A Fraught and Winding Road

Written by Sherry Zhang

“There has always been a tradition of pathologizing the behaviors of the African American poor and working class, especially women.” (Cohen, 2004; p. 34).

The topic of discussion in class last week was on race and political behavior. We examined readings that discussed differences in voting, elections, and political participation, by racial and ethnic groups. Group consciousness, the notion that collective action is the best way to improve a group’s social standing (McClain et al., 2009), was contested. Our insightful discussion leader argued that group consciousness could vary considerably within an umbrella racial or ethnic category, and that socioeconomic background, immigration status, and religion could contribute to differences in political engagement. In this blog post, I would like to add onto this claim and recognize the need for intersectionality within political movements with regards to gender and sexual identity. I will narrow my discussion to understanding the importance of the #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName movements. I would also like to critique the role of social science researchers in pathologizing the role of women in explaining “deviant” behaviors among Blacks.

Central to this week’s readings is the understanding that group consciousness is not necessarily guaranteed within a racial and ethnic category, and that invisibility is a persistent theme for those who do not identify as cis, heterosexual, white men. Alicia Garza, one of the creators of the #BlackLivesMatter online platform, describes some of the tension within the movement, by stating that “being Black queer women in this society (and apparently within these movements) tends to equal invisibility and non-relevancy” (2014). Cohen also recognizes that power dynamics exist within intersections of race, gender, and sexual identity (2004, p. 29). The #SayHerName movement was developed to recognize and center the police violence that Black women face, to eliminate their invisibility within the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and to bring awareness to the disproportionate incarceration rates, sexual assault, and police brutality that Black women face (AAPF, 2015).

Within academia, it is also important to note the ways in which intersectional frameworks have been largely ignored in studies of Black communities. Cohen (2004) describes how social science researchers have framed rising female-headed households and non-marital births as causes of poverty and the growing “underclass” (DuBois, 1899; Moynihan, 1965; Wilson, 1987). These explanations of “resistance,” which imply heteronormative policy solutions such as marriage promotion programs, do not recognize the role of human agency or context in shaping choices. She thoughtfully hypothesizes that “deviant” acts are “more often attempts to create greater autonomy over one’s life, to pursue desire, or to make the best of very limited life options” rather than intentional “deviance” (Cohen, 2004; p. 40).

This week’s readings provided several implications and needs to recognize anti-Black racism within white and non-Black communities of color, and to also recognize sexism within explanations of “deviant” behavior among Black communities. They also emphasized the need to address intersections of race, gender, and sexual identity when studying Black politics, and recognize the need to see acts of “deviance” as acts of agency (Cohen, 2004). Understandings of group consciousness cannot solely be restricted to explaining political behaviors of umbrella racial and ethnic categories.

References

African American Policy Forum. (2015). #SayHerName: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women. A Social Media Guide. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/t/555e2412e4b0bd5f4da5d3a4/1432232978932/SAYHERNAME+Social+Media+Guide.compressed.pdf

Cohen, C.J. (2004). Deviance as resistance: a new research agenda for the study of black politics. Du Bois Review, 1:1, 27-45.

DuBois, W.E.B. (1899). The Philadelphia negro. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Garza, A. (2014). A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/

McClain, P.D., Carew, J.D.J., Walton, E., & Watts, C.D. (2009). Group membership, group identity, and group consciousness: measures of racial identity in American politics? Annual Review of Political Science, 12: 471-485. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.072805.102452

Moynihan, D.P. (1965). The negro family: the case for national action. Office of Policy Planning and Research: U.S. Department of Labor. http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.htm

Wilson, W.J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: the inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Written by Ryan Purcell

