Everyday Sociology Blog

Drawing Lines in the Sand for Interracial Dating

By Janis Prince Inniss

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

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

Watch CBS News Videos Online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cultural Perspectives and Assumptions

By Sally Raskoff

We see the world through our own particular perspective and often assume that others share our views. Public events reveal these different perspectives, such as the conflict between Professor Henry Louis Gates and the police officer called to Dr. Gates’ home about an attempted break-in. Thoughts on this incident varied based on one’s experiences and cultural perspectives.

As I read thought about the differing views of the Gates incident, I was reminded of a summer trip we took in 2006 to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana. This is the place commonly known as the site of Custer's last stand. We were on the trip with some people who were really into discussing the battle and the strategies that the U.S. Cavalry could have used to prevail. I wasn’t comfortable with that particular discussion for many reasons.

For those who don’t remember their history, this is the notable battle in which Native Americans (specifically, Lakota-Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho) and the U.S. Cavalry (and their Native American scouts) ultimately clashed and both sides suffered tremendous loss of life. The twelve companies of the cavalry fighting this battle perished, including its leader, General Custer. My travel companions and many others feel that the cavalry underestimated the number of Native Americans or that their strategies were insufficient. Although the native peoples “won” this battle, they too suffered tremendous loss and they ultimately did not win the war.

The battle took place in June of 1876, and my visit was on the 130^th anniversary. The terrain there consists of beautiful rolling hills, and it is hard to see who or what is on the other side.

Once you get to the battlefield, the most obvious feature is the monument on top of Last Stand Hill. In 1879, three years after the battle, this location officially became a National Cemetery controlled by the War Department; in 1881, the twelve foot high granite monument was placed on top of Last Stand Hill.

Also at the top of Last Stand Hill is an enclosed area that delineates where Custer and many of his men fell. The fence around this area and the headstones invoke the common cultural markers of a cemetery.

If you move back from this hill, the view is quite grand (see photo below) and the granite marker and the cemetery fence are visible from many different angles.

The park map (see below) also shows this area as the focus of activity both historically and currently. Most of the tourists in this area were quiet and reverential, realizing that many people died at this location.

White headstones are placed wherever cavalry members fell. When you look over the expanse of the terrain, the white markers are obvious in contrast to the grass.

These two photos (above and below) were taken atop Last Stand Hill, looking south and east. The darker green grasses grow closer to the enclosed area mentioned above while the rest of the area is left to grow naturally.

If you’re at the top of this hill and you turn around to look to the north/east, you will see the image below – an iron sculpture of an Indian riding through the hills.

What you are seeing is the top of the Indian Memorial.

In 1940, the National Park Service took control of the cemetery and in 1991 it was renamed the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and plans began for a memorial to the Native Americans who perished here. By 1997, the design was selected and construction began.

The memorial is on the other side of the hill from the Custer cemetery but one can still see the granite marker atop the hill. This new memorial consists of a round area with inscriptions on one side framed by the sculpture of the riders on the other side.

I found it to be quite beautiful and reverential, comparably as moving as the cemetery on the other side of the hill. However, my reverie in this space was interrupted by families traipsing through, children running and jumping up and down the steps in front of the sculpture. Tourists behaved appropriately on the other side of the hill, quieting their children and, if they were old enough, pointing out why. Few ventured to this side but many of those who did, in the time of my visit, seemed to forget they were still in a cemetery.

The quotes on the inside portion of the wall reminded people of what had happened there, yet I noticed that many of the tourists did not take the time to read them. (see photo below of two markers) They were walking through the space as if it were a rest area.

The design of this memorial was intended to serve many functions but also to serve as a ”weeping wound” in the earth.

As you leave Last Stand Hill and take the many trails throughout the rest of the park, there are some other interesting sociological aspects to notice.

Off the main trails, there are headstones. There are paved paths to the white headstones. In addition to those white headstones for the cavalry, there are dark red granite headstones for some of the Native Americans who died. Those that are relatively close to a trail also have a path to them, although they are not paved. The photo below shows two vistas with headstones, red granite on top, white on the bottom, from one of the trails.

