Category Archives: Race and Ethnicity

Crime, Law and Deviance, Current Events, Power, Race and Ethnicity

Police Compliance, Body Cams, and Black Lives: Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System

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by Carmen Gutierrez

Inspired to contribute to our sociological understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement and of racial angst in the U.S., Dr. Rashawn Ray, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park, began investigating police killings, the social psychological dimensions of why police kill Black males with impunity, and the collective action responses to these events.

Dr. Ray recently shared some of this work in an invited lecture sponsored by the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Ray’s presentation provided a glimpse of his current research on a variety of timely, important social issues, summarized in the title, “Police Compliance, Body Cams, and Black Lives: Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System.”

Dr. Ray and his work motivates us to continue working toward an equal society where all people experience fairness and justice. We believe Dr. Ray’s research makes a necessary contribution to the current social and political climate as a growing number of Black men and women suffer the harmful consequences of discriminatory policing. As we recently passed the day marking the fifth year when the world learned of the life and death of Trayvon Martin, we write this review in his honor and in celebration of the wonderful work of Dr. Ray.

Here are 10 points inspired by Dr. Ray’s recent presentation:

  1. PEOPLE OF COLOR HAVE WORSE EXPERIENCE WITH THE POLICE

Dr. Ray explained that people of color have long suffered from disproportionate surveillance and violence from the police. According to a recent study using data on the “stop-and-frisk” practices by the NYPD, Blacks and Latinos are stopped by the police 23% and 39% more often than Whites. More specifically, when police officers suspect individuals of violent crimes and weapons offenses—the most common suspected charges, representing more than two-thirds of stops by police—Blacks and Latinos are stopped by the police twice as often as Whites.[i]

  1. DISPROPORTIONATE POLICING OF MINORITIES IS NOT BASED ON UNEQUAL CRIMINAL ACTIVITY

Despite their overwhelming suspicion of people of color, stop-and-frisk procedures by the police more often lead to arrests among Whites than among Blacks and Latinos. In other words, White people are more likely to be found guilty of suspected charges, and yet they encounter significantly fewer threats of police encounters than their minority counterparts. Most individuals across all racial and ethnic groups who have been stopped-and-frisked by the police, however, have been completely innocent of suspected charges. Only about 1 in 10 stop-and-frisk events leads to an arrest.

  1. OFFICERS COMMIT RACIAL BIAS IN POLICING

In an effort to describe the etiology of such racialized policing practices, Dr. Ray worked with Maryland colleague, Dr. Kris Marsh, to collect data on implicit bias among police officers. Results from this ongoing work show that officers admit to having racist preferences that affect the way they do their jobs. For example, officers reported preferences for the association of Blacks with weapons and Whites with harmless objects.

  1. RACIAL BIAS BY LAW ENFORCEMENT FUELS NEGATIVE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE POLICE AND PEOPLE OF COLOR

The implications for the work of Dr. Ray and Dr. Marsh on racial bias among law enforcement officials reflect the reality of police encounters among Blacks in the United States. Because they have strong expectations that the Black individuals they encounter will be in possession of deadly weapons, police officers impose a perceived threat from Blacks during their shared interactions. In turn, these irrational views from the police are used to justify their use of force against Blacks in cases involving violence.

  1. BLACK FAMILIES ATTEMPT TO PROTECT THEIR CHILDREN FROM POLICE VIOLENCE BY TEACHING THEM COMPLIANCE

In response to protecting themselves from police violence embedded within police perceptions of their presence as threatening, Black families commonly begin teaching their children at very young ages to comply with the police. Several studies describe the socialization of Black children as it relates to their relationship with police.[ii] These studies describe the way parents “armor” their children to survive and function in a racist culture. Parents are especially concerned for the safety of their Black sons as they fear the historical, structural, and institutional relationship between Black masculinity and suspected criminality.

Dr. Ray invokes this narrative in his op-ed featured on Public Radio International responding to why Freddie Gray ran from the cops. Although some people might have asked why a person would run from the police if they are not committing a crime, Dr. Ray instead asks “why wouldn’t he run?”[iii] He goes on to explain that “People run because they are tired of being accosted and harassed by the police every time they walk out of school or leave the subway…People run simply because they realize that even if they are not committing a crime, they can end up with a broken spine, choked to death, or shot dead for simply having the wrong skin color.”

  1. BODY CAMERAS MIGHT HELP REDUCE POLICE VIOLENCE AGAINST MINORITIES

Recognizing the danger of their implicit bias, some police departments have implemented the use of body-worn cameras (BWC) to be attached to their officers during their time on duty. BWC initiatives are intended to improve the objectivity of police reporting for criminal investigations, and to capture the perspectives of citizens and multiple individuals during police encounters.

As part of a longitudinal study with the Prince George’s County Police Department in Maryland, Dr. Ray and others are working with local residents and police to compare outcomes from their encounters as they relate to the use of BWC. Preliminary results from this work show that Blacks report more mistreatment by the police than Whites, but believe that BWCs will help reduce harassment and use of force they experience.

  1. RACIST POLICING DIVIDES VIEWS OF THE POLICE

The unequal distribution of surveillance, harassment, and use of force by the police among people of color has significant implications for the ways people across racial and ethnic groups differentially view the police.

According to a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 31% of Blacks reported that the police in their community do a good job when it comes to holding officers accountable when misconduct occurs. By contrast, these positive views of the police were reported among 75% of Whites in the sample.

In the same study, the Pew Research Center showed that Blacks’ fatal encounters with police have different meanings for Blacks and Whites. Just over half (54%) of White respondents reported that they believed fatal encounters between police and Blacks are signs of a broader social problem (rather than signs of isolated incidents), whereas the same was true for 79% of Blacks.

  1. #BLACKLIVESMATTER IS CREATING COLLECTIVE ACTION TO GENERATE AWARENESS OF AND TO PUT AN END TO ANTI-BLACK RACISM IN OUR SOCIETY

Since it began in 2012, the Black Lives Matter movement has heightened awareness of many structural and institutional acts of racism, including justifiable homicide[iv] against Black victims like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, to name a few. Like in those instances, these events often involve the killing of Black males by police officers whose actions are regularly deemed justified by the state.[v]

Awareness of and attitudes toward issues related to racism in the criminal justice system is thus evolving as the Black Lives Matter movement continues to successfully mobilize support and solidarity through its organization on social media.

The use of social media for promoting the Black Lives Matter movement has been so effective, in fact, that the development and growth of the Black Lives Matter movement offline is directly linked with the conversation occurring online. Understanding the presence of the Black Lives Matter movement has thus become an important centerpiece for our knowledge on social movements and collective action more broadly.

  1. RESEARCH ON #BLACKLIVESMATTER SHOWS ITS GROWING INFLUENCE

In response to its historical and social significance, Dr. Ray and colleagues turned to Twitter data to analyze the process behind the evolution of Black Lives Matter. With over 30 million tweets, Ray and others investigated the way Black Lives Matter transformed from a hashtag to a social movement.

In their analysis, Ray and his colleagues found that tweets about Ferguson corresponded to actual protests on the ground, male activists were viewed as more credible sources compared to female activists, and the names of male victims of police brutality were used as hashtags more often than the names of female victims. These findings are inspiring work specific to female victims of police brutality (e.g., Sandra Bland).

  1. THE FUTURE OF #BLACKLIVESMATTER

On their 10-year university, Twitter published a list of the most used hashtags related to social causes. According to Twitter, #BlackLivesMatter was ranked as the 3rd most used social-issue hashtag in the 10-year history of the platform. #Ferguson was the top used hashtag.

Dr. Ray is currently working to develop a special issue and edited volume on sociological research using social media data. We look forward to this and other projects of his future work.

For more on Dr. Ray’s presentation, listen to the audio of his talk here, watch his #DailyThought video blogs here, and follow him on Twitter.

References

[i] Gelman, Andrew, Jeffrey Fagan, and Alex Kiss. 2007. “An Analysis of the New York City Department’s “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 102(479): 813-823. DOI: 10.1198/016214506000001040

[ii] Fine, Michelle and Lois Weis. 1998. “Crime Stores: A Critical Look through Race, Ethnicity, and Gender.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(3): 435-459.

