Author Archives: legallysociable

The stories of Chicago synagogues that became black churches

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An article in the Chicago Tribune takes a look at black churches in Chicago that once were synagogues. Here is how this happened:

[Historian Irving] Cutler observed that ethnic groups often follow each other through Chicago’s neighborhoods. The patterns are regular: Mexicans trailed Czechs and Slovaks from Pilsen to Little Village and Cicero, for example, Cutler said. Blacks have followed Jews — westward from Maxwell Street to Lawndale and Austin; southward from the Near South Side to Bronzeville and South Shore.

Like other immigrants, Jews came to this country hoping their children would have opportunities denied them in the Old Country. For a while, they couldn’t realize part of the American dream: a nice home on a tree-lined street in a bucolic community. Some suburbs were restricted, others unfriendly to Jews.

“Then came World War II and the GI Bill which enabled veterans to become homeowners,” Cutler said. “There weren’t many single-family homes with nice yards in Lawndale. It was a neighborhood of two-flats and apartment buildings. So they went to the suburbs.”

Synagogues were sold to black congregations, whose members still couldn’t follow their previous owners to many suburbs in a region still often defined by racial and ethnic lines.

Interesting sociological history here. I was recently telling a class about the rapid shifts in Chicago neighborhoods in the mid twentieth century, how a neighborhood might go from being 90% white to 90% black in a ten year stretch. I don’t think they were able to comprehend this very well; we generally aren’t used to seeing such rapid social change and we tend to think that places will keep following the same course unless some large social force intervenes such as the closing of a major job provider. (Perhaps this helps explain NIMBY behavior – if they can, people will fight against any social force altering their neighborhood.) But in Chicago and many other American cities, this kind of rapid racial and demographic change once occurred regularly and altered many neighborhoods and communities.

It would be interesting to hear more about the sale of these synagogues. As Jews moved to the suburbs, did they sell their houses of worship at a fair market value or did they sell them for cheaper? Were there any hard or bitter feelings about having one’s house of worship turned over to another faith?

Driving today is much safer than in the past

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An article (“Safer Passage”) in the latest issue of Time has shows that the fatality rate from driving has dropped a lot over the years. Here is a description of the issue:

America’s roadways are safer than ever. The latest data show that traffic fatalities are at their lowest level since 1949 and that the death rate based on miles traveled is the lowest in history. But technologies such as active safety systems and advanced air bags are being offset by auto safety’s newest enemy: distracted drivers using electronic devices behind the wheel.

“We lost over 3,000 in 2010 to distraction-related crashes,” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland says. “It’s a heightened risk to the public, and it’s growing exponentially.”

Some of the statistics cited in the story:

1. In 1950, there were 7.2 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. In 2010, the rate is 1.1. While Americans might be driving more on average today than in 1950 (I couldn’t find figures on this), the fatalities while driving has dropped nearly sevenfold.

2. Here is what causes traffic fatalities: 32% killed by drunk driving, 31% by speeding, 16% by distraction, and 11% by bad weather. It is interesting that much of the current debate about making driving safer deals with cell phones and distractions (see a recent article from the Chicago Tribune about new efforts in Illinois) while it is the third biggest threat. Perhaps policymakers could argue that getting rid of distractions if the cheapest or easier route compared to dealing with the first two issues.

3. According to this CDC report, there were 36,216 deaths in 2009 in motor vehicle accidents for a death rate of 11.8 per 100,000 Americans.

Americans seem willing to accept some risk in driving and generally welcome efforts to make cars safer. And the numbers have gone down quite a bit since 1950: driving is safer. At the same time, the fight over cell phones in cars is just heating up and we need more data to know whether cell phones are more distracting than other features found during driving (passengers, fiddling with the radio/GPS devices, talking to passengers, tiredness). In the end, this may be an odd costs-benefits tradeoff: restricting cell phone use may limit deaths but some will argue that too much is being given up (assuming that only others get in accidents while using cell phones?). Of course, one solution is to simply go to driverless cars but there are other hurdles to overcome there.

Photos of Greenbelt Communities

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The New York Times’ Lens Blog has photos and a write-up of “New Deal Utopias”:

Known as Greenbelt Communities, these three federally built developments combined the suburb’s closeness to nature with the social and economic advantages of cities. Built originally for displaced farmers and poor or working families, they encouraged cooperation and community spirit. They also provoked accusations of socialism, and any further developments were stopped after a court ruling declared the federal government’s role in building these developments unconstitutional.

It’s always interesting to see a major media treatment of one’s backyard (many of the Greenbelt, MD photos were taken within a half mile or so of the residence my wife and I just moved into at the end of December).  I don’t feel like I’ve lived here long enough to have any major insights to add to the article, but it does strike me that Greenbelt, MD is a very tight-knit and walkable community.

