From the South's pageant queens to the importance of beauty parlors to African American communities, it is easy to see the ways beauty is enmeshed in southern culture. But as Blain Roberts shows in this incisive work, the pursuit of beauty in the South was linked to the tumultuous racial divides of the region, where the Jim Crow-era cosmetics industry came of age selling the idea of makeup that emphasized whiteness, and where, in the 1950s and 1960s, black-owned beauty shops served as crucial sites of resistance for civil rights activists. In these times of strained relations in the South, beauty became a signifier of power and affluence while it reinforced racial strife.
Roberts examines a range of beauty products, practices, and rituals--cosmetics, hairdressing, clothing, and beauty contests--in settings that range from tobacco farms of the Great Depression to 1950s and 1960s college campuses. In so doing, she uncovers the role of female beauty in the economic and cultural modernization of the South. By showing how battles over beauty came to a head during the civil rights movement, Roberts sheds new light on the tactics southerners used to resist and achieve desegregation.
The pageant had a rule that contestants be “of the white race,” — a rule that was lifted in 1950, but state and local officials continued to enforce it. Secondary pageants, like Miss Black America, emerged in 1968 to protest the exclusion of black women. Vanessa Williams was the first black woman to win the Miss America title...in 1984. (The first black contestant, Miss Iowa, first competed in the Miss America pageant in 1971.)
Some of us from Eurocentric cultures, like India (and I know many of my black and brown sisters will sympathize), had a double-whammy: Even within non-white cultures, “fairness” is a prized commodity. In Indian, culture, for example, I am considered “too dark” (read: ugly).
That’s why, when someone who deviates from the “beauty ideal” wins a pageant, it’s actually meaningful for many communities. I wrote about this when Nina Davaluri became the first Indian-American to win Miss America in 2013. How insane is the quest for “whiteness” in being beautiful? Well, in India, at least, there is this really fun brand called “Fair n’ Lovely.” It’s a beauty product that skin-shames women into being whiter. This ad tells you how to make your mom proud: https://youtu.be/SeePv5TvQEg
Please click on the following link and complete the course evaluation (I will also embed the evaluation in the post below). All responses are anonymous and I would really appreciate your honest and thoughtful input. After everyone is finished with the survey, there will be sometime to share your input with me personally. Thanks so much!
As students enter the room, review what we have been learning. 1. Individually - What are all the components that sociologists measure to examine social class?
Today: Within the United States, an individual's life chances are greatly affected by lower social class. 2. With a partner - hypothesize with a partner about the ways that poverty affects people in terms of: Health Location/environment Lifestyle Criminal Justice System
...poor black children are more likely than poor white or Hispanic children to be diagnosed with asthma — another ailment that plagues poor children in Jacksonville and one that is linked to living in older, more industrialized areas. Poor white children, though, are more likely to be exposed to secondhand smoke, or to be born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy than poor black or Hispanic children. And poor Hispanic children, it found, are twice as likely to have no place to go for health care, as compared to poor white or black children.
One reason may be that violence tracks with poverty, thereby preventing people from being active out-of-doors. Similarly, parks and sports facilities are less available to people living in poor counties (5), and people who live in poverty-dense regions may be less able to afford gym membership, sports clothing, and/or exercise equipment. There are multiple individual and environmental reasons to explain why poverty-dense counties may be more sedentary and bear greater obesity burdens.
Growing up in poverty can have serious and long-lasting effects on children’s health, development, and overall well-being. The effects of poverty have a well-documented impact on young children’s developing brains. And children who grow up in poverty are more likely to experience harmful levels of stress, more likely to struggle in school, and more likely to have behavioral, social, and emotional problems than their peers.