To say that Ben Carson is the conservative black counterpoint to Barack Obama that Carson’s constituency thinks he is, presupposes many things. (Jelani Cobb, “Ben Carson’s exonerating Racism,” The New Yorker, 9.22.15) First, it assumes that Obama is indeed liberal, a matter of perspective. But more importantly it means that Carson represents (or would, if he is elected) the lion-share of black voters that are not currently satisfied with their representation in the White House. While this constituency may be a minority, its voice is strong enough to push Carson to the top of the polls in the Republican primary race. And what a curious race altogether. The recent political debates present a wide array of presidential hopefuls as diverse in their occupational backgrounds as their skin color. Leading candidates, in the Republican race at least, are not career politicians but private sector professionals; Ben Carson is a renowned physician, Donald Trump a financier and television personality. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race, a self-identified socialist, also fills this unorthodox mold, as does the progressive rhetoric espoused by Hilary Clinton. This unconventional representation may reflect the dissatisfaction voters feel for a regularly inactive congress, gridlocked in partisan divide. Such symbolism, though, so early, is doubtful to pan-out as substance.

More curious is the racial representation of these candidates. While Democrats present an all-white cast, Republican candidates are multi-racial. Ben Carson is black; Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are latino (Cuban and Cuban-Spanish descent respectively). Surely we should not take this to mean that Republicans are somehow more attuned to the interests of black and latinos, or are more representative of these constituencies, than Democrats. Yet purely descriptive representation is not entirely devoid of substance. Ben Carson is not a token black man in the Republican line-up, nor are Rubio and Cruz — or Bobby Jindal for that matter— strictly symbolic of conservative diversity politics. Nor is their presence part of a GOP maneuver to wrangle minority votes. The diversity of Republican presidential candidates speaks to a vocal constituency of equally diverse conservatives. Black conservatives exist. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/10/what-explains-ben-carson-the-long-tradition-of-black-conservatism/ Indeed, the only black man on the Supreme Court is among the most conservative. Descriptive representation is clearly substantive to some degree, yet this relationship is problematized by the socio-economic composition of constituencies.

To be black in American is to be naked, Ta nehsis Coates asserts in Between the World and Me; “[T]he nakedness is the correct and intended result of policy, the predictable upshot of people forced for centuries to live under fear. The law did not protect us. And now, in our time, the law has become an excuse for stopping and frisking you, which is to say, for furthering the assault on your body.”  (Coates, 17) Descriptive representation is substantive in that representatives share the racial experience of their constituents. This is not to essentialize African American voters, however, but shared racial identity between representatives and constituents suggests a level of trust that cannot be achieved otherwise. Ben Carson, for example, knows what it means to be black American; he has ostensibly felt the nakedness and fear which Coates describes. The same might be said for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz and their latino constituency. The presence of blacks and latinos in government might ultimately lead to better representation, argues political scientist Michael Minta. He describes ‘strategic uplift’ as the means of providing a voice to underrepresented and marginalized communities that are not normally included in the public-policy-making process. This formula calls for a direct solution: Elect more blacks and latinos. But does political partisanship among blacks and latinos vary according to socio-economic status?

The erosion of the middle-class since the 1980s has resulted in the economic polarization of black America; there has been both a growing black middle-class (albeit increasingly insecure), and a growing black underclass, vulnerable to destitution. Ben Carson falls well within former group. His socio-economic background does not align with most Americans largely, let alone black Americans. The same, however, could be said for Barack Obama. Both were raised in solid middle-class families, educated in elite institutions, and both are successful in their respective fields. So why not a President Carson? Isn’t he the conservative black counterpoint to Obama? The more a black person believes their access to resources and opportunities are linked to those of a blacks as a group the more they will consider racial groups’ interests in evaluating political choices. This is what political scientist Michael Dawson calls the ‘black utility heuristic’. Moreover, Dawson finds, black political partisanship is determined by the ability of a party to actively further black interest; this has been the Democratic party since the 1960s, largely. Though the majority of black votes are cast for Democratic candidates, today one third of black Americans identity as conservative.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12111-005-1000-1#/page-1 Ben Carson is the latest example in a long line of black conservative politicians, which include Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, and Republican Edward Brooke whom Richard Nixon considered as a vice-presidential running-mate in 1968. Despite this linage, the economic vulnerably of black Americans in the current post-recession economy ensures black votes for the Democratic party regardless of descriptive representation. With this in mind, we can see that descriptive representation is symbolic except when the socio-economic status of the constituency is vulnerable.

