When Kelly Clarkson recently explained that she loves Ron Paul because he believes in states having rights, she had no idea the phrase “states’ rights” would stir so many negative memories.  As Fox News explained,

Even before the Civil War, “states’ rights” had become a byword for the protection of black slavery. And since the late Sen. Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 as a States’ Rights Democrat, or “Dixiecrat,” the phrase has sometimes been labeled a “dog whistle” for racist elements in the electorate.

Sociologist John Shelton Reed (UNC-Chapel Hill) wasn’t surprised that someone Clarkson’s age didn’t recognize the baggage “states rights’” carried.  Similarly, University of Georgia historian James Cobb noted,

“Any time I hear it, I get this sort of little twitch, because I associate it with Ross Barnett or George Wallace,” …referring to the governors of Mississippi and Alabama who, five decades ago, defied efforts to integrate their states’ flagship universities. “But members of the younger generation, it doesn’t have that kind of connotation to them at all. And whether this is to some extent the fault of those of us who are supposed to be educating the younger generations about their past, I can’t say.”

Both Ron Paul and Rick Perry (before he left the race) have used the loaded phrase recently.  Other candidates make a point to avoid it.

 Whatever reaction it evokes, Cobb, the Georgia historian, said the term has clearly lost much of its sting.  “It’s just become part of the lexicon, without any particular meaning,” he says. “It’s been historically decontextualized to the point that it can be thrown around by a lot of people without a second thought.”

Reed, the UNC sociologist, said that’s not necessarily bad.  “I do believe states’ rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while — like, 150 years or so…I’m professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.”

Popular wisdom and those who defend the death penalty say that the most heinous crimes should be more harshly punished. But, as Lincoln Caplan points out in a recent New York Times editorial, this is simply not the case. Death sentences are far more random than that, as shown by a study of murder cases in Connecticut from 1973 to 2007.

The Connecticut study, conducted by John Donohue, a Stanford law professor, completely dispels this erroneous reasoning. It analyzed all murder cases in Connecticut over a 34-year period and found that inmates on death row are indistinguishable from equally violent offenders who escape that penalty. It shows that the process in Connecticut—similar to those in other death-penalty states—is utterly arbitrary and discriminatory.

The study revealed that, far from being blind, Lady Justice metes out harsher punishments based not on the egregiousness of crimes but more often on race and geography. These findings echo those of sociologists who have studied the death penalty, such as Scott Philips (as “discovered” in Contexts, Winter 2011). Philips examined how the victim’s social status affected whether a defendant was sentenced to death in Texas from 1992 to 1999. Results showed that if the victim was “high status” (e.g. white, no criminal record, college educated), defendants were six times more likely to be sentenced to death. Black defendants, though, whose victims tend to be of lower social status, were still more likely than others to be sentenced to death.

In light of such evidence and with the death penalty on the decline (some states, such as Illinois in 2011, have abolished it altogether) Caplan argues it’s time for this “freakishly rare,” “capricious,” and “barbaric” form of punishment to go.

In a brand new piece for Slate, journalist Libby Copeland marshals the social scientific evidence to ask whether, as in so many other areas of social life, looks matter in politics. It’s been, she writes, “conventional wisdom” since the televised Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960 (see clip above) that a candidate in the modern age simply can’t avoid the fact that their very face will affect their polling numbers. Put more provocatively, Copeland asks, “How much does Newt Gingrich’s face hurt him?”

What’s really intriguing here, though, is that the assumption, for the longest time, was that it was attractiveness or beauty that would confer an advantage to the aspiring politico. To be sure, “Attractive people appear to benefit in all sorts of situations, like in the workplace and legal situations. Heck, even babies are predisposed to focus on good-looking faces,” Copeland writes. But 2005 research from Princeton’s Alexander Todorov and other researchers asserted “voters appeared primarily drawn to faces that suggested competence,” not a Crest commercial smile and perfect symmetry. “The competent face shape,” Copeland gleans, “is masculine but approachable, with a square jaw, high cheekbones, and large eyes. When people say Romney just looks presidential, this is the image they’re summoning.”

In follow-up studies, political scientists went on to confirm the Todorov findings, but refined them, pointing out that it was mainly less-informed voters who watched a lot of television who demonstrated the “competent face” effect. Copeland goes on to explore some other studies in psychology and political science which subtly altered the images of real politicians (in one case, even blending it with the study subject’s own photograph—“After all, who’s more competent and trustworthy than you?” the author asks) to consider other ways that looks shape elections. She concludes:

Taken all together, these new studies suggest how a politician’s face appeals to voters, or doesn’t, can’t be boiled down to just one factor. Rather, voters look at a candidate and make a series of instant judgments based on a number of traits. Then… they listen to the candidate, they consider the issues, and they do all the things rational voters are supposed to do. Skin-deep inferences aren’t all that voters rely on, though they may have an outsized effect on the decision-making process.

Not only are we excited to spot Reynolds Farley’s Contexts article “The Waning of American Apartheid?” (Summer 2011) written up in the Emerging Ideas section of the Jan.-Feb. 2012 issue of the Utne Reader, we’re gratified to see the elegant treatment it’s received in this “Citings & Sightings” style piece. Further, the illustration (at left, by Peter Thomas Ryan, peterthomasryan.com) wittily gets at the heart of the matter. What more could an editorial team want?

