Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders stated that he is against reparations for African Americans, and the declaration has spurred a fair number of back-and-forth pieces between authors on the political left. One notable article by writer and recent MacArthur “Genius” Grant winner Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to an open letter by Cedric Johnson, a professor of African American studies and political science who critiqued Coates’ call for reparations. Johnson tries to make the case that those who call for reparations are missing the main point: if broad class inequality is addressed, the economic and other inequalities faced by blacks will fall away. Further, Johnson characterizes liberals who disagree with him as uninterested in promoting solidarity. As Coates explains, however, race is far more complex. Whiteness and white identity still confer privilege, and that enduring system is another form of “solidarity,” a historical collection of forces that reinscribe inequality.

Using research from, among others, sociologists Patrick Sharkey of NYU and Robert Sampson of Harvard, Coates shows that white and black poverty are distinct. First of all, blacks are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods in which structural issues such as limited access to healthy groceries and banking are more heavily felt. After all, living in a poor neighborhood can have independent effects on poverty, effects which disproportionately affect African Americans. For example, Sampson’s research shows that incarceration rates in poor black neighborhoods can be forty times higher than in poor white neighborhoods, and incarceration rates are tied to further poverty in many ways. Trying to reduce issues of race to issues of class is, Coates explains, a disservice to both dynamics. Race and class intersect and overlap in ways left untouched by Johnson’s black-and-white characterization of poverty, reparations, and inequality.

For years, legislators and employers have framed guaranteed parental leave as a “women’s issue.” Women serve as the primary advocates for policies that allow more flexibility between work and family life, while fighting stereotypes that paint them as less committed to their jobs than men. In a recent article for Fast Company, sociologist Michael Kimmel discusses how the U.S. lags behind every other industrialized country in policies that guarantee parental leave and how he believes this contradicts “family first” ideals. “Supporting families is the very definition of family values,” writes Kimmel. “How can we possibly lecture others about loving and supporting families when we value our own so little?”The U.S. lags behind every other industrialized country in policies that guarantee parental leave.

One key to the gradual change that’s come to cities including New York, Washington D.C., and Chicago may be a shift in male perspectives of household work. Recent surveys suggest many men want to be more involved in household duties. Despite that willingness, however, women still bear much of the burden. Consequently, fathers are often praised for more public acts of parenting, like taking children to soccer practice, while mothers are more likely to take care of unsung housework, struggling to also meet the demands of their careers. Further, researchers note that demanding careers cause increased risks of physical and mental illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, and stress for everyone, not just fathers or mothers.

As legislators craft a new wave of parental leave policies, many question how employers can provide a working environment to support parents and families. In a recent study, Phyllis Moen and Erin Kelly studied the Star Initiative program that allowed for increased flexibility for 700 employees at a Fortune 500 company. The aim was to provide employees with more flexibility in attending meetings, working from home, and communicating via instant messenger. After one year, those involved in the initiative reported greater job satisfaction and lower rates of poor mental health. According to Kelly, “One important implication of this research is that workplaces can change to bring some relief to stressed out workers. It’s not up to an individual to figure out how to balance everything. Challenges come up with work, but organizations can change to bring some relief.”“It’s not up to an individual to figure out how to balance everything. Challenges come up with work, but organizations can change to bring some relief.” –Erin Kelly

Tonight, we’ll see the 7th GOP Presidential Debate, but how will the public parse truth from fiction? Recently The Conversation asked four scholars to choose and fact-check one statement from the 6th GOP debate. Stealing the show was tonight’s ostensible no-show, The Donald, conflating refugees with immigrants, and both with crime.

To be fair, nearly all the candidates conflate immigrants and refugees, and, in the 6th Debate, they reduced the topics to one: national security. According to sociologist David Cook Martin, refugees are a legal category defined by United Nations, and they undergo an extensive screening process, while immigrant status is determined by U.S. law. The emphasis on immigrants and refugees as a security threat thus leaves no room for acknowledging the ways  migration has helped the U.S.:

To reduce immigration and refugee policy to a matter of national security overlooks the considerable extent to which the cultural, social and economic success of the United States has been linked to migration, including that of the families of five of [the GOP] debate participants. Immigration policy is a complex weighing of security matters, but also of geopolitical interests, economics and the diversity of people and perspectives that have informed U.S. success.

