So you want to learn more about race or racism? Here's recommended reading...

Brief history of the recent sociology of race

 Brief history of the recent sociology of race

Historically, the approach to race has had some major evolutions especially within sociology.

As the U.S. emerged from the civil rights movement, by the 1980s, the emphasis for reacting to race in the U.S. was on colorblindness or acknowledging that race is a made-up social construct so we should no longer think in terms of race;  we should try not to see anyone's race, and move forward in the world ignoring race.

However, colorblindness did not reduce racism, instead, it ignored it.  This allowed racism to continue and allowed SOME people to claim they were not racist because they ignored race (but also ignored the racism)

This led to a new movement (late 90s) championed by sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.  He said we should strive to be race-conscious.  This means that we should acknowledge that though race is not a discrete biological category, it is in fact a social construct.  As such, it affects both how think about our own identity as well as how we think and act toward other people.  Some of these thoughts and actions might be explicit/conscious and some are implicit/unconscious.  Race consciousness emphasized trying to be conscious of all of these attitudes.

However, being race-conscious allowed SOME people to believe that they were doing their part to be not racist.  It was possible to feel that you understand the racial dynamics in America and that you were going to try hard to be aware of racist attitudes and actions and avoid them in your own life.  This could allow SOME people to go about their business feeling righteous about their own views on race, all the while allowing the status quo to continue.  And the status quo meant that racism could continue.  Sometimes there was a legacy of racism - such as the wealth gap which was generational, and other times there was racism embedded in social institutions.  The empirical data for this type of racial inequality is overwhelming.  (If you need data/examples here, I am happy to provide it)  

So it became clear that individuals claiming to be racially conscious and self-aware was not changing the system.  This led to Ibram Kendi's work called How to Be an Anti-racist.  Kendi's main thesis is that being race-conscious and working to not be racist as an individual is not enough to reverse the racism already embedded within society.  Doing so, allows racism to continue in really significant ways.  And so Kendi is trying to emphasize that simply denouncing racism without doing anything does not make one anti-racist.  In order to truly be anti-racist, one must actively work against the forces of racism that are already embedded in society.  

Some people want to criticize Kendi for being too extreme.  And I think that it is possible to be critical of specific aspects of being an anti-racist.  For example, there are some Americans perceived as whites who claim to be working against racism but not all Americans who identify as black will see their actions as such.  A great example of this are a number of instances during the George Floyd protests where well-meaning whites thought that by looting or rioting they were speaking out against the racism of the George Floyd incident.  These "woke" whites thought that they were taking to the streets to voice their displeasure with race relations.  They thought that they were working to be an anti-racist.  Plenty of Americans who identify as black spoke out against these looters/rioters.   There were stories of protesters who protected cops from being harmed by crowds and protesters who protected stores from being looted.   Clearly, there is disagreement or misunderstanding about what it means to be an anti-racist. And this is not surprising because society is complex and so are individuals.  And not only are they complex and multi-faceted, but they are dynamic: individuals and society are constantly changing.

But the general thesis of Kendi's idea is really simple to me;  if you truly opposed something, you will work to stop it.  For example, if you see a young child wander out into a busy street, you can stand by and say "I am really against letting children get by cars."  Or, you can actually help the kid even though you are a stranger.  You take an active role for something that you care about.  Take something like poverty.  You can claim to be against poverty or anti-poverty, but if you don't take steps in your daily life to end poverty, are you really anti-poverty? In other words, it is one thing to believe something, but it is something much more to actively work against it.  That is the simple takeaway from Kendi.

Meanwhile, Robin Diangelo has been working as a racial equity trainer throughout the different eras that I described above.  And what she has noticed is that SOME people who are in the various mindsets above, knee-jerk when they are challenged to be anti-racists as in the way that Kendi describes.  SOME people think that colorblindness is enough to be antiracist.  In fact, some people strive for colorblindness to the degree that any mention of race makes them uncomfortable.  I have experienced this with students myself.  Others think that race consciousness is enough and as long as they are aware of race, they do not feel obligated to work against laws or institutions that reinforce racial inequality.  When you say that being a bystander allows inequality and oppression to continue, they react defensively because they don't want to be implicated as a cause of continued racism.  The defensive feelings of people who identify as the majority are what Diangelo calls white fragility.  Discussing racism is hard and emotional so it makes people uncomfortable in ways that they have never had to feel.  And since whites are in the majority, they are not used to having to feel the emotion and discomfort of racial issues.  That, is what Diangelo describes as "white fragility".

