3.07 Femininity

For HW:  Please read:

• Mahler and Kimmel's article here.
• Excerpt from CJ Pascoe here.

Here is the Google Form for this lesson.

For starters, without looking ahead please answer these 4 questions:

1.  What does "like a girl" mean?  If someone says you do something "like a girl" what is it implying?

2.  List all the steps YOU take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted.     

3.  Do you know someone who is affected by body image issues?  Without using any names describe their situation.

4.  What does it mean for someone to be a feminist?  Please answer honestly, based on your understanding of what a "feminist" is.

How the binary puts females at risk in our culture

Gender is often seen as a binary in the US which pushes males and females to opposite ends of a spectrum forcing them into narrow boxes that define what it means to be feminine and masculine.  This lesson will explore some of the ways that females are shaped and especially at risk because of the binary 

"Like a girl"

The denigration of women and misogyny affect both women and men.  Watch the add below from Always:

Note how both the females and the males act when they are "acting like a girl."  Then, note how they act when they are told to do the action how they really would.  The commercial that is trying to help redefine femininity from Always is also available here from Time Magazine.

The promotion of masculine traits above feminine ones leads to denigrating of all things feminine.  This binary doesn't allow for individuals to be who they really are.  Instead, it pushes males and females to opposite poles with opposing traits.  And the binary's message is, if you are a male, you can't be anything considered feminine.  This means males deny their own humanity because they cannot be caring, empathetic, emotional, vulnerable or dependent - all of which are human traits.

5.  How do the people act when they are told to do something "like a girl?"  How might this affect society's view of females? 



Sexual Assault and Females - How are women at risk for sexual assault?

The objectification of women and the denigration of all things female puts women at risk physically.  Males are socialized to be aggressive and to see women as passive objects.  This puts women at risk of sexual assault and puts them on the defensive.  Men may not realize this because they do not have to think about it.  But for women, this is something that is conscious.  For number 2 at the start of this lesson, how many precautions did you list?  Usually, males have very few, if any, but women can list dozens.  Read this list from Huffington Post.  How many of the actions have you taken?

What's wrong with women protecting themselves? There's nothing wrong with all of us taking precautions to be sure that we are safe.  However, the emphasis on women protecting themselves takes the onus off males to not intimidate, harass or assault women.  Not only is this victim-blaming females, but it is also degrading to males by insinuating that males are animalistic and immoral.  Watch the video below that shows a woman walking in NYC.




CatcallsofNY is an instagram feed highlights the ways people are fighting back against street harrassment.

Here is a similar video from Inside Edition in Venice Beach, CA (2015).

Here is another video from Inside Edition in NYC (2016).

Here is an Iris video that shows dads reacting to their daughters getting harassed on the street.

And here is a video produced by Cosmopolitan in NYC that aired on GMA (2015).

The cast of GMA makes an important point of distinguishing between a compliment and harassment. But the cast also shows how difficult it is to change these cultural dysfunctions.

But sexual harassment is not just catcalls by random strangers on the street, it happens to women at work from people they know.  This 2012 research from Uggin, McLaughlin, and Blackstone concludes that much harassment at work 

...can serve as an equalizer against women in power, motivated more by control and domination than by sexual desire. Interviews point to social isolation as a mechanism linking harassment to gender nonconformity and women’s authority, particularly in male-dominated work settings.

And sexual harassment is so much a part of U.S. culture that a President of the United States could speak openly about harassing women and still be elected.  The Washington Post documents all of the instances of how Trump has demeaned women since 2015. 

6.  What was the most disturbing part of the video for you?



Sexual Assault and College Campuses

The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services provides valuable information about assault, including about consent and what that means.  This important for males and females alike to understand.  Please read the info below:

Consent is a clear “yes” to sexual activity. Not saying “no” does not mean you have given consent. Sexual contact without consent is sexual assault or rape.

• Consent is an ongoing process, not a one-time question. If you consent to sexual activity, you can change your mind and choose to stop at any time, even after sexual activity has started.

• Past consent does not mean future consent. Giving consent in the past to sexual activity does not mean your past consent applies now or in the future.

• Saying “yes” to a sexual activity is not consent for all types of sexual activity. If you consent to sexual activity, it is only for types of sexual activities that you are comfortable with at that time with that partner. For example, giving consent for kissing does not mean you are giving consent for someone to remove your clothes.

College freshmen women are especially at risk for assault.  Information about that is here:

• Studies show that students are at the highest risk of sexual assault in the first few months of their first and second semesters in college.2
• Women who identify as lesbian, bisexual, or gay are more likely to experience sexual assault on college campuses than heterosexual women.1

Rainn provides important info here and also is an advocacy group if you want to get involved.

End Rape on Campus has many resources including for marginalized communities such as: 

Civic Nation is an advocacy group working to end rape on campuses.

The Center for Changing Our Campus Culture is an advocacy group started by a grant from the Obama administration in 2016.

The Brookings Institute provides an analysis of sexual assault on college campuses here.

And this video that went viral explaining why men don't have as much to fear.

7. Was there anything in the above information that was helpful/eye-opening?




Femininity and body image - How are women socialized to think about their "self"?
For number 3 at the beginning of this post, most women can name multiple people they know who have wrestled with body image issues or eating disorders. 

Watch this video called Onslaught  from the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty which highlights the ways girls are socialized by media.

Read this post from the Society Pages which highlights how females are objectified in the media.  Please click the link and read the post.  From the post,

The damage caused by widespread female objectification in popular culture is not just theoretical.  We now have over ten years of research showing that living in an objectifying society is highly toxic for girls and women, as is described in Part 2 of this series.

8.  Which ad from the Society Pages link above stood out to you as being particularly degrading or objectifying?


Do you know Amy?

 
This video shows Amy not feeling like hanging out.


There are numerous studies showing that this is true for significant numbers of young women. Look at the research below and think about whether this has been true in your life. Do you know girls who struggle with self-esteem, body image and eating/dieting disorders? If you don't, can you at least see how the media is constructing a reality for girls?

Research about the effects of media socialization on females

"...after interacting with attractive peers, the women's perceptions of their own appearance changed, whereas interacting with family members did not have any bearing on their body image....Social media engagement with attractive peers increases negative state body image," explain the researchers.  2018 research — led by Jennifer Mills, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada, and Jacqueline Hogue, a Ph.D. student in the department's Clinical Program — examined the effects of social media on the self-perceived body image of young women.  Mills and Hogue published their findings in the journal Body Image.   https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323725.php

Thin Ads + Low Body Image = Stress?
Ads Showing Skinny Models Might Hurt Self-Worth In Vulnerable Young Women Viewing ads of super-skinny models may make young women feel worse about themselves, especially if they have body image problems, according to a new study. Researcher Gayle Bessenoff, Ph.D., reports the findings in Psychology of Women Quarterly. Bessenoff is an assistant professor in the University of Connecticut's psychology department.

What Studies Show: Links Between Media and Self Esteem in Girls Many studies conclude that there is clearly a link between young women’s self esteem and the media. *The Journal of Research on Adolesence, in a study of body image and self esteem (Daniel Clay, Vivian L. Vignoles, Helga Dittmar - 2005), imparts that the the declining self esteem that girls often experience entering into adolescence is in part due to social comparison with media models. In a 2006 study of girls' body satisfaction and self esteem from the American Psychological Association (Hayley Dohnt,, Marika Tiggemann), research also illustrates that media creates a negative influence on girls' body images and self-esteem – particularly in regard to acceptable levels of thinness.

A particularly alarming media trend is the sexualization of women at younger and younger ages. Medical News Today discusses how suggestive images of young women negatively affect girls self-esteem, playing a role in onset of depression, eating disorders, and low-self-esteem.

Sexualization Of Girls Is Linked To Common Mental Health Problems In Girls And Women Science Daily (Feb. 20, 2007) — A report of the American Psychological Association (APA) released today found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls' self-image and healthy development.

Dying to Fit In- Literally! Learning to Love Our Bodies and Ourselves By Christine Hartline, MA In the United States approximately 10% of girls and women (numbering up to 10 million) are suffering from diagnosed eating disorders. Of these at least 50,000 will die as a direct result! Recent data reported by the American Psychiatric Association suggests that of all psychiatric disorders, the greatest excess of patient mortality due to natural and unnatural causes is associated with eating disorders and substance abuse.

