by amelia on
Jul 08, 2008 at 8:49 am
The latest issue of Newsweek featured an article entitled, ‘The Future of Freedom: The Fate Of Liberty In The Next Century Is Fragile, In Part, Because The Very Notion Is Now So Ill-Defined.’
Newsweek reporter Robert J. Samuelson writes,
In a century scarred by the gulags, concentration camps and secret-police terror, freedom is now spreading to an expanding swath of humanity. It is not only growing but also changing–becoming more ambitious and ambiguous–in ways that might, perversely, spawn disappointment and disorder in the new century.
Undoubtedly, it was time for some sociologists to weigh in…
In 1900, this was unimaginable. “Freedom in the modern sense [then] existed only for the upper crust,” says political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset of George Mason University. There were exceptions–America certainly, but even its freedom was conspicuously curtailed, particularly for women and blacks.
…
Traditional freedom historically meant liberation from oppression. But now freedom increasingly involves “self-realization.” People need, it’s argued, to be freed from whatever prevents them becoming whoever they want to be. There’s a drift toward “positive liberty” that emphasizes “the things that government ought to do for us,” says sociologist Alan Wolfe of Boston College. This newer freedom blends into individual “rights” (for women, minorities, the disabled) and “entitlements” (for health care, education and income support) deemed essential for self-realization.
Read more.
by amelia on
Jun 20, 2008 at 8:48 am
A recent article in the Washington Post discusses how members of the clergy, who have traditionally been courted by presidential candidates, are now liabilities, furhter complicating the role of religion in politics.
Washington Post staff writer, Michelle Boorstein writes,
“First it was Republicans, and now Democrats, scrambling in recent presidential elections to snuggle up closely to men of the cloth, seeking the endorsement of well-known clergymen and campaigning with preachers, all in an effort to demonstrate how godly they are.”
“But a curious thing has happened in this year’s contest for the White House. Candidates are having to distance themselves from preachers, almost as quickly as they had sought their embrace. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) denounced his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who was videotaped asserting that the federal government had brought the AIDS virus into black communities and that God should “damn” America.
Sociologist Jacques Berlinerblau weighs in…
“The chickens are coming home to roost,” said Jacques Berlinerblau, a Georgetown University sociologist who writes a religion and politics blog called “The God Vote.” A post that got 50,000 hits called “Huckobama” asked why Democrats who have criticized President Bush’s overt faith expressions aren’t more critical of Obama.
“That’s the new Faith-and-Values friendly liberalism of the Democratic Party in 2008. And that’s something that might make it hard for secularists to live their lives in peace,” he wrote.
Among the speeches Berlinerblau cited was one Obama made in February, preaching at length about Jeremiah 29, saying, “God has a plan for his people.” The separationist group Interfaith Alliance has been sending out alerts about candidates for months, including when Clinton said last June that she’d like to “inject” faith into policy and when McCain said in September that the Constitution established “a Christian nation.” The group also included an Obama speech in October in which he told an audience that, with prayer and praise, “I am confident that we can create a kingdom right here on Earth.”
by amelia on
Jun 18, 2008 at 9:12 pm
A recent article from the Christian Science Monitor, “How Clinton and Obama Boost Feminism, Civil Rights,” seeks to understand how the primary season may have helped to advance these “historical causes.”
The Christian Science Monitor writes,
“The race between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton may be over, but its effects on the broader movements for racial and sexual equality in America are likely to be felt – and debated – well past the fall.”
“Senator Obama’s victory roused blacks who never thought they would see an African-American this close to the presidency, not in a country with a shameful history of slavery. Senator Clinton embodied the aspirations of millions of women, many of whom saw in her defeat a culture still rife with sexism.”
But they did consult a sociologist…
“Some critics say it was less voters than the news media, obsessed with firsts, that reduced Obama to his race and Clinton to her gender. ‘It’s an element that got inflamed in the course of the campaign because of the premium on differentiation,’ says Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at Columbia University and an expert on social movements. ‘It didn’t start out that way. When this campaign started, Hillary was the favorite of black voters.’”
by amelia on
Jun 07, 2008 at 10:36 pm
A recent piece from the Week in Review by the New York Times included commentary on the upcoming elections and the racial divide. Times reporter Marcus Mabry writes, “whether Mr. Obama captures the White House in November will depend on how he is seen by white Americans. Indeed, some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as ‘postracial.’”
Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson was asked to comment.
“Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, argues that the one arena where black grievance is acceptable is in music, particularly in hip-hop, where an estimated 70 percent of listeners are white. But the generation exposed to hip-hop, mostly under 40, are part of what Mr. Patterson calls a growing “ecumenical” American culture that is unselfconsciously multiracial.
