Hello Class; Introducing Social Class

Last unit we saw that people are shaped by the structures of society.  Family, school, peers, media all have profound effects on who we become.  This unit, we will see that these structures also create inequalities.  Often, these inequalities are overlooked because the dominant groups and structures look past these inqualities.  The first type of inequality we will examine is social class.

Brief Background of Social Class in Sociology

As sociology began to coalesce as a discipline in the 1800s, the changes of the industrial revolution created large disparities in health and income.  As we learned about the sociological perspective in unit 1, we saw the examination of inequalities was the focus for early scholars of sociology.

Karl Marx and the Inequalities of Capitalism

Marx studied these disparities and wrote about them.  For example, Marx points out that middle-class persons lived an average of 38 years, but laborers only made it 17 years.  Marx also wrote about earlier class systems such as feudalism and slavery.  His paradigm was focused on who owned the industries of the 1800s and who were the workers in those industries.  

Max Weber and Three-Component Social Class

Following Marx, Weber wrote about social class just before WWI.  Weber argued that social class was composed of multiple components, namely wealth, prestige and power.

Pierre Bourdieu and the Cultural and Social Reproduction of Class

Later still, in 1977 Pierre Bourdieu wrote "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" which was a study of French educational system.  Bourdieu made the claim that social class involves hidden assets that sustain one's class such as education, style of speech, how to dress, as well as how to conduct oneself to fit into a class system.   

Annette Lareau and Social Class, Race and Education 

In 1989, Annette Lareau published a seminal study that examined American education and social class and race. Here is an explanation from Lareau's publisher,

Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously―as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children.

Here is Lareau from the Stanford Center for Inequality:



And here is an Atlantic article (2012) explaining Lareau's research.

Summary
So this is the background with which sociologists approach social class.  Social class is complex and made up of various components that interconnect with each other.  These various components create opportunities and obstacles for the members of a society.  Not only does social class affect people's life chances, it also affects how people experience the world; it constructs their reality.

Social Class (inequality) in the USA by comparison

Sometimes we forget how fortunate we are relative to the rest of the world because the media is saturated with stories of the super wealthy. Here is a website that will rank you among the WORLD's population. That should provide some perspective as to how lucky we are.

However, relative to other Westernized modern countries, the US does not look so equal.  In fact, the inequality in the USA is closer to China, Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina and even Cuba!

This map shows the inequality present in countries around the world. The bluer countries are more equal and the more red are less equal:Notice how many countries are more equal than the United States.

And here is a post showing that the US has gotten more unequal over the past several decades.

 Here is another blog's post about the growing inequality in the U.S.

Here is a post from the Society Pages about the damaging effects of income inequality.

Here are a host of facts about inequality from inequality.org

Implicit Bias

Besides being explicit, biases can be implicit too.  Prejudices and stereotypes exist in our subconscious.  These hidden biases are called implicit bias.  Although implicit bias can be about myriad topics (gender, occupation, age), it can also promote racism.  Here is an explanation from Teaching Tolerance:

While the brain isn’t wired to be racist, it uses biases as unconscious defensive shortcuts.
As human beings, we are not naturally racist. But because of the way our brains are wired, we are naturally "groupist." The brain has a strong need for relatedness.
This wiring for “groupism” usually leads the dominant culture (the in-group) in a race-based society to create “out-groups” based on race, gender, language and sexual orientation. A system of inequity is maintained by negative social messages that dehumanize people of color, women and LGBT people as “the other.” For folks in the in-group, the brain takes in these messages and downloads them like software into the brain’s fear system. This leads to implicit bias: the unconscious attitudes and beliefs that shape our behavior toward someone perceived as inferior or as a threatening outsider.

Look at the following pictures and captions which both appeared in the press after Hurricane Katrina.

How does this represent implicit bias from the editor?

How does this promote implicit bias in society?


Police Surveillance and Implicit Bias from the Sociologist Toolbox
Here are a number of other examples (A NY Police Lt., Harvard U. President, State Senator Obama)


A Girl Like Me

Watch the following video and explain what evidence it provides that explicit bias exists and promotes racism and implicit bias exists and promotes racism.



What evidence does the video provide that explicit bias exists and promotes racism?

What evidence does the video provide that implicit bias exists and promotes racism?

The Police Officer's Dilemma from University of Colorado at Boulder

And another example of implicit bias is from the University of Chicago's Joshua Corell who showed how people react in a split second when they confront someone with a weapon. Soc Images explains it here.  See here for a link to the game and conclusions.

The Kirwan Institute from The Ohio State University

The Ohio State University does extensive research on implicit bias through their Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

The institute publishes a yearly review of the state of implicit bias research.  You can find that here.

Kirwan Institute and Medicine

Kirwan's 2017 research shows that even doctors and patient health are affected by implicit bias.  The research is supported by the American Association of Medical Colleges.  You can download it here.