Meeks, Kenneth. 2000. Driving while Black, Highways, Shopping Malls, Taxicabs, Sidewalks: What to Do If You Are A Victim of Racial Profiling. New York: Broadway.

Bell, Ella, L.J. Edmonson, and Stella Nikomo. 1998. “Armoring: Learning to withstand racial oppression.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 29(1): 285-295.

Green, Beverly. 1992. “Racial Socialization: A Tool in Psychotherapy with African American Children.” In L. Vargas, & J. Koss-Chioino (Eds.) Working with Culture: Psychotherapeutic Intervention with Ethnic Minority Youth (pp. 63-81). San Francisco, CA, USA: Jossey Bass.

Peters, Marie. 1985. “Racial Socialization of Young Black Children.” In H. P. McAdoo, & J. L. McAdoo (Eds.) Black Children: Social Educational and Parental Environments (pp. 159-173). Newbury Park, CA, USA: Sage.

Hale-Benson, Janice. 1986. Black Children: Their Roots, Culture, and Learning Styles. Baltimore, MD: USA: Johns Hopkins University Press.

[iii] Emphasis added

[iv] Homicide is the willful killing of one human being by another. Under the law, people may be justified in the act of killing another person if doing so is a necessary matter of protection from imminent and serious danger. Justifiable homicide is defined as and limited to: The killing of a felon by a peace officer in the line of duty, or the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen. Because these killings are determined through law enforcement investigation to be justifiable, they are tabulated separately from murder and non-negligent manslaughter (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide).

[v] Due to legal policies protecting the use of violence by the police

Carmen Gutierrez is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and a research trainee in the Population Research Center (PRC). Her research explores topics within crime, law, and deviance through a demographic lens. She is currently conducting a comprehensive analysis of health and healthcare among individuals with prior involvement in the criminal justice system.

Crime, Law and Deviance, Current Events, Power, Race and Ethnicity, Sociology of Gender, Uncategorized, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Angela Stroud on Race, Gender, and Concealed Carry

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by Katie Kaufman Rogers

Angela Stroud
Angela Stroud, UT-Austin PhD and Assistant Professor of Sociology & Social Justice at Northland College

This October, the UT Austin Department of Sociology and Fem(me) Sem welcomed sociologist Angela Stroud for a public talk and discussion with graduate students about her new book, Good Guys with Guns: The Appeal and Consequences of Concealed Carry. Dr. Stroud completed her PhD in sociology at UT Austin in 2012 and is now an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Justice at Northland College in Wisconsin.

Dr. Stroud opened her presentation with graphs showing rates of American gun ownership. Despite an overall decrease in gun ownership since 1970 (rates have fallen by nearly 20%), the Obama Era has seen a sudden proliferation of concealed handgun licenses. In 2007, she said, 4.5 million Americans held such licenses. But since, more than 6 million additional licenses have been administered, bringing today’s total to a staggering 11 million. But why? To better understand the explosion of firearm sales and spread of concealed carry legislation, Dr. Stroud sought to uncover what motivates Americans to attain permits and buy guns.

University of North Carolina Press
SOURCE: University of North Carolina Press

During the talk, Dr. Stroud shared insights from her fieldwork in gun licensing courses, as well as excerpts from the in-depth interviews she conducted with gun permit holders. The title of the book plays on an old maxim in pro-gun discourse (“only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun”), but as Dr. Stroud explained, it also highlights a key finding: the cultural relevance of the “good guy” trope. She unpacked the construction of the “good guy” identity, arguing that its conflation with whiteness and hegemonic masculinity helps explain the appeal of concealed carry as a symbolic practice for men. She drew on elements of critical whiteness theory and Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity to analyze participants’ narratives about the protection they perceive guns to offer.

Ultimately, she found that cultural definitions of “good” gun owners rely on a classed and racialized dichotomy of masculinities. Respondents saw themselves as “good guys” who earned the right to own guns through training and civic service, as opposed to to “bad guys,” whose gun ownership threatened the safety of “good” families and communities. Dr. Stroud argued that this binary paints white men as responsible heroes while casting Black and Latino men as dangerous criminals. Additionally, the trope displaces deviant whiteness onto working-class men (whom her participants dismissed as uneducated “Bubbas”). She also touched on how geographical space is invoked in “good guy” discourse, pointing to respondents’ racialized conceptualizations of sites like the highway, the ghetto, and the home.

Dr. Stroud’s work has a particular resonance within the context of the University of Texas at Austin. Texas’ new campus carry legislation, which took effect this past August, gives students and faculty members the right to carry concealed handguns in university buildings such as classrooms and dormitories. The law has added fuel to an already blazing national controversy about guns. It has also galvanized the UT community, sparking petitions, protests, resignations, lawsuits, several faculty op-eds, and a slew of cancellations from scheduled visitors ranging from famous musicians to guest lecturers.

Good Guys with Guns critically intervenes in gun control debates by illuminating an understudied facet of American gun culture: How gun owners understand the necessity of guns is tied to how they see themselves and their place in the world. Dr. Stroud’s talk added an important voice to the campus conversation about concealed carry, showing how both pro- and anti-gun advocates misunderstand the deeper issues of race, class, and gender that shape how Americans understand guns.

Good Guys with Guns is available through the University of North Carolina Press. You can follow Dr. Angela Stroud on Twitter at @astroud.

Katie Kaufman Rogers is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. Her research focuses on the areas of gender, race, and sexuality. You can follow her on Twitter at @katiearog.

Demography, Race and Ethnicity, Sociology of Health, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Duty, Honor, Country, Disparity: Race/Ethnic Differences in Health among Veterans

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by Connor Sheehan

A campaign supporter’s sign at a Trump rally in Chicago. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

During the 2016 election cycle, Democratic and Republican candidates for president have consistently discussed veteran health issues and reform of the Veterans Administration (VA).   The increased attention to veterans and their health is well-warranted, as veterans are an enormous population in the United States totaling over 23 million—almost as many people as live in the entire state of Texas. Veterans, of course, also have unique health, partially due to the occupational and behavioral hazards that accompany military service. As part of this policy discussion, it is important to discuss the large racial and ethnic health inequalities that exist among veterans. As I show below, racial and ethnic minority veterans consistently report worse health and have more health related limitations to activities than white veterans. These gaps are hard to ignore, particularly at a time when the veteran population is becoming increasingly racially diverse and the share of underrepresented groups among veterans is expected to increase dramatically over the next few decades (see Figure 1).

Sheehan Image 1

As a PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Texas, I have been conducting research that sheds some light on the extent and nature of racial and ethnic disparities in health and ultimately suggests what can be done about them. First, my findings consistently show that sizable health disparities exist. An analysis I conducted of a nationally representative survey of veterans administered by the VA showed that almost half of black veterans report “fair” or “poor” health rather than more favorable categories such as “good,” “very good,” or “excellent.” Conversely less than a quarter of whites reported “fair” or “poor” health (See Figure Two) (Sheehan et al 2015). The analysis also showed that 13% of black veterans report a severe activity limitation such as not being able to walk, get dressed, use a toilet, or eat. In contrast, less than 5% of white veterans reported having such limitations.

Not only are black veterans lives characterized by worse self-rated health, and more activity limitations, they are also shorter. In my own (unpublished) analysis using the Linked Mortality File of the National Health Interview Survey, I found that, even after controlling for age and region of residence, Black veterans were 43% more likely to die compared to white veterans from 1997-2011 (see Figure 2).

Sheehan Image 2

Imagine, so many of these veterans who once dedicated their lives to our country and sacrificed so much, are in such poor health. The American public and the presidential candidates cannot stand by and do nothing. The military, a longstanding institution that requires its members to uphold values like discipline, integrity, and loyalty should now uphold the same and do right by them. The VA, which shares similar values to the military and which also strives to provide equitable services, can also help minimize disparities.

There is a lot that can be done to reduce racial disparities in health among veterans. Any effort aimed at minimizing health disparities in later life must from the time that young recruits enter military service. My research shows that, compared to whites, a greater proportion of racial and ethnic minorities serve in combat roles, as well as also serving in branches with higher levels of exposure to combat and other dangerous experiences such as exposure to chemical or environmental hazards (Sheehan et al. 2015). Placement processes should be reviewed and such differences rectified in order to eliminate racial disparities in exposure to dangerous situations that have lifelong consequences for health.

