All posts by karashen

Wealth and Inequality

Wealth Week 12

I really enjoyed this week’s readings and discussion. Perhaps more than any other unit from the semester, the findings of The Hidden Cost of Being African American articulated a very different, novel argument. Speaking about wealth inequality opens a powerful narrative about opportunity and access, and even beginning this discussion reveals privileges in experiences that might have been difficult to see otherwise.

Shapiro’s talk at Brown in how education reform, eliminating income disparities and enabling home ownership was compelling. It resonated with the discussion of the origins of the wealth gap in class, where Professor Bobo pointed out the racialization of state policy, economic discrimination and categorical exclusions that created inequalities in wealth. Shapiro’s talk very clearly attempts to suggest measures that would reverse the impact of these structural forces. Given the resistance in testimonies in Shapiro’s book, though, and the difficulties of recognizing privilege, it seems that even with quantifiable evidence, the narrative of wealth inequality still has yet to become comfortably accepted by mainstream perspectives. To make real impact on the policies that perpetuate wealth inequality, we need to push for more conversations and make the realities of wealth inequality widely-accepted.

“Gifted” and Intersectionality

Schooling and Education Week 11

Like many others in class, some of my firsthand experiences strengthen the thesis put forth in Integration Interrupted. In first grade (incredibly early!), I took some version of an IQ test, and from then forth, I was labeled “gifted.” The circumstances in which I was chosen to take the test, the testing environment itself, and the evaluation of my performance: these are all points of entry that had the potential to be clouded by unconscious biases. My own upbringing and all the structural forces that created the environment from which I grew influenced my performance in the test. And yet, all that was erased by the simple binary labeling of myself and my classmates. Despite the early evaluation, the permanence and endurance of this label was total. For a few hours a week, the “gifted” students were separated from the class, and, given that we left together in the middle of class, in a very visible manner. Even after I moved and switched school districts, my parents made sure that I was placed in the analogous “gifted” program in the new school district. The segregation perhaps was greatest in high school, when all my classes involved the same small cohort of the grade. The number of entry points into the “higher” track, diminished with the passing of each grade.

I really enjoyed browsing the two articles that Khytie linked in the blog this week. Some of the works we’ve read this week have dealt with both race and gender, but not significantly. Intersectionality is unavoidable – all facets of a person’s identity influence her experience in society – and I enjoy when class material more directly addresses it.

A Father’s Day Speech

The Black Family Week 10

I found the clip that Khytie played of Barack Obama’s speech on the black family very interesting, and would like to think through its implications in this blog post. I later read the full transcript of the speech on Huffington Post and noticed a few things. Many newspapers and media outlets posited that the speech consisted of Obama reprimanding black fathers for “[abandoning] their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.” As a result, it was possible that readers just browsing the newspaper could use such a piece to support the culture argument, that many of the economic ills plaguing the black community could be attributed to the individual behaviors and decisions of members of the black community.

And in a way, Obama’s sort of does agree with that argument. Many of his assertions, though crafted to relate meaningfully to his audience, the predominantly black Apostolic Church of God, point out individual actions such as “sit[ting] in the house and watch[ing] ‘SportsCenter’ all weekend long” or not emphasizing education or passing on the value of empathy. In this way, he places some of the burden of gang violence or incarceration on the missing fathers of these black families. However, in the second half of his speech, Obama does mention that the government has also a responsibility of “making it easier for fathers who make responsible choices and harder for those who avoid them,” citing reforms of financial penalties around marriage and divorce, and child support, as well as expanded tax programs, education, and employment opportunities as methods of realizing this responsibility. Here, he invokes the structural argument that disadvantage is often embedded in institutions.

I’m not yet quite sure of what I think of this speech. On one hand, Obama plays straight into the heteronormative standard of the nuclear American family, in how describes the roles of mothers and fathers. On the other hand, he was speaking on a holiday that celebrates the father in the family structure. He does mention the structural components that influence the black family, but spends so much time on cultural implications that I’m afraid that it might have put too much emphasis on them. Obama’s background of growing up in a single-parent household, though he did have the support of his grandparents, lends also an interesting perspective to the issue. Perhaps the biggest question I am grappling with is the question of Obama’s responsibility in speaking about black family. To bring about change to the structural forces impacting the black family, should he have only mentioned those?