In the 2016 Presidential election racial description will remain a key issue which voters will consider when casting their ballots. Perhaps equally important is the question of gender. Underlying both categories, however, the socioeconomic vulnerably of constituencies will be the most decisive factor of the election. In this light, a President Carson seems like a long shot. As long as the Republican party platform champions free-market policies, while stripping Civil Rights legislation, removing the protections against discrimination and racial inequality, a black conservative candidate is unlikely to garner black votes. If Ben Carson is the counterpoint to Obama, it is an impossible position.

Written by Erica Salinas

Last week, President Obama announced several executive measures he will implement in order to improve the life chances of previously incarcerated individuals.[1] Among the initiatives announced was “ban the box” which will prohibit federal employers from asking applicants about convictions and postpone criminal history searches until after the initial job screening. In discussing reintegration of individuals released from prison, President Obama framed the urgency of aid and public policy as a matter of offering second chances to individuals who have paid their dues. More broadly, he argued our economy would suffer if we did not think about ways to successfully integrate the thousands of individuals who are released from prison. Throughout his speech, he shared the success stories of individuals who with the help from supportive organizations have managed to turn their lives around despite criminal backgrounds and continuing hardships. Only until the latter half of his address did Obama highlight the need to address the root causes of mass incarceration, such as housing, education, and access to jobs.

Obama’s speech in Newark, New Jersey is significant and interesting for multiple reasons. The fact he addressed reintegration and other criminal justice reforms suggests we are moving toward less punitive crime policies in the U.S. At the same time, Obama used issue frames that are more consistent with conservative law and order type appeals that have been used to increase punishment. This is evident in the goals in his speech including preventing crime and promoting ‘productive, law abiding, self-sufficient, good citizens.’ In addition, describing the success stories of a few individuals portrays the issue of crime and reintegration in terms of having the will or motivation to change bad habits. This opens up an alternative line of reasoning, those that do not change their ‘criminal’ tendencies are not sufficiently motivated and are less deserving of help. Perhaps the biggest problem is this discourse decontextualizes and depoliticizes how we came to have 2.2 million people incarcerated in the first place.

The careful appeals made by a Democratic president make sense in light of a longer history of conservative issue ownership over crime policy established in the 1960s.[2] Vesla M. Weaver traces the origins of punitive crime policies to the strategic actions of political leaders opposed to civil rights gains, a process she calls frontlash. Conservative leaders successfully associated black activism with criminality in effect hindering any additional efforts at passing civil rights legislation. Frontlash has made it difficult for Democratic political leaders to talk about crime policy outside of the law and order doctrine. Consequently, although Obama made policy suggestions that break with punitive crime policies, the language he used to support these changes is still attempting to work within an issue domain that has been captured by Republicans.

We have come full circle, mass incarceration has become a public issue political elites can no longer ignore. The following questions remain: Is political discourse that is appealing to the median white voter desirable as a political strategy? Or is centering race and redefining the issue space a more desirable strategy to dismantle a racist criminal justice apparatus?

Notes:

[1] Naasel, Kenrya R. (Nov. 2015). “Obama Announces ‘Ban the Box’ Measure, Other Criminal Justice Reforms.” Colorlines. Accessed Nov. 8, 2015. http://www.colorlines.com/articles/obama-announces-federal-ban-box-measure-other-criminal-justice-reforms.

[2] Weaver, Vesla M. “Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy.”

