in the early 1990s: down from 54 percent in 1991 to just under 48 percent in 2007, and that condom use is way up (from 46 to 62 percent). So despite this high-profile case, the news is mostly good.

As you can see, teen pregnancy is a bit more complicated than a funny movie about it or a profile of a young celebrity would suggest. In addition to socio-economic status, dramatic racial/ethnic differences still persist: African American and Latina fertility rates are higher than that of whites, regardless of age. The reasons for this are complex, and probably related to higher poverty rates of African Americans and Latinos in the population.

And finally, what about the boys (and men) involved? When we talk about teen pregnancy, we often leave them out of the discussion. Despite the reports that practically ignored males, the girls did not get themselves pregnant. But girls are still the ones we gossip about.

How Old is Old?

By Karen Sternheimer

A student of mine had a birthday this week. “How old are you?” a classmate asked.

“Old,” he told her. He had just turned 22.

The other students who had not reached the 21 year milestone agreed. Twenty-two is old.

I listened on, as someone with only faint memories of being that age myself. Surely someone in their late thirties like me would seem elderly to this group.

“Old” is of course relative. In my first year away at college, a friend of mine had a roommate who was 22. “She’s 22, can you believe it? She’s already had her own apartment and everything,” my friend whispered, so nobody would hear of the wizened woman she had been assigned to live with in the dorm. At eighteen, 22 seemed very worldly. And now many years later, my own perception of “old” continually gets older, and my expectations for what chronological age means shift as I pass through many previously “old” years myself.

We have been hearing the “how old is old” question a lot lately about presidential candidate John McCain. Although he is a long-time player on the national political stage, I never heard any reference to his age before this year. If you follow political news even a little, you have probably heard commentators note that if elected, he will be the oldest president to enter the White House at 72. This possibility has led to debate amongst the pundits—and jokes from late-night comics—about whether McCain is too old.

And while there have been many issues about sexism and racism that have arisen through the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, leading to discussions about both race and gender, I haven't heard any critical discussion about ageism. 

In a Pew Research Center poll conducted in February 2008, 32 percent of respondents thought that McCain was too old to be president, and when asked what adjectives first came to mind to describe him, the leading answer was “old.” By contrast, when former Senator Bob Dole ran for president in 1996 at age 73, 34 percent thought he was too old. Not much change in a dozen years.

Representative John Murtha, 75, has publicly stated that he thinks McCain is too old for the job. The AARP (formerly known as the American Association for Retired Persons) criticized Murtha for making this statement, but ironically, older Americans like Murtha are more likely to think McCain’s age is a problem, according to a May 2008 Pew Research Center poll. In contrast to registered voters 18-34, of whom 24 percent said his age is an issue, forty percent of registered voters 65 and older thought McCain was too old to be president. Why the big difference?

Getting back to the idea that age is relative, being over seventy carries different meaning today than it did a half century ago, when McCain and his cohort were in their twenties. A white male born in 2004 has an average life expectancy of 78.3, according to the 2008 Statistical Abstract of the United States. By contrast, when McCain was born in 1936, the average life expectancy for white males was 58.0 (up from 46.6 in 1900). So what would have been an elderly age decades ago has mutated into late middle age today. 

Other factors make age even more relative. Having long-lived family members is one indicator of longevity (McCain’s mother is 96), as is having access to quality health care, living and working in a safe and healthy environment, and having a positive outlook. Other lifestyle factors—such as not smoking and exercising regularly also extend one’s life span. 

Stress is another important issue. People who have jobs with a great deal of instability, little autonomy, and significant potential danger (such as in mining, construction, and driving a cab) also tend to have decreased life expectancy. While the president makes a decent salary—$400,000—and has arguably the best health care of any person in the world, the job is incredibly stressful. Even in the best of times, twenty to thirty percent of your constituents won’t like you. Lunatics making death threats require you to have a full-time cadre of bodyguards (four of your predecessors have been assassinated, four others have died of other causes; that means that nearly one in five haven't made it out of this job alive). And if you are vain about your appearance, this is the wrong job for you. Check out this ABC News slide show of before and after pictures to see how the presidency has aged presidents in recent years.

Questions about McCain’s age may seem legitimate and jokes just in good fun, but age discrimination exists in many forms, and has very real consequences for people who need to work for a living. As many people struggle economically, they will need to work longer. Federal legislation, first passed in 1967 and amended in 1986, bans age limits for most jobs, but that doesn’t stop employers from refusing to hire people looking for work. These are the issues we need to seriously consider as our population ages, especially since our society increasingly worships looking young and pathologizes the aging process.

