Abstract
faith, neighborhoods, family, and authenticity: new research from the journals
Keywords
Facing Race in Adoptive Families
Children adopted into families whose race or ethnicity differs from their own—transracial adoptive families—force their parents to confront uncomfortable racial realities. Some opponents of the practice believe that, because White parents have little experience navigating a socially stigmatized racial identity, they cannot adequately prepare children of color for a society rooted in racial inequality.
In Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Carla Goar and her colleagues explore how transracial adoptive parents understand and address race in their homes. They interviewed 56 parents who attended “culture camps,” which connect families to information, community, and support with the hope that children will gain a sense of connection to their birth culture. (Some camps focus on culture, while others branch out to include to race.) The families provided an ideal focal group, since many already acknowledged that race was an important issue to address.
Of the parents interviewed, 15% used a “colorblind” discourse, which tends to ignore race out of fears that addressing it actually creates a racial divide. Another 19% used a “race-conscious” discourse, meaning they acknowledged racism and the structural disadvantages experienced by people of color. But a majority of the parents blended colorblind and race-conscious discourses, acknowledging a racial hierarchy one moment and claiming that we are all part of “one human race” the next.
Raising children of color forces White transracial adoptive parents to address a history of privilege they’re not always able to leave behind. However, parents who attended camps that explicitly addressed race used colorblind discourses least often, demonstrating that although racial dynamics are deeply rooted, they are also malleable. Reshaping racial dynamics, the authors argue, will require motivated, diverse, and critically engaged families and communities.
Crime is Even Lower in Diverse Immigrant Neighborhoods
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. natives. Still, Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign hinged partly on stoking fear of criminality among U.S. arrivals. After his win, Trump seemingly set out to find data to support his alternative facts, requesting a weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants and ordering that a hotline be set up so that victims could directly report crimes committed by non-citizens. Against this backdrop, Feodor Gostjev studied immigrant concentration and neighborhood crime rates for his new article, published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
The First Christian Church in Eugene, Oregon, in late 2016.
Rick Obst, Flickr CC
Gostjev analyzed violent crime rates from the National Neighborhood Crime Study, which contains reported crimes by census-tract across the country. Then he brought in data on neighborhood ethnic diversity, immigration status, and crime rates. Consistent with previous studies, residential areas with more immigrants had lower violent crime rates. However, the pattern is observed only if the neighborhoods are ethnically diverse and have a high concentration of immigrants. That is, the effect doesn’t hold when a neighborhood is segregated. Where previous theories had suggested diverse neighborhoods saw less benefit from immigrant populations because of ethnic conflict, Gostjev posits that ethnic or linguistic isolation makes a neighborhood more vulnerable to social and economic alienation, reducing the protective benefits that often accompany immigrant populations.
Americans need not fear immigrant neighbors. Instead, if communities want to be safe, residents would do well to help unpack their new neighbors’ U-Hauls and share ”thank you” treats afterward.
Where Intersectionality is a Strategy
Despite a consensus that men’s involvement is crucial to women’s rights movements, including the long-standing push to stop violence against women, it remains a struggle for antiviolence groups to recruit and retain male allies. It’s even more difficult to engage men across diverse communities.
Tal Peretz, writing in Gender & Society, investigates how men become involved in antiviolence work through an in-depth study of two antiviolence groups in Atlanta, Georgia, both of which focused on engaging men of a particular marginalized identity. Thus, while much of the antiviolence literature focuses on White, heterosexual, middle-class, and young men, Peretz takes an intersectional approach. (Intersectionality is the idea that our different social identities combine to shape unequal life experiences.)
Much like men in past studies, the Muslim men in Peretz’s work do not tend to see their antiviolence activism as directly linked to their own experiences. Instead, their involvement increases with age and parenthood and is heavily dependent on interactions with women. Differing from other men, Muslim men’s online interactions with women are particularly important in spurring activism; the small, dispersed Muslim population in America and Muslim men’s disinclination to socialize with unmarried women make these interactions crucial to their mobilization.
For antiviolence movements, intersectionality isn’t just a buzzword, but a crucial practical approach to activism.
Meanwhile, queer men’s pathways to activism do not reference women; their involvement often begins in childhood and results from their own experiences as marginalized people. Seeing sexism and homophobia as two sides of the same coin, queer men link their own identities to their understanding of issues of violence. Ultimately, their involvement stems from similarities between them and women, whereas Muslim men’s involvement stems from acquired connections with women. What does this mean for antiviolence movements? For antiviolence movements, intersectionality isn’t just a buzzword, but a crucial practical approach to activism, ensuring that causes and messages are heard and received across many communities.
Education Changes Neighborhood Segregation
Residential segregation in the U.S. has declined by 25% since the 1970s, meaning fewer majority White neighborhoods and an increase in integrated and multi-ethnic neighborhoods. A recent article published in Demography explores the impact of educational attainment and family income on Black-White residential integration to understand what caused this decline.
Robert Wagmiller and his colleagues compared levels of residential segregation between Blacks who reached adulthood before the Civil Rights Movement and Blacks who reached adulthood during and after. The movement had a large impact on the formative years of the Civil Rights era cohort, and the authors find that this more highly educated group saw significantly lower rates of residential segregation later in life.
High school graduates and college attendees from the Civil Rights era cohort are much more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods than their pre-Civil Rights era peers—for that group to achieve racial equality in their neighborhoods, 47% of Blacks in the neighborhood would have to relocate. Among the Civil Rights era cohort, only 38% of Blacks in their neighborhoods would have to relocate.
Education activist Dr. Anna Julia Cooper had the right idea: higher education translates to lower neighborhood segregation.
