education

Katrin sent along links to visual portrayals of how much money goes, or could go, to various causes.  While sometimes it’s hard to comprehend what a billion, or 300 billion, dollars amounts to, these images give us perspective on just where our priorities lie.  The segments below are clipped from the visuals for the U.K. and the U.S. at Information is Beautiful.

The British example nicely illustrates how little social services like education, police, and welfare cost in the big scheme of things.

It also reveals how easy it would be to wave all of the African countries’ debt to Western countries. Just £128 spread out over the West.  Shoot, that’s the money for just a couple of corporate bailouts.

The U.S. example reveals how costly (just) the Iraq war has been.  All of our spending pales in comparison to that expenditure., with the exception of what we have spent bailing out the U.S. economy.

It also reveals that the U.S.’s regular defense budget is almot enough to feed and educate every child on earth for five years, and/or about the same as the revenues of Walmart and Nintendo combined.

If we diverted the money spent on porn, we could save the Amazon… almost five times over.  For that matter, if we gave our yoga money to the Amazon, that would just about do it.

Bill Gates could have paid for the Beijing Olympics and had money left over.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in an interactive breakdown of the US Budget for 2011.  In the figures below, the sizes of the squares represent the proportion of the budget, but the colors refer to changes from 2010 (dark and light pink = less funding, dark and light green = more).  These figures will give you an idea, but the graphic is interactive and there’s lots more to learn at the site.

See also our posts on how many starving children could be fed by celebrity’s engagement rings and where U.S. tax dollars go.

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.

As a white woman between 25 and 44 with a college degree, I am the least likely category of person to be unemployed according to an interactive graphic detailing the joblessness rate for people according to their race, education level, age, and sex (since Jan. ’07).  It is a rather devastating look at social inequality.  I recommend visiting the site to see for yourself, but below are some screen shots with some comparisons.

For comparison, the overall joblessness rate which, as of Sept., was at 8.6 percent:

The joblessness rate for white people (notice it is lower by 1.4 percent):

The joblessness rate for black people is almost twice that of whites:

Let’s add education level.

The joblessness for whites who have not yet graduated from high school is 17.5 percent:

The joblessness for comparative blacks is 10 percentage points higher.  Notice that the scale on the right hand side has changed from 0-20 percent (above) to 0-50 percent:

If we look at young blacks (15-24 years old) who haven’t been able to complete a high school degree, the joblessness rate is 42.7 percent:

If we restrict the numbers to young black men without a diploma, we see a whopping joblessness rate of 48.5 percent.

For comparison, here is the same kid, but white (the joblessness rate is cut in half, but is still huge, even by recession standards):

Ever wonder why young men turn to the underground economy?  Well, this is why.  Somewhere between 25 and 50 percent of them can’t get a job in the “above ground” economy.  What’s a kid to do?  Add in the rational choice of choosing work that pays more than minimum wage, and you’ve got a whole group of young people who participate in illegal activities.

Then, of course, we police black neighborhoods more aggressively than white neighborhoods, convict black people more frequently than white people, and send them to prison more often and with longer sentences (see also this post).

And, too add insult to injury, after all is said and done, a black person without a criminal record is less likely to get a job interview than a white person with one.  A black person with a criminal record: his chance of getting a call back after dropping off a resume (even at a place like McDonalds) is something like five percent.  No I’m not joking.

<sarcasm>Oh, but if they just had a good attitude and learned to talk right, they too could be successful in this life.</sarcasm>

It’s almost too much to bear.

Via Matthew Yglesias.

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.

We talk about a lot on this blog about how things that having nothing to do with genitals are, nonetheless, gendered. Some sociologists are noting that a cluster of ideas related to intellectualism–liking school, studying hard, being smart, reading, and even caring about ideas–have become feminized. As a result, boys and men express less interest in and invest less in school, and girls and women are kicking their asses, scholastically speaking.

We previously featured an advertising campaign for Wrangler that told men to “stop thinking.” And this week Monika P. and Kat B. sent in an ad campaign for Deisel with the slogan: “be stupid.”