Teen Body Image Media images have a strong effect on people's body image, particularly for women, because the ideals the media presents for women are farther from the average woman's body. The Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) reports that in 1972, the ideal woman shown in the media (models, movie stars, etc.) weighed less than the average woman, yes, but only by 8%. By the late 90s, the difference had become 23%... In one study from Harvard University reported by (SIRC), it was found that by age 17, 7 out of 10 teens have been on a diet and as many as 80% of teens may have a negative body image...The onset of eating disorders for 86% of people is before they finish their teens.


Finally, watch the powerful video below about how people are made to think about themselves and how different that can be from reality.

9.  Is the research above and the video convincing evidence that females are at risk because of gendered expectations?  Any other questions? 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an author and speaker from Africa.  One of her Ted Talks became this short book below:

10.  After reading Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists, how does she define feminism?  Is this different than the way the feminism often gets defined in popular culture?  If you have a chance, ask someone who is not in sociology class how what it means to be a feminist and compare this to Adichie's ideas.

Extra:

Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 4

What can we do?

https://www.apa.org/topics/teens/raising-adolescent-daughter, American Psychology Association 2001

Staying connected: A guide for parents on raising an adolescent daughter: Puberty, Peer Groups, Self Esteem, Body Image, Sexuality, Emotions, Rebellion, Risk-taking, violence, money management, spirituality, setting limits

https://childmind.org/article/13-ways-to-boost-your-daughters-self-esteem/, Childmind Institute 

13 Ways to Boost Your Daughter's Self-Esteem:  How to help girls build confidence based on what they can do, not what they look like.

https://www.pbs.org/parents/thrive/how-to-raise-a-self-confident-girl, PBS 2017

How to Raise a Self-Confident Girl

Today at 4pm: The Connection Between Drugs and Violence

 Today at 4pm in Damen Student Center!

https://loyolachicago.us.newsweaver.com/6b85bq3q83/1sif7wuuv9y1oz08f5bnzd?email=true&lang=en&a=6&p=13713317&t=3633058

This Friday - Art Talk with Alexander Chitungo

 

• NOVEMBER 17, 2023 
•  9:00 AM - 11:30 CST
•  MUNDELEIN CENTER (RM. 032)
•  DSD AND CAS 
  JOSÉ SANTIAGO PÉREZ, MFA , JPEREZ32@LUC.EDU
•  FREE
•  OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
•  HTTPS://SHADOWSINTHESTONE.WORDPRESS.COM/
•  ADD TO CALENDAR
•  DETAILS

  Alexander Chitungo is a stone sculptor from Marodera, Zimbabwe and is visiting campus from Nov. 5 -19. He completed his Ordinary Level at Prince Edward School in 1986, in Zimbabwe's capital of Harare. In 1990, he began apprenticing under his friends Tonderai Marezva and Lincoln Muteta, renowned Shona Sculptors. After two years Alexander set out on his own to develop his unique style, which he calls *shadows in the stone* (Mumvuri mudombo). Alexander's work reflects the theme *Voices of Reality.* He has been sculpting stone in Zimbabwe for more than 20 years. His work is exhibited around the world, from South Africa to The United States. Alex travels every year to share his passion in sculpting workshops. Join him Friday, Nov. 17, for an open studio workshop and talk.

3.06 The Social Construction of Gender

NOTE:  Next Tuesday will be Asynchronous.  The lesson will be posted on TUESDAY.  Please complete the google form associated with the lesson.  

Remember that participation counts!

HW: read Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists

 For after thanksgiving break, please read:    

• Mahler and Kimmel's article here.
• CJ Pascoe's Dude You're a F** (For background info click here).

      

Google Form Here

1.  Before you begin, please answer this question in as many ways as you can (brainstorm): 

Besides being different physically, how would your life be different if you were born a different sex?

Besides social class and race, another area of inequality that sociologists frequently examine is gender.  Similar to race, our society often uses the term gender erroneously.  Because of that, society makes assumptions about gender and biology that are more a social construct than biology.

Operationalizing terms:  What is gender and why is it confusing? 

Oftentimes, gender is confused and misunderstood because we are limited by our language.  We use the terms "male" and "female" to refer to both sex and gender.  Then, to add to the confusion, oftentimes sexuality is genderized.  Many people use the term "gay" or other pejoratives to mean that someone or something is not masculine.  So all three of these terms are confused with each other.  But, sex, sexuality, and gender are different terms that technically refer to different aspects of who we are as individuals. 

Professionals like doctors, psychologists, sociologists, social workers, and others who study people have written and researched about the differences of these terms extensively.  Sex is the biology that someone is born with.  Most often, a person's sex is assigned based on their reproductive parts.  People are also born with an aptitude for a sexuality.  As they get older, the sexuality becomes sexual attraction such as heterosexual or homosexual attraction.  These are part of our biological makeup, our nature. Most researchers have concluded that these can't be changed.  "Gender" however, is not biological.  It is a social construction that we learn from an early age and we often take it for granted.  Gender is how we think we should act based on our sex and sexuality.  In sum:

• Sex is the biology individuals are born with and often assigned at birth.
• Sexuality is the biological aptitude an individual is born with for attraction.
• Gender is how an individual reacts to these two.  This is not biological but instead a social construct.  Gender can be an inner identity/feeling or an outward expression

2.  Do you understand the difference between the terms "sex", "sexuality" and "gender" and why these differences create confusion?



What does it mean that gender is a social construction?

Sex and Sexuality are determined by our nature, but gender is a social construction.   Think about how you answered that question at the top of this post.  Most of the ways your life would have been different are examples of society treating people differently based on their sex (and sexuality).  This constructs a certain way of being.  So, for example, if I am a heterosexual male, how should I act?  What colors should I like?  What clothes should I wear?  How should I talk?   What sports should I play?  Is it okay for me to cry?  To be rough?  To like violence?   To be sensitive?  And so on... These are all our gender and they are all learned reactions.

Gender reveal parties are one example of how our language uses male/female to refer to both sex and gender - do these parties really reveal a child's gender?  Will the child be masculine/feminine?  How do we know?  

"Nature has no edges.  It is not binary."

What is a binary and how does it contribute to the confusion?

Humans tend to be dualistic in their understanding of the world (and thus, their language).  So much of our understanding is oversimplified into dualism: light and dark, wet and dry, tall and short, etc...  But the reality is that there is so much in between these concepts.  The same is true in terms of "gender".  Our culture pushes people to the edges of the continuum below.  This creates a duality for sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.  This duality is often referred to as a "gender" binary.

Evidence for the continuum

• Sex - Scientific American explains the continuum here.  And they provide a useful graphic here or here.
• Sex - One example of the spectrum of sex is the IAAF's 2018 proposal of new rules that would exclude some female runners from competing in women's Olympic events.  Guardian article here.
• Gender - The Gender Spectrum website also provides resources and an explanation.
• Gender Identity - Here is a terrific program about gender from National Geographic called The Gender Revolution.  It has an in-depth explanation of transgender as well as some of the latest science about sex and gender.
• Here is a Guardian article about shattering the myth of the gendered brain.
• For more info, this is a great blog from Dr. Zevallos, an Australian sociologist from a Latin-Australian background.
• The-Be-you-tiful-intiative started by a former student of mine.
• It's pronounced metrosexual, a free online resource for learning & teaching about gender, sexuality, & social justice created by Sam Killermann. 
• From the BBC, this article details the changes in pitch for women's voices and the dynamic effects of nature and nurture on each other.

3. Is gender a binary or a continuum?  What does that mean?

Evidence that gender is a social construction - change over place and time

Because gender is a social construct, it can be examined with a sociological imagination to show that it is different depending on where or when you examine it.  

Where

Some cultures have acknowledged a non-binary gender for centuries such as India's Hijra, Japan's Wakashu, Mexico's Muxe and two-spirit people from American Indians.

PBS highlights gender-diverse cultures here:

When

"The Manly Origins of Cheerleading" from Soc Images shows how cheerleading has changed from being considered very masculine to feminine to something in between:

And from the Smithonian, checkout this article about children's clothing becoming genderized:

First dresses then pink and blue

“It’s really a story of what happened to neutral clothing,” says Paoletti, who has explored the meaning of children’s clothing for 30 years. For centuries, she says, children wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’ ” Paoletti says.The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War I—and even then, it took time for popular culture to sort things out. For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

For a more detailed explanation of the genderization of colors, see this 9 minute video from PBS

A third example of the changing social construct is heels for men, explained here in Teen Vogue:

4.  How has our notion of gender changed over time?  Use your sociological imagination to explain how one of the examples above is evidence for gender being a social construction.