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 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.

Sociology of Education and School Discipline

Edward Morris and Brea Perry's research found that discipline in school for subjective offenses might be shaped by implicit bias.  See their research published in the ASA's journal here or here.


What Would You Do? 
And this video showing how people are more quick to be suspicious and to call the police if they see a black man committing the same crime as a white man.

Explicit Bias

As you enter, please read this:

Over the last few years, the  United States has elected its first black/ mixed-race President, there are more black actors and actresses on network television, and the cultural norm is that it’s wrong to be racist, so,

 Is racism still relevant? Should we still be concerned about racism or have we moved past racism? 

(Please jot down a response to this)

Even though race does not exist biologically, it does exist as a social construction. This means that people believe in it and act on it even though it is not real (Thomas Theorem).  One of the ways the social construction of race affects people is by creating and ideology that a dominant group is superior than other groups without power, or minority groups.  This is called racism.  Racism is often used to justify unequal social arrangements between those in power and minorities.

One type of racism is explicit racism - directly and consciously believing that one's own "racial" group is superior to others. Another way that Americans have been shaped by "race" is prejudice and discrimination.  Prejudice is having a predetermined attitude about a group of people usually based on a stereotype.  Discrimination is an action or behavior that results in unequal treatment of individuals because of his or her perceived "race."


Checkout these recent events in our country:

Miss America 2013, Nina Davluri came to SHS. But when she won the pageant, there was a flurry of tweets about her race.

Here is a post about tweets from the 2013 Miss America pageant.
Is this racism?
Is this prejudice?
Is this discrimination?


Here is a post  about a 2013 racist incident in an unlikely place.


Racism in College

Fraternities and sororities hold racial-themed parties that display very directly the racialized stereotypes that persist in the United States. Does this surprise you?  How would you feel/react to a party like this when you go to college?
Here is a post about why dressing up in this way is not okay.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has an ongoing list of racist incidents.


Racism in Sports





In 2018, Racism at Wrigley in the bleachers.

The stakes of the moment are made clear by a Latino female fan who security rescues from physical and verbal harm. She stands on the bleachers and points at each member of the white security team.
“You and you and you will never know what it’s like,” she says.
A few seconds later, a Latino fan involved in the altercation accuses security of “taking the white people’s side.” The fight appears to be ending when the non-Latino fan bellows the same slurs, putting his hands on either side of his mouth to amplify his voice and ensure he’s heard. It’s only then that he realizes he’s being recorded. (If you feel the need to fully absorb these words, you can watch the videos here.)
It’s a telling moment. He feels safe enough to shout those words next to security personnel. But when he realizes his actions might be seen outside of the stadium, he accosts the person recording the fight. Security also instructs this person to “put your phone away” and says “you’re on private property, you don’t have permission to videotape anyone.”

In 2017, Fans at Fenway made news numerous times over there racist taunts of opposing teams'  players.

In 2017, Yu Darvish was taunted and mocked for looking Asian.

In 2012, Joel Ward, a black NHL player scored the winning goal in the NHL playoffs and he became the target of racial slurs.


Racism in the Marketplace
A college student from Queens got more than he bargained for when he splurged on a $350 designer belt at Barneys — when a clerk had him cuffed apparently thinking the black teen couldn’t afford the pricey purchase, even though he had paid for it, a new lawsuit alleges.
“His only crime was being a young black man,” his attorney, Michael Palillo, told The Post.


Racism in Politics


During the Healthcare debate in 2009, Representative David Scott of Georgia had a 4foot swastika painted over his office sign.


The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies hate groups in America. This link will show you a map of all the hate groups in the United States.   Is this surprising?  Is this concerning?


This article from the Mail Online, A British online newspaper:

And with Mr Obama reportedly receiving more death threats than any other American president - 400 per cent more than those against his predecessor George Bush, according to a new book...A black U.S. Congressman had a swastika painted over his office sign after he yelled at allegedly racist protesters at a Southern town hall meeting, it emerged today.

Racism in the Media

Jeremy Lin is an example of the racial stereotypes in sports and how stereotypes can be more or less permissible for different groups within a society. Here is a post explaining that dynamic from the society pages.  Here is a clip of the skit from the daily beast.  Have you seen or heard any explicit racism in your own life?

Explicit Racism Backstage

Sociologists Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin explain in their book Two-faced Racism that racism can be explicit even if it is not always shared publicly.  Read an excerpt here.  Watch a video of Leslie Picca here:



SOCHE Talks: Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage from SOCHE on Vimeo.


Takeaway (for more info see Ferris and Stein pages 219 - 222)

What is the difference between racism, prejudice and discrimination?

What is explicit racism? 

What evidence is there that the U.S. is not post-racial and explicit racism exists?

