The goal of increasing “diversity” has become a common focus in university admissions, meaning strengthening the presence of underrepresented minorities within the student body. This kind of rationale also appears in businesses and government, with rhetoric that emphasizes how diverse groups can be more productive and innovative. In essence, most see pursuing diversity as a good thing because of the benefits of diversity.

That said, researchers question whether “diversity” policies and programs really overcome existing racial inequalities, and some argue that organizations are more interested in boasting about their diversity than they are in actually increasing minority representation. Ellen Berrey has researched the meaning and use of the word “diversity” in a variety of sites. Her research, as described in The New Yorker, suggests that touting the benefits of diversity can have an unintended consequence: glossing over issues of inequality, exclusion, and discrimination. As an example, Berrey describes an investigation of diversity in a Fortune 500 company,

“The diversity-management program functioned mainly as a surreal exercise in internal branding, entirely separate from the legal department (which handled claims of discrimination). So-called diversity managers worked to foster an “inclusive” environment, but they seemed to spend much of their time “reiterating the good that would come from diversity,” as a way of justifying their own positions.”

The New Yorker article also discusses research by Natasha Warikoo, who examines the ways that white students at Ivy League colleges describe diversity on campus. Their accounts point to what Warikoo calls “the diversity bargain” — white students accept the existence of racialized admissions programs with the expectation that students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds will expose them to new ideas, cultures, and experiences. In general, these researchers find that “diversity” rhetoric often misses the bigger picture of continued racial inequality in the United States.

For the past twenty-five years, Oklahoma has seen some of the highest levels of female incarceration in the United States. In a recent article from Reveal, research by sociologist Susan Sharp demonstrates that incarceration rates and sentence severity varies between different counties within the state, where courtroom cultures and access to legal resources vary.   

Across the state, harsh drug sentencing leading to lengthy prison sentences for women is the norm, and Sharp argues that women in Oklahoma have become “collateral damage” in the War on Drugs. This is in large part due to the cultural norms surrounding women’s roles as mothers. Sharp explains,

“I think the general population of the state feels that a woman – particularly a woman who has children who uses drugs – violates all the norms in a way that they find unacceptable . . . and they would rather see those children grow up in foster care than to be with a mother who had a drug problem.”

However, Sharp has found that rural counties with more “get tough on crime” district attorneys and judges will typically send more people to prison, and poor women in these areas often experience the “wrath of judges and prosecutors.” In urban areas, women have access to more resources — money for private attorneys and specialty courts for drug addiction and mental health issues — which often keeps them from serving a sentence or helps reduce their time served.  The case of Oklahoma demonstrates how local differences influence punishment, as external and situational factors play a central role in shaping personal experiences with the criminal justice system.

Popular media sometimes makes it seem as though college students are inundated with sex now more than ever. However, in a recent NPR podcast, “Hookup Culture: The Unspoken Rules Of Sex On College Campuses,” sociologist Lisa Wade argues that college students having frequent sex is nothing new. What has changed are the rules that govern these hookups. Wade’s work shows that hookup culture isn’t just about having any kind of sex — it’s about having meaningless sex. While it may sound rather simple, having meaningless sex often takes a great deal of emotional work for students. Wade explains,

“…to show themselves and other people that it was meaningless, they have to find a way … to perform meaningless. It’s not automatic. And they do that by, for example, making sure that they’re drunk. Or they appear to be drunk when they hook up … Sober sex is very serious, but if the students have been drinking then that helps send the message that it’s meaningless.”

Meaningless sex is tied to assumptions about women’s desperation for serious romantic relationships with men. Since serious relationships disrupt the flow of hookups, many women feel as though they need to show that they are not “desperate” and do not care as much about relationships as men think they do. On the other hand, women who do want serious relationships often feel as though they must engage in hooking up so that they can eventually develop a serious relationship. Wade explains further,

“So women’s options are either opt out of hookup culture altogether, or expose herself to this period where she’s treated disrespectfully in the hopes that it translates into something better on the other end.”

Male students, in turn, also keep their distance from the women they hook up with so that they do not appear to be seeking a serious relationship. At the same time, both male and female students alike revealed that they are interested in serious relationships at some point down the road.