For more information:

Scene On Radio did an excellent 10-part series podcast is about gender from the 
Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University distributed by PRX. The series attempts to answer:  What’s up with this male-dominated world? How did we get sexism, patriarchy, misogyny in the first place? How can we get better at seeing it, and what can we do about it? Co-hosts John Biewen and Celeste Headlee explore those questions and more.  This is an excellent podcast about the social construction of gender:

This 2018 episode of Hidden Brain explains how the differences between men and women are created by society.  

What does society construct for gender?

Take a moment to think about where you have heard the various phrases on the handout "Socialization of Gender Roles (Click on the link and follow the directions for PART I).

5.  Which of the messages have you heard before?
Mark all the messages that you have heard - even if the message was not directed at you.

6.  What agents of socialization have you heard say those phrases from the link above? 
List all the categories of people where you have heard these.  Were they:  parents, siblings, friends, peers, teachers, coaches, actors/actresses, tik-tok stars, somewhere else?

7.  List the messages that the phrases convey for males.  For example, for "Boys will be boys," you might write, "There's only one way to be a boy," You can't change boys," or,  "It's ok for boys to be rough."

8.  List the messages that the phrases convey for females.



This activity should reveal that even though people actually exist on a continuum (lesson 1), our culture constantly promotes a binary.  We hear these binary messages from all of the agents of socialization.  The messages start even before you are born.  So the idea of a binary is very strong and we are pushed to the ends of the binary from the moment we are born.


The boxes of the binary

Before going further, let me clarify about the biology of males and females.  On average, categorically, men and women are indeed different.  On average, males are taller, have more muscle mass and more testosterone and less estrogen than females.   However, none of these are at the exclusivity of each other.  Males and females both have testosterone and estrogen, they both have muscle mass.  Females can be tall and have a lot of muscle mass.  Males can be short and have little muscle mass.  People are complex and we all exist along a continuum.  

However, our society emphasizes the polar ends of the continuum.  Males are pushed to be only masculine and females are pushed to be feminine.  Society gives the appearance that there is only one way to be masculine or feminine.  Below are some of the traditional traits that dominant US culture has pushed for each gender.  Note that these are traditional in the sense that society has generally promoted them, even if they do not apply to you.  To be clear, I am not saying that men and women should be these ways, I am saying that society has traditionally socialized men and women to be these ways:

9.  Which of the traditional gender traits (above) are similar to the messages that you identified that are associated with he phrases above?  

PEW Research Center found similar gendered language in a 2017 study about gender expectations for men and women.  Click through the follow up analysis (2018), and look for ways that gender is constructed.

How Americans describe what society values (and doesn’t) in each gender? What traits does society value most in men and in women? What traits does society say men and women should not have?

You can click on the link above to explore their findings.  Here is a sample of their findings.  Gold is for women and green is for men.

Examples of data/evidence for the binary.
Please look at each of the links below.  Look for how the marketplace creates the binary between male and female  - especially in ways that are unnecessary.  When you are finished looking at each, answer question six.

• Gendered Products; See this post about products that are pointlessly gendered thus reifying the idea of traditional gender traits.  
• Gendered Halloween costumes.

10.  After reviewing the two links above (aren't those funny?), what product was the most pointlessly gendered?  What costume was the most ridiculously gendered?

Finally, one last bit of evidence that society pushes us to the binary is in the gendered language of teacher reviews.  This example shows how socialization shapes how American college students perceive their professors.  Sociology professor Ben Schmidt has gathered the metadata from ratemyprofessor.com at his site, Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews. The interactive chart lets you explore the words used to describe male and female teachers in about 14 million reviews from RateMyProfessor.com. You can enter any word (or two-word phrase) into the box below to see how it is split across gender and discipline: the x-axis gives how many times your term is used per million words of text (normalized against gender and field). You can also limit to just negative or positive reviews (based on the numeric ratings on the site). For some more background, see here. Not all words have gender splits, but a surprising number do.  Even things like pronouns are used quite differently by gender.   For example, the word "funny" shows up in the chart below.  Notice that orange is female and blue is male.  For every single subject (in the column on the left) funny is mentioned more in reviews of male teachers.  Every single subject!  

After you have tried your own search for words, or if the website was not working, click here to see my analysis of the RateMyProfessor data.


11.  See how many words you can find that are completely gendered.  Make a list.
Go to professor Schmidt's website, Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews.  See how many words you can find that are genderized.  What are the words?  List them in number 7.

How does society construct the gender binary?

The construction of gender and agents of socialization

All of the agents of socialization help to construct gender.  Look for the claim and evidence supporting each of these agents.  How does each agent contribute to the socialization of gender?  What evidence does sociology provide that agents of socialization influence individuals' self-concepts about gender?

Family:

This article from Newsweek explains the research by neuroscientist Lise Eliot that shows parents begin treating infants differently from the moment they are born.   Parents talk differently to babies based on sex.  Experiments reveal this is true for strangers as well.  It can even be argued that parents treat babies differently before they are born!  For example, pink and blue, decorating the nursery, "gender" reveal parties, and choosing a name.

This research published in Developmental Psychology by Fausto-Sterling, et. al. shows, "measurable sex-related differences in how mothers handle and touch their infants from age 3 months to age 12 months."

Treating six month-olds differently:

• boys are given independence and encouraged to be active
• girls are coddled and ecouraged to be dependent and passive
• by thirteen months, each gender acts differently.

Also differences in toys; boys=action figures, weapons; girls=jewelry, dolls.  

Click here to see a post from the Society Pages that examines how the  Barbie above helps to reinforce lessons learned from teachers.  The toy does not just show up in a little girl's toy box.  Toys come from family which is trying to do right by the kid based on messages in the media. 

Peers

Girls and boys learn what it means to be a man or woman from friends.
See the book from Patricia and Peter Adler on preadolescent peer pressure.

This research by Patricia and Peter Adler published in Sociology of Education shows that values for popularity develop as early as fourth grade;

• boys: athletics, coolness and toughness, grades=lower popularity (think about how this shows up in the ratemyprofessor reviews from the other lesson).
• girls: family background, physical appearance (esp. clothing and makeup) and ability to attract popular boys, grades=higher popularity.          

School

From the Society Pages, this post shows the latent lessons (hidden curriculum) that schools teach.  In this case, it starts as young as 8 years old.   (See the image below)

From the National Academy of Sciences this study shows that teacher anxiety about math affects their students. 

This research in the journal of Sociology of Education shows how high school begins to shape students' interest in majoring in STEM fields in college.

This research from Gender and Society shows that high school teachers' attitudes about females and math affect how teachers grade and teach female students.

This article from the NY Times shows that gender gap in math scores disappears in countries with a more gender-equal culture.

The Society Pages explain how cross-cultural studies provide evidence that the gendered expectations in STEM are a result of a social construction 

This 2007 study in Sociological Perspectives explains the  connection between core sports and homophobia finding that boys who participate in core sports (football, basketball, baseball, soccer) are nearly 3 times more likely to express homophobic attitudes.  Conversely, females who participated in nonathletic extracurricular activities were half as likely to express those attitudes as individuals who did not participate in those activities.

Work

Sociologist Jill Yavorsky found that the polarization in gendered traits also shows up in hiring practices, especially when overlapped with social class, published in the Journal of Social Forces here. 

12.  Which research about gender being constructed through the agents of socialization (family, peers, school) reinforcing gendered ideas is most interesting to you and why?

Concluding

To summarize, the agents of socialization play a pivotal role in helping each of develop a sense of self (remember the isolated kids, Genie and Danielle from the social structure unit?).  One of the ways that the groups influence us in thinking about gender.  And the influence is particularly strong because it happens from the time we are young (even before we are born) and then continues in a web of structure that perpetuates the construction of gender.  The web is a connection of parents, schools, peers, toys/marketers and media that all reinforce the gender binary.  

For More Info about Gender:

 

3.05 Race Specific Dynamics: Black, White, Asian, Hispanic

This lesson will focus on how racism leads to negative outcomes for Americans identified as Black, White, Asian Americans and Hispanic.   Just like people are unique and dynamic, so is each racial group.  The racialization of each group has a unique history and racism affects each group differently.  For more info about the history ad racism related to each group, please refer to Racism and Specific Racial Groups, Chapter 17 of Robin DiAngelo's book, What Does It Mean to Be White?  And for more information about the language and etymology of racial groups consult UW Madison professor Pamela Oliver's website, continually updated here, but she also posted a PDF version of this essay on SocArXiv.