Racial Construction and Racism in US history

Click here to do an activity from PBS's Race Power of an Illusion where you have to categorize people like a census taker would have.  (Use Safari or a browser that enables Flash)

After you do the sorting people activity above, click here to learn about traits.

This subjective, visual categorization of people is how the US Census operated until 1970.

Not only was racial classification based on this subjective, visual categorization of people, but also the categories have changed over time.

This is just one way that institutional policies constructed race differently throughout US history.


Read one of these posts to examine how a group changed over time:

How Jews became white.

How Asians became "model minorities."

How whites learn to not think about race. (Bonilla-Silva)

Doing Gender

From Soc Images,  Male Models Display Clothes; Female Models Display Themselves,

From Instagram Brosbeingbasic

From Bored Panda,   Man Or Woman? Androgynous Model Poses As Both To Challenge Gender Stereotypes

Also from Bored Panda, When Guys Try To Parody Women Photos And The Result Beats The Original

Men-Ups, Men Posing like Classic Female Pin-Up Models

 


What if male Avengers posed like the female one?

If Fashion Ads Posed Men Like Women

Cross-cultural Evidence of Gender as Social Construct

Our class (and sociology in general) is usually focused on the ways that men and women are treated differently and the implications of that different treatment.  Sometimes, students think that gender differences are simply an innate part of our nature (DNA, biology).  However, a cross-cultural look at gender reveals how widely these cultural norms vary.  It is our culture (or cultures) that surround us with these ideas and norms so they color how we see the world.  This makes it difficult to see the social construction of gender.

In Are men natural born criminals? The prison numbers don't lie (2015), Telegraph reporter Jessica Abrahams explores the academic theories that account for the social construction of higher criminality among males.  Among her claims are:

• The vast majority of crimes are nonviolent and men commit those too, so it is not simply that men's biology makes them more violent.
• Women may commit as many crimes as men, but they are better at not being held accountable and males may be deferential to holding women accountable.
• Women hold fewer positions in which they can commit crime and males feel pressure to succeed which motivates them to commit crime.
• Hypermasculinity may be the key to breaking the cycle of male crime.

Even with the generalizations about gender and crime, there are still wide variations in gender norms among cultures.  This provides evidence that gender is not built-in biologically.
 Here are some cross-cultural studies that demonstrate how gender can vary:

From the World Economic Forum (2017), the Global Gender Gap Report:
https://www.undispatch.com/heres-every-country-world-ranks-gender-equality/

And here is a pdf of the 2017 Global Gender Gap Index.

Here are 6 cultures that still exist today which are matriarchal.

And here are some ways that matriarchal cultures exhibit different norms:

Marriage
Marriage in matriarchal societies are typically non-binding, and various types of romantic relationships are embraced. 
In the mostly matrilocal tribe of Khasi in India, because children live with the mother's family side of the family or clan, there is little to no stigma and hardship when women divorce and have to move. "No matter how many times the woman marries, her children will always remain with her," editor of The Shillong Times and a Khasi, Patricia Mukhim, told Dame magazine. "And even if a man abandons a woman he has impregnated, the children are never 'illegitimate.' "
Crime
In mainstream society, men overwhelmingly commit more crimes — and more serious ones at that — than women. Jennifer Schwartz of Washington State University's Department of Sociology told Dame magazine:  "In more gender-egalitarian societies, there is much less crime by both women and men. And in those societies, the crime gap between women and men is somewhat larger, that is, women participate even less in crime."
Sex
Generally, people who live in matriarchal societies have much more sex and face much less stigma. In the Mosuo tribe, for example, men and women can take as many sexual partners as they pleaseand bearing children with different people is accepted. 

Domestic Violence
Domestic abuse is an epidemic in mainstream society; an estimated 3-4 million women are battered each year in the U.S. alone. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are indications that domestic violence is close to absent in matrilineal societies.

Here is a 2004 book by anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday, professor at University of Pennsylvania:

Contrary to the declarations of some anthropologists, matriarchies do exist. Peggy Reeves Sanday first went to West Sumatra in 1981, intrigued by reports that the matrilineal Minangkabau—one of the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia—label their society a matriarchy. Numbering some four million in West Sumatra, the Minangkabau are known in Indonesia for their literary flair, business acumen, and egalitarian, democratic relationships between men and women.

Continuing on...

First, for today, please be mindful of yourselves.  There is plenty of research about how to take care of yourself.

Allow yourself to experience a range of emotion.  This can be difficult especially for males. It is okay to experience different emotions. 

Talk to someone about your feelings. There are people here at school who are willing and want to help you.  Seek them out.  Maybe a social worker, teacher, or a friend.   

Get out into nature.  There are myriad benefits to spending time in nature.  If you live near a nature preserve, take a hike, get some fresh air.  If not, simply a walk in your neighborhood being mindful of nature can be restorative. 

