politics

This Clymer for Pennsylvania governor poster attacks his opponent, Geary, and the Republican exponents of black suffrage, with a familiar caricature of blackness  (Jim Crow History):

Text:

Every RADICAL in Congress VOTED for NEGRO SUFFRAGE.  Every RADICAL in the Pennsylvania Senate VOTED for NEGRO SUFFRAGE.  STEVENS, FURNEY, & CAMERON are for NEGRO SUFFRAGE; they are all Candidate for the UNITED STATES SENATE.  NO RADICAL NEWSPAPER OPPOSES NEGRO SUFFRAGE.  GEARY said in a Speech at Harrisburg, 11th of August, 1866 — “THERE CAN BE NO POSSIBLE OBJECTION TO NEGRO SUFFRAGE.”

For more caricatures of black people in U.S. history, see these posts: one, twp, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen.

And for examples of modern reproductions of these stereotypes (literally), see these: one, two, three, four, and five.

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.

Greg Mankiw, a big shot economist (he was the chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors) had a brief blog post on Monday comparing European countries and the US. It’s part of a long-standing debate about the relative merits of European-style social democracy. The left wants the US goverment to do more to reduce inequalities (ensuring universal health care, for example, or providing benefits for the unemployed, and the poor, requiring employers to offer paid maternity leave, etc.). Those on the right argue that these policies would stifle the economy. They offer an economic picture of America the dynamic, Europe the stagnant.

The volume on that debate got turned up by an article by Jim Manzi in National Affairs. He refers to “government policies — to reduce inequality or ensure access to jobs, education, housing, or health care — that can in turn undercut growth and prosperity.”

Paul Krugman, in his column on Monday, rejected this idea:

The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.

Greg Mankiw gives some data on GDP per capita, adding with a sly grin, “Readers of today’s column by Paul Krugman might find these figures useful to keep in mind.” He gives the data for “the United States and the five most populous countries in Western Europe.”

We’re number one. We’re way ahead – 30% higher than the UK next in line. Mankiw wins; Krugman loses. Case closed. Or is it?

I’m sure there’s a good economic reason for this cherry-picking choosing only the five largest cherries. But if you were curious about some of the insignificant countries in Europe and elsewhere, you might want to take a look at the entire list. Here’s an expanded chart:

It turns out that among the non-Asian industrial democracies, there are a few countries that fall in that $11,000 gap between the US and UK. And when you include all those countries, the US is no longer number one.

Hank M. sent us a link to this image that shows the proportion of news coverage in 55 outlets for various items throughout the year (click here for a larger image; to read more about the methodology and the news outlets, see Journalism.org):

Journalism.org puts out a weekly index as well, broken down by type of source (network TV, newspaper, etc.). Some of the results for Dec. 14-20 show some interesting differences. Here are the top-10 lists for newspaper and network TV, respectively:

The top three stories are the same, and clearly dominate both types of media outlets. TV sources seem to do more “human interest” or “entertainment” coverage of things like Tiger Woods’s scandal, the Goldman custody battle, and the missing climbers. (My mom and grandma were both distressed that I wasn’t aware of the missing woman in Utah or the Goldman custody case and said that I need to keep myself more informed of the world around me by taking the time to watch the news on TV so I’d know what’s going on in the world.)

Cable TV outlets had the same top 3 stories, but actually emphasized them even more than newspapers and network TV did, with health care getting nearly twice as much coverage as it did on the networks (radio had the same pattern):

Their database is archived and searchable, and it provides a rather fascinating view of what is considered newsworthy each week and how that depends on the type of outlet.

Also check out our posts on google searches for information about Afghanistan and Tiger Woods, the “dithering” meme,

Missives from Marx sent in a link to this animated time line documenting the diffusion of various political-economic systems (e.g., fascism, democracy, and feudalism) over world history.  It can be read as a story about the triumph of democracy, but it’s also illustrates how political-economic systems are not natural, but invented during particular historical eras, and diffuse or disappear as a consequence of war, geography, and other geopolitical factors.

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 in the clip below in which Senator Lindsey Graham (R – South Carolina) explains that health care reform will be bad because it will require his state to subsidize health care for poor people… and black people:

Graham’s mistake is a common one and one that contributes to penalizing and inhumane treatment of the poor in the U.S. He is conflating race and class. White people = not poor; black people = poor. Therefore, a high percentage of black people = a drain on society.

Here’s the reality: a higher percentage of the black population is poor, compared to whites. BUT, and this is a big “but,” most poor people are white because white people make up between 70 and 75% of the U.S. population.

However, a belief that that poor people tend to be black and black people tend to be poor is useful for those who want to stifle any redistribution of wealth. The conflation means that opposition to policies designed to alleviate the suffering of poverty can be based in both classism and racism.

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.

This graphic reveals which states pay the most in federal taxes and which receive the most in return. At the very bottom of the graphic, you can see the ratio of taxes out and taxes in. Rhode Island is exactly even, while the states above and to the left are essentially “donation” states and the states below and to the right are “welfare” states:

Found at Visual Economics, via ChartPorn.

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.

Larry Harnisch at the Daily Mirror dug up this gem, a 1909 story from the Los Angeles Times about prominent Chicago-area women’s rights advocates pushing back the time they served Thanksgiving dinner in order to go see the British suffragist Emiline Pankhurst:

“…one of the women voiced the sentiment that ‘every suffragist is a militant suffragist at heart’.” Well, obviously, if you’re willing to postpone Thanksgiving dinner, no matter what this woman says:

Those British suffragists must have been something if stoning legislators was part of the discussion.

Both my colleague, my friend, and a reader (that’d be John L, Dmitriy T.M., and Jillian Y.) sent along this month’s cover of Newsweek.  FOX News and Palin both are calling it “sexist” and “demeaning”:

I have to agree with FOX News here.  Sexualizing a woman is a way to make her seem less important.  It’s, literally, to disempower her.  This magazine cover tells us that we shouldn’t take Palin seriously.   With her short shorts, sexy legs, pigtails, and friendly smile, it turns her into a political joke.

But this is about more than gender; it’s about the relationship between power and sex in our society.  Because we so frequently see sex as a power struggle, to be presented as a sexual object is to be presented as passive, consumable, inert (remember, only one person gets “fucked”).  While both men and women can be presented as sexual objects, because of sexism, this particular tool can be used more effectively against women than men.  (And when it is used against a man, it often has the effect of feminizing him, making an association with femininity/sexual subordination the very thing that disempowers him.  Ah the tangled web of sex, sexuality, gender, and power.)

Whether you think Palin should or shouldn’t be taken seriously is irrelevant here.  What is interesting is just how much Newsweek can do to influence the public one way or another, even if all they do is see the cover.

Images matter.

For comparison, I did a quick search for Newsweek covers featuring the last election’s Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates for comparison.  Compare:

For more examples of the sexualization of Palin, see here, here, and here.

And for more on the relationship between sex and power, see these posts: power one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,and, eleven.

(Sources: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

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