I was listening to a story on National Public Radio this evening about “poor people”–which turned out to be about black and Hispanic Americans living in a central city somewhere in the U.S. I was troubled by how often we focus on black and Hispanic people when the topic is about poor people–as if the two are the same. Given this lopsided way race and poverty are portrayed and discussed in our media, it is not surprising that so many of us (including black and Hispanic Americans themselves) assume that connection.

In truth, however, half of all black and Hispanic families are “middle class.” Granted, that term is extremely broad and, in fact, most Americans consider themselves “middle class”–including many people who earn over $100,000 and less than $15,000 per year. This is because for most people the category has as much to do with cultural values as it does income, wealth, and status.

Nevertheless, with respect to their economic circumstances, families can be considered more or less firmly embedded into the middle class. Economists call this “Middle Class Economic Security,” and a report was published this past summer by Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization, in which the security of black and Hispanic middle class families was examined and compared to the security of middle class American families as a whole. (Unfortunately they left Asians and Native Americans out of their analysis.) By and large the research seems to be carefully crafted–and the findings are worth considering.

To begin, they measure “security” according to five broad indicators:

1. Assets: number of months able to live at 75% of a family’s current living expenses using only savings
2. Academic Degree: a family with at least one person with a college degree is more secure
3. Housing: percent of after tax income spent on housing
4. Budget: amount left over at end of year after paying taxes and all expenses
5. Healthcare: number of family members covered by health insurance.

From these indicators, they create an “index of security” that they use to ascertain how secure a given family or group of families appears to be. Here is a summary of their findings:

While 31 percent of American middle class families are securely in the middle class, only 18 percent of Hispanic families and 26 percent of black families have the combination of assets,
education, sufficient income, and health insurance to ensure middle-class financial security.

And while one in five (21 percent) of American families are at high risk of falling out of the middle class, one in three (33 percent) African American familes and twice as many (41 percent) Hispanic families are in serious danger of slipping out of the middle class.

Keep in mind that the security index of “American families” includes black and Hispanic families and is not an index measure of white families — and so it is skewed downward. Having said that, it is worth pondering just how many Americans of all ethnic and racial backgrounds are at risk.

Consider this:

* A full 95 percent of African-American and 87 percent of Hispanic middle class families do not have enough net assets to meet three-quarters of their essential living expenses for even three months if their source of income were to disappear. Both figures are well above 78 percent, the national average among all middle-class families.

* Sixty-eight percent of African-American and 56 percent of Hispanic middle-class households
have no net financial assets whatsoever and live from paycheck to paycheck. Just over half (52 percent) of Americans in general have no financial assets.

Check out the “By a Thread” report. It is worth thinking about.

Though it is essential to understand these differing patterns of wealth and poverty between groups, it is also important to notice how often our perception of this data is skewed by the sheer number of times the media mixes the term “poor” with the term “black” or “Hispanic.”

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There is considerable discussion these days about how racism of many undecided white voters might be the factor that keeps Barack Obama out of the White House. This is something worth pondering and an idea that I’ve been thinking for several months now.

In effect, large numbers of white people have conflicted feelings about black people and other racial minorities, just as many black and brown people feel conflicted about white people. And regardless of their political leanings, white people tend to want to be open-minded and accepting of other people who are not like them–and they tend to believe that they “don’t see color.” However, below the surface many of them unwittingly have questions and concerns that often do not become articulated thoughts.

At the same time, large numbers of white people feel inundated with the message that “all racism is bad.” Naturally, they learn a coded language for how to think and act in multicultural situations or whenever one’s behavior and ideas about race might be judged; they learn to say the right thing and appear as though they’re a member of the multicultural team, even if they play for another side. Extensive research on “latent racism” (i.e., the racism that is largely buried just beneath the surface of our waking consciousness) clearly suggests that when the moment comes to pull the lever for a black man, many white people are not going to be able to do it.

Dick Meyer, an editorial director for NPR Digital Media, has written a very balanced piece that suggests that Obama’s run for the seat in the Oval Office may well be derailed by our inability to create a society that is not mired in prejudice and racism. I’d like to think that Mr. Meyer’s research is off base and ill-informed, that he’s digging up divisive issues and playing the race card, and that the American public is progressing away from racism. But from what I know about the sociological underpinnings of racism in our society today, I think he may be on target.