In the past 50 years, marriage rates among U.S. adults have declined significantly. Social science suggests that financial success may play an central role in this trend. For example, in 2015 65% of adults 25 and older with a four year degree were married, while only 50% of those with a high school education were married. In a recent article in The New York Times, sociologists Sharon Sassler and Andrew Cherlin weigh in on this divergence in marriage rates.  

According to social scientists, some of the change has to do with economic trends. The decline in manufacturing jobs in the United States has made men without college educations less “marriageable.” According to Sassler, “women don’t want to take a risk on somebody who’s not going to be able to provide anything.” This decline has not, however, corresponded to a decline in births — births are just happening outside of marriage more often now. The article explains, 

“In reality, economics and culture both play a role, and influence each other, social scientists say. When well-paying jobs became scarce for less educated men, they became less likely to marry. As a result, the culture changed: Marriage was no longer the norm, and out-of-wedlock childbirth was accepted. Even if jobs returned, an increase in marriage wouldn’t necessarily immediately follow.”

On the other hand, those with college degrees are more likely to postpone marriage and children until after they feel financially stable, but then they do get married. They also may benefit from their own parents’ help in paying for education, birth control, and rent, allowing them the advantages of achieving stability not often available to lower and working class adults. Privilege, therefore, can play a key role in the decision to get married.

Does talking about economic inequality really matter when it comes to influencing voters? A recent article in The Washington Post discusses research on whether income inequality impacts Americans’ support for certain economic policies. A report from Leslie McCall and Jennifer A. Richeson suggests that when presented with data on economic inequality, Americans develop skepticism about the existence of actual economic opportunity, and will tend to favor policies that promote equality. Using experimental data, the researchers found that when presented with information on income inequality, 58% of Americans surveyed responded more favorably toward policies proposing decreasing the pay gap (in contrast to 51% for those who did not receive information). The authors write,

“Americans tend to support greater spending on education when their opposition to inequality rises or inequality itself rises, consistent with a link between concerns about inequality and opportunity. But this pattern may be limited to particular time periods and does not extend to support for other kinds of spending or government redistribution generally.”

The research suggests that Americans are fully capable of linking income inequality with economic opportunity and that efforts should not be made to avoid discussing one or the other. The authors conclude,

“For this reason, the instinct to focus on economic opportunity instead of inequality seems misplaced. In the minds of Americans, the two can be linked quite readily.”

It’s been well documented that religion played an important role in the 2016 presidential election, as well as recent state elections. ThinkProgress.org recently contributed a new analysis of this relationship, highlighting preliminary research from a number of sociologists on the role of “Christian nationalism” in President Trump’s victory. Their findings indicate that the belief that America is a Christian nation may both predict support for Trump and be connected to intolerant views of other groups.

Sociologists Andrew Whitehead, Samuel Perry, and Joseph Baker found that Christian nationalism was “strongly and positively associated with voting for Trump,” and they emphasized that Christian nationalism is not simply another measure of religiosity. Whitehead told ThinkProgress,

“For this study, when we look at a lot of the normal ways we measure religiosity, at the end of the day, none of them really predict a vote for Trump except Christian nationalism. It didn’t matter if you were evangelical or mainline [Christian], it didn’t matter if you went to church a lot or a little, what mattered was whether you think America is a Christian nation.”

Whitehead notes that an important part of this research regards findings about the ways Christian nationalism interacts with other ideologies, and ThinkProgress reached out to sociologist  Penny Edgell for further development of this connection. Edgell’s ongoing work with Evan Stewart and Jack Delehanty indicates that support for “public religious expression,” a variable that measures the belief that religion should be an integral part of public life and deliberation, is associated with intolerance against a variety of groups. Edgell emphasized the need for more analysis of white Christian nationalism, especially its role in propagating ideologies like Islamophobia and xenophobia. She told ThinkProgress,

“Certain white Christian institutions house and foster and bundle these attitudes all together, and link them to politics in systematic ways.”

Where does Washington D.C. get its policy? For nearly a century, think tanks have churned out the research that drives the political agendas of the day. Often hiring specialists from universities, we think these organizations bring the facts to politicians who, of course, can add the spin.

