Sunday, June 13, 2021

Being (Tim)Wise about race in the US

 White Like Me.  

A documentary by Tim Wise You can watch it here on media cast..

Here is a transcript of the documentary.

About Tim Wise
Wise’s antiracism work traces back to his days as a college activist in the 1980s, fighting for divestment from (and economic sanctions against) apartheid South Africa. After graduation, he threw himself into social justice efforts full-time, as a Youth Coordinator and Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized in the early 1990s to defeat the political candidacies of white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. From there, he became a community organizer in New Orleans’ public housing, and a policy analyst for a children’s advocacy group focused on combatting poverty and economic inequity. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Smith College School of Social Work, in Northampton, MA., and from 1999-2003 was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute in Nashville, TN.

Wise attempts to answer the questions below.  What answer does he give?  What evidence does he give?

WHAT IS WHITE PRIVILEGE?

ISN’T RACISM A THING OF THE PAST?

BUT WHAT ABOUT US?  IS THERE RACISM AGAINST WHITES?

SHOULDN’T WE BE COLORBLIND?



Sources and Evidence in the video:


Tim Wise 


Author of Between Barack and a Hard Place.




Martin Gilens, Princeton University, 

Author of Why Americans Hate Welfare.






John Bracy, UMass-Amherst.
Professor John H. Bracey, Jr., has taught in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1972. He is now serving a second stint as department chair, and is co-director of the department’s graduate certificate in African Diaspora Studies. His major academic interests are in African American social history, radical ideologies and movements, and the history of African American Women and more recently the interactions between Native Americans and African Americans, and Afro-Latinos in the United States.





Imani Perry, Princeton University.

The Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton, Perry has written and taught on a number of topics regarding race and African American culture.





Michelle Alexander, The Ohio State University.  Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. In recent years, she has taught at a number of universities, including Stanford Law School, where she was an associate professor of law and directed the Civil Rights Clinics. In 2005, she won a Soros Justice Fellowship, which supported the writing of The New Jim Crow, and that same year she accepted a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.  Author of The New Jim Crow; Mass Incarceration in an Age of Color Blindness 







Nilanjana Dasgupta, UMass-Amherst
Research in our lab shines a light on unspoken assumptions about social groups, often called implicit stereotypes or biases, and the ways in which they impact people’s evaluations of, and actions toward, others. We also examine how implicit biases influence people's self-perceptions, performance, and academic and career choices. We are particularly interested in the plasticity of implicit bias—the ways in which changes in social contexts change implicit attitudes, beliefs, and behavior.







Charles Ogletree, Harvard University.

Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, and Founding and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, is a prominent legal theorist who has made an international reputation by taking a hard look at complex issues of law and by working to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for everyone equally under the law.






America has always been a work in progress.  Our history is not just a story of oppression but also a story of triumph - the story of Americans making a better society for all citizens, even those in their outgroup.  Each success did not end racism or sexism but it brought us one step closer to realizing our founding goal;  
to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
 The history of the U.S. is as much anti-racist history as it is racist history.  

Here are some of the white allies he mentions in the documentary: 

Will Campbell - Baptist minister who walked with Little Rock nine
Jeremiah Evarts - Christian missionary who opposed Indian removal
Helen Hunt Jackson - author who wrote about and opposed the treatment of American Indians
John Fee - abolitionist minister from Kentucky
Robert Flournoy?
Grimke Sisters
Joan Mullholland - sat at the counter in Woolworth in Mississippi 
Anne Braden

Friday, May 14, 2021

Prom

From Sabrina Madeaux in the National Post (2018):
While teens might think they're fighting tradition and consumerism, today's proms are as conforming and expensive as ever.  As teens become more economically and politically influential, proms have come to offer an accurate reflection of their generation as it grows up.

The Surprisingly Sexist History of the Prom  from Leah Cuen of Mic (2016)
"Prom was [introduced to schools] to communicate a conservative, class-based gender script to a larger population," sociology professor Amy Best, the chair of George Mason University's Sociology and Anthropology department and the author of the book Prom Night: Youth, Schools, and Popular Culture, said in a phone interview. "To communicate what it means to be a "proper" middle-class girl, just like the debutante balls, both had narrow [gender role] expectations."

