Jan

31

Let’s Not Get Too Excited About The Idea of Octuplets

Filed Under Demography, Family Issues, Media Praises and Critiques, Original Essays and Analysis, Pregnancy and Childbirth, Sexuality and Heterosexism, Sociology, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Everyone is talking about the California woman who gave birth to octuplets. Yes, my friends, that’s 8 babies, and it looks like they will all survive. While the news media is gushing, my own response is a little more subdued. We don’t know all of the details surrounding the birth and conception of these babies, but the likelihood of having this many babies at once without some type of intervention is slim. The birth of high order multiples (HOM), while it is amazing, it’s troubling.

First, it’s very dangerous. I can speak first hand as a mother of multiples. Multiple pregnancies are closely monitored, and I routinely went for ultrasounds and stress tests during the last 2 months of pregnancy. This monitoring is because the risk of nearly all major complications for mother and children are higher. I was lucky to have no complications and to go full term–that makes me part of the minority of twin moms. If the risks are this high for twins, can you imagine how high the risks are when a woman is pregnant with 8. The risks to mother and children are very high.
Another ethical issue that arises with an HOM birth is the difficulty that arises in giving adequate care to that many babies. In talking with other twin moms who formula feed, they estimate that formula would cost over $200 a month. Even if this mother is providing some breast milk, the cost for just food would be nearly $1000 a month. By the time you add the cost of other basic necessities, paying for these kids would be nearly impossible. The other issue would be basic care. When my twins were born, I spent nearly all of my time feeding, diapering, burping, and clothing them, and I had help. My spouse was here, and my mother was here for the first week. It was a daunting task, and my twins were full term. Since these babies are micro-preemies, their care will be even more challenging. They will need to eat often, probably every two hours, and there is no way possible that one or even two people can feed all eight of these babies. Plus, the babies will likely have feeding and breathing difficulties associated with low birth weight and prematurity. Moreover, reports indicate that this family already has 6 children. Taking care of 14 children, including 8 preemies is a nearly impossible task.
There are also social and economic costs that the larger community faces in cases like this. The hospital and insurance costs in these cases is huge, and I can’t help wondering if care for other babies in that hospital is suffering. Who knows maybe the hospital has some additional temp nurses to handle these babies, but I wonder if the care of other infants is being compromised because the extreme burden this is placing on the staff. What about the costs of insurance, assuming the family has health insurance? Will all of this medical care be covered; how will the financial burden be shifted around to others. I also cannot imagine in the long term that this family will get by without significant amounts of public assistance. The octuplets will be automatically eligible for early intervention programs, which are often government sponsored programs for children with disabilities. I don’t have a problem with people getting public assistance, but I worry that a case like this is a very heavy burden on the system.
I’m hesitant to comment of the specifics when it comes to ethical fertility practices because we don’t know the exact details of this conception. However, I do worry, as do many fertility doctors, about the ethics of HOM. It’s not likely that a doctor used in-vitro fertilization in this case, but I wonder about the monitoring in this case. In cases where injectible fertility drugs are given, doctors often closely monitor the development of follicles, and the release of eggs. I’ve also heard some speculation about black market fertility drugs, but clearly, we don’t know enough details to focus on the specifics of this conception. Nevertheless, we do know that mainstream fertility doctors do not consider these HOM births a success. Here’s quote from MSNBC:

It’s fine to celebrate the healthy delivery, said Sean Tipton, spokesperson for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. But, a pregnancy resulting in this many babies is “clearly is not a medical triumph. Eight babies is not an outcome anyone should want.”

Unbridled celebration of these multiple births ignores the risks that this type of pregnancy can bring and the huge costs to the medical system and the parents, say experts.

This leads to my last point. I understand that people are fascinated with multiples. I can personally attest to the public reaction to twins. When we are out with the babies, numerous people approach us and provide unsolicited (sometimes nice and sometimes not so nice) comments. Multiples are a spectacle, and it is understandable because it’s different, but media coverage of multiples treats them with wonder, but generally ignores the challenges. I’d like to see more media coverage that is realistic. After all we rarely hear of HOM pregnancies that result in the death of the mothers or babies. I found this case from the UK that highlights a multiple pregnancy gone terribly wrong. I know for every one success story there are other stories that are not so happy.

While multiple pregnancies may be fascinating or interesting, the challenges shouldn’t be glossed over, especially when we are talking about high order multiple pregnancies. From child care issues, to medical and financial challenges the difficulties and risks are numerous. Parents, doctors, journalists, and the general public need to grapple publicly with what these HOM births mean for society. Unreflective celebration and freak show voyeurism seems to be the dominant way of viewing HOM pregnancies at this time.

May

11

Analysis of a Local Public Disturbance

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Class Classism and Economic Inequality, Crime/Hate Crimes, Demography, Environment and Conservation, Hip Hop, Politics, Race and Racism | 18 Comments

Note: This is a long piece and rambles over a lot of ground before I get to something resembling a point. I felt the pull of the current while writing it; I just wanted to get it out as soon as possible. I’m going to take a break from guest-posting here for a bit afterwards, since I have a lot of obligations coming up. I’m sure Sewere and Lyonside will soon have some interesting posts to fill the temporary guesting gap.

What makes a viral video?

Here are some qualities I’ve noticed.