On Ending the Discrimination System

Structural Racial Inequality Week 9

The graphic of the “Discrimination System” displayed in class mentions the labor market, income, the criminal justice system, the healthcare system, credit markets, the housing mortgage markets, residential and social segregation, and educational access as factors that contribute to the widespread, interdependent network of race-linked disparities. Professor Bobo mentioned also the implications of the complexity of the system: that the system is resistant to change, that feedback effects often counteract the effects of exogenous pressures on the system, and that mechanisms within the system are often redundant. Thus, points of intervention in the system must simultaneously act on subsystems or try to remove institutions from the network itself.

Sharkey proposes another view of how to address this discrimination system by suggesting that efforts often overlook the ideas of contextual mobility and cross-generational trends. This focus on time appears also in his recommendations for a durable urban policy, one that defies the diminishing effects of time. Although the discrimination system and Sharkey’s analysis in Stuck in Place provide useful, new frameworks for how to look at this difficult situation, I find their recommendations ultimately unsatisfying. Sharkey’s idea for a durable urban policy is commendable, but only in the general sense that he proposes. What would a durable urban policy really look like? In the article that Khytie linked, he mentions that urban policy has thus far been unsuccessful because public attention drifts away easily, but contends that he doesn’t have any ideas for how to engage public interest for longer.

I would thus be really curious to know more about the research done on proposing effective policy measures that implement the ideas put forth by Sharkey and through the Discrimination System.

Alternative Narratives

Health and Community Week 8

Khytie’s video of members of the Black Guerrilla Family, specifically members of the Bloods, speaking with the newscaster helps to cement the idea that mainstream narratives often unfairly portray the black community, and black gangs, in particular. The Bloods make a point to distinguish themselves from the rioters causing disorder and violence in the community, attempting to construct an alternative narrative to the one put forth by the mainstream media in the coverage of the protests surrounding the death of Freddie Gray. They emphasize the effort of the gangs to put aside their feuds and join in unity as one community protesting against police brutality.

As several people brought up on class, the books we’ve read in the past couple of weeks are very much in line with the theme of constructing alternative narratives. Black Citymakers paints a picture of black Philadelphia as a historic community that has continually played an enormous role in shaping and influencing its developments. Black Picket Fences gives a glimpse into a black middle class neighborhood whose plights and struggles are sometimes overlooked by the narrative that the black middle class is a simple example of the success of greater civic and economic equality. On the Run speaks of a marginalized community of black youths in Philadelphia and their attempts of living in and out of a highly policed system. Finally, Renegade Dreams perhaps best parses through this idea of the alternative narrative, giving voice to those who survive gang violence and to a community so often rocked by violent and tragic incidents.

It is frustrating that in the case of the Baltimore protests, the media so firmly denounced the rioters as violent and destructive, and that even a clip as the one in Khytie’s post barely made it to mainstream media. It makes me wonder how it’s possible to construct and spread alternative narratives when the primary streams of communication are controlled by so few people. How can alternative narratives make it to the masses?

Tim’s Story

Black Community, Policing the Carceral State Week 7

In class, I brought up the example of Tim’s brush with the system as a convincing example of Goffman’s point that the influence of the incarceration system in the neighborhood was encompassing and unavoidable. Khytie made an additional point that Tim’s story contributed to a theme of loss of childhood and innocence throughout the book. Given the questioning of Goffman’s ethics in writing her ethnography, especially the claim that Tim’s arrest as an accessory was outlandish and unlikely, I’d like to think through this specific case some more.