Written by AshLee Smith

When the 114^th congress began, many headlines noted that this congress was the “most diverse ever.” However, the “most diverse congress ever” is still 80% white, 80% male, and 90% Christian. Although our population is about equal in biological sex, only 20% of women serve in the legislative branch. In addition, according to the census, non-Hispanic whites make up 63% of the U.S., yet only 20% of our representatives are not white. Given the demographics of our country, it seems that our representatives might not be actually representing the population in the U.S.

This weeks readings were on congress and representation. According to the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, political representation is “the activity of making citizens’ voices, opinions, and perspectives “present” in the public policy making processes [and this] occurs when political actors speak, advocate, symbolize, and act on the behalf of others in the political arena.” A salient theme throughout the readings was that descriptive representation positively impacts racial minorities, the poor, and even the racial majority in our country. Although, most of us have taken an introductory course in American Politics, I just want to refresh your memories on a few key terms: delegate vs. trustee and substantive representation vs. descriptive representation. In my American Government course, I learned that legislators see themselves either as delegates or trustees.   A delegate tries to represent their district by responding to their constituent’s wishes and needs. On the other hand, a trustee tries to represent their constituents by exercising their own independent judgment (Tate 624). Substantive representation refers to the tendency of legislators to support an agenda based on their personal and party views; in contrast, descriptive representation refers to the idea that legislators will be “individuals who in their own backgrounds mirror some of the more frequent experiences and outward manifestations of belonging to the group” (Mansbridge 628). Now, imagine that you are a low-income racial minority in a majority white district. Would it be best to have substantive representation or descriptive representation? Probably descriptive – especially given that researchers have found that representatives who mirror certain characteristics such as race are more responsive to those constituents’ needs and wants (Minta 8). Would it be helpful for your economic and social well-being to have a member of congress that looks like you? Yes it would. In a study by Katherine Tate, she found that “blacks consistently expressed higher levels of satisfaction when their representative is black, even when controlling for other characteristics of the legislators, such as political party” (623).

So if descriptive representation is the way to go how can we achieve this? Well, Mansbridge suggests that we can (1) “Draw geographical district lines to encourage the election of representatives from proportionality underrepresented groups or (2) “Set aside a certain number of seats for members of specific groups” (633). This would be either to have gerrymandering based on a certain characteristic (deliberate segregation of voters on the basis of a certain characteristic), such as race or gender or to have each party or the government set a part a number of seats based on population data such as the census. When pondering how we could enact descriptive representation, I am inclined to believe that Mansbridge’s 2^nd suggestion could be done successfully if the categories we are representing are chosen carefully. The research is clear in that having a representative that is either your same race or gender positively matters. However, I wonder if we can push even further and theorize a descriptive representative who not only is similar in race or gender, but also in education or socioeconomic status. Do our descriptive characteristics overrule our substantive interests or can these two be connected? Should we have descriptive representation or should we always vote “the best person for the job?” If our congress does not look like us, will they represent the needs of the vulnerable in our country? Will rich white males vote on women’s health issues as a trustee or a delegate? Will rich white males help defend their minority district’s views on voter I.D. laws, undocumented citizens rights, or even extend the social safety net for the poor? In my opinion, Congress –the most powerful branch of government – should look like America and descriptive representation is one way to ensure that all of our voices are heard.

What congress looks like VS. what it should look like based on the U.S. population

Sources

Mansbridge, J. (1999). Should blacks represent blacks and women represent women? A contingent “yes”. The Journal of politics, 61(03), 628-657.

Minta, M. D. (2011). Oversight: Representing the interests of Blacks and Latinos in congress. Princeton University Press.

Tate, K. (2001). The political representation of blacks in Congress: Does race matter?. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 623-638.

