Last month, a Guatemalan woman, N-S-, won her domestic violence based asylum case after seven years in the United States immigration court system. Her case is similar to the story of many other women who flee their countries in order to receive protection from their abusive husbands. Until recently, courts rejected these types of claims, arguing that their issues were personal, not cultural issues (see Sinha 2001). Now, with the help of organizations like the Center for Gender and...
On August 7th, 2012, the state of Texas executed 54-year-old Marvin Wilson. Wilson was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering police informant Jerry Williams, 21, in 1992 in Beaumont, TX. The murder occurred several days after Wilson had been arrested for possession of cocaine. Free on bond and believing that Williams had told police about the drugs, Wilson and another man beat Williams outside of a convenience store before abducting and shooting him at close range. Williams’ body...
Author’s Note: This post is the second of a two-part series (read part 1 here) that looks at various narratives about civil lawsuits. Originally intended to be a longer series, it became apparent to the author that bi-weekly posts are a less than ideal way to write a series and makes it difficult for readers to follow. Mea culpa. Coincidentally, two weeks since my previous post, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a 2005 tort reform law. The law in...
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s recent overseas tour didn’t go well according to most in the press. The British press, in particular, blasted Romney for his comments regarding Britain’s preparedness for the Olympics. Then, Romney went to Israel. There he avoided offending his hosts but managed to offend Palestinians and some other nations while he was at it. Romney said that, “Culture makes all the difference,” as he compared the GDP per capita of Israel to “areas managed by the Palestinian...
I left my home state of Florida for some very personal reasons: racism and nativism, extremist right wing politicians, fiscal conservatism (and the failing school and social systems it produces) – not to mention vigilante justice (thanks to the stand your ground laws) and face-eating druggies. When people ask about where I grew up, I’m not proud to answer. But this summer, it got just a tiny bit better. Florida, ever a bastion of political, religious, and moral conservatism, a...
Nikki Khanna’s Sociology Compass article, Multiracial Americans Racial Identity Choices and Implications for the Collection of Race Data, reviews the literature on multiracial identity with a critical eye towards the 2010 U.S. Census. Racial identification is complex and difficult to measure because race itself is dynamic; a person’s racial identification may change—especially if the person has the ability to “pass,” or blend into the majority group even though they are, at least in par, a member of the minority group. ...
Should public spaces, like libraries, ban pornography? This past week, the San Francisco Public Library made it easier for those who want to use the library’s online services to view illicit materials by installing shields on 18 of its public computers at the Civic Center branch. In the tradition of anti-censorship, the librarians refuse to censor websites, including those containing pornographic materials. Yet, they want to address concerns from some of their patrons who were troubled that they might accidentally...
In recent years, debates have swirled over whether or not physicians should be allowed to hasten the death of their incurable patients. Although the Hippocratic Oath forbids medical doctors from prematurely ending the lives of their patients, questions still remain over how physicians should respond to the needs and to the wants of terminally ill individuals. Although the legality and ethics surrounding assisted suicide have been pondered since antiquity, these issues were brought to the forefront in the U.S. during...
Author’s Note: This post is the first in a series that looks at the civil justice system and various narratives about lawsuits. Today’s post uses a well-known 1994 case, Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, as a starting point to discuss a few of the more common ideas surrounding tort litigation. Poor Stella Liebeck. All she wanted was a cup of McDonald’s coffee. The 79-year old woman certainly never intended to become famous, or infamous, depending on which versions of the narrative...
After a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling, jurors in the state of New Jersey will now be asked to consider problems regarding the reliability of eyewitness identifications. The new court-mandated jury instructions warn jurors, among other things, that, “research has shown that people may have greater difficulty in accurately identifying members of a different race.” Judges must now ask jurors to “consider whether the fact that the witness and the defendant are not of the same race may have influenced...
Characters with “disabilities” are being more regularly depicted in entertainment media: The lead character of House suffers from chronic pain and walks with a limp; Glee has characters with Down’s syndrome, severe OCD, and mobility restrictions requiring wheelchairs; Perception has a schizophrenic crime-solving professor. And, this coming October, Turner Classic Movies will be showcasing some 20 movies featuring disabilities and disabled characters in a series the channel is calling “The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film.” While not...
Recently, it seems as though every newspaper and headline in the media includes the words,“diet, new regimen, or lose ten pounds instantly.” The amount of media reports can prove to be very confusing, problematic, and undermining of the larger health issues at hand. In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report titled “Obesity Trends Among U.S. Adults Between 1985 and 2010,” which offers an interactive map and state-by-state breakdown of obesity rates in the United States. According...
I feel compelled to write something about the shooting that occurred last night in Aurora, Colorado. I have nothing planned or scripted to offer, nor any profound sociological analysis designed to provide insight into why events like these happen. Likewise, I will neither use this moment to propagandize about supporting gun control, nor engage you in some hyperbolic ideological debate about the causes of mass homicide like you will probably find on all of today’s cable news outlets. Instead, I...
This summer, I tried something new with my sociology of gender class. Rather than assigning a traditional textbook or a reader, I had the class read a work of fiction based on social science research (along with a few topical nonfiction works). I was nervous to see if my students, who are used to big lecture halls and multiple choice tests, would feel comfortable discussing the novel and would come away from the class with a better understanding of...
In January 2010, 24-year-old Patricia Spottedcrow was arrested for selling $31 worth of marijuana to a police informant from her home in Kingfisher County, OK. Because her children were home at the time, Spottedcrow was charged with possession of a dangerous substance in the presence of a minor in addition to being charged with distributing a controlled substance. Since she had no prior criminal record and since the amount of marijuana sold was small, Spottedcrow elected to enter into a...
Two days ago marked what would have been the centennial birthday of iconic folk artist Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), perhaps best known today for his classic “This Land is Your Land.” His biography is a fascinating (and short) read and provides some context for the scathing social commentary in many of his 100+ songs. Much of his music is raw, simple, and emotionally charged – just a man and his guitar. But it was also forged in his own contentious politics...
