Christopher F. brought our attention to how the release of the four Chinese Uighurs from Guantanmo is being framed in the media. Uighurs are a minority group in China, often facing persecution for being Muslim. These three men had fled China as a result and were detained after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. They were found innocent in 2003. Now, after years at Guantanamo, they were released and resettled in Bermuda, since there were fears that they could not safely be returned to China. Some images of them in their new home (from USA Today):

What brought Christopher’s attention to the coverage of the Uighurs was a news segment he saw on MSNBC. The Huffington Post has a video of the segment (I can’t figure out how to embed it) and quotes part of the discussion by Tamron Hall:

But first from Gitmo to Bermuda, should former detainees, the ones you’re looking at there, be living what seems to be a pretty good life on one of the most beautiful islands some say in the world?

Another MSNBC host, Andrea Mitchell, said the following in a segment earlier in the day:

Let me talk about Guantanamo: you raised the point about the murky legal situation, one upshot of that is that we’ve got four Uighurs who are Muslim minority from China who are now basically getting ice cream and lolling about on the white sand beaches of Bermuda. It’s sort of incongruous! To see these four men in their polo shirts, from Guantanamo, eating ice cream in Bermuda…I mean, look at that picture! I’m not sure you can see it, but one of the Uighurs is swimming in the ocean. The first time, we’re told, that they had ever been to the ocean. Is this a good outcome?

Over on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart echoed some of these ideas:

Christopher says, about the photos above,

These images humanize something that has been, for the past 7 or so years, totally inhuman and alien. I find it highly disturbing that even the image of these former detainees enjoying their deserved freedom (we have know for a while now that these people were not complicit in any plot against the United States) is somehow anathema.

Indeed. These are men who were falsely imprisoned as a supposed threat and then remained at Guantamo for years since they were declared innocent and no threat to the U.S. Why are images of them enjoying themselves and living in a nice house and eating ice cream so problematic and offensive? You know, this is just my thought, but if you imprison someone for years for no good reason, really, the least you can do is give them a nice place to live where they won’t be persecuted. And it’s not like they chose Bermuda: when you imprison people for supposed links to terrorist groups, it turns out that when you release them, other countries aren’t eager to take them (and clearly, they can’t be released in the United States because…well, because people in the U.S. still consider them threatening, despite what the government might say). Bermuda was one of the few places that would agree to take them. How the particular house or luxurious ice cream was chosen, I don’t know.

There seems to be an underlying feeling here that the Uighurs simply don’t deserve such nice living conditions, even if we did arrest them, fly them around the world, and detain them for years. Instead of focusing on the fact that several innocent people were released, and that they remained in Guantanamo for six years after the U.S. said they weren’t actually a threat, there’s concern that they were released in a place so nice. If most American citizens don’t live like that, why should they get to? I can’t help but wonder how the coverage might have been different if they were resettled in a poor nation and were shown living in a run-down house.

Toban B. sent us a link to a video that condenses 24 hours of air traffic into a minute and 12 seconds. It’s fascinating to see where planes are going to and coming from on a typical day:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks to Dmitriy T.M. for sending this speech by Joss Whedon (responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer) at an Equality Now event. His comments begin at 2:00 (after an introduction by Meryl Streep):

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Kristin W., Brad W., and Deb G. sent us the Bacardi Breezers “Get an Ugly Girlfriend” ad campaign, discussed over at Jezebel. The message? Ladies, if you want to look better, get an ugly female friend to stand next to:

There are profiles of the various ugly girlfriends you can get:

Of course this ad campaign suggests to women that the most important thing about them is how they look. But, more insidiously, as Sweet Machine points out, it places women “in competition with other women for male attention” in a world where “self-esteem is a zero-sum game.”

This is how patriarchy creates in-fighting among women: If men have the power, and the only way to get power is to get men, then women feel compelled to try to get (the attention of) a man (or men).  Other women are their competition.