Despite the history of sociological scholarship I mention above, it is true that both people and society are unique, complex and dynamic.   I think sociologists would be careful to not say, "The left thinks..." or "Conservatives think..." or "white people think..."  I thought about that as I was reading your text about "not all black people agree with the most progressive version of anti racism".  I agree with you and I think that overgeneralizations are a problem.  However I also think that failing to see the forest for the trees is a problem as well.  If you dismiss the overall thesis of Diangelo and Kendi because you get too bogged down in the minutiae, I think it misses the point.  

Regarding ERD - we would have to talk about the specifics of which ERD and what was being pushed.  I think it is naive to think that after hundreds of years of racism that anyone has the solution or even that there is one solution.  

But instead, I think the goal is to acknowledge that:

- Race is a social construct that shapes the obstacles and opportunities for people in the U.S. 

- Being aware of the ways in which race shapes the obstacles and opportunities can help us as both citizens and educators speak and act to mitigate the racial inequalities.

Those are the two basic ways that I approach race.  But I acknowledge that everyone is at a different understanding of those two things.  SOME (emphasis intended) people refuse to believe that race plays a roll in society and even moreso, SOME people will balk at the idea that they have contributed to racism.    

Complaining While Black

Jacob Faber from NYU explains his research about complaints against Chicago police and the correlation to race:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWl5Ui4udcA

gun ownership subculture

 gun ownership subculture 

• ASA has a short video about gun ownership and the research of Professor Harel Shapira here: https://vimeo.com/239536359
  
• Gun Nation is a 30 min doc from 2016 produced by The Guardian:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUpCqBonOFw
  
• 91% documentary here: https://www.91percentfilm.com
  
• From HBO there is a doc called Gun Fight https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/gun-fight/synopsis

Why don't people protest violence when it is not because of a cop?

They do!

Once again the media is awash in gross generalizations and stereotypes about violence in the black community.  "Why don't these people protest violence when the perpetrator is black?"  

This erroneous message is used to say that people should not protest when violence is because of police or whites.  It turns the concerns about being victims of violence into an argument about racial animosity.  In other words, it is saying you are just protesting because you're black and the perpetrator was white.  This dismisses the issue of violence altogether and instead tries to put people against each other based on race.

It is easy to put people against each other because we all live such segregated lives.  When there are not protests in the larger society, many whites do not realize the work and risk that many black Americans are putting into ending violence in their own communities.

For example, many Chicagoans heard about the violent shootings in April 2020 but this Mother Jones article details how,

The day after the bloody Tuesday, around noon, Joshua Coakley joined about two dozen outreach workers on a walk through the streets of this working-class neighborhood. They were on the lookout for local contacts, mostly gang members or former gang members who might have information about the shootings—or plans to retaliate.

And here is a picture in 2018 of high school students who  protested violence in their community:

Another group protesting violence is Mothers Against Senseless Killing (MASK) detailed in this Crain's Chicago Business article.  Below is a photo of Tamar Manasseh, who founded the group in 2014.

The Trace details how MASK launched Moms On Patrol, a group that camps outside to monitor the neighborhood and prevent violence.  Here is a picture of some of those moms monitoring the neighborhood and doing street yoga:

And sadly, two of the moms in this group were even killed by the violence that they were trying to stop.  Here is a NY Post article about it.  And here is a memorial created for them:

In 2018 there was a protest specifically meant to raise awareness in less violent  neighborhoods about the violence that occurs in other parts of the city.  This Associated Press article details that.


This DNAinfo article (2015) shows how residents protest violence in neighborhoods all across the city.

There is sociological research that these protests and interventions do help.  This article from Science Daily (2019) shows that these protests go back to at least 1994 with Operation Ceasefire in Boston.   And sociologists from Northwestern found a significantly lower rate of violence because of interventions:

Spreading effects

George Wood and Andrew Papachristos, sociologists at Northwestern University just north of Chicago in the city of Evanston, Ill., have looked into the how gun violence prevention efforts have played out in the city where 051 Melly was gunned down. 

Their work, published August 19 in Nature Human Behavior, focuses on a Chicago intervention that, between August 2010 and June 2016, invited violent offenders, identified via Chicago Police Department records, to one-hour meetings, known as call-ins, held in community centers and other public places. The study tracks recorded instances of being shot among nearly 8,500 individuals, including program participants and their associates, who are known from arrest records, police and outreach workers to be involved in violent groups.
As in programs in several dozen U.S. cities, the call-ins began with officers emphasizing that shootings had to stop. If they didn’t, perpetrators as well as neighborhood associates would be hit with outstanding warrants, parole violations and charges for other crimes. 