You be the judge:

Against the Grain: Obama, Race and Undecided Voters

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I thought Penn State students were with me on the cusp of a new era. Even though most of us live (and too often die) by the “racial” group to which our appearances give us membership rights, I thought that DNA ancestry testing would inspire us to re-imagine how we identify ourselves—and how we relate to one another.

I was wrong.

It’s not that I don’t spend time pondering these issues. I have been sitting in circles with college students scaling the mountain of race relations for nearly fifteen years. When I do the math, it turns out that I have either facilitated or observed close to 1,000 small group conversations on the topic. Given all of the straight talk and sensitivity, breakdowns and breakthroughs that have occurred on my watch, I can say that there have been no topics too small or too large for us. We talk in earnest about everything from who can call their hair “nappy,” to the nature of historical trauma, to how different cultural groups bathe, raise their kids, and think about the future. I thought DNA ancestry testing would be a welcome addition to our conversational repertoire.

So when Sam offered the opportunity to take such a DNA test (www.ancestrybydna.com) as part of the SOC 119 curriculum, I expected the experience to catalyze the weekly discussion groups in ways that we had never seen. Each student received an estimate of the proportions of their heritage drawn from West African, West European, East Asian, and Native American population groups. Most were shocked to discover that at least two-thirds of them are some “mix” that they did not anticipate. I expected that this surprise would naturally begin the process of dismantling the unsophisticated views of race to which Americans hold so tightly in our politics, our policies, and our personal relationships.

Wrong again.

Instead of critiquing the way we categorize a person as “Asian” whose ancestry may include significant influences from other population groups, or someone as “black” when barely half of their ancestry originates from Africa, the vast majority of students focused on their own results. And they exhibited the gamut of emotion that occurs when individuals learn who was chosen to be on the team or to receive the first place prize. One dark-skinned woman excitedly posted the fact that she was “27 percent European” on her away message, while one light-skinned woman angrily destroyed the CD containing her results when she discovered her ancestry to be 100 percent West European. But this wasn’t meant to be a contest to see who was in and who was out.

So much for the lesson plans.

In almost every instance, my attempts to initiate a discussion of the test were met with unusually curt replies. “The test makes no difference,” I heard over and over again. “I know who I am; a blood test won’t change anything,” many huffed. “People won’t treat me any differently because of the results,” others insisted, “so what’s the point?” This was the tenor of comments I even heard from the teaching assistants who recognized the value in untamed conversations of all varieties and who had been willing to go with me into the wildest terrain. These were not individuals who participated on the margins; these were the ones who jumped in and got wet.

I didn’t get it. Genetic science seemed poised to tear down our accepted racial categories on a massive scale by revealing the false groupings that we follow like a religion—and everyone was acting uninterested. All I wanted was for us to ponder what it could mean if science was showing us that the way we classify our groups is inaccurate, or to explore what might happen if we realized that few of us wear our precise racial affiliations on our sleeves (as so many of us believe), or to picture how things would be different if we had to ask for this information when we met someone (as opposed to determining it haphazardly for ourselves in the time it takes to notice them rushing by to catch a train).

No one seemed to care about all of that.

But finally, I have begun to make sense of the collective malaise I encountered. One insight came last semester when a student posed an intriguing question to one of the discussion groups. He asked, “How would we treat each other if we came together without the baggage of our respective histories?” The consensus was that, without our histories, none of us would be who we are. So the thought experiment was impossible, the group concluded.

Click.

I got it. The ancestry testing did not even begin to discredit our concept of race simply because…it couldn’t. We don’t know how to live without the dividing lines that we have inherited to define us. We don’t know how to identify ourselves or how to recognize one another without them. So we have no choice but to side-step new information, dutifully fitting ourselves “into” the only available categories—even when we sense that those categories are wrong.

So it seems that DNA ancestry testing is a mirror. And if we dare to behold its reflection, we get to see how little imagination we have when it comes to race, and how much we resist living without our familiar fault lines. But genetic science has found its way to the surface and is now demanding that we respond to its challenges with something more substantial than our worn stories and stereotypes.

