A Pew study found that 63% of white and 20% of black people think that Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Darren Wilson was not about race. This week many people will probably say the same about two more black men killed by police, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.
Those people are wrong.
African Americans are, in fact, far more likely to be killed by police. Among young men, blacks are 21 times more likely to die at the hands of police than their white counterparts.
But, are they more likely to precipitate police violence? No. The opposite is true. Police are more likely to kill black people regardless of what they are doing. In fact, “the less clear it is that force was necessary, the more likely the victim is to be black.”
That’s data from the FBI.
This question was also studied by sociologist Lance Hannon. With an analysis of over 950 non-justifiable homicides from police files, he tested whether black people were more likely to take actions that triggered their own murder. The answer was no. He found no evidence that blacks were more likely than whites to engage in verbal or physical antecedents that explained their death.
Castile and Sterling, unlike Brown, were carrying weapons. People will try to use that fact to justify the police officer’s fatal aggression. But it doesn’t matter. Black men and women are killed disproportionately whether they are carrying weapons or not, whether carrying weapons is legal or not. Carrying weapons is, in fact, legal in both Minnesota and Louisiana, the states of this week’s killings. What they were carrying is no more illegal than Trayvon’s pack of Skittles. Black people can’t carry guns safely; it doesn’t matter whether they are legal. Heck, they can’t carry Skittles safely. Because laws that allow open and concealed carry don’t apply the same way to them as they do white people. No laws apply the same way to them. The laws might be race neutral; America is not.
The barbershop holds a special place in American culture. With its red, white, and blue striped poles, dark Naugahyde chairs, and straight razor shaves, the barbershop has been a place where men congregate to shore up their stubble and get a handle on their hair. From a sociological perspective, the barbershop is an interesting place because of its historically homosocial character, where men spend time with other men. In the absence of women, men create close relationships with each other. Some might come daily to talk with their barbers, discuss the news, or play chess. Men create community in these places, and community is important to people’s health and well-being.
But is the barbershop disappearing? If so, is anything taking its place?
In my study of high-service men’s salons — dedicated to the primping and preening of an all male clientele — hair stylists described the “old school” barbershop as a vanishing place. They explained that men are seeking out a pampered grooming experience that the bare bones barbershop with its corner dusty tube television doesn’t offer. The licensed barbers I interviewed saw these newer men’s salons as a “resurgence” of “a men-only place” that provides more “care” to clients than the “dirty little barbershop.” And those barbershops that are sticking around, said Roxy, one barber, are “trying to be a little more upscale.” She encourages barbers to “repaint and add flat-screen TVs.”
When I asked clients of one men’s salon, The Executive, if they ever had their hair cut at a barbershop, they explained that they did not fit the demographic. Barbershops, they said, are for old men with little hair to worry about or young boys who don’t have anyone to impress. As professional white-collar men, they see themselves as having outgrown the barbershop. A salon, with its focus on detailed haircuts and various services, including manicures, pedicures, hair coloring, and body waxing, help these mostly white men to obtain what they consider to be a “professional” appearance. “Professional men… they know that if they look successful, that will create connotations to their clients or customers or others that they work with — that they are smart, that they know what they’re doing,” said Gill, a client of the salon and vice-president in software, who reasoned why men go to the salon.
Indeed the numbers support the claim that barbershops are dwindling, and it may indeed be due to white well-to-do men’s shifting attitudes about what a barbershop is, what it can offer, and who goes there. (In my earlier research on a small women’s salon, one male client told me the barbershop is a place for the mechanic, or “grease-monkey,” who doesn’t care how he looks, and for “machismo” men who prefer a pile of Playboy magazines rather than the finery of a salon). According to Census data, there is a fairly steady decline in the number of barbershops over twenty years. From 1992-2012, we saw a 23% decrease in barbershops in the United Stated, with a slight uptick in 2013.
U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses, www.census.gov.