Medalists from the 33rd National Veterans Wheelchair Games (2013), from Houston, TX. (Source: U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs)
Medalists from the 33rd National Veterans Wheelchair Games (2013), from Houston, TX. (Source: U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs)

Other researchers have shown that after military service, minority veterans attain lower levels of education and economic prosperity than their white counterparts – two components that are consistently linked to worse health (Teachman and Call 1996). To counter this, the VA could expand occupational training focused specifically on underrepresented groups, with the understanding that these programs may improve health.

Beyond these measures, there are also specific health interventions that could be used as models to design approaches that can help reduce disparities. One intervention which improved the overall health among a primarily black elderly veteran sample in Washington, D.C. relied on Home Based Primary Care (HBPC). HBPC emphasized the integration between social workers, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and dietitians in providing care at home for the elderly population (see: Chang et al. 2009). Researchers found that those who received HBPC had 43.7% fewer hospital admissions and spent almost 50% fewer days in the hospital than those who did not.

Another intervention found that racial disparities in knee surgery outcomes were reduced when veterans were well-educated about their medical options. The black veterans who received more information on their treatment options experienced significantly less pain and greater physical function than black veterans who did not receive the information. There were little differences for the white veterans (Weng et al. 2007). These experiences suggest that integrating multiple domains and focusing on education regarding the health care system and health care options could help to minimize health disparities among veterans.

Veterans have sacrificed greatly for their country. Now it is time for their country to sacrifice for them, and work to end these health disparities. If the presidential candidates are as committed to veterans as their rhetoric claims, we should soon see policies and programs aimed at improving the health of all veterans.

Acknowledgements: I thank the Population Research Center, the Population Reference Bureau (Specifically Elizabeth and Reshma for their helpful comments), Shantel for her comments. All those working at the VA to end health disparities and all the veterans who have served. Mistakes and views are my own.

 

References

Chang, C., Jackson, S. S., Bullman, T. A., & Cobbs, E. L. (2009). Impact of a home-based primary care program in an urban Veterans Affairs medical center. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 10(2), 133–137.

Teachman, J. D., & Call, V. R. (1996). The effect of military service on educational, occupational, and income attainment. Social Science Research,25(1), 1-31.

Sheehan, C. M., Hummer, R. A., Moore, B. L., Huyser, K. R., & Butler, J. S. (2015). Duty, Honor, Country, Disparity: Race/Ethnic Differences in Health and Disability Among Male Veterans. Population research and policy review,34(6), 785-804.

Weng, H. H., Kaplan, R. M., Boscardin, W. J., MacLean, C. H., Lee, I. Y., Chen, W., & Fitzgerald, J. D. (2007). Development of a decision aid to address racial disparities in utilization of knee replacement surgery. Arthritis Care & Research, 57(4), 568–575.

Connor Sheehan is a fifth-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and the Population Research Center. His research analyzes health inequality and how institutions get “under the skin” to influence our health.  Follow him on Twitter at @ConDemography. 

Austin, Current Events, Political Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, Social Networks and Social Media, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Athletes as Activists: Lessons from Black Lives Matter and Beyond

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by Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown

Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James warms up before an NBA basketball game against the Brooklyn Nets at the Barclays Center, Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, in New York. Professional athletes have worn "I Can't Breathe" messages in protest of a grand jury ruling not to indict an officer in the death of a New York man. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James warms up at the Barclays Center, Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, in New York. He and his teammates wore “I Can’t Breathe” messages in protest of the grand jury ruling not to indict an officer in the death of Eric Garner. (Source: Kathy Willens/Associated Press)

The last few years have seemingly seen a rise in outspoken “activist” athletes. In late-2014, LeBron James and most of the Cleveland Cavaliers wore “I Can’t Breathe” warm-up shirts in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement to protest the murder of Eric Garner, a 43-year old Black man who was choked to death by Staten Island police in July 2014. Similarly, the University of California – Berkeley women’s basketball team took to the court wearing homemade black T-shirts with the names of Black Americans who were either lynched or killed by the police in the Golden Bears’ game against California State University – Long Beach. Also in 2014, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins entered FirstEnergy Stadium with a black sleeveless T-shirt worn over his uniform and pads inscribed with the message “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford III.”

On the left, Andrew Hawkins entering the Browns’ stadium with his “Justice” shirt; on the right, Cal’s Lady Golden Bears in their homemade t-shirts before their game. (Source: Tony Dejak/Associated Press, Cal Women’s Basketball/Twitter)

In 2015, in a show of solidarity with other students, the University of Missouri football team refused to take to the field unless their university system president, Tim Wolf (who had not adequately addressed issues of racism on campus), resigned. Within 36 hours Wolf was gone, prompting Missouri state legislators to engage in what sports journalist Dave Zirin terms “plantation politics”; in putting forth a bill that would revoke scholarships for any scholarship athletes who fail to perform for “any reason unrelated to health,” Missouri legislators aimed to silence Black dissent, specifically the actions of the Mizzou Tigers football players.

It is in the midst of this particular activism-inclined sports climate that several journalists, activists, academics, and former athletes gathered in Austin this March to discuss the relationships between sports and politics. On March 11th, the co-sponsored event (co-organized by UT-Austin Sociology professor Ben Carrington), “Athletes as Activists: Lessons from Black Lives Matter and Beyond,” brought together a panel of athlete-activists. Moderated by British journalist Keme Nzerem, the panelists Shireen Ahmed (athlete, writer, activist), Michael Johnson (former English Premier League and Jamaican national team football player), and Etan Thomas (former NBA player) facilitated a discussion about the role of athletes as activists. The room was full, with an audience of faculty, students, staff, sports writers, and curious residents of Austin, as well as SxSW visitors. The panel began with each panelist discussing their personal experiences as both athletes and activists and the intersections therein. From there, Nzerem asked a few more pointed questions to facilitate discussion, and then opened the floor to the audience itself.

IMG_7346IMG_7347

The panelists discussed the ways in which athletes have acted as activists throughout history, while simultaneously connecting their own experiences to contemporary instances of athletes as activists. One of the central stories shared was that of the Mizzou Tigers football team, and their successful stand against former university-system president Tim Wolf. The Tigers operated in solidarity with the student population of the university, including one student who had engaged in a hunger strike against the president. What their stand contributed, as noted by Etan Thomas, was a form of collective power. As student athletes, the football team generates revenue for the university, and by refusing to play, that revenue was put in jeopardy. Though their actions were later met with backlash and antagonism, they showed in that moment that power that comes from a unified front of student athletes—the power to get things done.

The panel highlighted the Mizzou action as a recent example of athlete activism, but also made it clear that taking such measures is not an easy thing to do. The act of being both an athlete and an activist simultaneously provides a platform and runs the risk of taking serious heat. Nevertheless, each panelist, in their own way, made clear the value of being both an athlete and an activist, especially in instances of solidarity and support.

The conversation was rich and varied, drawing on topics such as the lack of representation of people of color and women on athletic organizational boards, the continued issues faced by women in sport – particularly as they intersect with race, religion and sexuality – as well as the importance of all students (athletes and non) advocating for their own rights. The panel brought to the fore many diverse voices – faculty, student athletes, graduate students, sports writers and more.

One thing that was made particularly clear during this panel discussion was the intersection of sport and politics, and the interconnectedness of social movements and sports. Athletes have the ability to bring attention to larger societal issues on a major scale, and though using their voices to bring issues of injustice is often met with backlash, it is important to remember that the platform, power, and privilege does exist.

Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown is a 6th-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology. Her research interests include race, embodiment, social relationships, food practices, and sport. Her dissertation explores middle-class Black American food practices in Austin, TX. 

