Uncategorized | Race, Class, and Gender

The Beginning

During our first class devoted to issues of race, we wrote reactions, feelings, and musings on sticky notes. While we wrote, Professor Kucinskas lined the wall with the sticky notes from years prior, providing the opportunity to see how other students felt about race. Though each piece of yellow paper held the thoughts of different people from different years and different backgrounds, the sentiments were the same. Race is hard. Race is scary. Race makes us uncomfortable.

This is a familiar song, one we’ve sung for decades (and will likely continue to sing). But why? Markus and Moya, in their book Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, boil discomfort about race down to two factors: the view of race as a biological thing, and the assumption that the individual is the “source of all thought, feeling and action” (59). According to Markus and Moya, the idea that individuals may not themselves have the power to overcome racial barriers or remove themselves from racial associations similarly contributes to this discomfort.

These factors do play into the widespread unwillingness to address issues of race, but so too does fear of insult. When talking about race, we often tread upon eggshells. In doing so, words come protected, guarded, and therefore lose the ability to yield honest and meaningful conversations. This dynamic comes from the fact that racial differences stand rooted in long histories of hurt and abuse. For some, race is more than just an identity, but exists as a connection to other and to those who have come before.

The fear of insult comes also from the heightened push for political correctness. With attempts at full inclusivity and equality, humanitarian groups and social movements influence patterns of speech by constantly changing terms and labels, updating what is and what is not appropriate. The unintended effect, however, is that people fear using the incorrect term and therefore avoid discussion altogether (this is not only limited to race…a perfect example is sexuality, and how people struggle to know/remember the correct words for transgender individuals). There is an easy solution, though. We must create spaces where mistakes are allowed, where open discussions about difficult issues thrive and where, if a mistake is made, it is politely corrected so that everyone learns.

I firmly believe that hate speech comes largely from a place of fear. By signing up for “Race, Class, Gender,” we all took a step towards eliminating such intolerance and fear, creating the exact type of space where people can take risks, where they can speak and be heard. Unfortunately, the world is very different from our classroom. A mere glance at YikYak shows that our campus is even different from our classroom. We therefore all have an obligation to take this semester out of our notebooks and into the world, using what we have learned and discussed as fuel to fight the racist structures and sentiments around us. As educated and informed individuals made aware of prevalent systems of inequality, the charge falls on us. This class and the experiences we have shared will light our path forward, so together, let us now lead the way. The semester is ending, but our work is just beginning.

Humanizing the American Poor: A Review of the Documentary Rich Hill

“We’re not trash. We’re good people.”

Early on in Andrew Palmero’s and Tracy Tragos’s documentary Rich Hill, Andrew, age 13, delivers this message. Andrew is an adolescent boy subject to a seemingly endless cycle of broken homes and extreme poverty. In documenting the life of Andrew, the directors opt to forgo narration, choosing instead to document his life as it happens. Though the film is void of an explicit narrative, it sheds light on the problems plaguing impoverished families. It provides the viewer with strong ethnographical evidence that supports sociological and economic evidence of the limited upward economic mobility in America as well as the cyclical nature of poverty.

Throughout the film, the directors juxtapose extremely patriotic shots of the town’s Fourth of July celebrations with shots of Andrew struggling to achieve a normal life. At first, I thought these shots served only to make the film more aesthetically pleasing. But as the film progressed, it was clear that they served to demonstrate that, despite what we may think, the American Dream is not always within reach for the extremely poor. For a kid like Andrew, who is forced to bathe in water heated by irons and coffeepots, the day-to-day battle to survive poverty makes long-term planning all but impossible. Furthermore, given his parents’ lack of education and his inconsistent attendance at school, it is very clear that he lacks the cultural capital necessary to understand how one can attain a higher education and a successful career, much less actually achieve these things.

In a similar manner, Palmero and Tragos also include shots of a Ferris wheel at the local carnival in order to represent the cyclical nature of poverty. The academic world has long understood that poverty has a propensity to be passed along from generation to generation. Economic data tells us that the offspring of families in lowest income quintile have the smallest probability of ending up in the highest income quintile (Norton et. al. 2011).