Trump also claimed that migrants coming to the U.S. are primarily “strong, powerful men,” again drawing on stereotypes of immigrants and refugees as threats (previously, he had notoriously said that Mexican immgirants, in particular, were rapists and drug dealers). Hadar Aviram, professor of law, points out that this is plain old wrong. First, of the 1,682 Syrian refugees entering the U.S. last year, 77% were women. And while immigrants are often associated in the popular imagination with criminality, scholars agree—and sociologist Ruben Rumbaut has shown time and time again—that immigrants actually commit less crime than native-born Americans. Aviram argues that Trump is distracting the public from other issues, like the tax breaks for the wealthy he plans to make and that might actually harm middle-class and working-class Americans, by drawing attention to a “demonized ‘other.’”

Investigations into the Volkswagen emissions scandal, wherein the iconic German car maker had installed software in their diesel models to cheat American emissions tests, are ongoing, and the U.S. government is still considering the fines it will levy. But the software, according to VW America CEO Michael Horn in a congressional hearing, was no indication of a company-wide conspiracy. Instead, it was, Horn said, snuck in the design by a couple of rogue engineers. But surely some management or higher-ups had to have known, right?

An article by Paul Kedrosky in the New Yorker uses work by Columbia sociologist Diane Vaughan to delve into how cultures and patterns could actually explain the engineering genesis of Volkswagen’s “defeat device,” without any one person choosing to cheat. The effect of the defeat device was substantial; when tested, a car emitted forty times less nitrogen oxide than during regular use. But with Vaghan’s research, it appears possible that it was not the product of an elaborate scheme—just the result of accumulated fudging. more...

Saudi women have just achieved the right to vote. Sociologist Mona Salahuddin Al-Munajjed showcases the power and roles of such Saudi women through her books and her work with on social issues with the United Nations.

Al-Manajjed told Arab News,

There is a huge misconception and misunderstanding in the rest of the world about the status of women in Saudi Arabia, which I realized while pursuing my higher studies in the United States and traveling abroad subsequently.

In the book, Saudi Women: A Celebration of Success, Al-Manajjed interviews those who “have made a difference in society with their education, professionalism, socioeconomic impact and contributions to the Kingdom, becoming a role model and an inspiration for the younger generations.”

Throughout, she introduces readers to educators, businesswomen, bankers, doctors, scientists, philanthropists, writers, actors, and decision makers, giving a glimpse into their lives and achievements. Consider another major advancement for Saudi women’s rights: new entrée into the Shoura Council. That change was driven by driven women.

Winter break is a time for students and faculty alike to hunker down after a long semester, spend time with family and friends, and relax. But if you’re a woman in your 20s or 30s, you’ve probably been cornered by at least one relative who tells you your biological clock is ticking. And while Aunt Helen may be right, it turns out there’s at least one big benefit for women who wait to start a family.

Recent research featured in the Huffington Post indicates that women in their 40s are actually healthier if they have their first child after age 24. Sociologist Kristi Williams and her colleagues followed 3,348 women for nearly 30 years, collecting self-reported health data. They found that women who had their first child between the ages of 25 and 35 reported better health at age 40 than women who had their first child between ages 15 and 19 or 20 and 24 (and there was no significant health difference at age 40 between these two younger groups).
Read the full article here.

Gender bias in the workplace may not be breaking news, but its negative impact on mental health among powerful women might surprise you. A new study highlighted in Fast Company magazine suggests that women in high-ranking positions experience increased symptoms of depression. Lead author, sociologist Tetyana Pudrovska, describes the unexpected findings that came out of the WILLSHE project on the experiences of highly successful women:

What’s striking is that women with job authority in our study are advantaged in terms of most characteristics that are strong predictors of positive mental health. These women have more education, higher incomes, more prestigious occupations, and higher levels of job satisfaction and autonomy than women without job authority. Yet, they have worse mental health than lower-status women.