But these attitudes about the barbershop as a place of ol’, as a fading institution that provides outdated fades, is both a classed and raced attitude. With all the nostalgia for the barbershop in American culture, there is surprisingly little academic writing about it. It is telling, though, that research considering the importance of the barbershop in men’s lives focuses on black barbershops. The corner barbershop is alive and well in black communities and it serves an important role in the lives of black men. In her book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET, political scientist and TV host, Melissa Harris-Perry, wrote about everyday barbershop talk as important for understanding collective efforts to frame black political thought. Scholarsalsofind the black barbershop remains an important site for building communities and economies in black neighborhoods and for socializing young black boys.
And so asking if the barbershop is vanishing is the wrong question. Rather, we should be asking: Where and for whom is the barbershop vanishing? And where barbershops continue as staples of a community, what purpose do they serve? Where they are disappearing, what is replacing them, and what are the social relations underpinning the emergence of these new places?
In some white hipster neighborhoods, the barbershop is actually making a comeback. In his article, What the Barbershop Renaissance Says about Men, journalist and popular masculinities commentator, Thomas Page McBee, writes that these places provide sensory pleasures whereby men can channel a masculinity that existed unfettered in the “good old days.” The smell of talcum powder and the presence of shaving mugs help men to grapple with what it means to be a man at a time when masculinity is up for debate. But in a barbershop that charges $45 for a haircut, some men are left out. And so, in a place that engages tensions between ideas of nostalgic masculinity and a new sort of progressive man, we may very well see opportunities for real change fall by the wayside. The hipster phenomenon, after all, is a largely white one that appropriates symbols of white working-class masculinity: think white tank tops with tattoos or the plaid shirts of lumbersexuals.
When we return to neighborhoods where barbershops are indeed disappearing, and being replaced with high-service men’s salons like those in my book, Styling Masculinity, it is important to put these shifts into context. They are not signs of a disintegrating by-gone culture of manhood. Rather, they are part of a transformation of white, well-to-do masculinity that reflects an enduring investment in distinguishing men along the lines of race and class according to where they have their hair cut. And these men are still creating intimate relationships; but instead of immersing themselves in communities of men, they are often building confidential relationships with women hair stylists.
Media have tended to depict childfree people negatively, likening the decision not to have children to “whether to have pizza or Indian for dinner.” Misperceptions about those who do not have children have serious weight, given that between 2006 and 2010 15% of women and 24% of men had not had children by age 40, and that nearly half of women aged 40-44 in 2002 were what Amy Blackstone and Mahala Dyer Stewart refer to as “childfree,” or purposefully not intending to have children.
Trends in childlessness/childfreeness from the Pew Research Center:
When researchers explore why people do not have children, they find that the reasons are strikingly similar to reasons why people do have children. For example, “motivation to develop or maintain meaningful relationships” is a reason that some people have children – and a reason that others do not. Scholars are less certain on how people come to the decision to to be childfree. In their new article, Blackstone and Stewart find that, as is often the case with media portrayals of contemporary families, descriptions of how people come to the decision to be childfree have been oversimplified. People who are childfree put a significant amount of thought into the formation of their families, as they report.
Blackstone and Stewart conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 women and 10 men, with an average age of 34, who are intentionally childfree. After several coding sessions, Blackstone and Stewart identified 18 distinct themes that described some aspect of decision-making with regard to living childfree. Ultimately, the authors concluded that being childfree was a conscious decision that arose through a process. These patterns were reported by both men and women respondents, but in slightly different ways.
Childfree as a conscious decision
All but two of the participants emphasized that their decision to be childfree was made consciously. One respondent captured the overarching message:
People who have decided not to have kids arguably have been more thoughtful than those who decided to have kids. It’s deliberate, it’s respectful, ethical, and it’s a real honest, good, fair, and, for many people, right decision.
There were gender differences in the motives for these decisions. Women were more likely to make the decision based on concern for others: some thought that the world was a tough place for children today, and some did not want to contribute to overpopulation and environmental degradation. In contrast, men more often made the decision to live childfree “after giving careful and deliberate thought to the potential consequences of parenting for their own, everyday lives, habits, and activities and what they would be giving up were they to become parents.”
