The Chicago Tribune ran a story yesterday about the potential effects of Tuesday’s election results titled, “Transformed by Obama’s Win — Has the election of an African-American to the White House shattered stereotypes and changed the way Americans - black or white - view each other?” In addition to interviews with locals in Chicago, the Tribune calls in the sociologists to sort this out in greater detail…
One sociologist points out the remaining ’structural issues’…
To be sure, few people said they believe Obama’s victory will be enough to transform race relations in the United States radically or instantly.
“There are structural issues that need to be addressed,” said Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, a professor of sociology at the University of California- Berkeley. He said it is much more difficult for people to transfer their attitude toward Obama to the people of color they encounter every day.
“That is not something that any single election will be able to make a major difference in,” Sanchez-Jankowski said.
But on a more optimistic note, sociologist Omar Roberts focuses on how Obama’s victory may be a starting point for future change…
Omar McRoberts, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, said he thinks the election has provided a forum for the kinds of discussion needed to effect change.
“This election doesn’t represent the erasure of race as an obstacle or as a point of tension,” McRoberts said. “What it marks is the opening of a new space for serious dialogue and hard work.”
The American is now running a story titled, “The Long March of Racial Progress,” a piece that examines the story of race relations in America and the extraordinary changes that have come about. Sociological commentary is featured prominently in this story, specifically the work of sociologist Reynolds Farley.
As University of Michigan sociologist Reynolds Farley points out in a new paper, there are now 41 African Americans serving in the House of Representatives, compared to only six when the Kerner Commission issued its famous report on race and poverty in 1968. During the years following the Kerner Report, “The slowly rising incomes of black men and the more rapidly rising incomes of black women produced an important economic change for African Americans,” Farley writes. “In 1996, for the first time, the majority of blacks were in the economic middle class or above, if that means living in a household with an income at least twice the poverty line.”
According to Farley, “Only three percent of African Americans could be described as economically comfortable in 1968. That has increased to 17 percent at present. This is an unambiguous sign of racial progress: one black household in six could be labeled financially comfortable.” He notes that the black-white poverty gap “is much smaller now” than it was in the late 1960s.
The story continues, as Reynolds notes, with a point of caution:
Of course, we should not be overly sanguine about black progress, which has been hindered in recent decades by social pathologies and family disintegration. Since the 1968 Kerner Report, “adult black men have fallen further and further behind similar white men in terms of being employed,” says Farley, emphasizing that “the white-black gap in personal income is not closing, nor is the white-black gap in household income getting any smaller.” Indeed, both the white-black income gap and the white-black gap in educational attainment remain “persistent and substantial.”
The Boston Globe ran a story this morning about whether or not American racism is dead after the nation chose an African-American as the next president of the United States on Tuesday. The Globe reports, “The answer, coming as people began to digest the fact that a majority of Americans had chosen a black man, Barack Obama, to be the 44th president, was not nearly as straightforward. No, but sort of. Maybe, but probably not. While Obama’s achievement was profound, its psychological lift enormous for many, the impact on the rhythms of people’s everyday lives was revealing itself in subtler ways.”
The article includes commentary from researchers, lawyers and Boston residents. Sociologist Dan Monti weighs in…
“Are there racist people out there? Absolutely. Is our society racist? No,” said Dan Monti, a professor of sociology at Boston University whose specialty is race and ethnic relations in the United States. “I know there are people who will think that’s just wrong. But I think Barack Obama winning the presidency of the United States is the single clearest example that we are not. Because if we were, it wouldn’t have happened - period” …
In his sociology classes yesterday at BU, Monti told his students that everything - and nothing - changed on Tuesday night and that a series of changes, small and large, over the last century had laid the platform for Obama’s victory stage.
“With that said, what this represents, both domestically and internationally, is a coming of age of the American people,” Monti said.
Yesterday LiveScience.com highlighted the work of sociologist Andrew Perrin on “the irrational side of voting”, which also can be found in the latest issue of Contexts Magazine.
Live Science senior writer Jeanna Bryner reports:
…When it comes to the underlying reason why citizens vote in general, little has changed philosophically. Our propensity to vote has always been a complex mix of feelings and strategy, writes sociologist Andrew Perrin of the University of North Carolina in the fall issue of Contexts magazine, published by the American Sociological Association.
Voting is both rational and emotional, Perrin says. “It is a ritual in which lone citizens express personal beliefs that reflect the core of who they are and what they want for their countrymen, balancing strategic behavior with the opportunity to express their inner selves to the world.”
That’s why reason alone can’t explain say why a significant group of citizens voted for Ralph Nader, who ran as an independent candidate for U.S. president in 2004. “A significant, obviously small, group of people thought they were best able to express themselves by voting for Nader even though there was never any possibility h
e was actually going to win the presidency.”
The New Pittsburgh Courier ran a story about sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s recent lecture in which he discussed how presidential candidate Barack Obama is “not the symbol many perceive him to be.” The story ran under the headline “Sociologist Says Obama is Raceless.”
“Symbols work in many directions,” said Bonilla-Silva, a sociology professor at Duke University. “(Obama’s) going to be a truncated symbol; both segments happy, but for totally different reasons—we have to understand what does it mean for Black communities and White communities.”