Image

Washington Post – New Congress

Stanford – Political Representation

Written by Runjini Raman

I remember taking my first standardized test when I was in third grade. At the beginning of the test, all students had to turn to the back of test booklet and fill out information such as their name, birthdate, race/ethnicity, etc. This was the first year of my life that I ever saw this question about race. I looked through the boxes (didn’t take long—there aren’t many) and tried to find one labeled “Indian” but it wasn’t there. I raised my hand and pointed this out to my teacher. “Oh,” she said, “You’re not supposed to fill that part out. I’ll fill it out for all the students later.” That seemed fine, but I brought it to her attention again that Indian was not an option. My third grade brain was trying to account for the stress and confusion I imagined her having when she sat down later that evening with the stack of test booklets and was faced with the question of how to racially identify me. “It’s fine,” she reassured me, and tapped her finger on the Name portion of the paper, to remind me what was really important about identifying myself.

I remember feeling really distracted by this issue while I took the state test. Finally, I flipped the test booklet over and, in the Race/Ethnicity section, I drew a bubble, wrote “Indian, like from India” next to it, and filled it in. I figured this was a reasonable solution and that my teacher would thank me. Later, at home, I told my mom about what happened, and she brushed it off. “Next time, just check the Asian box,” she instructed, clearly trying to assuage my elementary preoccupations with the issue and not the larger sociopolitical implications of being Indian in the American public education system. The next day my teacher informed me that she had to make a new test booklet for me because I had written on the scantron, which made my test unreadable by a machine. She never told me how she racially defined me on the new scantron.

This happened to me every year I took a standardized test until I started to reluctantly fill in the Asian box myself. I felt strange every time I did it; I would imagine the test takers imagining me as they graded my test, and I would feel a little concerned that the picture they surely developed when they read the word “Asian” (which is a problematic word in and of itself) looked nothing like me. Then I wondered why it mattered.

Now I always mark “Other” on questions about my race. This is my small way of saying, “F You” to the system that makes me categorize myself in a way that is actually, if it was done correctly, pretty easy to categorize. As I define myself, I’m South Asian (or, I could assert Sub-continental Asian) without much further complication than that. I’m easy to define as far as defining one’s ethnicity could go. How hard is that to put next to a box? If it’s not there, I refuse to check anything else.

The article we read for class this week (“Immigrants and the Changing Categories of Race” by Kenneth Prewitt) made me wonder about the implications of my newfound choice to classify as Other. Many of those implications center around the idea that, as minorities, we might be better served lumped into one category or another, because those categories have serious influence on policies created for minorities. Prewitt writes, “Where earlier policies had been discriminatory, new civil rights policies were intended to right those wrongs and benefit groups that had been ‘historically discriminated against.’ Belonging to a racial minority becomes a basis from which to assert civic rights. In this task, statistic proportionality became a much-deployed legal and administrative tool.” In other words, there was an advantage to silencing your inner turmoil about lack of representation in the census survey. Just shut up and pick the box closest to your description, and there’ll be some pay-off.

The article asserts at times there is some kind of dichotomy at play here: Either minorities fight for the mostly figurative right to be correctly represented on the survey (i.e. including categories such as Indian, Middle Eastern, African [and not just “Black”]) or get access to a bounty of rights that come from being labeled as Black, Asian, or Hispanic, whether that truly describes us or not. In that line of thinking, why not just group yourself with one category and stop complaining? Surely the moral and intellectual relief of being labeled as you truly are is not worth the civil liberties that arise from your marking yourself as a minority for the government.

I’m not convinced though that these are mutually exclusive rights. I think we’re seriously underestimating statisticians and census administrators and whomever else if we think they can’t handle the diversity that exists in America. To put it matter-of-factly: America is diverse. The story of being a racial minority in America is a story of white people trying to suppress our complexity in a variety of ways. I’ve learned to trust my instinctual discomfort with the typical racial categories on surveys because trying to lump diverse groups into five or six categories is reminiscent of the overall American historical attempt to erase racial identity. It’s basically saying that the white majority is still too uncomfortable, inconvenienced, and overwhelmed by racial diversity. If it’s at all possible (sarcasm), I think we (as in, America) can recognize this racial diversity with one thousand categories if we need to, and researchers or statisticians (or whatever) can add some numbers up if they want to make generalizations? Like maybe if they want to talk about “Asian” people they can just add up the percentage of people they think fall into that category and make their generalizations? Or, maybe, better yet, we can start talking about populations of people with a little more nuance? Maybe we can stop saying things like, “This is what Black people do” or “This is what Asian people do” and recognize the extreme diversity of the population we just categorized in terms of not just race, but color and citizenship too?