I noticed immediately that the red headstones were quite difficult to see whereas the white markers were obvious, even from quite a distance. I was curious as to why the white headstones had paved paths while the red headstones had identifiable yet unpaved paths.

Once back at the Visitor Center, we attended a park ranger talk. I was fascinated to learn that all the rangers who do the talks about the park are themselves Native American and they tell the story that is not often told. They tell the story from the Native American point of view. Thus we learned more about how this was the culminating battle in which they were fighting to keep their way of life from these invaders.

They mentioned that the paths to the red granite headstones were not paved because that honored their culture while the white headstones were paved since that was in sync with that particular culture. Thus, when ceremonies were done to honor the dead, people used the paved paths to lay items on the white headstones and people also took the unpaved yet very clear paths to the red headstones. I also learned that the red headstones were placed in 1999.

We also learned some new facts about the battle. The conscripts in the cavalry at that time were mostly new immigrants, Italian and Irish, who did not necessarily speak English well or at all, thus the troops did not always understand the officers’ orders. This added to the problems that army was having in fighting this battle.

On the main building of the Visitor Center, the words of Black Elk are clearly placed (see photo below). I would have loved to ask everyone who passed by how they interpreted those words, but alas, I did not.

Visiting this site with acquaintances who were focused on calvary strategies challenged me. I used my sociological analytical skills to see as many sides of the situation as possible and to consider the impact of culture on its creation and on how people experience it as tourists and local residents.

I would encourage everyone to visit historical locations and use your sociological imagination to assess what you see. Don’t rely on your first impressions or assumptions. Instead, gather information about what you see so that you can compare the different sources and decide what makes sense to you. Consider alternative viewpoints, especially those that are contrary to your own.

Click here for further information about Little Bighorn.

Professor Gates and the Thin Blue Line

By Janis Prince Inniss

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

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

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

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

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Justice Truly Blind? Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Standpoint Perspective

By Janis Prince Inniss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A highly contrasting view is offered by Senator Sessions.

Note that Senator Sessions says:

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

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

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

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

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

She said:

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

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

The Myth of Imported Immigrant Success

By Tamara K. Nopper, Ph.D.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania

http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/

 

If I had a dollar for every time I heard people claim that Asian immigrants do well because they migrate with the human capital to succeed, I’d be able to…do many things.

A common sociological explanation for economic inequality between Asian immigrants and “native born minorities,” the importation thesis posits that the “development” of third world countries and policy dictates for skilled and educated labor have resulted in imported success. In other words, immigrants come in with more human capital and thus are able to effectively compete against and sometimes economically surpass other racial groups.

Whereas biological and cultural explanations focus on ethnic group characteristics as facilitators of success or failure, the importation thesis is preoccupied with the selectivity of immigration policy that has diversified the types of migrants the U.S. recruits and receives. Emphasizing the landmark 1965 Immigration Act, which set in motion the increased immigration of ethnicities previously restricted from entry or naturalization, scholars have refocused our attention on the state’s role in shaping contemporary economic inequality between racial groups.

Nevertheless, there are limitations to this approach. First, we can’t simply discuss aspects of immigration policy that favor skills because the majority of post-1965 permanent residents come in under family provisions and therefore don’t necessarily meet skill requirements. Immigration scholars know this and thus many look to other factors to explain economic assimilation. One is what sociologists Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut label the “contexts of reception,” which involves “the kind of community created by [their] co-nationals.” However, unless we explicitly trace how the state collaborates with ethnic institutions, we end up coming back to what’s presumably particular about ethnic groups—as if ethnic contexts flourish outside the purview of the state. In the process, we ignore the ways state institutions assist immigrants in their quest for socioeconomic mobility after arrival, albeit to differing degrees.