1) They show a human or animal engaged in some unique or extreme activity
2) They exhibit noteworthy artistic skill or cleverness
3) They greatly reinforce prior beliefs
4) They greatly challenge prior beliefs
5) Newsworthy: they show something that connects with our sense of the local and the current, the here and now. We can relate the narrative of our lives to what happens in the video.

These videos also generate mountains of racially-based commentaries wherever they’re posted. Actually, it’s often more a spittle-flecked monologue than it is a dialogue.

I’ll talk about two other viral videos before I show the Soulja Girl one.

I remember a video from last year that showed a high school fight. Two young men take off their shirts and square off. It’s a white kid and a smaller, shorter Asian kid. The crowd is yelling their support of the white kid; they’re on his side. It begins. Whoever uploaded it has added a soundtrack: Rick Ross’ “Everday I’m Hustlin” booms over the fight. The Asian kid moves like greased lightning and after a few punches, the white kid is down. He gets up and walks off. The Asian kid drops him again; this time he can barely stagger away, blood and bits of teeth spraying from his mouth. The video ends.

This video was popular among Asian-Americans, for obvious reasons. A narrative built up around it. The white kid was the bully. The Asian kid was the hero. The narrative had dubious authenticity, but it felt right, it fit with the video and it fit with many of our experiences. I’ve certainly had the experience, multiple times at school, of being surrounded by a circle of hostile white kids screaming at me. I watched the video several times. It created a strong surge of mixed emotion. I couldn’t think straight while watching it. I loved it and hated it at the same time for making me romanticize the violence.

Another example is a popular video I saw last year that’s much less violent but seemed to arouse equally strong emotions. A young, pretty, blond white girl sits in front of the camera and talks about her infatuation with Arab men. Nothing is pornographic or poetic; her tone is quite flat and even bland. Arab men are handsome. They’re sexy. They’re romantic. They know how to treat women well. They’re fun to hang out with. She only goes out with Arab men now. Her current boyfriend is Arab. She’s learning Arabic. She’s converting to Islam. That’s it, really.

You can imagine how the typical anti-Arab commenter reacts to this. Her positive stereotyping sends them into a frenzy. What she believes is the exact opposite of what any white, presumably Christian woman is supposed to believe about Arab men. It’s a huge challenge to their own beliefs, and they have to deal with it by turning her into a non-representative freak, someone who’s not deserving of the title of woman, even.

If it was a more common fetish for example, a white man giving similarly bland reasons for liking Asian women — there is no way the video would have gotten the same attention and reaction.

I first saw the Soulja Girl video at the Creative Loafing blog. It’s a local Atlanta blog. There are other local sources for the video. It’s viral because it’s current, it involves something that almost all Atlantans are familiar with (the MARTA train), it shows an extreme of human behavior and it reinforces some prior beliefs for a lot of people. I have to warn viewers, the video is quite depressing and is going to arouse a lot of negative emotions. I’m going to talk much more about those reactions than about the video itself.

Here are some comments from the initial Creative Loafing post. There’s a good dialogue in that the stupid comments do not go unchallenged.

Reason #3,129 guns should be kept off MARTA

# Jill Chambers Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
It’s just one more reason why MARTA needs to have their police actually riding on the trains. How sad that someone would so rudely disrespect the elderly woman and that all those other riders did not even try to come to her defense.

# Cricket Says:
May 8th, 2008 at 6:46 am
This is a perfect reason that people with concealed carry permits SHOULD be allowed on MARTA. If I had seen this, and it had escalated to actual physical violence, I would have no problem giving that ghetto wh*re two in the hat.

# Ken Edelstein Says:
May 8th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Cricket, you make the point of gun control advocates everywhere.

# DaleC Says:
May 8th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Cricket it DID escalate to physical violence when the guy finally stood up and stopped the aggressor. No weapons needed.
That poor old woman. I can’t believe it took that long for SOMEBODY to stand up to her being assaulted.
Notice how rapidly Soulja Girl’s attitude changed when she was confronted by someone who showed force in an appropriate manner.
Bullies fold when someone calls them on their crap. It’s a shame it took someone that long to stand up to her.
As an aside, don’t you just LOVE the beautiful world of Hard Core Hip Hop culture.

# Roxie Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Dude, Dale, did you just call “superman” Hard Core HipHop?
Please, appropriately hang your head in shame.
The woman in the video was not a life threatening individual. Although, she is severely testing sanity and patience, being horrendously disrespectful, aggressive, and antagonizing..It was NOT dealt with appropriately by the young man, as you can see, it only escalated the situation. There are better ways to deal with something like this that do not involve HITTING.
Of course, armchair quarterbacking is so easy. It took so long for ppl to respond b/c they couldn’t believe what was happening and certainly didn’t expect it to last as long as it did.

Hilarious.
# nast Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Seeing as how this incident was defused by a simple act of wig pulling, perhaps Gov. Perdue should sign a bill that protects individual rights to pull others’ wigs in restaurants, parks, churches and other public places.
“A wig-pulling society is a polite society.”

In the next update to the story, the spittle-flecked monologue begins.

MARTA statement regarding videotaped lunacy

# troy c Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Is she an Obama superdelegate?

# LMM66 Says:
May 9th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Not one of those losers tried to help an elderly woman. Everyone there was dumb*** you-know-what. As people have mentioned here already, THIS is how stereotypes are formed. And whether folks like it or not, THIS is the norm for “them”.