Unfortunately, what I see every day is that individuals of all colors share a propensity toward provincial views, overly simplified assessments of issues, and thinly veiled prejudices about other groups. That means we are walking together on the edge of a perilous cliff with few among us of any color prepared to truly assess the landscape we are facing. Many seem resigned to waiting for a lightening bolt for direction—like the student who poignantly stated, “It will probably take something a lot bigger than a DNA test to really change my outlook on race and racial issues.” All I could imagine was September 11th. That was the last time I thought something large enough had happened to begin to shift the dynamic of race relations in this culture. I thought it had to offer us a clearer vision of ourselves.

I was wrong then too.

So I’ve learned that what really matters are the tiny epiphanies that happen off stage, one at a time, when one person comes to see what another person sees and they view the world with the same eyes for a moment. In that instant, all who are present feel the ground breaking beneath their feet because, when we have the opportunity to witness a change of heart live, we know something profound is happening.

Of course, these singular awakenings turn out to be more about effort and grace than about lesson plans. But I am convinced that they do more to undermine the tangles of our bigotry than the more dramatic events that we all keep mistaking for the cure. That is why I continue to sit in conversation circles, doing my part to unravel our knotty multicultural macramé, person-by-person, story-by-story—because, as my students and a DNA test have so convincingly demonstrated to me, there are just no shortcuts to undoing the breadth of our illusions.

I don’t think I’m wrong about that.

Laurie

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I found a seven minute video that offers an interesting analysis of “power” as it is related to our political system. I think it is worth viewing; it will provoke some outside-the-box thinking.

As you watch, however, keep in mind the following:

Politics is all about how people manage the concentration of power in any system. Myriad decisions must be made in every large collectivity and it is impossible for all members to participate equally in each and every one of them. Consider the many collective resources that we all utilize: waste removal and clean-up, water purification and delivery, electrical generation, road construction and maintenance. This list is long and increasingly convoluted.

And because it is impossible for everyone to have a say in every aspect of collective (i.e., governmental) services, we must find ways for individuals and groups to “represent” the interests of the collectivity as a whole. Think about how EVERY organization has leaders who meet and make untold numbers of decisions on behalf of the that organization. There are always too many decisions to make for us to arrange an organization (or collectivity) in any other way.

But how do we select those representatives? How do we decide which individuals or groups will sit at the head of the table and think and act on everyone’s behalf?

For most government positions in the U.S. we do this with elections. But how do we determine who has an opportunity to run for one of these positions? If they meet select criteria such as certain minimum age requirements or legal residency of a state or district, any citizen is eligible to run for any office. All they need to do is get their name out to the voting populace and convince those people to vote for them.

And that’s the difficult part, of course, because that requires money–lots of money for major elections (i.e., positions of greater power). People who are wealthy can largely self-finance their elections on their own (e.g., Mayor Bloomberg in New York City who is a billionaire) while people without money can turn to other individuals and groups for help. Turning to masses of individuals is ideal–get everyone involved and expand the democratic base–but it takes a lot of effort and upfront money to convince isolated people to donate small amounts of cash. So what generally happens is that candidates turn to fewer numbers of wealthier individuals and groups who can contribute larger amounts. But here’s the catch.

Few people give money with no strings attached. Would you donate to a campaign without concern for the specific policies that a candidate will pursue once elected? Probably not. And who could blame you for wanting something in return for your hard earned cash?

And so we have very well-organized and powerful groups contributing the bulk of the funds for political campaigns that each year are more and more expensive, and to the exclusive parties that each season are more and more lavish. It is not difficult to imagine that every one of these groups, let’s say the “telecommunications industry,” has legislation pending before Congress that could lead to millions or billions of dollars in profits or losses, depending on how bills are written. While this legislation may or may not be in the public’s interest, it is always in the interest of the companies footing the bill for those campaigns and parties. Why else would they do it.

So what about race?

Take a look at the video at the end of this essay. Look at the people partying at the exclusive venues during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. What’s their racial background? They’re nearly all white. It’s a club that does not deliberately exclude black and brown people, but white people established the criteria for membership many years ago and seem to be inclined to reserve the few spaces that open to their friends and relatives–who more often than not are white.

This is not to say that there are no black and brown people with power. Far from it. half of all black Americans are middle class, after all. But the people who occupy those special seats of power, the people who make decisions that move millions and billions of dollars into and out of various private coffers, are mostly white. This is something that has not changed much over the years.

