race

This past weekend the New York Times ran a fascinating article about the use of racial epithets by Britons. The Times reports, “Britons generally agree — or say they do — that being racist is bad and that making racist remarks is wrong. But there is no national consensus on what that means, exactly. Take references to ‘golliwogs,’ which are Little Black Sambo-style dolls, or to ‘Pakis,’ a slur referring to people of Pakistani descent. Both terms have been used in Britain recently by famous people in infamous incidents. But though public condemnation followed each time, so did condemnation of the condemnation, the gist of which was that no offense had been meant, so no offense should have been taken.”

A sociologist weighs in…

Perhaps these mixed-up responses come in part because Britain, while deeply cherishing its tradition of free speech, also has laws against using language that incites racial hatred, said Robert Ford, a postdoctoral research fellow in sociology at the University of Manchester who studies racial attitudes in Britain.

“There’s a debate over whether these laws are acceptable in a free-speech society,” Mr. Ford said. “Some people say that freedom of speech is a fundamental birthright and that to condemn people for their language is ‘political correctness gone mad.

Read more.

The Washington Post reports on how the idea of America as an ‘ideological melting pot’ – in the context of the progress marked by the inauguration of our 44th President – may not be entirely true. This article highlights how researchers find that people want to live in diverse communities, but clump together with those most like them…

“Americans tell survey researchers they prefer to live in diverse communities, but this country’s residential patterns suggest otherwise,” said Paul Taylor, who directs the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends Project. The question is why.

“Do some people gravitate toward communities so they can be among neighbors who share their political views?” Taylor and his colleague Richard Morin asked in a recent report. “Alternatively, does living in a politically homogeneous community diminish people’s appetite for diversity?”

And sociologists?

Sociologists have a term for this birds-of-a-feather-flocking-together phenomenon: Homophily. Some explanations for America’s political homophily suggest that a president who is determined to be a uniter might be able to help the nation reverse course; other theories suggest that the forces of polarization are beyond the powers of any individual to influence.

Sociologist Michael W. Macy at Cornell University argues that political homophily is largely the result of network dynamics: Neighborhoods coalesce around certain viewpoints because people don’t want to feel at odds with those around them. As views in a neighborhood become more homogenous, outliers feel like outcasts. They move if an opportunity arises, leaving their old neighborhood less politically diverse.

Read more.

The Los Angeles Times ran a story this week about a new study that details the persistence of negative racial stereotypes, reporting that “Changes in social standing such as falling below the poverty line or going to jail made people more likely to be perceived as black and less likely to be seen as white,” according to the researchers.

USA Today reports on a new study which suggests that race is a ‘changeable marker of social status.’

The data collected between 1979 and 2002 and analyzed by sociologists at universities in California and Oregon show change over time in both racial self-identification and the way people perceive the racial identity of others.

“There is much less ‘agreement’ about what race a person is than is commonly thought,” says co-author Aliya Saperstein, a sociologist at the University of Oregon-Eugene, “Fluctuations in both self-identification and how one is perceived by others happen more often than they would or should if race is something obvious or unambiguous.”

And that leads to an even more striking result: Those who are unemployed, incarcerated or in poverty are more likely to be classified and self-identify as black than white, regardless of past identifications. In about 20% of the 12,686 respondents, at least one change was noted in an interviewer’s perception.

The study found that setbacks in social status made it more likely that someone would be seen as black.

Read more.

The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend on how some multiracial families see Barack Obama as ‘Other’ like them — meaning that Obama’s multiracial identity, not fitting into a single “racial category,” is sometimes best described by the term ‘Other.’ The article tells the stories of several multiracial families who provide commentary on the difficulty of assigning themselves to a single racial category on forms like college applications. The LA Times reports:

Race, however, continues to be a stubborn puzzle. It wasn’t until 2000 that Americans were allowed to check more than one box for race on U.S. census forms. At that time, about 6.83 million people, or 2.4%, checked two or more races on census forms out of a population of about 281 million.

Additional commentary from a sociologist and a demographer helps to clarify this new trend…

Carolyn Liebler, a sociology professor specializing in family, race and ethnicity at the University of Minnesota, said she expected that the numbers of people identifying as multiracial would be higher in 2010 than they were in 2000 “because the number of mixed-raced marriages are going up” and because of Obama.

Tom W. Smith, an expert on race and demographics at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, calls it the “Obama effect.” “He’s made being multiracial salient,” Smith said.

Read more.

Science Daily reports on a new study from sociologist Rob Ford about the decline in racial prejudice in Britain since the 1980s, which the research suggests is attributable to the tolerance of younger generations.

Dr. Rob Ford from The University of Manchester says that social contact with black or Asian Britons is becoming increasingly unremarkable to white people in their 20s and 30s.

The study published in next month’s British Journal of Sociology found that while 60% of people born in the 1910s opposed marriage between white relatives and ethnic minorities, this figure falls to 25% for people born in the 1970s.

The study draws upon data from the British Social Attitudes Survey conducted in the 1980s and 90s.

“The marked decline in racial prejudice is backed by further data points in 2006, 2004 and 2003 so the results here are pretty emphatic: we are becoming a more tolerant society. The attitudes of older cohorts reflect the fact that their perceptions were shaped by growing up in an ethnically homogeneous Britain before mass immigration began,” he said. “Those cohorts express much more hostility about social contact with minority groups than their children and grandchildren.”