# Weary One Says:
May 10th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
M.A.R.T.A.
Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta

# Roxie Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Wow. I didn’t know so many racists liked CL.

MARTA actually stands for Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (although everyone knows the other five words). It’s a contentious intersection of race, politics and economics.

Compared to better-known train systems, such as New York City, the trains are very limited in the ground they cover. The crime rate is low and the trains and stations are extraordinarily clean. Everyday users of the MARTA trains are predominantly working-class/middle-class African-Americans. All other Atlantans take the trains periodically, usually to go the airport or to attend special events held downtown.

Central Atlanta is a diverse mix, with the largest bloc being native (Atlanta-born) African-American. White people who live inside Atlanta are comparatively progressive in their politics, especially because of the huge GLBT community. They’re not a choir of enlightened angels, by any means, but one thing is sure: if they were scared of seeing and talking to black people every day, they wouldn’t be living where they do.

The suburbs to the east are where many richer, non-Atlanta-born African-Americans have settled. And to the far north, the suburbs trace the arc of white flight. The iron claws of the northern suburbs have had a pretty bad effect on the development of public transportation in Atlanta. Their politics, plus the road-construction lobby’s dirty money, ensures that Atlanta’s traffic congestion and air quality get worse and worse every year. MARTA’s system is funded only by the two counties of metropolitan Atlanta, although people from the surrounding counties frequently use it for park-and-ride. The counties of the northern suburbs refuse to link their own systems to it, for fear of getting too many undesirable people in their neighborhoods. A well known fact: “MARTA is unique in that it is the largest United States transit agency not to receive state operational funding.”

The comments to the video illustrate an intense fear and loathing of public transportation. This fear and loathing feeds from racism, then back into racism, in a vicious feedback loop. “If only I could never leave my car,” they pray. But parking is limited at their sporting events and their centers of bureaucracy. Every once in a while, they have to bravely step onto a MARTA train. And they’re not even allowed to carry their guns on board! They resent that.

Anyone who is passionate about Atlanta and knowledgeable about Atlanta and lives inside it, no matter what their race, knows about this dynamic. We’re all hostages to it.

Getting back to a more personal level, what do viewers feel about the woman?

I didn’t think that drugs were involved. It definitely wasn’t crack. People on crack aren’t that fluid and expressive and coordinated in their movements. I think a lot of people on the train had the same visceral reaction I did the fear and awe of the mad. If you don’t look at them, maybe they won’t notice you.

In fact, that’s what happened. I read it first at local videojournalist A.Man.I’s blog: Soulja Girl Turns Herself In. The fuller story was reported here and on local radio stations.

MARTA’s ‘Soulja Girl’ Getting the Help She Needs

She’s only 25 years old, but the dark bags under Nafiza Z.’s eyes tell the story of a young life blighted by psychosis, delusions, hallucinations and mania that are the hallmarks of her mental disorder.

Yesterday afternoon, Nafiza, was in the DeKalb County jail receiving the psychiatric treatment she desperately needed. But on April 7th, Nafiza was spiraling out of control on a MARTA train traveling through Atlanta’s east side.

The scenes captured on another passenger’s cell phone of Nafiza aka “Soulja Girl” terrorizing an elderly passenger – caused a sensation on the Internet and embarrassed MARTA officials who quickly issued a warrant for her arrest.

People with bipolar disorder aren’t usually that violent or aggressive even in their manic phase. They are usually more of a danger to themselves than they are to others.

Nafiza’s boyfriend Dee, with whom she has a baby son, said it more eloquently when he called into the Ryan Cameron Show on Friday, “If she wasn’t bipolar she would be the good a person on earth,” said Dee.


“That girl got a good heart. The city don’t help her, man! They just kick her back out on the streets. The city don’t help [black mentally ill] folks like that. Once you get in that [manic] stage you can’t help yourself. It mess with your mind, man. Once your mind gone it’s a wrap!”

I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be in the grip of clinical mania, adrenaline coursing through your body, other strange chemicals surging through your brain. But I know what it feels like to be a witness to something like that. Perhaps the awe and fear of the bystander is partly because of our empathy with mania… as if we’re seeing the dial turned up to 10 on an experience we’ve felt at level 3 or 4.

It reminds me of a bizarre experience I had when I was in college in Miami. I was at a donut shop late at night, studying with some friends. An older white man walked in and set down at the booth next to us. He started talking very loudly to the air in a sharp, agonized tone. It was a monologue about being a Vietnam vet and how he was betrayed and how it was all the fault of the gooks. That sentiment, those words, over and over again.

My friends were shrinking into their seats. They were all foreign students and terrified of getting into trouble and getting deported, especially the one from Iraq. I had the opposite reaction. My skin was on fire, there was a buzzing noise in my ears, my body started shivering and trembling as if someone had plugged me into an electric current, and everytime he said the word “gook” the current spiked. After a couple minutes of this, I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and faced him and started yelling back.

There was chaos after that point. Another older white man came over, said he was also a Vietnam vet and then took my side of the loud, disjointed argument. The staff of the donut shop got involved. There were numerous threats of ass-kicking. The police came. They tried to talk him down but eventually arrested him after he got into his car, because he was obviously in no condition to drive.