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.

Problems with the 2010 Census

By C.N. Le

For many sociologists and other scholars like me, the Census data that is compiled every ten years is the most reliable, comprehensive source of data on the American population. We rely on it for us to not just do our research and publish papers, but to help us understand the world around us better.

It's with that in mind that I was rather frustrated to see this article by CNN—an accumulation of mistakes and glitches will apparently cost the Census Bureau several billions of dollars in wasted funds, not to mention the trust of scholars and the American people in general:

[T]he government will scrap plans to use handheld computers to collect information from the millions of Americans who don't return census forms mailed out by the government. The change will add as much as $3 billion to the cost of the constitutionally mandated count, pushing the overall cost to more than $14 billion. 

This was to be the first truly high-tech count in the nation's history. The Census Bureau has awarded a contract to purchase 500,000 of the computers, at a cost of more than $600 million. The devices, which look like high-tech cell phones, will still be used to verify every residential street address in the country, using global positioning system software.

But workers going door-to-door will not be able to use them to collect information from the residents who didn't return their census forms. About a third of U.S. residents are expected not to return the forms. . . . Interviews, congressional testimony and government reports describe an agency that was unprepared to manage the contract for the handheld computers. 

Census officials are being blamed for doing a poor job of spelling out technical requirements to the contractor, Florida-based Harris Corp. The computers proved too complex for some temporary workers who tried to use them in a test last year in North Carolina. Also, the computers were not initially programmed to transmit the large amounts of data necessary.

In my previous life, I worked as a Research Associate for the Center for Technology in Government, doing applied research on how government agencies use information technology to improve their public services.

The most common and costliest mistake we saw was caused by exactly what happened with the Census Bureau -- a technological change was implemented from the top down, with little consultation with the actual workers who will use the technology on an everyday basis on what exactly they need and would like the technology to do.

This miscommunication and lack of consensus input from day-to-day workers led to poorly designed and inferior technology, which led to its ultimate failure, costing American taxpayers billions of dollars. Time and time and time again, this continues to happen.

I suppose this would be the textbook example of the negative connotations of bureaucracy that many of us have -- inefficient, little communication, lack of coordination, and incompetence that leads to public funds being wasted and public outrage.

So it will benefit all of us if the Census Bureau gets their act together, and soon. Rather than simply another form to fill out, the Census helps us understand who we are as Americans. As the response rate declines, the Census data that we as academics rely on becomes less reliable and more prone to sampling error, and that can lead to diminished confidence in our research.

Ultimately, scholars like me end up paying a double penalty for the Census Bureau's mistakes. The first is having our money as American taxpayers wasted. But even more important, the second penalty is that instances like this make Americans less trusting of the Census Bureau and also perhaps less likely to eventually fill out and return their Census forms. What other factors do you think prevent people from returning their Census forms?

Get Religion, Live Longer

By Bradley Wright 

Do you want to live a longer life? Well, science says there are a few things you can do to add years to your life: eat well, exercise, watch your weight, get regular medical check-ups, to name a few. In addition, there are various social factors that are linked to longevity, and one of them is religious involvement. That’s right, people who attend religious services and are involved in religious communities live longer. 

Dozens of studies have found a link between religion and longevity. As an example of this line of work, sociologists analyzed data from a study of about 21,000 people who were first interviewed in 1987. Researchers then followed up eight years later, in 1995, and found that about 2,000 of them had died. The study was designed to study risk factors for cancer, and it contained measures of attendance at religious services. This allowed researchers to test if the people who went to religious services were less likely to die during the study than those who did not. 

Here’s what they found. Using various fancy statistical methods, they calculated that a twenty-year-old person who did not attend religious services at all would on average live to be 75 years old. If they attended religious services less than once a week, they would live to 80 years old; and if they went once a week, they’d live to be 82. Finally, if they attended more than once a week, they would live 83 years. Wow! Going from not attending religious services to attending multiple times a week was associated with living eight full years longer. Eight years, that’s a long time. That’s how long George W. Bush will have been president. That’s two four-year college experiences. That’s about how much extra longevity you get for not smoking.