Unnatural causes is a website and documentary about the connection between social class and health;
UNNATURAL CAUSES is the acclaimed documentary series broadcast by PBS and now used by thousands of organizations around the country to tackle the root causes of our alarming socio-economic and racial inequities in health. The four-hour series crisscrosses the nation uncovering startling new findings that suggest there is much more to our health than bad habits, health care, or unlucky genes. The social circumstances in which we are born, live, and work can actually get under our skin and disrupt our physiology as much as germs and viruses. Among the clues: • It's not CEOs dropping dead from heart attacks, but their subordinates. • Poor smokers are at higher risk of disease than rich smokers. • Recent Latino immigrants, though typically poorer, enjoy better health than the average American. But the longer they're here, the worse their health becomes. Furthermore, research has revealed a gradient to health. At each step down the class pyramid, people tend to be sicker and die sooner. Poor Americans die on average almost six years sooner than the rich. No surprise. But even middle class Americans die two years sooner than the rich. And at each step on that pyramid, African Americans, on average, fare worse than their white counterparts. In many cases, so do other peoples of color. But why? How can class and racism disrupt our physiology? Through what channels might inequities in housing, wealthy, jobs, and education, along with a lack of power and control over one's life, translate into bad health? What is it about our poor neighborhoods, especially neglected neighborhoods of color, that is so deadly? How are the behavioral choices we make (such as diet and exercise) constrained by the choices we have?
Conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes.1 These conditions are known as social determinants of health (SDOH).We know that poverty limits access to healthy foods and safe neighborhoods and that more education is a predictor of better health.2,3,4 We also know that differences in health are striking in communities with poor SDOH such as unstable housing, low income, unsafe neighborhoods, or substandard education.
Criminal Justice Poor people are more likely to enter the criminal justice system and remain there. From Spotlight on Poverty and Georgetown University Law Professor, Peter Edelmen's book, Not A Crime To Be Poor; This chart shows the different stages of the criminal justice system. In each stage, a person of lower social class is more likely to progress through the system than a person of upper social class.
Economic Life Chances
Researchers have documented that it costs more to be poor. From the Economist, this article, explains the numerous ways that in the United States, life is more expensive the less money you have.
And the award winning book Evicted from Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond shows how society profits off the poor and how lack of housing can lead families to spiral downward.
In this groundbreaking book, Harvard sociologist and 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Award winner Matthew Desmond takes readers into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee, where families spend most of their income on housing and where eviction has become routine—a vicious cycle that deepens our country’s vast inequality. Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, Evicted transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem.
Now make a mind map connecting the various effects of poverty. How does each connect to the others? How many connections can you make?
Online Simulation
Try the playspent website which guides readers through the difficult choices that those in poverty must make.
A Culture of Poverty?
Some people will argue that there is a culture of poverty among those in the lowest income levels. This culture of poverty represents individuals making choices that create or worsen the impoverished situation they are in. But, it is important to understand how these choices come about. A life of deprivation, punctuated by emergencies creates a lack of “deferred gratification." In other words, it is difficult for these people to invest in their own future; many of the poor see the future as more of the same or even worse; enjoy what you can, because tomorrow may be worse; poverty influences attitude which influences behavior which leads to poverty, etc…
Although income is usually what people think of first when they think of social class, there are many other elements that are a part of social class. All of these components both exemplify social class inequality and they exacerbate it. Please read about each element below. As you go through, think about what an average American looks like and how your family compares. I want you to have a better understanding of where your family fits compared to the average American when the lesson is finished. Wealth
Wealth is tricky to understand. It is everything that a household owns, such as the home, vacation home, cars, 401K, savings, stocks, jewelry, etc...But, you must subtract what the household owes. So, if my house is $200,000 but I owe $160,000 then my wealth is only $40,000 on the house. One way to examine wealth is through quintiles (20% increments). if you lined all the households up in the U.S. by wealth, what percentage would the top 20% own? And then the next 20% and so on...Another way to think about this is if you have 5 people who are sharing a pie, what percent of the pie does the first person get, and the second person and third, etc...
How much of the wealth (the pie) in the U.S. do you think each quintile (person) has: Bottom 20%:______ 2nd 20%_______ 3rd 20%________ 4th 20%_______ 5th 20%_______Top
(least) (most)
After you have finished answering the questions above, watch this video:
What is the reality?
The disparity of wealth is greater than that of income (see the pie graph below). From the Huffington Post, In 2010, "The median household net worth -- the level at which half the households have more and half have less -- was $77,300 For a much more detailed analysis of wealth, see this post from business insider.
How does your family or community compare to the average American?
Average American:50%
own 2 cars,50% have a 401K, 66% own 1
home, 6% own a second home
Education
In the US, here are the percentages of adults over the age of 23 who have attained each degree in 2012:
This graph shows that the less education that parents have, the less education their children obtain.