 

Current Events, Gender and Sexuality, Power, Race and Ethnicity

Shantel Buggs at Racism Review

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Source: Salvage
Image Source: Salvage

Over at Racism Review, fifth-year doctoral candidate (and UTAustinSoc editor!) Shantel Gabrieal Buggs has shared some findings from her dissertation in regards to dating practices, race and racism, and the Black Lives Matter movement:

As every good social scientist knows, words mean things. The  language around, and produced by, movements like BLM – particularly in regards to discourses of race, racial inequality, state-sanctioned violence, and racism – has influenced the ways in which the multiracial women in my study discuss race, racism, and inequality in the context of their intimate relationships. Several women have described using their own stances on the issues BLM addresses as a means of selecting potential dating partners. This finding suggests that BLM and other widespread social justice movements are having significant impacts on how people are navigating racial politics on an interpersonal level. This is particularly pertinent during a time where U.S. media and popular culture is especially focused on issues of racism and state-sanctioned violence.

Thus, Black Lives Matter provides multiracial women with a means of framing their commentary on racism, racial inequality, and violence. Often, these women describe trying to find a “middle ground” in which to exist politically, so as to not fall within the so-called “extremes.” This middle ground calls to mind the notion of mixed-race people being a “bridge” between communities. The “middle ground” also suggests that to be on the extremes is to identify too closely with blackness or to not be “beyond” race. Thus, many women expressed contradictions over the course of their interviews; for several women the tensions around race and racism are issues of “diversity” and something that these women perceive black people to be “ethnocentric” about. It is telling that the multiracial women who believe that the concerns of BLM are solely concerns for black people are women who are not of black descent. However, women of myriad mixed racial backgrounds – including those who are not part black – noted that the issues the movement highlights are concerns for us all.

Read more here!

 

 

Current Events, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity, Social Networks and Social Media

When White Men Can Dance: Race, Masculinity, and Jock Insurance

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by Katie Kaufman Rogers

Earlier this month, an Australian CrossFit athlete named Khan Porter posted a video to his Facebook page. The video opens on Porter in a gym. He sashays to the Beyoncé hit “Single Ladies.” Suddenly, mid-routine, Porter performs a 264 lb snatch: He lifts a cartoonishly huge barbell above his head in one swift motion, then drops it with a triumphant thud and picks up dancing where he left off.

The original video, which has been deleted, had more than 1.7 million views. Porter has since followed up with a second post, saying, “I posted my video because I think the way the public reacted reflects a pretty cool shift in preconceived notions of masculinity and think that’s grounds for starting some more positive conversations about what it means to be ‘a man.’” The post goes on to address the connections between masculinity, mental health, and suicide.

Porter’s video and follow-up post have both received an outpouring of support online, from comments on Facebook to features and praise on Buzzfeed, Bustle, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and espnW. Many commenters—including Porter himself—have likened the video to actor Channing Tatum’s recent appearance on the reality series Lip Sync Battle, in which Tatum performed a drag rendition of Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls).” The video of Tatum’s performance went viral, too.

It is tempting to embrace Porter’s hope that the widespread love for his video reflects a sea change in contemporary conceptions of masculinity—a move from rigid, fragile identities to more flexible, durable ones. But while it is true that masculinities are always in flux (Kimmel 1996), masculinities scholars debate the extent to which these changes are liberating for women and marginalized groups of men. Is the response to Porter’s video as revolutionary as these media outlets profess, or is it a mirage, tricking us into believing that patriarchy has fundamentally changed? Masculinities scholarship suggests that the video reveals the elasticity of an institution like patriarchy. It can stretch to change form or appearance, but its hierarchical structure and resulting inequality stays the same.

Sociologists Tristan Bridges and C.J. Pascoe (2014) have devised a useful concept for understanding the continual shifting of masculinities. For Bridges and Pascoe, hybrid masculinities refer to the “selective incorporation of elements of identity typically associated with various marginalized and subordinated masculinities and—at times—femininities into privileged men’s gender performances and identities” (2014:246). In other words, men enact hybrid masculinities when they include bits and pieces of identities associated with marginalized “Others” into their own identity projects. These Others can include men of color, working-class men, rural men, queer men, and women, among others. Bridges and Pascoe argue that even though all kinds of people use hybrid masculinities, it is men who have the most privilege (i.e., white, straight, wealthy, cisgender) who are freest to enact these identities while still being seen as appropriately masculine.

Porter partially acknowledges this when he points out that gay men are not allowed the same flexibility in constructing hybrid masculinities as straight men (though it should be noted that this point also serves—intentionally or otherwise—to stress that Porter himself is straight). However, two additional privileges help make Porter’s hybrid identity “acceptable” to a broad audience. First, he has what Pascoe calls “jock insurance” (2003:1427), meaning he conforms so closely to the standards of hegemonic masculinity that he can behave in conventionally nonmasculine ways without having his masculinity questioned. These standards include traits like athletic prowess, attractiveness, and sexual skill. Porter’s website states that he is a professional CrossFit athlete. His Instagram account is filled with photos and videos that showcase his athletic ability, muscled build, and signifiers of wealth (e.g., a BMW, an expensive watch, vacation photos). Articles describing the viral video tend to mention Porter’s sexual desirability, calling him “super hot” “eye candy” with a “flawless” physique and “all-too-perfect upper body strength.” These elements of Porter’s performance and its reception work together to ensure that his dance moves do not detract from his manliness.

Second, Porter is a white man. Compare Porter’s experiences with those of Odell Beckham, Jr., star wide receiver for the New York Giants, to understand the advantage his race affords him. Beckham, who is Black, is also known for dancing. He grooves in the end zone after a touchdown and in videos posted online. He also posts photos on his Instagram account that show displays of tenderness and affection toward other men. These behaviors seem aligned with what Porter sees as a transformation in socially-accepted performances of masculinity. However, the response to Beckham’s hybrid masculinities differs dramatically from the response to Porter’s. Rather than celebrate Beckham’s identity, online commenters and media organizations have responded by interrogating his heterosexuality. Streams of comments on Beckham’s Instagram describe his sexuality as “suspect” and explicitly insist that he’s gay.

An image (with comments) posted on Odell Beckham, Jr.’s Instagram page. The photo features Beckham hugging close friend and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Jarvis Landry after a game.
An image (with comments) posted on Odell Beckham, Jr.’s Instagram page. The photo features Beckham hugging close friend and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Jarvis Landry after a game.
An image (with comments) posted on Odell Beckham, Jr.’s Instagram page. The photo features Beckham with his father and baby brother.
An image (with comments) posted on Odell Beckham, Jr.’s Instagram page. The photo features Beckham with his father and baby brother.

For instance, a photo of Beckham hugging longtime friend Jarvis Landry (a wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins) drew dozens of comments like the following:

blessings_catchings He’s really gay people and it’s not because of this pic.

alexryansanch Looking very suspect.

marley_chapo He kissn his neck

Compare this response to the praise heaped on high-profile friendships of white celebrities. The so-called “bromance” of Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon, for example, has been celebrated by the media for years at no cost to public understanding of their manliness or heterosexuality.

These attacks on Beckham’s identity have taken a toll on the football field. Numerous sources including the Giants organization have stated that players have targeted Beckham with homophobic language all season, occasionally spurring confrontations with other players. Before a December game against the Carolina Panthers, players reportedly taunted Beckham with “gay slurs” during pregame warmups. Beckham went on to strike Panthers cornerback Josh Norman repeatedly on the head during the game, resulting in a one-game suspension. Panthers players continued to undermine Beckham’s masculinity after the game, publicly feminizing him with words like “bitch” and “ballerina.”

American culture regards NFL football players as paragons of masculinity and toughness. If anyone should be able to leverage “jock insurance,” it should be an NFL football star. Yet when we compare the radically different responses to Porter’s and Beckham’s enactments of hybrid masculinities, we can see racial disparities in the effectiveness of jock insurance. White men, it seems, have more space to construct hybrid identities (e.g., showing affection to other men, dressing in drag, dancing to Beyoncé music) than men of color.