Similarly, sociological literature tells us that parenting styles perpetuate income levels across generations. In her book Unequal Childhoods, Annette Lareau (2003) draws distinctions between the way in which lower and upper classes approach parenting as well as the consequences of the different approaches. She explains that wealthier parents use a child-rearing approach called “concerted cultivation” that is characterized by very active and guided parenting in order to foster the growth of their child’s talents, opinions, and goals. This approach is adopted to prepare children for future academic and occupational endeavors. On the other hand, lower class parents tend to let their children grow and mature more on their own, through a “natural growth” parenting style. As a result, these children are dependent on the institutions they are a part of. They are less likely to seek out alternative guidance or directly question authority. Furthermore, lower class kids are far more likely to spend their time “hanging out” instead of participating in organized extracurricular activities that ultimately are rewarding in the long run (Lareau 2003).

Throughout the film it is apparent that Andrew’s parents’ do not use the concerted cultivation approach. Andrew spends the majority of his afternoons aimlessly playing. The fact that Andrews’ parents frequently move houses in the pursuit of new jobs further eliminates any sense of institutional consistency that would have otherwise existed in Andrew’s life. One cannot help but worry that Andrew will be subject to the same cycle of poverty that his parents experienced as a result of his upbringing. At the conclusion of the film, it is clear that the use of a Ferris wheel could not be a more apt metaphor for Andrew’s family’s life as well as the rural poor as a whole.

Unfortunately Andrew’s experiences are far from unique and are characteristic of the struggles that most young, poor Americans face. It is not clear by the end of the film what could or should be done in order to reverse these troubling trends. While the film fails in this regard, it does deserve considerable praise for its ability to humanize the American poor and strike down stereotypes of a lazy lower class unwilling to work their way out of poverty. It is abundantly clear at the end of the film that Andrew and his family are indeed good people. They are just facing numerous, overwhelming challenges that make it nearly impossible for them to break out of poverty.

Hillary’s Hurdle: The Effects of Gender and Sexism on Professional Women

Hillary Clinton might lose the presidency, and even the nomination, because she is a woman. Among Sanders’ fans who support him with militant millennialism, or Trump supporters who talk about women as if they were dogs, this statement will likely be written off. I might be seen as another worried supporter crying sexism to distract from the actual shortcomings and missteps of Clinton’s campaign. But call off the Berniebots and silence the Trumpeters, because I aim not to qualify my decision to vote for Hillary nor to challenge yours not to. Pointing to professional gender norms and the role of sexism in the media, I aim instead to trace Hillary’s backlash to her gender performance, illustrating the double binds that obstruct paths to success by holding professional women at higher standards than their male counterparts.

Performing gender doesn’t happen in a social vacuum. It happens, rather, in a world of social hierarchies and pressures that enforce expectations and consequences of performance. Women and men are held to different standards of self-presentation, with male-associated behavior more suited for professional success. Tyler Okimoto and Victoria Brescoll’s (2010) study of women in power shows that ambitious women tend to engender feelings of anger and contempt from their male counterparts. These feelings likely come from the cultural understanding of women as “communal”- kind, sensitive and caring, and men as “agentic”-aggressive, competitive, and assertive. Women in public leadership positions who exhibit behaviors not traditionally associated with their gender often risk backlash, even if these behaviors are necessary for their job or position. This theory gains credence from a 2008 study in which male and female participants both “assigned less status” to women who exhibited competitiveness, strong leadership styles, authoritative rhetoric, and ambition (note that each of these characteristics are intrinsic to the demeanor of a president).

Gendered expectations force women to do intense identity work to prove their qualifications and capabilities both as a woman and as a professional. As a result, women can “easily cross the line and appear to be insufficiently feminine- that is, not “nice” enough” (Carroll 2009, 6). Sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter comments on this dynamic in her work on gender and tokenism, laying out four common stereotypes and associated identities forced upon professional women. Three of these four identities are markedly feminine (the seductress, mother, and pet), while one bares masculine undertones (the iron maiden). The latter is implicitly critical, using masculine imagery to shame strong women. This unfairly places women into roles they may or may not identity with, since “women inducted into the iron maiden role are stereotyped as tougher than they are (hence the name) and trapped in a more militant stance than they might otherwise take” (Kanter 984, 1977).