Racism's Effects on People Racialized as Black

Segregation

The 2020 Census shows that the USA is diversifying faster than previously predicted.  From USA Facts, this graphic shows the racial makeup of the USA in 2020:

The Brookings Institute also explains the increasing diversity in the USA here.

Explore where different races live in the U.S. using Justice Map here.

What trends can you identify?

Google Form here.

1.  Did you grow up in a segregated neighborhood?  What were the demographics and geography  of where you grew up?  How do they compare to the nation overall?

There is quite a bit of segregation in the U.S.A., even in areas that seem to be diverse (like Chicago) there is a large amount of segregation.

Some of the segregation is a result of institutional policies like redlining and sadly, the criminal justice system.  Look at this analysis (from Patheos 2018) of the racial dot map.  

 The effects of segregation have long-lasting impact including:

Segregation in rental market This 2018 research by economists Early, Carrillo, and Olsen finds that discrimination causes black renters to pay substantially more than whites for identical homes in identical neighborhoods; the amount of the exploitation is greater the more white the neighborhood.

NY's Amsterdam News highlights school segregation in this article: Where School Segregation is Still Happening across the U.S.  The article highlights research from U of Southern California's Segregation Index.

2.  Hypothesize at least one way how segregation might contribute to economic, health or educational disparities.

Economics

As we have mentioned earlier in the semester, there are multiple audit studies that show that race is a factor in preventing some Americans from interviewing for potential jobs.

University of Chicago School of Economics and Labor Market

Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan published a study of implicit bias and the labor market in The American Economic Review (2004) called Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination?

Labor Market and Felonies

From the NY Times, When a Dissertation Makes a Difference shows not only how unconscious bias can play a role in hiring in a most inequitable way, but also how sociology can make a difference that influences policy.  

As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Devah Pager studied the difficulties of former prisoners trying to find work and, in the process, came up with a disturbing finding: it is easier for a white person with a felony conviction to get a job than for a black person whose record is clean.

Pager's dissertation is called The Mark of a Criminal Record (2003) was an audit study of the Milwaukee area labor market.  She also published in a follow-up study (2010) in the American Sociological Review  which was a more qualitative study using fieldwork.

The Economic Policy Institute (2016) found that the wage gap among different races is growing more as the inequality, in general, grows.  The report lists key findings as well as policy suggestions.

The Guardian analyzes the EPI report here.  Some notable findings include: the wage gap is worse than in 1979, and that college graduation does not mitigate the disparity as black college graduates earn 10% less than their white cohorts. 

Inequality.org published a report on racial inequality showing that the disparity is not just income but also wealth and homeownership.

Health/Medicine

Social factors play an important and well-documented role in health outcomes.  Race is especially correlated to health outcomes because racial inequalities are so stark and have persisted for so long.  Please examine all of the evidence below that race affects health outcomes.

The Annals of Epidemiology (2019) published this meta-analysis of the effects of daily stresses as a result of racism, also known as the "weathering hypothesis."  The analysis finds that having to weather the stress of racism has a cumulative effect on individual resulting in lower life expectancies and worse health outcomes.

American Academy of Pediatrics (2019) published this statement about how childrens and teens can be harmed by racism and what doctors and healthcare providers should do to improve health outcomes.

Racism Impacts Your Health, a 2018 article from The Conversation documents a literature review of the myriad ways that racism impacts health outcomes for minorities including: higher systolic blood pressure, increased blood pressure and higher rates of hypertension. 

The American Journal of Epidemiology (2007) found a link between racism and breast cancer summarized by the National Institute of Health. 

The American Public Health Association study of hypertension/heart disease published a link between racism and heart disease in the American Journal of Public Health (2012) 

This study published in the journal of Ethnicity and Disease shows that African-Americans experience worse health outcomes than African immigrants!  Lower hypertension among 1st gen African immigrants compared to multigenerational Americans who are black shows that the stress of growing up in the United States where racism against Americans who are black has a real effect - it's not simply genetics (although possibly epigenetics). 

This 2010 fact sheet from the Center for American Progress shows disparities in health for all races including who has health coverage, chronic diseases and causes of death for African Americans/Blacks, Hispanics, Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, Asian Americans.  

A 2016 report on life expectancy from PBS reveals that Americans who are black have a shorter life expectancy from the moment they are born.  The disparity continues throughout life so that African Americans live about 4 years shorter than white Americans on average.

NPR reported (2018) on a Center for Disease Control study published in JAMA Pediatrics of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the effects on health.  Those identifying as black or Latino and those with less than a high school education or an annual income below $15,000 were more likely to have more ACEs. 

 This article reported in the NY Times (2018) shows that Black infants in America are now more than twice as likely to die as white infants — a racial disparity that is actually wider than in 1850, 15 years before the end of slavery!

Punishment/Legal System

Institutionally-sanctioned punishment begins in preK!

A 2016 Yale University study of discipline disparities in preschool found that implicit bias towards preschool students perceived as black resulted in teachers monitoring their behavior more closely and punishing them more often including in expulsion rates!

 

And it continues throughout high school:

Vox shows racism at school from preK-12 in 7 charts (2015).

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9646504/discipline-race-charts

                                                         

This article from the Sociology of Education (2017) shows that implicit bias results in black girls being punished harsher for subjective offenses.  In other words, when the offense is subjective, school officials are more likely to perceive black girls as being worthy of punishment.  You can 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. 

US Dept of Education just released data on racial disparities in every school and school district in America (from preK-12). Here’s how you use the data to show if/how your school discriminates against black students and other marginalized groups. First, lookup the most recent year of data available for your school and/or school district. Right now that’s data on the 2015-16 school year. Here’s where you go: https://ocrdata.ed.gov/DistrictSchoolSearch#schoolSearchHere's a link to Samual Sinyangwe's tweet about this.Click on the Discipline Report on the right side and you’ll see which groups of students your school is most likely to suspend, expel, and refer to law enforcement. You can also see who’s more likely to be arrested at school using the “school-related arrests” tab.

 And the Disparity Continues in the Criminal Justice System:

Disproportionately stopped by police:

This 2021 Dept. of Justice brief explains that

In 2018, based on data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, black people were overrepresented among persons arrested for nonfatal violent crimes (33%) and for serious nonfatal violent crimes (36%) relative to their representation in the U.S. population (13%) (table 1).  White people were underrepresented. 

Disproportionately shot by police: 

This 2019 study from the Proceedings of the National Acdemy of Sciences of the United States of America concludes that, "people of color face a higher likelihood of being killed by police than do white men and women, that risk peaks in young adulthood, and that men of color face a nontrivial lifetime risk of being killed by police." African American men and women ... face higher lifetime risk of being killed by police than do their white peers... Risk is highest for black men, who (at current levels of risk) face about a 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police over the life course. The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women. Risk peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for all groups. For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death.

The American Journal of Preventative Medicine explains that

Victims were majority white (52%) but disproportionately black (32%) with a fatality rate 2.8 times higher among blacks than whites. Most victims were reported to be armed (83%); however, black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims. 

So, yes according to this study from 2009-2012, more whites have been killed, but a DISPROPORTIONATE number of blacks have been killed and that disproportionate number was much LESS likely to be armed. 

This 2021 Washington Post study has detailed every police shooting since 2015.

 

Black Americans are killed at a much higher rate than White Americans

Although half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.

Although this is a more anecdotal bit of evidence, I saw this video from Youtube (Watch from 2:30-6:15 and 12:50-18:50) and thought what an amazing contrast to the videos of police stopping Philando Castille, Sandra Bland, Terence Crutcher, Levar Jones and the stopping of black men by police.

Disproportionately sentenced:  

This 2019 Marshall project study details sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system (2019).  

The Equal Justice Initiative founded by Bryan Stevenson reports on sentencing disparities (2017) as well. 

 Vox reports (2017) on University of Michigan Law School report on sentencing disparities published by the United States Sentencing Commission.  Among the key findings is that, "Black male offenders continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated White male offenders."

 For more on policing and racism, see:

Focusing 2020 on Protests for George Floyd

Whose Lives Matter? (A History of Black Lives Matter Movement)

A Knee into the Gut of America (Colin Kaepernick)

Ferguson

Why Don't People Protest When the Violence is Not Because of a Cop? (They Do!)

 

3.  Comment on some of the evidence above in the disparities of how Americans are punished based on race.  What was compelling/surprising?

