inequality

Gentrification is a hot-button issue. The renovation and rebuilding of homes and businesses provide cultural changes that socially separate wealthy whites who move into minority neighborhoods from current residents, even when the spacial distance between the groups is small or non-existent. Looking at the history of residential segregation, Angelina Grigoryeva and Martin Reuf investigate whether whites living in close proximity to racial minorities will result in social interaction or if today’s experiences of segregation will be different than in the past.

The authors use household data from the 1880 U.S. Census to analyze different ways residential segregation appeared in post-Civil War United States. They begin by focusing on Washington, D.C., using data collected by “census enumerators”—people who went door-to-door conducting the Census. Then they examine a larger sample of 171 post-Civil War cities and towns. Grigoryeva and Reuf find regional differences in segregation, noting that the Northeast became characterized by black and white people living in separate districts, while segregation in the South grew to be characterized by a “backyard” pattern, where black and white people live within the same Census districts.The Northeast U.S. became characterized by racially separate districts, while segregation in the South was characterized by a “backyard” pattern, with black and white people living within the same Census districts.

Grigoryeva and Reuf believe their method of tracing residential housing segregation changes the way we think of the history of residential segregation in the U.S., and their findings about the different patterns of contemporary Northern and Southern segregation demonstrate how the social effects of segregation remain powerful, even when racial groups live in close proximity.

The alarmingly high rates of suicide among transgender people have received national attention, prompting larger questions about health-harming behaviors among the transgender population. When one’s gender expression strays from cultural expectations, how does it influence discrimination and health?

Using data from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, Lisa R. Miller and Eric Anthony Grollman examine this relationship. Survey respondents answered a number of questions about how their gender is perceived by others, what types of discrimination they have faced, and whether they have attempted suicide and/or abused alcohol or drugs. Miller and Grollman find that transgender adults report substantially higher rates of health-harming behaviors than cisgender (that is, non-transgender) adults report in other surveys.

A staggering 44% of transgender respondents said they had attempted suicide. Those who thought others saw them as transgender were significantly more likely to have attempted suicide than those who “passed” (were perceived to be cisgender) and reported higher rates of discrimination. Taken together, Miller and Grollman suggest that transgender adults perceived as gender nonconforming face more types of both daily and major discriminations; this may increase self-harming behavior.

Being transgender, the authors write, does not necessarily lead to health-harming behaviors; rather, being visible as transgender (or gender nonconforming) increases health-harming behaviors. It seems to be the social responses to gender nonconformity that negatively impact transgender health and wellbeing.

Since 9/11, Arab Americans have experienced various forms of harassment and repression in the U.S., including deportations, FBI questioning, citizen surveillance, and harassment as well as insults, threats, and physical attacks we might now categorize as hate crimes. Sociologists Wayne Santoro and Marian Azab are interested in how these experiences impact Arab Americans’ political activism, with a particular focus on protests.

Using Michigan as their case study, Santoro and Azab focus on two main questions. First, to what extent are documented levels of repression associated with increases in public demonstrations and meetings between Detroit-area Arab Americans and authorities about ethnic-based grievances? And second, which Arab Americans are more likely to be involved in activism and civic engagement?

To answer the first, Santoro and Azab examined archives of the Detroit Free Press from 1999-2010. They found a clear temporal relationship between increases in repressive treatment against Arab Americans and patterns of protest and organizing in the community. Such activism peaked in the year after 9/11, with a general increase in protest in the following years.

If the fact that protests peaked post-9/11 within the Arab-American community is unsurprising, the second question—who participated in these protests—provides new information. To examine the effects of repression on an individual level, Santoro and Azab used the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) to look at a sample of 1,016 people of Arab or Chaldean descent living in the Detroit area in 2003. They examined the impact of experiencing repression due to race, ethnicity, or religion on the respondent’s participation in a protest, march, or demonstration about any social or political issue within the last twelve months. The results indicated that individuals who identify weakly with their Arab identity are more likely to protest after experiencing repression.