Since women live longer than men and also tend to be more religious, we might expect a different effect by gender, but the effect of religion on longevity still holds. Men who attend services more than once a week live, on average, seven years longer than men who don’t attend services (81 versus 74 years). There’s a similar finding for women.

These findings lead to the question of why. What is it about religion that has people living longer?

One answer has to do with what sociologists call selectivity. Maybe the people who become religious are the type of people who would live longer anyway, and religion really has nothing to do with it. This seems plausible. Perhaps most people who frequently attend religious services aren’t the type to live life reckless, dangerous lives and would be this way even if they didn’t go to religious services. (This is called selectivity because people “select” themselves into religion.)

It could also be that involvement in religion changes people such that—whatever their life expectancy before they become involved in religion—they live longer. This could happen in several ways. (In case you’re wondering, this is called mediation. Mediating factors are mechanisms through which X causes Y. In this case, things that religion does to make someone live longer).

Many religions have explicit norms about health related behaviors-about drinking or smoking, for example. Even when they don’t have specific rules, they encourage moderation. To illustrate, in the church that I attend, it’s fine if I regularly have a drink or two, but I think my friends there would be concerned if I were routinely getting drunk (especially if I showed up drunk on Sunday mornings). Eating well, drinking in moderation, and not smoking are things that will usually increase longevity regardless of one’s supernatural beliefs.

Another factor is more social in nature. Many religious groups provide strong social ties—friendships, social activities, personal support, and, in general, lots of social interaction. Social ties, regardless of the source, lead to longer lives. My church has numerous meetings a week in which people interact with each other, often seeking to help each other.

A final factor is the effects of stress on religious versus non-religious people. Many religious groups provide various forms of formal and informal support. The theologies espoused by religions frequently include instructions on how to cope with stress. Religious organizations often provide counseling, confession, and just plain old friendship. They also can provide material goods, such as food and money, to members who experience difficulties in these areas. 

What does all this mean? That even with something as seemingly-biological as how long we live, social conditions matter greatly. Based on this, if you’re going to smoke, do try to get to services! ;-)

Wal-Mart and Muslim Americans

By C.N. Le

As globalization continues to effect American society and the world in general, I've been asking the question, how will these political and economic changes affect the cultural landscape of race relations?

While the final verdict is still being debated, I'd like to discuss one recent example of globalization that caught my eye -- as the Associated Press reports, Wal-Mart is catering to the Arab and Muslim American population in the Detroit area:

Aisle 3, which also features Eastern European and Hispanic food, represents many of the 550 items geared toward Arab-American shoppers in the store that opened last week.

It might be statistically tiny in a store with more than 150,000 items, but it's symbolically huge for the world's largest retailer as it seeks to change from a cost-is-everything monolith to one that customizes its stores to meet neighborhood needs.

Managers say they seek peace with the neighborhood's merchants — and vow not to undercut them on Middle Eastern specialties. . . . the modifications go beyond merchandise: It has 35 employees who speak Arabic — noted in Arabic script on their badges. The store also  has hired a local Arab-American educator to teach the staff cultural sensitivity.

Is this another sign of the power of capitalism, or a sign that an icon of "traditional" American society and culture is increasingly accepting of Arabs and Muslims, or both?

To be honest, I'm not quite sure myself what Wal-Mart’s motivation is. On the one hand, we might say that since Arab and Muslim Americans are increasingly becoming integrated into the American mainstream, it makes sense for companies like Wal-Mart to recognize this demographic pattern and, at least in the Detroit area, to reflect the makeup of their surrounding community with culturally-appropriate products and services.

On the other hand, cynics might say that Wal-Mart did not become the world's largest corporation by accident -- it knows by now how to make money. Therefore, Wal-Mart is simply milking the Arab and Muslim American community for as long as it takes them to drive out local small business competitors. After all, that would be the "capitalist" way  to do things, something that Wal-Mart has been known to do in the past.

I applaud Wal-Mart for taking this step to make at least one of their stores more appealing to Arab and Muslim Americans and to reflect the demographics of its surrounding community, even if their ultimate motivation is to make more money.

For me, the alternative -- ignoring the changing demographic and cultural changes in the local community -- would be worse than acknowledging these changes for the sole purpose of trying to rake in a little more money. As we should know by now, American society and American capitalism are not perfect but they are a practical reality of the society in which we live. I don't believe that it has to be an either-or" proposition -- I think both sides can benefit from this development.

I support ways of coexisting and engaging all sides in any particular question, issue, or debate, rather than taking a take-it-or-leave-it approach that only breeds more distrust. What do you think?