The situation was this: Tim is named as an accessory to the stealing of the car, and as, a mere eleven-year-old, thus enters the cycle of the incarceration system. Goffman makes a point to note his age. Now, later research claims that this situation was entirely falsified and that there is no way that Tim would have been charged. The article on the ethics of ethnography suggests that such a claim is perhaps less the fault of Goffman and more so the fault of the way this research is traditionally conducted. Goffman was charged with writing a truthful and factual account of the experiences of these young men who lived on the run, but the reality of maintaining the anonymity of these subjects may have resulted in strange inconsistencies in her book. This could explain the Tim story; Goffman was well aware of the ease in which little clues like the details of a case could let a reader to figure out the identity of a subject, but would she have purposefully changed these details so much? It’s possible that Goffman, so deeply emotionally and socially entrenched in the lives of her subjects, was told a story and never bothered to look up its legitimacy, in the same way her telling of hospital stakeouts seemed overly dramatic.

I actually find the squabbling around small inaccuracies like Tim’s story to be unproductive. It could be that the response to Goffman’s book might be a thorough scrubbing of what is real and what isn’t, but I sincerely think her goal was to tell the story of a group of young men she befriended and awaken the general public to a way of life, perhaps talked generally about, but never really seen. If there are inaccuracies in her telling, then maybe it would be helpful to go into why there were such divergences between the reality of the tactics of the police force and the impression that they had on the neighborhood community. Perhaps a larger reformation of the ethics of ethnography in general should be considered. If it is agreed that, by-and-large, her book is a realistic account, then let us move forward with addressing the implications of having a population of this country that lives on the run.

Thrilled or Consumed

Ghetto Poverty Challenges for the Middle Class Week 5

As briefly touched on in class, the distinction Mary Pattillo made between being “thrilled” and being “consumed” by “ghetto” culture was particularly interesting. While some, even many, black middle class youths may dabble in street styles, listen to certain music, or adopt ways of dress or speaking, a few others engage in serious criminal activity, a decision that is sometimes tragically fatal. Pattillo takes care to describe her definitions of thrilled and consumed, but she does not really explain why a person might become consumed rather than simply thrilled, only insinuating at certain peer or social pressures.

This discussion is interesting when taken in the context of comparing black and middle class youths. Quinn mentions a quote from the Bouie article on DeSean Jackson and Richard Sherman that also struck me, detailing the difference between white and black middle class youths in their experimentation in delinquency. While “youthful experimentation for a white teenager in a suburb might be smoking a joint in a friend’s attic,” “youthful experimentation for a black teenager might be hanging out with gang members.” The comparison between the relative risks a teenager might undertake when toeing the line between being thrilled and consumed perhaps does not describe exactly where and why the line is crossed, but significantly asserts that black middle class youths come much closer to crossing the line by nature of their geographic proximity to areas of crime.

Misperceptions of the Black Community

Black Middle Class Week 4

In the video that Khytie linked, Mary Pattillo describes the misperceptions of the black community as one of the motivations behind her research. She describes the lack of coverage of the black middle class, both by academia and the media, as giving rise to wrong assumptions of the number of poor blacks in the United States and yet simultaneously to unfocused and uninformed opinions about the state of the black community as a whole.

As we talked about in class, Frazier creates a great distance between both the black middle class and the white middle class, as well as the black middle class and the black poor. Pattillo mentions in the video that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. overstates the fragmentation in the black community and argues instead that there is great fluidity across class and both upward and downward mobility. Though there may be large economic distance between the middle class moving into a neighborhood and the original residents, Pattillo describes family, friendship, institutional – church and employment – connections as easily crossing the middle class boundary and that even if a person is considered middle class, blacks are three times as likely to have a poor sibling than those in the white middle class.

Here we see the complicating factors that make up the situation of the black middle class. More people in the black community are middle class than are poor, and yet the middle class continues to be ignored by the mainstream media. The black middle class, unlike the white middle class, often lives in racially homogeneous communities, and often in close proximity to poorer black neighborhoods, resulting in social and cultural mobility. Frazier describes the straddling position of the black middle class as they attempted to leap to a higher social status, but even his depiction was wildly oversimplifying.

Durable Racism and the Tragic Flaw

Philadelphia Negro Week 3

The Legacy of Courage documentary did a wonderful job of juxtaposing the past and the present. Overlaying images of the Seventh Ward as it looks today with the narration of a descendent of a family who once lived there consciously puts into contrast the history of the space with its present state. Although the documentary glosses over it in the dialogue, the gentrification of the area is made more present by the difference between the black and white photographs from the late nineteenth-century and the technicolor videos of Philadelphia today.

In class, we spoke about the idea of looking at racism as durable, an “integral, permanent, indestructible component of our society.” In this framework, the fact that the United States was built as a white, racist republic permeates all facets of society still today. We see this in the glimpse of present-day Philadelphia in the documentary; although different people may live in the area, there still live people who can remember a much different time. However, the tone of the documentary does take on a more hopeful tune than durable racism might suggest. The inclusion of the story of the mural and two families coming together is much more in line with the triumph of liberal democracy camp and the American creed. The creation of the mural in the space serves as a tribute to the black families who once lived there and provides some sense of respect for the history of the neighborhood. Of course, a single mural, or a single story do not make a social movement, and it’s interesting that the documentary should take that spin. It might be interesting to look behind the motivations and audience of the creation of the video.

The End of White America?

DuBois Sociology Week 2

Hua Hsu’s article “The End of White America” puts forth the interesting prospect of a new America, whose culture is created not by the white American but by the new mainstream of a “post-white” country. Hsu’s tone through the article is hopeful; he mentions significant progress of the inclusion of more diverse actors and actresses on television, the increase in the number of non-white elected officials, and the possibility that a post-racial world means that race is “no longer essential to how we define ourselves.” Although Hsu cites a few examples as evidence that identifying as white is “no longer a precondition for entry into the highest levels of public office” nor for other milestones of cultural ascension,  I find his conclusions premature. Hsu mentions the rise of hip-hop as an example of how African American culture is helping to redefine mainstream culture in America. While hip-hop has developed a global audience and emerged as a multi-billion dollar industry, I would argue that hip hop artists are still forced to the margins of white American culture and white artists still culturally appropriate and capitalize on elements of black culture. Perhaps a prime example of this is Miley Cyrus’ appropriation of twerking at the VMAs in 2013. The form of dance exploded onto the American culture scene, but had existed in global black culture for years. The popularization and manipulation of the dance, coupled with society’s hyper-sexualization of black bodies, just solidifies the assertion that white American still handles and shapes culture creation.

Additionally, the article does little to address intersectionality, considering race as isolated from other identifiers of personal identity, when, in fact, all facets of a person’s identity inform their experience. Gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status are just a few of these identifiers that come together each with their separate systems of hierarchy and power. Rather than speaking of people abandoning their whiteness, we should instead encourage a greater understanding of how race has impacted the experience of certain groups in society. A post-racial society we are not, and instead of fooling people into thinking of today’s society as one, we should instead work to address the discrimination and inequality that still so clearly exists.

Kara Shen – Introductions

Introductions

Hello everyone! My name is Kara Shen and I am a senior in Quincy House studying Computer Science and Economics. I spent the last two summers working as a software engineer for a start-up in Cambridge and an advertising tech company in New York City. Outside of class, I became involved in Harvard National Model United Nations, Harvard College Consulting Group, and Student Mental Health Liaisons, but I’m now invested in our Women in Computer Science group on campus to help create community for women interested in STEM fields.

I’ve spent a lot of the past three years learning a lot about computer science, economics, and other quantitative subjects, but as it’s my senior year and requirements are winding down, I saw this year as my last chance to delve into issues I’d always wanted to learn and discuss more about. The events of this past year mandated renewed conversations and reflection from everyone in the country, and I am really looking forward to taking a comprehensive look at the issues affecting the African American experience in this country, from matters of class and economics status to schooling and education.

I’m hoping that this class will give me the knowledge and vocabulary to speak as a more informed and critical citizen, and I am so excited to start the discussion with all of you! See you on Tuesday. 🙂