Over at Everyday Sociology, Janis Inniss posted about interracial relationships and she offered a graph showing 30 years of marriages of white men to black women and black men to white women.  Describing it, she writes:

Looking at the graph below, you will see that the black female/white male pairings of today are about what they were 30 years ago for black male/white female dyads. (The blue line represents black husband/white wife). In other words, today, white men and black women marry at about the same rate that black men and white men married about three decades ago.

So, why would there be a difference in the marriages between white men/black women and black men/white women? I suspect that this has to do with the intersection of gender and race. Consider: according to American cultural stereotypes, black people, both men and women, are more masculine than white people. Black men are seen as, somehow, more masculine than white men: they are, stereotypically, more aggressive, more violent, larger, more sexual, and more athletic. Black women, too, as seen as more masculine than white women: they are louder, bossier, more opinionated and, like men, more sexual and more athletic.

If men are supposed to be sexy by virtue of their masculinity and women sexy by virtue of their femininity, then black men and white women will be seen as the more sexually attractive than white men and black women.  So, while white men may not find black women particularly attractive, white women may very well find black men attractive.  In this is so, we might see the patterns that Inniss demonstrates with her table.

These concrete statistics, as well as the cultural stereotypes that position black women as undesirable, help explain why interracial dating is politicized by many in the black community.  It is not trivial that black men can date outside of their race and black women are less able to do so.  It means that many black women have less opportunity to form long-term relationships.

Chris Uggen put together a pie chart of U.S. arrests (FBI statistics 2007) in order to show that “only a small proportion of arrests involve violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault” (see it here):

In 2007, only 4% of arrests were for violent crimes; another 12% were for crimes like burglary, theft, and arson; drug offenses (including drunkenness and DUIs) accounted for 31% of arrests.

Uggen mentions that he shows this data, in part, to talk about the way in which arrests for drug offenses disrupt families and neighborhoods.  Low income neighborhoods are devastated by the transfer (to put it nicely) of huge numbers of adult males to jails and prisons.  Those men are not overwhelmingly committing violent crimes (as stereotype suggest), but are imprisoned because of the intensive policing of drug crimes in those neighborhoods.  In another post, we put up a table that showed how the “drug war” that started in the 1980s disproportionately affected blacks.

For more on crime and imprisonment, see this post on the ineffectiveness of racial profiling, this table on the percentage of children with parents in prison by race, and this table that compares incarceration rates across countries.

I am curious as to what you, Readers, think of the recent rash of advertising capitalizing on Obama’s “brand.” Here are some examples (found here, here, here, and here).

Budweiser American Ale:

A language school in Israel:

Ikea:

In other posts we’ve suggested that ads that appropriate feminism trivialize gender inequality and ultimatly undermine feminist efforts to attain social justice for women (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).  Like many of the “feminist” ads, these ads seem to be genuinely celebrating Obama’s election.  Do they?  Or do they trivialize everything he claim to stand for and the difficult road ahead for both him and the country? Something in between? Something else entirely?

What do you think?

NEW: Breck C. pointed out the Obama Chia Pet:

Amid a controversy that the Obama Chia pet was racist, Walgreens pulled the product.

The New York Times put together an interactive graphic showing, for each U.S. President’s in augural speech, a word cloud with the most used words, with larger words being used more frequently than smaller words.  Click here to see the whole thing and look at any specific speech.

Here is Obama’s speech.  The words in yellow (“generation,” “crisis,” “hard,” “job,” “women,” and “endure) were used more by Obama than in the average inaugural speech:

This is interesting because it helps us see what is being emphasized by different President’s at different times, and also how language changes. For example, for George Washington in 1789, the word “God” was not among his most used  He does, however, use the word “pecuniary” (of or relating to money) a lot.

Via infosthetics.

In this video, from the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof argues that sweatshops are, despite their drawbacks, the best option for many people in many places… and that anti-sweatshop activists should keep that in mind.

Two readers, Muriel M. M. and Lauren D., sent in this advertisement for the Oslo Gay Festival.

Three thoughts:

First, notice how the narrative reproduces the idea of the goal-oriented sentient sperm.  (We’ve got a fun post on that idea here, and here’s another good one.)  Remember, sperm do not have goals; they do not have ideas; they do not think.  It’s just chemistry.

Second, I think it’s interesting how this video associates anal sex with gay men.  How do gay men have sex?   Well, they must copy straight people as closely as possible.  Therefore, they must put the penis in an opening “down there.”  Ah ha!  I bet they all have anal sex all the time!  I’m sure some gay men do have anal sex, but some surely don’t, and lots of straight couples do!  I bet a lot of lesbian couples find a way to do it, too.  I’m just sayin’.

Third, for what it’s worth: It also occurred to me that, in that this commercial celebrates the infertile sex act, we’ve come a long way from the Christian ethic against wasting your seed.

Shelby Lee Adams is a photographer most famous for his pictures of Appalachia. Here is the cover one of his books:

This post is based on a documentary about Adams work called The True Meaning of Pictures.

Adams has come under severe criticism.  Critics argue that his photography exploits the poverty and disempowerment in Appalachia and reproduces negative stereotypes. The idea the Appalachian people are imbred, dumb, and barbaric was made famous in the movie Deliverance. Here is the (at once charming and chilling) dueling banjo scene:

Critics argue, also, that Adams features the worst conditions of life in Appalachia.  Bill Gorman, the Mayor of Hazard, Kentucky, says:

“I don’t think this is average… I think it’s the kind of thing that sells.”

For example, one picture is argued to be staged. Adams admits to buying the pig and arranging the butchering (the family was too poor to have pigs).

In the documentary, we also see Adams instructing his subjects in how they should stand and what facial expression to make.

A.D. Coleman, an art critic, thinks that images are purposefully made to seem “ominous” and “spooky.”  And, while Adams gets permission from the people in his pictures to use their images, Coleman suggests that they are not necessarily capable of understanding exactly what they are consenting to.  He explains:

“They [the pictures] call for a very sophisticated kind of reading.  And I’m not sure that these people have the education, the visual educational background, to understand how these pictures read.”

Others suggest that that doesn’t give the Appalacians enough credit.

Adams argues that he’s taking pictures of his own culture. In fact, Shelby did grow up in Appalachia, though he was middle class compared to those he photographs.  He also abdicates responsibility for any objective representation.  He says:

“I’m trying to express myself with that culture. So it’s not an objective document. It’s not an object. It’s me. It’s life. And it’s my subjects lives. Who are my friends.”

You can see more of his photographs here and here.

The controversy over Adams’ work brings up some interesting questions regarding art and representation:

1.  What is art for?  Is it for representing things as they are?  Is it for the expression of the artist?  Is it for the furtherance of social justice?

2.  Who decides the meaning of a picture?  Does Adams’ intention count?  Or does the only thing that counts what the viewer sees?  Which viewer?  How many viewers must we predict will judge Appalachia badly upon viewing the pictures before we decide that they undermine social justice efforts (if, in fact, we decide social justice is relevant to art)?

3.  If, in fact, the pictures do represent the poorest Appalachians, does that mean they should not be photographed?  Is that criticism, in itself, a good one?  Who gets to decide who really represents Appalachia?

4.  So what if Adams is making money off of the pictures?  Does this make him a bad person?  Does it make the pictures exploitative?  When things are done for money, does that mean that they are automatically not about love and care?  Many of us, I imagine, sure hope that’s not true for preachers and teachers.  So how do we decide whether the fact that Adams benefits is a problem?

Thoughts?  Other questions we could ask?

Political donations are by law public. With this information, someone has put up a website which shows, on google maps, which households (in the Bay Area, Salt Lake City, and Orange and L.A. Counties) donated money to Proposition 8 (California’s successful proposition to prohibit gay marriage). When you click on the arrow, it also tells you the name of the person in the household, that persons occupation and employer, and how much money they donated. Take a look.

Over at The Daily Dish, one person is quoted saying:

What could possibly be the use of this kind of information, presented in this way? It’s intended to intimidate people into not participating in politics by donating money. Do that, and you’ll end up on some activist group’s map, with hotheads being able to find your street address on their iPhones.

Andrew Sullivan weighs in:

I don’t get the fear. If Prop 8 supporters truly feel that barring equality for gay couples is vital for saving civilization, shouldn’t they be proud of their financial support? Why don’t they actually have posters advertizing their support for discriminating against gay people – as a matter of pride?

Elsewhere on the same website, a reader writes in:

I zoomed in on the cities and neighborhoods where my relatives live.  What do I find but that one of my own aunts, in San Diego, contributed $200 to the Prop 8 cause last summer.  This same aunt, a good person I honestly believe, has even invited me and my partner to stay with in her family’s home. Call me naive, but I’m kind of having trouble wrapping my brain around this seeming contradiction.

This back and forth raises some interesting questions:

Is the map violating some sort of privacy? If not technical, legal privacy, then some sort of cultural agreement about how far is “too far”?

Is the first commenter correct that this is essentially a nefarious act? Should political donations be public in this brave new world of google maps and internet access? Has “public” taken on a whole new meaning here?

Then again, the right to free speech protects a lot more aggressive and heinous things than this google map. Is the first commenter overreacting?

And what of Andrew Sullivan’s comment? Are those who donated proud to see themselves on the map? Or are they ashamed?  When political action is unpopular (not that I’m sure this one is), does that change the nature of participation? Should holders of unpopular political beliefs be protected, perhaps by allowing them to donate anonymously?  Or is shaming part of how cultural change happens and, thus, a perfectly legitimate strategy on behalf of gay rights?

Further, maybe people like the last commenter deserve to know if their friends or relatives are donating to political causes that discriminate against them?  Then again, does the Aunt have any right to be able to donate to the cause without disrupting her relationships with her family?

Thoughts?  Other questions you think this brings up?