inequality

Today some cities are celebrating Indigenous People’s Day in an attempt to counter the celebration of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas that led to years of disease, death, and the removal of native peoples from their homes. One thing to reflect on is how this turbulent past has had lasting health effects for Native Americans. According to the Indian Health Service (IHS), Native Americans and Alaskan Natives have a lower life expectancy than any other US racial group and they are more likely to die from heart disease, cirrhosis, and suicide.

Social science researchers point to a number of social and historical factors that help explain the high suicide rates for Native Americans, including racial discrimination, a long history of colonial exploitation, poor health outcomes, and poor communities. Many of these communities also lack access to quality reproductive healthcare, a disparity that researchers associate with high rates of c-sections among Native American women giving birth.

• Nicholas A Guittar. 2012. “On and Off the Reservation: A Discussion of the Social, Physical, and Mental Health Indicators of Suicide in the Native American Community.” Sociology Compass 6(3):236-243.  
• Louise Marie Roth and Megan M. Henley. 2012. “Unequal Motherhood Racial-Ethnic and Socioeconomic Disparities in Cesarean Sections in the United States.” Social Problems 59(2):207-227.

Poor health outcomes are also closely related to environmental injustice. The remote areas of land originally chosen for Native American reservations tended to be lands that were least attractive to White Americans, but perfect for military testing. The US military used adjoining lands and sometimes seized reservation lands to test military equipment, leaving toxic and dangerous materials in close proximity to Native American land. Native Americans living in areas with high levels of pollution attribute various health problems in their communities to pollutants, but are often unable to validate their concerns through institutional channels.

• Gregory Hooks and Chad L. Smith. 2004. “The Treadmill of Destruction: National Sacrifice Areas and Native Americans.” American Sociological Review 69(4):558-575.  
• Thomas E. Shriver and Gary R. Webb. 2009. “Rethinking the Scope of Environmental Injustice: Perceptions of Health Hazards in a Rural Native American Community Exposed to Carbon Black.” Rural Sociology 74(2):270-292.

Charter schools are public schools that are meant to provide more choices for students and their families–at least, that’s what federal law says. Yet, sometimes charter schools reject students based on academic performance. Does that make them less public? Other times, charter schools forbid teachers from unionizing and the National Labor Relations Board gets involved. Such competing and confusing legal definitions of “public” only complicate the debate over charter schools’ legitimacy. Do these cases make charter schools any less public if the U.S. Department of Education insists otherwise? Certainly the NLRB thinks so, having recently argued that teachers in two separate charter schools do not have the right to unionize because, “charter schools are not public schools but private corporations.”

One way scholars of education parse out the difference is by comparing charter schools’ behavior and organization with more traditional, unquestionably public schools. Scholars find that as long as these practices exist in a legal gray area and the school follows some institutional norms for public schools–such as not charging tuition and grading homework–charter schools are public.

• Jennifer L. Jennings. 2010. “School Choice or Schools’ Choice? Managing in an Era of Accountability.” Sociology of Education 83(3): 227-247.
• Scott Davies and Linda Quirke. 2007. “The Impact of Sector on School Organizations: Institutional and Market Logics.” Sociology of Education 80(1): 66-89

Advocates for charter schools claim that this flexibility fosters innovation and helps close the achievement gap–everybody wins. That is, until regulatory agencies respond to the more abnormal facets of charter schools. This prompts a serious conversation about what “real” public schools should be. In the social world, the boundary shifts with popular perception, and the charter schools of yesterday can no longer be as public as they once were.