Men do not seem to suffer similar negative mental health consequences when in powerful occupations. Marianne Cooper, sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, explains:

Women leaders are viewed as being less competent than men, they’re evaluated in performance reviews on personality traits while men are evaluated on accomplishments, and they’re interrupted more often during team meetings. The day-to-day interactions can become tiring to deal with—it’s like death by 10,000 paper cuts.

In an essay for the New York Times, University of Mississippi – Oxford M.F.A candidate Jason Harrington aims to dispel the myth that inner-city gangs in Chicago are rigidly structured organizations with clear, color-coded boundaries that separate one from another. According to Harrington this conception perpetuated in Spike Lee’s new satirical film “Chi-Raq” through the presentation of two opposing gangs engaged in a constant war, the “Trojans” and the “Spartans.” This emphasis on clear-cut gang warfare is outdated, according to Harrington and the residents he’s interviewed from Chicago neighborhoods Englewood and Auburn-Gresham, where the movie is set.

Most shootings in black Chicago neighborhoods are no longer a result of epic clashes between street battalions. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, big gangs like the Black P. Stone Nation and the Gangster Disciples were structured like corporations — tightly run narcotics operations with chains of command. If, for example, an order came down that anyone wearing a rival gang’s colors was to be shot on sight, then that command was dutifully followed by soldiers on the corner. But by the close of the 1990s, with the end of the crack explosion and the federal prosecution of many of the gangs’ founders, the groups splintered into small sets that now only loosely identify with their founding “nations.”

Today, most gun violence in Chicago does not occur due to what set someone claims, but over small, interpersonal feuds usually involving money, women or disrespect. However, the “gang-member” label of past decades persists. Harrington interviews Andrew Papachristos, a Chicago native and associate professor of sociology at Yale, about the implicit meaning of “gang-member.”

“People see ‘gang member,’ and the words ‘psycho killer’ instantly pop in their head. But that isn’t the case,” Andrew Papachristos, a Chicago native and an associate professor of sociology at Yale, says. A majority of residents who claim sets in Chicago are more like Trey, my close friend of 17 years and a member of the 81st Street Black P. Stones in Auburn Gresham. Trey has no violent criminal record and works full time as a security guard. In areas like Gresham, a lot of young men don’t have the luxury of opting out of affiliation with the local set; banding together in brotherhoods can be a survival strategy in neighborhoods where personal reputation is capital and walking the streets alone makes it more likely that you’ll be seen as weak.

Read the essay here.

Attention to violence against women has improved significantly within the legal system since feminists pushed for recognition of what had once been considered “personal problems”—like violence by an intimate partner—as part of a larger system of gender inequality. Even into the early 1990s, laws discrediting the possibility of rape within marriage remained on the books for some states.

Some discrepancies remain. According to recent study by Myrna Dawson, men who kill their wives, girlfriends, or female family members often face shorter prison terms and fewer first degree murder charges than men who kill female strangers. Dawson calls this an “intimacy discount.” Among many possible explanations for these disparities include that women may still be viewed as men’s property, therefore partner deaths aren’t taken as seriously as other killings. Another possibility is that crimes against intimate partners tend to be easier to solve, prosecute, and bring to a guilty plea, perhaps resulting in a lighter sentence, since the killer took responsibility for his crime.

Read the full article here.

Alongside the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the media and presidential candidates have been making a lot of small talk about weather. Though there’s nothing new about the issue “climate change,” and the preceding term “global warming,” not everybody is on board. Republican candidates including Donald Trump, Chris Christie, and Ben Carson continue to deny climate change, even as the evidence mounts. Often, these candidates state they don’t place much stock in “science.”

An article on Huffington Post discusses this dynamic with help from environmental sociologists Riley Dunlap from OSU and Aaron McCright of MSU. They describe how, particularly among conservative voter bases, people are more likely to seek out information that they agree with while, ignoring what challenges their preexisting ideas. In addition, high-profile skeptics such as political figures can generate an “echo chamber.” In essence, people hear their beliefs reinforced within their social networks; groups can normalize and strengthen particular beliefs or ideologies by simply listening to each other instead of finding new information. As the article describes, even in the face of increasing scientific evidence of climate change, some will remain cold to the idea.