Category: Race and Ethnicity

Fear, Race and the “Yellow Peril”

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, COVID-19, Myron Strong, Race and Ethnicity4 Comments

Myron strong author photoBy Myron Strong

As the globe grapples with COVID-19, violent attacks on Asians and Asian Americans continue to climb. There are continuing horror stories coming from the United States, Europe, and Australia: stories of people irrationally screaming profanities, telling them to go back to China and news reports of Asian and Asian Americans violently attacked. As a matter of fact, NBC news reported that there were over 650 racist attacks against Asian Americans last week alone.

The anti-Asian racism demonstrates how history can inform our understanding and interpretation of the outbreak in China. The messages attached to the COVID-19 virus have a history.

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Lizzo and Sociocultural Constructions of the Body

On By econnellIn Angelique Harris, Popular Culture and Consumption, Race and Ethnicity, Theory4 Comments

By Angelique Harris

Anyone listening to the radio or pop- or hip-hop-streaming stations lately certainly were aware that 2019 was the summer of rapper, singer, songwriter, and flutist, Lizzo. Born Melissa Viviane Jefferson in the late 1980s, Lizzo had been writing and producing music for several years before her music began topping the charts over the past year.

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Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fight for Equality

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Race and Ethnicity, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Todd Schoepflin4 Comments

Todd SchoepflinBy Todd Schoepflin

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is highly celebrated this time of year, with a national holiday in his name occurring on the third Monday of January, and as a heroic figure recognized during Black History Month in February. We revere King for his incredible “I Have a Dream speech” delivered in August 1963 at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. To remember King, I also like to teach my students about some of his other activism and speeches they may not know. It’s a way of appreciating more of what King valued and fought for, and contemplating what else he might have been able to accomplish had his life not tragically been cut short by assassination in 1968 at the age of 39.

It’s fitting that we honor King in the sociology community–he earned a Bachelor’s degree in sociology from Morehouse College where he was president of the sociology club. In sociology courses we learn about racism, injustice, inequality, social change and so many other subjects that King spoke poetically about and worked on while being at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. A summary of his achievements can be viewed at The King Center website, where we can gain understanding about his leadership and Gandhi-inspired philosophy of nonviolent resistance.

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Teaching in the Shadow of Slavery

On By econnellIn Myron Strong, Race and Ethnicity, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change3 Comments

Myron strongBy Myron Strong

On a warm day in the spring, a colleague and I walked into Hilton Hall located on the Catonsville campus of my college. The campus was once a plantation and Hilton Hall, which more commonly is known as “the mansion,” had been renovated over the past 3 years for $10 million. I had never been there before and it was an eerie experience. It reminded me of growing up in Eudora, Arkansas, a small rural town that also was once a plantation, and had evolved into a segregated town separated by railroad tracks. There is spiritual weight to these places. History has mass – you feel it, see it and taste it. I felt it in “the mansion.”

I was there giving a lecture for a program, Invisible History: Exploring CCBC Hilton Center, a program created to address complaints expressed by some students, faculty, and staff concerning the college embracing a symbol of trauma and oppression. The program featured a panel of professors from different disciplines as well as the college president. When I heard about the program, I was afraid that it would glance over or romanticize history, so I insisted on being a part of it.

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Racism, Stress, and Health

On By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Race and Ethnicity, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Social Psychology3 Comments

Headshot 3.13 cropcompressBy Karen Sternheimer

This past weekend I was shopping at the grocery store. This wasn’t the grocery store I usually shop at, but while doing other errands in this part of town I figured I’d stop in and get this errand done too. It’s a bigger location than our local store but part of the same chain, and they have a greater selection than at my usual store.

As I was checking out, a commotion started in the front of the store. A customer was being escorted by out a security guard. I’m not sure what prompted the security guard’s action, as the store is rather big and they were walking from the other side of the store from where I stood. As people started to notice the commotion, tension hung in the air.