Childfree as a process
Contrary to misconceptions that the decision to be childfree is a “snap” decision, Blackstone and Stewart note that respondents conceptualized their childfree lifestyle as “a working decision” that developed over time. Many respondents had desired to live childfree since they were young; others began the process of deciding to be childfree when they witnessed their siblings and peers raising children. Despite some concrete milestones in the process of deciding to be childfree, respondents emphasized that it was not one experience alone that sustained the decision. One respondent said, “I did sort of take my temperature every five, six, years to make sure I didn’t want them.” Though both women and men described their childfree lifestyle as a “working decision,” women were more likely to include their partners in that decision-making process by talking about the decision, while men were more likely to make the decision independently.
Blackstone and Stewart conclude by asking, “What might childfree families teach us about alternative approaches to ‘doing’ marriage and family?” The present research suggests that childfree people challenge what is often an unquestioned life sequence by consistently considering the impact that children would have on their own lives as well as the lives of their family, friends, and communities. One respondent reflected positively on childfree people’s thought process: ‘‘I wish more people thought about thinking about it… I mean I wish it were normal to decide whether or not you were going to have children.’’
Braxton Jones is a graduate student in sociology at the University of New Hampshire, and serves as a Graduate Research and Public Affairs Scholar for the Council on Contemporary Families, where this post originally appeared.
We often think that religion helps to build a strong society, in part because it gives people a shared set of beliefs that fosters trust. When you know what your neighbors think about right and wrong, it is easier to assume they are trustworthy people. The problem is that this logic focuses on trustworthy individuals, while social scientists often think about the relationship between religion and trust in terms of social structure and context.
New research from David Olson and Miao Li (using data from the World Values survey) examines the trust levels of 77,405 individuals from 69 countries collected between 1999 and 2010. The authors’ analysis focuses on a simple survey question about whether respondents felt they could, in general, trust other people. The authors were especially interested in how religiosity at the national level affected this trust, measuring it in two ways: the percentage of the population that regularly attended religious services and the level of religious diversity in the nation.
These two measures of religious strength and diversity in the social context brought out a surprising pattern. Nations with high religious diversity and high religious attendance had respondents who were significantly less likely to say they could generally trust other people. Conversely, nations with high religious diversity, but relatively low levels of participation, had respondents who were more likely to say they could generally trust other people.
One possible explanation for these two findings is that it is harder to navigate competing claims about truth and moral authority in a society when the stakes are high and everyone cares a lot about the answers, but also much easier to learn to trust others when living in a diverse society where the stakes for that difference are low. The most important lesson from this work, however, may be that the positive effects we usually attribute to cultural systems like religion are not guaranteed; things can turn out quite differently depending on the way religion is embedded in social context.
One explanation for Trump’s popularity on the political right is that supporters are attracted to him because they feel invisible to “establishment” candidates and Trump, as an “outsider” is going to “shake things up.” A survey of 3,037 Americans completed by RAND, weighted to match the US (citizen) population, suggests that there is something to this.
About six months ago, RAND asked respondents if they agreed with the statement “people like me don’t have any say about what the government does.” Responses among likely Democratic voters didn’t significantly correlate with support for either Sanders or Clinton and those among likely Republican voters didn’t significantly correlate with support for Rubio or Cruz, but responses did correlate dramatically with a preference for Trump. All other things being equal, people who “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed with the statement were 86% more likely to prefer Trump over other candidates.
“This increased preference for Trump,” RAND explains, “is over and beyond any preferences based on respondent gender, age, race/ethnicity, employment status, educational attainment, household income, attitudes towards Muslims, attitudes towards illegal immigrants, or attitudes towards Hispanics.”
Whatever else is driving Trump voters, a sense of disenfranchisement appears to be a powerful motivator.
Democratic members of the US House of Representatives sat in on the floor of the House, demanding recorded votes on gun control measures. Rep. John Lewis (Georgia) made the speech that launched the effort, and was framed at the center of most of the photos; after all, he has an unrivaled record for participating in such efforts that dates back to the sit-in movement of 1960.