Though well-intentioned, Porter’s “strategic borrowing” (Bridges & Pascoe 2014:252) of elements of black femininity may actually work to obscure and reinforce systems of patriarchy and white supremacy rather than dismantling them. Bridges and Pascoe write:

By framing middle-class, young, straight, White men as both the embodiment and harbinger of feminist change in masculinities, social scientists participate in further marginalizing poor men, working-class men, religious men, undereducated men, rural men, and men of color (among others) as the bearers of uneducated, backwards, toxic, patriarchal masculinities. Even as young White men borrow practices and identities from young, gay, Black, or urban men in order to boost their masculine capital, research shows that these practices often work simultaneously to reaffirm these subordinated groups as deviant, thus supporting existing systems of power and dominance. (2014:253)

Applauding Porter’s identity while criticizing Beckham’s reinforces racial disparities in public conceptions of manhood: Porter appears bold and enlightened for engaging in behaviors for which Beckham is painted as deviant. Porter’s video and accompanying statement celebrate the freedom of white men to play with masculinity, but they will do little to dismantle systems of oppression that punish men of color for the same behaviors. Rather than subvert the structural inequalities of patriarchy and white supremacy, Porter’s appropriation of elements of femininity and black culture amount to—in the words of sociologist Michael Messner—“more style than substance” (1993:724).

 

References

Bridges, Tristan and C. J. Pascoe. 2014. “Hybrid Masculinities: New Directions in the Sociology of Men and Masculinities.” Sociology Compass 8(3):246-258.

Kimmel, Michael. 1996. Manhood in America. New York: The Free Press.

Messner, Michael. 1993. “‘Changing Men’ and Feminist Politics in the United States.” Theory and Society 22(5):723-37.

Pascoe, C. J. 2003. “Multiple Masculinities? Teenage Boys Talk About Jocks and Gender.” American Behavioral Scientist 46(10):1423-38.

Katie Kaufman Rogers is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. Her research focuses on the areas of gender, race, and sexuality. You can follow her on Twitter at @katie_k_rogers.

Current Events, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized

“Modern” Romance and the Absence of Race

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Fifth-year doctoral candidate Shantel G. Buggs takes on Modern Romance‘s lacking analysis of the role of race in “modern” dating:

Modern Romance assumes a consistency of dating experience across race that is problematic. Assuming that people of color have had the same experiences as, or with, white people with online dating is critically irresponsible and is contradicted by the research. White millenials in particular have proven time and time again they are not as progressive as they are assumed to be, including in who they choose to date (or exclude from dating).

Even best-selling author and OKCupid co-founder Christian Rudder notes the continued role of racism in the chances of finding a partner online in his book Dataclysm and on the blog OKTrends. He reiterated this fact again during a Q&A at the 2015 meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago that I attended. When Helen Fisher of Match.com suggested that online dating had wiped out prejudice, he was quick to correct that misperception. Given the widely known and easily available data on race and online dating, the disappearing of race from Modern Romance’s analysis is all the more curious. This colorblind approach does little to help us understand contemporary intimacies that begin online and does even less to advance sociological understanding of modern romance.

Read more over at Racism Review.

Current Events, Gender and Sexuality, Power, Race and Ethnicity, Sociology of Gender, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

“This Is Men’s Work:” Lessons on How to Talk about Masculinity and Men’s Involvement in Ending Violence against Women

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by Juan Portillo

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“My Strength Is Not For Hurting,” read a poster that professor Christine Williams showed during the inaugural MasculinUT: Healthy Masculinities Project event on September 3, 2015. Williams was critical of the poster because of how it positioned men as subjects who can make a choice to be violent or not, while women were portrayed as silent objects to be protected. The poster is an example of recent efforts to involve men in the movement to end violence against women, contained in Michael Messner’s new book, Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women. The book, which came out earlier this year, was at the center of an “author-meets-critics” panel conversation between Messner, UT sociology professors Christine Williams and Ben Carrington, and undergraduate Student Government Chief of Staff Taral Patel.

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Examples of the “My Strength is Not for Hurting” campaign posters referenced by Christine Williams

The conversation around this poster was reflective of the tone of the event, which did not focus purely on the successes or failures of men’s involvement in the movement to end violence against women, but on the contradictions and lessons that can be learned about masculinity, race, and the institutionalization of the movement to end violence against women. The “Strength is Not for Hurting” campaign represents, to varying degrees, the state of men’s involvement (or attempts to involve men) in the movement: a depoliticized (read: distanced from feminism), sanitized (read: not messing with a gender hierarchy or questioning masculinity), professionalized and institutionalized effort that targets individual men, but is not critical of masculinity or patriarchy and the way they shape institutions and their logics. It stands in stark contrast with MasculinUT, which is a project headed by Voices Against Violence of the Counseling and Mental Health Center. MasculinUT aims to transform taken-for-granted understandings of masculinity on campus, and promote healthy models of masculinity with the ultimate goal of preventing interpersonal, relationship, and sexual violence on campus. The conversation over the poster and the history of men’s involvement in ending violence against women went in many directions that problematized taken for granted ideas about gender, race, and violence. Though not all questions were answered, the fact that we can have a complex conversation says a lot about the direction that anti-violence work can positively go in.

Messner’s co-authored book analyzes men’s involvement in the movement to end violence against women from the 1970s to the present, separating the men into different cohorts. As Patel summarized during the event, Messner explains that in the 1970s some men listened to and collaborated with women who were leaders in the feminist movement, creating coalitions with them to redefine masculinity and fight for gender equality by reaching out to young men. Messner calls these men the “movement cohort.” Patel noted that a key difference between men in the 1970s and young men today was the use of political labels to identify themselves in the 70s, compared to almost a phobia of labels nowadays. The “bridge cohort” is what Messner terms the men who worked in anti-violence programs and institutions with anti-violence policies during 1980s and 1990s; Patel found this part of the book relevant to him as a student in an institution that has to follow laws and policies to prevent violence against women. Patel saw the institutionalization of anti-violence programs (in universities and the military, for example) as the success of feminism, and observed that coalition building means that allies must listen to movement leaders. He also highlighted how the book respects and centers the work of women, without which men who do anti-violence work could not operate.

The final group that Messner’s book discusses is the “professional cohort.” This cohort of men is the most diverse racially and economically; this is partly the result of anti-violence programs targeting communities of color and needing to recruit young men of color that their target audience can relate to. It is also a cohort distant from political discourses, as they do not identify with feminism for the most part, and work under a public health and social work umbrella to justify their involvement in anti-violence programs. In this vein, Patel’s questions focused on what students can do now to build on the opportunities afforded to them by feminist work and continue building coalitions that recognize how gender violence is not independent from racial violence and class violence, among other types of violence experienced by students.

One of VAV's new posters for the "Yes means Yes" campaign.
One of VAV’s new posters for the “Yes means Yes” campaign.

After reflecting on Patel’s comments and Messner’s responses, I see that MasculinUT is a mixture of both “new” and “not so new” ideas. Mesnner shared that in the 1970s, men had a vested interest in changing the definition of “manhood” to humanize men and fight against unquestioned gender assumptions (which society ascribes to boys and men) such as men’s aggressiveness, lack of emotions, and violent tendencies. Like Messner’s early experiences in the feminist movement, one of the goals of MasculinUT is to promote healthy models of masculinities that would afford young men on our campus a better quality of life by improving relationships, reducing violence (against women and among men), and improving men’s mental and physical health by encouraging the exploration of different emotions and interpersonal skills often thought of as feminine.

However, as Christine Williams pointed out during the panel, recent efforts by some men’s groups who stand against violence often reify the gender hierarchy by positioning men as subjects who have to be responsible for their male power, and women as objects to be protected. After showing the posters mentioned at the beginning of this post, she congratulated Messner on how the book operates with a framework that does not glorify or put down men’s efforts, but rather works to understand contradictions and tensions that arise out of men’s involvement in the movement to end violence against women. One of her most critical questions had to do with how much emphasis Messner puts on education programs to reduce violence, and whether or not education is a true site of transformation for masculinity. To this, Messner responded that education by itself is not an answer, and indeed it is wrought with problematic messages that rest on a gender binary and hierarchy. However, he pointed out that the book contains examples of men using educational and promotional materials as tools to start a conversation that is relevant to men’s lives. Moreover, he emphasized that the book also explores what it takes for men to get interested in the movement to end violence against women, and how much effort they have to put in to make it their career. By emphasizing this, he is not trying to glorify the men (who often are praised just for showing up to anti-violence programs), yet also not dismiss the complicated, contradictory, and often difficult work they engage in.