While conducting my dissertation research on Korean banks’ and U.S. federal government agencies’ contributions to Korean immigrant entrepreneurship, I became more familiar with such efforts. They involved collaborations between Korean banks, non-profits, and federal government organizations, including the Small Business Administration, the Minority Business Development Agency, the White House Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders—the only White House commission at the time dedicated to economic development among non-whites (Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans had commissions focusing on educational opportunities)—and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Korean immigrants aren’t the only ones receiving institutional support. There are multiple projects sponsored by government institutions to economically incorporate immigrants of many backgrounds. For example, the FDIC sponsors a Money Smart program that targets language groups for financial literacy; along with English, the program is offered in Spanish, Chinese, Hmong, Korean, Vietnamese, and Russian.

Additionally—and not addressed in my dissertation—mortgage loans are now available to undocumented immigrants, an opportunity that involves using an Income Tax Identification Number (ITIN), which is issued by the Internal Revenue Service when people are ineligible for a social security number. American banks and credit unions began issuing “ITIN mortgages” to undocumented immigrants in 2003. While increasingly difficult to get due to the current financial crisis and political hostility toward illegal immigrants, Kevin Mukri, a spokesperson for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, housed under the Department of Treasury, defends ITIN mortgages. As he puts it, “Banks are not an arm of the immigration department…As long as those getting mortgages meet the requirements of being authorized bank customers, including proper ID, it would be discriminatory not to service them.”

While I don’t propose further policing of immigrant economic activity (it’s already policed), the state’s willingness to turn a blind eye to such financial transactions, coupled with proactive measures taken by government institutions to economically incorporate post-1965 immigrants, suggests that more than human capital and the ethnic contexts of reception are at play.

Finally, the importation thesis reproduces the racist myth of white entitlement. By emphasizing how immigration policies from 1965 onwards have favored skilled immigrants, we inadvertently suggest that post-1965 immigrants—code for immigrants of color—have a competitive edge over earlier waves of white immigrants. Thus, we promote the idea that earlier waves of white immigrants really did earn everything all by themselves. Despite the valorization of the European indentured servant, peasant, farmer, domestic, or seamstress as relying solely on hard work, perseverance, discipline, and hope, we need to remember that immigration has always been a state selective process and that “unskilled” white immigrants legally entered the United States, experienced upward social mobility, and were actively assisted in their trajectories by the state. While we rightfully draw from W.E.B. Du Bois’ “psychological wage” concept to help interpret white immigrants’ racist political choices, we can’t pretend that earlier white immigrants were only psychologically compensated. As law scholar Hiroshi Motomura describes in Americans in Waiting, white immigrants got theirs. For example, from 1795 to 1952, “every applicant for naturalization had to file a declaration of intent several years in advance.” At different periods, these “intending citizens,” overwhelmingly white, accessed tangible opportunities that helped facilitate economic assimilation, including land grants under the 1862 Homestead Act and the right to vote.

While the implications of immigration acts from 1965 onward require exploration, we need to consider how the state actively promoted and promotes immigrant economic assimilation after arrival. To ignore this reality is to reproduce myths about human capital that impact how we address economic disparities between ethnic and racial groups, some of whom may not be immigrants.

Sociologist Niki T. Dickerson speaks to this point and deserves to be quoted at length. She states, “Conventional explanations of racial inequality in academia and public policy have typically focused on racial disparities in human capital as the primary explanation for persistent racial economic inequality, and consequently we have invested substantial societal resources to eradicate differences in education. However, even though the human capital gap between blacks and whites has closed substantially over the past 30 years, commensurate earnings, unemployment rates, and occupational status have not.”

From the Dog House to the Big House

By Colin Jerolmack

Michael Vick, the former star quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons who was convicted of running a dog-fighting ring in 2007, was released from prison in May.  Bankrupt and disgraced and currently under house arrest, he is seeking a comeback in the NFL. While he could be back in action as soon as this fall, there are indications that Vick may be suspended much longer from league play.  He has been told that he will never appear in a Falcons uniform again—management claims Vick has “betrayed” them.

Vick has been labeled a killer, a savage, a barbarian, and worse. The NFL commissioner has stated that Vick must demonstrate that he is “truly” sorry for his crime before he can be reinstated, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has demanded that he undergo a brain scan first to determine if he is a psychopath. It seems that NFL fans, like the Falcons’ management, also feel betrayed.  They wonder: How could Vick risk it all for so little?  Worse, how he could endorse the maiming and killing of innocent animals? 