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.

Everyday Sociology Talk: Can Sociology Explain $4 Gasoline?

As  you can see, gas in Los Angeles has risen above the $4  mark. Can sociology help us understand why?

Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss a few ideas of how sociology explains rising gas prices. What are your ideas? (Yes, the steering wheel symbolizes consumers being choked by high gas prices...or it just got in the shot accidentally).

Cultural Symbols, Assimilation, and Freedom of Expression

By C.N. Le

One of the main themes in my research as a scholar in Sociology and Asian American Studies is the process of assimilation. As I've written about in various posts on this blog, assimilation can take many different forms.

One form that I've recently started to follow more closely concerns anti-communist political activism among Vietnamese Americans. In fact, I've just completed a chapter entitled "'Better Dead Than Red': Anti-Communist Politics Among Vietnamese Americans" in a book titled Anti-Communist Minorities in the US: The Political Activism of Ethnic Refugees, edited by Ieva Zake (Palgrave-MacMillan Publishing) that will be published early next year.

In that chapter, I write that while the forces of assimilation are likely to result in a moderation of fervent anti-communist sentiment among younger Vietnamese Americans, there is still a strong level of ethnic solidarity within the Vietnamese American community. Combined with continuing incidents of human rights abuses in Viet Nam, I conclude that anti-communist activism among Vietnamese Americans may evolve into different forms but is unlikely to be eliminated or even notably lessened any time soon.

Recent examples illustrate the power of symbols and visual images to illuminate the legacy of the Viet Nam War.

The first incident, as the Orange County Register reports, involves a community college in Irvine, California (located only a few miles from Little Saigon) that recently decided to remove the Vietnamese flag from public display after local Vietnamese Americans threatened to demonstrate:

The 144 miniature flags have hung from the second-floor atrium for many years without controversy, in a gesture designed to symbolize the diversity of the college's student body. On Thursday, college officials removed the display in the wake of threats that busloads of protesters could arrive to disrupt the campus if the Vietnamese flag were not removed. 

Westminster Councilman Andy Quash and Garden Grove Councilwoman Dina Nguyen said they met with college officials Wednesday after receiving calls from numerous constituents about the flag display. "We reminded them that in 1999, in the city of Westminster, that flag hung in a video store led to a 49-day protest peaking at 50,000 people," Quash said. . . . "It's offensive because this flag represents a regime that is very dictatorial and does not respect human rights," Nguyen said.

The second incident, described by the San Mateo County Times, involves artwork created by a young Vietnamese American that was intended to pay tribute to the refugee experience of Vietnamese Americans but instead has been interpreted by many as pro-communist.

The offending photo was of a piece of art by a University of California, Davis, graduate student and Vietnamese immigrant who saw the creation — a yellow-and-red foot-spa tub — as a salute to Vietnamese refugees like her mother-in-law who toiled in a nail salon after the family came to America.

But the protesters saw something far more menacing.

The tub was yellow with three red stripes, which the protesters said must be a reference to the flag of the fallen country of South Vietnam. And the spa's yellow power cord was plugged into a red outlet, which seemed to resemble the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, now under communist rule.

"Why is the South Vietnamese flag on a thing that people wash their dirty feet in?" asked Uc Van Nguyen, 70, who attended some of the rallies, which began in late January. . . .

Meanwhile, the artist said she had no intention of offending anyone when she bought a foot spa from a nail shop, painted it yellow and red. . . . She saw the art creation as a way to honor Vietnamese women who have "toiled and sacrificed enormously for the future of their children and family," she wrote.

It would be easy for many Americans to criticize the Vietnamese American protesters and to say things like, "You may find the images offensive, but as Americans, you should respect the right of people to freely express themselves however they want. If you don't, you're just replicating the same kind of authoritarianism that you blast the communists for committing."

While there is some truth to this particular argument, I would point out that first, in the same way that the artist or school has the freedom to express themselves however they want, so too do others have the right to criticize such expressions. In other words, freedom of expression is a two-way street -- express yourself however you want, but be prepared to receive potentially critical expressions in return.

This is not to say that I always agree with the protesters. In fact, I do not share their interpretation that the "foot tub" artwork shown above is offensive and an insult to the Vietnamese refugee experience. There are other instances in which I disagree with many anti-communist opinions. At the same time, though, I respect and defend their right to express their interpretations that may be counter to mine. 

