Katrin brought our attention to a report from the Brookings Institution about the educational levels of immigrants to the U.S., based on data from the 2009 American Community Survey as well as Census data between 1900 and 2000. As a group, immigrants have significantly more education than common stereotypes might lead you to believe. In fact, there are now more immigrants with at least a 4-year college degree than with less than a high-school diploma (27.8%):

Overall, immigrants still have lower levels of education than native-born U.S. citizens. While the proportion with a college degree is comparable (32% of the native-born and 29.6% of immigrants have a 4-year degree or higher), the immigrant population is much more likely to have less than a high school diploma (27.8% vs. 7% for the native-born).

The proportion of immigrants falling into the high- or low-education categories varies significantly by destination city. The study authors calculated the ratio of high-skill to low-skill immigrants  (where skill is defined as education level, as in the graph above) for the 100 largest metro areas. High-skill destinations have more than 125 college-educated immigrants per 100 immigrants with less than a high school diploma; low-skill cities have fewer than 75. A city was defined as “balanced” if there were between 75 and 125 high-skill immigrants per 100 low-skill immigrants.

A map of the ratios shows that of the 100 largest metro areas, those in the eastern half of the U.S. (especially the Northeast) attract more educated immigrants, while the Great Plains and West (especially California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) have lower-educated immigrant population. Balanced-skills cities are concentrated in the Midwest and Southeast:

Not surprisingly, cities with universities attract more  highly-educated immigrants, while those with economies based on agriculture or food processing are more likely to be destination sites for immigrants with less education.

Here’s a video of one of the authors, Audrey Singer, discussing the study and its implications:

You can also see the detailed information about the 100 largest metro areas. In the areas studied here, immigrants with less than a high school diploma are disproportionately from Mexico (57.3%, but with wide geographic variation — Mexican immigrants make up only 6.2% of low-skill immigrants in Buffalo but 85.8% in Austin), lack English skills (only 16.4% are proficient), and are unlikely to be naturalized citizens (26.2%). Among immigrants with a college degree, 5.5% are Mexican, 71.5% are English-proficient, and 54% are naturalized citizens. The full report has a detailed discussion of the factors at play here–historical immigrant settlement patterns, changes in which cities are gateways for arriving immigrants, and so on. If you’re interested in immigration issues and how they impact economic development, it’s definitely worth a read.

Lindy hopper Jerry Almonte sent along a clip of the first place-winning routine in a division at the European Swing Dance Championships.  Lindy hop is a partner dance invented by African American youth in Harlem dancing to swing music in the early 1930s.  It’s near and dear to my heart; I’ve been a lindy hopper for 13 years (minus that year with a broken leg).

Modern day lindy hop raises difficult questions.  In a post I wrote when the beloved Frankie Manning died, titled Race, Entertainment, and Historical Borrowing, I tried to capture the conundrum. I’m going to quote myself extensively, only because this is a tricky issue that deserves real discussion:

Though lindy hop was invented by African Americans, lindy hoppers today are primarily white.  These contemporary dancers look to old movie clips of famous black dancers as inspiration.  And this is where things get interesting:  The old clips feature profoundly talented black dancers, but the context in which they are dancing is important. Professional black musicians, choreographers, and dancers had to make the same concessions that other black entertainers at the time made. That is, they were required to capitulate to white producers and directors who presented black people to white audiences. These movies portrayed black people in ways that white people were comfortable with: blacks were musical, entertaining, athletic (even animalistic), outrageous (even wild), not-so-smart, happy-go-lucky, etc.

So what we see in the old clips that contemporary lindy hoppers idolize is not a pure manifestation of lindy hop, but a manifestation of the dance infused by racism. While lindy hoppers today look at those old clips with nothing short of reverance, they are mostly naive to the fact that the dancing they are emulating was a product made to confirm white people’s beliefs about black people.

…

So we have a set of (mostly) white dancers who (mostly) naively and (always) wholeheartedly emulate a set of black dancers whose performances, now 70 to 80 years old, were produced for mostly white audiences and adjusted according to the racial ethos of the time.  On the one hand, it’s neat that the dance is still alive; it’s wonderful to see it embodied, and with so much enthusiasm, so many years later.  And certainly no ill will can be fairly attributed to today’s dancers.  On the other hand, it’s troubling that the dance was appropriated then (for white audiences) and that it is that appropriation that lives on (for mostly white dancers).  Then again, without those dancers, there would likely be no revival at all.  And without those clips, however imperfect, the dance might have remained in obscurity, lost with the bodies of the original dancers.

It is this paradox that stirred Jerry to send along the clip of Dax Hock and Sarah Breck performing a routine that was an homage to a famous clip from the movie Day at the Races, featuring Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. Here’s the original clip from 1937:

And here’s Dax and Sarah’s routine (Dax, btw, is in a fat suit; an entirely different and equally troublesome issue):

To be as clear as possible, I do believe 100% that Dax and Sarah have no intention to mock and, as essentially professional lindy hoppers, I doubt very much that they’ve never considered the ideas I’ve explained above.

