Trevor Noah Says He’s Not a Political Progressive. He’d Be Funnier If He Were.

Posted in Articles, Arts, Media Archive, United States on 2015-10-12 00:44Z by Steven

Trevor Noah Says He’s Not a Political Progressive. He’d Be Funnier If He Were.

The Nation
2015-10-09

Katie Halper


(The Daily Show with Trevor Noah / Brad Barket)

The new Daily Show host doesn’t have much to say, which leaves him making jokes about tramp stamps and body weight.

Unlike Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah doesn’t ground his comedy in a political ideology. This is of course politically disappointing to people who saw Jon Stewart as someone who not only raised awareness but influenced politics and sometimes even policy. But what’s less obvious is that the lack of political perspective makes the show less funny.

Like millions of viewers in the United States and across the globe, I depended upon Jon Stewart, night after night, to excoriate people in high places who had messed with ordinary people during the day. When Comedy Central announced that Trevor Noah would replace Stewart, I knew that the odds of someone doing as good a job were slim. But I defended Noah when he came under attack for a handful of tweets that ranged from offensive to not at all offensive (just critical of Israeli policy), and from unfunny to really, really unfunny. It seemed an unfair point of focus. I was hopeful that his background, so different from Stewart’s, would bring a fresh perspective. And I thought it went without saying that Noah would continue the show’s political focus and insight…

… In contrast, correspondents Roy Wood and Jordan Keppler brought an angle and some character to the show, which made them funnier. It wasn’t earth-shattering (no pun intended), but Roy Wood Jr.’s report on NASA’s discovery of liquid on Mars was the first time I laughed during the debut episode. It was also the first time racism (and not just race) was addressed on the show. When Noah asks Wood what he can tell us about the story, Wood responds, “I can tell you I don’t give a shit.” When an optimistic Noah says, “Doesn’t this raise the possibility that one day people can live on Mars?” Wood responds, “People like who? Me and you? How am I going to get there? Brother can’t catch a cab, you think we can catch a spaceship?… Black people ain’t going to Mars! And that includes you, Trevor.”…

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A resurgence of black identity in Brazil? Evidence from an analysis of recent censuses

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science on 2015-10-12 00:27Z by Steven

A resurgence of black identity in Brazil? Evidence from an analysis of recent censuses

Demographic Research
Volume 32
Article 59 (2015-06-18)
pages 1603-1630
DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2015.32.59

Vítor Miranda
Population Studies Center
University of Pennsylvania

Background: The second half of the 20th century brought a sharp increase in the number of people self-identifying as “brown” in the Brazilian Censuses. Previous studies have demonstrated that this was not the result of demographic forces, such as differential birth rates, but of a large number of people changing their response in the censuses from “black” or “white” to “brown”. Despite the increased black political activism of the last two decades, whether this historical pattern of racial reclassification continued after 1990 has not yet been systematically investigated.

Objective: This study investigates if the increase in identity politics by the Brazilian black movement since the 1990s was associated with a number of people changing their answers in the census from non-black to black.

Methods: The residual method is used to estimate a counterfactual scenario: what the distribution of the population by race would look like in the 2000 and 2010 censuses if no racial reclassification had occurred during the 1990s and 2000s.

Results: The “black” category experienced net gains of 2.2 million and 3.1 million newly reclassified members in the 2000 and 2010 censuses, respectively. By 2010 at least one in every three people in the black population was a newly reclassified black. The increase was particularly strong among males and the younger generations.

Conclusions: The historical flight from blackness in Brazil documented by previous studies has reversed in the last two decades. This suggests that the increased black activism might have been successful in valorizing black identity and increasing identification with blackness.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Racial statistics in Brazil
  3. Earlier studies and open questions
  4. Analytic strategy and data
  5. Results
  6. Alternative scenarios: Mortality, international migration, and census coverage
  7. Conclusions and discussion
  8. Acknowledgments
  9. Reference

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Tap Roots (1948): A Review of the first “Free State of Jones” movie

Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, History, Media Archive, Mississippi, United States on 2015-10-12 00:14Z by Steven

Tap Roots (1948): A Review of the first “Free State of Jones” movie

Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners
2015-10-11

Vikki Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History
Texas State University, San Marcos

As we await the release of The Free State of Jones, I thought it might be fun to visit an earlier movie similarly inspired by Newt Knight and the Knight band’s Civil War uprising. Tap Roots, adapted from James Street’s 1942 novel of the same name, was released by Universal International Pictures in August, 1948.

As I searched the internet, I quickly discovered that New York Times reviewer Tom Pryor had been anything but impressed by the movie. “Checking the accuracy of historical detail in Tap Roots, the romanticized Civil War drama,” he wrote, . . . “would serve no special purpose,” presumably because, he added, “clichés, oral and visual,” had produced a drama whose characters exhibited no “individuality or substance.”