My friends, who hadn’t moved during the whole time, told me I was crazy. Yes, my actions were pretty irrational, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I’d waded up to my knees in something that the mentally ill man was drowning in. I suppose I won, but my victory was pretty hollow.

This was the first narrative that I connected to the video I watched today. But after that man went out into the parking lot, I have no idea how his story began or ended.

After I read a bit more of Nafiza Z.’s story, I feel almost guilty for writing this analysis. I still empathize with the bystanders and the poor elderly lady, but I also empathize with her terrible struggle. I hope these words will go to show how the hatred expressed toward her has more to do with a complicated web of politics, race and resentment than it does with her actual actions. Finally, I hope she can transcend the person shown in that video and become the person she wants to be.

Dec

13

This is for Buster PhD

Filed Under Demography, Family Issues, Xenophobia and Immigration | 4 Comments

I have a picture of the 17.1lb Russian baby.? It’s been circulating all over the internet and has made it into the top pictures of the year on Yahoo!? I bring this up because Buster had an interesting post about pronatalism and nationalism in Russia.

giant-russian-baby.jpg

Nov

19

How Can We Lower Infant Mortality?

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Class Classism and Economic Inequality, Demography, Family Issues, Race and Racism, Sociology, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

I ran across this article on Yahoo! news the other day. It discusses the depressingly high rate of infant mortality in Memphis, Tennessee. The article does a good job highlighting the causes of infant mortality, but I thought the mention of a program designed to lower infant mortality was the most interesting part of the discussion.

While devoted health officials here have been working quietly on the problem for years, only in the past two years did Memphis and Shelby County launch a broad, coordinated attack.

The governor’s office committed more than $3 million in grants to boost grass-roots programs that try to keep women of childbearing age healthy and to pay for better equipment and add workers at city health clinics.

At the moment, health leaders in Memphis are placing their faith in a relatively new idea called “centering pregnancy,” which gathers about a dozen women with similar due dates and coaches them through their pregnancies. They take their own measurement at each meeting, call each other with questions.

The idea: Solve the medical problem by getting vital prenatal care to women who otherwise might not have it, and chip away at the social problem by building a community who women who trust and rely on each other, and perhaps as well at some of the shame and inaccurate information that may have been passed down in families.

Two studies in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, including one that came out this August, have found the models led women to be better prepared to handle their pregnancies. One of the two studies also found the model led to higher birth weight, especially for premature babies.

The county has the program up and running at one of its clinics, with plans for two more soon. And Christ Community, where Taylor works, is expecting a state grant soon to start one of its own.

Taylor, who wears earrings depicting babies in the womb head down, the optimal way, she points out when a guest inquires about them can barely contain her excitement.

“They are acknowledged. They are heard,” she says. “They interact with each other. It produces a community support for each other. You’re actually growing a community and teaching women to take care of themselves.”

I like the idea of a women centered program where peers offer support, but I also think structural solutions like universal health care and poverty reduction are also important. Thinking about it sociologically, we would need macro or structural level solutions, meso or group level solutions, and micro or individual solutions. The program above adresses meso and micro levels, but not macro level problems.

Oct

29

Introducing Guest Poster Atlasien

Filed Under Blogs Blogging Blogthropology, Demography, Family Issues, Race and Racism | 3 Comments

Greetings, Tavernites! My name is Atlasien, and Rachel has kindly invited me to guest blog for the month of November. I’m an Asian prospective adoptive parent living in Atlanta. My husband is white, Southern and Irish-Polish in origin. We’re in the middle of the loooooong process of adopting from the foster care system, while also trying the biological way.

My personal blog is called “Upside-Down Adoption”. The origin of the name is simple. I’m Asian, and Asians get adopted, but they don’t adoptor do they?

Here’s the rundown of my complicated family history, in the portentous manner of one of my guilty vices: James Michener novels. Let’s call it, “Hapa!” Those who find their eyes glazing over should jump to the next section, “Race!”, where I’ll talk about my personal focus on racial issues and introduce future guest blog topics.

Hapa!

Several thousand years ago a group of hunter-gatherers lived on an island chain. The islands were overflowing with natural bounty. They were aware of farming practices, but why bother, since their land was so rich? But one day the farmers from the mainland decided to move in. They killed most of the hunter-gatherers, drove the rest to the northernmost, coldest, bitterest island and began a long slow process of assimilation and cultural genocide.

Then, in the middle of the last century, a woman from that northern island had a son. The father died shortly thereafter; American forces sunk his battleship to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Life was very hard. Many children died of malnutrition. The mother gave her child up in an effort to save him, then quickly died. The child was placed with elderly parents in a village in the mountains. Life was still hard, but it started getting better. On one happy day, black and white television with sumo wrestling and Godzilla movies came to a house, and all the villagers crowded around the set. The boy grew up and became the first person in his adoptive clan to go to college. He left for the big city. Restless and curious, he never stopped moving. His country kept moving too; it changed all around him and became one of the richest in the world.

In 1606, on another island, a second son decided to seek his fortune. He joined a group of ambitious entrepreneurs to found a colony called Jamestown. The effort didn’t succeed, but he put down roots in the state of Virginia. His family joined together with other English and German families. They held themselves to be the chosen heirs to the land, superior to the black and Native residents, and built flimsy, eclectic thought structures to justify their continued separate and superior identity.