In fact, it is this right that allows historically marginalized groups to criticize recent media portrayals that many of us find offensive, including a college newspaper column meant as "satire" or the anti-Filipino Desperate Housewives episode.

Secondly, when people (particularly non-Vietnamese people) criticize such protests, in many cases they have little or no connection whatsoever to the refugee experiences that form the basis of such strong anti-communist sentiments. In other words, it is easy for others to say, "Come on, that was 30 years ago -- just let it go already" without truly understanding the level of suffering that many Vietnamese endured and still endure in the form of friends and family who have been killed or made into refugees.

In the same way we need to acknowledge and respect the historical impact of past experiences of injustice and suffering experienced by other racial/ethnic minority groups, so too should Americans be careful not to minimize the impact of the Viet Nam War and the forced exit of the Vietnamese people from heir ancestral.

At the same time, Vietnamese Americans should understand that there is a limit to their protests. Verbal criticisms and mass demonstrations are perfectly legitimate expressions of dissent, but threats and acts of violence are not. In those cases, the laws of this country are clear and there are no exceptions, regardless of how angry one feels or how much one has suffered in the past.

Political activists have the right to freedom of expression. We have broad opportunities to express our experiences, our grief, and our anger, but there are limits that we need to keep in mind. This is ultimately part of what it means to become assimilated, to become Vietnamese American.

How Effective Is Diversity Training?

By C.N. Le

The conventional thinking among sociologists and, I would guess, many corporations is that diversity training is ultimately beneficial for their company or organization -- that it results in greater workplace harmony, more opportunities for advancement for women and racial/ethnic minorities, and more productivity for all their workers.

However, as the Washington Post reports, a new study by Alexandra Kalev, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, shows that when attendance at diversity training is mandatory, rather than voluntary, it is likely to lead to counterproductive results:

A comprehensive review of 31 years of data from 830 mid-size to large U.S. workplaces found that the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by a 7.5 percent drop in the number of women in management. 

The number of black, female managers fell by 10 percent, and the number of black men in top positions fell by 12 percent. Similar effects were seen for Latinos and Asians.

The analysis did not find that all diversity training is useless. Rather, it showed that mandatory programs -- often undertaken mainly with an eye to avoiding liability in discrimination lawsuits -- were the problem. When diversity training is voluntary and undertaken to advance a company's business goals, it was associated with increased diversity in management.

Several experts offered two reasons for this: The first is that businesses are responding rationally to the legal environment, since several Supreme Court rulings have held that companies with mandatory diversity training are in a stronger position if they face a discrimination lawsuit. 

Second, many companies -- with the implicit cooperation of diversity trainers -- find it easier to offer exercises that serve public relations goals, rather than to embrace real change.

I am disappointed but not completely surprised to hear that most diversity training programs are actually counterproductive. In fact, one might be tempted to say that this finding reinforces the argument that greater diversity actually leads to less trust and civic cooperation among Americans, which I blogged about earlier.

Nonetheless, it's important to understand that the main reason diversity training doesn't seem to produce many benefits in corporations is not because of the increase of diversity itself, but because the underlying motivation and support for increased diversity in the workplace is fundamentally superficial and weak to begin with.

In other words, when diversity training in corporations fails, it is almost always because the company in question is motivated by fear of lawsuits rather than by a genuine desire for greater diversity. They are often just going through the motions and putting on a public relations show that has very little true commitment to the underlying principles involved in diversity training.

In contrast, other scholars’ research reinforces the notion that greater diversity can and often does lead to benefits for an organization or society in general. For example, I have blogged about how a mediating institution such as religion can be used as the "social glue" to bring diverse groups of people together.

In fact, Prof. Kalev's research on corporate diversity training compliments the work of Scott E. Page, a professor of complex systems, political science, and economics at the University of Michigan, who wrote The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies. In this book he argues that programs which increase diversity in any organizational setting are ultimately beneficial for society: 

Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.

People from different backgrounds have varying ways of looking at problems, what I call “tools.” The sum of these tools is far more powerful in organizations with diversity than in ones where everyone has gone to the same schools, been trained in the same mold and thinks in almost identical ways.

The problems we face in the world are very complicated. Any one of us can get stuck. If we're in an organization where everyone thinks in the same way, everyone will get stuck in the same place. . . . [Affirmative action is] a flat-out good because, as I said earlier, it makes everything we  do more powerful.

