Controversy continues to rage over the alleged “job-killing” effects of the Affordable Care Act and potential increases in the federal minimum wage. Kathleen Sebelius recently weighed in on the Congressional Budget Office’s report about the ACA, reminding us that the CBO’s “2 million jobs lost by 2017” figure comes from Americans cutting their work hours, not employers cutting their jobs to cover healthcare costs. With a new poll showing Americans think the job market is the number-one problem today, however, why would we see these trends? The ACA and a higher minimum wage may not be a job-killers—instead they remind us that employees can demand better working conditions.

We shouldn’t necessarily think of coverage programs in terms of “jobs lost.” Instead, giving employees affordable health coverage may actually free them from “job lock.” Economic research shows that benefit programs can give low-income workers the security and potential mobility to seek out better jobs.

• Cynthia Bansak and Steven Raphael. 2008. “The state children’s health insurance program and job mobility: Identifying job lock among working parents in near-poor households.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61(4): 564-579

While benefits can give employees the opportunity to quit, organizational characteristics like group job satisfaction and flexibility in the workplace also affect the likelihood that employees will want to quit.

• Phyllis Moen, Erin Kelly, and Rachelle Hill. 2011. “Does enhancing work-time control and flexibility reduce turnover? A naturally occurring experiment.” Social problems 58(1): 69-98.
• Kimberly Jinnett and Jeffrey Alan Alexander. 1999. “The influence of organizational context on quitting intention an examination of treatment staff in long-term mental health care settings.” Research on Aging 21(2): 176-204.

This weekend saw a verdict in the trial of Michael Dunn, accused of killing Florida teen Jordan Davis in 2012. The jury found Dunn guilty on three counts of attempted murder, but declared a mistrial on the murder charge for Davis’ death. According to reports from Al Jazeera America, Dunn’s attorney argued that “there were no signs Dunn was planning the shooting, only firing his gun when he saw Davis wielding a weapon from inside the vehicle and felt threatened.” However, Dunn is white and Davis was black and—with echoes of the George Zimmerman trial still fresh in public memory—supporters of the prosecution argue that shooting was racially motivated and premeditated.

In cases like these, the argument often breaks down to whether violence was racially-motivated or a “colorblind” act of self-defense. However, race structures all parts of the criminal justice system.

Self-defense isn’t as colorblind as we think. Research in social psychology shows that race affects the way we perceive and react to threatening situations.

• Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park, Charles M. Judd, and Bernd Wittenbrink. 2002. “The police officer’s dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83(6):1314-1329.
•  Jennifer Eberhardt, Phillip Atiba Goff, Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, and Paul Davies. 2004. “Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87(6):876-893.

These individual reactions aggregate into big social problems, where race and social class impact how jurors and law enforcement make decisions about policing and punishment.

• Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Patricia Warren. 2009. “Explaining and Eliminating Racial Profiling.” Contexts 8(2):34-39
• Scott Phillips. 2009. “Status disparities in the capital of capital punishment.” Law and Society Review 43(4): 807-837.
• Mark Bradbury and Marian Williams. 2013. “Diversity and Citizen Participation The Effect of Race on Juror Decision Making.” Administration & Society, 45(5), 563-582.

For a more detailed summary of racial threat experiments, see Sociological Images’ coverage of this work during last year’s Zimmerman trial.

Love is in the air this week, but not everyone in the music world has been feeling it lately. Macklemore’s performance of “Same Love” at the Grammy’s last month—as well as his win for best hip hop album and subsequent apology to Kendrick Lamar— drew a slew of comments from pop culture bloggers. For some, his music represents everything wrong with the privileged cultural appropriation of hip hop, but others thought the performance was an important illustration of how allies can contribute to movements for social justice.

So where is the proper place for allies in the world of identity politics? Should they spread the love, or stop hogging the spotlight?

When individuals speak from a position of privilege, they don’t risk a lot by advocating for change. Their perspectives may crowd out the voices of marginalized groups, or risk appropriating identities in a way that maintains privilege instead of challenging it.