Through the centuries, some of the family fell down the class ladder and drifted through Kentucky as preachers and craftsmen, but they climbed back up when they settled again in West Virginia. The men were business owners and professionals, exhibiting a curious mix of blind willful prejudice and thoughtful, progressive intellectualism. The women had nannies and cooks, golfed, wrote long articulate letters to each other, drank cocktails and occasionally overdosed on barbiturates due to crushing depression. During the war, two people from that circle married and had two children. But after the war, the country club life began to crumble, along with the state economy. West Virginia was being strip-mined. The 1950s was a decade of exodus to the north.

The eldest daughter grew up in New England and became a political radical in college. She believed in the best of what her parents believed in, but looked for even more change. She left the country and began traveling the world, where she met my father. She traveled with him, and then tried to establish a life as a mother and housewife in Japan, but it just didn’t work. We ended up moving to America, a new country for me, and I became the American daughter of a single working mother.

Race!

As you can tell, I’m very involved in my family narrative. I’ve gone over it many times. As a multiracial person, I’ve never been able to take it for granted. It’s constantly questioned, praised, criticized and commented upon by others. I’ve had to constantly struggle to define myself and interpret my own story. One story constantly forced on me to this very day is that I’m the daughter of an Asian war bride and a white military officer. I believe that everyone — multiracial or not — has the right to their own story, accompanied by the responsibility to interpret it ethically.

My views on race have been formed both by personal experience, listening to the stories of others and also through academic study (although my career ended up leading me elsewhere). I’m glad to have found sites like this and Racialicious where intelligent conversation about race is actually possible. I don’t like Oppression Olympics. I do like taking a broad, global perspective on the intersection of class, race, gender, disability and other issues. And to a great degree, I’ve held that kind of stance from the very beginning of my childhood.

In America, I went to a mediocre public school in a lily-white district. The results were painful. I was pulled out at the age of 14, and I think if I’d stayed in a few months longer, I might have had a complete mental breakdown. I’ve written a lot about those experiences, but I still have a lot left in me. Anyway, as I was growing up, I thought about suffering a lot, and about how other people suffered. Did I have a right to complain? Did the others? Did we complain, and if we did, who heard us?

I had a conflicting set of feelings towards the tiny group of black girls at the school. We lived in a region where black people were highly segregated and mostly belonged to the lowest class. First of all, I was afraid of them. They looked tough. Some of them were nice, but some of them bullied me and called me racist slurs. Second, I felt a solidarity with them. I understood that for some as yet unknown reason, the world was divided into “white” and “everything else” and we were firmly on the “everything else” side. Third, I envied them. The white kids were scared of them, and I wished they were more scared of me. Fourth, I felt sorry for them. Though their commanding physical presence insulated them from the attacks I received on a daily basis, I knew in the wider world they would be at a disadvantage. My status as a freakish perpetual foreigner would be less of a handicap than their status of lower-caste native minority.

Today, I live in Atlanta, a city with a thriving black middle and upper class, co-existing (sometimes uneasily) with the more inner-city black lower class, African and Asian immigrants, a massive population of newly arrived Mexicans, traditional Southern whites and progressive Southern whites and Yankee/Western transplants. The other prospective adoptive parents I know here are almost all black, some African-American and some Caribbean. I still use the tools I picked up as a child to understand and navigate this complicated environment and the even more complicated environment of global adoption politics.

During my guest stint I’m going to be posting some older pieces from my archives, pieces which have to do with race and politics and fit in nicely here. I’ll do a new post about myths and realities of black adoptive parents, and aggregate some recent posts I made about the resentment faced by Chinese-American international adoptive parents into a new article designed for this site. I might post a rambling autobiographical piece about race, genealogy and national identity. I’m an avid reader of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project report, and the new issue has a couple of hot items I’d like to discuss. One media-related idea I’m working is going to be called “Good White Savior Movies, Bad White Savior Movies”. If you have any burning questions or requests for me to write about something I haven’t mentioned, post it here in the comments. Oh yes, and the Wapanese I have a lot to say about the Wapanese. I don’t like them. If you don’t know about the Wapanese, you WILL be educated! Stay tuned! And thanks, Rachel, for the spot!

Sep

10

Police Officer Charged in Rene Perez Killing

Filed Under Demography, Sociology, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Update: Here’s Kai’s post on the case.? He does a good job highlighting th backdrop of Westchester County.?

I’ve been following the Rene Perez story for the past several months. Below I have compiled several links from my local paper in chronological order.

If you haven’t followed the story, Perez was a homeless man in suburban New York, who was found dead in April of this year. Initially people thought the case was not a suspicious death. Perez was found unconscious on the side of the road, which wasn’t surprising since Perez was by all accounts an alcoholic well known in the area for his numerous arrests for public intoxication and other public nuisance crimes. However, an autopsy revealed that Perez’s injuries were not the result of an accident, and the last known people to be in contact with Perez were the local police. It became evident that investigators believed that these police officers were suspects in the murder. The story also gained traction because Perez is one of three Guatemalan immigrants who have died under unusual circumstances and police had been accused of dumping people off in the remote area where Perez was found.

