An ad for a floral shop: “He chose her. She chose us.”
Found in Zions Bank Community magazine, January/February 2008 issue.
This bar chart puts the United States as the dubious front runner with the highest income inequality among 20 wealthy nations. With the exception of Japan, all the countries have European heritage. In 2000 the United States’ inequality stood well above all other rich nations. At the other end of the scale the Nordic countries plus the Netherlands had very low inequality ratios. Most Western European nations, as well as Australia and Canada fell in between.
These data come from the Luxembourg Income Study, the most rigorous data source for cross-national income and wealth. The chart’s income gap indicator in each country is the disposable (after tax) annual income of the top 10% divided by the disposable income of the bottom 10%. In other words, the income gap is the ratio of the 10% of persons with the highest income to the 10% with the lowest. For instance, in the USA the income of the top-earning 10% was 5.5 times that of the bottom 10%.
The statistics in this chart can be found on page 4 of a document on the Contexts website: http://www.contextsmagazine.org/resources_vol6-3.php That document is a supplement to an article by Peter Dreier, “The United States in Comparative Perspective,” in the Summer 2007 issue of Contexts.
Some may read these statistics and say “inequality in the US is overblown” because the bottom 10% live better off than most people in the rest of the world. That is true if Americans are compared to countries where the average income is less than a dollar a day. But if the American poor are compared to the poor in other wealthy countries, American poor are far worse off.
As if the world needed another battleground, peaceful Kenya slipped into a civil war as post-election demonstrations turned to riots, and riots to rampages. Kenya’s December 27th elections could have ended as a model for party transition, but instead it became the worst possible scenario.
EU observers agreed the vote processes were flawed and results were denounced as rigged by the main opposition party. Protesters were shot by police leading to rioting and repeated demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans fled their homes and hundreds lie dead as the conflict became an ethnically charged civil war.
Two years ago I had the good fortune of spending four days in Kenya. To my amazement Nairobi’ downtown felt like a Midwestern city: orderly, friendly, uncongested, clean, and mostly absent of beggars. But Nairobi has over three million people, a half million of which live in Africa’s largest slum.
Poverty in many rural villages was evident, but the Kenyan people, especially the women, work very hard. In the first photo is a typical rural scene where the women do back breaking work in the fields.
During our brief stay the papers headlined several major political events: President Kibaki, who is still the uncompromising president, fired his entire cabinet. The next day he suspended all of parliament. On the third day, major public demonstrations took place in the streets by the opposition party calling for new presidential elections.
I watched these demonstrations on the streets of Nairobi and felt the tension and anger. The demonstrations, however, ended without incident. But apparently it has not been uncommon for people to die in Nairobi demonstrations.
I took the 2nd photograph of the demonstrations in the central city. Notice that it could pass for football game day in a small US city.
What can sociology add to help us understand Kenya’s tragic, unfolding story? Here are three perspectives that may help:
Social Class Perspective: The images we are given by the American network media are suggestive of warring savages. In fact, the riots and ethnic strife are phenomena of the poverty class, not the wealthy and middle classes, although the leaders of both warring factions are wealthy politicians. Sharp inequality and festering poverty lay beneath the surface of this formerly peaceful country.
Historical Conflict Perspective: The British spent decades trying to keep the Luo and Kikuyu divided to preserve colonial order. (Now these are the two major warring ethnic groups.) During the decolonization process the British drew electoral boundaries to cut the representation of groups they thought might cause trouble. This only fanned the flames of tension among these groups. In the past few years tribal factions fighting over cattle rights in the Rift Valley have left over 100,000 refugees. These conditions helped ignite recent spontaneous rioting, looting and killing.
Race/Ethnicity Perspective: Both sides of the conflict are accusing the other of genocide, and both may be right. It will take months if not years to assess the horrendous damage. Ethnic hatreds run deep and prolonged, but the first cause of this war was political. It was the common practice of rigging elections followed by a refusal of the President to negotiate a coalition government.
What other sociological perspectives help to explain what is happening in Kenya and what might happen in the future?
This is an ad for Tao Asian bistro and nightclub in Las Vegas. The tagline is “Always a happy ending.” Note the naked woman’s body with the presumably Chinese characters on her. And of course a “happy ending” is often associated with Asian massage parlors…
These three confessions, from Post Secret this week, illustrate that “ethnic” hair carries meaning (in the first authenticity, in the second ugliness, and in the third it’s left open) and how some women feel about that:
Image via: Sports Image Times
The U.S. Border Patrol is focusing its new recruiting efforts in the Southeast, the region that just happens to have had the largest Hispanic population growth over the last few years.
How is the U.S. Border Patrol marketing itself to possible recruits in Southern states? Yup, by sponsoring the #28 NASCAR race car.
These are Italian candies with chocolate inside. You can read a description of them here (scroll down the page quite a bit). I’m not sure what the point of the shiny dot on the forehead is.
Thanks to Denise H. for finding this image! 
NEW! Kathleen T. sent in this photo she took in Segovia, Spain, of a popsicle that had a stereotypical Asian figure on it:
Notice that the “Asian” face is in the shape of a lemon; Kathleen suggested that the idea might be “lemon = yellow = Asian.”
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Despite all kinds of “truces” and “promises” in the media lately about “leaving race and gender out” of the democratic primaries, gender and race are obviously a part of this presidential election cycle.
But, here’s a newsflash: even when the candidates are all white men, gender and race are STILL a part of the decisions made about who should be president.
Think back to 2004 for a moment– remember all those political cartoons criticizing Kerry for being too “French” (as opposed to American Cowboy) and generally feminizing his image (feminine = bad for politics) in political cartoons.
I’m fascinated by the anti-Hillary Clinton facebook groups. There are dozens of these groups, but four groups have the most members.
- Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich– 30,000+ members
- Anti Hillary Clinton for President ’08– 65,000+ members
- Stop Hillary Clinton: One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary– 700,000+ members
- Life’s a Bitch, Why Vote for One?– 14,000+ members
So this morning I spent some time looking at the images that dominate these groups. The images these groups use to criticize Clinton as a presidential candidate make it pretty clear that sexism is alive and well (beyond the protesters asking Clinton to iron their shirts)– and that gendered ways to talk about politics are as cogent as ever! Here’s a smattering for you– there are so many I couldn’t possibly post them all!
And the intersection of race and gender…