Racism's Effects on Whites

Surprisingly, however, even whites can be affected negatively by racism towards nonwhites.  One person studying the effects of racism on whites is Jonathon Metzel, a sociologist, and a medical doctor at Vanderbilt University.

White Life Expectancy is Decreasing (Even before Covid!)

As both a sociologist and a medical doctor, Jonathan Metzel explores the connection between racism and the negative effects on society, especially among whites.  In his book, Dying of Whiteness, Dr. Metzel finds that the life expectancy of white Americans has gone DOWN for three years in a row, 2015, 2016 and 2017.  (This was even before the Covid-19 pandemic!)   The last time that life expectancy went down in the U.S. for three years in a row was one hundred years ago because of World War I and the influenza outbreak of 1919.  The reasons that it is going down again now are surprisingly related to race.  This has not happened in 100 years and it is almost unheard of in the developed world.! Life expectancy should be going up.  Simply put, Metzel's thesis is this:

Racial resentment = Deaths of Despair + Anti-Gov + Guns = Lower Life Expectancy

Many Americans who are White, resent minorities and their resentment toward minorities has led them to: buy guns, choose anti-government policies and use opioids and alcohol.  This has resulted in suicide and overdose deaths and policies that lessen their healthcare options.  All of these combined have had such an effect that they have lowered the life expectancy for Americans!

See this post for a detailed discussion of Metzel's work.

4.  What is your reaction to Metzel's thesis? Do you find it surprising or upsetting?

Americans Racialized as Asian

Often, Asians are seen as a "model minority" because a large number of Americans with Asian heritage have achieved high levels of education and income.  However,  there is a long history of discrimination against Americans of Asian descent.

From the Asia Society's Center for Global Learning:

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.
•  1899 Philippine-American War 

From the Scene on Radio podcast season 4 episode 9 about race and democracy

" America’s involvement in the Philippines, though, may be the most grossly under-discussed chapter in U.S. imperialism, and in the nation’s bloody war history.  After the United States decided that it would end its war with Spain not by liberating but by annexing the Philippines, not surprisingly, Filipino nationalists disagreed and fought with the United States. And this began a war that lasted years, and arguably over a decade. It just depends how you count the war. But the United States was governing militarily at least parts of the Philippines, and fighting up and down the archipelago, from 1899 to 1913. It's the second longest war in U.S. history. And it's a war that was deeply one-sided in terms of the death counts.  Forty-two hundred U.S. soldiers died. Estimates of the Filipino death toll, mostly from disease caused by the upheaval of the war, range from 200-thousand to a million or more. Immerwahr’s estimate is three quarters of a million. He points out, the most intense period of that war lasted from 1899 to 1903—four years, the same length as the U.S. Civil War."

 

• In 1907, Japanese immigration was restricted by a "Gentleman's Agreement" between the United States and Japan. 
•  1913, CA passed Alien Land Law which barred Asians from owning land. 

• 1922 Ozawa v. U.S. (allowed denial of citizenship based on race) see also here.
• 1923 Thind v. U.S. (all people perceived to be "Hindus" are not white and not citizens)

• 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.
• 1942 Korematsu v. U.S.  (Japanese internment camps) 

• ...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.

 

Asian American Civil Rights Movement

All of the discrimination 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.  Many Asian Civil Rights leaders worked with the Black Panthers (see the picture below from Giant Robot Magazine's (1998) history of the yellow power movement.

• Richard Aoki learned and worked with the Black Panther Party (though later became an FBI informant).  NPR story here.
• Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee created AAPA and changed the pejorative label of "orientals" to Asian-Americans.  Ichioka legacy here.  
• Yuri Kochiyama worked so closely with Malcolm X that she held Malcolm X in her arms after his assassination.  NPR story here.  People's History here.

Yuri Kochiyama holds the head of Malcolm X after his assassination.

And here is Mrs. Kochiyama with the grandson of Malcolm X:

ThoughtCo has a history of the Asian-American Civil Rights movement, the "Yellow Power Movement".

The Social Construction of  "Model Minorities" and radicalized Asians.

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.  Not only did internal pressure domestically contribute to embracing Americans perceived as Asian, but international developments also contributed to the embracing of Americans perceived as Asian.  In a 180-degree turn from the Komatsu decision in the 1940s, during the Cold War, geopolitics like the Vietnam war, the Korean War and the threat of communist China led the US to embrace the Asian-American cause.  This way the U.S. could try to win over the increasing number of immigrants from these countries and sway popular opinion that despite the use of the atomic bomb in Japan and wars in Korea, Vietnam and disputes with China, the US was not anti-Asian.

At the same time, the change in immigration law in 1965 opened the door for more diverse and more educated class of immigrants:

South Asian Indians become model minorities

From the Atlantic (2021), The Truth Behind Indian American Exceptionalism By Arun Venugopal

Many of us are unaware of the special circumstances that eased our entry into American life—and of the bonds we share with other nonwhite groups.

There was a term for our place in the country’s racial order: model minority. The concept is generally traced to a 1966 article in The New York Times Magazine by the sociologist William Petersen, which focused on Japanese Americans; the basic idea was extended to other Asian Americans. Of course, the notion of “model minorities” comes with a flip side—“problem minorities.” 

What is forgotten is that before Indian Americans became a model minority, we were regarded as a problem minority. Also forgotten is the extent to which the U.S. engineered the conditions that allowed certain nonwhite groups to thrive.

The majority spoke English and came from upper-caste communities (as my parents did). The composition of the diaspora was representative of only a narrow slice of India: people who had the social capital and intellectual means to succeed far from home, and who had the resources to make the journey in the first place.

The result was an intense form of social engineering, but one that went largely unacknowledged. Immigrants from India, armed with degrees, arrived after the height of the civil-rights movement, and benefited from a struggle that they had not participated in or even witnessed. They made their way not only to cities but to suburbs, and broadly speaking were accepted more easily than other nonwhite groups have been.

East Asians become model minorities 

From Ellen Wu's The Color of Success; Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (2014)

Jeff Guo of the Washington Post interviewed Ellen Wu, author of the book Color of Success (the interview is available here The real reasons the U.S. became less racist toward Asian Americans: Washington Post analysis).  In the interview Wu explains that her research found

...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 [1950s, 60s, 70s].  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.

From NPR,

'Model Minority' Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks'

[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."

From CNN, The truth about Asian Americans' success (it's not what you think) by Jennifer Lee, August 4, 2015 

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.

From the American Psychological Association,

Hyper-Selectivity and the Remaking of Culture: Understanding the Asian American Achievement Paradox by Lee and Zhou

Here is the Abstract:

From the Asian American Achievement Paradox, different groups of Asians were disparately shaped by more than their own will to succeed:

A Russel Sage 2015 publication authored by Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and Min Zhou, professor of sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

"While pundits ascribe Asian American success to the assumed superior traits intrinsic to Asian culture, Lee and Zhou show how historical, cultural, and institutional elements work together to confer advantages to specific populations. An insightful counter to notions of culture based on stereotypes, The Asian American Achievement Paradox offers a deft and nuanced understanding of how and why certain immigrant groups succeed.

Asian Americans are often stereotyped as the “model minority.” Their sizeable presence at elite universities and high household incomes have helped construct the narrative of Asian American “exceptionalism.” While many scholars and activists characterize this as a myth, pundits claim that Asian Americans’ educational attainment is the result of unique cultural values. In The Asian American Achievement Paradox, sociologists Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou offer a compelling account of the academic achievement of the children of Asian immigrants. Drawing on in-depth interviews with the adult children of Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese refugees and survey data, Lee and Zhou bridge sociology and social psychology to explain how immigration laws, institutions, and culture interact to foster high achievement among certain Asian American groups."

From Contexts,

How hyper-selectivity drives Asian Americans’ educational outcomes

by Jennifer Lee

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).

From Inside Higher Ed

The Asian American Achievement Paradox

Here are presentation slides from Lee and Zhou.

From Columbia University, Tran, Lee et. al.

hyper-selectivity and Asian racial mobility 

Asian Americans Advancing Justice resists efforts that use Asian-Americans as a wedge against affirmative action.

5.  What aspect of the racialization of Americans identified as Asian stands out to you as being most interesting or surprising?  Why?

Racism and the Asian Model Minority Myth 

Why might it be harmful to have a "positive" stereotype such as the model minority?

Although on average Asian Americans have a higher median income and higher educational level than all racial groups in the US, they face implicit bias in their own ways.  It should be noted that the higher average level of income and education hide the wide disparities within the Asian American community.  Thinking about Asian Americans as a model minority is an overgeneralization that hides important realities about implicit biases both in the Asian American community and in other communities.