From Sociology in Focus (2013) Stratification on the Dance Floor: Prom Night in America

Prom may be a right of passage, but it is also a place where stratification is observed. In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explains how stratification related to race and sexual identity are reproduced on prom night... In the book, Prom Night (2000) by sociologist Amy Best, she points out how racial divides are recreated at the dance through decisions made regarding the music played during the dance and in more extreme cases, holding racially segregated proms. More recently, Morgan Freeman paid for a Mississippi high school’s first racially integrated prom as documented in the film Prom Night in Mississippi (watch the movie’s trailer below), while other communities continue to hold racially segregated proms.

Prom segregation in Georgia from 2009 NY Times.
Racially segregated proms have been held in Montgomery County — where about two-thirds of the population is white — almost every year since its schools were integrated in 1971. Such proms are, by many accounts, longstanding traditions in towns across the rural South, though in recent years a number of communities have successfully pushed for change. 

From Psychology Today, Gender, Class, & Proms: High school rites of exclusion:
Does it matter if the prom excludes certain students from participating? (2010)



In the end, my advice to students is that the day high school ends, it will become irrelevant to your life's experience, the same way that middle school feels now.  Prom will feel "so high school".  So, don't worry if something goes wrong - if your group is not getting along, or someone wears the same dress as you, or something spills on your tux, or the limo is late, don't worry about it.  It won't be a big deal in the long run.  And because of that, my advice is to not put too much pressure on what prom represents.  Just let it be a celebration of high school.



When I was younger I used to chaperone prom and I always dressed according to the theme.  Here are some pics:












Thursday, May 6, 2021

Gender Lesson 5: masculinity and replicating Mahler's research

If you did not get to finish the reading,  here is an annotated version of the Mahler article.  Please read it now.

After reading the article, answer question 1 below.  Here is the Google Form for answering the questions this lesson.
1.  What is Mahler (and Kimmel)'s overall claim?



After understanding Mahler and Kimmel's claim and evidence,  we will attempt to replicate and update their qualitative research.   Their qualitative analysis of existing data on school shooters examined random school shootings in major print media outlets (Time, Newsweek, US News, USA Today, NY Times, LA Times). Below are two lists of school shootings to get started.

First, choose at least one of the random school shooters after 2001.
Second, after choosing a shooter to research, use major news outlets to gather data about some of the school shooters from 2001-present.
Make a note of the shooter's:
  • gender 
  • race
  • state (red or blue in 2001) 
  • community: urban, suburban, rural
  • other qualitative info about them such as music, video games, movies, parent status, mental illness, social status/teased, et al...
You may want to use the ILC newspaper search to find info about the shooters, or Google their names.  Here are a few other websites to help you find info:
GunViolence.org
Everytown research
Mass Shooting Tracker
TheTrace compiles articles and data related to shootings at thetrace.org
NRA gun law tracker

Maps for comparing red/blue states:
Results of 2000 election.


The map above shows current laws for carrying firearms.




















2.  What shooter(s) did you research?

3.  What was the shooter's race?

4.  What was the shooter's gender?

5.  What community setting did the shooting occur in?

6.  Was the shooting in a red state or blue state?

7.  What other details about the shooter were revealed?

After you have entered the data above for at least one school shooter, hypothesize whether Mahler and Kimmel's research still holds up.

8.  Do you think that since 2001, Mahler and Kimmel's claim is still true about who shoots up schools and why?


9.  Answer any of the following questions about this lesson.
  • Does your data correlate with what the rest of the class found?
  • What do you think of the findings?
  • Is this data interesting/insightful?  Why/why not?
  • Can you see the connection between masculinity and violence?
  • Do you think that the average American would have trouble understanding the connection?  Why?
  • What questions do you still have?

Finally,  try to apply the research to other random shootings besides schools.  Search the websites that you used earlier.  Again, you may want to use the ILC newspaper search to find info about the shooters, or Google their names.  Here are a few other websites to help you find info:
GunViolence.org
Everytown research
Mass Shooting Tracker
TheTrace compiles articles and data related to shootings at thetrace.org
NRA gun law tracker

Find one example of a random shooting that did not occur at a school.