“The mothering you see today in America is culturally and historically unprecedented”

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A sociologist suggests mothering is done very differently in America:

“American parenting is child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, financially expensive and is expected to be done by mothers alone. And it is impossible to do alone,” said Sharon Hays, a sociologist at the University of Southern California. “The mothering you see today in America is culturally and historically unprecedented. We expect selfless devotion to what we interpret as the child’s needs, wants and interests at every moment of the day. And with the vast majority of mothers working, that puts them in an impossible paradox.”

While the intensity is at its most acute in the middle and upper-middle class, she said, her studies have found that low-income parents feel the same parenting pressures, compounded by the guilt of having neither the resources nor the time to meet them.

The rest of the article talks about why this is: we have structured society in such a way so that the brunt of child care is borne by individuals, not society, and with our cultural gender norms, women are left with much of the burden.

Pedestrians in a world of driverless cars

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Many bloggers are starting to tease out the social and infrastructure implications of driverless cars, including David Alpert over at the Atlantic:

[Driverless cars] will bring many changes, but when it comes to the car’s role in the city, they may just intensify current tensions.

David suggests that new technology will simply exacerbate current trends by “trigger[ing] a whole new round of pressure to further redesign intersections for the throughput of vehicles above all else”:

If autonomous cars travel much faster than today’s cars and operate closer to other vehicles and obstacles, as we see in the [University of] Texas team’s simulation , then they may well kill more pedestrians. Or, perhaps the computers controlling them will respond so quickly that they can avoid hitting any pedestrian, even one who steps out in front of a car.

In that case, we might see a small number of people taking advantage of that to cross through traffic, knowing the cars can’t kill him. That will slow the cars down, and their drivers will start lobbying for even greater restrictions on pedestrians, like fences preventing midblock crossings.

Our metropolitan areas could then look, more and more, like zoos for humans interlaced with pathways for the dominant species, the robot car.

Personally, I think one of these scenarios (i.e., “travel much faster…[and] kill more pedestrians”) is unlikely.  Initially, driverless cars will almost certainly be much more expensive than equivalent conventional vehicles.  A car that is both (1) more expensive and (2) more dangerous seems unlikely to sell well, to say nothing of the likelihood that such lawsuit-magnets would be sued utterly out of existence.  To catch on with a mass market, driverless cars will at least need to uphold safety’s current status quo.

As far as David’s second fear (“metropolitan areas [that] look, more and more, like zoos for humans”), I’m unclear how much that differs from current development patterns.  While there are plenty of examples of “walkable” cities, much of contemporary American infrastructure is extremely unfriendly to pedestrians, cyclists, and other non-car users.  To the extent that cars dominate today’s roads, a move to driverless cars seems only to continue, rather than augment, that trend.

Sociologist Neil Gross counters Santorum’s charge about liberal colleges with research

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Sociologist Neil Gross, whose work on this subject I have cited before, disagrees with Rick Santorum’s claim and argues that “college doesn’t make you liberal“:

But contrary to conservative rhetoric, studies show that going to college does not make students substantially more liberal. The political scientist Mack Mariani and the higher education researcher Gordon Hewitt analyzed changes in student political attitudes between their freshman and senior years at 38 colleges and universities from 1999 to 2003. They found that on average, students shifted somewhat to the left — but that these changes were in line with shifts experienced by most Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 during the same period of time. In addition, they found that students were no more likely to move left at schools with more liberal faculties.

Similarly, the political scientists M. Kent Jennings and Laura Stoker analyzed data from a survey that tracked the political attitudes of about 1,000 high school students through their college years and into middle age. Their research found that the tendency of college graduates to be more liberal reflects to a large extent the fact that more liberal students are more likely to go to college in the first place.

Studies also show that attending college does not make you less religious. The sociologists Jeremy Uecker, Mark Regnerus and Margaret Vaaler examined data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and found that Americans who pursued bachelor’s degrees were more likely to retain their faith than those who did not, perhaps because life at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder can be rough in ways that chip away at religious belief and participation. They report that students “who did not attend college and two-year college students are much more likely — 61 and 54 percent more, respectively — than four-year college students to relinquish their religious affiliations.”…

The main reason for this development is that attacking liberal professors as elitists serves a vital purpose. It helps position the conservative movement as a populist enterprise by identifying a predatory elite to which conservatism stands opposed — an otherwise difficult task for a movement strongly backed by holders of economic power.

Is this enough research to satisfy critics or do the studies not really matter in the face of political concerns?

While these studies might show that students are not all being pushed into liberalism, I imagine conservatives might bring up other arguments. For example, professors have a certain level of prestige in society and so if a majority are proponents of liberal opinions, then society could be swayed in certain directions. Policy decisions might be made. Public opinion could be influenced (though this might require suggesting that Americans are easily swayed). Or another issue: colleges and universities receive federal funding and so liberal professors can access taxpayer money to promote their causes.