Although I had read the novel Tap Roots many years ago, I had never seen the movie—until now. After viewing seven of the eight sections of Tap Roots on YouTube over the space of two days, I have to say, Pryor was correct. Moviegoers learned little to nothing about the important story of Southern Unionism in Jones County, Mississippi, from this production…

Read the entire review here.

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The Criminal Justice System and the Racialization of Perceptions

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2015-10-12 00:01Z by Steven

The Criminal Justice System and the Racialization of Perceptions

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Volume 651, Number 1 (January 2014)
pages 104-121
DOI: 10.1177/0002716213503097

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Andrew M. Penner, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Jessica M. Kizer
Department of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Recent research on how contact with the criminal justice system shapes racial perceptions in the United States has shown that incarceration increases the likelihood that people are racially classified by others as black, and decreases the likelihood that they are classified as white. We extend this work, using longitudinal data with information on whether respondents have been arrested, convicted, or incarcerated, and details about their most recent arrest. This allows us to ask whether any contact with the criminal justice system triggers racialization, or only certain types of contact. Additional racial categories allow us to explore the racialization of crime beyond the black-white divide. Results indicate even one arrest significantly increases the odds of subsequently being classified as black, and decreases the odds of being classified as white or Asian. This implies a broader impact of increased policing and mass incarceration on racialization and stereotyping, with consequences for social interactions, political attitudes, and research on inequality.

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Patterns of Racial and Educational Assortative Mating in Brazil

Posted in Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Social Science on 2015-10-11 20:58Z by Steven

Patterns of Racial and Educational Assortative Mating in Brazil

Demography
June 2014, Volume 51, Issue 3
pages 835-856
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-014-0300-2

Aaron Gullickson, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Oregon

Florencia Torche, Professor of Sociology
New York University

Exchange of racial for educational status has been documented for black/white marriages in the United States. Exchange may be an idiosyncratic feature of U.S. society, resulting from unusually strong racial boundaries historically developed there. We examine status exchange across racial lines in Brazil. In contrast to the United States, Brazil features greater fluidity of racial boundaries and a middle tier of “brown” individuals. If exchange is contingent on strong racial boundaries, it should be weak or non-existent in Brazilian society. Contrary to this expectation, we find strong evidence of status exchange. However, this pattern results from a generalized penalty for darkness, which induces a negative association between higher education and marrying darker spouses (“market exchange”) rather than from a direct trading of resources by partners (“dyadic exchange”). The substantive and methodological distinction between market and dyadic exchange helps clarify and integrate prior findings in the status exchange literature.

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Disentangling the Effects of Racial Self-identification and Classification by Others: The Case of Arrest

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2015-10-11 20:45Z by Steven

Disentangling the Effects of Racial Self-identification and Classification by Others: The Case of Arrest

Demography
June 2015, Volume 52, Issue 3
pages 1017-1024
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-015-0394-1

Andrew M. Penner, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Scholars of race have stressed the importance of thinking about race as a multidimensional construct, yet research on racial inequality does not routinely take this multidimensionality into account. We draw on data from the U.S.Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to disentangle the effects of self-identifying as black and being classified by others as black on subsequently being arrested. Results reveal that the odds of arrest are nearly three times higher for people who were classified by others as black, even if they did not identify themselves as black. By contrast, we find no effect of self-identifying as black among people who were not seen by others as black. These results suggest that racial perceptions play an important role in racial disparities in arrest rates and provide a useful analytical approach for disentangling the effects of race on other outcomes.

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Race, color, and income inequality across the Americas

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Census/Demographics, Economics, Media Archive, Mexico, Social Science, United States on 2015-10-11 20:32Z by Steven

Race, color, and income inequality across the Americas

Demographic Research
Volume 31
Article 24 (2014-09-19)
pages 735-756
DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2014.31.24

Stanley Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Andrew Penner, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Background: Racial inequality in the U.S. is typically described in terms of stark categorical difference, as compared to the more gradational stratification based on skin color often said to prevail in parts of Latin America. However, nationally representative data with both types of measures have not been available to explicitly test this contrast.

Objective: We use novel, recently released data from the U.S. and 18 Latin American countries to describe household income inequality across the region by perceived skin color and racial self-identification, and examine which measure better captures racial disparities in each national context.

Results: We document color and racial hierarchies across the Americas, revealing some unexpected patterns. White advantage and indigenous disadvantage are fairly consistent features, whereas blacks at times have higher mean incomes than other racial populations. Income inequality can best be understood in some countries using racial categories alone, in others using skin color; in a few countries, including the U.S., a combination of skin color and self-identified race best explains income variation.