There’s a whole commerical (embedded below), but the general thrust is that smart people are doin’ smart stuff, but Diesel is “with stupid.” Because “stupid is the relentless pursuit of a regret free life.”  And while smart people may have “the brains,” stupid people have “the balls.” Besides, they say, “if we didn’t have stupid thoughts, we’d have no interesting thoughts at all.” Which doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but whatever.

And in case that doesn’t convince you, they concede that “smart has the authority,” but stupid has “one hell of a hangover.” Sign me up.

Ultimately the message is that smart people are repressed and confined, they have no fun, and nothing exciting ever happens to them.  So being smart is framed as (but isn’t) the opposite of all these things.   They leave you with the thought: “You can’t outsmart stupid.”

UPDATE! That said, Reader Kyle Munkittrick offers a compelling rebuttal at his blog, Pop Transhumanism.

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.

In several posts, we have problematized past and present school mascots.  In this post, I discuss the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns.

Originally, UL Lafayette’s mascot was a Bulldog.  Then, according to the mascot history page,

…in the early 1960’s as an effort to “fire up” the football team, Coach Russ Faulkinberry called his team the Raging Cajuns since 95 percent of the football team was from the Acadiana area [i.e., ethnically Cajun].  It was then decided by the Sports Information Director, Bob Henderson, to honor the team and the Cajun heritage by calling them the Raging Cajuns.

The first Ragin’ Cajun mascot was Cajun Man:

This was protested by African American activists who resented the association of the multi-racial and -ethnic University with a white ethnicity.  From another perspective, the mascot was questioned on the grounds that “Cajun” had once been a nasty racial slur.

Apparently the University lost Cajun Man when he graduated, so he was replaced by Cajun Chicken:

Cajun Chicken as Elvis (what, your mascot didn’t dress up like Elvis?):

Cajun Chicken was later replaced by Cayenne, a chili pepper, the University’s current mascot:

Still, the disappearance of the Cajun Man has not led to the disappearance of the controversy over the mascot, kept alive with the term “Ragin’ Cajuns.”  In Blue Collar Bayou, Jaques Henry and Carl Bankston III report that in 1997 Louis Farrakhan protested that the state funding of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette amounted to the state using “African American and Creole tax dollars… to promote a white culture.”

Consider the Ragin’ Cajun controversy in light of the other mascots we’ve covered: the Orientals, the Gauchos, the Jews, the Fighting Irish, and the Indians.

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.

Visual Economics posted a (mildly) interactive page comparing what percentage of their budget different nations spend on health, education, and their military. The three screenshots below are for health:

You can also look at the data via a list.  This data is the percentage of the budget spent on the military:

Via Look At This.

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

Students at my college, Occidental, are required to live on campus through their junior year.  So most students live in the dorms.  I saw this flyer, advertising what I am sure is intended to be a harmless and fun competition, taped to the door of my building:

Of course, having the “best room on campus” is only partly about creativity.  A person with money would have a significant advantage in this competition, as you can clearly see in the flyer itself (extra pillows, a rug, two extra lamps, extra furniture, etc).

I am sure that the people behind this had no intention of reinforcing a class hierarchy on campus.  But I’d bet my extra money that they were middle class or better.  Part of class privilege is the ability to forget that some people do not have the resources to put together a bangin’ room.   And part of being an economically disadvantaged student at a private college sometimes means being alienated from many of your peers for just that reason.

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

Story at the Christian Science Monitor, via Asian Nation.

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

Emily L. sent in a link to the t-shirt below.  It was made by students at Houston’s Memorial High (go, Mustangs!) for the yearly football game against their rival, Stratford.  It nicely reveals how sex and domination are conflated in American society.  On the shirt, “beating” Stratford at football is conflated with “fucking” them.  As the text says: “F’n Spartans Up Since 1962”:

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, it should be really troubling to us all that “fuck” has the double meaning that it does.

More conflations of sex and power here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Borrowed from Jezebel.

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

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.