Pam Oliver sent in this graph that shows disparities in Blacks’ and Whites’ new prison sentences:

While blacks are more likely to be sentenced for all the offenses shown, clearly drug offenses stand out as the area with the biggest racial disparity in prison sentences. The other thing that stands out is the huge jump that occurred in the late 1980s and how much higher the disparity was by the 1990s than in the 1980s. Either African Americans suddenly started doing a whole lot more drugs, Whites stopped doing them altogether…or Blacks started getting arrested and sentenced at a much higher rate than Whites for drug offenses.

From an article by Oliver:

…the rise in imprisonment since the 1970s is not explained by crime rates, but by changes in policies related to crime…Determinate sentencing, which eliminates judicial discretion, longer sentences for drug offenses, increases in funding for police departments and large increases in prison capacity, the exacerbation of racial tensions and fears following the civil rights movement and the riots of the 1970s, and the politicization of crime as an election issue all seem to have played some role.

In Focus 21 (3) pp. 28-31 Spring 2001.

Other sociologists have pointed out that Whites tend to sell drugs inside buildings (houses, dorm rooms, workplaces) to people they know, while Blacks are more likely to engage in open-air sales to strangers. It’s much easier for police to see and arrest people engaged in open-air sales because they’re visible and, being out in public, can often be stopped and frisked without a warrant. Clearly it would be more difficult to know about drug sales taking place in private residences, and there would be more procedural hurdles to searching for them. And when you’re selling to strangers, you’re more likely to see to an undercover cop or to sell to people who don’t really have a problem saying who they bought their drugs from. So the very manner in which they sell makes it much more likely that Blacks will be caught and arrested, even though enormous amounts of drugs are bought and sold by Whites.

You can find a lot more graphs and articles on this topic (including disparities broken down by state) at Pam Oliver’s website. Also see this post about international imprisonment rates. Thanks, Pam!

Oh, and Lisa’s at the American Sociological Association meetings, which is why you’re stuck with just me this week.

Here is an ad put out by the McCain campaign that associates Obama with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton:

What struck me about it is that associating Obama with some young women is a way to imply he’s not a serious candidate (see this post from yesterday on a similar theme). I mean, they could have used, say, Tom Cruise of one of the examples of overwhelming celebrity, but part of the image of the Obama campaign is that many of his followers are sexy but vapid young women. (Also, as far as I’m aware neither Britney Spears nor Paris Hilton have actually been connected to Obama, unlike Scarlett Johansson, who sent him emails; the media frenzy over the idea that he was her “email buddy” eventually forced him to distance himself from any association with her. Why this was such a big deal, I do not know, since there was no indication that the emails were inappropriate in any way.)

Also: Paris Hilton has now become part of our political discourse? Really?

NEW: Marc S. sent in a link to the humorous response from Paris Hilton. It might be a humorous intro to a discussion of the way that we assume that certain types of femininity (particularly the type associated with tanning and liking the color pink) are incompatible with being intelligent or politically aware.

Thanks, Marc!

Today I saw an interesting talk about public reaction to the Humane Society (HSUS) video of cruel treatment of cattle at the Westland/Hallmark slaughterhouse in Chino, California. As you may recall, someone from the Humane Society took a job at the plant and secretly videotaped the practices there for about four months. In late January, 2008, HSUS released the video. Here is a video from the HSUS website that shows images from the original video footage (and yes, it’s a disturbing video, even by my Oklahoma-ranch-raised standards):

The talk I saw today, titled “Westland/Hallmark: When You Don’t Care Enough to Send the Very Best,” by David Holt and Michelle R. Worosz (presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society in Manchester, NH) provided an interesting analysis of how issues get framed in the public. The HSUS undertook this investigation, and released the video, primarily because of concerns about animal cruelty and the mistreatment of cattle, particularly those that could not stand or move on their own.

But as sociologists studying framing and social movements have often noted, once an issue gets out there, organizations can’t control what the public, lawmakers, or the media will make of it, and this case is a good example. Once the news broke, what came to the forefront were food safety issues, particularly the idea that so-called “downer cows” (that is, cows that can’t stand or walk on their own) might have made it into the food supply. Downer cows are a concern because of the (very small) risk that they might be suffering neurological damage from BSE, or Mad Cow disease. After an outcry several years ago downer cows were barred from human consumption, but back in 2007 the USDA quietly relaxed the standards so that downer cows can be slaughtered for human consumption if a Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) veterinarian inspects and passes them.