The cased pushed forward last week with the Westchester county district attorney indicting police officer George Bubaris with manslaughter in the death of Perez. Many details in the case have not been revealed, so the public doesn’t know exactly what evidence there is against Bubaris. It is unusual to have a police officer be arrested for killing someone while on duty. Moreover, given Perez’s background–undocumented immigrant with a history of encounters with local police–the charges are even more unprecedented.

Perez Killing Timeline of Articles

4/30/07 Acquaintance describes Bedford homicide victim’s troubled life
5/1/07 Police pursue leads in Bedford slay
5/4/07 Investigators’ insight limited on slain Mount Kisco drifter
5/7/07 Mount Kisco police cars impounded in homicide investigation
5/7/07 Mount Kisco chief shares little detail on homicide
5/7/07 Bedford police had contact with homicide victim on evening he died
5/7/07 Video: Immigrant death investigation deepens
5/8/07 3 officers dealt with vagrant before death
5/8/07 Mount Kisco officers under investigation in homicide
5/9/07 Brother speaks about Bedford immigrant’s death: ‘What I want is justice’
5/10/07 Remaining Mount Kisco police car released in immigrant death probe
5/10/07 Mount Kisco probe cop complained to father about immigrant left to die
5/11/07 DA: Feds to join Mount Kisco slay probe team
5/14/07 Slain immigrant’s family mourns
5/17/07 2 earlier immigrant deaths join 3 homicides in creating doubts
5/23/07 Witnesses: Mount Kisco cops didn’t beat Perez
6/17/ 07 Perez made long descent from elite commando to drunken vagrant
8/21/07 Report: Mount Kisco officer’s car ID’d on tape
8/22/07 Perez case goes to grand jury
9/6/07 Mount Kisco cop charged in immigrant’s death
9/6/07 Bubaris indictment: audio, video, photos
9/8/07 Mount Kisco cop just a fall guy, lawyer says

I’ll try to post updates as the case continues to unfold.

Sep

3

Xenophobia and Racism Affect Black School Children In Ireland

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Demography, International Racism, Original Essays and Analysis, Race and Racism, Sociology, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

I’ve written in the past about European countries being forced to confront racism and xenophobia, which is especially the case in nations where large scale immigration is making the countries more ethnically and racially diverse. One of the latest countries confronting discrimination is Ireland. Unlike many other Western European countries, Ireland was never colonial power. In places, like France, Spain, and Britain many immigrants are coming from former colonies, but since Ireland didn’t have colonies, Irish immigration is a little less predictable. Nevertheless, Ireland is facing some of the same problems as other European countries. Many Irish people do not accept the new immigrants, and this is especially true for Black immigrants, who come mostly from West African countries like Nigeria.

Traditionally, Ireland has been a country of emigrants.1 Given this fact, it should be no surprise that there are more people of Irish descent in the US alone than there are in Ireland, but in a surprising twist of fate, the trend is beginning to reverse.2 With Irish birth rates above replacement level and a new wave of immigrants from Africa and Eastern Europe, Ireland is actually gaining more people than it is losing. Some hope that this will contribute to growth in the Irish economy, which has been one of the weakest economies in western Europe.

Right now, there is little research on this trend, and the manifestations of anti-immigrant attitudes and racism come to light with stories this one. The gist of the story is that in a suburb of Dublin nearly all of the approximately 90 children who couldn’t find a school to attend were black kids.

The children will attend a new, all-black school, a prospect that educators called disheartening.

About 90 children could not find school places in the north Dublin suburb of Balbriggan , a town of more than 10,000 people with two elementary schools. Local educators called a meeting over the weekend for parents struggling to find places and said they were shocked to see only black children.

“That overwhelmed me. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. I just find it extremely concerning,” said Gerard Kelly, principal of a school with a mixture of black and white students in the nearby town of Swords.

The parents at Saturday’s meeting in a Balbriggan hotel said they had tried to get their children into local schools but were told that all places had to be reserved by February.

Almost all of the children are Irish-born and thus Irish citizens, under a law that existed until 2004.

There is no way this is merely a coincidence, especially when a neighboring town has mixed schools. It should be noted that they are not starting a school that only admits black pupils, like this poorly worded headline from The Times Online suggests. The school is made up overwhelmingly of black children because those children “mysteriously” were not allowed to enter many of the local schools.

Part of the problem is that the Irish government allows schools to discriminate on the basis of religion, which ends up being a form of indirect institutional racism.

About 98 percent of schools are run by the Roman Catholic Church, and the law permits them to discriminate on the basis of whether a prospective student has a certificate confirming they were baptized into the faith. Some of the African applicants were Muslim, members of evangelical Protestant denominations or of no religious creed.

Since many immigrants are not Catholic, these schools were allowed to not accept them without a Catholic baptism certificate. It is difficult to know how many black children who were Catholic were also excluded. I know many of the African children are Nigerian, and many Christian Nigerians are Catholic, so I’d be curious to see how much religious discrimination and racial discrimination overlapped in this case. Clearly, this is a great case for the separation of church and state, and this is an issue that the Irish will have to confront as they become a multicultural nation.

I suspect that the 2004 referendum changing laws that allow parents of Irish citizen children to also become citizens is part of an anti-immigrant backlash. It will also be interesting to see how the role of the Catholic church changes because of immigration. They may lose some power. Ireland can’t call itself democratic when 98% of their schools are run in an openly discriminatory fashion.