In the piece, the author writes of Farley and his fellow researchers’ extensive longitudinal work:

The stats aren’t evidence of a racial utopia (50 percent of thse respondents hit the edge of their [neighborhood] comfort zone at a 50-50 split in racial composition), but from block to block, there does seem to be slow and steady progress toward a more racially integrated America.

To check out the original article, please visit contexts.org.

Though Facebook has been known to waste your time, Sociologist Hui-Tzu Grace Chou’s research found that it might also make you sad. Chou and Nicholas Edge interviewed 425 students, asking them whether they agreed on statements like “Many of my friends have a better life than me” or “Life is fair.”  They also asked them questions about their Facebook usage, according to an article on ABC News.

After controlling for gender, race, religion, and relationship status, the scholars found that the more time students spent on Facebook, the more they thought others were happier and had better lives than they did.

 Facebook photos generally depict smiling, cheerful people having good times, conveying a sense of happiness. Of course everyone likes to smile for the camera, so that good cheer may be inflated or false. As others view the photos, they may believe this conveyed sense of  intense happiness is real, making them think that their friends are much happier than they are.

As Chou noted, “We’re not aware of the bias we have… On Facebook we present ourselves at our best. People are affected and they don’t realize it.”

As viewers of the ongoing GOP debates already know, religion is a hot topic this voting season. But despite discussion and conjecture regarding a host of religious issues by voters, candidates, and pundits alike, Scott Jaschik points out (this week in Inside Higher Ed) there is little research to turn to in support of their claims.

According to an analysis of US-based and British political science research by associate professor of politics and international studies Steven Kettell, less than two percent of studies in the top 20 research journals in the field focus on religion.

Jaschik notes, “Of the small minority of articles that considered religious issues, the most popular topics are not likely to provide much help to those trying to follow the Republican presidential race this year. The most common topic was religious links to violence and terrorism, and the second most common topic was Islam.”

Although other social sciences, such as anthropology, history, and sociology, give greater attention to religious issues today, “[Kettell] argues that it is time for ‘political scientists to turn the tools of their trade’ to issues of religion.”

Find out how your income ranks in different parts of the U.S. with this interactive graphic from the New York Times. Needless to say, what earns 1% status in New York is not the same as in Flint, Mich. Data comes from demographic researchers at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota.

A breakdown of the jobs of the 1%, featured over on Sociological Images, is part of the same Times package.

Some experience discrimination throughout their lives, while, for others, it’s simply living long enough that leads to discrimination. According to research from Clemson University sociologist Ye Luo and her team that’s reported in The New York Times‘ New Old Age blog, nearly two thirds of those over age 53 report having been discriminated against—and the leading cause they report isn’t gender, race, or disability. It’s age.

Now, on its own, this statistic isn’t terribly surprising—many studies have turned up high levels of ageism. But Luo told the Times she was shocked that, over the two-year period of their study, everyday discrimination was found to be associated with higher levels of depression and worse self-reported health. The association held true even as the researchers controlled for general stress resulting from financial problems, illness, and traumatic events. As the Times reports:

Interestingly, the discrimination effect was stronger for everyday slights and suspicions (including whether people felt harassed or threatened, or whether they felt others were afraid of them) than for more dramatic evens like being denied a job or promotion or being unfairly detained or questioned by the police. “Awful things happen and it’s a big shock, but people have ways to resist that damage,” Dr. Luo said. “With maturity, people learn coping skills.” Every day discrimination works differently, apparently. “It may be more difficult to avoid or adapt to,” Dr. Luo suggested. “It takes a toll you may not even realize.”

Although trends may shift as more data comes into focus, it’s already clear that the well-being of older adults is being affected when they experience ageism in their social interactions.

As part of its programming surrounding our national day of remembrance in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., NPR’s Fresh Air brought scholar Michelle Alexander to the airwaves last night for a lengthy, fascinating interview. Alexander is the author of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (out now in paperback with an introduction by Cornel West), and she argues persuasively that, as NPR puts it, “Jim Crow laws are now off the books [but] millions of blacks… remain marginalized and disenfranchised… denied [the] basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens.”

President Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” was declared, Alexander said, “primarily for reasons of politics—racial politics. … [these] racially coded ‘get-tough’ appeals on issues of crime and welfare appeal to poor and working-class whites, particularly in the South, who were resentful of, anxious about, and threatened by many of the gains of African Americans in the civil rights movement.” And so, the war on drugs keeps Jim Crow going:

Today there are more African Americans under correctional control—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. …In major American cities today, more than half of working-age African American men are either under correctional control or branded felons and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives

In her conversation with Dave Davies, Alexander went on to explain that, while some, like criminologist David Kennedy, believe  anyone who’s spent time with those fighting the “War on Drugs” on the streets (that is, who’ve embedded themselves with beat cops and DEA agents) knows there’s absolutely no racial or class bias in who gets arrested for what, she’s found in her research that, for white, middle and upper-class kids, some crimes are considered rites of passage deserving only a slap on the wrist. Just a few miles away, though, in poorer communities of color, those same crimes (particularly the sale and use of recreational drugs, which Alexander says research has found are no more likely among black adolescents than white nor among poor vs. white kids) relegate young people to a life haunted by the legal system.

This, Alexander goes on, is especially problematic in one under-examined way: the disenfranchisement of convicted felons means that these communities, which are already low in political capital (that is, real political power), don’t even have the ability to go and vote for the politicians (and policies) that might improve their lives. “My experience and research has led me to the regrettable conclusion that our system of mass incarceration functions more like a caste system than a system of crime prevention or control,” concludes Alexander.