Professor Ben Carrington also highlighted parts of the book that discussed how anti-violence PR work is limited when the movement to end violence against women is institutionalized. Carrington reflected on how, as universities, non-profits, health organizations, and other institutions develop anti-violence policies and work to reduce gender violence, they often ignore how to transform powerful entities (such as athletics departments) and become complicit in the perpetuation of violence. Moreover, Carrington mentioned that the problem is individualized, as it is not seen as a cultural or structural problem, but a problem of individual men. Often, the men who represent violence in the eyes of the institution tend to be men of color, who become scapegoats that ultimately allow for assumptions of masculinity within the institutions to resist transformation. Carrington ended with a question about the limits of Messner’s definition of the “field” of men’s involvement in the movement to end violence against women, particularly how limiting the genealogy of anti-violence work from the 1970s to today leaves out important contributions of women of color that span hundreds of years of work against the violence of European colonists, slave-owners, and other powerful entities. If these were to be included, asked Dr. Carrington, is a white, liberal, feminist framework still relevant?

There is a lot at stake when writing about men’s involvement in a movement primarily seen as headed by white women, because under patriarchy men’s contributions can be glorified and their privilege overlooked, silencing women’s needs and contributions. Moreover, in a society that privileges whiteness, it is easy to ignore women of color’s involvement and intellectual contributions in anti-violence work, and ignore power dynamics that result in men of color and working class men being labeled as the most violent in an effort to resist an overall transformation of patriarchy that affords elite men privilege. While the book does address some of these issues, Messner shared that after having conversations with many feminist academics and activists, he now sees loose ends left in his book. If given a chance, he would include more historical information about important anti-violence work, particularly work done by women of color. He explained that his original genealogy arose from a conversation with his co-authors while reminiscing about their involvement in the feminist movement and in violence prevention work. Thus, the genealogy represents their own social location. This reminds me of how Dorothy Smith1 and Patricia Hill Collins2 write about how the tools we learn as sociologists to conduct research are rooted in masculinist, Eurocentric logics. It is easy to forget or trivialize women’s intellectual contributions and work when the very tools of our field are already infused with logics that center (often white and middle-class) men’s experiences and standpoint, even when working with a feminist framework in a field constructed by feminists.

I am not accusing the authors of the book or pointing fingers particularly at them, but rather reflecting on what it takes to produce feminist work that includes sophisticated thoughts about men and masculinity in a feminist scholarly effort, from the point of view of men. As Smith and Collins argue, one way to account for the limitations of both our social location and masculinist, Eurocentric sociological methods and theory, is to trust and respect feminist work that arises from the experiences of women of all walks of life. This is something that, as a feminist scholar, Messner is doing since the release of the book. He has addressed questions such as Carrington’s by recognizing the limitations of his book and incorporating the tools and ideas of feminists of color to enrich the work without taking credit for those ideas. He wrote the blog post titled “Intersectionality Without Women of Color?” to engage in reflexivity sparked by listening to feminists of color. He starts his post by writing:

A book should never be treated as a statement of some final Truth. Instead, a book is best put to use as moment of condensed insight that focuses and clarifies ongoing conversations. Still, when you are the author of a book, and engaging in such public conversations, you sometimes learn things in the give-and-take that you wish you had known while writing.

This is where I see the success of this event and hopefully, of the new MasculinUT initiative on the UT campus: engaging in dialogue that results in meaningful transformations of our understandings of gender and violence, and the multiple intersections with race, class, and more. I foresee a lot of difficult conversations happening as Voices Against Violence moves forward with this project on the UT campus. When talking about the power inherent in relationships shaped by gender, race, and class (among other identities), and more importantly, about transforming those relationships to prevent violence, I don’t see an easy way to prevent disagreement or prevent MasculinUT from engaging in problematic discussions. What I do see is that it can be possible to have a dialogue where MasculinUT and the student body can learn from each other and together develop a fluid platform to address issues of violence, gender, race, class, and more. What this event taught me (in connection to feminist epistemology and methodology), is that this type of work requires an interrogation of logics and practices that exist through, and outside of, ourselves. We cannot rely on our experiences and our points of view alone to understand how violence works and how to prevent it. We need to trust, listen to, and respect what people with vastly different experiences have to say, whether this is in the form of theories developed by feminist scholars, or the solutions that activists of different backgrounds have come up with when engaging in anti-violence work. Being reflexive of our standpoint as we do research, having compassion for the people who engage in education programs that target men, questioning the rationalization for targeting men of color, and being critical of taken-for-granted notions of masculinity will only enrich the work that we do, and Messner’s responses (during the panel and in the blog linked above) are one way of transforming our narratives and our tools as sociologists. In line with his book, I do not want to glorify Messner for his work; however, I do want to celebrate the lessons to be learned in the contradictions and tensions that his work contends with, and the way that he listens to, honors, and works with other stakeholders in the movement to end violence.

 

References

1. Smith, Dorothy. (1987). The Every Day World As Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Northeastern University Press.

2. Collins, Patricia Hill. (2000). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge.

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Juan Portillo is a Graduate Assistant for Voices Against Violence, working on the MasculinUT project. He is also a 4th year PhD student in the Department of Sociology at UT Austin.

 

ASA, Austin, Current Events, Gender and Sexuality, Immigration, Latin American Studies, Political Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, Sociological Theory, Sociology of Education, Sociology of Gender, Sociology of Health, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

@UTAustinSOC in Chicago #ASA15

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Sexualities in the Modern World? @UTAustinSOC says yes, in a big way. While our faculty, graduate students and alumni always represent at ASA, Longhorns will steer this year’s sexualities’ conversation in many directions. In glancing over the schedule, I found 82 presentations and table sessions and I’m sure there are more. I include a few of our graduate student presenters below.

Anima Adjepong
“I Want Ghana to Continue to Live in the United States”: Cultural Identity among Second generation Ghanaian immigrants

Claims about the absence of transnational activities among second-generation immigrants do not often consider how racialization shapes these processes. This paper examines the extent to which the U.S.-born children of Ghanaian immigrants participate in a “transnational social field” (Glick-Schiller 2005; Levitt and Glick-Schiller 2004) where they simultaneously engage in Ghanaian life and culture, while fully immersed in American life. Ethnographic investigation of an organization that comprises 1.5- (foreign-born immigrants who moved to the United States prior to or during adolescence and attended school here) and second-generation Ghanaians in Houston, Texas leads me to ask why a group of ostensibly American youth would so strongly identify as Ghanaians. This ethnography examines the ways in which identifying with Ghana and as Ghanaians helps these mostly U.S.-raised youth make sense of their difference as racialized Americans and foreign Ghanaians.

Shantel Gabrieal Buggs
‘Your Momma Is Day-Glow White’: Questioning The Politics Of Racial Identity, Loyalty, And Obligation

This article utilizes discourse analysis and an autoethnographic approach to explore the impact of U.S. racial and ethnic categorization on the experiences of an individual marked as ‘mixed-race’ in terms of individual identity and familial/cultural group loyalty and obligation(s). This essay focuses on an incidence of public policing through the popular social networking platform Facebook, centering on the invocation of racial obligation by white friends and family members. I analyze how racial loyalty is articulated by friends and family members in their posts on my personal Facebook page and how this ‘loyalty’ is used as means of regulating my mixed-race identity performance. This essay aims to understand several things, namely how identity is mediated through the invocation of racial obligation and how tension around identity plays out in the multiracial family.

Caity Collins
Work-Family Policies And Working Mothers: A Comparative Study Of Germany, Sweden, Italy, And The United States

Despite women’s common struggles to balance motherhood and employment, western countries have responded with drastically different work-family policies. Drawing on 100 in-depth interviews and field observation with middle-income working mothers in Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the United States, I examine how different ideals of gender, motherhood, and employment are reflected in and reinforced by the work-family policy regimes of these four countries. Given these different policy regimes, I investigate how working mothers negotiate the constraints and opportunities facing them daily as they balance motherhood and employment. Depending on a country’s level of policy support for women’s employment and caregiving, I observed variation in (1) how closely mothers identify with their policy regime’s ideal of motherhood and the “ideal worker,” and (2) the extent to which they experience guilt and tension about their identities as a mother and a worker. This is the first comparative study to incorporate mothers’ voices into the scholarly debates about the relationship between gender inequality and work-family policy around the world. Understanding women’s perspectives about what works – and what hinders – their achievement of work-family balance should be central to any scholarly endeavor to craft, advocate for, and implement work-family policy as a force for social change.

