politics

Driving from New Orleans to Las Vegas this June, I was struck by the fact that every roadside I saw, everywhere, had a fence separating the shoulder from the land.  Not only was every parcel of land owned, travelers had to know it.  Mine.  Keep out.

There are lots of reasons why people become and remain homeless, but one of them is “private property.”  Private property, of course, isn’t real.  People made it up.  But because the vast majority of us accept the concept and enforce it, it persists as a reality that structures people’s lives.  For example, we’re not allowed to build a house just anywhere there’s space.  We can’t just tap any aquifer you please, no matter how much we need water.  If we want to go camping, we need permission from a property owner or we have to pay a fee at a public or private park.  And, because of private property, if you can’t afford to buy property or rent space from a property owner,  you are homeless.  Homelessness, then, is a function of our commitment to private property.

I offer this as a context with which to view these photographs that accompany a story in the New York Times about a tent city in Providence, Rhode Island.  The residents of the tent city call it “Camp Runamuck.”  As the pictures below show, the 80 or so members of Camp Runamuck have a pantry, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a recycling center.  They also have rules (e.g., no fighting), a democratically elected “chief,” a “leadership council,” and a social contract that they have all signed.  They share labor; they cook dinner for one another. However, despite the fact that they’ve made a home for themselves, they are officially homeless.  And state officials have now officially told them that they are not allowed to make their home there.

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.

Carl G. sent in this cartoon, found at Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom, that ran during the 1864 Presidential election campaign and played on voters’ fears of racial mixing:

The following text accompanied the cartoon:

The Miscegenation Ball at the Headquarters of the Lincoln Central Campaign Club, Corner of Broadway and Twenty Third Street New York Sept. 22d. 1864 being a perfect fac simile of the room &c. &c. (From the New York World Sept. 23d. 1864). No sooner were the formal proceedings and speeches hurried through with, than the room was cleared for a “negro ball,” which then and there took place! Some members of the “Central Lincoln Club” left the room before the mystical and circling rites of languishing glance and mazy dance commenced. But that Many remained is also true. This fact We Certify, “that on the floor during the progress of the ball were many of the accredited leaders of the Black Republican party, thus testifying their faith by works in the hall and headquarters of their political gathering. There were Republican Office-Holders, and prominent men of various degrees, and at least one Presidential Elector On The Republican Ticket.

I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen, so it’s good to see that outright lying in political campaigns isn’t new.

It’s interesting that all the couples feature White men and Black women. Usually opponents to abolition or desegretation depicted White women with Black men, sometimes voluntarily, other times showing Black men as sexually aggressive predators who threaten White women’s virtue.

And of course, while they weren’t generally having “Negro balls,” many White men at the time were sexually involved with Black women, often (though not always) women they owned as slaves and who had little ability to say no to, or do anything about, their sexual advances. So the real outrage here would be not so much that White men were having (often coercive) sex with Black women, but that Black women and White men would be couples, socializing openly and in a situation of “universal freedom” that would put Black women on a more equal footing relative to their White partners (or, anyway, closer to the level of equality White women had with White men, which was more than Black women had but clearly left a lot to be desired).

On another note, Carl points out that even though this is a cartoon meant to incite fears of racial mixing among Whites, the African American women are not drawn in a way that makes them look grotesque or monstrous like so many cartoons at the time did.

The Women’s Media Center has compiled a series of clips exposing the racist and sexist discourse surrounding Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court:

Via Racialicious.

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

As the Obama adminstration presses for health care reform and members of congress are deciding the fate of the American people, pharmaceutical companies do more than just watch. According to NPR, in the last three months (THREE), they have spent $6.15 million dollars lobbying congress.  To show which companies are spending what, NPR has put together an interactive graphic.  It also allows you to view lobbying reports for each firm.  Click hereto learn more.

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

Sam Yoon is running for mayor of Boston. Yoon is Korean Korean-American. It only makes sense, then (*sarcasm*), that the Boston Phoenix illustrated a story about his race against incumbent Mayor Tom Menino with the follow picture:

Screen shot for context and posterity:

Race is made to matter. Sotomayor can’t just be a judge, Gates can’t just be a suspect, and Yoon can’t just be a candidate. If you are not white, then your race will likely be used to denigrate you, make fun of you, or question your competence and entitlements. This may not happen all the time, but it will happen often enough.

Via Resist Racism and Slant Eye for the Round Eye.

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

Ed at Gin and Tacos offered up the figure below comparing the minimum wage (adjusted to inflation) and the poverty line for a family (he doesn’t specify how many children).  It reveals that, as Ed puts it: “not once in its 80-year history has the minimum wage, if earned 40 hours weekly, hit the Federal poverty line for a family.”  That is, a dedicated full time worker earning minimum wage does not earn, and has never earned, enough to keep a family out of poverty.

So, if you are a single parent, you’re screwed.  (And, frankly, if you aren’t, you’re still screwed because child care will likely wipe out, if not exceed one person’s entire income.  Subsidized day care only serves a fraction of the children that are qualified.)

Ed notes that, given this, the rational choice for a parent is to go on welfare.  Welfare doesn’t get you above the poverty line either, and you’re still likely to be miserable, but at least you’ll be miserable while parenting your children instead of miserable while flipping burgers.

Some argue that, if people choose to go on welfare instead of work, then welfare must be too generous.  Lower welfare payments and people will choose to work.  Ed, however, suggests that the real problem revealed by this figure is the insufficiency of the minimum wage.  Raise the minimum wage and people will choose to work.  Only one of these solutions actually mitigates human suffering.

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

Liz C. sent us a link to a segment of The Daily Show featuring Kristen Schaal and John Stewart (aired July 1st).  They discuss Sarkozy’s ban on burkas and, in doing so, question whether the burka is truly oppressive and whether American fashion is, in contrast, oh-so-liberating.

We covered Heelarious here.

See also this confessionechoing Stewart and Schaal’s conversation.

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

Eugene Robinson:

Republicans’ outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor’s musings about how her identity as a “wise Latina” might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any “identity” — black, brown, female, gay, whatever — has to be judged against this supposedly “objective” standard.

Thus it is irrelevant if Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. talks about the impact of his background as the son of Italian immigrants on his rulings — as he did at his confirmation hearings — but unforgivable for Sotomayor to mention that her Puerto Rican family history might be relevant to her work. Thus it is possible for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to say with a straight face that heritage and experience can have no bearing on a judge’s work, as he posited in his opening remarks yesterday, apparently believing that the white male justices he has voted to confirm were somehow devoid of heritage and bereft of experience.

Stephen Colbert:

If you can’t view the video, there’s a transcript after the jump, thanks to Macon D at Stuff White People Do.

Jay Livingston:

In the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, Republicans have swarmed on Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven firefighters case. To hear them tell it, Sotomayor flung the law aside in upholding the lower court decision. She, the majority of the Second Circuit Court, the Federal judge who wrote the original opinion, and the four dissenting Supreme Court justices all based their opinions entirely on a preference for blacks and Hispanics and an animus towards whites. They didn’t consider the law.

By contrast, the five males (four of them white) on the Supreme Court who sided with the white male plaintiffs based their decision wholly and impartially on the law. Their race had nothing to do with it.

The Republican strategy depends on the tendency for privilege to remain invisible.

The transcript after the jump:

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