Anyway, it turns out that this particular meat processor was a major supplier of beef to the nation’s school lunch program. This exacerbated concerns about the (remote) possibility of BSE-infected meat getting into the food supply. And that quickly overwhelmed the animal-cruelty concerns that had motivated the HSUS investigation in the first place. The Congressional hearings and (superficial) changes to processing practices that occurred as a result of the video focused primarily on improving food safety, with little discussion of how animals bound for slaughter are, or should be, treated.

It reminded me of how Upton Sinclair said that, when he wrote The Jungle, that he “aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,” meaning that he’d meant to bring attention to the horrific conditions immigrant workers faced at work but what the public outcry centered on was the idea of rats in their meat.

I thought this might be a good example of how activists try to frame issues but have incomplete control of the framing process once it enters the public domain and may find that media depictions and public discussions of the issue take a very different path than they would have liked.

Halle T. (of Yoga Bear) sent in this example of corporate philanthropy.

Halle says,

Arimidex, a prescription drug for breast cancer has created a site called the “Celebration Chain”. According to their promotion, the “Celebration Chain is a way to honor special women in our lives who have overcome or are fighting breast cancer…”. Users create a virtual doll in honor of someone they know, then send (spam?) it to everyone they know.

I’m always interested in corporate-sponsored philanthropy and the ways in which companies use things like donating to breast cancer research to improve their image. On the one hand, does it really matter who provides the money as long as it goes to a good cause, even if the motivation behind it is PR or marketing? On the other…the corporate giving often requires a purchase, such as when you have to buy yogurt and send in the lids so the company will donate a small amount (though in this case you don’t have to buy anything–you just have to spend time on the drug company’s website making a virtual doll).

The other thing that concerns me is that these programs are usually not very transparent. Halle sums it up nicely:

For every doll created, Arimidex donates $1 to “a breast cancer charity”, up to $25,000. But no where on the site do they disclose which charity; and for all we know, they could consider their R&D team a charitable unit. Arimidex also fails to mention if they donate the revenue or proceeds from the program, i.e. do they take marketing and website development costs out of the amount donated?

For other examples of corporate philanthropy, look here, here, here, here, and here.

Thanks, Halle!

Annie G. sent in this ad for the Baby Wee Wee doll, which was sold in the UK and Ireland for a while but was manufactured by a Spanish toy company (and is also called Piolin Pipi):

Notice that, although it’s girls who are shown playing with the doll, the parent they’re showing it to and playing with is the father, which is pretty unusual. Also, the doll is uncircumcised, which could be used for an interesting discussion of culture and representations of the body–if the doll had been manufactured in the U.S., it almost certainly would have been circumcised, and that’s the image of what penises look like that the kids playing with it would get. I find that more interesting than the gendered element of the ad–the way that the male body is being depicted, how that might be different depending on where the doll was manufactured, and how that reflects cultural norms about circumcision and what a “normal” penis looks like.

Of course, you could also discuss parenting styles and the types of parents who might find this appropriate, and why parents who might find the “girl-style” peeing dolls (i.e., those that “pee” through a hole between their legs) perfectly fine might still be offended by this doll (I’m just guessing that a lot of people would not want to buy this for their kid and might think it’s inappropriate for little girls to be playing with a doll with such a “lifelike” penis, but maybe I’m wrong). And there’s the whole issue of whether different viewers and/or regulators would find this ad appropriate for TV (I’m guessing it wouldn’t run in the U.S. Actually, I’m just gonna make a declarative statement: this ad would not run on TV in the U.S.).

Thanks, Annie!

In her book Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School, Barrie Thorne looks at how children play an active role in socializing themselves and one another. It’s an interesting insight because we often portray children as these passive, empty vessels who are acted upon by adults, the media, and so on, but who play no role in defining or interpreting the world around them (sometimes in ways that are much more rigid and cruel than what adults do).

An example of this is the way that kids often play with toys in ways that aren’t, um, intended by the manufacturers or parents. I mean, Barbie may represent a certain type of femininity, and kids may receive that message and be affected by it…but they often also make Barbie have an awful lot of casual sex, have superpowers, or become horribly deformed after being mutilated (my cousins and I played a game where we tried different ways of popping Barbie’s head off). My point is simply that kids aren’t just passive recipients of a set of messages about the world and, thus, that we can’t always assume that because a toy is “supposed” to reflect a certain cultural ideal that kids are always unambiguously getting that message.

Elizabeth Z. sent in a good example of this when she describes how her daughter plays with some Playmobil figures. Here is a picture of the Silver Knight:

A description from a website selling the figure:

The Playmobil Silver Knight is a perfect addition to your world of Playmobil Toys. He is as strong and valiant as knights come! Riding a black horse and carrying his flag of honor, the Playmobil Silver Knight is ready to take on any battles and enemies that get in his way – and of course he’ll be successful! The Playmobil Silver Knight set includes a knight dressed in silver/purple armor, a black horse in black/purple riding gear, shield, and battle flag.