As a vegan, I find it hard to empathize with Vick’s heinous actions. But as a sociologist, I ask why it is that Vick serves two years in prison and must now convince the league that he deserves a chance to play football again while Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte Stallworth recently received only a thirty day prison sentence for killing a man while driving his Bentley under the influence of alcohol. Why can’t Americans forgive Vick for this transgression, as we have done with his previous antics and with the many sins of other players, and fixate instead on his highlight reels?  What line in the sand has been crossed? Though we could simply indict the individual, the Vick case provides a perfect opportunity to examine how context shapes the ways we think about and treat animals.

The condemnation of Michael Vick highlights our cultural obsession with—and moral elevation of—certain animals designated as companions, especially “man’s best friend.”  Also, a racial and economic subplot adds flavor to this story of a sports icon’s tragic downfall. Vick is most abhorred for not subscribing to mainstream America’s valuation of the dog, which is an historically emergent, middle-class, and Anglo-European phenomenon. 

Keeping dogs as pets was virtually unheard of before the urban bourgeoisie began to bring them into the home as accessories and status symbols in the Victorian era. Only those with excess income could afford such a luxury. As a result, it became common for the poor to steal pet dogs and sell them back to their owners; and newspapers had a field day mocking the hefty ransoms paid by the well-to-do for the return of their beloved pooches.

Certainly, times have changed. Today, pet ownership has diffused across the socioeconomic spectrum. In addition, seventy-five percent of dog owners “consider their dog like a child or family member;” and pets now comprise a $41 billion economy. Indeed, certain animals have won their way into the domestic sphere in the past two centuries. However, such understandings are still socially contingent and mutable. 

Vick grew up in a place where life was cheap. A product of public housing projects located in a crime-ridden Virginia ghetto, Vick’s environment was a place where drug dealing and drive-by shootings were the norm. As Philippe Bourgois and Elijah Anderson point out in their research on American ghetto life, the poor and minorities have historically been subjected to more violence in cities than have middle class whites. 

In contexts where many people are deprived of even basic necessities, dog fighting may seem far less remarkable to ghetto residents than the animal practices that are the norm for the Beverly Hills set—where some people kiss their dogs, spoil them with trips to the spa, and provide them with booties and raincoats that could be the envy of human children. Unfortunately, violence against dogs and other animals is often just another aspect of the routine cycles of violence that so many poor and minority Americans must endure in their neighborhoods.  Designating animals as pets—and feeding, vaccinating, pampering, spaying, and declawing them—not only are luxuries most people living in poverty can ill afford but might also be actions that some might never conceive of doing.  Hard as it is for much of mainstream America to believe, in such settings dogs may not be given honorary familial status. 

Another young black sports celebrity from a modest background turns out to be the most astute cultural critic on this issue.  Basketball player Stephon Marbury complained, “we don’t say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals.”  Marbury raises the specter of a dubious double standard.  He need not say who the predominant group of hunters is:  it is rural white Americans, the mirror opposite of those usually associated with dog fighting.

Isn’t it blasphemy to say that killing dogs for sport is no worse than killing deer?  It depends on whose cultural script you are following. Are those who subscribe to animal slaughter by eating meat on firm moral ground to make judgments against Vick?  Marbury’s challenge lies in making middle America confront its own moral contradictions.

Top Chef and the Black/Non-Black Divide

By Tamara K. Nopper, Ph.D.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania

http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/

I love the show Top Chef. I watch it religiously and regularly chat about it with fellow fan and friend Kevin Eddington. Although more of a foodie than me—he actually knows what sous vide means—we share concerns about the show’s racial dynamics, some of which I want to discuss here. Specifically, I want to explore how Asian Americans and African Americans are represented on Top Chef and in the process, draw from approaches emphasizing the Black/non-Black divide.

The Black/non-Black framework is proposed by George Yancey in his book Who is White?: Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide. According to Yancey, this framework is more helpful for analyzing racism than a white/non-white paradigm because Blacks experience a unique degree of social isolation, as evidenced by how whites, Latinos, and Asian Americans reject them as potential neighbors and marriage partners yet remain open to each other. Yancey’s conclusion bears out on the show.