10.  Does Mahler and Kimmel's research apply to NON-SCHOOL random shootings?







Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Tough Guise Day 2

 Today we continued watching Tough Guise about how our society socializes boys in a narrow and limited way.  

Yesterday we saw that masculinity has been portrayed in Western movies only for around the last 75 years or so.  But examining the older tropes of masculinity, it is evident that the portrayal of masculinity in movies, sports, toys and other areas have all become more extreme.

Today we will see that one reason the masculinity has become more extreme is a reaction to increasing equality for minorities - especially women and non-heterosexuals.

Begin from 37:31 A Culture in Retreat Watch Tough Guise 2 on mediacast by clicking here.
  • Along with the change of society came changes in the acceptance of women as equal and changes in gay rights.  Fear of the changes in society is filtered throughout society via politics and media.  Guns are a symptom of the fear of the changes. There is a siege mentality that promotes rugged individualism and gun ownership as a way of fighting back both literally and figuratively.  Guys today are taught that violence is the only way to be really considered a man and to hold onto their manhood. 
  • Because our construction of masculinity includes the idea that anything feminine is inherently NOT masculine, as the box of what is acceptible for women has gotten larger, the box for males has gotten smaller.  This includes denigrating anything that is female or gay.  And, this creates a dangerous anti-female attitude.
  • Finally, he ends with the idea that we can all make little changes in how we talk and act and think. We can support movies that show honest portrayals of guys and movies that help broaden the box that guys fit into.

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Race lesson 4B: the social construction of race in the US continued

Because race is a social construction, we can use our sociological imagination to see that race changes depending on where you live and also when you live.  As we saw in yesterday's lesson,  race has changed throughout the history of the United States including who is considered "white".  

Choose one of the readings below and read it to see how the definition of race and whiteness has changed.

Here are some sociology readings about how different groups have changed over time:

All of these are examples of how race has changed over the years in America.  Who is considered white changes because there is no empirical or objective way to define race.  Race doesn't exist in any biological or empirical sense, it only exists as a social construction.



7A How does this article explain that whiteness has changed over time?

B What are the factors that have changed it?

C Is it surprising that the idea of who is white has changed so much over the years?  Which group is most surprising to hear about?  

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Social Class Lesson 3c: Location

Location

The next component of social class is location.  



The Median Metro Area
Examining the largest 384 metro areas in the United States,  our area, Chicago is the 3rd most populous at 9 million people.  The median metro area is #192 - it is the 2nd largest city in Arkansas; Can you name it? Can you guess how many people are in the city? The total metropolitan area?

1.  What is the size of the median metro area in the United States?


Location and where College Grads Move
WSJ data shows where college grads are likely to move after they graduate.  Recall that only about 30% of Americans get a college degree, and out of that small group, notice where most of them move to after college.

Here is U of I and Indiana U:

Try Accessing the data through this link (sometimes you have to be on campus to get it to work):
Where Graduates Move After College
If the link above does not work, these might:

OFF CAMPUS ACCESS DURING PANDEMIC:
You will use the same link to access, then click the "sign in" link in the corner and use the username and password below:http://www.wsj.com/highschoolUsername:   schoolaccess@wsj.comPassword:    wsj123
ON FACEBOOK:
Accessible through this facebook link:   https://www.facebook.com/groups/486893378140308/?multi_permalinks=1004035523092755&notif_id=1532189664367938&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic
ON CAMPUS:
For full access to the WSJ when you're on campus, you need to use the following special link: www.wsj.com/highschool
  • Once there, the fastest way for you (and your students) to find the article you're looking for is to click the search icon and enter the words  "grads database"

ORIGINAL STORY:
https://www.wsj.com/graphics/where-graduates-move-after-college/?mod=e2fb

Try to make your own conclusions about the data:
What does this data say about your life after college?
On a less personal level, what does this data say about the U.S. in general?

2.  Where do college grads tend to move?

3.  How do you think where college grads move affect social class in the U.S.?


Educational Attainment in America Map

Another source of evidence regarding social class, education and location is an interactive version of the map below.   The map was created by a geographer using existing data are from the 2011-2015 American Community Survey Table B15003, distributed by NHGIS. 
(Data preparation was completed in the R and Python programming languages, with heavy reliance on the arcpy site package via ArcGIS Pro and the sf R package. The map itself is hosted by Mapbox and designed with Mapbox GL JS and dimple.js.  Major features of the map are described here.)