But recent shakeups in the think tank world call this narrative into question. NPR reports on a controversial decision at the New America Foundation to close a project studying monopolies. Critics allege that funding from Google swayed the decision, but blatant bribery isn’t necessarily the whole story. Sociologist Thomas Medvetz traces bigger structural changes in think tank organizing over the years that make these groups more susceptible to partisan interests, because they aren’t just doing research. From the article:

[Medvetz] said think tank experts now need skills not commonly found on college campuses: “Skills that one would use in a PR firm, for example, or a lobbying firm, as an aide on Capitol Hill, as a scholar, or a journalist.”

This is a key sociological insight about organizations: when groups have to draw on a wide variety of skills and resources to survive, there is a higher chance that conflicts of interest will arise even without explicit corruption.

Over a year after 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first knelt during the national anthem in protest of police brutality, protests in the NFL spiked dramatically after President Trump attacked players who followed Kaepernick’s example. In recent weeks many more players knelt, locked arms, or stayed in the locker room during the anthem in response to Trump’s speech and series of tweets. During the flurry of media attention on the NFL, scholars Rashawn Ray and Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve wrote an Op-ed for NBC News about not losing sight of the original purpose of the protests.

Instead of focusing on the political implications of the president’s tweets or changes in protests over the past week (such as owners joining their players on the field), Ray and Van Cleve reiterate research on the violent repercussions of racial bias in policing. They emphasize that black athletes, even NFL stars, are subject to the same dangers of racial profiling as all other African Americans. In an MSNBC spot discussing the Op-ed, Ray told the panel,

“We really have to reorient the narrative. This isn’t about someone standing or sitting, this is about the fact that black lives matter. This is about the fact that football players, basketball players, baseball players, once they leave those stadiums they are black and brown men. And unfortunately in our society it doesn’t matter if you are affluent or less affluent, unfortunately you might be actually profiled by the police, and unfortunately that particular profiling can turn deadly.”

Ambiguity from the Trump administration about the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program puts the current lives of many immigrant youth and young adults in a state of limbo — nearly 1 million people could face the loss of legal protection or even deportation. In a recent piece for The Globe Post, Stephanie Canizales outlines what the abolishment of DACA could mean for both the current DACA-recipients, or “Dreamers,” and others who may have qualified for the program in the future.

Beginning in 2012, Canizales conducted in-depth research with hundreds of now long-settled undocumented young adults. These young adults, now aged 18 to 31, arrived as unaccompanied minors to the United States between the ages of 11 and 17. Her research shows that upon arrival, and without parental support, many of these youth entered the workforce immediately, taking jobs in industries marred by deplorable working conditions and wages. These jobs were often extremely detrimental to mental and physical health, and forced many youth to work exceptionally long hours for menial pay.

Work permits under DACA appear to have helped alleviate these exploitative workplace conditions, and many Dreamers are now enrolled in college to further their careers. Canizales’ work demonstrates that the loss of DACA could also negatively impact young adults at work even if they aren’t deported. She concludes,

“Removing legal protections for immigrant youth and young-adult workers risks further increasing the exploitation of immigrants in the workplace, as well as poverty and marginality in their communities.”

Surveillance technology dominates policing in many major cities, and software companies continue to develop tools that allow law enforcement to collect and analyze data on traffic violations, citizen complaints, and even license plate photographs. A recent CNN Tech article highlighted sociologist Sarah Brayne’s research on the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of one such data collection software, Palantir.  Brayne’s findings suggest that while the utilization of big data in policing facilitates communication, it also raises some major concerns of privacy and potential bias.

With the help of Palantir, LAPD officers use a point system to measure the risk of individuals with extensive criminal records, awarding points for a variety of law infractions and police interactions. However, Brayne found that individuals from low-income communities of color are more likely to have their risk measured — she cautions that such systems can be cyclic, with more points leading to more police contact, and vice versa.

Another potential problem is that of privacy. Palantir has improved location tracking abilities and allows law enforcement to gather and connect more information about individuals than ever before, but this often includes information on individuals without police contact. Certainly there are clear benefits; sharing data can help connect related crimes and more information helps police to work more efficiently and effectively. But challenges arise as technology develops. Brayne warns,

“I’d caution against the thinking that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. That logic rests on the assumption of the infallible state. It rests on the assumption that actors are entering information without error, prejudice or discretion.”

For more on the biases behind surveillance technologies, check out this TROT on computer code as free speech.