How Good Are the Asians?  Refuting Four Common Myths about Asian Americans, from the journal Phi Delta Kappan in 2009:

 

 

MMM Ignores Racism

First,  here is a post from the Society Pages that explains how the model minority myth makes Asian stereotypes more acceptable in society.   Here is a clip of an SNL skit from the daily beast about Jeremy Lin highlighting the ways that the media is able to stereotypically portray Jeremy Lin - Because he is Asian, the racism is more acceptable.  

From this article from the Winter 2004 Contexts:

MMM Hides Vast Differences within Asian-American Population 

This 2009 research published in the Annual Review of Sociology explains that many laws, and racial resentments changed in the second half of the 20th century which allowed more opportunities for Asian Americans, but the successes of Asians on average hide wide disparities that still exist.

This article published by Kevin Kumashiro, dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco highlights findings that were published in the Journal of Higher Education.

"Research in higher education shows that class and ethnicity shape Asian-Americans’ post-secondary decisions, opportunities and destinations. The model minority stereotype, in fact, begins to break down when we look at the data by ethnicity and class. While Chinese-Americans and Indian-Americans do have high rates of educational attainment, it’s a different story for Southeast Asian-Americans.Southeast Asian-Americans have among the lowest educational attainment in the country (e.g., fewer than 40 percent of Americans over the age of 25 of Laotian, Cambodian or Hmong descent have a high school diploma). Compared to East Asians (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) and South Asians (Indian, Pakistani), Southeast Asians in the U.S. are three to five times more likely to drop out of college. Southeast Asian-American students struggle with high rates of poverty and are often trapped in programs for English learners, which fail to prepare them for college. But this diversity among Asian-Americans is often lost in conversations about the “Asian disadvantage.” As a result, the interests of the most vulnerable Asian-Americans are not represented by anti-affirmative action rhetoric."

The Perpetual Foreigner Stereotype

Another aspect of racism that is hidden by the model minority stereotype is the perpetual foreigner syndrome.  If someone is perceived as being Asian, there is an assumption that they are a foreigner and not really American.  In some cases, the person's ancestors may have been in the U.S. for generations.  Chinese immigration has been happening since the 1850s.  Frequently the perpetual foreigner syndrome manifests itself in questions like, "Where are you from? Where are you really from?"

When Tara Lipinsky beat 

Michelle Kwan

, a headline said "American Beats Kwan."  Why is this a problem?

This 2011 article from the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology details the implications for ethnic minorities facing perpetual foreigner syndrome.  It includes a comparison of Asian and Latino/as.

This article in the Johns-Hopkins News Letter (2017) explains the frustrations of a 5th generation American who is still asked "Where are you really from?"

Here is an article from Quartz critical of a 2016 segment on The O'Reilly Factor of Fox News which not only promoted the perpetual foreigner stereotype, but a host of others as well.

The "Bamboo Ceiling"

From Psychological Science, Lessons from the Bamboo Ceiling by Ludmila Nunes, (2021), 

" ... despite having the highest educational attainment, highest median income, and lowest unemployment rate of any racial or ethnic group in the United States (Hsin & Xie, 2014; U.S. Census Bureau, 2019; U.S. Department of Labor, 2019), Asians are underrepresented in U.S. leadership positions."

From the Journal of Business Psychology, Granting Leadership to Asian Americans: the Activation of Ideal Leader and Ideal Follower Traits on Observers' Leadership Perceptions by Kim KY, Shen W, Evans R, Mu F., (2022),

"...stereotypical views that Asian Americans possess ideal follower traits (i.e., industrious, reliable, and competent) may also contribute to poorer perceptions of Asian Americans as leaders than White Americans.

 

"From the LA Times March 28, 2018 by Jennifer Lee (@JLeeSoc), a professor of sociology at Columbia University and Karthick Ramakrishnan (@karthickr), a professor of public policy at the UC Riverside, "Asian Americans think an elite college degree will shelter them from discrimination. It won't;"  Implicit bias affects hiring of Asian Americans.

"In numerous interviews with corporate leaders, we learned that Asian Americans are less likely to be seen as leadership material, and are thus given fewer opportunities to advance and succeed. Part of this is based on stereotype. Asians are often viewed as smart, diligent, focused, quiet and technically competent — traits that make them desirable employees, but not desirable leaders. So strong are these stereotypes that even when Asian workers take creative risks, supervisors may still prefer to promote someone else."

From the Asian American Advancing Justice institute in Washington DC also addressing implicit bias and job promotion:

"While many Asian Americans have high educational attainment and work in professional fields, some encounter a glass ceiling that blocks their professional advancement.  This often takes the form of perceptions that Asian Americans have poor communication skills or that they are passive and lack leadership potential. Reliance on stereotypes should not continue to pose barriers to advancement in the workplace."

Racism in Healthcare

From PRI, Asians face implicit bias in their healthcare:

A University of Chicago Research Study showed that

"More than half of Asian Americans with Type 2 diabetes don’t even know they have it. That compares to one in four Americans with the disease overall who are unaware. Even though the American Diabetes Association changed its screening guidelines for Asian Americans, a large number are still going unscreened....That difference is so significant that two years ago, the American Diabetes Association changed the screening guidelines to recommend Asians are screened for diabetes at a lower body mass index, but that didn’t necessarily result in more screenings, according to Elizabeth Tung, a physician at the University of Chicago. She recently wrapped up a study looking at the disparities in diabetes screening between Asian Americans and other adults.

What we found was that Asian Americans were the only racial and ethnic group that was consistently screened less than other racial and ethnic groups,” Tung says. “We found that overall, Asian Americans had 34 percent lower odds of being screened than whites.”

Racism in Education

Educationally, teachers will call home less for Asian students.

This article from the Atlantic highlights research by Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, a sociologist and an assistant professor of education at New York University's Steinhardt school.

"Cherng’s statistical analysis found sharp contrasts in how math and English teachers communicate with parents from different racial, ethnic, and immigrant backgrounds, reflecting many existing stereotypes of black, Latino, and Asian American students....Cherng attributed this to the “very implicit, really deep bias” that certain kids “get math” and certain kids don’t...teachers were less likely to contact immigrant Asian parents about academic and behavioral struggles. Only 5 percent of math teachers and 9 percent of English teachers communicated with parents of first- and second-generation Asian students about misbehavior. And less than 5 percent of English teachers contacted parents of first-generation Asian students who rarely do homework, which was 10 points less than the frequency of contact with the parents of their third-generation white counterparts."

Anti-Affirmative Action Policies and Asian-Americans

From NBC News, 70% of Asian Americans Support Affirmative Action, Here's Why Misperceptions Exist

According to the national 2020 Asian American Voter Survey, which examined almost 1,570 voters, targeting the six largest national origin groups, found that 70 percent of Asian Americans supported affirmative action, while 16 percent opposed it. Chinese Americans, who were the least likely of the ethnicities to back the program, still favored it at a majority of 56 percent.

Data on Harvard’s own admissions shows that race-conscious admissions have benefitted all communities, including Asian Americans, producing a more diverse student body, Yang said.

Harvard’s admissions statistics show that the share of its admitted class that is Asian American has grown by 27 percent since 2010, according to the university's response to the lawsuit. When looking at its class of 2023, Asian Americans make up more than 25 percent, while Latinx students comprise just over 12 percent and Black students constitute more than 14 percent.

“Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been used as a wedge and certain groups have purposefully showcased Asian American dissent to affirmative action as a way of masking their anti-Black and anti-Latino agendas,” Yang explained. “Such efforts hide the fact that most opponents of affirmative action are really trying to increase the number of Caucasian students at the expense of Black, Latino and Native American applicants.”

A working paper published last year in the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard fell under the categories of recruited athletes, legacy students and children of faculty and staff. That share also includes what’s referred to as the “dean’s interest list,” which consists of applicants whose parents or relatives made donations to the university.

The research noted that roughly 75 percent of white students admitted from those categories, identified as "ALDCs," "would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs."

Racism during Covid-19 Pandemic

6. What type of racism toward people racialized as Asian is most interesting/compelling to you? Why?

Americans Racialized as Hispanic and Racism

My former student Heidi Rojas is a singer and songwriter.  She wrote the song La Situacion about the experience that many Americans from Hispanic and Latina decent have in the U.S.  See more about her song here.