…
He discussed “new-racism,” meaning “the post-civil rights racial system of subtle, institutionalized, and apparently non-racial practices that maintains White supremacy and its accompanying racial ideology of color-blind racism.” Instead of seeing Obama as the end of this racism, Bonilla-Silva said his campaign success has been based largely on his ability to appear raceless. Although he admitted Obama could be a good role model, Bonilla-Silva said it is more important for him to create “real change.” — Read more.
The latest installment from the video podcast ‘Meet the Bloggers‘ (from Friday, October 24th), examines the role of race in the presidential election and features commentary from sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield. Watch the podcast below.
Salon Magazine interviewed Georgetown University sociologist Michael Eric Dyson about Barack Obama and race in America. Salon writes, “According to sociologist and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, Barack Obama has already won the election. But if he were white, ‘he’d be up by 15 to 20 points in the polls.’”
An excerpt from the interview:
Does it not surprise you that two-thirds of black Americans say race relations are poor?
Not at all. Regardless of whether or not they make $100,000, they still see barriers imposed that white brothers and sisters don’t see. If you were stopped by a policeman, as a black person you think: Will they make up some story that I tried to run and shoot me in the back? I use that example because I have been pulled over by the police several times despite the fact that I have a Ph.D. from Princeton and some notoriety. It makes no difference. You are still afraid. That is the great equalizer among black people, regardless of how rich or well-known they are.
It would obviously be an enormous achievement if Barack Obama were to be elected president. What would he be able to change for black Americans?
Well, let’s start with what he can’t change. Given the investment of black people in Mr. Obama’s success, you would think that he was a kind of political Santa Claus, that the day after he was elected, black people wouldn’t have to pay taxes or would get a get-out-of-jail-free card. But social inequalities will still be real. Ironically enough, he has imposed upon himself certain restrictions when it comes to showing a willingness to be susceptible to the demands of black people.
The Washington Post is running a story on common misperceptions about how American voters base their decisions on moral values.
The myths: (1)”Moral values” determine who wins elections. (2) Americans have broadly rejected “traditional values.” (3) Americans are polarized and fighting a culture war over values. (4) Traditional values are “family values” or “moral values.” (5) Basic values, properly understood, are compatible and harmonious.
In support of myth #2, the Post draws upon the work of sociologist Wayne Baker. MYTH #2: “Americanshave broadly rejected ‘traditional values.’ – Actually, Americans retain our traditional values more than just about any other developed country in the world.”
That’s what University of Michigan sociologist Wayne Baker found in his 2005 book, “America’s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception.” Baker uses the World Values Surveys to look at American values from a broad, global perspective. He describes human values on two planes. The first is a scale of values from traditional to secular-rationalist. Societies with more traditional values emphasize the importance of God and religion, family and parenting, national identity and pride and absolute standards of morality, not relative ones. Secular-rationalist values are pretty much the opposite: nonreligious, open to abortion and euthanasia, skeptical of national pride or patriotism and evolving away from family, duty and authority.
The second range of values runs from survival values to self-expression ones. In less developed and safe societies, survival values reign. Procuring physical security and meeting basic material needs dominate; foreigners and ethnic diversity are seen as threatening; intolerance is exaggerated. Self-expression values concern creativity, self-fulfillment and lifestyle.
Fascinating. Read more about the other myths here.
Mother Jones ran a story yesterday that was meant to serve as a ‘field guide’ to vote-blocking tactics titled, “Beyond Diebold: Ten Ways to Steal This Election.” The piece outlined a number of different state and federal measures taken to exclude certain voting populations… and sociologist Chandler Davidson helped Mother Jones sort this out.
Tactics to deny Americans the right to vote are as old as, well, the right to vote. Democrats have been at fault in the past—take the literacy tests Southern states used to deprive blacks of their suffrage from the Civil War up through 1965. Today’s shenanigans—which still target minorities and vulnerable first-time voters—are more often designed to stifle Democratic turnout, perhaps never more than in 2008. “This is obviously an important election, and the turnout may break records,” says Rice University sociologist Chandler Davidson, who has studied vote suppression, “so there is every reason to expect these tactics will be employed.”
Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, has recently written about how vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is reigniting the culture war as her ‘everywoman’ act plays well with audiences. She suggests that this might indicate that the GOP will try to once again paint Barack Obama as an elitist.
In her article Clift included commentary from sociologist Todd Gitlin, who spoke at a Pew Forum discussion in Washington as to whether the cultural war will have an impact come November…
Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, speaking from the progressive side, said the culture war always matters, but that it may not be decisive, with economic issues making it harder for Republicans to get traction on lampooning Obama as an elitist, in the way they turned John Kerry into a windsurfing Frenchman. Gitlin described the presidential election as a “quadrennial plebiscite of who we are,” with Americans casting their vote for the candidate that best embodies who we are as a nation.
Newsweek’s commentary on the vice-presidential candidates in this culture war…
Nobody wants to be an elitist. In politics, it’s a deadly label. What we saw in Thursday night’s debate were two competing strains of populism. Biden, the Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton, represents Main Street populism, the people against the powerful, anti-corporatism, little guy kitchen-table values. Palin is wooing the same working-class constituency that could decide the election in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania with her pro-gun, family and religious down-to-earth values.
Mother Jones