4. Where do you see segregation by educational attainment? 


 This article by Business Insider highlights some conclusions about educational segregation based on the interactive version of the map above.


Home Price, location and social class

The price of a home depends on a lot more than the physical structure of the home.  From FRED, the average home price in the United States in 2019 was about $380K.  But the average home price varies considerably from state to state.  For example, West VA was the lowest with an average home price of $108K and California was one of the highest at $554K.  The average for Illinois was $202K.  


Location and home price:

Zillow has a real estate market overview.  Here is a link for the overview for each suburb (2021 averages):
Buffalo Grove ($330K)
Long Grove. ($623K)
Lincolnshire. ($501K)

Click here to see some houses for sale in Lake County, IL in 2014.  Which do you think are the most expensive?  Which are the least? When you see the actual prices, why do you think that is?

Time had a map showing the most economically segregated cities in America.  

This heat map from Trulia shows the median sales price for areas across Lake County.

5.  How do you think your home's value compares to the average home price?  (Remember from the wealth section above, the average American owns a home.)


Location and health

This research from Harvard shows that zipcode is a better predictor for health than genetic code.



And Clint Smith, Washington DC teacher explains in his slam poem the ways that location affects his students.  As you watch, make a list of the ways that location affects them:





Location is also related to mobility:

An online data tool called Opportunity Atlas finds a strong correlation between where people are raised and their chances of achieving the American dream.
Here is an NPR piece explaining it.
Here is the NY Times Upshot explaining it.
Opportunity Insights provides data about how neighborhoods shape residents' life chances.

This report from NPR's Planet Money details how where you grow up can affect your income later in life.

And here is a video and stats from CNN Money that show how where you grow up limits or benefits you.



Robert Wuthnow, sociologist at Princeton University explains in his book The Left Behind; Decline and Rage in Rural America that location has strongly affected how rural Americans feel and how they vote.  
Here is a 2018 interview with Professor Wuthnow from Vox.

What is fueling rural America’s outrage toward the federal government? Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump? And, beyond economic and demographic decline, is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide? Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America’s small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order — the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and identities—underpinning this critical segment of the nation. Wuthnow demonstrates that to truly understand rural Americans’ anger, their culture must be explored more fully. Wuthnow argues that rural America’s fury stems less from specific economic concerns than from the perception that Washington is distant from and yet threatening to the social fabric of small towns. Rural dwellers are especially troubled by Washington’s seeming lack of empathy for such small-town norms as personal responsibility, frugality, cooperation, and common sense. Wuthnow also shows that while these communities may not be as discriminatory as critics claim, racism and misogyny remain embedded in rural patterns of life.



Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Student Voice Survey

Please take a few minutes to complete the survey below about SOCIOLOGY.  Your answers should pertain to our class only.  



https://surveys.panoramaed.com/adlaistevenson


Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Unit 3 Social Structure: Essay Assessment

Unit 3 Social Structure Essay Assessment

 

Introduction 

For this unit, we learned that individuals are born with a nature, but part of their nature is to be nurtured.  The nurturing of individuals connects them to other people from even before the moment they are born.  That connection with people connects them to a culture, a family, school, peers, and social media.  As people grow they develop an awareness of their “self”; they have a picture of who they are as individuals.  With this in mind, follow the instructions below.  

 

Instructions

Write an essay that demonstrates your sociological knowledge about how these groups shape individuals in general and then provide specific examples from your own life.  Choose THREE of the groups that we learned about (culture, a family, school, peers, and social media).  In each paragraph, explain some of the sociological conclusions about how the group influences individuals and whether that is true for you or not - in other words, what is some of the sociological research/evidence about how these groups shape individuals?  Then give unique examples from your own life about how the group has influenced/socialized you and shaped your own sense of self.  Was the influence manifest or latent?