The results indicate that repression does not just mobilize those who are already activists. Rather, repression mobilizes individuals with low levels of identity who are especially shocked by their experiences with oppression.

Public sector jobs, like those in the military, education, and prisons, have long been seen as increasing racial equality; they’re often service-oriented and secure, providing seniority, benefits, and paths to promotion. But as “new governance,” described by George Wilson, Vincent J. Roscigno, and Huffman’s new Social Problems research, and privatization make the public sector look more like the private sector, racial wage parity erodes. In exploring their findings, the authors challenge scholarship on institutions and inequality that has assumed that, over time, “social change and associated structural transformations will reduce… inequalities”—that organizational and bureaucratic forces will lead, inevitably, to drops in racism and discrimination.

Using two datasets, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID2012) and the Integrated Public Use Data Series (IPUMS), Wilson, Roscigno, and Huffamn compare wage discrepancies between black and white employees across time and “new governance,” controlling for factors such as work ethic, education, physical health, gender, age, and unionization. The authors show that, with privatization, wage discrepancies by race grow within and beyond the public sector; this change is not explained by other variables.With privatization, wage discrepancies by race grow within and beyond the public sector.

New governance means both private and public sectors operate, increasingly, under business models, complete with managerial discretion and market principles. Thus, public jobs start to look more like private ones and rather than continuing a legacy of increased equality, both sectors see more inequality over time.

In American Sociological Review, Jennifer Sykes, Katrin Križ, Kathryn Edin, and Sarah Halpern-Meekin argue that for low-income families, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is not seen as a stigmatizing “welfare” handout akin to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), but a measure that allows a sense of dignity because it is earned.

Based on in-depth interviews with 115 working parents, the authors find that EITC can help families stay afloat financially—or simply splurge a little. Sometimes the credit is used for necessities, such as paying bills. Other times parents put it toward gifts or other child-centered consumption—think cartoon-themed bedroom accessories, new shoes, dinner out, or an overnight trip. This “fun money” helps take the edge off a sense of precarity. And however it’s spent, the arrival of the money is meaningful: as the authors note, “For most [interviewees], it was by far the largest single check they receive in a given year.”

The authors argue that because of the positive feelings the credit engenders among recipients, the benefit is bigger than a dollar value. The EITC allows low-income recipients to practice what the authors call “incorporative consumption.” In other words, getting and spending the credit however they see fit affords low-income recipients a sense of citizenship and belonging that typically eludes those who live paycheck-to-paycheck in the contemporary U.S.

The homicide rate has been steadily, albeit slowly, declining in the United States and Western Europe for several decades. Researchers have pointed to various social and economic factors that account for variations in the homicide trends, including “decommodification”: the extent to which individuals are protected from market forces. In particular, Robert Merton’s strain/anomie theory predicts that the murder rate is dependent on the extent to which cultural expectation and social structure are in balance. Here, a society in which social life is heavily dictated by economic pressures would likely have a higher prevalence of criminal activity.

Following this theory, social welfare support, an attempt to buffer individuals from the economic turmoil of the market, could function to decrease the prevalence of crime. Patricia L. McCall and Jonathan R. Brauer empirically examine this possibility using homicide (one of the most reliable measures of criminal activity—underreporting is a less pressing issue than in other types of crime) and economic data from 29 European countries from 1994 to 2009.

McCall and Brauer find that levels of welfare support within a country (measured by an index that incorporates total welfare expenditure per capita, health care, and unemployment support) is associated with a decrease in the homicide rate, controlling for numerous other economic indicators and the age structure of the country. Further, the researchers find that the effects of these changes are not apparent right away. The effect of increased social welfare support has a 2-3 year lag, meaning that an increase in welfare spending in 1990 would not be reflected in lower homicide rates until 1992-1993.  McCall and Brauer caution that welfare spending is not a solution to a nation’s homicide problem, but increased social support won’t hurt.

McCall and Brauer’s analysis suggests that protecting individuals from the forces of the market via robust a robust social welfare net may not only decrease the extent of inequality in a nation, but also the prevalence of homicide. This finding highlights how the anti-austerity measures many European nations have implemented have not only changed economic conditions, but also the social conditions of many citizens. While McCall and Brauer caution that welfare spending is not a solution to a nation’s homicide problem, increased social support won’t hurt.