Academics tend to brush aside these arguments by suggesting they can still be objective researchers (and I tend to agree) regardless of their own political or personal opinions. But there is still a perception issue here that academics could work harder to dispel. At times, I think it wouldn’t take much: show some respect for religion, stop suggesting that people with traditional or conservative ideas are all ill-intentioned, hint that popular culture and the suburbs aren’t a complete wasteland, and don’t be condescending.

Sociologist to journalists: “Racism: Not Isolated Incidents but Systemic”

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After several recent incidences in East Haven, Connecticut, a sociologist explains why racism is a systemic issue, not a matter of a few racist individuals:

As a sociology professor whose specialties include the study of racism, I am sometimes asked to explain what is happening following such a flurry of racist incidents. That question is based on the faulty assumptions that what is happening now is something new and that what occurred is no more than a disturbing accumulation of isolated incidents of racial bigotry committed by a few Neanderthals who didn’t get the memo that in today’s colorblind America we have moved past all that.

Social structures, racist, or otherwise, don’t just disappear or grow old and die. Consequently, when I get that “what is happening now?” query from the press, I feel like yawning as I mutter, “There you go again.” Lately I have advised reporters to connect the dots. I challenge them to, for once, abandon racism-evasive language such as “race” or “the race issue” and to call the thing what it is, racism, which is by its nature always systemic.

So far, to my knowledge, no reporter has taken my advice. Instead they tend to write stories that, if they even acknowledge a pattern of racist incidents, seem to attribute it to the bad economy, the coming of a full moon or perhaps some foul-smelling concoction that was secretly slipped into our drinking water. Then they go away for another few months; and when still more overtly racist stuff happens, they email again to ask me to explain, once more, what is happening, now.

Unfortunately that type of news reporting supports the dominant response to racism by European Americans — the militant denial of its existence or significance. A very successful racism denial tactic is to conveniently confuse the racial, bigoted attitudes and behaviors of some person of color with systemic racism as a way of suggesting that white racism is no more of a problem than is so-called black racism. On other occasions a person of color may be accused of being a racist for simply bringing up the issue of racism.

This is a message needed for more than just journalists.

I wonder if journalists are any better on this issue than average Americans. On the whole, Americans often privilege individualistic situations to social problems, race or otherwise. White Americans, in particular, would prefer to act like race doesn’t matter and claim that we should move on. I’ve noted before that the reverse should be true: Americans should have to show that race isn’t involved in social situations instead of suggesting it doesn’t matter until there is incontrovertible proof otherwise.

Transit-oriented development in the Boston area

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Transit-oriented development has been popular for years now and here is an update on this development strategy in the Boston area:

“We see a huge demand around Greater Boston. We’re working in communities from Winchester to Lawrence that are all working to develop vibrant urban villages around public transportation,” Leroux said. “An overwhelming number of people want to live in these types of places, and communities that don’t create them are less competitive for residents and jobs.”

Filling the need in Somerville, where the residential landscape consists mainly of three-decker homes, is Maxwell’s Green, which will feature 184 rental units with amenities to rival many downtown Boston luxury apartment buildings.

Near completion and ready for occupancy this September, the $52.5 million development sits on 5.5 acres and is located minutes from the Red Line stop at Davis Square and adjacent to the much- anticipated MBTA Green Line Extension’s Lowell Street station…

SouthField, one of the largest transit-oriented developments in Greater Boston, is on track for South Weymouth at the former naval air station.

The first phase of the project is already complete, with residents occupying both apartments and townhouses. The total cost of the project, including the homes already built, is targeted at about $2.5 billion, which includes 2,800 homes and 2 million square feet of commercial space.

The “urban village” concept has been around now for several decades. They are thought to be particularly attractive for young professionals who want to live in the suburbs or further away from the city core (partly because of cheaper prices), don’t yet want to buy a home (condos being easier to maintain), want mass transit access, and also want to be in more lively areas with some cultural and dining options.

These types of development are very popular in the Chicago suburbs are well, particularly along the railroad lines that radiate out from Chicago’s center. Many suburbs have sought to build multi-use developments (condos plus offices or small retail establishments) near their commuter train stations. While this means that the residents can access mass transit, it also provides more pedestrians and hopefully customers for the downtown. A number of suburbs have pursued these developments as part of a downtown revitalization strategy.

I would be interested to see how studies about how much these developments reduce traffic and congestion. Particularly in a suburban setting, a couple might be able to go down to one car (or none?) if both use mass transit a lot. However, while mass transit access to the city center might be great, there is often a lack of mass transit options across between suburbs.

I also wonder how much transit-oriented development succeeds because it is seen as trendy.