Conclusions: These results complicate theoretical debates about U.S. racial exceptionalism and methodological debates about how best to measure race. Rather than supporting one measure over another, our cross-national analysis underscores race‟s multidimensionality. The variation in patterns of inequality also defies common comparisons between the U.S. on the one hand and a singular Latin America on the other.

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We organized a student pow-wow and some of the attendees had clearly studied at the Grey Owl School of Indian fakery.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2015-10-11 20:23Z by Steven

But the longer I spent at that university, the more of them I ran into. People who confused having an “interest” in Indigenous culture with “going full redface.” We organized a student pow-wow and some of the attendees had clearly studied at the Grey Owl School of Indian fakery. They showed up with feathers in their hair and introduced themselves with names like, “Running Wolf.” I remember that name very clearly because it belonged to a man well over three hundred pounds and I remember cattily whispering that a better name would have been: “Sedentary Wolf.”

Dawn Dumont, “That’s What She Said: Red-face,” Eagle Feather News, August 2, 2005. http://eaglefeathernews.com/opinion/index.php?detail=1458.

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Mapping Amerindian Captivity in Colonial Mosquitia

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive on 2015-10-11 18:18Z by Steven

Mapping Amerindian Captivity in Colonial Mosquitia

Journal of Latin American Geography
Volume 14, Number 3, October 2015
pages 35-65

Karl Offen, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

In 1764, Spanish colonel Luis Diez Navarro mapped the racially diverse British settlement at Black River on what is today the coast of northeastern Honduras. I use the map as a point of departure to ponder the origins of Amerindian and mestizo residents of Black River and other British settlements across the Mosquito Shore in the eighteenth century. I suggest that Diez Navarro’s map can be read to discuss a regional history of violence, the lengthy importance of northern European (and especially British) influence in the region, the significant presence of free people of color, and the social and economic importance of female captivity in general and the Amerindian slave trade in particular. The paper shows how the Afro-Amerindian and Amerindian Mosquito people became deeply entangled with the trade-driven supply of Amerindian captives during times of Anglo-Spanish peace, but also the capture of Amerindians, Africans, mestizos, and mulattos during times of Anglo-Spanish warfare. The paper argues that Amerindian, mestizo, and mulatto captivity made the Mosquito Shore one of the more racially mixed societies anywhere in the British Atlantic and deserves much more attention than it currently receives.

En 1764 el coronel español Luis Diez Navarro mapeó el diverso y mezclado asentamiento británico de Black River, en el lugar que hoy es la costa noreste de Honduras. Utilizo este mapa como punto de partida para examinar el origen de los residentes indígenas y mestizos de Black River y de los demas asentimientos a lo largo de la costa de los Mosquitos en el siglo dieciocho. Sugiero que el mapa de Diez Navarro se puede leer como una pista para entender la historia regional de violencia, la importancia y larga influencia de los nor-europeos y especialmente los británicos, la presencia significativa de gente libre de color y la importancia económica y social de la cautividad femenina en general y el tráfico en esclavos indígenas en particular. El artículo demuestra cómo los Mosquito, tanto los Afro-indígenas como los indígenas, se involucraron con el comercio de las indígenas cautivas durante tiempos de paz entre los Españoles y los Británicos, así como también participaron en la captura de indígenas, afrodescendientes y mulatos durante el tiempo del conflicto Anglo-Hispano. El artículo sostiene que la cautividad indígena, mestiza y mulata convierte a la costa de los Mosquitos en una de las sociedades más diversas de la Atlántica británica y merece un sitio mucho más central que el que tiene actualmente en la academia.

Read or purchase the article here.

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The Cost of Color: Skin Color, Discrimination, and Health among African-Americans

Posted in Arts, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2015-10-11 17:54Z by Steven

The Cost of Color: Skin Color, Discrimination, and Health among African-Americans

American Journal of Sociology
Volume 121, Number 2 (September 2015)
pages 396-444
DOI: 10.1086/682162

Ellis P. Monk Jr., Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Chicago

In this study, the author uses a nationally representative survey to examine the relationship(s) between skin tone, discrimination, and health among African-Americans. He finds that skin tone is a significant predictor of multiple forms of perceived discrimination (including perceived skin color discrimination from whites and blacks) and, in turn, these forms of perceived discrimination are significant predictors of key health outcomes, such as depression and self-rated mental and physical health. Intraracial health differences related to skin tone (and discrimination) often rival or even exceed disparities between blacks and whites as a whole. The author also finds that self-reported skin tone, conceptualized as a form of embodied social status, is a stronger predictor of perceived discrimination than interviewer-rated skin tone. He discusses the implications of these findings for the study of ethnoracial health disparities and highlights the utility of cognitive and multidimensional approaches to ethnoracial and social inequality.

Read or purchase the article here.

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