Dax and Sarah are not my target here and, besides, they’re just two people.  All conscious lindy hoppers struggle with these issues.  My target, and my own personal struggle, is the entire endeavor.

I leave this as an open question for discussion, and one that extends far beyond lindy hop to jazz, blues, rap, and  hip hop music; other forms of dance, like break dancing and pop and locking; and even the American obsession with spectating sports that are currently dominated by black athletes.  It also extends far past the relationship between blacks and whites, as Adrienne Keene well illustrates in her blog, Native Appropriations.

How do white people, especially when they’re more or less on their racial own, honor art forms invented by oppressed racial groups without “stealing” them from those that invented them, misrepresenting them, or honoring them in ways that reproduce racism?  You tell me… ’cause I’d like to know.

———————

For more, I’d be thrilled if you read my original post, inspired by the passing of Frankie Manning.

Also worth considering is this beautiful music video (Slow Club, Two Cousins) featuring lindy hoppers Ryan Francoise and Remy Kouakou Kouame performing vintage jazz movement. Is it different? What makes it so (other than production value and the race of the dancers)? Can you articulate it? Or is it tacit knowledge?

Inspired in part by The Spirit Moves?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Dmitriy T.M. sent us a link to some images at the Brookings Institution, based on analysis by William Frey, illustrating the very uneven changes in average of of the population by state in the U.S. Overall, the U.S. population is aging, with rapid growth in the population over age 55 and individuals over age 45 surpassing those aged 18-44, according to the 2010 Census:

But this varies by region of the country. Here’s a map showing growth in the +45 population, illustrating the rapid growth in the Southwest and much of the South:

Nevada had the single highest growth in the 45+ population, with this group increasing by 50% between 2000 and 2010. West Virginia growth comes in last among this group (excluding Washington, D.C.), increasing by 15%. Of course, growth doesn’t tell you anything about the underlying numbers.

Many of the same states that had rapid growth in the 45+ population also saw significant gains in the under-45 range. But unlike with the 45+ population, where every state’s population was stable or growing, a significant number of states actually experienced a loss of the under-45 group:

Again, Nevada’s #1, with 28% growth. Michigan, on the other hand, had an 11% loss.

These patterns have significant implications for individual states — everything from estimating how many elementary schools they’ll need to build in the future, to how many health care workers they’ll need to educate or attract, to a state’s or region’s ability to attract different types of employers, and so on. And states will be grappling with these issues under very different circumstances. It’s one thing to, for instance, address the potential health-care needs of the elderly in a state where every age group is increasing; it’s another if your working-age population is fleeing.

Brookings has a much more detailed interactive map that includes information on aging; you can look at the dependency ratio (population under 18 or over 65 per person of working age) and look at age changes by major metro areas in addition to states.

Renée Yoxon sent along a performance by Patina Miller singing Random Black Girl.  It’s about how new musicals all just so happen to include a soulful, sassy, big-voiced, big-bottomed black girl in the ensemble (I’m looking at you, Glee).

My favorite part is at 3:45.

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

HAPPY JULY!

If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll have noticed three new members of the Sociological Images team.  We’re so pleased to announce that Philip N. Cohen, Caroline Heldman, and Jay Livingston have joined on as regular Contributors.  Each has a bustling public intellectual presence of their own and we’re thrilled that they’re blogging for SocImages!

Philip N. Cohen, PhD is a Sociology professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  He writes about family, work, and inequality professionally, and at his fabulous blog, Family Inequality.

Jay Livingston, PhD is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University.  His expertise is in social psychology, culture, and crime.  He blogs at the equally fabulous Montclair SocioBlog, where he also does great work teaching science literacy with his posts about statistics.

Caroline Heldman, PhD teaches Politics at Occidental College.  She is an expert on the presidency and gender in politics, featured in the new documentary Miss Representation.  She’s also an intrepid investigative journalist and represents the liberal point of view on Fox programs weekly.

Please welcome them with your always incisive commentary!

AROUND THE INTERNET:

After Gwen posted my talk on hook up culture here at SocImages, it was picked up by BoingBoing (to my excitement!).  After seeing the talk, Ben Privot at The Consensual Project asked me to do a quick interview on deconstructing cultural narratives about sexuality.

Caroline, our new Contributor, published two essays exposing the culturally and politically corrupt response to a rape in Silsbee Texas.  You can read abridged versions at the Ms. blog (here and here) or her unedited version at her blog.

Gwen was all over the internet this month: on About for a story about Arnold Schwartzenegger’s Love Child Scandal, on the Huffington Post about a racially-charged Dove Ad, and on a local Las Vegas NPR station offering some perspective on home buying and the recession.

Finally, I was also tickled to see my post about the “obscene” Dossier cover featuring a feminine male model used in a Newsy video report about the controversy.

WHERE ELSE WE ARE…

This is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter and Facebook.  You can learn more about your editors at my website and Gwen’s.

