“They use their media to assassinate real news…all to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism, and sexism, and xenophobia, and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding, until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.”
Last month, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch spoke these words in a new video campaign targeting progressive political protesters. The ad features black and white media footage of protest signs with the words “RESIST” and shows protesters looting, breaking windows, and starting fires in the street. Loesch and the NRA have since received widespread criticism for the advertisement’s seemingly pro-violence rhetoric, even evoking a video response from BlackLivesMatter. While the NRA maintains that the advertisement is not intended to encourage violence against progressive political protest, the black and white imagery depicting protesters as criminals is eerily reminiscent of political campaigns (e.g. the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s) that used political action as a call for criminalization and law and order.
In times of spiraling economic instability, political divisiveness, and social inequality — such as the Great Depression or the Civil Rights Movement, the result is often public unrest and widespread protest. In order to quell state criticisms, elite political actors on both sides of the political spectrum develop campaigns that heighten public anxiety of crime by conflating political dissent with criminal activity. President Nixon, for example, ran on a campaign of “law and order” and called himself part of the “silent majority” on this issue. Regardless of actual fluctuations in crime rates, the public often accepts these messages of criminalization and tough on crime policies. This law and order rhetoric then legitimizes police and military aggressive surveillance – and at times, physical confrontation – against protesters.
We can link the current tide of mass incarceration to these types of campaigns in the 1960s and ’70s. Though the Johnson administration is lauded for taking important legislative steps in welfare reform, Elizabeth Hinton’s recent work argues that the administration simultaneously developed legislation, like the Law Enforcement Assistance Act (LEAA), that expanded police control through federal funding and toughened criminal sanctions amid a time of sit-ins, boycotts, and marches by (young) black advocates against Jim Crow practices. The Johnson administration helped create the “War on Crime,” and their political rhetoric rested upon the notions of black urban pathology and individual (as opposed to structural) economic failure.
While social scientists have long talked about globalization, a new concept called “glocalization” has emerged as a way to highlight the ways that global patterns are accepted and interpreted by localized populations. Sport sociologists have been among the leaders in developing this concept, and the International Champions Cup (ICC), a soccer tournament making its way around the United States, helps illustrate and explain why.
By combining local customs and traditions with global trends, communities engaged in globalization have control over how the global viewpoint is digested. And this combination of the outside world with the inside world has become a highly effective tool of capitalism — jumping on recognized trends while providing a local twist makes glocalizing of certain products more appealing.
When it comes to the ICC, we see American promoters and communities taking the world’s most popular sport and infusing it with traditional American sporting values. Club chants have been replaced by pop music that plays over the sound system like at many basketball and baseball games. Marching to the stadium with team banners and flags is replaced by exclusive fan party zones during tailgating. And players are elevated to celebrity status rather than community heroes.
Glocalization, however, comes at the risk of loosing those who support what is already established. The ICC, for example, has created an artificial experience for hardcore fans because of the domination of casual fans — known as “post fans” — as the main spectator group. Post fans are casual supporters who have a certain expectation of what the event is supposed to entail, and often the experience they seek is very homogeneous with every other Western, middle class sporting experience. With the event being catered to post fans, hardcore soccer fanatics are left with a watered down experience. And within the context of the United States, Hispanics, Africans and other minority and immigrant groups are the primary soccer supporters. However, these groups are often at an economic disadvantage, which makes attending these games very difficult, further strengthening the post fan’s position in the glocalizing of the the global product of soccer.
Another U.S. Independence Day came and went, along with cheers of ‘Murcia! and sentimental Facebook posts about American pride. But how do racial and ethnic minorities experience being “American” while systemic racial oppression continues to target people of color in the U.S.? A lot of the focus has been on the experiences of Black Americans, but social science shows that other racial minorities are similarly marginalized when they are excluded from whiteness.
For example, while stereotypes like the “model minority” myth seemingly valorize Asian American achievement, other stereotypes exclude them from the “American” label by depicting them as foreign. Moreover, Asian Americans are a pan-ethnic group – meaning there are many nationalities included under the umbrella term “Asian American.” And darker-skinned, poorer Asians, like Cambodian refugees, are excluded from characterizations of excellence and success.