Click image to watch the video:
They’re grandstanding, hoping to the play to the crowd by violating the norms and rules of the House where, under normal circumstances, a member of the minority party can’t do much on matters of policy. Appealing to the public is their best shot to get a vote, but it’s not a very good one; and it’s extremely unlikely that anything gun control advocates in the House want could win majority support in that body. The members sat on the floor in the well of the House, likely the most comfortable surface Rep. Lewis has ever protested on, without much fear of arrest or violence. The presiding officer, always from the majority party, adjourned the session, turning off CSPAN’s cameras – seeking to deny Democrats the audience they seek. But the protesters are livestreaming on a variety of social media. It’s not quite so easy to control the flow of images and information anymore.
The Democratic revolt in the House is yet another response to the mass shooting in Orlando, which once again reminded Americans – and their representatives – that it’s very easy for dangerous people you don’t like to get powerful weapons. The sit-in is also an attempt to escalate the political conflict and make more of the generally fleeting moment of public attention that follows such a tragedy. We’ve all seen it many times before: a mass shooting captures public attention and sets the agenda, but only briefly, and a familiar political ritual plays out: Advocates of gun control hold vigils and make speeches; advocates of gun rights mostly stay silent on matters of policy, and offer thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families. And the moment passes.
In normal political life, when everyone isn’t talking about guns all the time, the gun rights side of the debate enjoys a substantial advantage, particularly visible in the National Rifle Association, which deploys more money, more active membership, and calls upon more well-positioned allies than its opponents, who come and go. Gun control advocates have been “outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned” (to quote Hamilton).
Since the tragic massacre of school children in Newtown, Connecticut, gun control advocates have been building organizations and an infrastructure for action. They have been better able to exploit the moment of a massacre, and less willing to allow their opponents to stall until concern passes.
Last week, Senator Chris Murphy, who previously represented Newtown in the House, staged a filibuster of sorts in the Senate, monopolizing the floor while standing, not sitting, and talking about the need for action. In the upper house, a Senator can hold the floor as long as he can stand and talk. Most Democrats, and a couple of Republicans, joined Senator Murphy for part of 15 hours, offering sympathetic questions and taking up some of the talking. The leadership agreed to hold votes on four gun control bills, and Murphy stopped talking. The next day, the Senate rejected all of them.
Movement on policy? Not so much, and not so fast, but all of this sets up further contest in the November elections.
Meanwhile, other advocates are prospecting another strategy that operates with different rules and on an alternative schedule. Parents of some of the massacred students at Sandy Hook Elementary School have filed a product liability suit against Remington Arms, the company the manufactures and markets the AR-15 Bushmaster, the weapon used in the mass murder. (See Evan Osnos’s report at The New Yorker.) By pursuing their argument about deceptive marketing, they hope to publicize the workings of the arms industry, contributing to a political debate that’s only slowly emerging. America offers many outlets for people to try to organize for change, none of them very easy or fast.
Nothing gun control advocates have tried has affected national policy for more than twenty years. As public concern and political resources grow, however, they keep trying to innovate new approaches, hoping that something works before the next time.
David S. Meyer, PhD, is a professor of sociology and political science at the University of California, Irvine. He blogs at Politics Outdoors, where this post originally appeared, and where he offers comments on contemporary events informed by history and the study of social movements.
“It was ‘Latino night’ at a gay club,” Salvador Vidal-Ortiz wrote. As a sociologist who identifies as a queer Latino man, the intersection of race, gender, and sexual orientation itself was the central story of the Orlando massacre, even as liberal media pundits seemed to fixate on sexual orientation and conservative ones on the identity of the shooter.
In fact, research suggests that racial minorities are far more likely to be victims of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes than whites.
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program collected data on hate crimes against LGBTQ and HIV-affected people (and those perceived to be so). The 1,253 incidents were self-reports collected by local chapters in 12 states. The data isn’t national or representative, so their results should be considered tentative and exploratory and, for what it’s worth, it’s difficult to get good data on hate crimes, so there isn’t a perfect data set out there.