Is this going to change if Obama is working out of the Oval Office? You watch the video and respond to that question yourself.

For those who watched the conventions, compare your memories of the extremely “colorful” Democratic National Convention with the images (from the video) of the exclusive parties in downtown Denver where the DNC was held. All the darker skinned people seem to have been inside the convention and not at these parties where the “wheeling and dealing” was happening. That’s odd for a party of “inclusion.” The RNC in Minneapolis was almost entirely white, so the same contrast doesn’t hold–they have no need to pretend.

Finally, keep in mind that this video was produced by ABC which is owned by Disney and is a massive media conglomerate. You might wonder why it is that they would show something that so clearly appears to undermine that corporation’s ability to shape the decision-making of our political leadership. I’ll let you answer it for yourself.

VIDEO

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I’m going to write about Obama in these blogs (just as I will discuss him in my race class) because of the sheer historical significance of his candidacy with regard to race relations. But in order to do so freely, without parts of my discussion being misread as a political endorsement, let me explain some things about the way I vote.

I have never missed casting my ballot in a presidential election in my thirty years of legal adulthood. And as a student of political sociology for nearly all of that time, I do the research and I take my vote very seriously.

This year, as we have candidates who are not white and male running in both major parties, we are clearly faced with an opportunity to advance this nation culturally, keeping us in step with most of the world’s more industrialized countries (and many less developed ones) that have already elected racial minorities or women to their highest seats of power. Furthermore, whether we put Barack Obama or Sarah Palin into office, this election will influence how we see all women or all people of color in both subtle and not so subtle ways. Speaking as a sociologist, this is fascinating to contemplate. Speaking as a person whose work involves building bridges between balkanized racial and ethnic groups, it is groundbreaking.

And yet, as I examine the gravity of all of the issues we face, I am left to conclude that the value of cracking one of these twin glass ceilings cannot alone determine the way I cast my ballot. In my view, we need a party that is willing to truly tackle the issues of terrorism and war, depletion of natural resources, the explosion of the world’s population and the deepening of global poverty—and to do so in radically different ways. I don’t mean spinning words to attract constituents. I’m talking about actually encouraging and carrying out system transformation.

Unfortunately, the differences between our two major parties on all of the issues are mostly cosmetic and rhetorical. It might appear as though their differences are significant—why else would their respective members be arguing with one another so vociferously? But I see two parties that are sponsored by and answerable to the same power base—and, for me, that adds up to little expectation for change when we most need it. The following are two broad issues that are of particular concern to me. But there are others:

Natural Resources. I’m not talking about the prices of gas or heating fuel or the sudden spike in airfares. I’m talking about sustaining life on this planet. I think the data we have about global climate change is sobering. Most of it does not appear to be hysterical exaggeration. And I think we are foolish not to genuinely heed this warning. We need to begin by severing the ties between corporations and politicians who are bought and sold in the basements and back rooms of congressional buildings, the White House, and K Street. Because I think this is so essential to making decisions that have the people and the planet in mind, I have never voted for a candidate who is not committed to and capable of putting natural resources ahead of short-term profits.

War and Terrorism. The United States produces and sells more military weapons than the next eight top weapons manufacturing nations combined, and we spend more money on our military than the militaries of the twenty-five next most powerful countries in the world. War will always occur and there will always be threats to our national security. But we can only avert these threats if we cease supporting a military industrial complex whose profits are unfortunately rooted in waging war (and threatening the national security of other nations). In other words, we must stop ourselves before it is too late. Imagine a nuclear bomb in New York City. This doesn’t have to happen. But it is the outcome we are likely to witness if our leaders do not shrink the size of the military industrial complex and curtail the proliferation of weapons. I have never voted for a candidate who does not see this as crucial for our protection and survival.

For my entire voting life, I have observed that neither of the major parties has substantively addressed these (and other) critical issues. And once again in 2008, neither party has made history with their platforms because they are still beholden to vested and powerful interests that maintain the perilous status quo. They have only made history with the faces of their candidates. This is not insignificant, to be sure, but I have to cast my vote for more than that, for a future, for a sustainable world that we can actually live in.

Sam

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