The Social Construction of Hispanic from "Mexican" to "Latinx"

1848 The border crossed many Mexicans with the controversial Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo : 

• 100,000 ethnically Mexican residents become US citizens technically guaranteed rights
• although Mexico demanded that the former Mexicans be given full citizenship, they were discriminated against.  

1896 Supreme Court rules In Re Riccardo that Mexican-Americans are white.

 

1898 Spain cedes Puerto Rico to the U.S., in 1918 over 1 million Puerto Rican residents become US citizens.

Cuban immigration increases. 

 

1930 "Mexican" appears on US census because of nativism and economic depression.  Mexican Americans had traditionally seen themselves as white. When the 1930 Census classified “Mexican American” as a race, leaders of the community protested vehemently and had the classification changed back to white in the very next census. The most prominent Mexican-American organization at the time—the patriotic, pro-assimilationist League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—complained that declassifying Mexicans as white had been an attempt to “discriminate between the Mexicans themselves and other members of the white race, when in truth and fact we are not only a part and parcel but as well the sum and substance of the white race.” Tracing their ancestry in part to the Spanish who conquered South and Central America, they regarded themselves as offshoots of white Europeans.  Choosing either Mexican or White implies that Mexicans are not White. The Mexican government and LULAC lobby to change that and in 1940 Mexican is removed.

 

Despite identifying as White, Americans identified as Mexican face continued discrimination.

 

 The Birth and Growth of Racism against Mexican-Americans.  The American Experience.  PBS. 2009.

 Watch a 1 minute clip here or at PBS Local.  Other clips:

Watch on Amazon Prime here. 

1954 Hernandez v. Texas - Supreme Court rules that discrimination against Americans identified as Mexican is illegal under the 14th ammendment.

1960s Chicano - "Chicano" emerges as a term for Americans who have Mexican heritage but they don't feel Mexican.  "Mexican American" feels like a misnomer to them.

1976 Hispanic - Cristina Mora (2014)'s research in her book, Making Hispanics, uses an organizational lens and traces how activists, bureaucrats, and media executives in the 1970s and ’80s created a new identity category—and by doing so, permanently changed the racial and political landscape of the nation.

Because of pressure from advocacy groups, political strategists and media marketers, Congress passes a law mandating the collection of "Americans of Spanish origin or descent".  This is the origin of "Hispanic" which was tied to language and heritage connected to Spain. Mostly, this combines Americans with Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage but also includes people from Spain and people from over a dozen other countries, but excludes Brazilians.  

For more on Hispanic identity:

Who You Calling Hispanic? (2021) From NPR's radio show and podcast, Code Sw!tch 

Hispanic identity is recent and a social construction 

 

How Distinct Ethnic Groups Became 'Hispanics'.  Othering & Belonging Institute. 2017.

Cristina Mora, Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and member of the Haas Institute's Diversity and Democracy cluster, presented earlier this month on her book, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American.

In the talk, which was a part of the Institute's Thinking Ahead lecture series, Mora explained that in the US in the 1960s diverse ethnic groups like Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and others were all classified as white by the Census Bureau.

Activists from these different groups, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, thus came together to demand that the Census Bureau create a new category that separates them from the descendants of Europeans as part of the larger struggle for equal rights.

The activists wanted to obtain data on their ethnic groups, which had been mixed with data on people who were actually white, and didn't face the same forms of discrimination as those who originated from countries south of the border.

1990s Latino - By 1990, "Hispanic" had been used on 2 censuses which allowed problematic aspects of the term to arise - The term included Spain which was not only European but also seen as an adversarial imperial power and it did not include Brazil which was in the Americas but historically Portugese.  Latino emerged as a term inclusive of all of Latin America.  

2000 Hispanic/Latino becomes and ethnicity - The census adjusts to allow "Hispanic/Latino" as an ethnicity with subcategories that identify with: Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc... And then race is a separate category allowing people who identify as Hispanic/Cuban/White or Latino/Puerto Rican/Black etc...

2010s Latinx - because Latino is masculine, many gender activists advocate for Latinx as a gender-inclusive term.

Despite the 1976 law and the 1990s lobby for Latino, a substantial group of Americans identifies with their ethnicity (like Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican) rather than the pan-ethnic terms of Hispanic or Latino.  And because this was a label imposed upon them, many people radicalized as "Hispanic" rejected that label and that still shows up in the PEW data Explanation and history from PEW:  Who is Hispanic? (2021):

For more on the creation of Hispanic and identity:

• The Invention of Hispanics; What It Says about Race.  The Heritage Foundation. 2019.

• Julie Dowling, University of Illinois sociologist, Mexican Americans and the Question of Race.

Drawing on extensive interviews with Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in Texas, Dowling’s research challenges common assumptions about what informs racial labeling for this population. Her interviews demonstrate that for Mexican Americans, racial ideology is key to how they assert their identities as either in or outside the bounds of whiteness. Emphasizing the link between racial ideology and racial identification, Dowling offers an insightful narrative that highlights the complex and highly contingent nature of racial identity:

2/3 of Texan Latinos check white with the highest % along the border

those people who checked white were more identified with this ideology of using whiteness as a strategy, while those who checked other were more identified with anti-racist politics, or they identified more or with immigrants with African-Americans. So it wasn't so much color or assimilation, but what strategy they use to combat the discrimination they faced. Because the overwhelming majority of the people I spoke to experienced discrimination — whether they identified as white or whether they identified as other. Some of the lightest people checked other and some of the darkest people checked white. It wasn't a skin color issue or an assimilation issue: It's a strategic issue.

NPR Code Switch interviewed Dowling on the census and who checks Hispanic and who checks white and why.

• Defining Hispanicity: E Pluribus Unum or E Pluribus Plures?  NIH. 2006.

A history of 'Hispanic', 'Latino' and the shifting concept of race.

• When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity. PEW Research. 2012.

Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label.

• Hispanics are also divided over how much of a common identity they share with other Americans. 
• When it comes to describing their identity, most Hispanics prefer their family’s country of origin over pan-ethnic terms. Half (51%) say that most often they use their family’s country of origin to describe their identity.
• “Hispanic” or “Latino”? Most don’t care—but among those who do, “Hispanic” is preferred. Most Hispanics do not see a shared common culture among U.S. Hispanics. Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) say Hispanics in the U.S. have many different cultures, while 29% say Hispanics in the U.S. share a common culture.

• What does it mean to be Latino? From NPR's radio show and podcast, Code Sw!tch

• The Institutionalization of Hispanic Panethnicity 1965 to 1990. American Sociological Review. 2014;

Research on racial/ethnic categorization provides insight on how broad processes, such as migration trends or political shifts, precede the establishment of new categories, but does not detail the struggles and compromises that emerge between state and non-state actors. As a result, we know little about why new census categories are defined in certain ways or how they become legitimate. This article addresses this gap by using an organizational lens to reconstruct how the Hispanic category emerged in the United States. I demonstrate that categories can become institutionalized through a two-stage process as state actors and ethnic entrepreneurs (1) negotiate a classification's definition and (2) work together to popularize the category. I argue that cross-field effects undergird these stages—movements toward developing a new category within state agencies are reinforced by similar classification efforts occurring among social movement groups and media firms, and vice versa. I identify three organizational mechanisms that sustained these effects in the Hispanic case: the development of boundary spanning networks between state and non-state actors, the transposition of resources across fields, and the use of analogy and ambiguity as cognitive tools to describe and legitimate the new category. I discuss the theoretical merits of incorporating organizational analysis, especially the concept of cross-field effects, into the study of racial/ethnic classification.

• Is Being Hispanic a Matter of Race, Ethnicity or Both?  Pew Research Center.  2015.

When it comes to reporting their racial identity, Latinos stand out from other Americans. In the 2010 census, for example, 94% of the U.S. population selected at least one of the five standard, government-defined racial categories – white, black, Asian, American Indian or Pacific Islander. But among Latinos, just 63% selected at least one of these categories; 37% of Latinos, or 19 million, instead selected only “some other race,” with many offering write-in responses such as “Mexican,” Hispanic” or “Latin American.”

Federal policy defines “Hispanic” not as a race, but as an ethnicity. And it prescribes that Hispanics can in fact be of any race. But these census findings suggest that standard U.S. racial categories might either be confusing or not provide relevant options for Hispanics to describe their racial identity. They also raise an important question long pondered by social scientists and policymakers: Do Hispanics consider their Hispanic background to be part of their racial background, their ethnic background or both?