John Flannery, Flickr CC
Surprisingly, the authors found little association between family income and decreased levels of segregation; between the two cohorts, the distribution of family income changed little. This reflects the high levels of discrimination Blacks have historically encountered in the housing market, prohibiting residential integration even when they have similar incomes to Whites.
Pushes and Pulls for Professional Women
Gender divides in the types of work men and women often do contribute to inequality in earnings, yet women face continued difficulty entering predominantly men’s jobs. Now, in Gender & Society, Latonya Trotter finds that it’s not just exclusion from men’s professions, but the inclusionary policies of women’s professions that maintain distinctly gendered fields.
To understand how gendered organizations develop institutional norms that cater to women, Trotter turned to the case of nurse practitioners. The ethnographer interviewed nurse practitioners and observed classes and events that were part of their profressional advancement. She identified a number of practices in the profession that attract women.
Within the hierarchy of nursing, nurse practitioners are high status, high earning, and highly trained, and this profession has become a desirable alternative for women interested in medicine, but who choose not to commit to the longer training (and hours) of medical school, want children, and appreciate the autonomy and flexibility of a nursing career. These women can work part-time and take a long time to finish their schooling; there are no career penalties for taking time off, and seniority is not highly rewarded in the profession.
A nurse practitioner on the job at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center.
University of New Mexico, Flickr CC
The flexibility of the nursing profession must be understood in conjunction with the inflexibility of other occupations and workplaces; that flexibility also means female nurse practitioners can have good careers while still prioritizing men’s professional paths. When only some occupations offer that possibility, it’s little wonder they prove particularly attractive to female professionals.
Parents’ Faith Brings Friendship
Social networks offer emotional and material support, buffering against stress in difficult times. Indeed, adults’ strong social networks are associated with happier marriages and better relationships between parents and children. Paradoxically, though, a close relationship with a spouse or partner can isolate a couple. For some people, religious institutions provide a source of both friendship ties and pro-family ideals. In the Journal of Marriage and Family, Benjamin Gurrentz asks how changes in marital and parental status influence social relationships forged through religious congregations.
Using surveys collected in 2006 and 2012, Gurrentz examined respondents’ social ties, honing in on both the number and proportion of close ties among fellow attendees at the respondent’s religious congregation. Those people who got married over the years studied had, on average, a decrease in close ties culled from their congregations. But among those who were married at the start and remained married, having children was linked with an increase in both the number and proportion of close ties found in congregational ties groups. These relationships were even stronger among younger adults; for them, marriage led to fewer congregational ties but the shift to parenthood increased congregational ties.
A “nearly new” kids’ clothing sale demonstrates one way that church-going parents support each other.
Jonathan Rolande, Flickr CC
Gurrentz concludes that marriage still holds a lasting isolation effect for couples, but that young parents return to religious institutions to form the support networks they need as they raise children.
Friends in Low Places
Feeling inauthentic? Publicly displaying your appreciation for “lowbrow” art might be the answer. According to Oliver Hahl and colleagues, writing in American Sociological Review, some high-status people love lowbrow culture because it makes them appear more authentic—to others and to themselves.
In general, we detect authenticity in others when we see an apparent consistency between their public-facing self and their internal motives. We expect people to be what they say they are: dancer, doctor, musician, sociologist. This is why the “authentic” musician is the one who strives to be an excellent musician, while the “inauthentic” one is seen as striving for fame.
“Lowbrow” artist David Choe’s work adorns city streets and major art institutions alike.
RJ, Flickr CC
High-status people may be especially susceptible to claims of inauthenticity (or “status denigration”), because they are successful and may appear to be motivated by success. Many high-status people are aware of this suspicion and experience “authenticity-insecurity.” To counter this feeling, high-status people may turn to lowbrow culture, seen as more authentic because it is produced by or for low-status people, without the promise of status, fame, or fortune. By showing appreciation for lowbrow culture, high-status people can signal to others that they appreciate authenticity—with the implication that they, too, are authentic.
Hahl and colleagues conducted two experiments, looking for evidence of this authenticity-by-association effect. In the first experiment, participants evaluated two paintings, one produced by a fictional artist they were told was high in status but low in authenticity and the other a lowbrow piece produced by a fictional artist low in status but high in authenticity. Participants who were made to feel high-status (through association with a high-status social type) and inauthentic (because their social type was portrayed as status-driven) favored the lowbrow art more than participants who were made to feel authentic. In the second experiment, high-status, inauthentic people were deemed more authentic by study participants when they were presented as preferring the lowbrow art.
The authors ultimately conclude that consuming lowbrow culture can reduce status denigration. But can you consume your way to authenticity? Not quite. As the authors point out, any effort to appear authentic, if detectable, might be taken as evidence of inauthenticity.
self-fulfilling status?
A new study by Rachel Shattuck finds that young women’s wishes about parenting and marital status may materialize in adulthood. The research, published in Demography, investigated whether their preferences regarding having children outside marriage, as stated before their childbearing began, predicted their likelihood of having a nonmarital first birth.
Shattuck used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which asked about 4,000 girls aged 11-16, “Would you consider having a child in the future as an unmarried person?” Then they followed up years later. When the women reached ages 24-30, a higher percentage of those who had answered ”yes” did have a nonmarital first birth, compared with those who had said ”no” (39% vs. 26%). However, as many as a quarter of the women who had stated a preference against having a child outside marriage ended up doing it anyway.
The women’s adolescent preferences did not, however, fully account for socioeconomic differences in the likelihood of that outcome. Those with high educational attainment and professional work experience in adulthood as well as those who dated college-educated men were less likely to have nonmarital first births. In fact, high educational attainment mattered more than stated preferences. Highly educated women avoided non-marital births through a combination of greater ability to access and afford effective contraception and abortion services and a greater likelihood of marrying. Wishes only go so far.