This research from Natasha Quadlin shows that the major a student chooses at college is influenced by social class.
From The Upshot, Ny Times, this interactive site allows you to see what percent of students from the top 1% and bottom 60% attend each school of higher education.
This graph shows where students from different social classes end up after high school:
Elite Colleges Constantly Tell Low-Income Students That They Do Not Belong
from Clint Smith in the Atlantic.
How Admissions Really Work: If The College Admissions Scandal Shocked You, Read This from NPR.
There are lots of ways that wealthy families get a boost in the college admissions process. Most are quite legal.
Location
The price of a home depends on a lot more than the physical structure of the home.
The average home price in the United States in 2012 was $175K. The average price in BG was $346,000. And in LG it was $765,000. Click here to see some houses for sale in Lake County, IL in 2014. Which do you think are the most expensive? Which are the least? When you see the actual prices, why do you think that is?
Opportunity Insights provides data about how neighborhoods shape residents' life chances.
Here is a map from Time showing the most economically segregated cities in America. Can you find your town? How does this segregation affect the residents?
This research from Harvard shows that zipcode is a better predictor for health than genetic code.
An online data tool called Opportunity Atlas finds a strong correlation between where people are raised and their chances of achieving the American dream. Here is an NPR piece explaining it. Here is the NY Times Upshot explaining it.
Where College Grads Move
WSJ data shows where college grads are likely to move after they graduate.
For full access to the WSJ when you're on campus, you need to use the following special link: www.wsj.com/highschool
Once there, the fastest way for you (and your students) to find the article you're looking for is to click the search icon and enter the words "grads database"
Prestige and power
People view different occupations with different levels of prestige. This prestige can translate to real power such as being appointed to boards or committees. It can also simply give you credibility or respect in social situations. Here is a chart of prestige ratings.
Power, according to Max Weber, is the ability to impose one's will on others. One example is how the world's most powerful leaders gather in secret meetings annually to discuss how they can shape policy, economics and laws among other things. One such meeting is the American Enterprise Institute held every year on an island off the coast of Georgia where attendees can fly their jets on and off the island in private. Another meeting is the Bilderberg meeting.
Some examples of power are the abilities to keep yourself out of jail, influence politicians and enact laws that are you favor. Here is one example from The Daily Show comparing teachers and Wall Street Investors. Can you guess who has the power?
And this article from the NY Times shows that an executive at United Airlines accused of corruption charges was forced to resign. Imagine if a teacher was accused of corruption and was forced to resign. That would be it - out of a job and no compensation. But,
Here is another representation of how all of those components might work together:
Look over your information for income, wealth, education, location and prestige. Are they mostly above, average or below? Then try to think where that person falls on this ladder? Why would you place them there? Share this your group.
Was it difficult to share with the group? Why or why not?
After you have thought about your own personal example, classify the four people in this Esquire article and analyze what class they are and why? Try to use components other than income. How is each person shaped by their social class?
Here
are other resources for examining the components of social class that
comprise the "rules" about what is possible in the USA in terms of
class:
What class would you say that you belong in? upper upper middle middle lower middle lower
How do Americans feel about class?
The United States has always resisted the pretentiousness of class. The country was founded partly as a reaction to a monarch, which is in itself a class-based system defined by hereditary status and honorary titles. Additionally, and maybe because of, its revolutionary history, the U.S. values equality, freedom and individual control over one's own destiny. Americans do not like the idea of social class.
During the gilded age, the Horatio Alger myth was popularized as a promise of the American possibility of going from "rags to riches" a success story "only in America." From Princeton professorJen Hochschild's 1996 book, Facing Up to the American Dream, Americans believe in the American dream and that success is attainable for anyone. And from the PEW Research Center, this 2015 publication shows American attitudes about the economy including that 85% of Americans consider themselves middle class, including 93% of those who earned more than $100,000!
This 2015 article from Smithsonian Magazine details a number of sources that show Americans like to believe that they are middle class. So why bother studying social class in the U.S.?
First, social class does in fact exist and to deny it is to live naively at best and possibly in delirium. Additionally, although the idea of "middle class" is appealing to Americans, it is difficult to define because the U.S. is so stratified.