This Obama Generation came of age in the post-civil-rights age when color, though still relevant, had less impact on what one read, listened to or watched. It was the common crucible of popular culture, he said, that forged a truly American identity, rather than the “salad bowl” analogy cherished by diversity advocates.
Mr. Obama’s campaign so de-emphasized race that for most of the 17-month nomination contest much of the news media became obsessed with the question of whether he was “black enough” to win black votes.
Most African-American Democrats were for Hillary Clinton early on, until voters in Iowa proved to them that whites would support a black candidate.”
Full story.
by amelia on
Jun 04, 2008 at 8:06 am
The Associated Press reports that Charles Moskos, sociologist and creator of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy towards homosexuality in the military has passed away at the age of 74 after battling cancer.
The Chicago Tribune noted:
“Moskos helped design AmeriCorps, a public service organization, and studied Greek-Americans. But his most noted accomplishment was his advice to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that led to the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.
Under the policy, passed by Congress in 1993, gays are allowed to serve in the military, but they are prohibited from engaging in homosexual activity and to not talk about their sexual orientation.”
by amelia on
Jun 01, 2008 at 8:54 pm
The Washington Post reports,
“The resonance of that long-ago predicament is still with us today, as a bitter Democratic presidential primary battle has caused many supporters of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to feel that the campaign has pitted race against gender. Many Clinton supporters, men included, cite openly sexist criticism targeting their candidate — conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh asked, ‘Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?’ — and feel that a political defeat would be an unconscionable victory for sexism itself. Obama’s supporters, the majority of whom are white, cite the racism their candidate has faced — large numbers of voters have openly told pollsters they would never vote for a black man. Should Democratic superdelegates hand the race to Clinton, many of these voters would feel racism has won.”
The sociologist weighs in:
“Patricia Hill Collins, a University of Maryland sociologist who is to be the next president of the American Sociological Association, said the error being made by many Clinton and Obama supporters is to see race and gender in unidimensional terms: ‘Obama represents race and Clinton represents gender — this is a flawed model,’ Collins said. ‘Why does Obama not represent gender? He has a race and a gender. Hillary has a race and a gender.’
The reason for our selective focus, the scholars said, is that people are keenly aware of unfair disadvantages but spend no time dwelling on unfair advantages.”
by amelia on
May 24, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Well-known Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson recently wrote an op-ed piece for for the New York Times about Hillary Clinton’s ‘3 am’ phone advertisement.
Patterson writes:
“On first watching Hillary Clinton’s recent ‘It’s 3 a.m.’ advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right — something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America’s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.”
…
“I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation,’ the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.”
Full story.
by amelia on
May 14, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Check out this fascinating blog post from Jeff Weintraub about MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews’ comments about contrasting sociologists with Americans.
Weintraub writes,
“Tonight, Matthews suddenly decided that even mentioning class and race in connection with elections is for ’sociologists,’ not ‘Americans.’ Using phrases like ‘blue-collar’ is ‘elitist talk.’ And simply by talking about ‘white working-class voters,’ Hillary Clinton is almost ‘like the Al Sharpton of white people.’”
Check out the full story with video link.
by amelia on
May 05, 2008 at 1:04 pm
The New York Sun recently reported on the release of a new study from sociologist Harry Levin of Queens College titled, “Marijuana Arrest Crusade.” The report claims that police have singled-out minorities during the drug crackdown in New York beginning in 1997. The study makes use of data from the New York Division of Criminal Justice Services which shows that between 1997 and 2007, of those arrested on drugs charges, 52% of the suspects were black, 31% Hispanic, and only 15% white.
Some blame laws…
“Laws were revised in the late 1970s to largely decriminalize carrying small, concealed stashes of marijuana, Mr. Levin said. But he claimed police routinely ‘manufacture’ arrests for possession in public view — still a misdemeanor — by stopping young black men on the street and goading them into emptying their pockets.”
Others blame the administration…
“According to the study, arrests for marijuana possession began skyrocketing in the late 1990s during the Giuliani administration — a trend that continued under Mayor Bloomberg at an estimated cost of between $50 and $90 million a year. There were 39,700 arrests last year alone, according to the study. The 2007 total makes the city ‘the marijuana arrest capital of the world,’ Ms. Lieberman [the Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union] said.”
by amelia on
Apr 10, 2008 at 9:04 am
The Independent Lens is currently collecting photographs that illustrate what it means to be an American through the website Flickr.com to integrate into an upcoming PBS documentary called ‘A Dream in Doubt.’ This documentary, based on the premise that the American Dream is becoming increasingly elusive, highlights the racial stereotypes in the U.S. including the wave of hate crimes following September 11th. The documentary is set to air on PBS Tuesday, May 20, 2008.
See the photography collection.