Over the next few years, I expect to see more stories on discrimination like the case in Balbriggan. Hopefully, we will see more pro-immigrant organizations developing from ethnic Irish and immigrants.

  1. Emigration with an “e” refers to people exiting the country. This is how I teach the words in class: Immigration with an “i” means into and emigration “e” means exit. [back]
  2. Unfortunately, this article is now a paying article, but I was able to read in my New York Times home delivery. [back]

Aug

9

Dumb Headline of the Week

Filed Under Demography, Media Praises and Critiques, Race and Racism | 11 Comments

This one from the AP “Whites now minority in 1 in 10 counties.”? ? Couldn’t this headline also be “Whites Majority in 9 of 10 counties?

And it is really funny given the discussion that Rory and I were having in this thread. I was telling him how there are many places in the northern tier of this country that are nearly all white.? He was asking me if it really was that rare to see a black person in (rural) areas of the north.? Here’s the comment I left.? You should check out the graphs:

It’s not so much rare as it is concentrated into segregated areas in and around major cities. Check out page 6 of this pdf file; the map is the percent white for various counties (some would say it underestimates % white because it include Latinos who identify as white, but it demonstrates the general point). Look how many counties are 90-99% white–notice how most of them are in the north. In many states like Ohio, you can spot the counties where the bigger cities are because they are not darker blue.

Now check out page 6 of this pdf file. Look how many counties have fewer than 5% black. For that matter look how many states have no counties where more than 4.9% of the population is black–Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Hawaii. You have a few states where all but one or two counties are less than 5% black, but the dark blue counties are pretty much all in the south.

Now I was specifically talking about Blacks, not people of color broadly.? But there are still many counties, probably the majority where people of color are less than 10% of the populations.? Even the graph, pictured in association with the article, could just as easily have made my point about how many counties are very white.?

If you read the article, you would like there is a huge Latino invasion, but is 1 in 10 impressive.? I don’t think so.

Jul

12

The Least Segregated Cities for Latinos in 2000

Filed Under Demography, Original Essays and Analysis, Race and Racism, Sociology, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post, you can look at this post from? July 2nd? where I discuss the different dimensions of residential segregation.? That post discusses a few of the methodological issues, and it links to the Census Bureau report where the data comes from.? So if you are confused about the differences, between? clustering and exposure (for example), you can get more information from that post.? If you link to the actual Census report, they show statistical formulas that are used in calculating segregation using each method described.? They also discuss other issues related to measuring segregation.?

You should also keep in mind this is only measuring segregation for Latinos, and it’s only measuring urban segregation.? I am preparing future posts on? Asians and Native Americans, and you? can read the previous posts on

? The analysis of Latinos only 36? metro areas? met the Census criteria for analysis–the number was 43 metros for blacks.

All data comes from the US Census Bureau

5 Most Even Metro Areas (cities where Latinos are most evenly spread; the number is the percent of people who would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed across the metro area)

  1. St. Louis
  2. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
  3. Fort Lauderdale, FL
  4. Portland, Vancouver
  5. Baltimore

5? Highest Exposure Metros (cities where? Latinos have highest chance of having contact with whites)

  1. St. Louis
  2. Baltimore
  3. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
  4. New Orleans
  5. Portland, Vancouver

5? Least Concentrated Metros (cities where? Latinos are? least densely concentrated/more spread throughout the metro area)

  1. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
  2. Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater
  3. Orange County, CA
  4. Detroit
  5. Baltimore

5? Least Centralized? Metros (cities where? Latinos are? least concentrated in the central core of the city)

  1. Oakland, CA
  2. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
  3. Orange County, CA
  4. Newark?
  5. Baltimore

5? Least Clustered Metros

  1. St. Louis
  2. Baltimore
  3. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
  4. New Orleans
  5. Portland, Vancouver

Overall? Least Segregated for Latinos (Averaging ranks for all 5 major dimensions) Drumroll…..

  1. Baltimore
  2. St. Louis
  3. Fort Lauderdale, FL
  4. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
  5. Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater
  6. Detroit
  7. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
  8. Atlanta
  9. Oakland, CA
  10. Cleveland, Lorain, Elyria

A few points for discussion:

By? this point in our analysis of the most segregated cities? readers should notice? a trend for the least segregated metro areas–the cities with relatively small percentages of a group tend to have lower levels of segregation for such groups.? Of course this is not always true, but it is frequently the case.? For example, St. Louis and Detroit aren’t well known for their Latino populations in part because they are relatively small.? Just as the black population in Orange County, CA or Portland, Oregon are relatively small, but? these cities all rank as less segregated.? ? Of course, we? have to ask, does less segregation necessarily mean that a? particular city/metro would be a good place to live?? Is St. Louis really that welcoming for Latinos?? My guess is probably not.? Same for Detroit.? I attended school in Detroit, and I had? several Latino friends and acquaintances, who were from other? places like New York City? or Texas.? Many of these friends missed having the variety of restaurants, shops, dance clubs, and other places that reflected their ethnic backgrounds.? I would not be surprised if a black person living in Seattle felt the same way.? I bring this up because I think? integration/segregation is just one factor that? affects the well? being of people of color.