Ford cautions against the assumption that racial prejudice will disappear in the immediate future. He notes, “…while prejudice is therefore likely to be less of a problem in the future, it is unlikely to disappear overnight. Cohort replacement is a slow process and significant levels of hostility to ethnic minorities remain even in the youngest cohorts surveyed here.”

Read more.

The Chicago Tribune ran a story yesterday about the potential effects of Tuesday’s election results titled, “Transformed by Obama’s Win — Has the election of an African-American to the White House shattered stereotypes and changed the way Americans – black or white – view each other?” In addition to interviews with locals in Chicago, the Tribune calls in the sociologists to sort this out in greater detail…

One sociologist points out the remaining ‘structural issues’…

To be sure, few people said they believe Obama’s victory will be enough to transform race relations in the United States radically or instantly.

“There are structural issues that need to be addressed,” said Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, a professor of sociology at the University of California– Berkeley. He said it is much more difficult for people to transfer their attitude toward Obama to the people of color they encounter every day.

“That is not something that any single election will be able to make a major difference in,” Sanchez-Jankowski said.

But on a more optimistic note, sociologist Omar Roberts focuses on how Obama’s victory may be a starting point for future change…

Omar McRoberts, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, said he thinks the election has provided a forum for the kinds of discussion needed to effect change.

“This election doesn’t represent the erasure of race as an obstacle or as a point of tension,” McRoberts said. “What it marks is the opening of a new space for serious dialogue and hard work.”

Read the full story.

The American is now running a story titled, “The Long March of Racial Progress,” a piece that examines the story of race relations in America and the extraordinary changes that have come about. Sociological commentary is featured prominently in this story, specifically the work of sociologist Reynolds Farley.

The American reports: 

As University of Michigan sociologist Reynolds Farley points out in a new paper, there are now 41 African Americans serving in the House of Representatives, compared to only six when the Kerner Commission issued its famous report on race and poverty in 1968. During the years following the Kerner Report, “The slowly rising incomes of black men and the more rapidly rising incomes of black women produced an important economic change for African Americans,” Farley writes. “In 1996, for the first time, the majority of blacks were in the economic middle class or above, if that means living in a household with an income at least twice the poverty line.”

According to Farley, “Only three percent of African Americans could be described as economically comfortable in 1968. That has increased to 17 percent at present. This is an unambiguous sign of racial progress: one black household in six could be labeled financially comfortable.” He notes that the black-white poverty gap “is much smaller now” than it was in the late 1960s.

The story continues, as Reynolds notes, with a point of caution:

Of course, we should not be overly sanguine about black progress, which has been hindered in recent decades by social pathologies and family disintegration. Since the 1968 Kerner Report, “adult black men have fallen further and further behind similar white men in terms of being employed,” says Farley, emphasizing that “the white-black gap in personal income is not closing, nor is the white-black gap in household income getting any smaller.” Indeed, both the white-black income gap and the white-black gap in educational attainment remain “persistent and substantial.”

Read the full story.

The Boston Globe ran a story this morning about whether or not American racism is dead after the nation chose an African-American as the next president of the United States on Tuesday. The Globe reports, “The answer, coming as people began to digest the fact that a majority of Americans had chosen a black man, Barack Obama, to be the 44th president, was not nearly as straightforward. No, but sort of. Maybe, but probably not. While Obama’s achievement was profound, its psychological lift enormous for many, the impact on the rhythms of people’s everyday lives was revealing itself in subtler ways.”

The article includes commentary from researchers, lawyers and Boston residents. Sociologist Dan Monti weighs in…

“Are there racist people out there? Absolutely. Is our society racist? No,” said Dan Monti, a professor of sociology at Boston University whose specialty is race and ethnic relations in the United States. “I know there are people who will think that’s just wrong. But I think Barack Obama winning the presidency of the United States is the single clearest example that we are not. Because if we were, it wouldn’t have happened – period” …

In his sociology classes yesterday at BU, Monti told his students that everything – and nothing – changed on Tuesday night and that a series of changes, small and large, over the last century had laid the platform for Obama’s victory stage.

“With that said, what this represents, both domestically and internationally, is a coming of age of the American people,” Monti said.

Full story.

The New Pittsburgh Courier ran a story about sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s recent lecture in which he discussed how presidential candidate Barack Obama is “not the symbol many perceive him to be.” The story ran under the headline “Sociologist Says Obama is Raceless.”

The Courier reports:

“Symbols work in many directions,” said Bonilla-Silva, a sociology professor at Duke University. “(Obama’s) going to be a truncated symbol; both segments happy, but for totally different reasons—we have to understand what does it mean for Black communities and White communities.”
…
He discussed “new-racism,” meaning “the post-civil rights racial system of subtle, institutionalized, and apparently non-racial practices that maintains White supremacy and its accompanying racial ideology of color-blind racism.” Instead of seeing Obama as the end of this racism, Bonilla-Silva said his campaign success has been based largely on his ability to appear raceless. Although he admitted Obama could be a good role model, Bonilla-Silva said it is more important for him to create “real change.” — Read more. 

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva was also a contributing writer to Contexts Magazine‘s feature on the “Social Significance of Barack Obama.” Take a look at Bonilla-Silva’s commentary, here.