Even though many Arab Americans have lighter skin, enjoy middle class success, and identify as White, they are still “not quite White” because of the ways they are racialized. Negative stereotypes about Arab people as “backward” and “uncivilized” have resurfaced in recent years as the racialization of Arab and Muslim men as criminals and threats to national security became mainstream talking points in the War on Terror.
Institutions may also dismiss important differences among various Black ethnic groups. For Somalis who come to America, it is often the first time they are considered Black. However, their religion, language, and cultural identities may be more salient, differentiating them as “foreign” from Black Americans.
Cartogram of Total Disenfranchisement Rates by State, 2016. The Sentencing Project.
Amy Bach, a lawyer and criminal justice journalist, built a free public tool titled “Measures for Justice” that contains data on over 300 county court systems in 6 states. The nonprofit has received funding from the burgeoning activism of the tech community — Google gave Measures for Justice a grant for $1.5 million dollars and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative recently announced they would be awarding the nonprofit $6.5 million. Due to the fragmented nature of the criminal justice system, the Measures for Justice research team frequently had to travel to individual counties in order to request records.
Sociologists who study punishment have long recognized the importance of geography in structuring disadvantage, at multiple levels. For instance, there are tremendous differences between states in the scope and impact of felon voting restrictions. Florida, for instance, contains 27% of all disenfranchised felons in the United States—in large part due to its policy of disenfranchising people after they have completed their sentences.. On the other end of the spectrum, Vermont and Maine allow even prisoners to vote. Another way that geography structures punishment is through children’s experiences of parental incarceration, which varies substantially by region. Moreover, the extent of racial disparity also varies regionally, with African American children experiencing the highest risks in all regions, and Latinos experiencing the most disadvantage in the West and Northeast.
In a similar vein, even new forms of cybercrime are structured by geography. Sociologists have recently started to explore how these new types of crimes, such as cyber-victimization, are shaped by state-level characteristics.
These efforts could prove useful for scholars and for the public. For example, Measures for Justice developed a “Fair Process” indicator, which is closely tied to the social science concept of procedural justice — the idea that citizens will be more likely to comply with the law and requests of law enforcement if they perceive the system as fair. Recently, reforms and police training based on procedural justice have begun to be widely implemented.
Veronica Horowitz is a Ph.D Candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota who studies punishment, mercy, and gender in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Last month, a Texas law enforcement officer opened fire on a van of several Black teenage boys, killing 15-year-old Jordan Edwards. His death reminded many of the cell phone footage showing a Los Angeles off-duty white officer dragging a 13-year-old Latino boy by the collar while pointing a gun, or the McKinney, TX officer who drew his gun on multiple Black youth at a pool party in 2015. During media coverage of Edwards’ death, the media emphasized his honor roll status and the fact that he was a “good student,” and thus not deserving of this treatment. This is not always the way mistreatment of minority youth is framed, however, and sociological research on youth victimization finds that minority youth are often excluded from the category of “true” or “ideal” victimhood, which ultimately works to legitimize their victimization.
Societal notions of childhood characterize children as innocent and pure in contrast to the deviant adult world. Society employs these images of innocence to address children’s vulnerability to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. However, when children’s behaviors contradict traditional notions of innocence and purity, adults tend to exclude them from the social and legal protection that childhood often affords.
This inclusion and exclusion of some children from social and legal protection is highly racialized. Images of childhood innocence and victimization typically feature mainstream images of white girls and boys, leaving minority children excluded. Not only that, schools and law enforcement view Black and Latino boys as dangerous and often ignore or downplay their everyday experiences of violence.
Despite encountering high levels of street and interpersonal violence, Black and Latina girls’ victimization remains largely neglected in comparison to their white female peers. Minority girls living in high crime environments often feel pressure from adults to adhere to notions of being “good girls.” Yet, to survive such environments, many minority girls feel they must forgo traditional feminine roles and engage in physical confrontations with other girls and/or men. In doing so, they are criminalized, depicted as bad girls and “ghetto chicks,” and excluded from societal ideals of victimhood.