• Linda A. Renzulli. 2005. “Organizational Environments and the Emergence of Charter Schools in the United States.” Sociology of Education 78(1): 1-26.
• Janice Aurini. 2006. “Crafting Legitimation Projects: An Institutional Analysis of Private Education Businesses.” Sociological Forum 21(2): 83-112

If you didn’t notice the rampant interruptions during this week’s first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, don’t worry – several sources ranging from Vox to The New York Times and even U.S. Weekly took note. While estimates vary as to the exact number of times each candidate interrupted the other, some estimate that Clinton interrupted Trump about a dozen times while Trump interrupted both Clinton and debate moderator Lester Holt over 50 times. As this is likely a moment we will teach in Sociology of Gender courses for years to come, we can look to prior studies of speech patterns and gender to contextualize the demeanor of the debate.

Both men and women engage in all types and styles of interruption; however, men are more likely to engage in intrusive interruption — that is, when someone interrupts “the speaker’s turn at talk with the intent of demonstrating dominance.” Additionally, men interrupt women more often than they do other men, using sex as a status characteristic in group discussion.

• Kristin J. Anderson and Campbell Leaper. 1998. “Meta-Analyses of Gender Effects on Controversial Interruption: Who, What, When, Where, and How.” Sex Roles 39(314): 225-252.
• Lynn Smith-Lovin and Charles Brody. 1989. “Interruptions in Group Discussions: The Effects of Gender and Group Composition.” American Sociological Review 54(3): 424-435.

Gender also plays a role in interruptions among deliberating bodies, particularly when women are the minority within the group. When outnumbered, women experience higher rates of dismissive interruption and lower rates of approval when speaking.

• Tali Mendelberg, Christopher F. Karpowitz, and J. Baxter Oliphant. 2014.  “Gender Inequality in Deliberation: Unpacking the Black Box of Interaction.” Perspectives on Politics 12(1):18–44.

Interruption, regardless of gender, has social consequences. Someone who interrupts is often seen as more successful, though less socially acceptable and reliable.

• Mary Glenn Wiley and Dale E. Woolley. 1988. “Interruptions Among Equals: Power Plays that Fail.” Gender & Society 2(1): 90-102.

In lieu of the recent fatal police shootings in cities such as Tulsa, Charlotte, and most recently, El Cajon, California, communities are coming together to demand changes in law enforcement interactions. Of particular concern is police surveillance and the subsequent criminalization of minor offenses. “Problem-oriented policing” – which focuses on a community’s “hot spots” and requires police to be more proactive in identifying where crime might happen, as opposed to just reacting after a crime takes place – has been offered as a possible solution. But does problem-oriented policing actually reduce crime? Social science research helps us sort out the potential benefits and pitfalls to problem-oriented policing.

The research record is mixed. Studies evaluating problem-oriented policing programs in Jersey City and Los Angeles showed reductions in serious crimes, such as property crime, robbery, and drug selling, as well nuisance crimes associated with homelessness. Others, however, show no signs of decrease in the number of reported crime rates. Scholars suggest that problem-oriented policing may only have an impact in areas of severe crime and distrust of law enforcement.  

• Anthony A. Braga, David L. Weisburd, Elin J. Waring, Lorraine Green Mazerolle, William Spelman, and Francis Gajewski. 1999. “Problem‐oriented Policing in Violent Crime Places: A Randomized Controlled Experiment.” Criminology 37(3): 541-580.
• Richard Berk and John McDonald. 2010. “Policing the Homeless: An Evaluation of Efforts to Reduce Homeless-related Crime.” Criminology and Public Policy, 9 (4): 813-840.
• David Weisburd, Nancy A. Morris, and Justin Ready. 2008. “Risk-Focused Policing at Places: An Experimental Evaluation.” Justice Quarterly 25(1): 163-200.

Additional concerns with problem-oriented policing is its effect on marginalized communities. Both observed environmental cues and implicit racial and ethnic biases affect people’s perception of neighborhood disorder. As such, neighborhoods with high concentrations of racial/ethnic minorities are perceived as having more disorder, and consequently viewed as more dangerous and violent. Residents living in neighborhoods marked by perceived disorder are themselves labeled as threats by law enforcement, perpetuating and reproducing urban inequality and cultural stereotypes.

• Robert Sampson and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 2004. “Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of ‘Broken Windows.’” Social Psychology Quarterly 67(4): 319-342.
• George Kelling and Catherine Coles. 1996. Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities. New York: Free Press.

Last month marked the centennial of the National Park Service, which is tasked with preserving natural and cultural resources and protecting outdoor spaces for recreation, like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite. The most recently designated park is an ocean park where 4,900 square miles of deep sea volcanoes and canyons in the Atlantic ocean are now prohibited from commercial fishing and other types of resource extraction. While the idea behind the national park system is that everyone should be able to enjoy nature, the reality is that the working class and people of color are less likely to use national parks and the history of the parks has involved the displacement and exclusion of Native American, African American and immigrant communities.

Unequal access to resources – including money for entrance fees and transportation, equipment for exploring the parks, and leisure time – have resulted in race and class differences in who can actually enjoy the national parks.

• Jason Byrne and Jennifer Wolch. 2009. “Nature, Race, and Parks: Past Research and Future Directions for Geographic Research.” Progress in Human Geography 33(6): 743–65.
• Paul H. Gobster. 2002. “Managing Urban Parks for a Racially and Ethnically Diverse Clientele.” Leisure Sciences 24(2): 143–59.
• Myron Floyd. 1999. “Race, Ethnicity and Use of the National Park System.” NPS Social Science Research Review 1(2): 1–24.

Beyond access, there are a variety of cultural definitions of “the wilderness,” “the outdoors,” and recreation that are shaped by race. Racial norms and ideologies impact how people perceive leisure time and values of natural beauty, and activities like hiking and camping are often seen as “white hobbies.” Yet, these differences are largely due to a history of exclusion, discrimination, and segregation that kept people of color from using public outdoor space, particularly in the Jim Crow South.

• Cassandra Y. Johnson, Patrick M. Horan, and William Pepper. 1997. “Race, Rural Residence, and Wildland Visitation: Examining the Influence of Sociocultural Meaning.” Rural Sociology 62(1): 80–110.
• Cassandra Y. Johnson. 1998. “A Consideration of Collective Memory in African American Attachment to Wildland Recreation Places.” Human Ecology Review 5(1): 5–15.
• Dorecetta Taylor. 1989. “Blacks and the Environment:  Towards an Explanation of the Concern and Action Gaps Between Blacks and Whites.” Environment and Behavior 21(2): 175- 205.

The parks themselves were created through colonialism, as much of the land that is now “protected” was of course taken from Native Americans. The idea of a pristine wilderness is historically linked to white racial purity and the need for Europeans to save the land, which justified U.S. expansion into the West. The conservation movement was also led by white men, such as John Muir, who often overlooked the struggles of racial minorities and issues of equity.

• Mark David Spence. 1999. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Mark Daniel Barringer. 2002. Selling Yellowstone: Capitalism and the Construction of Nature. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas.
• Dorcetta Taylor. 2016. The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

On the recent 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, prisoners in at least 24 states protested inhumane living and working conditions, in what some observers are calling the largest national prison strike in American history. Led by inmate movements in Alabama and Texas that critique prison slavery, protests are still ensuing in many states, with demonstrations ranging from work stoppage to hunger strikes. As historian Heather Ann Thompson reveals in a recent article in the Atlantic, the parallels between these modern prison protests and the Attica prison uprising are clear:

“The root causes of the Attica rebellion were, as they are with the rebellions today, abysmal conditions in our nation’s correctional facilities.”

Thompson argues in her book that the political consequences of the misinformation surrounding Attica helped to legitimate the punitive turn in American imprisonment. Although Attica may have helped to perpetuate some of the problems in American prisons, Thompson believes that it also provides an example to those who are incarcerated that they have ways to take action.

• Heather Ann Thompson. 2016. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. New York City, NY: Pantheon.

The current uprising highlights not only unpaid labor but also issues of dismal healthcare and high rates of suicide in prisons, as well as the overuse of solitary confinement. Prison suicide rates are extremely high compared to the general population, and imprisonment may contribute to racial disparities in midlife physical health functioning.  Moreover, solitary confinement significantly damages the mental health of prisoners, especially if used for extended periods of time.

• Lindsay M. Hayes. 1995. “Prison Suicide: An Overview and a Guide to Prevention.“ The Prison Journal 75(4), 431-456.
• Alison Liebling. 1999. “Prison Suicide and Prisoner Coping.” Crime and Justice 26: 283–359.
• Michael Massoglia. 2008. “Incarceration, Health, and Racial Disparities in Health.” Law & Society Review 42(2): 275–306.

Not only are these protests in response to conditions within prisons, but also for related causes such as the school-to-prison pipeline. Recent evidence suggests a strong relationship between school sanctioning and future involvement with the criminal justice system.  Thus, many of the concerns of this prisoner movement are empirically supported but have yet to capture attention outside of the prison system.   

• David M. Ramey. 2016. “The Influence of Early School Punishment and Therapy/Medication on Social Control Experiences During Young Adulthood.“ Criminology 54(1): 113-141.
• Peter S. Smith. 2006. “The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates: A Brief History and Review of the Literature.“ Crime and Justice 34(1): 441-528.

Want to know more? See here for live updates on the national prison strike.  

More and more athletes are joining the San Francisco 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick in kneeling during the “Star Spangled Banner” at the beginning of sporting events. Though this phenomenon has spurred controversy and heated exchanges, sports stars using their celebrity for civic action is not entirely new. After the police shootings of Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and other unarmed black people, numerous members of the NBA and NFL wore hoodies that read “I Can’t Breathe,” (Eric Gardner’s last words); others entered the game while making the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” gesture championed by #BlackLivesMatter. Indeed, today we are witnessing a resurgence of athlete advocacy.

A common criticism of these athletes is that “they should just stick to sports!” or that “they aren’t supposed to talk about politics!” In reality, however, athletes have been at the forefront of protests and civic action for some time now, particularly in the 1960s. TSP Editor Doug Hartmann’s popular book describes how the Civil Rights Movement provided the context for athletes to begin using their celebrity for greater causes. Similarly, Ben Carrington describes how racism has shaped the international black-athlete-experience. Colonialism and contemporary globalization have made sports a site where racism is enacted and solidified, meaning athletes have had to think about these concepts–and fight against them–for a long time.

• Douglas Hartmann. 2003. Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and their Aftermath. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Ben Carrington. 2010. Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora. Sage Publications.

After the Civil Rights movement, athlete protests became less common, especially as athletes expanded into areas like merchandising and marketing, which meant that they were more likely to avoid “rocking the boat” and jeopardizing their business. But because of #BlackLivesMatter and a greater national focus on police killings of unarmed black people, athletes are once again getting into the fray. As Herbert Ruffin describes, politicizing college sports has led student athletes to protest for their own rights and demands — remember the events at Ole Miss last year? Similarly, Emmett Gill describes actions (and reactions) surrounding the “Ferguson Five” — the St. Louis Rams football players who showed solidarity with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. 

• Herbert G. Ruffin II. 2014. “Doing the Right Thing for the Sake of Doing the Right Thing”: The Revolt of the Black Athlete and the Modern Student-Athletic Movement, 1956-2014. Western Journal of Black Studies, 38(4).
• Emmett E Gill Jr. 2016. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” or Shut Up and Play Ball? Fan-generated Media Views of the Ferguson Five. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 26(3-4): 400-412.

This research shows that while athlete activism is often met with criticism, it does not mean that their tactics will prove unsuccessful. If history or recent events have shown us anything, the opposite may be truer. One thing is for sure — athlete protest in the contemporary era is just warming up.

For even more readings on race, sports, and athlete activism, check out the  #ColinKaepernickSyllabus created by NewBlackMan (in Exile).

Thousands led by Native Americans from across the country have converged on rural North Dakota over the past month to stop construction of the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Opponents say the pipeline is a threat to culturally and spiritually sacred sites as well as vital drinking water sources. Protesters have erected an encampment and are leading daily marches to the construction site demanding that the company and federal government halt construction in order to protect water and adhere to treaties with Native American tribes.

The protest over the Dakota Access pipeline reflects the social and political tensions that often emerge around resource extraction projects and potentially hazardous infrastructure, and sociologists have been at the forefront of research and analysis. Mining development led by large multinational companies often brings social dislocation, environmental problems, and a loss of livelihoods for native communities. Yet, indigenous communities have had some success in preventing development and maintaining control over land and natural resources partially through direct action, transnational coalitions, and public campaigns against corporations.

• Alex Golub. 2014. Leviathans at the Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous and Corporate Actors in Papua New Guinea. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.
• Gavin Hilson. 2014. Natural Resource Extraction and Indigenous Livelihoods: Development Challenges in an Era of Globalization. Farnham, GB: Routledge.
• Fabiana Li. 2015. Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.

In the U.S., Native American reservations have often been used as sites for hazardous mining and disposal of toxic waste – what scholars call “national sacrifice zones” and environmental racism. Hooks and Smith find that Native Americans struggle with environmental injustices and are more likely to live near toxic waste sites, largely because the U.S. military has used reservations and nearby land for testing and disposing of weapons.

• Robert D. Bullard. 1994. Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
• Gregory Hooks and Chad L. Smith. 2004. “The Treadmill of Destruction: National Sacrifice Areas and Native Americans.” American Sociological Review 69(4):558–75.
• Traci Brynne Voyles. 2015. Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Protest is also driven by group identities and culture. Mobilization against industrial development is shaped by historical and social differences in how people relate to the land. Indigenous philosophy, spirituality, and land claims can provide legitimacy to environmental opposition and are a source of inspiration and motivation for movement participants. This highlights the role of culture, place-based identity, and values in motivating people to participate in protest.

• William Freudenburg and Robert Gramling. 1993. “Socioenvironmental Factors and Development Policy: Understanding Opposition and Support for Offshore Oil.” Sociological Forum 8(3):341–64.
• Francesca Polletta. 1998. “‘It Was like a Fever …’ Narrative and Identity in Social Protest.” Social Problems 45(2):137–59.
• Rachel A. Wright and Hilary Schaffer Boudet. 2012. “To Act or Not to Act: Context, Capability, and Community Response to Environmental Risk.” American Journal of Sociology 118(3):728–77.

Environmentalists have joined the effort to stop the pipeline as part of a wider movement against fossil fuel extraction and climate change mobilization. Coalitions of environmentalists and indigenous peoples often develop in response to environmentally harmful projects, such as dams or pipelines, which have been important for generating public attention to issues of Native American rights while also building environmental movements. Protests over particular local industrial development can be used strategically by social movements to attract new participants and link people’s immediate concerns about health and safety to broader environmental issues.

• Mik Moore. 1998. “Coalition Building between Native American and Environmental Organizations in Opposition to Development: The Case of the New Los Padres Dam Project.” Organization & Environment 11(3):287–313.
• Joanna L. Robinson. 2013. Contested Water: The Struggle Against Water Privatization in the United States and Canada. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Kate J. Neville and Erika Weinthal. 2016. “Scaling up Site Disputes: Strategies to Redefine ‘local’ in the Fight against Fracking.” Environmental Politics 25(4):569–92.

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans… to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less­ advanced school… a slower-track school where they do well.

During oral arguments for Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin (in which the Supreme Court just upheld UT Austin’s use of race in their admissions policies), Justice Antonin Scalia’s comments caused quite an uproar. Did a member of the Supreme Court actually say that African Americans aren’t capable of success at competitive colleges? He was drawing from the so-called “mismatch hypothesis,” which suggests that affirmative action places people into positions they can’t handle—that is, that affirmative action could hurt African Americans by placing them in schools where they may not succeed or from which they may not graduate.