Hajer pointed out in class that a new racial categorization of “Middle Eastern/Arab” (by the way, not interchangeable terms with the term Muslim *ehm*) on the 2020 census might be problematic because it could create more awareness for the general population of the number of Middle Eastern or Arab people in their community, state, country, etc. and might have, for example, policing implications. (By the way, I hope I recapitulated this thought correctly and leave room for the possibility that I have not.) I think this is an important point, and thanks to Hajer for saying it so well in class. I wonder, though, if maybe people having more specific information about their neighbors could be a positive thing overall, even if it is not initially. It feels too submissive to deny the diversity of our minorities the right to be correctly represented because of the racist, xenophobic fear some people have of living in a world where one subgroup of the population is (more) accurately accounted for. I want to state very clearly, though, that that concern is very legitimate because, as minorities, our lives are always in danger because of racism, xenophobia, patriotism, white supremacy, etc.—but to what extent do we let the fear of white people fearing us prevent us from asserting our presence in this country? Imagine if we had a survey that collected information on the number of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indonesian, etc. living in our communities as opposed to the number of “Asians.” (Or to simplify it even further, we could even take Asia apart into regional areas.) Maybe it would slowly start to change our language around how we talk about “Asians” (I can’t stop putting it in quotes). Maybe if we had a national census document that refused to reduce people to broad categories, more people would develop the language to stop doing it in everyday interactions with people. Perhaps some would meet a person they previously thought was “Asian” and have the intellectual capacity to conceptualize their racial identity as much more specific and vibrant than the conglomerated identity of the largest and more diverse continent in the world? It’s a stretch, but it could happen.

Written by Sherry Zhang

Last November, I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a policy conference. My colleague, a Korean-American woman, and I decided to rent a car and drive South to the White Sands National Monument after our conference presentations, about 100 miles north of the border of Mexico. Before arriving to the National Park, we were stopped at a border patrol checkpoint. Border patrol checkpoints require motor vehicle drivers to stop and verify their U.S. citizenship statuses. Growing up, I would make a yearly trip to the U.S.-Canadian border with my parents to renew our TN Visa. My parents and I had never gone through an internal border control on our way to the border. Currently, there are very few border patrol checkpoints near the border of Canada. Most of these checkpoints are located in Southwestern states. This reflects the history of border control in the United States and Mexico – racial boundaries to separate whites from Mexicans [1].

Having not encountered anything like this before, I had no idea what to expect. I pulled up to the border patrol agent, with my colleague on my side, and was asked where I was going. Then I was asked whether I was a U.S. citizen, and where I was born. The border patrol agent assumed that my colleague and I were sisters, and after my colleague replied her birth place, the agent asked, “you too?” I nodded yes, out of fear. I had not brought any documentation (green card and passport) with me other than my drivers’ license.

After being let through the border patrol checkpoint, my colleague and I breathed a huge sigh of relief for not being pulled over for further inspection like we had seen other cars in front of us had. I thought about my own status as a Chinese-Canadian, green-card holder at the time. What privileges did I have being born in Canada, not having an “accent,” and being identified as part of the “model minority?” How would my treatment from the border patrol agent change if my mother, with limited English proficiency, or father went through? What if I were Latina? Would I be asked about my birthplace if I were white?