Sex education is a contentious subject in U.S. politics. Before Obama’s presidency, the federal government only funded abstinence education, but in 2009 Obama created the Office of Adolescent Health and diverted some of these funds to create an approved list of practices shown to prevent teen pregnancy (several sourcesshowabstinence-onlyeducationdoes not) through research. With Trump as president, the future of sex ed is an open question, but sociologists can offer some insight regarding what we already know.
Public sex education or “social hygiene” appeared in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century in response to concerns about increasing urbanization and growing sexual temptations. During the 1960s and 70s, sexual cultures in the U.S. underwent further shifts, influenced by feminism, youth culture, and the gay rights movement. However, anxieties about sex, especially for youth in the U.S., remained. Debates about what kind of sex education to provide for youth seemed to occur between two poles — sexual liberals who supported a comprehensive sex education in schools and sexual conservatives who supported abstinence-only education.
No matter which type of sex education is implemented, sex ed is ultimately about regulating youth sexuality. Political actors and popular conversations alike frame youth sex as a social problem that requires intervention. Much of this discourse focuses on sex as a danger for children and young adults. Thus, sex education in the U.S. draws on an assumption of risk, relying on prevention-based education.
However, sex educators and the curriculum they use do not assume all children are equally innocent or at risk. Scholars show that sex education often draws on racial stereotypes of youth of color as sexually deviant. Youth of color are “adultified” and thus perceived as more sexual than their white peers. For instance, teachers often characterize African American girls as sexually opportunistic and assume Latina teens are inherently at risk of teen pregnancy. Further, boys are assumed to be sexually aggressive, and girls are held responsible for dealing with boys’ desires.
Public outrage about missing Black and Latina girls struck the nation’s capital in March, with many calling the number of missing girls of color a crisis. While the number of disappearances has not risen considerably in recent years, and there weren’t actually 14 Black girls missing in 24 hours in DC, the question is an important one for sociological analysis. Who is considered a “victim” of violent crime and whose victimization goes unnoticed?
Whites, particularly white women, are the most likely to be framed as victims of crime. Take laws named after victims in the U.S. (e.g., Megan’s law) — while Blacks suffer far more victimization from violent crime than whites, of the 51 laws named after victims in the U.S. from 1990-2016, 86.3% are named after white victims. Only four are named after Black victims, and three after Hispanic victims. Additionally, 65% of these laws were named after female victims.
The construction of whites as victims and Blacks as offenders extends to the reaction of law enforcement when girls are reported as runaways. Scholars argue that running away from home is particularly gendered, pointing to the high number of girls that run away compared to boys and their reasons for running away. Of girls that were considered runaways in the U.S. from 1997-2003, Black and Hispanic girls were significantly more likely to have a runaway charge than white girls. White girls were more likely to get off with a warning.
Similarly, Black girls are more likely to be punished in schools. A recent study showed that Black girls are three times more likely than white girls to get an office referral, a higher likelihood than white boys in the same school. Black girls also got referrals for more ambiguous infractions like dress code violations or disobedience.
What does all of this mean in the context of missing Black girls? It means that institutions, like schools and law enforcement, are far more likely to criminalize Black girls than their white counterparts, which means that they are less likely to see them as victims.
With Arkansas’ recent attempts to execute seven inmates in the course of eleven days, and the Supreme Court’s upcoming oral arguments surrounding McWilliams v. Dunn , there has been a lot news about the death penalty this month. Although it is abolished in many other industrialized nations, 31 U.S. states still retain the death penalty, and there is extensive research on this “peculiar institution” and why it remains resilient today.
Despite a multitude of studies, current research remains inconclusive on the deterrent effects of capital punishment. These ambiguous findings are due to a lack of attention to “noncapital sanctions” for homicide like life sentences and incomplete data on potential murderers’ perceptions of capital punishment. What is clear is that there is an extreme racial divide in support for the death penalty, with Black Americans being consistently less likely to support capital punishment than whites. This divide is partly attributed to racial prejudice against Blacks, so much so that one study suggests that if you exclude whites with extreme racial attitudes, support for capital punishment between Black and white Americans is not nearly as bifurcated. Death sentences are also applied disparately across racial lines, with defendants convicted of killing white females most likely to receive a capital punishment sentence, while those convicted of killing Black males are afforded more leniency.
Scholars argue that the death penalty is nested within an exceptionally punitive American carceral state. Capital punishment stems from an unparalleled American political culture that centralizes issues of crime and the criminal justice system. Unlike their European counterparts, American judges and prosecutors are locally elected, allowing much of the criminal justice process to be subject to electoral cycles and public outcries. This political structure, combined with a history of racial conflict and segregation, perpetuates low levels of social solidarity and an underdeveloped state, which allows retributive punishments to flourish. This is especially evident in the American South, a region that has a long history of collective, racialized violence and where death penalty support is particularly embedded.
Wall Mural in Nogales. Photo by Jonathan McIntosh, Flickr CC
“I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” These were the words that President Donald Trump said when he first announced his candidacy. Since his inauguration, Trump has continued to talk about his intentions of building the wall, with many companies allegedly bidding for the contract,despite its many obstacles. Many leaders in Latin America have publicly stated that building the wall would not only change the relationship with Mexico, but it would change relationships with the rest of Latin America as well. Trump’s wall would create a physical barrier between the US and Mexico, but it would also intensify what social scientists call symbolic boundaries.
The border acts as the physical manifestation of and “us versus them” mentality by reinforcing differences between groups, which often limits positive contact between groups and can lead to negative stereotypes. For example, physical borders create symbolic boundaries that reinforce national identities by marking the geographic territory where one nationality resides. This often creates tensions by giving further attention to perceived group differences. In the case of Trump’s wall, part of the underlying purpose is to intensify the symbolic boundary between Anglo-Americans in the industrialized world and the Hispanic inhabitants of a developing nation.
Symbolic boundaries use specific cultural distinctions in order to distinguish one group from another, often along racial, ethnic, and religious lines. In the United States for example, Christians believe having religion creates a morality that is the basis for civic society. Atheists, who have no religion, are believed to lack that morality. This has resulted in atheists being unfairly cast as the symbolic representation of anti-American values. Like the physical wall Trump keeps threatening, these same types of symbolic boundaries work to keep many immigrants, refugees, and other religious minorities from being fully accepted in the U.S.
Black men are often depicted as hypersexual, aggressive, and criminal in the media, which perpetuates long-standing racial and gender stereotypes and inequalities. Director Barry Jenkins attempts to deconstruct these stereotypes of Black masculinity in the award-winning Moonlight. The movie tells the story of Chiron, a young, Black, queer man, on a quest for self-acceptance amidst the homophobia of his peers and socioeconomic circumstances of his Atlanta neighborhood. Social science research sheds light on the origins of these stereotypes and how they influence Black men’s gender and sexual identity performances.
While virtually all men are subjected to the pressures of acting like a “real man,” Black men experience additional strain due to racialized stereotypes that depict them as inherently dangerous and hypersexual. Due to the socioeconomic disadvantages that plague many Black communities, Black men develop alternative constructions of masculinity that emphasize moral and masculine superiority over white men. For example, they may view whiteness as feminine and homosexual, and thus position themselves as the heterosexual man whose masculinity is reaffirmed through sex with women. The result is that some Black men label those who behave in traditionally feminine ways as “sissies” or “punks” and justify violence perpetuated against them.
Due to the stigmas described above, many queer Black men attempt to remain “in the closet” to avoid harassment and violence. Other Black men only engage in homosexual activity on the “down low” (DL). And others navigate stigma by exploring queer experiences without distancing themselves from their straight public identity. For example, some Black men frequent gay hip hop clubs where they do not need to “come out”; they can enjoy a space where they can explore their sexuality with other men while simultaneously performing heterosexuality by acting “hard” with hip-hop music. Yet, being “in the closet” or “on the down low” may further stigmatize Black queer men as sexually deviant.
Messages regarding the need to act “tough” also affect sexually abused Black male children. McGuffey interviewed 62 parents of Black and Puerto Rican sexually abused boys. He found that fathers believed male-perpetrated sexual abuse threatened their son’s masculinity. Many were afraid that the abuse made their sons act “too emotional” and that they would become homosexual. As such, they encouraged heterosexual behavior by telling them not to touch other boys, asking them if they had a girlfriend, and telling them to look at girls’ physical characteristics.