Asian Americans are present as contestants, chefs, judges, and of course, hosts, and Hung Huynh won the title on season three. Yet Asian Americans face particular racial expectations: they’re encouraged to talk about their ethnicities or immigration histories, badmouthed for cooking too many Asian-influenced dishes, or expected to cook Asian food regardless of training. For example, Huynh was told that despite his skill and “technique,” his food lacked “soul.”

White head judge Tom Colicchio, reminding Huynh of Huynh’s Vietnamese background, said he didn’t “see” him in his food. Such comments reinforce the model minority myth, which celebrates “Asian” work ethic and mechanical productivity while denying us unconditional subjectivity, sociability, and authority automatically afforded whites.

Ultimately Huynh incorporated Asian-influenced flavors into his final meal in hopes of revealing his “authentic” (ethnic) self to the judges. As Huynh tried to express “soul,” his (aired) image shifted from a technically efficient, ultra-competitive, and unlikable Asian to a more humbled Asian eager to take advantage of American opportunities available to him and other immigrants, making one blogger conclude, “he seemed to…acquire social skills in front of my eyes.”

Whereas Asian Americans are racialized in ways that whites aren’t— white contestants aren’t expected to cook foods of their ethnicities so that judges “know” them—African Americans, for the most part, are physically absent from the show. Yet as Frank B. Wilderson, III explains in the anthology Biko Lives!, even when physically present, Blacks remain absent. Despite the popularity and skills of Tre Wilcox and Carla Hall, they exemplify what Wilderson describes as “the absence of a subjective presence.” Unlike Asian Americans, who could explicitly reference their ethnic backgrounds, they could not. They couldn’t talk about Black marginalization in the culinary industry, but were forced to adopt de-racialized tropes of gender and class marginalization used by whites, particularly women and those who are not classically trained.

Black participants also lacked what Wilderson describes as “political presence” in that they were denied cultural and institutional authority. Although Blacks don’t automatically cook (or eat) “soul food,” they are often relegated to doing so regardless of training. While “ghettoizing,” such gestures, as my friend Kevin points out, also imply that soul food has little value to the non-Black culinary world.

Indeed, no chefs were expected to know foods that are culturally associated with Black people, with the exception of the final competitions held in New Orleans on season five. Yet at both dinners, all of the judges were white except for Asian host and judge Padma Lakshmi. Because Bravo TV, which airs Top Chef, doesn’t have all five seasons archived on its website, I can’t say for certain, but I only remember one Black person, chef Govind Armstrong, ever sitting at the judges’ table during deliberations. I only remember four other Black people—and only one of them a chef—serving as guest diners: chef Marcus Samuelsson (whom my friend Kevin points out was not born or raised in the United States), actress and comic Aisha Tyler, sociologist Mary Patillo (who was never introduced to viewers but who I recognized from being in the same profession), and musician Branford Marsalis—who was the lone Black guest at the final New Orleans dinner.

Marsalis even drew attention to his lack of political presence: after listening to others discuss how dishes tasted good but didn’t “pop,” he remarked that chefs talk just like musicians. Although the others tittered, Marsalis, perhaps inadvertently, alluded to the absurdity of his physical presence as a musician at a food competition where all of the other guests were esteemed members of the culinary world—and all non-Black.

Consistent with Yancey’s and Wilderson’s arguments, then, Asian Americans are more present in multiple ways compared to African Americans on Top Chef. Asian Americans compete, host, sample, and judge. We’re recognized as having an identifiable culture and permitted narratives of “Asian Americanness.” Intrusive, limiting, and racist, these narratives nevertheless serve to endear us to non-Asians because they affirm our presumed ethnic “exoticness” while simultaneously re-institutionalizing “universal” ideas related to the white immigrant experience that emphasize outsider status (but not social inequality). And, Asian cuisine is treated as a legitimate cuisine with history, culture, and place as demonstrated by whites citing it as their specialty, talking about taking classes in Asian cooking, or traveling to Asian countries to learn flavors and techniques. Finally, Asian cuisine is racialized as simultaneously traditional and global and therefore marketable to non-Asians.

