Category: Race & Ethnicity Studies

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture

Love and Homonormativity: One in the Same?

(Source:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gay_wedding_a_by_Stefano_Bolognini.JPG) What is love? Does everyone understand love as how Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines it? Starting from birth, everyone is taught to love: whether it is a family member, the family pet or a close friend. However, we are never socialized how to love an individual not related by kinship. Amorous love between two individuals is more like a trail and error process. Yet, American society would have one think falling in love is as easy as one, two, three: one...

Class & Stratification / Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

"Today we honor the best and whitest"

This article is making its way through my news feed again, despite the fact that it is more than 2 years old.  Fresh comments, fresh outrage from the community.  Students experiencing race-based standards give interviews on NPR about how these standards make them feel and think while they are inside the classroom.  To date my favorite casual observational comment about having different standards for different sets of students based on their race is, “based upon their race?  The only race...

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture

Ubiquity and Privilege Checking

(Source:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Unity#mediaviewer/File:3D_Full_Spectrum_Unity_Holding_Hands_Concept.jpg)   In my last post I discussed the problems with juridical changes and practice in real life, problematized ubiquity amongst communities that are at odds with solidarity and posed questions about challenging privilege. Today’s post continues that conversation by asking how does one create change around ideologies? Those who work in the health and human services, who are educators and the like, know that change does not come just from juridical amendments. Change is only created through education and...

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change

Will the LGBTQ Community Ever Become Ubiquitous?

(Source:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:LGBT_rights#mediaviewer/File:Demonstration,_with_Gay_Liberation_Front_Banner.jpg, via Wikimedia Commons) During the trials of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and others, my Facebook newsfeed was filled with a barrage of status updates about the refusal to indict the officers: I had “friends” standing behind the police officers and the law, and “friends” who were in line with protestors and the families of the victims. For the majority of the press coverage, I stayed quiet and did not take a side: but the time has come for the...

Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

CONAIE Headquarters to be Shut Down: Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador Request International Support

Yesterday, in Quito, Ecuador, hundreds of Indigenous people from around the country, including those from the Amazon, the Sierra and the Coast, gathered outside the offices of CONAIE (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), in the north of the city, to continue the fight against a government plan to close the organisation’s headquarters. CONAIE is among the largest and longest standing Indigenous organisations in Ecuador, and its work focuses on defending the rights, territories, culture and lives of millions of...

Class & Stratification / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change

Legacies of The War on Poverty: A chat with Jill Quadagno on the 20th anniversary of The Color of Welfare

In 1994 Jill Quadagno published The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty.  To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this highly influential text, Dr. Quadagno did a series of media interviews two days.  She also graciously sat down with me for an informal chat about what she believes to be the lasting outcome of The War on Poverty.

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

It's Time to Discuss: Race, Police Misconduct, and Social Change

  I have been reading the most recent posts on Sociology Lens and I was surprised to see that there has not been a post on the recent grand jury decision in not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. For weeks, a large portion of news coverage has been on the death of the unarmed 18-year-old black teen. Then Wednesday, a grand jury declined to indict another white police officer,...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

"Nice Bag!" Discussing Race, Class, and Sexuality in Examining Street Harassment

Over the last two weeks two videos have repeated shown up on my social media pages: “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman” and “3 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Homosexual.”  Both videos aim to illuminate the often unnoticed topic of street harassment.   And both videos clearly illustrate what day to day life is like for some women and gay men.  However, it is important to frame both videos within the context of location, race, class,...

Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

Happy 20th Anniversary!

Pop Quiz! What do Brandeis, UCLA, and Fayetteville Universities have in common?  Answer: They all have The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty by Jill Quadagno on their 2014 syllabi.  This book is taught in departments of history, public affairs, social work, sociology, and political science.  Professors use it to examine sociological methods, poverty, race, politics, and welfare state.  For many students this was a life changing book.  This book ignited our interests in studies of...

Gender & Sexuality / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Teaching & Learning Guide

Are We All Expert Impostors?

In a previous post (which can be found here), I mentioned the ‘impostor phenomenon’ and how I and many people I know who work in academia have experienced it in some form or another during their career. The ‘imposter syndrome’ (identified by Clance & Imes, 1978, pp. 1-2), the feeling that leads the self-declared impostors to believe that they are not intelligent and that anyone who thinks otherwise has simply been fooled, is usually accompanied by a fear that one...

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

Exhibit A: the Whites of the Eyes

Under what conditions might it be ethical to refuse to meet or return someone’s gaze? Is it ever acceptable for a social scientist or journalist to write ‘with their eyes shut’? The notion that visual receptiveness can be a spur to urgent ethical response is captured in that familiar category of humanitarian action, ‘bearing witness’ (so much so, in fact, that we often forget about the work that must be done in order for witnesses to be created). At the...

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture

Holding Up the Women Who Hold Up Half the Sky

  Recently, Netflix added the widely acclaimed documentary Half the Sky to its online streaming library.  The film, inspired by journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn book of the same name, follows six American celebrities as they travel throughout Asia and Africa addressing some of the health care, educational, and economic issues that oppress women and girls across the globe. Throughout the film, the viewer clearly sees the impact women and girls of the developing world have on both Kristof...

Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Going Out of My Mind in Jandiayacu

    So often we talk about being rational, making decisions based on established facts and existing knowledge, as if it is, and should be, the aim of all people at all times. Ways of being or knowing that sit outside of accepted knowledge can open a person up to being dismissed, discredited or ridiculed, particularly in the academic world. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a somewhat methodical and ‘rational’ person (most of the time). I love...

Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

Becoming Respectable in Northwest England and Kathmandu Nepal

  In working with survivors of human trafficking over the last few weeks, I have had the opportunity to have a number of very personal conversations with women who are in the process of becoming empowered and rebuilding their self-esteem.  One topic that continues to emerge in almost every discussion is being respectable.  As I have been reflecting on what it means to be respectable in the context of surviving gender violence, I recalled a remarkable text I read a...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Alternative to the school-to-prison pipeline

In my last post I discussed the role the school-to-prison pipeline plays in increasing the gap in minority education. The consequences of zero tolerance school policies are many including stigmatization, dropping out of school, and/or getting a juvenile record. Some schools have begun to change their responses to deviance in schools by going away from zero tolerance policies and towards restorative justice models. Restorative justice is a proactive approach requiring wholesale cultural change in the punishment orientation of the school...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Avery Gordon's "Ghostly Matters" and the Haunting of Sociological Research

  I recently stumbled upon a unique analysis of the construction of social reality.  In Avery Gordon’s Ghostly Matters, haunting is a method of sociological research.  She argues, “To study social life one must confront the ghostly aspects of it” (7).  Ghostly Matters is her attempt to understand the complexities of social life through an analysis of the hauntings surrounding Sabina Spielrein, the desaparecido of Argentina and the lingering impact of racial slavery during the Reconstruction period in the United States.  Her...