While this company has very clearly gendered this figurine, on the Playmobil website, the gender is not given–it’s just “Silver Knight.”

Now, my guess is that a lot of parents buying this toy are going to interpret it as a male knight for the simple reason that, you know, knights are guys. The princesses they save are girls. I have no idea what Playmobil intended–if this is supposed to be a gender-ambiguous figure that could be male or female or not (Elizabeth points out the hair is long, and thus “feminine,” by our standards but would have been pretty clearly an acceptable hairstyle for men in medieval times).

But regardless of what Playmobil “means” this toy to be (that is, whether or not they manufactured it to be gender-neutral), kids such as Elizabeth’s daughter are going to do their own interpreting:

I noticed that my daughter’s micro castle world…had two knights, and she called them the boy and the girl. They didn’t to my eye appear to be a boy and a girl — the “girl” had hair in a cut that’s called a “pageboy” for a reason, you know — but I could see why she thought of that way…my [daughter] has an answer she’s happy with to the question about where the princess is; not captive, not sitting at home in a dress, but riding on a horse with a big sword. That works for her.

When we’re talking about kids, toys, and socialization, we should keep in mind that kids can be awfully creative and smart and might not be seeing things the way us adults do.

Thanks, Elizabeth!

One thing I do in my classes is show my students evidence that things that seem very individualistic and unique are often influenced by social patterns to a much higher degree than they’d think. I often bring up the example of baby names. On one level, it’s an extremely personal and individual-(family)-level decision: people pick names they like and that are meaningful to them, and many would deny that larger social influences had anything to do with what they named their child. And yet names come into and out of fashion quite abruptly among lots of people at the same time, indicating that either a whole lot of people somehow independently make the same decision or that there’s a social aspect to baby naming–so naming your baby “Isabel” might not be the totally unique, personal decision you thought.

Well, now I can quantify this. It turns out the Social Security Administration has this nifty little website where you can put in any year since 1880 and find out the most popular names (from the top 20 up to the top 1000) boys’ and girls’ names for that year, including percentages of babies born that year given each name.

Here are the top 10 names for boys and girls in 1916 and 2016.

From 1916:

From 2016:

Only 1 name (William) that was most popular in 1916 was still in the top 10 in 2016. There was also a lot more concentration in 1916 than in 2016. For boys, the top name in 1916 made up 5.4% of names, while in 2016 the most popular name was only 0.9% of all names. For girls it went from 5.7% to 1.0% (I rounded all percentages to the nearest tenth of a percent). Also, in the past there was more clumping in boys’ names than girls’ names, though this is no longer the case. So in addition to just pointing out that preference for names has changed over time, it might be interesting to discuss the increasing emphasis in our culture on trying to have a “unique” name for kids that express their personality, so that there is more diversity in kids’ names today than in the past, and why until recently this was more true for girls than boys.

Jay L. provided a link to this neato site where you can type in any name and get an immediate graphic of its frequency per million babies. Totally addicting!

NEW: Abby sent in a link to Freakonomics Watch with the following explanation:

The other day a friend of mine said he was reading Freakonomics and there is a chapter on baby naming…the chapter presents a theory for how baby names become popular. People of higher education and socioeconomic status tend to seek out unusual names for their babies, which are then increasingly adopted by the masses.  Once the names become popular, cultural elites seek out a new batch of unusual names, and so on.  Based on this theory, the book gives a list of names that they predict will be popular by 2015.

You can find a table tracking the popularity of the Freakonomics predictions here. Abby was embarrassed to see that her 3-month-old son’s name is on the list.

In his book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (2005; New York: Touchstone), James Loewen discusses cities that had a “no Blacks after dark” policy. They were called “sundown towns” because African Americans were actively informed that they should be out of town by sundown; if not, they were subject to arrest or violence. Of course, the purpose of these regulations was to keep Blacks from settling permanently in these towns. If they couldn’t be in town limits after dark, they clearly couldn’t live there. Here is an example of a sundown town: this ad encouraging people to move to Siloam Springs, Arkansas, says, over in the lower right corner, “No Malaria, No Mosquitoes, No Negroes.”

Found here.

NOTE: As Mr. Loewen pointed out in a comment, I had originally said he discussed “cities in the South,” as though that was all his book concentrated on. That was poor wording on my part, as I had been reading the sections of the book that covered some areas in the South I was specifically interested in (particularly Oklahoma). I did not mean to imply that sundown towns existed only in the South or that Mr. Loewen only discusses the South.