Women are stereotyped as bitchy and catty as if it is an inherent feature of femininity when, in fact, women’s subordination to men creates the conditions that force them into competition.

We see it happen live in this horrendous clip from Battle of the Bods.

More examples of cultural endorsements of the idea that women and girls are always in competition with one another here, here, and here.

UPDATE: Commenter Joanne pointed out an update, via Shapely Prose:

Sean-Patrick Hillman of bacardi.com comments below:

June 21, 2009

Thank you for taking the time to post your story regarding Bacardi Breezer.

The campaign you are referring to ran in 2008 for two months in Israel. Even though Bacardi Breezer is not sold or distributed in the United States, we immediately notified the appropriate Bacardi affiliate and had this website shut down.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

I’m a bit confused, though–I did a quick google search, and Bacardi Breezer seems to be sold in a lot of places, including Canada and the U.S., but maybe they’re imported by a third party and not directly by Bacardi? I know I’d heard the name Bacardi Breezer before I saw these ads. Apparently I’m going to have to go on a tour of local liquor stores to see. What a horrible life I lead.

And I also agree with several of the other commenters–how awful must it be to be cast as an “ugly” person?

Because meat is what men eat…

See also this BEEF! BEEF! BEEF! Campbell’s Soup ad.

From MultiCultClassics.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Matthew Yglesias featured two figures from the Pew Economic Mobility project.  They show how long different types of people tend to take to recover from income loss (within 1 year, 2-4 years, or 5-10 years).

This figure shows that people who are older, have more education, or are poor, working, or middle class have a harder time recovering from tough economic times:

This figure shows how marital status is related to recovery.  Most dramatically, people who get married before recovering financially (especially men), women who split with a partner, and women who are single have a more difficult time recovering.

Something to consider: As several commenters noted, I’m not sure how they defined “recovery” from income loss.  If you never made a lot of money to begin with, does recovery simply mean returning to a state of low income?  Then, does the income for an initially high income person need to return to its high state for it be counted as a “recovery”?

(Just FYI: I revised my interpretation of these figures.  Thanks to the early commenters who noticed I’d misinterpreted.  It was really late at night when I wrote this post!)

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Are sounds gendered? Yes. Does the gender of sounds change over time?

From the surprisingly interesting blog of Laura Wattenberg comes these graphs showing that popular masculine endings to names has changed over time.

1906:

1956:

No dramatic changes from 1906 to 1956, but then, in 2006, n is triumphant!

2006:

Laura also offers some data showing how boy and girl name endings have shifted since the 1880s:

This figure, relatedly, shows trends in the endings of girl babies’ names in France:

Graphs from here, here, and here. Hat tip to Montclair Socioblog.

UPDATE: In the comment thread, Sator Arepo notes:

Sounds are not equal to letters. The graphs are misleading in that they (with exception of the French language spectrograph-like pictures) they equate the sound of the end of the name with the appearance of the letter in the written word.

Commenter pfctdayelise notes something similar, above. However, it’s even more misleading in the tables, and would depend widely on the origin of a name whether and how certain letters were pronounced.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Toban B. sent in a link to a clip of a 1935 Department of the Interior movie that includes a scene with African American conservation workers. I couldn’t find an embed code, so you have to click over, but the clip clearly illustrates the “happy-go-lucky,” dancing and singing stereotype of Blacks common to the era. The person who posted the clip says,

The racial stereotyping in this clip is appalling, but not surprising for a 1935 production. Hollywood films of that era also portrayed African-Americans purely for laughs. It was a rare film that showed black people as more than two-dimensional, and when they did – as Hattie McDaniel demonstrated in Gone With The Wind – Hollywood was ready to pat itself on the back.

Of course, Spike Lee’s movie “Bamboozled” implied that this type of stereotypical Black-man-as-happy-man-child-entertainer trope is still alive and well. He’s been criticized for his portrayal, of course, but it’s food for thought.