Enjoyable to watch, Top Chef is, like many pleasures experienced in a racist society, an opportunity for sociological reflection. When the soon to be launched Top Chef Masters airs, I am sure my friend Kevin and I’ll have lots to dish about. And I am certain that the Black/non-Black divide framework will still be useful for understanding the show’s dynamics. The program’s website already tells me as much. Announcing the competition of “24 world-renowned chefs,” its pictures do indeed speak a thousand words. As images of participants reveal, a few Asian Americans will be featured as competitors and host/judge; but this time around, there are literally no Blacks on the show.

Diary of a Mad Black Woman? Double Minority Status and (Un/Under) Employment

By Janis Prince Inniss

I recently learned that an acquaintance, Jim, has been unemployed for a while. I don’t know exactly for how long, but this middle-aged white man had held a number of important sounding positions. I don’t know how or why he is now jobless, but he explained that he is still unemployed because he is the wrong race and gender to be hired today. “It’s because I’m not a black woman,“ he said.

I am. I have a doctoral degree and am the “right" race and gender—a twofer for any employer. They can check off two check boxes that demonstrate their diversity initiative in  action. African/American/black? Check. Female? Check.

In the context of this moment in U.S. history maybe his comment was understandable or excusable. There are currently two songs celebrating “chocolate”: “Chocolate High” and “Chocolate Legs”. And there’s newly elected President Barack Obama. Being black is in, right?

After all of the years of debates about affirmative action and quotas, blacks are preferred, right? All the talk about cultural competence and diversity means that companies are seeking blacks. And as a black woman—and therefore a double minority—I should be solid gold!

So why aren’t folks lined up at the door to hire me? Well, perhaps because I have not been looking for a job. That seems like a pretty good answer. But despite my supposedly ideal race and gender, my research position at a university (supposedly a bastion of liberal leanings) keeps shrinking.

It's not that I’m a terrible employee, which would override my race and gender in order to maintain important academic standards. All of my performance evaluations have been very good. I've also been elected to a departmental council, suggesting that I am also liked and trusted by my peers.

If I’m a good worker, well liked, and black and female, why am I under-employed? I’ve recently been made part-time as some of my grant funded projects have ended. Where are the overtures to me that Jim and others imagine?

In reality, being black and female is no guarantee of employment. Many states are facing their highest unemployment rates in decades. Even in prosperous economic times, unemployment rates among blacks in the U.S. are highest; this same group is being hit harder than whites or Latinos by the current recession. In February, the unemployment rate for whites was 7.3 percent, 10.9 percent for Hispanics, and 13.4 percent for blacks. Why might this be the case? (Think about the industries that have employed large numbers of blacks and those hardest hit by the recession.)

The institute at which I work has three departments and employs about 500 people. (Actually, because of the economic downturn, the institute is now part of a newly formed college that includes five other departments. However, given its newness and my relative unfamiliarity with it, I’m choosing to ignore that for now.) I’m on the faculty in a research position. And in my division, I believe I’m one of two faculty members who are not full-time. At the moment I’m barely over half-time and that is projected to decrease to 35%. (The other person in the department is a white woman who remains much closer to full-time status.) As far as I can tell, of the approximately 85 faculty at the institute, 7 are black; this is less than eight percent black faculty in a city that is more than one quarter black. So there is no clear advantage based on race and gender here.

According to the Institute’s Diversity Plan, there is an expectation that “administrative and organizational processes” is evident in "hiring practices (and) staffing patterns". But as my experience demonstrates, this does not mean that there is any advantage to being black and/or female.

I don’t think anybody owes me anything. Well, that’s not quite true. A few people do, but they know who they are and that has nothing to do with employment. I digress. I’ve worked hard to earn everything I have and expect to always be successful. My success is also due to the fact that many people (of all hues and stripes) have gone out of their way to be supportive of me.

It was and is, however, rather odd to bump up against the notion that my race and gender put me in a position of privilege, especially at a time when I am under-employed. I don’t see this privilege in my own lived experiences nor in the statistics of what is occurring to others across the nation. What do you think fuels the notion that black women are forcing white men out of jobs?

News Coverage of Crime Victims

By Terry Glenn Lilley

Graduate Student, University of Delaware

Most of you have probably heard of Laci Peterson. She was pregnant with a baby boy when, on Christmas Eve of 2002, she was reported missing by her husband, Scott. Four months later, on April 14, 2003, Laci Peterson’s decapitated body was pulled from the San Francisco Bay. Four days after that, Scott Peterson was arrested for murdering his wife. He was later convicted and is currently on death row.

But how many of us have ever heard about Evelyn Hernandez? Evelyn Hernandez was a Salvadoran immigrant and single mother living in San Francisco. Seven months before Laci Peterson was reported missing, Evelyn Hernandez and her five year old son were reported missing. Like Laci Peterson, Evelyn Hernandez was pregnant and was due to deliver a baby boy in a week’s time. Three months after being reported missing, Ms. Hernandez’s decapitated body was pulled from the San Francisco Bay on July 24, 2002. This was nine months before Laci Peterson’s body would be recovered.

The circumstances of the two cases are remarkably similar. Yet one of the stories received considerable media attention while the other received very little. In the four months between Laci Peterson’s reported disappearance and husband Scott Peterson’s arrest on April 18, 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle published 32 stories about her disappearance and murder, four of which were on the front page. Meanwhile, the newspaper published a total of only four stories about Evelyn Hernandez and none of them made the front page.

The disparity in coverage wasn’t isolated to the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. I conducted a LexisNexis Academic search in October 2008 for news items in U.S. Newspapers and Wires containing the name “Laci Peterson”, (results in Figure 1 below), and found 8,141 separate entries. On the other hand, a LexisNexis Academic search using the same parameters for “Evelyn Hernandez” produced only 57 results (0.7% of the total stories devoted to Laci Peterson).

What’s more, of the 57 stories mentioning Ms. Hernandez, 41 of them (72%) only mention her in relation to the Peterson case. One of the reasons for this is that during the Scott Peterson’s trial his defense team mentioned the Hernandez case to suggest that a serial killer might be targeting pregnant women in the area.

So, why the disparity in news coverage? Some researchers suggest that a case’s novelty determines the level of attention it receives. The race, class, and gender of the victim also play a role. Victims who are white, middle to upper-class females receive more media and political attention than their lower-class counterparts of color. This disparity matters for a variety of reasons. For one thing, highly-publicized cases often receive more police attention and, later when the perpetrator is caught, more attention from prosecutors. These cases are also often used to rally support for legislation.

For instance, the 1992 murder of 18-year old Kimber Reynolds was used to help gain support for California’s “Three Strikes” law. The 1994 rape and murder of 7 year old Meghan Kanka from New Jersey was used to help create and pass that state’s sex offender registration and community notification law which has become known as “Megan’s Law”. You’re probably familiar with of “AMBER Alerts”, which are issued to inform communities and law enforcement of child abduction cases. AMBER Alerts are named for 9-year-old Texan Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996. Likewise, Laci Peterson’s murder in 2002 was used to pass “Laci and Connor’s Law” or “The Unborn Victims of Violence Act”. This act was passed by the United States Congress in 2004 and recognizes a child in utero that is injured or killed during the commission of federal crimes of violence as a legal victim.

In each of these cases, the victim was a white female. And, like the Peterson case, each had similarities to other crimes committed against women of color that received little to no media attention. Thus, while most of us have heard about Laci Peterson and Meghan Kanka, few of us know about Evelyn Hernandez, Tamika Huston, Dannarriah Finley, or Alexis Patterson, nonwhite victims of similar crimes whose names you might not know. Their murders didn’t make national headlines and no laws bear their names.

Some might argue that no matter which cases we rally around, protections for victims are being put in place so we should be satisfied either way. But if only a certain type of victim spurs action while other victims are ignored, already subordinated groups become more disenfranchised. Mourning white victims with news stories and then memorializing them with legislation can make minority victims seem even more nameless and forgotten.

Exactly what is it that makes Laci Peterson more newsworthy than Evelyn Hernandez? Why don’t we have ALEXIS alerts? Dannarriah’s law? What other ways do you think race, class, and gender shape our beliefs about crime?

Who is Most Likely to be a Crime Victim?

By Karen Sternheimer

If you watch one of the many television crime dramas that are on now, you might think you know the answer to this question. But looking at the actual statistics might surprise you.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has conducted the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) each year since 1973, asking a random sample of Americans twelve and older about their experiences with crime during the past year.

This survey is important because many crimes, especially minor crimes like theft, never get reported to police. So if we relied solely on law enforcement agency data, we might never get a good picture of the prevalence of crime. For instance, by comparing the NCVS to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, a database of crimes and arrests based on law enforcement data, we can also get an idea of how many rapes get reported to the police and how many don’t.

Here are some things the NCVS teaches us about crime victimization from 1973 to 2006, the most recent year for which data are available:

1. Violent victimization is on the decline

Between 1973 and 1993, violent victimization held somewhat steady, hovering just under 50 per 1,000 (this means that for every thousand Americans, fifty were victims of violence) to around 20 per 1,000 in 2006. This trend mirrors FBI data, which also details a sharp crime decline after the early 1990s. As you can see below, property crime declined significantly too.

2. Teens and young adults are the most likely victims of violent crime

Young people are the most likely victims of violent crime. In 2006, young adults 20-24 were slightly more likely to report victimization than teens after many years of teens being the group most likely to be victims of violence. This isn’t necessarily because teens themselves are more violent—according to then FBI Uniform Crime Reports the vast majority of people arrested for violent crime (more than 80 percent) are adults.

Take a look at the lowest line on the graph above; despite the common perception that the elderly are highly likely to be victims of violence, they are the group least likely to be victimized.

3. Blacks are more likely to be victims of violence than whites

Unfortunately, the NCVS data on race only considers two categories. From the graph above, it is clear that black victimization is higher than the rate for whites. Although the rates for both groups have declined in recent years, we can see that black victimization has increased slightly, while white victimization has remained flat.

4. Males are more likely to be victims of violence than females

With the exception of rape, males are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than females are. As Sally Raskoff blogged about last year, we tend to believe that females are more vulnerable to violence. Boys and men are more likely to be victims of assault, robbery, and homicide than girls or women are.

5. Low-income people are more likely to be victims

The NCVS data reveal that those with household incomes below $7,500 are more than three times more likely to be robbed than those with incomes above $75,000. This might seem counterintuitive; wouldn’t wealthier people have more and better stuff to take? They probably do, but poorer people are more likely to live in higher crime neighborhoods, and criminals typically victimize those around them the most. It’s more convenient.

Poor people are not just more likely to be robbed. Those at the lowest income level are victims of aggravated assault at the rate of 13 per 1,000, compared with 3 per 1,000 in the $75,000 and over category.

 

Okay, now that we have some basic ideas about the age, race, gender, and class of the most likely victims of crime, let’s think about who is most likely to be featured in crime dramas. The victims on these shows tend to be (although are not always) sympathetic figures; after all, if we don’t care about the victim, we might not care if their assailants are caught and brought to justice.

This might lead to highlighting white female victimization, both in crime dramas and in the news to appeal to a specific target audience. Historically the fear for white women and children’s safety motivated the lynching of many black men and the passage of laws allegedly to protect women’s virtue.

In seeking a middle class audience, producers might also tend to focus on middle class victims, people we might imagine are “just like us” and therefore their victimization hits closer to home. We might also feel more emotional connection to stories about elderly victims, which heighten the sense of outrage against a heartless perpetrator.

So crime shows have a lot of compelling reasons for telling slightly different crime stories than the ones that happen in real life. Drama, after all, is heightened reality, not reality.

But it’s important to recognize that the abundance of crime dramas might distort our perception of who are most likely to be victims. Based on NCVS data, those who are young, black, male, and poor are disproportionally likely to be crime victims. Why do you think we have had an easier time viewing this group as the cause of crime, rather than as crime victims?