Prof. Page's argument is that diversity and heterogeneity in any organization, facilitated through programs such as affirmative action, leads to innovation and ultimately benefits the entire organization. He also argues that diversity can come in many different forms, not just simple racial/ethnic identity.

Prof. Page's arguments for diversity through programs such as affirmative action support the ideas expressed in Prof. Kalev's research. In order for diversity training programs to be successful in corporations, there needs to be a fundamental commitment to and embrace of its core principles.

The take home message here is that the goal of diversity (and therefore diversity training) is fundamentally sound. It's just that in order for such goals to be realized, organizations need to accept and internalize them as part of their mission rather than just use the training to satisfy legal requirements.

New Research on Racial Ethnic Attitudes

By C.N. Le

These days, racial/ethnic relations seem to be at the heart of many of the most controversial issues in modern American society. These issues include the long-running debate about immigration (especially illegal immigration), racist imagery such as the noose recently pictured on the cover of Golf magazine, and issues surrounding Barack Obama's campaign for president.

I think it's useful for us to try to take a step back and look at these specific issues within a broader perspective. Understanding the social context that forms the framework within which each issue unfolds will increase our understanding of them.

With that in mind, let’s look at the results from two recent national-level surveys about the current state of racial/ethnic relations. Studies conducted by the Pew Research Center and New America Media each provide data on attitudes about different racial/ethnic groups in America. 

The Pew Research Center study generally concludes that among whites, blacks, and Latinos, large majorities of each group report that they get along "pretty well" or "very well" with members of the other groups. However, there are some differences -- black and Latino responses seem to be slightly less positive:

While 70% of blacks say blacks and Hispanics get along very or pretty well, just 57% of Hispanics agree. Meantime, some 30% of Hispanics say blacks and Hispanics get along not too or not at all well; this is the most negative assessment registered by any group in the survey about any inter-group relationship.

It's important to note that although the 57% of Latinos who report good relations with blacks is lower than what Blacks report themselves, that 57% is still a numerical majority.

The Pew study also reports that generally speaking, those with higher education and income tend to report better cross-racial relations. Perhaps surprisingly, blacks living in rural areas tend to report better relations with whites than blacks who live in urban or suburban areas. Also, there were no significant differences in terms of attitudes by region of country. Finally (and most discouraging), younger blacks report worse relations with whites than older blacks do.

In general, I found the Pew study informative but with one significant drawback -- they chose to exclude Asian Americans from the study.

In my opinion, this omission is inexcusable at a time when the Asian American population is close to 15 million, in which Asian Americans are some of the most socioeconomically successful ethnic groups in the U.S., and when Asian Americans increasingly make up large proportions of the population of many states and majorities in many cities.

To remedy that, let's turn to the other national study on racial attitudes, from New America Media (NAM), in conjunction with Bendixen & Associates. This survey included Asian Americans, Latinos, and African Americans, but because it focused on attitudes among and between racial/ethnic minority groups, the study did not include whites.

I am impressed that the NAM study was conducted in multiple languages to maximize its overall validity and accuracy. A PowerPoint presentation of their major findings is also available for download. To summarize, the study notes:

[The poll] uncovered serious tensions among these ethnic groups, including mistrust and significant stereotyping, but a majority of each group also said they should put aside differences and work together to better their communities.

Predominantly immigrant populations - Hispanics and Asians - expressed far greater optimism about their lives in America, concluding that hard work is rewarded in this society. By contrast, more than 60% of the African Americans polled do not believe the American Dream works for them.

[Regarding tensions and mistrust], 44% of Hispanics and 47% of Asians are “generally afraid of African Americans because they are responsible for most of the crime.” Meanwhile, 46% of Hispanics and 52% of African Americans believe “most Asian business owners do not treat them with respect.” And half of African Americans feel threatened by Latin American immigrants because “they are taking jobs, housing and political power away from the black community.” 

[Nonetheless], the poll found “a shared appreciation” for each group’s cultural and political contributions. “Hispanics and Asians recognize that African Americans led the fight for civil rights and against discrimination, forging a better future for the other groups.”

I am saddened to hear that apparently, there is still a lot of racial tension and suspicion between Asian Americans, Latinos, and African Americans. I agree that important issues need to be addressed for these stereotypes to eventually be debunked.

Nonetheless, two points from the NAM survey stand out. The first is that as the Pew Research Center study generally showed, more educated and higher- income respondents are likely to be more positive about cross-racial attitudes and experiences.