Now whites are a different story, since we can generally access products and services that cater to us in almost any place in the US.? This is why we really need to have data on whites that reflects white’s level of integration in these metro areas.

Jul

2

Dimensions of Residential Segregation

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Demography, Original Essays and Analysis, Race and Racism, Sociology, Uncategorized | 40 Comments

Before I put up the full post on the Supreme Court decision on voluntary desegregation programs, I want to briefly discussion the dimensions of of residential segregation. Segregation is a really hot topic in sociology these days. This is probably true for a few reasons, including the fact that it is fairly easy to measure with statistics and it’s one of those areas where we still have significant progress to make.

For the most part, sociologists are interested in residential segregation, which simple means refers to the racial/ethnic mix of blocks, neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas. We tend to be less concerned with segregation as a legal concept, and it seems that a minority of sociologists studying segregation focus on school segregation or segregation in other social institutions such as churches and families.. I suspect that we don’t focus as much of school segregation because it is so highly correlated with residential segregation. I think too often people start by looking at school segregation, but they ignore the fact that more integrated neighborhoods would lead to more integrate schools. I suspect that people don’t focus on residential segregation because it is much harder to challenge, and it’s much more firmly entrenched (at least it is in recent history).

So what are the dimensions of residential segregation. The Census Bureau website identifies 5 major dimensions of segregation: eveness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering.1 Each one of these measures a slightly different element of segregation, and some cities may do well on some measures and poorly on others. One major weakness is that the census doesn’t give segregation data for whites in it’s general report on housing segregation, so the data is lacking in that area.

Eveness

Evenness refers to the distribution of a particular population group.

The most widely used measure of evenness and the most-widely used measure of residential segregation, in general, is dissimilarity. Conceptually, dissimilarity, which ranges from 0 (complete integration) to 1 (complete segregation), measures the percentage of a groups population that would have to change residence for each neighborhood to have the same percent of that group as the metropolitan area overall.

For example, if a group has a dissimilarity score of .75, then 75% of the people in that group would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed throughout the given area. The table below highlights the eveness for major racial and ethnic minority groups in the US, keep in mind the closer the number is to one the more segregated the group is.

eveness-segregation.png

Exposure

Exposure measures potential contact with other groups, and it is measured with the isolation index, which measures how much contact people have with members of their own group. It is also between 0-1, and higher number mean high segregation.

? isolation-copy.png

Concentration

Concentration measures “the relative amount of physical space occupied” by a group. Generally, concentration figures are based on a group’s relative density in a particular area, usually a city or a metro areas. If a group is more segregated it is more dense. In the tables below, I have recorded the Census figures for the delta index, which measures concentration and has figures between 0-1, with those closer to one indicating more segregation. This index measures the proportion/percent of people who would have to move to have a group be distributed across a given area without having greater density in any place. This may sound similar to eveness, but it is different because it is measuring spacing, not percents.

? concentration-segregation.png

Centralization

Centralization measures how closely a group is to the center of an urban area. This is measure is useful because many cities currently have a pattern, which some call the “chocolate city vanilla suburbs” phenomenon. In these metro areas, the cities are predominantly people of color and the suburbs are predominantly white. Of course, some day the US could also have the reverse pattern as they do in places like Paris, where ethnic and racial minority groups are concentrated in suburban ghettos.

Absolute centralization examines only the distribution of the minority group around the metropolitan area center and varies between -1 and 1. Positive values indicate a tendency for group members to reside close to the center, while negative values indicate a tendency to live in outlying areas as compared with the reference group. A score of 0 means that a group has a uniform distribution throughout the metropolitan area.

As you read the table below keep mind the numbers closer to zero mean less segregation, and those closer to 1 or -1 mean more segregation.

centralization-segregation.png?

Clustering

The final dimension is clustering, which “measures the degree to which minority group members live disproportionately in
contiguous areas.” For this, the Census Bureau uses the spacial proximity measure, which

basically measures the extent to which neighborhoods inhabited by minority members adjoin one another, or cluster, in space. Spatial proximity equals 1 if there is no differential clustering between minority and majority group members. It is greater than 1 when members of each group live nearer to one another than to members of the other group, and it is less than 1 in the rare case that minority people lived nearer, on average to nonminority people than to members of their own group.

clustering-segregation.png

A Few Trends Of Note From the Graphs

Looking carefully over the graphs, we can see a few trends of note. First, across measures of segregation there have been some declines in segregation for Blacks and American Indians from the 1980 to 2000. The declines are modest, but nevertheless, they are declines. For Asians and Latinos, the trends are more mixed. In a few areas there has been lower segregation, and in other areas there are no changes or increased segregation depending on which measure is used. Some of the increases of lack of changes for Latinos and Asians is likely attributable to the large increases in their populations.2 Overall, African Americans are by far the most segregated racial minority group.3 American Indians and Alaska Natives are the least segregated racial minority group and Latinos, and Asians fall somewhere in between.

I think this is very important background information that needs to be addressed before we can adequately discuss school segregation, so keep these figures in mind as we go on to discuss school segregation.

  1. Iceland, John, Daniel Weinberg and Erika Steinmetz. 2000. US Census Bureau, Series CENSUR-3, Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. [back]
  2. Their rates of intermarriage have also decreased from 1990-2000. [back]
  3. I would really like to see data for whites here because I would suspect comparable figures. [back]

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