Then community representatives, including parents of murdered children, ministers and street outreach workers, told participants that they are loved and valued, but need to become involved in constructive activities. Victims of gun violence and their relatives described the trauma of their experiences.
Finally, local social service workers offered access to job training, drug treatment and other programs.

And, Presidential candidate Joe Biden  spoke out against the violence as reported by Reuters (2020)

... after George Floyd’s death, Joe Biden repeatedly condemned violent protests. In a May 31 post on his blog shortly after George Floyd’s death, he wrote, “Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not.” ( here , here ).
At a speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 2, he said, “There’s no place for violence, no place for looting or destroying property or burning churches or destroying businesses […] we need to distinguish between legitimate peaceful protest and opportunistic violent destruction” (here).
On July 28, Biden also condemned violent protests at a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, as seen here at the 8 minute 24 second mark.
On August 30, Joe Biden condemned violence at protests in Portland (here) by releasing a statement on his campaign website (here), which said, “The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable […] as a country we must condemn the incitement of hate and resentment that led to this deadly clash. It is not a peaceful protest when you go out spoiling for a fight.” (More here )

Really interesting video from CBS called "Speaking Frankly: Raising Boys".

Boys are socialized differently from the moment they are born.  So they learn to think one way about who they should be.  So by the time they are old enough to be self-aware, addressing the issues related to masculinity makes boys feel like they are not being accepted for who they are.  This video tries to bridge that divide. 

I hope students realize that there's nothing wrong with being masculine.  Masculinity becomes a negative life chance outcome when it is taken to extremes.  Extreme masculinity is violence and toughness resulting in males more likely to express themselves violently and hurt either themselves or other people.  This extreme form of masculinity is what some sociologists call "toxic masculinity." 

Sociology Conclusion Day 2: instruction

For the next lesson (Wed and Thu this week), the focus will be on evaluating instruction.  Please take a few minutes to give your honest feedback about how the class was taught and evaluated.

Here is the Google form.

Sociology Evaluation Day 1: Content

Please remember that these last 2 weeks we are on a special schedule.  I want to wish good luck to anyone taking AP tests!  For the last few classes, I would like to review our class and ask you to evaluate it.

For today, the focus will be on the content.

Here is the Google form for this lesson.

1.  How much do you think our class helped you to understand how sociologists examine the world?  

2.  How much do you feel that you understand how sociologists conduct research?

3.  How  much do you feel that you learned about how individuals are influenced by their culture? 

4.  How much do you feel you learned about how individuals are influenced by family, school, friends and media?

5.  How much do you feel you learned about social class and the inequalities that stem from it?

6.  How much do you feel you learned about race and the inequalities that stem from it?

7.  How much do you feel you learned about gender and the inequalities that stem from it?

8.  What topics/content was most interesting or compelling that we learned? 


9.  What other topics would you like to have learned more about?

Teaching About Socialism; Discourse in an Age of Polarization

Teaching About Socialism; Discourse in an Age of Polarization

As I began my unit on social class, I asked students what they would want to know about social class throughout the unit. Some students said they wanted to know if socialism would benefit the U.S. and how socialist countries compare to us.  These student queries combined with the way our current President uses socialism made me want to address it.  As I researched this topic I increasingly came to the belief that there is a problem in our discourse over socialism and this problem represents a larger issue that teachers need to address.  

Capitalism is most closely associated with the 1776 publication of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.  The Adam Smith Institute explains that capitalism is rooted in free-market (no government control) and the accumulation of wealth.   

From the OED, Socialism was being used in England as early as 1822 by Robert Owen as a response to the capitalism, individualism and the Industrial Revolution (also detailed at History.com).  In the 1800s, a small group of industrialists was amassing extreme fortunes while the average citizen and worker was working longer and longer hours for less money and in dangerous working conditions often in sweatshop factories and including children as young as 5 years old!  This inequality of labor/economy spilled over into private life as workers increasingly lived in unregulated conditions at home that resulted in diseases like smallpox, typhus, yellow fever and cholera, spread through overcrowded tenements that lacked running water, plumbing, waste removal.  Jacob Riis detailed living conditions around 1900. 

By the late 1800s, there was a call within the U.S. (and Europe) to address the growing issues associated with urban industrialism.  As the US teachers will point out, many regulations and reforms of the Progressive Era were meant to address the problems that came out of unregulated 1800s urban industrialism.  Because these reforms did not give government ownership of the industrial production of goods, the reforms were not technically socialist in the way that Marx referred to the term.  In fact, there were other terms/parties such as the Populist Party of 1892 and the Progressive Party of 1912 that called for such reforms, but they are not equated with socialism.  However, Eugene Debs did run as a Socialist in 1918 and his platform was more closely aligned with Marx's 1848 Communist Manifesto.