Elizabeth Cozzolino and Christine L. Williams
Child Support Queens and Disappointing Dads: Gender and Child Support Compliance

Despite increased spending on child support enforcement in the U.S. over the past 30 years, child support collections remain around 40%. Existing literature focuses on three main explanations for this low compliance: poor enforcement, inability to pay, and unwillingness to pay. These explanations either neglect gender or rely on outdated assumptions about gender. Our analysis of in-depth interviews with 21 members of separated families reveals two controlling images of separated parenthood—the child support queen and the disappointing dad—that may help explain the underpayment of child support. In a reversal of traditional parenting roles, we find that separated mothers are now evaluated on their ability to financially provide for their children while separated fathers are evaluated on the time and care that they provide. We argue that these changing expectations of fatherhood and motherhood may contribute to men’s unwillingness to pay child support and women’s reluctance to demand compliance.

Rachel Donnelly
Intergenerational Changes and Health: the Effects of Downward Educational Mobility

A clear majority of high school graduates in the United States decide to enroll in college. In addition to many economic benefits, higher levels of education create opportunities for better health. Social stratification by education creates inequalities in education and health that are socially reproduced within families. Given the context of educational expansion in the United States, this study used data from the General Social Survey to explore the detriments to self-rated health when adult children receive less education than their parents and how these detriments differ by sex and race/ethnicity. Binomial logistic regression models of self-rated health indicated that an individual completing less years of education than his/her mother (downward intergenerational educational mobility) increases the likelihood of reporting fair or poor health. In an era where an increasing number of Americans are completing higher levels of education, these findings illustrate the detrimental effects on health for those who are left behind.

Marc Garcia
Prevalence and Trends in Morbidity and Disability among Mexican American Elders in the Southwestern United States, 1993-2011

The aim of this study was to examine trends in morbidity and disability among elderly Mexican Americans residing in the southwestern United States. Seventeen-year panel data from the Hispanic Established Population for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly were used to make detailed comparisons specific to nativity, gender and five-year age groups. Results show that foreign-born and U.S.-born Mexican Americans, with a few exceptions, have similar prevalence rates for morbidity regardless of gender. Conversely, IADL prevalence is higher for foreign-born women. Nativity is found to be a significant predictor of IADL disability for females and ADL disability for males. The differences we report have important implications for health services and health policy. Given the rapid aging of the Mexican American population, the prevention and treatment of medical conditions and disabilities, particularly among the foreign-born should be a major public health priority to reduce ADL and IADL dependence in the community.

Erika Grajeda
A “Safe Space” for Undocumented Immigrant Workers?: The Case of the San Francisco Day Labor Program and Women’s Collective

In the U.S., more than 117,600 immigrant, displaced, and homeless workers gather daily in public settings such as street corners, storefronts, and in recent years, worker centers, to procure “off-the books” employment. While “informal” or unregulated hiring sites have long been a common feature of the urban landscape, day labor worker centers represent a new organizational model that emerged in recent years to halt the exploitative practices associated with curbside hiring. Worker centers are thus said to represent a “safe space” for marginalized immigrant workers, particularly a growing number of women who are turning to these organizations to secure employment. While these immigrant organizations are increasingly taking on the role of labor market intermediary, creating recognizable day labor markets and sorting low-wage workers into the world of work in the U.S., they have been largely overlooked by scholars. This article examines new (day) labor organizing in the Latin American immigrant community through an ethnographic case study of the San Francisco Day Labor Program and Women’s Collective (SFDLP-WC). Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with SFDLP-WC staff, members, and volunteers, I show that assumptions about gender difference are encoded into the worker center’s organizational practices, ideologies, and distributions of power, ultimately placing undue burden on the women members. I find that while worker centers are purported to be “safe havens” for undocumented workers, particularly women, they may actually reproduce existing structures of gender, race, and class inequality.

Pamela Neumann
“Rutas y Desvios: Gender-based Violence, Bureaucratic Practices and (in)Justice in Nicaragua”

In Nicaragua, like other countries in Latin America, women’s police stations serve as the critical first point of contact with the state for women experiencing various forms of domestic violence. With the passage of Law 779 (Ley Integral contra la Violencia hacia las Mujeres) in 2012, new requirements, such as prohibiting mediation and detaining suspected offenders, were introduced. A year later, Law 779 was reformed to permit mediation again under limited circumstances. Then, in August 2014, Nicaragua’s President Ortega signed an executive decree altering Law 779 to incorporate the involvement of community-level “Gabinetes de Familia” in the resolution of certain domestic violence cases. Drawing on participant observation in women’s police stations and in-depth interviews with women victims, this paper analyzes the relationship between these legal and political developments and the everyday interactions that women have with police. In doing so, it highlights both the constraints of local state actors embedded in a web of partisan bureaucracy as well as their agentic role in shaping different women’s ability to access legal justice in domestic violence cases.

Cristian Paredes
Attendance at Museums and Live Theaters: Ethnic Disparities in Highbrow Out-of-the-House Leisure Consumption in Houston

Dynamics of compensation for the deprivations of segregation and discrimination, and the support of multiculturalism derived from ethnic cohesion explain the consumption of out-of-home highbrow leisure events by minority/ethnic individuals, immigrants, and their descendants as efforts toward their integration and assimilation in metropolitan areas. Using data from the Houston Area Survey, I examine whether there are any significant ethnic disparities in the attendance at museums and live theatres, which represent a relevant dimension of out-of-home highbrow leisure in Houston. I found that the odds of frequently attending museums and live theatres are lower for Anglos compared with non-Anglos, and higher for U.S.-born individuals with at least one foreign parent compared with U.S.-born individuals with U.S.-born parents. These findings reveal that the audiences of museums and live theatres in Houston are already characterized by a noteworthy ethnic diversity.

Marcos Perez
What About my Parents? Three Dilemmas of a Community-Based Campus Organization.

Based on a year of ethnographic research on a large organization of undocumented college students, this paper explores the contradictions experienced by activists in one of today’s most important social movements in the United States: the DREAMers. I argue that the dual nature of the organization under study, which is both community-grounded and campus-based, generates three dilemmas that severely affect the group and its members. The first dilemma concerns the organization’s goals, and is experienced as the hard choice between focusing on the needs of undocumented students and pursuing a more inclusive agenda that incorporates their families. The second dilemma is related to the organization’s mobilizing structures, and is caused by its strong ties to the local Latino community, which provides many types of resources but at the same time hinders the group’s appeal to other ethnic and national groups. Finally, the third dilemma stems from the clash between the member’s own identities as hard-working Americans and their experiences of exclusion and discrimination. I describe how these contradictions generate tensions among activists and how they complicate the relations with allied organizations. I also discuss how my findings apply to the nation-wide immigration reform movement. I conclude by exploring how the three dilemmas might shed light on the challenges currently faced by immigrant communities in the United States.

Juan Portillo
Is there really a “female advantage” in higher education? Reconceptualizing the “boy crisis” in education

A topic that dominates education these days is the “crisis” faced by boys’ due to underachievement relative to girls in education. In her best selling book, The War Against Boys: How misguided feminism is harming our young men (2001), Christina Hoff Sommers writes that “it’s a bad time to be a boy in America” (p. 13). She claims that misguided efforts of feminist and women’s groups have resulted in pathologizing boys and men, leading boys to be shut out of educational attainment because of teachers’ perceptions of their “bad behavior” compared to girls’ “good behavior.” This sentiment is accentuated in higher education, as scholars and others are alarmed over an apparent “dominance” of women, who earn a larger proportion of college degrees than men. However, it is not statistics but rather: (a) moral claims about discrimination against boys (particularly boys of color); and (b) a “female advantage” that is to blame for boys’ “disadvantage,” which are misguidedly at the root of most scholarly work done on this topic. In this paper, I will address current understandings of a “boys’ educational crisis” and show that it is a dangerous framing that follows heteropatriarchal logics without challenging gender norms. I argue that: (1) Men of color can easily fall into the trap of speaking ONLY from personal experience, blinding them to the way in which masculinity and male privilege also shape their experiences and their relative disadvantage; (2) A dichotomy that reproduces male dominance is re-created, disguised as “true equality.”