Viewed by many as an iron maiden, Clinton bears harsh attacks for her perceived lack of femininity. As articulated by Diana B. Carlin and Kelly Winfrey, in the 2008 race, “both Clinton’s physical appearance and her choice of pantsuits over skirts and dresses were the source of considerable derision.” Public figures speak often and sharply of Clinton’s appearance. Rush Limbaugh in 2008 contrasted Clinton with Sarah Palin by saying that Clinton is “not going to remind anybody of their ex-wife, she’s going to remind men, ‘Gee, I wish she was single’’ (Carlin and Winfrey 2009, 331, 338). The double standard therefore extends to the media by creating a platform to judge men on a basis of merit while women, as illustrated by Limbaugh’s statement, are judged by personality, physical attractiveness, and gender performance. FOX news contributor Tucker Carlson once said of Hillary: “when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.” This statement directly paints Clinton as a danger to men everywhere, reinforcing the harmful characterization of powerful women as threats to male-dominated institutions.

Journalists bear equal blame for negatively reporting on Clinton’s gender performance. Prominent amongst these pen-yielding mudslingers is New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, whose scathing columns boil to the brim with sexist sentiment. In a 2015 column, Dowd described Clinton as a “granny” who should learn to “campaign as a woman.” Dowd, who once called Clinton “the manliest candidate,” later criticized her as over-feminizing, stating that she “should have run as a man this time.” From these wildly offensive (and contradictory) statements to the claim the Hillary “killed feminism,” Dowd and reporters like her use Hillary’s sex as a weapon of slander and hate, harming public perception by shaming her non-hegemonic gender performance.

Some media sexism comes in abrasive and obvious forms, like calling Hillary “shrill” or “bitchy,” but the majority of it comes by subtly addressing female candidates with less respect than their male opponents. As discovered in Joseph Uscinski and Lilly Goren’s 2010 study of the 2008 Democratic Primary, both sexes tend to call men by their titles and women by their first names. In the 2008 primaries, Clinton was referenced in newspaper coverage “by first name 3 percent more [than opponent Barack Obama) and her title of Senator was omitted 15 percent more.” On television, Clinton was referenced by first name four times more than Obama was. These seemingly minute and peripheral statistics actually resonate deeply within the dynamics of a campaign. As Uscinsi and Goren (2010) found, “referencing a woman by a first name may project an image of inferiority to the audience.” The media therefore disadvantages Clinton not only through overt sexism, but by subtly painting her as a less viable candidate.

Hillary Clinton is, and always has been, a polarizing figure. Her long career of spotlight scrutiny left her seasoned with scars, dividing the American public sharply between champions and critics. As a fellow on Clinton’s campaign who spent months canvassing door-to-door, I heard time and time again that people like her policies but not her personality, her vision but not her voice, her ideas but not her identity. These criticisms come largely from those who see Hillary as a threat to hegemonic gender norms, and who watch, unsettled, as she every day cuts cracks in the glass ceiling not with a stiletto or kitchen knife, but with her own two hands. We need to stop pretending that the playing field is level. Like it or not, Hillary Clinton is not a man. She’s a woman (a strong woman), and it’s time we stopped punishing her for it.

It’s Time to Move beyond Numbers!!

Having grown up in Tokyo, a racially and ethnically homogeneous city, I had a utopian image of American society before arriving here. I thought in the United States, people respected all kinds of social differences, including race, ethnicity, and nationality. Unfortunately, the reality was far from my imagination; the affluent American society I was exposed to at my boarding school was surprisingly homogeneous. I constantly felt a strong pressure to be like my peers, most of whom were wealthy white students from the East Coast. In fact, I still feel a similar pressure at the small liberal arts college I currently attend.

Why was there such a large discrepancy between what I believed and what I experienced in terms of racial and ethnic diversity in elite higher education?

One important reason I thought was the schools’ focus on the numbers of racial diversity. Stevens (2007) shows interesting examples of how colleges use statistical figures that are “the most flattering,” “accurate,” and “defensible (47)” in order to improve their image. The statistic on diversity is no exception. Some colleges “round up” the number of students from underrepresented groups. Other colleges in their pictures on recruiting materials include proportionally more minority students, especially African Americans, than are actually attending the school (Pippert, Essenburg, and Matchett 2013).

