Good morning! This week at TSP we extend a hearty welcome to Sociology Toolbox—a new community page courtesy of Todd Beer at Lake Forest College. Check it out and have a look at what else we’ve been up to below!
“Incarcerated Women in a Double Bind” by Allison Nobles. The U.S. criminal justice system made a big shift from rehabilitation to “tough on crime” in the last 40 years, but it looks like women still get the worst of both worlds.
On Facebook, today, scrolling through my friends’ posts, I spotted U of M professor Joe Soss’s post featuring an eye-catching photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. hot-dogging it at a pool hall, accompanied by the following quote:
“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed” (MLK, report to SCLC staff, May 1967).
And I loved Soss’s gloss on the photo: “I bet,” Soss wrote, “he sunk that pool shot too.
The day and the photo got me thinking. I had just done a television interview about how Minnesota was recently ranked as the least racially integrated state in the nation by a financial services website. After making the usual comments about being cautious about state-by-state comparisons, particularly about gaps and changes over time, I talked to the reporter about how Minnesotans’ general sense of themselves as relatively successful in terms of racial harmony and our sometimes self-satisfied liberalism can get in the way of our fully recognizing and then really addressing, in policy and social action, racial inequality problems in our state, especially those pertaining to African Americans.
Not all of my comments made it into the piece (see actual story here), and afterwards I found myself thinking back to that most famous of sociology majors, Dr. King (see below for a great photo Soc Images spotted on the HBCU website, dated 1948) and his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In it, he writes that he believes white moderates are among the greatest obstacles to his vision of change. One passage reads:
…I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.
Many years later, many protests and rallies and elections later, America remains torn between high-minded colorblind ideals and persistent racial inequalities, while white Americans have the easy option and privilege of just living with the status quo. Maybe if I had quoted Dr. King directly, I could have made that point even stronger.
Hello again everyone! This week we have a roundup of both classic older pieces and some great new ones. See below for sociological insights into everything from lottery tickets, to MLK day, to racial diversity on TV.
“Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.” by Hollie Nyseth Brehm. On Monday, Americans will celebrate the life of MLK, Jr., but this classic Clipping explains how the ways MLK is remembered and celebrated are often contested.
“Back in Living Color? Diversity on TV,” by Stephen Suh. Awards season also all too often reveals the underlying racial and gender dynamics that play out in the entertainment industry. Check out this great piece for research on racial diversity in American television.
Hello, everyone! TSP is back from winter break with coverage on everything from wage inequality to man buns. Here’s a look at what we’ve been working on this week.
“Culture of Overcompensation” by Joey Brown. New research from Jerry Kim, Bruce Kogut, and Jae-Suk Yang looks at how network structures cut bigger checks for CEOs
Hello again everyone and Happy New Year! We are slowly easing into the new year with a roundup of all the TSP posts that were voted Best of 2015, along with a few new pieces from our community pages that might pique your interest.
Hello, everyone! As the semester winds down at TSP, we are gearing up to announce our Best Posts Of 2015! Keep an eye on the site around the end of December to see which social science stories made a splash this year. For now, here is a list of the latest to tide us all over.
“7 things maps tell us about neighborhoods.” Rose Malinowski Weingartner reviews new research mapping everything from grocery stores to gender differences in the way kids travel.
“Constrained Classroom Choices,” by Sarah Catherine Billups. “School choice seems to simply reinforce existing gaps: those likely to benefit from school choice are already privileged enough to transfer schools.”
Hey everyone! We hope you are all having a restful holiday weekend. Despite the short work week, we have a long list of great new pieces for you to check out.
Amidst everything that seems to be going haywire in our world these days, it is good, right, and necessary to take this day and reflect on all that we have to be thankful for in our lives. There are many blessings I personally am thinking of this morning–family near and far, house and home, health (except for the deranged disk in my back), meaningful work, caring colleagues, great students, engaging friends. But thing I keep coming back to this morning is this pair of socks I’ve been wearing once a week every week this past fall.
It is a pretty cool pair of socks. They are mostly white, 3/4 length athletic socks with thick red and blue strips that encircle the calf. Think of 1970s ABA swagger and hip-ness, and you kind of get the picture. I’m pretty sure I’m the envy of all when I wear them. Truth be told, they are probably a bit too stylish for me. But they are also so thick and absorbent and comfortable that I’d wear even if they weren’t cool.
So they are great socks, yes. But what I really like about these socks is that every week when I put them on–and I do wear them once a week without fail–I think of my former graduate student Kyle Green. Kyle, you see, is the one who gave me these socks. He presented them to me as a going away present just after he defended his wonderful dissertation study (an ethnography of mixed martial arts) and before he left for his new, first job in New York (Utica College). They were one of the most unusual going-away gifts I’ve ever gotten from a student. I think he gave them to me because we had a lot of fun playing pickup basketball together on Thursday nights. And why I’ve come to love them–and am grateful for them this morning–is because they remind me of Kyle and how much I enjoyed working with him, and how proud I am of what is doing out there on his own. It is my weekly “Kyle moment,” as I told him yesterday when he was telling me about this great new methods project he’s been working on for TSP.
So its really not the socks I’m thankful for this morning as it is Kyle–and all of the people like Kyle (and so many of you!) who help make my life so meaningful and satisfying and wonderful.
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