Still, if their data is anywhere close to accurate, the findings suggest that race and citizenship status are central to even an elementary understanding of hate crimes against (perceived) sexual minorities.
While only 38% of the US population identify as people of color (non-white and/or “Hispanic”), the NCAVP study found that 60% of survivors of anti-LGBTQ and anti-HIV hate crimes identified as such. And, while only about 3.5% of the US population is unauthorized, in the country without the required documentation, 17% of survivors reported being undocumented.
The NCAVP allowed the 752 survivors of color to choose more than one race for a total of 931 racial categories. The chart below features the responses (excluding white when white was mentioned alongside a non-white racial category). Latino/a was the racial identity most frequently reported, followed by Black or African American. These two groups made up the vast majority of victims.
Black and Latino/a Americans are the largest racial minorities in the US (at 13% and 17% respectively), which may account for much of the disparity among non-white victims, but probably not all. It’s hard to parse the disproportionality because survivors could choose more than one race. The under-representation of Asians is likely real because being able to choose multiple races would err on the side of over-representation. The federal government considers people who are Arab or Middle Eastern to be White, but that doesn’t throw off the numbers that much.
These statistics, as I said, are likely quantitatively imperfect, but they are likely not qualitatively wrong. Thanks to some combination of discrimination and structural vulnerability, people of color are more likely to be victims of anti-LGBTQ and HIV-status violence. “It was ‘Latino night’ at a gay club.” It matters.
Last month the Washington Post released the results of a poll of self-identified Native Americans. It asked respondents whether they found the Washington Redsk*ns mascot offensive and 90% responded that they did not.
Dr. Adrienne Keene responded at Native Appropriations, where she has been blogging about Native issues, and the mascot issue, for years. She questioned the methods and her discussion is worth a read. It’s both a great example of uninformed/biased polling and an introduction to the politics of Native identity and citizenship.
She also questioned the logic behind doing the survey at all and that’s what I’d like to talk about here. “I just don’t understand why WaPo felt the need to do this poll,” Keene wrote. “We’ve got psychological studies, tribal council votes, thousands of Native voices, and common decency and respect on our side, yet that was not enough.” What is there left to understand?
“This is just an investment in white supremacy, plain and simple,” she concluded.
It’s hard to parse motivations, especially institutional ones, but it’s arguable that the effect of the poll was to shore up white supremacy by undermining decades of Native activism against the mascot, validating white people’s defense of it, and weakening challenges.
The owner of the Redsk*ins, Daniel Snyder, who strongly defends the use of the term, immediately pounced on the poll, writing in a statement:
The Washington Redskins team, our fans and community have always believed our name represents honor, respect and pride. Today’s Washington Post polling shows Native Americans agree. We are gratified by this overwhelming support from the Native American community, and the team will proudly carry the Redskins name.
By mid-afternoon the day the poll was released, Keene noted that there were already over 100 articles written about it, alongside repeated images of the Redsk*ns logo, an anachronistic depiction of an Indian wearing braids and feathers that portrays Native people as historical instead of contemporary.
And the poll very well might be used in the ongoing court battle over whether the Redsk*ns trademark can be pulled (federal law does not allow for trademarking racial slurs, so the fight is over whether the word is a slur or not).
Keene asks, “Who does this serve?”
It’s a good question, but questioning the motivation for the poll is just part of a larger and even more absurd question that anti-Redsk*ns activists are forced to ask: “Why is this even a fight?”
“We just want respect as human beings,” Keene implores. It would be easy to change the name. Quite easy. It just takes a decision to do it. Not even a democratic one. It wouldn’t even be particularly expensive. And fans would get over it. Why is it necessary to keep the name? Who does it serve? There is no doubt that the word redsk*ns is arguably offensive. Many Natives are and have been saying so. Why isn’t that enough? The fact that Snyder and other supporters defend the name so vociferously — the fact that this is even a conversation — is white supremacy, “plain and simple,” too.
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