Brandon Robinson
Doing Sexual Responsibility: Gay Men Navigating HIV Online

In this article, the author draws on 15 in-depth interviews with self-identified HIV negative gay men who use Adam4Adam.com for sexual purposes. The author examines how HIV discourses influence these men’s lives as they navigate their intimate and sexual relationships in cyberspace, and the author introduces the concept of doing sexual responsibility to illuminate how managing sexual health, HIV, and risk plays out on the interactional level within gay men’s online encounters. Specifically, the author shows how these men use the website interface to screen other users for HIV and how these men disclose one’s own status and safe sex practices. The author also exposes how these practices lead to the stigmatization of HIV positive individuals on the website. Lastly, the author uncovers how trust can lead to a contradiction of how gay men feel they should act and how they do act in certain sexual encounters. The author concludes that new ways of discussing sexuality, HIV, and sexual health need to be engendered.

Luis Romero
“From La Migra to El Amigo: The INS Campaign to Befriend Undocumented Immigrants during IRCA”

Before the passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), the relationship between undocumented immigrants and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was highly antagonistic. Undocumented immigrants were distrustful of the immigration service due to its deportation mission that implemented deceitful tactics, including using children to lure their undocumented parents and sending letters to immigrants promising legalization only to deport them once they arrived to INS offices. However, this changed for a brief period after the passage of IRCA when INS transformed its image in the eyes of immigrants and became their amigo – their friend. INS accomplished this by engaging in a furious public relations campaign and training their staff to be supportive of immigrants as they applied for legal status – unprecedented measures for an agency that was set on deporting immigrants. This paper explains why INS, an organization that was defined by its enforcement duties and attempted to push out undocumented migrants, became an organization that altered its mission during IRCA to help undocumented migrants gain legal status. The author differs from other explanations of INS’ behavior during IRCA by extending interest-convergence theory and the implications that converging interests have on undocumented immigrants and racial minorities. Using a historical and content analysis of INS interviews, government documents and independent reports, the author expands interest-convergence theory to examine INS’ motivations for helping undocumented immigrants and transforming from the antagonistic migra to their amigo.

Connor Sheehan
Race and Ethnic Differences in Reconstructing Childhood Health

Using the Health and Retirement Survey (n = 9,696) we analyze how race/ethnic disparities in retrospective ratings of child health and current levels of functional limitations are influenced by controls for specific sets of childhood health and socioeconomic conditions. This research is important because the lifecourse framework has become reliant on retrospective measures to operationalize child health. Generally, it’s assumed that reports of childhood health, socioeconomic status and diseases operate similarly across racial and ethnic groups, a questionable supposition considering substantial stratification in life experiences and access to medical care. Indeed, we find considerable race/ethnic differences in retrospective reports of child health with Blacks and Hispanics having higher odds of “fair/poor” child health than Whites. These differences are strengthened when childhood diseases are controlled for, and mediated when socioeconomic conditions are controlled. The lack of access to the health care system likely leads to underreporting of specific childhood conditions among minorities which leads to a suppressor effect when childhood diseases are controlled. Results from negative binomial models predicting the current number of functional limitations largely echo, albeit less strongly, the findings from the retrospective measures. Our results suggest that race/ethnic health disparities begin in childhood but also that childhood health is appraised differently between race/ethnic groups. Due to the observed differences, future life course work should use more general measures of child health than specific when exploring the origins of health disparities.

Chelsea Smith
Change Over Time in Attitudes about Abortion Laws Relative to Recent Restrictions in Texas

Recent laws and regulations in the state of Texas have severely restricted access to abortion care; however, less is known about public opinion regarding such legislation. This study used the Houston Area Survey to investigate attitudes about abortion laws in 2009 (n = 1,393) and 2013 (n = 1,213), as a before-and-after comparison of 2011 restrictions. Descriptive results indicated a decrease in the proportion of Houstonians who were against restrictive abortion laws and who also reported conservative stances on welfare and immigration. Logistic regression analyses revealed that both before and after the 2011 legislation, the strongest predictors of public opinion on abortion laws were attitudes about gay marriage and political party affiliation. Multivariate results also suggested that Houstonians who were older and foreign-born were less supportive of restrictive abortion laws only following 2011 legislation. The findings of this study thus revealed continuity and change in attitudes (and correlates of attitudes) about abortion laws among respondents in the biggest city in Texas before and after the implementation of legislation severely limiting women’s access to abortion.

The study also has implications for current and future impacts on public opinion of the 2013 legislation, which received national attention following state Senator Wendy Davis’ filibuster. Nationally, one in five pregnancies in 2008 end in abortion and in Texas this statistic is slightly lower at 15% of all pregnancies (Guttmacher 2011). Abortions performed in Texas account for 7% of all abortions in the United States; however, in 2008 33% of women lived in one of the 92% of Texas counties without an abortion provider (Guttmacher 2011). Although legal, abortion is an increasingly difficult procedure for Texas women to obtain because of recent laws targeting providers. Legislation in 2003, 2011, and 2013 not only inhibited providers’ ability to serve their patients but also created obstacles to women seeking abortions. Tied to the recent legislation is the increasingly vitriolic public discourse and debate surrounding abortion laws. In this study, I take advantage of a unique dataset, the Houston Area Survey (HAS), to investigate public opinion about abortion laws before and after the 2011 legislation.

Christine Wheatley
Social Effects of Immigrant Detention, Removal, and Return

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) marks a restrictionist and punitive turn in contemporary United States immigration enforcement. The IIRIRA has made it significantly easier to deport non-U.S. citizens (Hagan, Eschbach and Rodríguez 2008; Rodríguez and Hagan 2004) and accounts for the nearly ten-fold increase in deportations since its passage, with Mexican citizens representing the vast majority of deportations. Despite these trends, few studies have examined the social impacts of IIRIRA, particularly such impacts of increases in detention and deportation. My research addresses this lacunae in immigration literature by assessing the intended and unintended consequences of IIRIRA for Mexican nationals, the largest group impacted by the legislation. In this paper, I uncover and examine the social effects of post-IIRIRA deportation law and practices on returning migrants in Mexico—Mexican nationals who recently returned to Mexico after living in the U.S. without documents, including deportees and other non-deportee returnees. I consider how current U.S. immigration enforcement affects their lives now, how it stays with them (or not) back in Mexico. I consider how this enforcement constrains them in Mexico—the various tangible and intangible, concrete and abstract forms of constraint they experience as a result of interacting, in some capacity, with the system of U.S. immigration enforcement.

Ethnography, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity, Social Networks and Social Media, Sociology of Health, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Brandon Robinson in the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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IntoWhiteLatino
This image is an example of the data Brandon Robinson analyzed in his article. In the profile description you can read that the user is into “white and Hispanic guys.”

by Eric Enrique Borja

Brandon Robinson’s latest article, “Personal Preference” as the New Racism: Gay Desire and Racial Cleansing in Cyberspace, has been recently published in the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
Abstract:
In this article, I examine how race impacts online interactions on one of the most popular online gay personal websites in the United States. Based on 15 in-depth interviews and an analysis of 100 profiles, I show that the filtering system on this website allows users to cleanse particular racial bodies from their viewing practices. I use Patricia Hill Collins’s concept of the “new racism” and Sharon Holland’s ideas on everyday practices of racism within one’s erotic life to explain how these social exclusionary practices toward gay men of color in cyberspace are considered not to be racist acts.
Specifically, I show how the neoliberal discourse of “personal preference” effaces the larger cultural assumptions that are influencing people’s interpersonal and psychic racial desires, furthering an erotic new racism in this digital age. By also turning to a queer of color analysis, I posit that the practices that gay users engage in lead to the remarginalization of all nonheterosexual individuals, though in qualitatively different ways.
OnlyWhiteGuys copy
This image is another example of data Brandon Robinson analyzed in his article. In this post you read, “I usually only hookup with white guys.”

You can also read Robinson’s other articles in the following journals: Sexuality Research & Social Policy, Deviant Behavior, Culture, Health & Sexuality, and Social Theory & Health. He also has a book chapter in the anthology A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias.