Notes from the Field: A Loyola Theater Production

Sociology often makes for poignant art.  Some examples include Oscar winners Crash and Parasite, as well as local artist Tonika Johnson's Folded Map which debuted at Loyola's WTC gallery. 

Announcing a sociological Loyola Theater production:  Notes from the Field.

And Sunday is a post-show discussion:

The production's Dramaturgy Resource provides more resources related to the performance, including this graphic which shows the way that companies profit off mass incarceration:

Qualitative assessment for 1 The Sociological Perspective

If you choose to do this qualitative assessment for unit 1: The Sociological Perspective, here is the assignment.

General assignment:

This is due one week from today.

For the first assessment, please demonstrate that you can find a sociology research article.  Then, use that article to demonstrate that you understand the sociological perspective and how sociologists do research.  Below are specific questions that you should answer.  

(1 Point each for 1a and 1b):

1a.  Cite your article. 

The American Sociological Association (ASA) has its own format and style guide, but they charge you for the book, so I will show you where to find out how to cite using ASA style below.  ASA style is used less so it is a little harder to find; for example, you can find general help about how to cite from  LUC's libraries here, but it does not include ASA style.  The format for journal articles like those we did in class looks like this: 

 Author Last Name, Author First Name. Year Published. 'Title'. Publication Title  Volume number(Issue number):Pages Used. Retrieved October 10, 2013 (http://Website URL).

If you need more detail than what is above, use one of these other guides:

• Cite This For Me will create citations for you with the citation generator but it also has numerous guides to citing.  https://www.citethisforme.com/citation-generator/asa/how-to-cite-journal
• Purdue Online Writing Lab is really useful.  It has a citation guide here, and the home page is here.
• Harvard has a guide to ASA style.
• UNK has a guide here.

Lastly, Pro Tip - if you use JSTOR for research, the database has a citation generator.  If you have a resource open like a journal and you click citation, it will generate it for you (but check on the format).

1b.  Please include a link to the article so that I can click on it.

2.  Explain how this research can be an example of the sociological perspective.   

Use ONE - either Berger's idea of Social Construction of Reality or Mill's idea of the Sociological Imagination  and explain both: (a)what their idea is and (b)how that idea might apply to the research article.

3.  Explain one of the paradigms.

Choose ONE paradigm: Durkheim's Structural Functional, Marx's Conflict, or Weber's Symbolic Interaction and briefly explain the paradigm and then illustrate how the research looks through the lens of that paradigm.

4.  Explain the type of research.  

We learned about both the general types and specific methods of research that sociologists use.  What general type(s) of research (qualitative, quantitative, longitudinal, cross sectional, etc...) does the author use and why/how do you know?  Then explain what particular method(s) the author uses.  How did they gather their data?  (HINT: Do not confuse the background literature review for the actual research)

5. Explain the conclusions of the research.

What groups/categories are the authors studying?  What conclusions/generalizations do they come to and why are these not stereotypes (explain the difference)? Finally, why should we be careful of how we view outgroups and what might this research shed light on to prevent either outgroup homogeneity or outgroup stereotypes?

6. Critically analyze the article.

What are some of the general ways of being critical about research or statistics in general?  What are some specific ways of being critical of this article's statistics or claims?  Lastly, is this article (or its conclusions) interesting enough that I should use it in my regular lessons (if we cover the topic) for all students to see?

Tips and Recommendations:

• Use a separate app to write and save your responses. Then, to TURN IN the assessment, please email it to me.
• Start making an outline ASAP so that if you have questions, next week you have time to get help.
• Be sure to answer ALL parts of each question. 
• If you have trouble, please do not fret alone:
• Use Loyola’s writing center.
• Find me (helpful if you email me a heads up) in Coffey room 418 Usually I am there from 10:45 - 12:15 and then again from.
• Or we can communicate via email, zoom or make an appointment to meet in person.

Grading

6 points each for questions 2- 6 using the scale below:

6 All parts of the question are complete and accurate.

5 answer is slightly either inadequate or inaccurate.

4 answer is either seriously inadequate or inaccurate OR slightly both inadequate or inaccurate.

3 answer is seriously inadequate or inaccurate AND slightly inadequate or inaccurate.

2 answer is BOTH seriously inadequate AND inaccurate.

1 answer shows an attempt to answer but is completely inaccurate.

0 there was no answer provided or answer shows contempt for the course or teacher and/or a lack of seriousness.

Meditation: Listen for the constant change.

Listen for the constant change. 

It is easy for us to hear the bell ring when it is hit and we notice the bell go silent.  But in between, the bell is constantly changing.  Listen for the constant change.  

This is like our everyday life.  It is constantly changing.  Every moment is different.  If you are having a rough day, week or semester, the next moment is different.  Let yourself be born anew in this present moment. 

From The Marginalian, Maria Popover writes,

In the opening pages of her 1993 masterwork Parable of the Sower (public library) — the first part of her oracular Earthseed allegory — Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) writes:

All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.

God

Is Change.

And from Tiny Buddha:

 

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” ~ Hal Borland

From the Joy Within:

From Charlotte Bell at Hugger Mugger:

I have the great privilege of teaching a mindfulness class each week for Huntsman Cancer Institute. The class takes place at Salt Lake City’s gorgeous Red Butte Garden. I recently bought a new 85mm macro lens for my Nikon d7500. Red Butte Garden is the perfect place to play with the lens after class. I love the elaborate detail that emerges when I shoot things close up. Sometimes when a particular plant really shines through my lens, I think about different ways I might approach it the following week. Then the next week rolls around and often that flower is gone, only to be replaced by some other gorgeous bloom. Going to the garden is a weekly reminder of the truth of constant change.

A group of meditation teachers once asked Suzuki Roshi, author of the mindfulness classic, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, to sum up meditation in one sentence. His answer: “Everything changes.” It’s easy to see the truth of constant change in our lives. We can observe the evolution of our bodies throughout our lives. We can reflect on changes in our preferences and habits. What I enjoyed in my 20s is vastly different from what I enjoy now. Sometimes the cycles of constant change can be challenging. It can be hard to let go of things we love. At other times, we welcome change.
CONSTANT CHANGE IS NOT A CHOICE

The changes that characterize our lives are often beyond our control. For example, we can’t stop the aging process. Relationships change, often without our input. Friends, family and animal companions come and go. We can’t stop these changes from happening. But we can choose how we respond. We can choose whether or not constant change throws us off balance—which it most certainly will at times. Or we can remember that the difficulties we experience in response to change will themselves change at some point.

When we’re happy with the conditions in our lives, we often wish they wouldn’t change. When they inevitably do change, we suffer. Have you ever taken a vacation and wished it would never end? Wanting your situation to be different keeps you from enjoying where you are.

When we’re not so happy with what’s happening in our lives, we respond with aversion. Have you ever gotten angry at being stopped by a stoplight? Have you ever sat in your car, stewing about it until the light changes? This is how we add unnecessary suffering onto a basically neutral situation. It may not be our preference to have to stop, but is it worth getting worked up?

These responses are natural, but they can sometimes layer even more angst onto the situation. Our choice then becomes whether we react with clinging or aversion, or whether we recognize that our present situation is temporary and relax into it as much as possible.

The situations I cited above are relatively easy. Of course, there are pleasant and unpleasant situations that are much more challenging in our lives. But we can practice moderating our responses in these less challenging times, so that when bigger challenges arise, perhaps we can respond more skillfully. That’s what practice is about.
HOW MINDFULNESS HELPS US TUNE IN TO CHANGE

We can also practice moderating our responses in meditation. In the same way my macro lens reveals tiny details in the flowers I shoot, mindfulness gives us an intimate look at constant change.

Try this: Place your hands together. You can interlace your fingers, place your hands in Anjali Mudraor touch your fingertips together—whatever you prefer. Now tune into the sensations in the hands. What do you feel? Maybe there are sensations of warmth, coolness, pressure, pulsing or vibration, or something else entirely. Do these sensations stay constant, or do they continuously change? Practice this inquiry for at least 3 to 5 minutes.

When we look closely at what appears to be constant contact between our hands, we can begin to see that the sensations are actually constantly changing. Contact between our hands is not just one thing; it’s a panoply of changing sensations.

This is a microscopic look into what is happening all the time in our lives. In mindfulness practice, we can observe sensations coming and going at very subtle levels. Eventually, we become less reactive as we become more comfortable with the inevitability of change. When we practice mindfulness, we rest in the flow of constant change in our bodies. It becomes familiar enough that we no longer see change as a problem, but rather simply as the natural state of our lives.

Practicing mindfulness is kind of like a musician practicing scales. You practice scales and arpeggios so that you develop facility with combinations of notes that you will likely encounter when you play music. When we learn to rest in the flow of constant change, we become better able to respond skillfully to the bigger changes we experience every day of our lives.

2.01mwf Nature AND Nurture and Socialization

HW:  Levine, Robert and Wolff, Ellen.  Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culture.  Psychology Today. 1985.          

Google Form for this lesson

1.  What are some of the unseen ways that the tree below has been shaped?

There are two general categories of influences on the tree: Nature and Nurture.

The Nature and Nurture Dynamic

The tree begins with a seed that houses the tree's genetic material, an algorithm for how the tree should grow.  But the rules of the algorithm interact with the environment that the seed lands in.  For example, the tree's genes are programmed to grow towards the sunlight, but that depends upon what is around the tree and what happens to the tree.

The genetic material in the ash tree seeds creates an aptitude for the tree to grow like this:

Both of the ash trees above start from seeds like the ones pictured above. The seeds provide an aptitude for the tree to grow.  The aptitude is the tree's potential for traits like height, branching, lifespan, etc...  This is the tree's nature; its genes and biology.  But this aptitude is dependent on the nurture that the tree gets from its environment; the tree is affected by its surroundings:

• the light it receives
• its surroundings like buildings and other trees
• the soil composition
• pollution
• animals and insects nesting/affecting in the tree
• And the tree is also affected by human activity:

• pruning
• fertilizing 
• people driving by the tree with trucks hitting the branches  

All of the effects of the surroundings of the tree and the human activity is nurture; how interaction with surroundings and people affect growth.  So the tree's growth is based on a dynamic interaction between both its nature and its nurture.  

The poem below was written by Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman who was a sociology major from Harvard. (She also wrote and read The Hill We Climb, the poem at the 2021 Presidential Inauguration). You can read more about her and hear her recite her poetry on this 2021 post from the NY Magazine.

 Arborescent I

by

Amanda Gorman

We are
        Arborescent-
What goes
        Unseen
Is at the very
        Root of ourselves.
Distance can
        Distort our deepest
Sense
        Of who
We are,
        Leave Us
Warped
        & wasted
As winter's
        Wind. We will
Not Walk
        From what
We've borne
        We would
Keep it
        For a while
Sit silent &
        Swinging on its branches
Like a child
        Refusing to come
Home. We would
        Keep.
Knowing how
        We would
Again
        Give up
Our World
        For this one.

2a. What does Gorman mean by "We are arborescent"?
2b. What are some things that "go unseen" that are "at the very root of ourselves"?

This lesson is the beginning of our second unit - Social Structure.  For this unit, I want students to be able to answer the question: How has social structure shaped you? To begin this unit, this lesson will first examine evidence about how humans are programmed by their DNA and biology.  If we are programmed to grow/be/act a certain way then that is not social structure, that is biology.  Let's begin with an examination of biology v. society or nature v. nurture so that we can separate out what is social influence on people.

Like Gorman explains in her poem, people are like trees as well.  Humans are born with biological nature - genes that provide an aptitude and a road map for growth.  In other words, all living creatures from trees to humans are dependent on both nature and nurture. But humans are affected by their surroundings - their environment including both the physical environment and the social environment.  Similar to trees, many animals are born with instincts and abilities to survive on their own.   

Human Nature is to be Nurtured

But people are different than trees and animals in profound ways.  If a tree's seed falls to the ground and takes root, left to itself, it grows.  But if a human baby is born, left to itself, it is unlikely to survive.  In other words, humans are deeply interdependent on other humans to survive.  In other words,  it is human nature to be nurtured.  Humans need to be cared for, and that is why we are born with a biology and a psychology designed for social interaction.  

Blueprint by Nicholas Christakis

Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist and medical doctor.  In his 2019 book, Blueprint, he explains that humans are born with a nature that makes us be nurtured.  This is what Christakis calls the "social suite:"

“At the core of all societies, I will show, is the social suite: 

(1) The capacity to have and recognize individual identity
(2) Love for partners and offspring
(3) Friendship
(4) Social networks
(5) Cooperation
(6) Preference for one’s own group (that is, “in-group bias”)
(7) Mild hierarchy (that is, relative egalitarianism
(8) Social learning and teaching”

 

 

Watch Christakis briefly summarize his book on youtube here or on the embedded video below:

For more info., Christakis has a 30 min interview with the RSA here that explains how his work can inform us during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Evidence for the connection between nature and nurture and the human social connection: 

Born Helpless

From Scientific American,

Human babies enter the world utterly dependent on caregivers to tend to their every need. Although newborns of other primate species rely on caregivers, too, human infants are especially helpless because their brains are comparatively underdeveloped. Indeed, by one estimation a human fetus would have to undergo a gestation period of 18 to 21 months instead of the usual nine to be born at a neurological and cognitive development stage comparable to that of a chimpanzee newborn.

From Cornell,

Newborn horses can stand within an hour of birth. Baby wood ducks leap from a nest to splash down in a pond a day after hatching. Yet human babies, as well as the young of many other species of mammals and birds, require months or years of care before they reach full mobility and sensory function, let alone maturity.

Neurobiology and psychology

• mirror neurons
• vagus nerve
• facial recognition
• language
• oxytocin
• left-cradling bias
• “A left-cradling bias arises from the right hemisphere advantage for social processing, for example, visual recognition of infant facial expressions,” the authors of the first study write. “The position of an infant on the mother’s left side may optimize maternal monitoring, by directing sensory information predominantly to the mother’s right hemisphere.”
  Allow us to translate. You probably learned in biology class that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and that the opposite holds true too. So if you’re holding baby on the left, your right hemisphere—the one responsible for processing emotion, making sense of what you see and facial recognition—is fully engaged. Your parenting muscles, in a sense, are fully flexed.

From Our World in Data,  

Dr. Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General of the United States, recently wrote: “Loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day”.

From the National Institutes of Health,

Social relationships—both quantity and quality—affect mental health, health behavior, physical health, and mortality risk. Sociologists have played a central role in establishing the link between social relationships and health outcomes, identifying explanations for this link, and discovering social variation (e.g., by gender and race) at the population level. Studies show that social relationships have short- and long-term effects on health, for better and for worse, and that these effects emerge in childhood and cascade throughout life to foster cumulative advantage or disadvantage in health. This article describes key research themes in the study of social relationships and health, and it highlights policy implications suggested by this research.

From Harvard Medical School,

Social connections like these not only give us pleasure, they also influence our long-term health in ways every bit as powerful as adequate sleep, a good diet, and not smoking. Dozens of studies have shown that people who have social support from family, friends, and their community are happier, have fewer health problems, and live longer.

Dean Ornish's Reaserch

 

Dr. Dean Ornish, a cardiologist who found through research that patients with medical issues, including surgeries like bypass surgery or mastectomies, healed quicker and more thoroughly if they had meaningful relationships in their lives. 

From Dr. Ornish's website:

At the Heart of Healing: Connection

Loneliness and Isolation

Medicine today tends to focus primarily on the physical and mechanistic: drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules. However, there isn’t any other factor in medicine – not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery – that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes than loneliness and isolation.

Love and intimacy — our ability to connect with ourselves and others, is at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for his or her patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it — yet, with few exceptions, we doctors do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our medical training.

There is a deep spiritual hunger in this country. The real epidemic in our culture is not only physical heart disease, but also what I call emotional and spiritual heart disease. The profound sense of loneliness, isolation, alienation, and depression that are so prevalent in our culture with the breakdown of the social structures that used to provide us with a sense of connection and community. It is, to me, a root of the illness, cynicism, and violence in our society.

We are creatures of community. Those individuals, societies, and cultures who learned to take care of each other, to love each other, and to nurture relationships with each other during the past several hundred thousand years were more likely to survive than those who did not. Those people who did not learn to take care of each other often did not make it. In our culture, the idea of spending time taking care of each other and creating communities has become increasingly rare. Ignoring these ideas imperils our survival.

Awareness is the first step in healing, both individually and socially. Part of the value of science is to increase the level of awareness of how much these choices matter that we make each day. Not just a little, but a lot, and not just to the quality of life but also the quantity of life – to our survival. When we understand how important these issues are, then we can do something about it. These include:

• spending more time with our friends and family

• communication skills 

• group support

• confession, forgiveness, and redemption 

• compassion, altruism, and service 

• psychotherapy 

• touching

• commitment

• meditation

When we increase the love and intimacy in our lives, we also increase the health, joy, and meaning in our lives.

Bruce Perry's Research

Another researcher,  Bruce Perry,  has written extensively about the importance of nurturing humans as they grow, especially empathy.  Perry's research details the sad evidence that humans who are not nurtured by other humans will not grow and develop. There are numerous examples of kids who are fed and protected so that they survive, but they are isolated from other people and not shown love and caring.  Humans need more than nutrition and shelter to grow and develop.  

Watch both of the videos below about famous examples that are as revealing as they are sad:

• Danielle, found in 2004.

Watch this video from the Oprah show which summarizes her initial finding and then updates how she is ten years later.   Ten years after she was found, the Tampa Bay Time did an update on her here.

    

• Genie, found in 1970.  

The video below is about a girl named Genie that was locked in a bedroom alone for 12 years of her life. Here is what Susan Curtiss wrote about her in her book, Genie; A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day Wild Child.

Here is a brief clip from a documentary about Genie's story. And below are notes from one of the researchers studying Genie:

Genie was pitiful. Hardly ever having worn clothing, she did not react to temperature, either heat or cold. Never having eaten solid food, Genie did not know how to chew and had great difficulty in swallowing.  Having been strapped down and left sitting on a potty chair she could not stand erect, could not straighten her arms or legs, could not run hop, jump or climb.  In fact she could only walk with difficulty shuffling her feet and swaying from side to side. Hardly ever having seen more than a space of ten feet in front of her she had become nearsighted to exactly that distance....Surprisingly, however, Genie was alert and curious. She maintained good eye contact and...She was intensely eager for human contact. 

3. What are the ways that Danielle and Genie both were not nurtured?

4.  What are some of the results of their lack of nurturing?

Feral Kids

Some people have been found to be living with wild (feral) animals.  These feral people provide more evidence that humans are influenced by their surroundings.  Check out this website for examples of feral children.

 

Socialization before birth!

The process of nurture that shapes humans is called socialization.  There is evidence that this process begins even before birth!  Even before birth, a baby is dependent on its parents for its genes.  And then, as it develops in utero, it depends on its mother to make the baby's life viable; A prenatal infant can be impacted by the stress that the mother feels as well as the nutrition she gets, and the medical care she receives.

• This Ted Talk by Annie Murphy Paul explains some of the ways that humans begin learning before birth!
• Another example of prenatal socialization is in identical twins who have the same exact DNA and biology.  Because they are exactly the same, nurses will often paint the nails of twins differently so that they can quickly tell them apart.  But, often the parents of these twins can tell them apart from their earliest days because they have already started developing different personalities even before being born.
• The effects of alcohol and drugs on unborn babies are one example of prenatal effects on unborn babies that are well documented.  Additionally, other examples are the effects of prenatal vitamins and stress on the mother.  
• Yet another example of socialization happening in utero is that babies are influenced by what mothers eat during their pregnancy.  One study shows that the amniotic fluid around the baby can take on the flavor and smell of certain foods or spices.  Babies show a correlation to those foods after being born.  See more about this study here.
• There is even more recent research that has found that the experiences a grandmother has can affect the genes that she passes down to her grandchild!  In other words, the nurturing or socialization process that affects you, might start decades before you are even born!  This multigenerational effect on genes is known as epigenetics.   Here is a link to a PBS program called The Ghost in your Genes about epigenetics.  The researchers theorize that social experiences can affect the genes of a person and, more amazingly, these genes can be passed down to a generation or two. So the grandchildren may experience the effects of their grandparents' lives on their genes. How amazing is that? They call it the "ghost in your genes," explained on the BBC here.

Can you explain what sociologist mean by nature and nurture?

What is the dynamic between the two?

Use evidence from the lesson above to support your answer.

Quantitative Assessment Unit 1

Today's lesson is ASYNCHRONOUS - we will NOT meet in person.  Instead please complete the assessment for the first unit.  

• The assessment will be posted to Sakai under the Tests/quizzes tab at the start of today's class.
• You must take this assessment before the beginning of our next class.
• Be mindful of the time - once you begin, you have 60 minutes to finish.  There are readings and that may take you a little bit of time. You are NOT allowed to skip questions - you must answer them in advance.
• Please do not share any answers, but you may use your notes to answer the questions.
• Don't be too anxious - you can always submit a qualitative assessment.  That assessment will be posted/assigned at our next class.

 When finished with the assessment, please answer this Post-assessment evaluation.

Sociological Super Bowl 2025

 Ending [the fight against] Racism; The NFL's Participatory Obedience 2025

NPR's Code Switch reported on the NFL's decision to end their END RACISM campaign in 2025, the same year that President Trump is attending the game and also ending all DEI initiatives in the government.  This concerns scholars who study democracy;

Some democracy advocates worry that too many of our civic institutions are softening their postures toward Trump to avoid getting on his bad side, pointing to what the historian Timothy Snyder calls "anticipatory obedience:"

"Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do."

Advocate explains,

The NFL introduced its “Inspire Change” platform in 2018, with end-zone slogans such as “End Racism,” “It Takes All of Us,” “Stop Hate,” “Choose Love,” and “Vote” becoming part of the league’s broader diversity and inclusion messaging in 2020, the Athletic reports. These changes were implemented in response to nationwide BLM protests following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The issue of racial injustice had been a talking point in the NFL since 2016, when former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick  (For more on Colin Kaepernick see my 2017 post about it) began kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racism, sparking widespread debates.

And the END RACISM end zone message has been in the end zone since 2021 as an anti-racism response to the murder of George Floyd.

But, Trump has a long history of racism (see my post about his attacks on DEI) that makes his comments about NFL players all the more suspect.  Newsweek documented all of Trump's NFL comments during his first term here, including saying that "NFL players who kneel should be fired" (2017), "Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!" (2017) and saying that these players "shouldn't be allowed in our country" (2018).

All of this calls into question the decisions of Trump to be the first President ever to attend a Super Bowl and the NFL's decision to end the END RACISM campaign.  Scholars who study authoritarianism call decisions like this anticipatory obedience.  Taking actions in an attempt to appease a leader is one way that democracies can fall into autocracy.  Princeton Sociologist Kim Scheppele explains this in her forthcoming book called Destroying Democracy by Law (more in my post about that here).
 

Kendrick Lamar's 2025 Halftime Performance, A Conflict Paradigm Lens

Kendrick Lamar's performance showed that he was aware of the gravity of the moment in both Trump attending and the President's past history with the NFL and racism as well as the history of participatory obedience.  Without a doubt, Lamar's performance was a commentary on racial justice in America through a lens of Marx's Conflict Paradigm.  Lamar brought numerous inequalities and injustices to light throughout his performance.

Double Consciousness

As the show begins, Lamar launches into Squabble Up, a song BET explains, 

...that speaks to the tension and resistance found in everyday Black life, Lamar immediately set the tone for the night.  

That tone was

...confronting uncomfortable truths about race, power, and identity in America. His lyrics often serve as a mirror, forcing listeners to see the country for what it is—not the sanitized, revisionist version often presented in history books, but the raw, unfiltered reality of Black life in America.... At a time when diversity programs are being dismantled and affirmative action is being gutted, Lamar stood as proof that Black excellence does not require permission.
At a time when voter suppression is being enacted in states with large Black populations, Lamar’s performance was a call to action, reminding us that our voices—whether in music, sports, or the ballot box—cannot and will not be silenced....Lamar’s halftime show was a direct response to the times we live in. It was a performance rooted in history, shaped by struggle, and fueled by the unrelenting spirit of Black America.
For years, America has tried to erase us—from slavery to segregation, from redlining to mass incarceration, from voter suppression to attempts to erase Black history from the classroom.  But history has shown, time and time again, that we are unerasable.  You can cancel every program. You can roll back every policy. You can attempt to silence every voice. But you cannot erase us.  Black people are America. Not just a part of it—not just contributors—but the very essence of what makes this country what it is.

And that last important point - that Black people are America despite the attempts to erase them from the culture exemplifies what W.E.B. Dubois called "Double Consciousness," or being forced to see yourself through two lenses - as a person who is both American and Black.

Beyond-say

During the first Trump administration, Beyonce performed at the Superbowl and faced backlash because her performance was too focused on social justice, too critical of American status quo; it was too black.  The Journal of Black Studies published an essay about the criticism of the performance (see below) and about how Black artists are often pressured to sanitize their performances and personas for an America that refuses to come to terms with racism.  In order to maintain their pop culture success, these artists are forced to live with Dubois' double consciousness as inhabiting an identity that is both a victim of racism and a neutral performer in the society that perpetuates the racism. In many ways Lamar's performance was attacking that that criticism.

Uncle Sam; A Structural Functional Symbol

Though the overall theme of the performance was addressing power and inequality through a lens of Conflict Paradigm, Lamar also brought attention to the inequality by critiquing, through structural functional analysis, the dysfunctional ways that society has broken apart - racially and politically.  The performance included Uncle Sam(uel Jackson) explained by Screen Rant here. Uncle Sam represents America - or at least the structures within it that seek to control and profit off minority artists like Lamar. It's the NFL that bows to Trump by eliminating their call to End Racism; it's the media like Fox that seeks to sanitize performances like this halftime show; it's the law that is used to silence artists like Drake's lawsuit attempts to.  Lamar attacks these structures so ingeniously by infiltrating them and being the performer that the structures gave the stage to. 

As Khal Davenport wrote in The Ringer,

“The revolution ’bout to be televised,” (a powerful reference to Gill Scott-Heron's song and message) Kendrick said before getting into GNX’s “squabble up,” adding, “You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” Later, Jackson as “Uncle Sam” scolded him, calling the performance “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto” and inquiring about whether Kendrick “really knew how to play the game” before imploring him to “tighten up!” The exchange echoed the hostility that Kendrick and so many other Black artists have experienced in the music industry and in this country more broadly. Lamar then transitioned into “Humble,” the lead single from his triple-platinum-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning Damn. 

Then, it happened: As Uncle Sam started to tell Lamar that he was “almost there” and not to mess things up, the opening notes of “Not Like Us” started to play, and Kendrick dropped the following bars before giving the crowd the release that was included with the purchase of their Super Bowl ticket: “It’s a cultural divide, I’ma get it on the floor / 40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music / They tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence.” The lines call back to the third verse of “Not Like Us,” when Kendrick proffers a lesson about Atlanta’s history as a “Black Mecca” and the broader system that exploits Black culture.

Red Lining

Lamar subtly recreates redlining as his dancers in white are surrounded by an invisible wall tinted red by lights and red dancers around it. 

David Dennis Jr.'s article, The Subversive Genius of Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Halftime Performance explains,

He was defiant, proud, vindictive, playful and celebratory. He was pro-Black and subversive, trolling and joyful, and through all the expectations and fighting and nastiness, he was ultimately victorious. Lamar was aspirational, inviting us along with him.

Lamar is always pushing up against what it means to be Black and American. Which is why the very first thing we saw in his halftime performance was actor Samuel L. Jackson dressed as Uncle Sam narrating the showcase as well as a voice in Lamar’s head, telling him to play it safe and humble himself for America.

When Lamar opened the show with his homies hopping out of his Buick GNX, a metaphor for his neighborhood and homies invading Americana, he’s admonished by Uncle Sam to humble himself. And when Lamar and his dancers formed a human American flag on the field during his smash hit “Humble,” it was clear there was going to be a larger statement about the country when it needs a mirror the most.

Lamar wanted to deliver a message and a series of messages aimed directly at Black folks who are yearning for a place to rest our hearts. It’s what he has done so brilliantly in the midst of his feud with Drake. Part of Lamar’s attack on his Canadian nemesis has been positioning Drake as an extension of an establishment whose goal is to tear down Black folks. Yes, Drake is a colonizer according to Lamar, but it’s not just about that. It’s about getting rid of all colonizers. So when Lamar dropped his most powerful easter egg of the performance — Serena Williams — it was a wink to a particularly Black audience.

