Race, obviously.

The other day I wondered what issues offered potential for the left-side party to raid the right-side for some voters. But that’s abstract compared to this actual election. This is my thought on what happens if it comes down to Trump and Clinton.

John Cassidy at the New Yorker runs through some speculation about how Trump could win a general election. It seems to boil down to bringing in enough White working-class voters to win Rustbelt states that Obama won like Michigan (Obama +9.5%), Pennsylvania (Obama +5.2%), and Ohio (Obama +1.9%). Setting aside his prospects among Whites, I’m very skeptical he can win those states (or some others) with basically no Black and very few Latino votes.

To show the depth of ill will between Trump and African Americans, here are the feeling thermometer distributions from the 2016 ANES Pilot Study, taken in late January. People were asked to rate candidates from 0 (very cold, unfavorable) to 100 (very warm, favorable).

Lots of people hate Trump, but no group hates him like African Americans (other variables, like age and education, perform as expected, but nothing is as strong). Obama got something more than 90% of Black vote in 2012. It’s hard to see even 10% of Black voters going for Trump. Especially given Hillary Clinton as an opponent. She might not inspire the same turnout as Obama, but she’s very popular among Black voters. Here are her thermometers:

That Black Clinton thermometer is a basically a mirror-image of the one for Trump. The poor feeling toward Clinton among Whites is obviously a problem, but I still think Blacks and Hispanics can sink Trump.

For what it’s worth, the racial feeling seems mutual. ANES also asked the feeling thermometer about Blacks. Here are the White feelings toward Blacks, adjusted for age, gender, and education level — according to their feelings toward Trump:

The linear trend, which is highly significant, is about one-eighth of a point down on Blacks for every point up on Trump. That’s America for you – even though Trump is mostly going after immigrants and Muslims in this election, racism is always also about the Black-White thing.

(Follow the elections tag for the series.)

Disclaimer: I’m not a political polling expert, this isn’t real research and it hasn’t been reviewed, and I could be completely wrong.

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality, where this post originally appeared. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

Law professor and critical race scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw developed the term” intersectionality” to draw attention to the way that all of our socially salient identities work together to shape the stereotypes that apply to us. The experience of being black, for example, is shaped by gender, just as the experience of being a man is shaped by race.

Once a person has internalized an intersectional lens, the old model — epitomized by the famous phrase “all the women are white, all the blacks are men” — can be jarring. It has a way of making certain kinds of people and their experience invisible. In the above case, women of color.

At this weekend’s debate, Bernie Sanders made exactly one of these jarring statements in response to an inquiry about “racial blind spots.”

When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car.

I imagine poor white people, middle class blacks, and women everywhere sat up and were like “What!?”

Author Joy Ann Reid noted on twitter that Sanders was conflating race and class, making poor white and middle and upper class black people invisible. Most African Americans are not poor and most poor people are white. She noted, as well, that white immigrants have lived in what we call the “ghetto” for much of American history.

I’ll add that one doesn’t need to be black to get hassled when walking down the street, as most women of all races can attest. Or, for that matter, how about being a feminine-presenting or gender queer man? And being dragged out of a car is something that happens to black people who are being accosted by the police, but also those who are being victimized by violent boyfriends or husbands.

Ironically, Sanders was saying that his racial blind spot was not being able to fully understand the black experience, but he revealed a different blind spot: intersectionality.

The comment starts at about a minute, twenty seconds:

At the history of sexuality blog Notches, Rachel Hope Cleves reminds us that this isn’t the first time the size of an American president’s penis has been politicized.

Thomas Jefferson defended the size of American men’s penises, including presumably his own, in Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1785. He was countering a claim made by naturalist Comte de Buffon, who argued that the American climate shrunk men’s genitals and made them asexual and impotent.

“Poppycock!” wrote Jefferson (I’m paraphrasing), but literally, he said, the Native American, as well as transplants to the continent, was “neither more defective in ardor, nor impotent with his female.”

Jefferson’s penis would later become the subject of political scandal after America learned that a woman he enslaved, Sally Hemings, had given birth to several of his children. A cartoon portrayed him as a cock — and Hemings as a hen — this time suggesting that Jefferson was too virile to be president.

Cartoon from American Antiquarian:

Whether Trump is too virile, or not virile enough, is still up for debate.

On February 14th, 1920, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt founded the League of Women Voters. The League would go forward where the suffrage movement left off, thanks to the passage of the 19th amendment granting the right to vote to women.

Before that day, suffragists had used Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to spread their message. This 1915 valentine suggests that there will be no love on Valentine’s Day until women get the right to vote:

This 1916 valentine suggests that women love men who stand up for their right to vote:

And this one from 1918 suggests that if men really loved women, they’d give them suffrage.

Happy early Valentine’s/League of Women Voters’ Day!

Via Ms. Magazine; images borrowed from the League of Women Voters.

Cultural and Historical Variation

• “Vinegar Valentines”: Happy Valentine’s Day, I Hate You
• Love, Business, and Valentine’s Day in Pakistan
• Valentine’s Day in Japan
• Before Love: Puritan Beliefs about Sex and Marriage
• Valentine’s Day as Youth Rebellion in India

Race/Ethnicity

• Racist Vintage Valentine’s Day Cards: My Cheap Scottish Valentine
• Racist Vintage Valentine’s Day Cards: American Indians
• Racist Vintage Valentine’s Say Cards: Asians and Asian Americans
• Racist Vintage Valentine’s Day Cards: Africans and African Americans

Heteronormativity

• Have a Very Straight Valentine’s Day

Compulsory Coupling:

• Fit in by Finding Someone, says Frito Lay
• The Social Construction of Solitude

Gender

• The Feminization of Love and Masculinization of Sex (pictured)
• Violent Metaphors in Vintage Valentine’s Day Cards
• Do Men Want Flowers?
• The Sexes are “Opposite”
• Steak and a BlowJob Day (for men)
• Pretty Girls Get Lots of Stuff

Marketing:

• Buy Flowers or You’re a Dipshit, says FTD Florists
• Measuring Love with $$$
• Men are Loved and Women are Property
• Valentine’s Day as Sex-For-Gift Exchange

Consumption:

• Do You Know that Valentine’s Day is Coming? Do you? DO YOU!?
• The Sweet Smell of Environmental Degradation
• Love for Sale with Dogboy and Mr. Dan

In New Orleans, it’s Mardi Gras! Everywhere else, it’s Tuesday.