Second, social class so strongly shapes us that by understanding it, we will understand ourselves better as well as our fellow Americans better. And this understanding is not just an understanding of how we think and what we value, but it also is an understanding of our life chances, or what we are capable of achieving and the likelihood that we achieve it.
Finally, social class and inequality correlate with a number of measures of society that show inequality makes societies less healthy, less productive and less desirable.
This 2012 post from Socimages of the Society Pages points to The Equality Trust, a British trust that seeks to limit inequality, especially in Britain. Here are a few examples of the correlation between inequality and undesirable societal outcomes (for more, see the 2012 post linked above):
Social Class Inequality has been widening in the last few decades.
First, the social class gap is widening. See this post from Socimages. Here is one graph from the post. It explains how income has shifted steadily to the top percentiles over the last few decades.
Inequality from country to country shows greater inequality has damaging effects on individuals
Second, cross national studies show that social class inequality correlates closely to a number of troubling outcomes such as: infant mortality, mental illness, drug use, educational achievement, incarceration, obesity, homicide and social trust.
This article from the Sociology of Education (2017)
Read the article and use my annotations to answer questions about it. Then see the data source from the article below to look up data on your own.
As you read, look for both generalities and specifics of how to think about racial groups. As you read, please do these two items:
1. Annotate or make a list of generalities that are important to keep in mind when examining ANY racial group. 2. And make a list of insights that you find interesting that apply to specific racial groups.
Additionally, you may find this website helpful. Pamela Oliver, a professor from UW Madison has made a list of terms thatexplainsthe history and nature of racially-based terminology.
Beginning in the 1850s when young single men were recruited as contract laborers from Southern China, Asian immigrants have played a vital role in the development of this country. Working as miners, railroad builders, farmers, factory workers, and fishermen, the Chinese represented 20% of California's labor force by 1870, even though they constituted only .002% of the entire United States population. With the depression of 1876, amidst cries of "They're taking away our jobs!," anti-Chinese legislation and violence raged throughout the West Coast.
1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act—the only United States Iaw to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race—which restricted Chinese immigration for the next sixty years.
In 1907, Japanese immigration was restricted by a "Gentleman's Agreement" between the United States and Japan.
By 1924, with the exception of Filipino "nationals," all Asian immigrants, including Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Indians were fully excluded by law, denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land.
...immigration laws remained discriminatory toward Asians until 1965 when, in response to the civil rights movement, non-restrictive annual quotas of 20,000 immigrants per country were established.
Additionally, remember what we learned about racial formation in the U.S.:
Ozawa v. U.S.
Thind v. U.S.
Japanese internment camps
Korematsu v. U.S.
How did Americans with Asian Heritage Fight for Civil Rights?
All of this means that Asian-American success was severely limited by racism. Structural racism prevented Asian immigrant success in the U.S. and that had to be changed before Asian-Americans could thrive. Asian-Americans did not stay silent in this fight. They had to fight for equality:
Richard Aoki learned from the Black Panther Party.
Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee created AAPA and changed the pejorative label of "orientals" to Asian-Americans.
Yuri Kochiyama worked so closely with Malcolm X that she held Malcolm X in her arms after his assassination.
Yuri Kochiyama holds the head Malcolm X after his assassination.
And here is Mrs. Kochiyama with the grandson of Malcolm X.
How did Americans with Asian heritage become "model minorities?"
One way that to prevent a larger coalition of Asian-Americans and African-Americans from fighting for civil rights together was to embrace Asian-Americans while resisting African-Americans. Additionally, because of geopolitics like the Vietnam war, the Korean War and the threat of communist China, it made political sense to embrace the Asian-American cause.
...according to a recent study (2016) by Brown University economist Nathaniel Hilger, schooling rates among Asian Americans didn't change all that significantly during those three decades. Instead, Hilger's research suggests that Asian Americans started to earn more because their fellow Americans became less racist toward them. How did that happen? About the same time that Asian Americans were climbing the socioeconomic ladder, they also experienced a major shift in their public image. At the outset of the 20th century, Asian Americans had often been portrayed as threatening, exotic and degenerate. But by the 1950s and 1960s, the idea of the model minority had begun to take root. Newspapers often glorified Asian Americans as industrious, law-abiding citizens who kept their heads down and never complained.
