race/ethnicity: Latinos

Grace S., Courtney V., Mazhira B., and Ashley B. (I hope I got everyone!) sent in Kleenex’s Get Mommed campaign. The campaign represents another instance in which nurturing is associates strictly with women (it is mom who takes care of us when we’re sick, not dad).

It also manages to throw in a number of racial and religious stereotypes, including the Latina Ana Maria (“hola!”) who brings traditional wisdom; the distracted upper class WASP (“just a moment, dear”); the sassy, full-figured black women who can do anything around the house; the pushy Jewish mom (“Phyllis wants to be your mommy, not just your mom”); the stern Asian mom (“I don’t put up with excuses, not even from babies!”); among others.

I didn’t dive into the website too far, but you’re certainly welcome to do so and feel free to report what you find!

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 this 20 minute video, novelist Chimamanda Adichie describes, with insight and grace, the problem of the “single story.”  She says, “Show a people as one thing, and only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”  Focusing on her experience as an “African” in the U.S. (she is from Nigeria), she also describes her own experiences with realizing that she has heard only a single story, whether of rural Nigerians or Mexicans.

Highly recommended (or read the transcript here):

Via Stuff White People Do.

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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.

The Economic Policy Institute defines a “good” job as “one that pays at least 60% of the median household income and also provides health care and retirement benefits.” Based on that definition, here is a breakdown of men holding good jobs in 1979 and 2008, broken down by race/ethnicity (with Native Americans and Asians unfortunately absent):

Notice the clear decrease in the % of men in each group in good jobs between 1979 to 2008. The racial pattern is also striking, if not surprising, with Black and Hispanic men being significantly less likely to have a good job than White men in both 1979 and 2008. Notice the particularly large gap between White and Hispanic men in 2008–over 20 percentage points.

Before Sociological Images was widely read (when it was just us and our friends), we used to occasionally title posts “Sigh.”  But these days, what with people following us on twitter, we must offer more imaginative titles.  But really, my instinct was to title this with good ol’ resignation:

Via Racialicious.

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

In the vintage ad below, Sanka sells coffee by joking about how Mexicans (I think) lack good ol’ American capitalist values (text below):

Text:

“How a kind word ruin by beezness”

1. Everyone takes the siesta in the heat of the day, except I, poor Juan.  While all are asleep, the shops are closed.  Except my shop, where I sell pottery to the American tourists for ten times what it costs in America.

2. An American senorita comes one afternoon to buy the pottery.  “How is it that you do not take the siesta?” she asked, speaking that strange language which I have heard called Highschool Spanish.  “Ah, senorita,” I sighed, “I cannot sleep!”

3.  “Is it the coffee!” I explained.  “I love the coffee. I cannot resist it.  But when I drink it with the lunch, then all afternoon I am wide awake!”  She nodded.  “It is good business to be open when other shops are closed!”

4. “I would give all the beezness for a good siesta!” I cried.  “Then you should drink Sanka Coffee,” she said.  “It’s 97% caffein-free [sic], and can’t keep you awake!”  “It is an American trick!”  I scoffed.  “How can it be good coffee?”

5. “It’s wonderful!  A blend of fine Central and South American coffees!” she replied.  “And the Council on Foods of the American Medical Association says: ‘Sanka Coffee is free from caffein [sic] effect, and can be used when other coffee has been forbidden!’ ”

6.  So in gratitude I charge her only five times what the pottery is worth.  Later, I try Sanka Coffee.  Delicious.  And I sleep each day during the afternoon.  My pottery beezness, he is ruin but ah, amigo… how I enjoy the siesta!

See also our post on the Frito Bandito and a vintage Tequila ad.

Found at Vintage Ads.

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

Yvonne Liu, at the Applied Research Center, told us about their report, Race and Recession, which includes a lot of useful information about the disparate effects of the economic crisis for different groups of Americans.

While an overall unemployment rate of just under 10% is bad regardless, that statistics hides the fact that Latinos and African Americans are experiencing even higher levels (note: the government agencies that the information comes from didn’t provide breakdowns for Asians or Native Americans, so the report was unable to show comparisons for those groups):

In a comment, thoughtcounts Z points out,

My immediate reaction…: the worst points (highest unemployment) on the “White” curve are generally around or below the best points (lowest unemployment) on the “Black” curve.