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Nipplegate 2.0: Privilege and the Construction of the Body

On By econnellIn Angelique Harris, Behind the Headlines, Popular Culture and Consumption, Race and Ethnicity, Sex and Gender2 Comments

author photoBy Angelique Harris

I can’t believe that I am discussing nipples, privilege, and the Super Bowl Halftime Show for the second year in a row, but here we are. While performing during the Halftime Show for Super Bowl LIII, Adam Levine, lead singer of Maroon 5 took off his top, exposing his bare-chest, and not one, but both of his nipples. Remembering Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004 during the Super Bowl XXXVIII’s halftime show, there was a quick and immediate backlash to the obvious double standard that allowed Levine to expose his nipples, while penalizing Jackson when it was Justin Timberlake, her guest performer, who ripped off part of her costume exposing her breast.

This begs the question, why was Levin able to expose his nipples while Jackson was not? Although a relatively simple question, the response is pretty complicated and is rooted in the ways in which we as a society construct the body and the privileges associated with these constructions. However, it’s important to note that this wasn’t just any Super Bowl halftime show, before Maroon 5 even took stage, their performance was steeped in controversy.

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Race and Studying Abroad

On By econnellIn Class and Stratification, Globalization, Jonathan Wynn, Race and Ethnicity1 Comment

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

Have you been traveling this summer? If you have, I’m sure that you packed your sociological imagination with you. Last month I participated in a Study Abroad trip with a group of first year students who were all either first-to-college or global majority students. We traveled to the Dominican Republic so the students could do an intensive cultural exchange and service learning course.

These students are part of a program to improve racial and ethnic diversity in our Honors College here at UMass Amherst, and I taught Intro to Sociology with them last fall. Similar to honors programs (as well as high school college prep courses) study abroad programs are, generally, a primarily white experience. Only about 5% of students who study abroad are black. Our International Programs Office recognizes this disparity, and assists and supports the program my students participated in because of this inequity.

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Race, Identity, and the British Royal Family

On By econnellIn Angelique Harris, Behind the Headlines, Race and Ethnicity2 Comments

12_01446By Angelique Harris

On November 18, 2016, Kensington Palace, the residence and office of the British Royal Family issued a statement on behalf of Prince Harry. Part of this statement read:

His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment. Some of this has been very public – the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments.

This is the first time Kensington Palace has issued such an emotional statement that not only publicly recognized the relationship between Markle and Harry, but it recognized the racism and sexism that Markle, who is biracial or of mixed race, and her mother, who is Black, faced. We often hear about racism in the U.S., but the relationship between Markle and Harry, as one article put it, exposed “Britain’s ‘quiet and unique brand of racism.”

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Intersectionality for Beginners

On By econnellIn Class and Stratification, Race and Ethnicity, Sex and Gender, Theory6 Comments

By Peter Kaufman

Intersectionality is one of those terms that we use a lot in sociology but we don’t always do a good job of explaining. I know I’m guilty of this. Sometimes I’ll be talking with students in class or trying to explain something to someone and I may casually use the words intersectional or intersectionality without stopping to define what these terms mean.

Much like the word structure, intersectionality has become one of those common, go-to concepts that we tend to invoke so frequently in sociology we assume everyone knows what we mean by it. It’s both troubling and ironic that we make these assumptions because these concepts are usually crucial to the point we are trying to make; in fact, sometimes these concepts are the point. If the people we are talking with do not understand these terms then they will certainly not understand what we are trying to say.

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Dove Body Wash, Colorism, and Skin Bleaching

On By econnellIn Angelique Harris, Popular Culture and Consumption, Race and Ethnicity4 Comments

12_01446By Angelique Harris

This past October, Dove, the personal care brand, released an advertisement that garnered quite a bit of negative press. This body wash ad featured a two to three second video of a Black woman wearing a brown shirt. She removes the shirt, revealing a White woman in a light beige shirt, who then takes it off to reveal another woman with a light skin tone.

A Facebook user was the first to post about this ad on her page and simply wrote: “So I’m scrolling through Facebook and this is the #dove ad that comes up… ok so what am I looking at.” This Facebook user also included four screenshots that showed the Black woman in the ad removing her shirt to reveal the White woman. Although these screenshots reveal only part of the ad and the Black woman portrayed in the ad, Lola Ogunyemi, wrote an op-ed defending the intentions behind the ad, many still believed that Dove implied that darker skin was dirty and the ad was widely panned as offensive and racist.

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