Some people think that racism toward Asians diminished because Asians "proved themselves" through their actions. But that is only a sliver of the truth. Then, as now, the stories of successful Asians were elevated, while the stories of less successful Asians were diminished. As historian Ellen Wu explains in her book, "The Color of Success," the model minority stereotype has a fascinating origin story, one that's tangled up in geopolitics, the Cold War and the civil rights movement.
[Promoting the myth of the Model Asian minority] showcase a classic and tenacious conservative strategy, Janelle Wong, the director of Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, said in an email. This strategy, she said, involves "1) ignoring the role that selective recruitment of highly educated Asian immigrants has played in Asian American success followed by 2) making a flawed comparison between Asian Americans and other groups, particularly Black Americans, to argue that racism, including more than two centuries of black enslavement, can be overcome by hard work and strong family values."
"It's like the Energizer Bunny," said Ellen D. Wu, an Asian-American studies professor at Indiana University and the author of The Color of Success (excerpted here). Much of Wu's work focuses on dispelling the "model minority" myth, and she's been tasked repeatedly with publicly refuting arguments like Sullivan's, which, she said, are incessant. "The thing about the Sullivan piece is that it's such an old-fashioned rendering. It's very retro in the kinds of points he made."
Based on a survey and 140 in-depth interviews of the adult children of Chinese, Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles -- fellow sociologist Min Zhou and I explain what actually fuels the achievements of some Asian American groups: U.S. immigration law, which favors highly educated, highly skilled immigrant applicants from Asian countries. Based on the most recent available data, we found that these elite groups of immigrants are among the most highly educated people in their countries of origin and are often also more highly educated than the general U.S. population.
Take Chinese immigrants to the United States, for example: In 2010, 51% were college graduates, compared with only 4% of adults in China and only 28% of adults in the United States. The educational backgrounds of immigrant groups such as the Chinese in America -- and other highly educated immigrant groups such as Korean and Indian -- is where the concept of "Asian privilege" comes in. When highly educated immigrant groups settle in the United States, they build what economist George Borjas calls "ethnic capital." This capital includes ethnic institutions -- such as after-school tutoring programs and after-school academies -- which highly educated immigrants have the resources and know-how to recreate for their children. These programs proliferate in Asian neighborhoods in Los Angeles such as Koreatown, Chinatown and Little Saigon. The benefits of these programs also reach working-class immigrants from the same group. Ethnic capital also translates into knowledge. In churches, temples or community centers, immigrant parents circulate invaluable information about which neighborhoods have the best public schools, the importance of advance-placement classes and how to navigate the college admissions process. This information also circulates through ethnic-language newspapers, television and radio, allowing working-class immigrant parents to benefit from the ethnic capital that their middle-class peers create. Our Chinese interviewees described how their non-English speaking parents turned to the Chinese Yellow Pages for information about affordable after-school programs and free college admissions seminars. This, in turn, helps the children whose immigrant parents toil in factories and restaurants attain educational outcomes that defy expectations. The story of Jason, a young Chinese American man we interviewed, is emblematic of how these resources and knowledge can benefit working-class Chinese immigrants. Jason's parents are immigrants who do not speak English and did not graduate from high school. Yet, they were able to use the Chinese Yellow Pages to identify the resources that put Jason on the college track. There, they learned about the best public schools in the Los Angeles area and affordable after-school education programs that would help Jason get good grades and ace the SAT. Jason's supplemental education -- the hidden curriculum behind academic achievement -- paid off when he graduated at the top of his class and was admitted to a top University of California campus. This advantage is not available to other working-class immigrants.
Hyper-selectivity benefits all members of an immigrant group, because these groups are more likely to generate “ethnic capital,” which manifests into ethnic institutions like after-school academies and SAT prep courses that support academic achievement. The courses range in price tags (some are freely available through ethnic churches), so they are often accessible to the children of working-class Chinese and Korean immigrant parents. Hence, the hyper-selectivity of an immigrant group can assuage a child’s poor socioeconomic status (SES) and reduce class differences within an ethnic group. In turn, this produces stronger educational outcomes than would have been predicted based on parental SES alone.
Here are a few results from Lee and Zhou's publications available in JSTOR. They are shorter journal articles that highlight segments of their later published book (mentioned above).