Trying to disprove Dunbar’s number on Facebook

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One writer tried to disprove Dunbar’s number on Facebook but found that Dunbar was correct after all:

Not for Dunbar, apparently. He was looking for individual interactions. Well, I thought, if that’s all it takes to disprove Dunbar’s number, then that’s what I’ll do: I’ll write personal letters to every one of my 2,000 Facebook friends…

I only made it through 1,000 of my 2,000 Facebook friends. But that was enough. My experiment’s outcome was crystal clear: Dunbar’s number kicked my ass.

In trying to disprove Dunbar’s number, I actually proved it. I proved that even if you’re aware of Dunbar’s number, and even if you set aside a chunk of your life specifically to broaden your social capital, you can only maintain so many friendships. And “so many” is fewer than 200.

Writing my Facebook “friends” had taken over my time. I was breaking plans with real friends to send meaningless messages to strangers. Some of the strangers didn’t respond, and many of those who did respond only confirmed Dunbar’s theory.

Quick examples: When I wrote A. F., a Malaysian magician, he responded: “hey rick i think you might’ve sent me this message by mistake lol.” And when I wrote A.D., a friend of a friend, and asked how things were going, she replied, “Sorrx but do i know you?:)”

The question I want to ask next: so did this writer lose friends over the course of this? If so, was it because the friends did the dropping or the writer decided to pare down his friends list?

While Facebook allows people to have expanded “friendship” networks, it is interesting to consider what would actually happen if someone tried to activate these networks. For example, the friend you once had in third grade and are now are Facebook friends with: what can you reasonably ask that person to do? Respond to a quick message you send them? Catch up with you and talk about what has happened in your lives since you last talked? Help you out of a tough spot? Join a cause you are interested in? Alert you to a job opening that would help you? My guess is that most of these online relationships rarely can be counted on even though they may have a semi-permanent status on Facebook. If this is the case, then perhaps you have hundreds upon hundreds of friends on Facebook but only 150 or so (Dunbar’s number) can be counted as actionable relationships.

This is not necessarily bad for Facebook: perhaps that 150 friends can shift rapidly over time meaning one week someone is a close friend while several months later it is someone else. Or perhaps you don’t actually know which of your friends is part of the 150 until you engage in deeper interaction. To have more social capital, it is helpful to have broader social networks that you can attempt to utilize. Without those connections at all, it is more difficult to find information or produce change.

The gendered tasks you do at work can affect the gendered work you do at home

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A new study in the American Journal of Sociology looks at what men who work in female-dominated careers do at home:

When stacked up against men who have jobs where men and women are equally represented, men in gender-atypical jobs put in an extra hour each week on typically male housework. What’s more, these men’s wives stick to female-typed tasks, spending about four hours more each week cooking dinner, vacuuming or throwing in a load of laundry. Meanwhile, women who work in male-centric professions also tend to pursue more female-typed housework but not with the same consistency as men in female-dominated arenas — perhaps because they perceive it as less of a threat to their femininity. (It should also be noted that a different study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that doing housework after a day on the job isn’t good for anyone, regardless of gender.)

What’s going on here? It seems to be a manifestation of what sociologists call the “neutralization of gender deviance.” Or, in plainspeak, “men are trying to bolster their masculinity at home,” says Daniel Schneider, the study’s author and a doctoral student in sociology and social policy at Princeton University…

Truth be told, Schneider was surprised by the findings. He’d expected to discover that men in gender-typical jobs — a mechanic, for example — would spend more time at home working on car or home maintenance. By that logic, he also anticipated that men in male-atypical jobs would come home and do more cooking and cleaning-type housework typically associated with women.

But humans don’t always make sense. “The market and home are really intertwined and influence each other,” says Schneider. “But they are not necessarily intertwined in a rational way. Instead, they’re intertwined in a way that’s about cultural salience and the meaning of gender.”

In other words: gender norms and expectations influence how people act. If we were to interview men who work in more female fields, would they be able to describe this process discovered in survey data? Also,  I wonder if this is tied to the amount of time people spend at work.

More broadly, this is a reminder that what happens in our career or at the workplace has an influence on other areas of our life. On one hand, perhaps this seems fairly obvious: our culture is one where people are defined by their occupation and what they do. As I tell my students, when you meet people as an adult, the first or one of the first questions you tend to be asked is, “what do you do [for work, a living]?” These puts a lot of pressure on individuals to have meaningful jobs. On the other hand, we tend to act like we can compartmentalize work and home. This goes back into history as there was a separation of home and work only in the Industrial Revolution as jobs moved out of the household or close by to larger factories and offices owned by corporations. While technology may have blurred the lines in recent decades, we still tend to have strong physical and mental boundaries between home and work.

Considering how much time full-time workers put into their jobs today, it should be little surprise that it is hard to keep these spheres apart. At the same time, specifying how it affects other areas of our lives is worth considering.