Unemployment rates for those aged 20-24:

This figure indicates what % of each racial group falls into each occupational category (the median indicates that half fall above and half fall below that level):

Median earnings for each occupational category (again, the figures represent the % of each race that have jobs in that category):

So as we see, Whites are disproportionately employed in management and professional occupations, while relatively few are employed in the service industry, whereas both African Americans and Latinos are significantly more likely to be employed in services.  And while there’s a big gap between the % of Whites and Blacks in management/professional occupations, I was somewhat surprised that it wasn’t larger than it is.

Earnings broken down by both race and gender:

Assets by race:

See also: images of the downturn, job loss by region, unemployment by education level, another map of job loss by region, the dilemma of the duplex, not everyone knows there’s a recession, Detroit’s decline, job losses, gender and recession, and tips to the rich on how to be discreet during a recession.

As far as I can figure it, Halloween costumes come in three categories: scary, funny, or fantastical.  This is why dressing up like another “race” or “culture” for Halloween is racist.  A “Mexican Man,” for example (see below), should not be presented as scary, funny, or fantastical.

Brooke, at Whebr’s Hotub’s Blog, expresses her frustration for people who dress us like an “Indian”:

Why is it socially acceptable to dress like the stereotypical Indian: “Brave”,”Chief”, “Princess”, “Squaw”, “Maiden”? Pardon Moi, but when did the Native American enter the realm of Wizards, Fairies, Super-heroes, Goblins, or Ghouls? When did it become ok to reduce the diversity, language, and culture of nearly 500 different Indigenous tribes into a tacky “costume” of cheap suede, colored feathers, plastic beads, and fringe? Who decided that the history, identity, and lineage of Native Americans could be easily put on and taken off like greasy Halloween face paint?

Brooke features a whole host of “Indian” costumes at her site, including this one:

Illustrating the way in which these costumes tend to collapse culturally distinct groups into a cheap stereotype, Costume Craze has a whole section of the website devoted to “History and World Culture Costumes.”

Here’s a sample of the “Asian costumes” (don’t miss the fantastic font):

“Indian costumes”:

“Mexican costumes”:

Fatemeh Fakhraie, at Racialicious, points out how “Middle Eastern” costumes reinforce both ignorance and negative stereotypes.  Regarding the “Sheik of Persia Arabian Costume” costume shown below, she says:

History lesson: Persia didn’t have sheikhs, they had shahs. And Persia and Arabia were two different places! AKH!

…of course he has a knife! All Middle Eastern men are dangerous, didn’t you know? You can even tell by his face: he’s pissed, and he’s going to take it out on some infidels!

For good measure, Cindy at Lotería Chicana has collected a set of racist Halloween costumes that she photographed at a store called Spirit in San Francisco.  A selection:

UPDATE!  Awesome tidbit from Rosemary in the comments thread:

The geisha one in particular makes me wince, partly because the “kimono” is tied the wrong way (the only time you ever tie it that way is when a person is dead)…

Of course, that’s actually perfect for Halloween!  But somehow I don’t think that’s what SPIRIT is going for.

More…

And my favorite, the “Dream Catcher”:

Does making fun of white people (“tighty whiteys”) make it all equal?

The thing that amazes me most about these costumes is that they’re everywhere.  You can’t escape them.  And no one seems to notice or care.  For example, this “Hey Amigo” costume can be purchased at the Linens N Things website:

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

I recently wrote a quite popular post, titled “What Do Women Want?”, based on data collected by the dating site OK Cupid (short story: women like it when men engage with their personality, not just their looks).  Mary S. sent in a link to some of their data on race and response rate, with some fascinating findings.

First, OK Cupid measured the compatibility of people of different races. They found that, by and large, race doesn’t impact compatibility scores:

Then they looked at response rates. When a man writes an inquiry email to a woman, what is the chance that that woman will write back?  Here is the data:

What this table shows is that race matters.  OK Cupid breaks it down:

Black women… are by far the most likely to reply to your first message. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and overall black women reply about a quarter more often.

…white males just get more replies from almost every group.

White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else—and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It’s here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the “should-look-like” one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them.

And how do men respond to women?

OK Cupid again:

Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.

White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often.

To sum, white men appear to have the most dating capital in the online dating world, while black women seem to have the least.  This means that white men can sit back and enjoy the adulation, while black women are required to do more outreach to men to get the same results.

This makes sense give the way in which race is gendered.

For more, read Restaurant Refugee’s experiment comparing  responses on OK Cupid to an identical profile with pictures of a white person and a person of color.

UPDATE: Duran2, Dave, and Assaf critiqued my comment about white men sitting back and enjoying the adulation as both inaccurate and unfair. Point taken. I apologize.

For more, see our posts on asymmetry in interracial marriage and how Asian women are marketed to white men.

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