By focusing on surface-level representations of minority students, elite schools overlook a crucial piece in diversity: student experience. Unfortunately, superficial forms of diversity do not automatically translate into positive experiences for students from underrepresented backgrounds in historically white academic institutions. Warikoo and Deckman (2014), for example, show that students from two equally “diverse” schools in terms of numbers of underrepresented groups of students have completely different experiences with respect to integration into campus life. What determines the student experiences is how each school approaches the topic of diversity.

One school takes the Integration and Celebration approach. This school focuses on racial integration and offers events for all students to enjoy learning about different cultures. Consequently, both white and minority students in this school have positive experiences with regards to social diversity. However, since the school does not offer much programming to educate students on the structural racial inequalities, students often do not develop the ability to critically address those issues in a deeper way.

The other school takes the Power Analysis and Minority Support approach. This school focuses on the needs of minority students. It offers programming for minority students on the systems of racial oppression. Unfortunately, this programming creates a division among students. Minority students who actively participate in diversity programming, feel empowered by the knowledge and skills they gain in understanding how racial inequalities operate. Other mainly white students who do not participate in diversity programming feel marginalized and frustrated by the division that such programming creates.

The takeaway point from this comparison is that numerical diversity does not tell the whole story. It does not reflect college policies and campus cultural climates that significantly impact students’ experience and quality of life on campus. Although numerical diversity is an important step towards true diversity, it is not enough. It is time for us move beyond numbers and promote efforts in inclusion and education on structural inequalities for all students in elite higher education, regardless of their racial, ethnic, national, socioeconomic, sexual, or any other identities.

The Sad Truth About Manufacturing

If you’re like me, you’re usually excited about job creation. So, if you’re like me, you’re happy when you hear that a new manufacturing plant is being built, because you think that people are getting good jobs. It seems so simple: new factories mean good jobs, right?

Wrong.

Between 2010 and 2012, the manufacturing industry has grown by 4.3 percent (Wessel and Hagerty, 2012). But in 2007, the median wage of manufacturing workers dipped below that of the rest of the private sector. It and has continued to go down since (U.S. Census in Ruckelshaus and Leberstein, 2014).

Why are workers’ wages dropping like this? It seems to me that there are two main reasons.

The first is that corporations can often lower these workers’ wages with impunity.

In order to boost job creation, states offer major financial incentives for companies to open manufacturing facilities. According to a 2014 article, however, corporations do not have to meet any wage requirements to receive benefits. Many corporations even elect to build plants in the south, where the labor standards are lower. The Manufacturing industry does create many jobs, but it does not create good jobs.

But why do the corporations behave this way?

According to Karl Marx (1888), it is because this is what happens in a capitalist society. Marx believes that capitalist societies are always a battleground between the working class (the proletariat) and the owning class (the bourgeoisie). As Marx says, capitalism “[leaves] remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self interest” (Marx, 1888). Marx believes that members of capitalism’s owning class (in this case, the manufacturing corporations) always act exclusively in pursuit of their own ends. According to Robert Reich (2007), American shareholders are following this pattern by inciting corporations’ “the obsessive drive to meet or exceed Wall Street’s estimates of pending quarterly earnings”. Clearly, America’s bourgeoisie is trying to maximize profit for itself.

What most of us don’t realize, though, is that it’s not just the corporations’ fault. And this leads to the second reason why wages for manufacturing workers are falling:

The American people push these corporations to expand.

Nine out of ten Americans believe that manufacturing corporations create good jobs, and many listed a manufacturing plant as one of the top facilities they would want to be brought into their community to create jobs (As cited in Ruckelshaus and Leberstein, 2014). Because of this, Americans push the government to use tax dollars to incentivise large corporations to build more manufacturing facilities. We only focus on the number of jobs that the industry can create, and do not realize that we are contributing to a system that hurts workers.

So, is it possible to reverse this trend?

If the government places more regulations on corporations, those corporations will be less likely to set up facilities in this country. If we do nothing, however, manufacturing workers’ wages may continue to drop. We are reminded of Marx’s prophecy about the end of capitalism, where the entire system crumples because the bourgeoisie has oppressed the workers to the extent that “the slave cannot exist within his slavery” (Marx 1888). If we cannot do something to fix this problem, this prophecy may come true.

There are no easy solutions to this problem, but if we do not try to solve, it this…

Modern Factory Worker — Sam Churchill, Flickr

…may become this again.