Hi folks. I'll weigh in, since this is one area where I have some "expertise" and where the sociological perspective can help. Again, we mainly examine issues of a more psychological nature here on this list, so I can share a little bit from my background as a sociologist. For example, I just taught finished last month teaching an upper-year course on "hate crimes", where we examined some relevant issues both from a sociological standpoint AND from a social psychological perspective. I've attached the course syllabus, FYI. So many issues that we cannot possibly cover in email exchanges, ranging from the historical legacies, the regional variations, the institutional power dynamics, the group differences aspects, and the individual-level experiences and interpretations. Unfortunately, many in the media and some of our other institutional leaders (e.g., Gregg's example from the APA) do not frame the issues in constructive ways and instead look to demonize or advance particular agendas. Especially in the heat of the moment and as people protest and riot, the same camps quickly emerge and people hunker down with their perspectives. Most important, it's tough for people in general, to say nothing of our own institutional social scientists, to examine the underlying "causes" of the different behaviors, as well as the institutional "forces" that help shape what's happening and provide the broader context.
My simple way of framing this is to examine the two levels and share the best information and "theories" we have in terms of the different aspects of interpersonal dynamics. At the institutional level, the sociological evidence and even some of our theories have long pointed to the differential treatment that stems from various types of inequalities (wealth, income, power, etc.), as well as the different types of "social distances" that separate people and create the "us" and "them" groups that lead to systemic types of racism and "othering." Not surprisingly, these differences and distances produce vastly different outcomes for people, at least in terms of aggregate outcomes. How many of you have experienced "differential treatment," for example, based on certain identifiable characteristics? Here's a great example from my many years of coaching basketball, where I've usually had extremely diverse or "mixed" teams in terms of racial/ethnic composition. When I was driving three African-American high schoolers home after practice one night, I was pulled over the the police for running a stop sign. One of the guys piped up immediately, "Okay, y'all. Act white!" Yes, meant as a joke & we laughed - but we laughed b/c we knew that was soooo true!
Furthermore, those in positions of power are deeply at risk for abusing such power if there are not appropriate checks and balances within extant systems. That's patently obvious and demonstrably true, time and again, throughout history and certainly in the context of the U.S. Yet that's also why the constructive discussions are so difficult to have: who wants to critically examine the power structures or put their privileged positions at risk (whether in terms of controlling the police to one's Senate seat to tax breaks to investing in certain communities? But it's even more complicated than that, for then you have to deal with the issues of where people actually live & work, and the degree (or lack thereof) of integration, communication, and opportunities to build healthy lives and communities. And this connects to the social psychological level.
We then all make choices to some degree as to where we will live, raise our families, etc. - all conditioned by our own backgrounds, resources, education, and "biases." And that's where things are even MORE challenging or almost impossible. I highly recommend Jennifer Eberhardt's book Biased, which examines exactly these issues (she has worked extensively with police departments, training, racism, etc.), explains precisely how and why we are ALL biased in our encounters at the interpersonal level, and how for the most part we are not even aware of our own prejudices. Dr. E. notes that shee too was sometimes "blind" to her own biases initially as an African-American woman and now well-known Stanford social psychologist. But all those instances of "picking up trash while black" and "BBQ-inq while black" and "being at the pool while black" and "driving while black", etc. - these are not simply anecdotes, but rather confirm what the research has demonstrated for decades, i.e.he longstanding patterns of racialized treatment that varies from what happens during police stops to everyday, interpersonal dynamics. And, guess what? We ALL display certain types of biases and preferences, some of which are hard-wired into our brains from our earliest experiences.
For example, Dr. Eberhardt notes that the spate of robberies in Oakland's Chinatown stemmed in part from the difficulty that the Asian women had in identifying their attackers based on their limited familiarity with African-American faces. She notes too that she herself had an extremely difficult time identifying the "white faces" she encountered when she transferred to a predominantly "white school" growing up. Why? The same lack of familiarity and experience. Now, multiply that by the thousands of other encounters that people have, over and over again, and we start to understand why we all use info and cues to simplify, classify, and even pre-judge the "others" whom we encounter. So much so that it's completely "natural" for us to look out upon the world as we do, to live and work among the networks we do, etc. We live in "different worlds", which was roughly the title of an African-American 1980s sit-com about young African-Americans who then attended university together & so on. In short, we are deeply "biased" toward that which is "familiar", or that to which we have been exposed and conditioned. And that's what's so challenging in all of this.
Yet Chance's video clip shows partly what would genuinely "need" to happen to foster constructive change. The white sheriff joins in with the more diverse & predominantly African-American protesters. Lots of contact, hugs, interpersonal connections, and so on. They make the crucial human connections and all want to walk together. Great! But I would ask further, Does the sheriff actually live among these African-American residents or in their 'hood, or vice-versa? Do his children go to school with their children? Are their friendships multi-ethnic and multi-racial in nature? Probably not. I do not mean this as a criticism, but rather to highlight why residentially and ecologically the problems are so intransigent. You can hold people accountable within institutions, which would be a good start. But challenging, especially within hierarchical organizations such as the police and the military, to say nothing of private corporations, where people use their power to control what's seen and the narratives that are constructed. The videos that are posted, of course, undermine that "authority" and challenge those narratives. So, people are at least more "aware" of these institutional abuses of power.
What's far more challenging, though, is to either ask people to live & work together in much more diverse communities OR to get them to fundamentally change the biases that are almost a part of their DNA (at least metaphorically), not only in terms of race/ethnicity/gender, but then in terms of lifestyle, music (anyone see the viral video of the woman excoriating the group of Hispanics for playing their Latin music rather than "American" music?), dress, tattoos, etc. You can legislate at the level of institutional behavior and what the consequences might be for those who violate the standards, such as arresting officers who violate the law (but note that there are a million other "biases" where law enforcement folks get a break that the rest of us do not = as in the case of my late father, who flashed his FBI ID on those rare occasions where he was pulled over for speeding & thus maintained a "perfect" driving record - unlike yours truly!). Breaking the proverbial "code of silence" is the big story of the 21st century, at least in terms of institutional pressures and the public discourse around such obvious abuses, from police brutality to the identification of the many sexual predators who have been "outted." What you can NOT legislate, however, is how and where people grow up, what they learn from their parents, what they experience as children and their levels & contexts of "exposure" to the "others," and so forth. I'm sure this is quite obvious to everyone on this list, but it's still worth reflecting upon our own "experiences" and "biases" - and then what we might be able to say and do that would be helpful moving forward.
In the meantime, I highly recommend this brief clip from the Tyler Merritt Project, which captures the essence of what I'm talking about in terms of really getting to "know" people & looking beyond skin color and stereotypes: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DoGu-5FxGBekpo&d=DwIF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=-9fHwPF6J8Yqq6NiVYrqLfj4_tKifKUhjKB9HlM18ME&s=p-VzcBYSUmzj8WbFGjFuPgYYSo1G9HFwVBWaIYtPUsE&e=
[https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bing.com_th-3Fid-3DOVP.NFog6MNLrN8WaslHO-5FsMvAEsDh-26pid-3DApi&d=DwIF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=-9fHwPF6J8Yqq6NiVYrqLfj4_tKifKUhjKB9HlM18ME&s=-F6MIOj2-U0GMq_mumKQNwkpJGWvhZ-bzXgr9yYpcwI&e= ]<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DoGu-5FxGBekpo&d=DwIF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=-9fHwPF6J8Yqq6NiVYrqLfj4_tKifKUhjKB9HlM18ME&s=p-VzcBYSUmzj8WbFGjFuPgYYSo1G9HFwVBWaIYtPUsE&e= >
Before you call.<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DoGu-5FxGBekpo&d=DwIF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=-9fHwPF6J8Yqq6NiVYrqLfj4_tKifKUhjKB9HlM18ME&s=p-VzcBYSUmzj8WbFGjFuPgYYSo1G9HFwVBWaIYtPUsE&e= >
Get to know me better.
www.youtube.com
Yours kindly, -Joe
Dr. Joseph H. Michalski
King’s University College at Western University
266 Epworth Avenue, DL-201
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 2M3
Tel: (519) 433-3491
Email: [log in to unmask]
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From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, June 1, 2020 10:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: ppt on the Mission of Universities
Hi Corinne,
Thanks for sharing this. I thought the President’s message was appropriately framed.
I have been wondering about this. Here is a question I have been struggling with and I would love to get your take:
How do we honor the particular incidents that have become flashpoints over the last month and recognize the injustice and pain, and at the same time, how do we keep things in proper perspective?
What I mean is, from a policy perspective, I would argue that we should be making decisions based on aggregate analyses of structural injustices. Now, because of the way humans work, specific incidents become symbols of the aggregate. However, as intellectuals, we should know this is a dangerous process. As an example of what I mean, consider what I thought was an ill-framed message that came from American Psychological Association's President. She announced there was a “Racism Pandemic<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.apa.org_news_press_releases_2020_05_racism-2Dpandemic&d=DwIF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=-9fHwPF6J8Yqq6NiVYrqLfj4_tKifKUhjKB9HlM18ME&s=ZkbqCLegXS6-TBw5LnOoQl8Meaxv5BZ_SBRQv4TVVsk&e= >”, writing:
“The deaths of innocent black people targeted specifically because of their race — often by police officers — are both deeply shocking and shockingly routine.
“If you’re black in America — and especially if you are a black male – it’s not safe to go birding in Central Park, to meet friends at a Philadelphia Starbucks, to pick up trash in front of your own home in Colorado or to go shopping almost anywhere.
“We are living in a racism pandemic, which is taking a heavy psychological toll on our African American citizens. The health consequences are dire.
IMO, this is exactly the wrong message that intellectuals should be sharing as it blatantly conflates individual episodes with aggregate levels of analysis and then does so by associating it with our current stressors and fears (i.e., the pandemic). As painful as these examples are, they offer no genuine evidence of spreading of racist attitudes, behaviors, etc in the US over the past year (or whenever the pandemic of racism supposedly was sparked). For a conceptual parallel, consider “the summer of the shark<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Summer-5Fof-5Fthe-5FShark&d=DwIF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=-9fHwPF6J8Yqq6NiVYrqLfj4_tKifKUhjKB9HlM18ME&s=pvX9Bb3H7pxcfdzCHc7ILYdG6_rmC-diBg6Ep5d-rrA&e= >” phenomena, whereby an early sensational and tragic shark attack primed the media so that every story with shark was covered. The availability of the story created more and more media drive and the experience was that the year was marked by a massive increase in shark attacks. However, that was just because of the way it was covered and the actual aggregate instances were exactly in the normal range.
Now, as a white man from a upper middle class background, I fully acknowledge this might be experienced by some as me trying to minimize and brush off the deep and heartfelt concerns that emerge in the wake of these tragic incidents. That is not my intent. My intent is to simply offer the more intellectual point that our reactions and movements for a just society need to be anchored to the appropriate level of analysis. This is something the APA President failed at and the consequence is a dramatic and alarming rhetoric that feels to me to be more damaging than either empathetic or realistic.
I welcome your reactions to this reaction. I am very interested in how communities of individuals can come together and create common ground regarding these painful and polarizing issues.
Best,
Gregg
-----Original Message-----
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Diop, Corinne Joan Martin - diopcj
Sent: Monday, June 1, 2020 9:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: ppt on the Mission of Universities
On this topic, I found the JMU college president's statement to students titled "Building a better tomorrow together " (with similar versions sent to faculty and staff) to be an appropriate university response to the current upheaval in the US. https://www.jmu.edu/news/2020/05/31-buiding-a-better-tomorrow.shtml
He makes the statement that "...as an educational institution, it is our responsibility to call out these issues, critically examine the underlying causes, and identify ways to use our knowledge and skills to make positive change." Additionally, JMU leaders are planning a series of virtual town hall and other events as "an opportunity for our community to learn from experts and discuss the role each of us has to play in creating a more inclusive society."
He assumed universities are responsible for connecting to and improving current issues and also reaffirmed the importance of "experts", which has been in question. I also thought he did a good job of avoiding the "culture wars" while claiming inclusion and diversity as a normal part of education.
Was I too easily impressed? (I have a black husband and son, so was grateful for the hopeful tone.)
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