• C.J. Pascoe. 2003. “Multiple masculinities? Teenage boys talk about jocks and gender.” American Behavioral Scientist 46(10): 1423-1438.
• Whitney Anspach, Kevin Coe, and Crispin Thurlow. 2007. “The other closet?: Atheists, homosexuals and the lateral appropriation of discursive capital.” Critical Discourse Studies 4(1): 95-119.

On the other hand, allies can be an important strategic resource for marginalized groups at the social level, both by contributing material resources and changing the surrounding culture.

• Doug McAdam. 2010. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. University of Chicago Press.
• Herbert H. Haines. 1984. “Black radicalization and the funding of civil rights: 1957-1970.“ Social Problems 32(1):31-43.

Either way, we have to realize that social movements are going to build up and break down identities, and thinking about allies helps us reflect critically on what it means to belong to a movement.

• Joshua Gamson. 1995. “Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma.” Social Problems 42(3):390–407.

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Why would people experiencing homelessness refuse shelters in some cases? They are often trapped between policies which treat them as criminals for making their own shelter and sick if they seek help.

Last week atheist bloggers expressed their frustration when Oprah Winfrey suggested that distance-swimmer Diana Nyad’s atheism wasn’t really atheism. Op-eds from authors in the secular community reminded us that atheists appreciate lots of wonder in the world, and warned about stereotypical views of non-religious people. A few pieces of sociological work can also help explain the weight of her words.

Americans already hold negative opinions about self-identifying atheists, and many say atheists “don’t agree with their vision of American society.”

• Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann. 2006. “Atheists as ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society.” American Sociological Review 71(2):211–34.
• Ryan T. Cragun, Barry Kosmin, Ariela Keysar, Joseph H. Hammer, and Michael Nielsen. 2012. “On the Receiving End: Discrimination toward the Non-Religious in the United States.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 27(1): 105-127.

Oprah’s fame makes her a “moral entrepreneur”— someone with the power to define who the insiders and outsiders are in society. This makes her opinions more likely to influence viewers’ misunderstandings about atheism.

• Howard Becker. 1973. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press.

It’s Columbus Day! In 1492 he sailed the ocean blue and—well—historians, sociologists, and even web comic artists have been reminding us for a while now that he didn’t really “discover” America, so much as find the native peoples who were already living there. So, how does the narrative of Columbus day (or any other story in our history textbooks) keep coming up the same way year after year?

Columbus’ voyage isn’t the only historical story we tend to get wrong in the classroom.

In a recent report from Al Jazeera America on his first major interview, Pope Francis raises concerns that the Catholic Church needs to change its political priorities if it doesn’t want to “fall like a house of cards.” He argues that the church is focusing too heavily on “narrow” issues like gay marriage and abortion when it should be fostering a more inclusive message. Is this a new and necessary direction for Catholic politics in the United States, or just a flash in the pan?

Pope Francis may be right about church collapse. Many Americans choose not to affiliate with religion for political reasons.

• Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer, “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations,” 2002.
  

It also isn’t just political. Narrow theological views on issues like gender and sexuality have an effect on who comes to Mass every week.

• Andrew M. Greeley and Mary G. Durkin,  Angry Catholic Women: A Sociological Investigation, a Theological Reflection, 1984.
  

This isn’t the first shift, though, new leaders and changes in society have a long history of altering the church’s politics.

• Gene Burns, The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World, 1994.

Plenty of organization for change can emerge from the church’s membership as well. Not all the discontented leave!

• Tricia C. Bruce, Faithful Revolution: How Voice of the Faithful is Changing the Church, 2011.
  

A recent report from the New York Times tells us that Washington may be loosening the leash on mortgage lenders, but a range of research from sociologists over the last five years suggests that there were actually multiple problems that led to the 2008 housing crash, and they weren’t all about financial regulation alone.

Modern mortgages arose when homeownership was politically popular.

• Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam’s A Theory of Fields

Politicians often used economic policy to “punt” unpopular political conflict.

• Greta Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis, 2011.
• Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson, Too Big to Bail: The “Paulson Put,” Presidential Politics, and the Global Financial Meltdown (Part 1 and Part 2) 2009.

Subprime lending didn’t just take advantage of the poor—it was also a racial problem.

• Jacob Faber, Racial Dynamics of Subprime Mortgage Lending at the Peak, 2013.