Oh and, um, I totally joined twitter this week!  And you can follow Philip Cohen and Caroline Heldman too.  :)

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.

In Sunday’s Times, David Leonhardt, who usually patrols the economics beat, looks at fashions in baby names. His primary focus is the rapid decline in old-fashioned names for girls. The “nostalgia wave” of Emma, Grace, Ella, and other late-nineteenth-century names, he argues, is over.

Well, yes and no. Sarah and Emma may be in decline, but the big gainer among girls’ names is Sophia, an equally nostalgic name that was last popular at the turn of the twentieth century. Isabella, too, (third largest gain) follows the same trend line. Besides, the nostaligia for old names was selective. Emma and Grace may have come back, but many other old-fashioned names never became trendy. One hundred years ago and continuing through the 1920s, one of the most popular girls’ names in the US was Mildred. (You can trace the popularity baby names at the Census website.)

“The lack of recent Jane Austen movies has probably played a role,” says Leonhardt, though he’s probably joking. Not only is Emma still in the top five, but I suspect that films of that persuasion appealed more to the prejudices and sensibilities of post-childbearing women. But the media do have an impact. In Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner showed how fashions in names often trickle down. The Sophias and Isabellas become stylish first among the upscale and educated; it may be several years, even decades, before they became more widely popular. But the media/celebrity channel can bypass that slow trickle. As Leonhardt says, how else to explain the boom in Khloe?

Similarly, Addison, the second biggest gainer, may have gotten a boost from the fictional doctor who rose from “Gray’s Anatomy” to her own “Private Practice.” In the first year of “Gray’s Anatomy, the name Addison zoomed from 106th place to 28th. The name is also just different enough from Madison, which had been in the top ten for nearly a decade. Its stylishness was fading fast among the fashion-conscious.

Madison herself owed her popularity to the media. She created a big “Splash” soon after the film came out. As Tom Hanks says in the scene below, “Madison’s not a name.” (Stop at the punchline at 3:23 — “Good thing we weren’t at 149th street.” Transcript after the jump).

At the time, the Hanks character was correct. Before “Splash” (1984) Madison was never in the top 1000. The next year, she was at 600. Now she has been in the top ten for nearly fifteen years, and at number two or three for half those years. (There have not yet been any Madisons in my classes. I suspect that will change soon.)

Boys’ names seem governed by somewhat different rules, with less overall variation, though recent trends are towards names with a final “n” (four out of the five big gainers in the chart above) and Biblical names.

In short, these recent changes in girls’ names aren’t about nostalgia.   Name trends are like fashion trends, they come and go. And, like fashion, name trends can be media driven, especially now that media can short-circuit the slower class diffusion process.

Transcript of the Splash joke after the jump:

more...

I argued earlier that Avatar was not a story about a heroic people, the Na’vi, but a white savior.  I summarized:

Sully is not only a superior human being, he is also a superior Na’vi. After being briefly ostracized for his participation in the land grab, he tames the most violent creature in the sky, thereby proving himself to be the highest quality warrior imaginable per the Na’vi mythology.  He gives them hope, works out their strategy, and is their most-valuable-weapon in the war. In the end, with all Na’vi contenders for leadership conveniently dead, he assumes the role of chief… and gets the-most-valuable-girl for good measure. Throngs of Na’vi bow to him.

Avatar was heralded as a break-through movie for its technological achievements, but its theme is tired.  With the aim of pointing to how Avatar simply regurgitated a strong history of white, Western self-congratulation, Craig Saddlemire and Ryan Conrad re-mixed the movie with other similar movies, including Blind Side, Dancing with Wolves, Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Out of Africa, Stargate, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

They go through several features of these narratives: awe at the “native” landanimalspeople, the decision that they are helpless and doomed without White, Western intervention, the designation of a White savior who devotes him or herself to their rescue, native self-subordination, and more.  It’s pretty powerful. Thanks to Lizzy Furth for sending the video along!

See also: Formula for a successful American movie.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

I recently argued that the blog, Born This Way, falsely suggested may give the impression that dressing or acting in ways consistent with the other sex when you are a child is a True Sign that you are gay.  This is obviously not the case, as almost all of us can find a photo from our childhood in which we’re breaking gender norms; it also conflates gender performance and sexual orientation (leaving out “lipstick lesbians” and “butch” gay men) and it locks the GLBTQ movement into a biological argument for acceptance, an argument I believe is short-sighted.

The idea that wearing a dress or seeming girly is a sign that one is gay is also completely ahistorical. If wearing a dress as a child means boys are gay, then there should have been essentially no straight men for much of American history.  Until the 1920s, infants and small children, whether male or female, were dressed and looked alike, often in long hair and dresses (source: Jo Paoletti).  Behold, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945):

Roosevelt may or may not have been gay then, but this outfit and hairdo certainly cannot be read to suggest that he was, at least not anymore than it can for young people and adults today.

Idea and photo borrowed from Family Inequality.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.