 

Requirements

  • The essay should have 3 distinct and well-developed paragraphs, but you do not need an introductory or concluding paragraph.
  • Write your essay with unique examples so that they apply specifically to you. Make your writing authentic. If your writing is specific and authentic, then no other student should be able to use your essay as their own. 
  • The essay should be spell-checked and written with proper grammar.
  • Please write your essay in a Google Doc. Be sure to share the doc with me or make it public.
  • Then open this Google Form and fill it out with the link address to your Google Doc

     





Providing evidence of competency for previous units (optional)


Unit 2 Sociological Research

If you still want to demonstrate your competency for Unit 2 Research, you can do this as an optional part of this assessment.  

Over the course of Unit 3, I have mentioned a number of primary research articles that highlight how the agents of socialization affect individuals.  In order to demonstrate competency for unit 2, you must complete numbers 1 and 2 below:

1. In your assessment for this current unit (Social Structure Essay Assessment - above), you had to choose three of the groups and write about them including the sociological research/evidence about how the group socializes individuals in it.  Choose one of the groups you wrote about in the unit 3 assessment (above) and find one of those original/primary research articles that we used as evidence/research during this last unit (posted throughout my Unit 3 blog lessons).  Write a detailed paragraph explaining the research and include the following: 

Cite the article including author, article title, journal title, publisher and date.

Explain the methods the researchers used. 

Explain the conclusions that the researcher reached. 

Explain ONE of the following and how it can be applied to the research:

A) The difference between a generalization and a stereotype and how that applies to the research.

B) The difference between statuses and roles and how they might apply to the research.

 

2. Find an original/primary research article that is about socialization or one of the agents of socialization that we studied: family, school, peers, media.  Write a detailed paragraph that explains the research article and includes:

Cite the article including author, article title, journal title, publisher and date.

Explain the methods the researchers used. 

Explain the conclusions that the researcher reached. 

Explain ONE of the following and how it can be applied to the research:

A) The general type of research (cross-sectional, longitudinal, cross-cultural or historical)

B) The difference between macro & micro sociology and which of these is the research is focused on

C) The difference between ingroups and outgroups and how the research might help understand the group as an outgroup more accurately.

 

 

 


 

Unit1: Sociological Perspective

If you want to demonstrate competency for Unit 1: Sociological Perspective, you can do this as an optional part of this assessment.

Over the course of this past unit (Social Structure), we examined the ways that the nature-nurture dynamic socializes people and gives them a “self”.  We examined evidence that culture, family, school, peers and media all play a role in this process.  In your assessment for this unit, you were required to choose three of the groups and write about them including the sociological research/evidence about how the group socializes individuals in it.  To demonstrate competency for Unit 1: Sociological Perspective, you must completely do both of the following:

 

1.  Choose any of the three paragraphs that you wrote for the Unit 3 assessment and then add a paragraph that applies ONE of the sociological paradigms (Structural-functional, Conflict or Symbolic Interaction) to your answer.  You must explain what the paradigm focuses on generally and how that applies to your example specifically.

 

2. Choose one of your other paragraphs that you wrote for the Unit 3 assessment (different than the paragraph you used above for the paradigm) and then add a paragraph that applies one of the theories (Social Construction of Reality, Sociological Imagination or Sociological Mindfulness) that we examined to your answer.  You must explain both the theory in general and how it specifically applies to the example that you used in the Unit 3 assessment.

 

 

Monday, March 8, 2021

3SocStructure Lesson 11 Social Dilemma



The Social Dilemma
A 2020 documentary called The Social Dilemma (available on Netflix) details the influence of social media.  
(TEACHERS NOTE: There is a free and easy-to-use accessibility solution available now for educators who register their event on our website. Since you may have already registered an event(s) in the past few months, we’re linking directly to the Educator Resources document that includes details on how to access the film. When you plan to screen the film again, please re-register your event to receive permission and an up-to-date password for the screening link, which changes frequently.)



  • The documentary was made by dozens of tech executives who have expressed concern about the influence of social media.  
  • The documentary is interspersed with a docudrama that shows how social media is in the background shaping the lives of one family.

The beginning of the movie raises the question, "What is the problem?"
Jaron Lanier explains that,
it is not just that, "we are the product and that our attention is the product being sold to advertisers.  That's a little too simplistic.  It is the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product.  And that is the product.  That is the only possible product...."