With that in mind, it appears that the NAM survey did not disaggregate its responses by social class, and instead lumped everyone from all kinds of educational, income, and occupational backgrounds together within each racial/ethnic group. This categorization unfortunately distorts the findings a little bit.

But I am more disappointed in some of the wording of the questions in the NAM survey. For example, it asked Asian and Latino respondents whether they agreed with the statement "I am generally afraid of African Americans because they are responsible for most of the crime."

The wording of this question is biased, leading, and confusing. First of all, it asks two questions in one -- whether they are afraid of African Americans, and two, whether they agree that African Americans commit most of the crime. One of the key rules about questionnaire design is that you should only ask one question at a time.

Second, presenting the statement that African Americans "are responsible for most of the crime" is leading -- it should have just asked the question, "Do you agree or disagree that African Americans are responsible for most crimes committed" would have been less leading and more direct. The distinction between the two is subtle, but empirically important.

Another example of a poorly-worded and misleading question posed to African American and Asian respondents is the one that begins: "Latin American immigrants are taking away jobs, housing and political power from the Black community." Again, the problem here is that there are three questions combined into one -- whether Latino immigrants take away jobs, take away housing, and take away political power are all three distinct issues and questions that are unfortunately all rolled into one.

Taken together, these two questions may have distorted and exaggerated the overall level of racial tension between Asians, African Americans, and Latinos, especially considering most of the other findings in the NAM study, which generally showed a high level of willingness to cooperate with each other.

Specifically, 86% of Asians, 89% of African Americans, and 92% of Latinos agreed with the statement, "African Americans, Latinos, and Asians have many similar problems. They should put aside their differences and work together on issues that affect their communities."

Ultimately, that is the probably the most significant finding from the flawed NAM survey. Although some tensions and stereotypes still exist between Asians, Latinos, and Africans Americans overwhelming majorities of each group are willing to work together to address issues of discrimination and inequality that they have in common.

Both the Pew and NAM studies offer useful and interesting data, but the shortcomings in their fundamental design compromises their overall value.

Latino versus Asian Immigrants

By C.N. Le

As I’ve written about before, immigration (especially illegal immigration) is one of the most divisive issues of our time. Sociologists can help inject a little bit of objectivity and rationality into this ongoing debate by presenting data, statistics, history, and other “academic” knowledge that can provide a little context and perspective.

At the same time, sometimes it’s interesting to hear “regular” peoples’ opinions about immigration. This idea is at the heart of a new multimedia project headed by Eric Byler. Those of you who are familiar with “indie” films might know him as the director of Charlotte Sometimes and Americanese (an adaptation of Prof. Shawn Wong's novel American Knees), both being critically-acclaimed independent movies about Asian Americans.

Eric's latest project, in collaboration with fellow independent filmmakers Annabel Park, Jeff Man, and Zhibo Lai, is entitled Project 9500 and deals with illegal immigration in Eric’s home state of Virginia. They are putting together a feature-length documentary film, but the project also involves short video essay clips that capture different aspects of the issue. Here are two introductory clips from their YouTube site:

While much of the focus of this project is on Latino immigrants, Eric notes that Asian immigrants have been brought into the issue because many critics argue that Asian immigrants are "good" immigrants. This is based on the belief that they learn English quicker and are perceived to be more willing to assimilate into American society, as opposed to the "bad" Latino immigrants.

Eric emailed me to ask for my “academic” opinion about the sociological similarities and differences between Latino and Asian immigrants. I basically told him that when people argue that Asian immigrants learn English faster than Latino immigrants, what they're actually referring to is social class differences.

In other words, I would argue that what people are noticing is not that Asian immigrants are somehow inherently more intelligent or better at learning English, but rather, for whatever reasons Asian immigrants (1) tend to be more fluent in English overall and (2) perhaps are perceived to be more willing to learn English. From a sociological point of view, the first point is probably true, but only because the aggregate data tends to show that Asians who immigrate to the U.S. tend to have more education and job skills and more likely to come from their country's middle class. By contrast, Latino immigrants tend to come to the U.S. with less education and job skills and are more likely to come from their country's working class or from a rural background.

In other words, Asians who end up immigrating to the U.S. are more “self-selective” in terms of socioeconomic characteristics. What’s important to note is that this is not due to some inherent superiority that they possess over Latino immigrants -- it's just that the social class (also known as 'human capital') characteristics of immigrants from Asia tend to be higher than those of immigrants from Latin America.