A new Pew Research Center survey of multiracial Americans finds that, for two-thirds of Hispanics, their Hispanic background is a part of their racial background – not something separate. This suggests that Hispanics have a unique view of race that doesn’t necessarily fit within the official U.S. definitions.

• The Latino Flight to Whiteness.  The American Prospect. (2016)

In a 1997 article in the Journal of Black Studies, sociologists Jonathan Warren and France Twine had already challenged the view that the United States was gravitating toward a white minority population because of evidence that the new immigrant population tends to identify as white. A similar preference for whiteness is present among Hispanics who select a single category as their racial identity. In the 2010 census, the majority of Hispanic respondents, 53 percent, said they are white, a mere 2.5 percent said they are black, and more than 35 percent chose a category other than black or white (some choosing "Hispanic" itself or their national origin as their racial classification). A majority of "single-race" Hispanics selected a white racial identity.

The census does not include information about an individual's physical appearance. But there are surveys that enable us to compare the interviewees' self-reported race with their complexion as judged by the interviewer. In a survey devoted exclusively to Hispanics, the interviewers coded the respondents on a continuum of Very Light, Light, Medium, Dark, and Very Dark. The vast majority of Hispanics coded as Medium to Very Dark said their race is white. Even among the Dark and Very Dark respondents less than 5 percent said they are black. (For these findings, see William Darity Jr., Jason Dietrich, and Darrick Hamilton, "Bleach in the Rainbow: Latin Ethnicity and Preference for Whiteness," Transforming Anthropology, 13:2 October 2005 103-109.) The preference for whiteness among Hispanics parallels a flight from blackness.

7.  What is something about the creation of "Hispanic/Latino" that you find surprising or interesting?

Discrimination and Prejudice against people identified as Hispanic

 

The Brutal History of Latino Discrimination in America, from History.com (2017), Though Latinos were critical to the U.S. economy and often were American citizens, everything from their language to the color of their skin to their countries of origin could be used as a pretext for discrimination. Anglo Americans treated them as a foreign underclass and perpetuated stereotypes that those who spoke Spanish were lazy, stupid and undeserving. In some cases, that prejudice turned fatal.

A History of Anti-Hispanic Bigotry in the United States; This Animus Bubbles Up Frequently, with Devastating Results,  from Washington Post (2019),

Marie Arana details the various peaks of racism toward people seen as non-white from the Western Hemisphere.

 

The 'Forgotten' History Of Anti-Latino Violence In The U.S., from NPR (2019), The rate of hate crimes against Latinos in the U.S. is at its highest in nearly a decade, according to an annual report by the FBI.  The report revealed 485 hate crimes against Latinos in 2018. That’s 58 more than reported the year before and surpassing those against Muslims and Arab Americans.

 

Racism, Not a Lack of Assimilation Is the Real Problem Facing Latinos in America, From NBC News (2019), 

A bounty of research debunks the idea that Latinos are not integrated into American society: Latino immigrants, like other immigrant groups, are completely English dominant by the third generation; their economic mobility rate is almost equal to that of whites; and Hispanics are more likely to marry outside their group than blacks or whites.

 

Disparities do remain, but those who tell Latinos to assimilate often fail to acknowledge the centuries of exclusion, racism and systemic discrimination that have slowed Latinos’ economic and social mobility. Racism puts up practical roadblocks to integration and participation, preventing Latinos from being accepted as “assimilated,” experts said....a recent report found that in Iowa City, Iowa, Latinos were denied home loans four times more often than whites, the biggest disparity in the country. This adds to the wealth gap between whites and Latinos because most families’ net worth comes from their homes and their equity.... 

 

When it comes to language, many Latinos see a double standard.  “It is a deficit when you speak Spanish, but it’s an asset to whites and white Americans when they speak it,” said scholar and educator Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, who documented racism in the criminal justice system in her book, “Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court.” “This is the ultimate form of exclusion.”

 

 

Colorism

Colorism and Hispanic Identity from PEW (2021):

 

 

Racial Identity and Racial Treatment of Mexican Americans.  Vilma Ortiz and Edward Telles. 2012.

Abstract:  How racial barriers play in the experiences of Mexican Americans has been hotly debated. Some consider Mexican Americans similar to European Americans of a century ago that arrived in the United States with modest backgrounds but were eventually able to participate fully in society. In contrast, others argue that Mexican Americans have been racialized throughout U.S. history and this limits their participation in society. The evidence of persistent educational disadvantages across generations and frequent reports of discrimination and stereotyping support the racialization argument. In this paper, we explore the ways in which race plays a role in the lives of Mexican Americans by examining how education, racial characteristics, social interactions, relate to racial outcomes. We use the Mexican American Study Project, a unique data set based on a 1965 survey of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio combined with surveys of the same respondents and their adult children in 2000, thereby creating a longitudinal and intergenerational data set. First, we found that darker Mexican Americans, therefore appearing more stereotypically Mexican, report more experiences of discrimination. Second, darker men report much more discrimination than lighter men and than women overall. Third, more educated Mexican Americans experience more stereotyping and discrimination than their less-educated counterparts, which is partly due to their greater contact with Whites. Lastly, having greater contact with Whites leads to experiencing more stereotyping and discrimination. Our results are indicative of the ways in which Mexican Americans are racialized in the United States.

 

Stereotypes about Citizenship Status 

Who Are the "Illegals"? The Social Construction of Illegality in the United States.  Flores, Rene and Schacter, Ariela. American Sociological Review. 2018.

Wash U and U of Chicago sociology professors explain that political rhetoric, racist stereotypes drive false notions about immigrant criminality.

From Wash U news:

Fueled by political rhetoric evoking dangerous criminal immigrants, many white Americans assume low-status immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Syria, Somalia and other countries President Donald Trump labeled “shithole” nations have no legal right to be in the United States, new research in the journal American Sociological Review suggests.

In the eyes of many white Americans, just knowing an immigrant’s national origin is enough to believe they are probably undocumented, said Ariela Schachter, study co-author and assistant professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Our study demonstrates that the white American public has these shared, often factually incorrect, stereotypes about who undocumented immigrants are,” Schachter said. “And this is dangerous because individuals who fit this ‘profile’ likely face additional poor treatment and discrimination because of suspicions of their illegality, regardless of their actual documentation.”

Findings suggest that the mere perception of illegal status may be enough to place legal immigrants, and even U.S. citizens, at greater risk for discrimination in housing and hiring, for criminal profiling and arrest by law enforcement, and for public harassment and hate crimes in the communities they now call home. “When people form impressions about who they think is ‘illegal,’ they often do not have access to individuals’ actual documents. There have actually been a number of recent incidents in which legal immigrants and even U.S. born Americans are confronted by immigration authorities about their status. So these judgments seem to be based on social stereotypes. Our goal was to systematically uncover them,” said study co-author René D. Flores, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

From a broader sociological perspective, Schachter and Flores argue that an immigrant’s real standing in American society is shaped not just by legal documentation, but also by social perceptions.

“These findings reveal a new source of ethnic-based inequalities — ‘social illegality’ — that may potentially increase law enforcement scrutiny and influence the decisions of hiring managers, landlords, teachers and other members of the public,” they conclude in the research.

Conducted in November 2017, the experimental survey asked a representative sample of 1,500 non-Hispanic white Americans to guess whether a hypothetical immigrant was in the country illegally — and perhaps a threat worth reporting to authorities — based on the reading of a brief biographical sketch.

By systematically varying the immigrant’s nation of origin, education level, language skills, police record, gender, age, race and other variables, researchers created a pool of nearly 7 million unique immigrant sketches that touched on a range of stereotypes. Each respondent was randomly assigned to view 10 of these unique sketches during the survey.

Using complex statistical analysis, researchers estimated how much each of these individual immigrant traits and stereotypes influenced the assumptions of white Americans from various demographic backgrounds, geographic regions and self-identified political affiliations.

Surprisingly, the study found that white Republicans and white Democrats jump to many of the same conclusions about the legal status of hypothetical immigrants — except when it comes to the receipt of government benefits.

 

Hispanic Health Paradox

The Hispanic Health Paradox across Generations: The Relationship of Child Generational Status and Citizenship with Health Outcomes (2015) from the NIH,

 

Stat News details the Hispanic Paradox and reports that new research may show that Hispanics live longer, but not necessarily healthier.

PEW Research Center collection of surveys about Hispanics/Latinos.

8.  What do you find interesting about the examples of racism toward Hispanic Americans?

9. What are some similarities between racism toward Asian and Hispanic Americans?

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