If you’re not in the middle of the revelry, enjoy these Mardi Gras posts from previous years:

• Why are there so many Mardi Gras parades?
• The baby dolls of Mardi Gras
• The flambeaux: A history of race, gender, and fire on Mardi Gras
• The Order of Myths: Race and Mardi Gras in Mobile
• Where Mardi Gras beads come from
• The best Mardi Gras ever: The 1979 police strike
• Mardi Gras krewes, tourism, and segregation
• Race, class, and collective Mardi Gras memory

On Mardi Gras mornings before dawn, members of the North Side Skull and Bones Gang prowl the streets. It’s a 200 year old tradition belonging to African American residents of the city. They first prowled in 1819.

Members of the gang dress up like ominous skeletons. At nola.com, Sharon Litwin writes:

Because the origins of the Gang were with working class folk who had little money for silks and satins, the skeleton suits are made from everyday items and simple fabrics. Baling wire (to construct the shape of the head) along with flour and water to bind together old newspapers, create the head itself.

Their message is to “warn [people] away from violence” — says the North Side Chief, Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes — especially young people, and especially gun and domestic violence. He explains:

The bone gang represents people… waking people up about what they’re doing in life, if they don’t change their lifestyle. You know. We’re like the dead angels. We let you know, if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re gonna be with us.

Up before most residents, members of the gang cause a ruckus. They sing songs, bang on doors, and play-threaten their neighbors.

Here’s some footage:

A New Vision and a Hiatus:

Sociological Images turned 8 this year. It’s been a long, busy, and exciting journey and my own writing has been front-and-center for much of that time. Moving forward, my hope is to step back into more of an editor role, helping established scholars bring attention to their research, giving newer scholars a platform, and helping other sociology bloggers reach a wider audience. Essentially, I would like to use this site as an amplifier, broadcasting as many sociologists as I can as widely as possible by either cross-posting or using the SocImages social media reach. So, to all the sociologists out there, look out for more requests to re-print, please don’t hesitate to pitch me ideas, and feel free to send me things to share!

But… not yet. SocImages is taking its first hiatus. My book deadline is March 1st, so I’m taking two months off to polish the draft. See you all in 30 days!

Visits:

We rounded out the year with over 2,900,000 visits and nearly 4,000,000 page views.  We are proud and honored to enjoy almost 80,000 Facebook friends, over 23,000 Twitter followers, plus nearly 15,000 on Pinterest and over 24,000 on Tumblr.  A huge thank you to everyone for your enthusiasm and support!

Highlights:

• Sociological Images was granted the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award!
• With Doug Hartmann and Chris Uggen, I edited what might be sociology’s first anthology of blog posts, featuring bloggers from all over the sociology blog-o-sphere. It’s called Assigned: Life with Gender. Coming soon to this series!
• I had the incredible pleasure of debuting a talk about SocImages as a plenary at the Midwest Sociological Society meetings! (Now there’s one for undergrads, too!)
• SocImages was quoted in Peggy Orenstein’s Girls & Sex, Kate Harding’s Asking For It, and the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s Our Bodies, Ourselves!
• Jon Smadja made us mobile friendly!
• We were on NPR; covered or quoted in Autostraddle, the Smithsonian, The New Yorker, and New York Magazine; and I had an editorial in the Washington Post!
• Rush Limbaugh called me a “professorette”!

Best of 2015!

Over the last week we’ve featured my favorite and your most loved posts from 2015.  Here’s the list in case you missed it:

Reader’s Choice

• Where do negative stereotypes about feminists come from (5,200+ likes)
• Who farts? And who cares? (4,600+ likes)
• Five reasons why gendered products are a problem (3,800+ likes)
• Why don’t men kick each other in the balls? (3,300+ likes)
• Mass shootings in the U.S. are on the rise (2,400+ likes)
• Lumbersexuals and white heteromasculine pageantry (1,780+ likes)
• The corrupt economics behind Greece’s troubles (1,700+ likes)
• Who really runs the AirBnBs? (1,700+ likes)
• Are economics majors anti-social? (1,600+ likes)
• https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/11/03/man-buns-as-cultural-appropriation/ (1,400+ likes)
• Media spin on violence against police (1,400+ likes)
• Why lesbians and gay men don’t share space (1,300+ likes)
• What is a world in which commercials make you cry? (1,100+ likes)
• Why it was easy for Rachel Dolezal to pass as black (1,000+ likes)
• Why do people hate the word “moist”? (1,000+ likes)

Editor’s Picks

• What is creepiness?
• The unbearable daintiness of women who eat with men
• The iron cage in binary code: How Facebook shapes your life chances
• Don Draper and the pursuit of loneliness
• The trouble with American views of female genital cutting
• Powerful people are sensitive to injustice, but mostly when they are its victims
• A short history of trophy hunting in America
• Is Justin Beiber’s “What do you mean?” just as bad as Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”?
• Slave families’ desperate efforts to reunite during Reconstruction

Happy New Year everyone!  Here’s to wonderful things in 2016!