On the second point--the perception that Asian immigrants are more willing to learn English once they're in the U.S.--I would again argue that much of that perception has to do with demographic characteristics, not with individual motivations. That is, because Asian immigrants are a smaller portion of the total U.S. population, they're more likely to be integrated into “mainstream” American society. On the other hand, because they are a larger group and are more likely to be working class, Latino immigrants are also more likely to live almost exclusively within a Latino enclave and therefore have less interaction with other Americans. This may seem counterintuitive -- that a larger population tends to be more segregated. But the larger a group's population, the more likely it is to be segregated. In many respects, whites are the most segregated racial group in the U.S.

If a room of 100 people has a racial composition equal to that of the U.S. as a whole, there would be about 66 white, 12 Blacks, 14 Latinos, 5 Asians, and 3 who are American Indian or multiracial. In this room of 100 people, the average white person has a 31% chance of interacting with a non-white (with an even lower chance of interacting with a Latino, Asian, or Black specifically) while the average non-white has a 66% chance of interacting with a white.

Thus working-class Latino immigrants are more likely to be segregated from whites than Asian immigrants are. I believe it is this higher rate of segregation that leads many whites to conclude that Latino immigrants are less willing to learn English than Asian immigrants are. Because In fact, since Latino immigrants are more likely to be segregated in neighborhoods with large concentrations of other Latinos, they can get by in their daily lives without fluent English.

But that does not mean that Latino immigrants are less willing to learn English -- it just means that because of their demographic situation, it is not as crucial for them to do so. But are they less “American” as a result? A few months ago, I posted in my other blog about a new study that shows rather clearly that Latino immigrants generally want to be just as ”American” as anybody else.

Ultimately, there might be some truth to perceptions about immigrants, but such points have little to do with individual motivation. They are based largely on social class differences and institutional-level demographic trends and patterns. Nonetheless, research consistently shows that the overwhelming majority of Latino immigrants, legal and illegal, want to become just as American as anybody else.

Big Plans for Little Saigons

By C.N. Le

The Vietnamese-American community is one of the fastest-growing Asian ethnic groups in the U.S. Many scholars would also say that because of their refugee experiences and their relatively recent arrival, Vietnamese Americans also have one of the highest levels of ethnic solidarity of all Asian groups.

Much of their social cohesion centers on the ethnic enclaves in the metropolitan areas with the largest Vietnamese American populations: Orange County and San Jose. Both of these communities are examples of the “new generation” of Asian ethnic enclaves that I wrote about earlier -- spread out, suburban, and affluent, as opposed to the more traditional Asian enclaves that most Americans are used to seeing -- urban, crowded, and working-class.

Nonetheless, as articles from the Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News suggest, even as they continue to grow, both these Vietnamese American enclaves are poised for some upcoming changes: the one in Orange County is debating plans to add New York City-style high rises,and the San Jose enclave has adopted a controversial official name.

As for the Orange County Little Saigon:

Imagine what would happen if New York City-style development came to the heart of Orange County's Little Saigon, now a jumble of mom-and-pop shops in mostly old strip malls. Lofts would sit atop high-end stores. People would lounge at outdoor restaurants and sidewalk cafes. The area would have hotels and a sculpture garden.

The street where newspaper and television stations are headquartered would become the "Vietnamese American Times Square," complete with plasma screens and electronic headline news signs. That's the ambitious vision put forth by a group of land-use experts to transform the area, home to the largest  concentration of Vietnamese Americans in the country. Little Saigon has not lived up to its potential as a tourist spot, the group says, and it's going to take a lot of money, cooperation and faith to make it one.

Community leaders have long worried that the three square miles that make up the district would slowly decline as the second and third generations of Vietnamese families moved away.

San Jose's Vietnamese American enclave is also undergoing changes:

In a dynamic and dramatic scene before one of the largest crowds to ever gather at City Hall, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday designated a busy hub of Vietnamese-owned businesses "Saigon Business District," enraging several hundred people who stormed City Hall demanding the name "Little Saigon."

Throughout the night, the boisterous crowd of mostly "Little Saigon" supporters shouted and booed, forcing Mayor Chuck Reed to repeatedly tell the crowd to "calm down, calm, down," and council members to defend colleague Madison Nguyen, who initially proposed the name change.