During my citizenship oath ceremony in February of this year, a white woman came up to me and congratulated me on becoming a new citizen. “Welcome to America,” she exclaimed, although I had been living in the United States for 14 years at the time. I thanked her, and she told me my English was very good. “Which country are you from?” I told her that I grew up in Canada. I thought about Grace Lee Boggs, who described a similar experience in her autobiography. After being asked her nationality several times, the person who asked would often say “But you speak English so well” [2]. Boggs remarked, “But the message behind the sweetness was that being Chinese and speaking English well were just as incompatible as being Chinese and American” [2]. Boggs wrote about her experiences in the 1930s, and I was not surprised that these microaggressions still occur today. Historically, Asian immigrants were always seen as “foreigners” [3].

What does assimilation mean? Sociologist Milton Gordon described different stages of assimilation, including adopting the language and customs of the majority group, intermarrying, identifying with the majority group [4]. However, assimilation is described as what the immigrant can do to “incorporate” into U.S. society. What is not included is how others respond to assimilation – what does assimilation mean if we are constantly seen as alien?

 References

 [1] Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

[2] Boggs, Grace Lee. Living for Change: An Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. P. 10.

[3] Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996. P.5.

[4] Gordon, Milton. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Written by Ryan Purcell

Completing an on online survey is a complicated and arduous task. A questionnaire recently distributed by the Cornell Department of Psychology is hardly worth the chance to win $25 in Amazon credit it offers in remuneration. The survey’s capacity to accurately reflect the psyche of Cornell students was potentially undermined by both the long duration of the process and difficult nature of the questions asked. An endless line of intimate questioning was not only psychologically taxing, but the means of interrogation were morally vexing. The survey was formatted so that the volunteer responds to general statements about their psychological disposition. ‘I cannot keep up with coursework,’ for example, is a typical statement meant to reveal potential anxiety regarding academic rigor. The problem, however, was with the responses in this line of questioning. How can anyone respond to a statement within a range from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’? Life is not a scale. These responses were at once specific, and yet too broad to accurately reflect my psyche. What was more, these questions provoked self-doubt and even insecurity. ‘How many times a week do you consume more than two alcoholic beverages?’ How many times a week is acceptable? Are three glasses of wine too much? The volunteer is left in an existential void: ’how should I feel’ is raised in conflict with ‘how do I actually feel’. Nowhere in the survey was this condition clearer than in the profile question of race.

The selection in the racial identity component was problematic. As in the statement response section, the available responses for racial identity were both specific and broad. Categories like ‘Latino,’ ‘African American,’ ‘Asian’ and ‘White’ and others do well to account for the diverse demographics throughout America, but would it be more useful if they were tailored in site specific questionnaires like those distributed at Cornell? Of the 14,453 undergraduate students during at Cornell the 2013-2014 year, more than 39 percent were foreign-born nationals, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, or identified themselves in more than one racial/ethic group. http://diversity.cornell.edu/who-we-are Cornell is a much more diverse population than Ohio State University where the undergraduate population of 44,201 was 72.2 percent white. http://www.forbes.com/colleges/ohio-state-university-main-campus/ The fact that Ohio State’s student body was much less diverse cannot be refuted. Given such a different racial/ethnic composition, should Ohio State have a more specific selection in the racial identity component of its questionnaires than Cornell? Should questionnaires at Ohio State, in other words, breakdown the category of ‘white’ to yield a more detailed reading of its racial composition? Should racial categories on such questionnaires represent the constituent population?