Williams has been the target of Drake and America at multiple times in her career. She’s been unfairly targeted for daring to be great, or, in Drake’s case, disinterested in a relationship. During the performance of “Not Like Us,” Williams danced on the field — a middle finger to Drake and timely reminder that Lamar defended her, and the culture, on the song. But if you recall, back in the 2012 Olympics, Williams celebrated her Gold medal by c-walking on the court. The move, an homage to her Compton roots and something Black folks had been doing for ages, became another opening for attack as far too many people accused her of being “ghetto” and too cocky for daring to shout out her hometown and rejoice in victory. Lamar gave Williams space to reclaim that dance as he was rapping about the ills of folks who don’t belong in the same universe as Black excellence trying to tell us what to do.  

Lamar performed between the end zones where the slogan “End Racism” used to be. A few days before the Super Bowl, the NFL made the decision to remove the slogan, coinciding with a nationwide rebuke of DEI, where Black folks’ accomplishments are questioned as much as ever before. To perform at a halftime show for an organization like the NFL implies a tacit complicity in that type of empire, even in the face of raised Black fists at the 20-yard line. And for a certain sector of the audience, nothing Lamar says or does will erase that complicity. 

Symbolic Interaction

As Dennis explains above, Lamar's message was "a message and a series of messages aimed directly at Black folks who are yearning for a place to rest our hearts."  Lamar was singing to all of Black America validating them and saying that not only do you belong, but you are America and you cannot be erased.  This shared meaning was woven throughout his choices of the performance:

• Having all black performers - including the American flag being literally made of Black people.
• Dropping Serena Williams into the performance - another successful black American who has faced criticism for being too 'ghetto' 
• Through his set and Serena Williams appearance highlighting Compton, a city often denigrated as black and violent. 

Newsweek deciphers some of the symbolism in the show here:
The dancers, dressed in red, white and blue, created formations that resembled the American flag. Times of India reported that at one point, Lamar himself stood at the center, seemingly dividing them, a visual metaphor for America's ongoing racial and political divisions.

The Daily Mail analyzes the meaning of the performance here:

At the top of his set, Kendrick, 37, appeared to make a dig at President Donald Trump, who was among the high-profile attendees in the crowd. Addressing the audience, Kendrick said: 'The revolution is about to be televised; You picked the right time but the wrong guy.' The multi-Grammy award-winner was of course referring to Gil Scott-Heron's acclaimed 1971 poem, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which speaks to the Black power movement of the 1960s. However, Kendrick's mention of the 'wrong guy' sent the internet into a frenzy, immediately leading them to believe he was referencing January's US Election.

Kendrick's back-up dancers were dressed in red, white and blue, in reference to the American flag. During the rapper's track Humble, they stood in formation on the stage making the flag much clearer to see. At first, the dancers were unified, but seconds into the track they divided in half with Kendrick standing in-between them. Some eagle-eyed audiences noted this and deduced that the group was split to show how the country is politically and culturally divided. Others noticed that all of Kendrick's dancers were Black, which was an apparent nod to America's history of slavery. 'Black folk representing the American flag because modern America was built on our labor… Kendrick I see you,' said one. Another wrote: 'Kendrick creating the American flag and then splitting it in half to symbolize the country's divineness... the amount of amazingly executed political symbolism in this one performance… I'm going to have to sit down with a notebook and pen.' A third said: 'Kendrick making the American flag out of black men was absolutely beautiful, and the message was clear. 'Black people built America, and the same people that he was embracing are now calling the performance boring.'

Ernest Owens at The Root says that Kendrick Lamar's halftime show was a coded indictment of the current state of affairs in America.

...the performance was an artistic statement about the current state of America as President Donald Trump (presumably) watched live. Having legendary actor Samuel L. Jackson dressed as Uncle Sam narrating the show (and serving as Lamar’s subconsciousness) was intentional. Having an all Black cast of dancers and performers dressed in red, white, and blue was also intentional....  

During his set, parts of the Super Bowl crowd were lit up to formulate the sentence “WARNING WRONG WAY” – a symbolic message of where our nation is currently headed.In another sequence, the wide gap in between his background dancers (all dressed in either red, white, or blue jumpsuits) forming a disjointed American flag clearly implied a divided country. 

All of this after the NFL itself decided to drop their “End Racism” banner on their end zones isn’t a coincidence.... The greatest rapper of our generation did it all: He put the nail in the coffin of an industry heavyweight and more importantly reminded the rest of America that the bigots currently occupying the White House are not like us.