Stories like those out of Ferguson and Baltimore show a double bind for the Black Lives Matter movement. On the one hand, large scale protests draw national attention to important matters of racial injustice and structural police violence. However, media attention to riots leads commentators to criticize “violence” among protestors and discredit their mobilization. One response to these critiques is the argument that violence is political—it is sometimes the only possible way to resist injustice when the traditional political system fails. New research gives us another perspective to chew on: tangible political power for citizens of color may actually reduce the link between race and violence that the media is so quick to criticize.

Research on neighborhood violence often finds a relationship between racial composition and rates of violence—communities with a higher percentage of black residents tend of have higher rates of violence even after we control for structural problems like economic inequality. Vélez, Lyons, and Santoro argue that neighborhood context matters a great deal and can challenge this conclusion. In particular, political opportunities for community members of color offer policy benefits and increased trust in local institutions, and these factors in turn may reduce or even eliminate the relationship between race and violence in a neighborhood.Political opportunities for community members of color offer policy benefits and increased trust in local institutions, and these factors may reduce or even eliminate the relationship between race and violence in a neighborhood.

Using data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study and the 2000 Census, the authors measured violent crime (homicides and robberies) in 8,931 census tract neighborhoods in 87 cities. They also measured black political opportunities in terms of elected representatives, workers in civil service positions, civilian police review boards, and liberal voting bases, and black political mobilization through the presence of citywide minority advocacy organizations and histories of riots and nonviolent protests. Finally, they controlled for city-level factors like the number of manufacturing jobs, racial segregation, and residential mobility.

With a method called hierarchical generalized linear modeling, the authors test the relationship between neighborhood racial composition and neighborhood violence across census tracts clustered in cities. When they introduce the controls for city-level disadvantage, the relationship between race and violence drops substantially, suggesting that it does not hold true across different locations. Finally, they find that in cities with more black political opportunities and more past mobilization through protests and riots the relationship between race and violence disappears.

This last finding is especially important for two reasons. First, it is a myth buster; the authors argue “these results challenge pervasive cultural stereotypes that trace black neighborhoods inevitably to violence” (110). Second, the finding shows us the benefits of political engagement and symbolic inclusion in neighborhood life—when communities have opportunities to organize, mobilize, protest, and ultimately secure power, certain social forces that may increase neighborhood violence disappear.

Red Carpet season has come and gone, and with it the sky-high stilettos and elegant evening gowns that elicit the standard, “Who are you wearing?” Fashion denotes status and femininity on the red carpet, daily life, and even in the music world (remember Kreayshawn’s catchy rap “Gucci Gucci”?).

Despite this emphasis on female consumers and on fashion being a “women’s world,” Allyson Stokes finds it’s gay men who excel in the industry, taking the majority of fashion awards and titles as elite designers. This makes fashion a realm of role reversal: men who work in these feminized professions more easily achieve higher status than their female colleagues, the opposite of what happens when women enter predominantly male professions.

Using content analysis of 157 entries in Vogeupedia (the canon of elite designers) and articles about designers in broader fashion media, Stokes researched how the fashion industry legitimates designers to understand why gay male designers steal the spotlight. Entries and articles about gay men often discuss themes like value and legitimacy, which Stokes argues “constructs a gendered image of the ideal cultural producer.” Stokes uses the metaphor of the glass ceiling (err, runway) to explain how the industry valorizes gay male designers as the artists and tastemakers of the fashion world. In the spotlight of a “woman’s world,” they receive the lion’s share of legitimation, authority, and legendary status.

Descriptions in Voguepedia and fashion articles more generally tend to depict gay male designers as artists more often than women; in contrast to women who design clothes to accommodate consumer to consumers’ tastes, gay men are noted for created original “art.” Gay male designers receive praise for their work in fashion, while the media focus on female designers revolves around their families and other aspects of their lives unrelated to their creative processes. When the question of gender inequality comes up in the broader fashion media, articles follow two major patterns in their responses: 1. They justify the inequalities or 2. They criticize them, but using essentialist ideas that men and women are inherently different.

Stokes’s glass runway metaphor nicely complements the glass escalator, which uses the image of an invisible moving staircase to show how men entering sectors of “women’s work” find themselves quickly elevated to the top. As discrimination in other sectors increased the prevalence of gay men in fashion, a more LGBTQ-friendly atmosphere, it has also reinforced a “normal”/queer dichotomy. So while gay men find themselves at an advantage compared to female designers, sexuality-based discrimination still complicates their strut down the glass runway. It’s a far experience than straight men’s glass escalator.

In Social Forces, Megan Andrew examines how being held back in grade school affects kids’ high-school completion, college entry, and college completion. Students can be held back for a variety of reasons, many of which are well intentioned. But as Andrew shows, such jarring incidents and processes can be “scarring,” leaving lasting impacts on young people’s lives, moreso depending on its timing.

Andrew uses two national, longitudinal studies in her work: the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the National Educational Longitudinal Study 1988. Each consists of repeated surveys of thousands of students from grade-school into adult life. Even when she uses a method called “sibling fixed-effects” to control for family, birth-cohort, and demographic characteristics within families, retention still has clear consequences for high-school completion. Andrew finds that any grade-school retention greatly decreases a child’s odds of high school completion; however, the effect is dampened when the retention occurs earlier rather than later. That is, repeating the second grade isn’t as harmful as being held back in the eighth grade. Luckily, once Andrew controls for high school completion, the scarring effect seems to go down; if kids graduate high school, a past retention has less impact on their college entry and completion.

Drawing on sociological understandings of performance and self-esteem, Andrew theorizes that stigma and students’ doubts about their capabilities (raised by being held back) explain the scarring effects. So when educators and parents hope to better prepare students for transitions to junior high or high school with an extra year of grade school, the move can paradoxically lower a child’s chances of educational success. Now teachers and parents can better address children’s needs with the knowledge that, if it is necessary to hold a child back in school, it’s far better to do so earlier rather than later in the educational process.

A lot of ink has been spilled investigating “mass incarceration,” the massive expansion in the scope of punishment and its subsequent social consequences. However, the largest arrest categories are for crimes below a felony level, which do not elicit a prison sentence. These “lower-level” criminal justice encounters involve misdemeanors or infractions of noncriminal codes. Issa Kohler-Hausmann, using over 2 years of field work in a New York City criminal court, investigates how “misdemeanor justice” – the criminal justice processing of lower level offenses – represents a form of social control, even though the majority of these sub-felony cases do not result in either a finding of guilt or a formal punishment.

Kohler-Hausmann argues that the criminal justice system extends its net of control through misdemeanor level cases through three techniques: marking, procedural hassle, and performance. The first procedure, marking, is an official mark on the defendant, most often in the form of a temporary rap sheet (which can be dismissed after a period of time). The mark allows the authorities to keep temporary “tabs” on the defendant, and restricts the defendant’s travel and immigration. Further, all open criminal matters in New York are accessible to the public through an online database. This can increase the stigmatizing reach of the criminal mark, as employers and landlords can access this data.

The second form of misdemeanor control, procedural hassle, involves the institutional “hurdles” necessary to obtain the dismissal of the mark. Defendants have to conform to the institutional demands of the court, for example, a mandatory court appearance (or a number of them) is accompanied by stress, lost work, child care costs, and often the neglect of other opportunities in order to comply with court dates. Additionally, the time from arrest to dismissal is defined by numerous encounters with state authority, which demand a level conformity and obedience.

The final penal technique offered by Kohler-Hausmann is performance. The threat of a lasting criminal mark and the demands of criminal justice procedures require the defendants to comply with the demands placed on them. For example, the performance of community service is a common prerequisite for a case dismissal. Overall, these techniques allow the criminal justice system to track and discipline alleged low-level offenders without the formal punishment of parole, prison, or jail, widening the system’s net of control.