The meaning of 'Socialism'

The point is that the idea of socialism was the idea of using government to combat the effects of urban industrial capitalism.  However, the idea of socialism was used variously depending on who's idea was being cited.  There were numerous forms of "socialism" not all that unlike the numerous forms of "democracy".  

The meaning of "socialism" grew even further amorphous when in 1917 the Russian Revolution created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) an authoritarian government run by a single party, the Communist Party.   Lenin's socialism is very different than Marx's. As communism spread during the 20th century (China, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam) it took on various forms further confusing the idea of communism (which Americans still saw as connected to socialism via the USSR).  In AP comparative government, China and Iran are labeled as "authoritarian" and China is also considered a "one-party state" with "state-managed markets."  However, North Korea is considered Totalitarian.  Venezuela might be considered socialist but also an authoritarian state.

Confused?  Good.  That's the point.  So is the rest of America!   This link to the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom ranks countries by how much economic freedom they have - the US ranks 17th!  And "socialist" Denmark is 8th.  Whatsmore, all but one country in the top ten have universal healthcare.  All of this is to say that there is not really agreement about what socialism is anymore.  Instead, it is just a buzzword used for fear mongering Americans.  And it is easy to gin up fear because Americans have very different ideas about what socialism is.

Americans do not agree on what countries represent socialism today - this article from Forbes explains that,

"Among Republicans, the three most socialist countries are Venezuela (60%), China (57%) and Russia (57%) while among Democrats, Sweden (43%), Denmark (43%) and Norway (42%) come first."

Yougov.com explains the partisan gap in what "socialist" means in this 2020 article.   Americans from different political parties have different ideas about what socialism is in terms of healthcare, gun safety laws, taxes etc...  Furthermore, the article explains that there is a partisan divide over which countries in the world are considered socialist.

 

In addition to the Yougov article above, 2019 research from the PEW reveals that,

"Critics of socialism point to Venezuela as an example of a country where it has failed. People with positive views of socialism cite different countries, such as Finland and Denmark, as places where it has succeeded....[And many Americans] viewed socialism and capitalism in zero-sum terms. A large majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (68%) had both a positive impression of capitalism and a negative view of socialism."

This zero-sum definition fails to take into account the reality that in the US and most western countries there is a mix of socialism and capitalism." 

 It may be best for Americans to use the labels of progressive, liberal or conservative as this PEW study shows stark partisan divisions in Americans’ views of ‘socialism,’ ‘capitalism’.

Overall

Generally, I think that democrats and republicans both use the term socialism but when democrats use it, they really mean social democracies like Sweden, Canada and Denmark, and when republicans use "socialism" they really mean authoritarian communist government like that of China, North Korea, or Cuba.  Just like much of our discourse in the current political climate there is stark differences in meaning when discussing the term "socialism."  Without meaning, there is no shared reality.  We might as well be speaking different languages to each other.  So, it is my plan to not to respond to student questions about socialism without first asking a follow up question, "what do you mean by socialist?"  I think all teachers would do well to do the same in their classes.  I think our country is having problems because we can't discourse together, but we cannot discourse because we are using the same words with very different meanings. 

Gendered Language and Professor Reviews

Sociology professor Ben Schmidt has gathered the metadata from ratemyprofessor.com at his site, Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews.   He compiled the words used to describe male and female teachers in about 14 million reviews from RateMyProfessor.com into an interactive chart that lets you explore. 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.  

Below are some results that I found interesting.  I find it really remarkable that so many terms are completely genderized.  I would love to study this further to find out if the genderization is because our society uses different words to describe males and females even if the words are describing a similar trait, or if the genderization is because our society thinks about men and women differently.  The truth is probably a combination of both.

Here are the words nice and friendly.  Are female professors really nicer and friendlier than males?  That seems unlikely since mean and annoying shows up as female as well!  

And these are college professors, right?  They all have more education than 93% of the United States.  But male professors are cited as smart much more often in every single subject area! 

However, we will also see in our lessons to come later that education is not masculine, so males are also cited consistently as geeky, nerdy and dorky.

Is there a difference between condescending and sarcastic?  At least one difference is that males are sarcastic, but females are condescending.

Women are always labelled as nuts or crazy more than men.

A special shout-out to all those female sociology professors doing life changing work!

And sociology shows up as the most eye-opening subject too!  Thanks to those fearless female professors!

Perhaps that is why sociology is so relevant!

Click here to return to the original post, Gender Lesson 2.