‘White’ as a category is also problematic. I expected to have little difficulty when it came to the racial identity component of the survey. After slogging through the frustratingly arbitrary statement responses I was happy to come to such a straightforward and simple question. ‘White’ I thought, directly. But viewing the full range of choices gave me pause to think. Am I ‘White’? Surely, I am wonder-bread-white, but would I have been eighty, or ninety years ago when Irish-Catholics and Jews might have been considered nonwhite peoples in America? Does the pigment of my skin constitute my ‘whiteness’? My skin is beige in some places, and even darker in others. It changes through the seasons. In the winter it will be a pasty pinkish-white. Why white though? A black person is not black. Is it a matter of how I see myself or how I am viewed by society? If my mother was white, and my father black — even if my grandmother was black— and I still looked more or less white, would I be white? What if my forgotten ancestors were black, would that make me black? Do I perform my whiteness? Is it a matter of culture? This took too much of my time, and at that point I was too far into the survey to justify giving up my chance for $25 in Amazon credit. The range of choices was not a matter of annoyance so much as the conundrum of racial identity itself. Resigned to the category that society ascribed me. ’White’ it was.

Online questionnaires are indeed difficult tasks — almost painful. But the promise of monetary payoff, in the form of Amazon credit, kept me going. And it ultimately forced my hand when it came to racial identity. I couldn’t bother with further questioning, and where was that going to lead me anyway? Was I going to quit the questionnaire and scrap my hard work and chance for payoff? Of course not. Given the choice between possible Amazon credit and rejecting the whole situation based on my moral objection to being placed into an ascriptive category, I chose the credit. It was easier. And perhaps that’s how these categories retain their credence in society broadly.

Written by AshLee Smith

Are race and class inherently intertwined or can they be separated? Adolph Reed argues that race and class are inherently intertwined with capitalism in the U.S. He believes that race and class cannot be separated, however, Ellen Meiksins Woods boldly argues that, “Capitalism is conceivable without racial divisions, but not, by definition, without class.” She defines capitalism as, “a system in which all economic actors, producers, and appropriators, depend on the market for the most basic conditions of their self-reproduction.” After reading both arguments and rebuttals, I tend to agree with Ellen Meiksins Woods. To me race stands apart from class, though they do tend to work together, especially in producing inequalities in our country. However, I believe that it is clear that we can have a class hierarchy without a racial hierarchy. This has been shown clearly throughout history (for example the serfdom status that peasants held under feudalism or even the caste system in India). Reed writes a degrading rebuttal and believes that Woods is “fatally miscast” and he contends that she “establishes an either or framework.” However, again, I take issue with Reed’s notion that race and class cannot be separate. It is not an absolute that race and class are inherently intertwined. For example, one of the front-runners for the Republican Party is a Black man who grew up severely impoverished and now in addition, to running for president, he is a world-renowned neuro-surgeon. Although this is one case, this is clear example that being a person of color does not mean that one’s class is ascribed to them at birth.

I disagree with the my classmate, Runjini Raman, that “race and class are so linked when it comes to what one is able to do educationally, career-wise, financially, etc., that it’s impossible to separate them.” A non-white person with a college education statistically looks similar to a white person with a college education and white people who do not graduate high school look more like non-white people who did not finish high school. Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University argues that, “class not race is the dominant dimension of difficulty [in the U.S.]” and he notes, “racial differences controlling for class are decreasing while class differences controlling for race are increasing in America.” Class differences (most notably known in the U.S. as income inequality) depress the American Dream and social mobility. As you can see in the chart below, The United States income inequality skyrockets above other countries and continues to rise. This is a major issue and one that Woods and I both see as a concern for all in the U.S. regardless of race.

This chart shows us the income distributions in the U.S. since 1980.

In class we discussed if policies should be local and race specific or broad sweeping and not specific. I contend that if we are to implement the most positive change we need broad sweeping policies that lift people up regardless of their race. As a future policy scholar, I believe that the issue of our day is income inequality not race inequality. Yes, race inequality does matter, but it is evident that the main policy issue in America is the rising income inequality and wealth disparity that inflicts 99% of the U.S. and this effects all, no matter if you are black, white, Asian, or Latino.

Please see the following links for more information about income inequality and the citations that I used:

Inequality for All – Movie

Robert Putnam – The Atlantic Piece

CBPP – Income Inequality Trends

Adolph Reed and Critiques