A significant amount of academic work debunks “mismatch theory,” deeming it both wrong and “paternalistic.”

Fischer and Massey use the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshman to analyze college outcomes and test the mismatch hypothesis; they find no evidence in its favor. Alon and Tienda use two different longitudinal datasets to run similar analyses, again finding no proof that ethnic minority students fare badly in advanced institutions. Replication results have been consistent over time; Kurlaender and Grodsky piece, for instance, find that students placed in programs considered “out of their league” performed just as well as those in less demanding programs.

• Mary J. Fischer and Douglas S. Massey. 2007. “The Effects of Affirmative Action in Higher Education,” Social Science Research 36(2):531-549.
• Sigal Alon and Marta Tienda. 2005. “Assessing the ‘Mismatch’ Hypothesis: Differences in College Graduation Rates by Institutional Selectivity,” Sociology of Education 78(4):294-315.
• Michal Kurlaender and Eric Grodsky. 2013. “Mismatch and the Paternalistic Justification for Selective College Admissions,” Sociology of Education 86(4):294-310.

In a twist, scholars find that affirmative action may place a different group of people in schools for which they are not equipped. In many schools, particularly prestigious ones, “legacy” students—whose family members graduated from the same school—benefit from affirmative action in admissions. Bowen and Bok show this has disproportionately affected white students, and Massey and Mooney show that legacy students earn lower grades than their peers and have lower graduation rates. If affirmative action is doing a disservice to some students, it is not in the way Justice Scalia suggested.

• William G. Bowen and Derek Bok. 1998, 2000. The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Douglas S. Massey and Margarita Mooney. 2007. “The Effects of America’s Three Affirmative Action Programs on Academic Performance,” Social Problems 54(1):99-117

In April, HBO premiered “Confirmation,” the story of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings. In those hearings, a former colleague, lawyer Anita Hill, testified about the ongoing sexual harassment she endured while working for Thomas. HBO’s film, some 25 years after the hearings that Thomas famously called a “high-tech lynching,” reminds us of the murky waters women must drudge through when facing and reporting sexual harassment—as well as how complicated the intersections of race, gender, law, and work can be.

Hill testified that Thomas sexually harassed her as her supervisor at the Department of Education and the EEOC. Various studies find that at least 40% of all women report experiencing sexual harassment at work during some point of their lives. Women of color experience higher rates of both sexual and ethnic workplace harassment.

• Aniruddha Das. 2009. “Sexual Harassment at Work in the United States.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 38: 909-921.
• Jennifer L. Berdahl and Celia Moore. 2006. “Workplace Harassment: Double Jeopardy for Minority Women.” Journal of Applied Psychology 91(2): 426-436.

Hill testified that she continued working for Thomas despite the ongoing harassment because she had no other job alternatives. This is unsurprising given that women in law professions encounter a glass ceiling that limits upward mobility, often pushing women to pursue a limited track of jobs when seeking promotions. Further, women in law professions report hearing sexist jokes, having their authority questioned, and being complimented on looks rather than achievements—all at higher rates than their male colleagues.

• Elizabeth H. Gorman and Julie A. Kmec. 2009. “Hierarchical Rank and Women’s Organizational Mobility: Glass Ceilings in Corporate Law Firms,” American Journal of Sociology 114(5): 1428–74.
• Patricia MacCorquodale and Gary Jensen. 1993. “Women in the Law: Partners or Tokens?” Gender and Society 7(4): 582–93.

Even women in power are subject to sexual harassment. One study finds that sexual harassment can actually increase when some women occupy supervisory positions. Sexual harassment has much more to do with power than simple workplace hierarchies.

• Heather McLaughlin, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone. 2012. “Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power,” American Sociological Review 77(4): 625-647.