Exercise.  There are many forms of exercise.  Choose something that is pleasurable to you.  Maybe it is a sport, but it also might be weight lifting or simply hiking/walking. 

Lastly, know that you matter.  Just like there is no telling how far the bell resonates, there is no telling how far your influence goes.  

HW:  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's essay, We Should All Be Feminists.  Also if you want to print it, a cleaner copy is here.

Today:  We are continuing on with the video called Killing Us Softly 4.  (Click here to watch it on mediacast).

Elite College Acceptance and Social Class

From the NY Times Upshot
How Much Does Getting Into an Elite College Actually Matter?
Certain kinds of students — but not the privileged and the wealthy — benefit greatly from a selective university.

By Kevin Carey
March 15, 2019

Was it worth it?

The celebrities and C.E.O.s arrested in this week’s college bribery scandal were charged with paying up to $1.2 million for guaranteed admission to elite universities. And of course there’s a much larger and mostly legal system whereby rich people pull strings, hire consultants and make enormous tax-deductible donations, all in the hopes of improving their children’s college chances.

Yet academic research suggests that these efforts are mostly a waste of money, and that the seized opportunities would have actually helped other students much more.

In 2014, the economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger published an analysis of the benefits of attending a highly selective college. They found that, after statistically controlling for students’ SAT scores, economic background and college ambitions, the long-term financial returns are “generally indistinguishable from zero.” Students who are poised to succeed tend to do so even if they don’t get into the Ivy League.

But there was a crucial exception. There were strong benefits for the subset of black and Hispanic students, and for those whose parents had few educational credentials. It turns out that students who come from less privileged backgrounds benefit greatly from selective colleges. Elite higher education gives them social capital they didn’t already have.

In other words, Lori Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli, who is attending the University of Southern California, would have probably been fine attending Arizona State University. (Arizona State is a thriving public research university that Ms. Giannulli’s father is reported to have cited on F.B.I. wiretaps as the unthinkable destination he would pay bribes to avoid.) When you’re a 19-year-old YouTube star who spends spring break on a billionaire’s yacht, life tends to work out.


But if the charges against them are proved, Ms. Giannulli’s parents would have taken something their daughter didn’t need from someone for whom it might have been life-changing.

There are some important caveats to Ms. Dale and Mr. Krueger’s research. This kind of analysis isn’t devised to detect certain narrow pathways to elite professions that run through a handful of top colleges. Supreme Court clerks, for instance, tend to hail from a small number of highly selective universities. There is still a pipeline to Wall Street and management consulting that traverses a long-established network of private high schools feeding into top colleges.

But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material.

At the same time, research from the Equality of Opportunity Project found that while many kinds of colleges can help students move to the top 20 percent of the income distribution from the bottom 20 percent, moving to the top 1 percent from the bottom 20 percent almost always requires a highly selective institution. If you’re at all concerned about economic mobility, this underscores the waste of unfairly displacing qualified low-income students from top colleges and universities.

Selectivity may also matter more in other parts of the higher education universe. A 2009 study from the economist Mark Hoekstra found that white men who attended a flagship public research university earned 20 percent more over time than similar white male students who attended less selective colleges.

Not all students at selective colleges have the same experience. Soon-to-be-released research from the economists Douglas Webber, Ben Ost and Weixiang Pan found that students who majored in high-demand fields such as engineering at less selective public universities earned more than similar students who chose other majors at more selective universities.

The economists Sarah Cohodes and Joshua Goodman found that students who accepted a scholarship to attend a public university with lower graduation rates than alternatives were themselves less likely to graduate.

In general, there are strong correlations between the resources colleges have and the success of students who attend them. So it seems nothing about the admissions scandal should dissuade parents and students from trying to find a good college to attend.

More than anything, the scandal shows how much elite higher education has become entangled in structures of prestige, status and anxiety among the upper class. It is in some ways a case of one-percenters lusting after the privileges of one-tenth-of-one-percenters — possibly risking infamy and prison to buy something that, the evidence suggests, provides little value for their privileged offspring.

HW:  Please ready to discuss the Mahler reading for tomorrow.  We will discuss it, then apply it, then there will be an assessment on it later this unit.


Today's schedule:

Progress Reports

Finish watching Tough Guise.

Discuss She Kills Monsters

Theater guide from Stage Agent

Questions for sociology:

What are reasons Tilly did not come out to her sister Agnes?

How was Tilly socialized by agents of socialization?  Which agents and how?

How is D&D a subculture?

Violent masculinity and how play flips masculinity?

What kind of identity did Tilly give the characters in the play?  Why?  In what ways did they meet the traditional gender norms?  In what ways did they depart from them?

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/01/10/the-evolution-of-the-dungeons-and-dragons-playbook/

 Mahler's Adolescent Homophobia and Random School Shootings...