Tag Archives: ethnicity

Colleges with whiter student bodies present more diversity in their promotional materials

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A sociologist talks about race and ethnicity in the promotional materials colleges offer:

Even without Photoshop, colleges try to shape the picture they present to prospective students, says Tim Pippert, a sociologist at Augsburg College in Minnesota.

“Diversity is something that’s being marketed,” Pippert says. “They’re trying to sell a campus climate, they’re trying to sell a future. Campuses are trying to say, ‘If you come here, you’ll have a good time, and you’ll fit in.’ ”

Pippert and his researchers looked at more than 10,000 images from college brochures, comparing the racial breakdown of students in the pictures to the colleges’ actual demographics. They found that, overall, the whiter the school, the more diversity depicted in the brochures, especially for certain groups.

“When we looked at African-Americans in those schools that were predominantly white, the actual percentage in those campuses was only about 5 percent of the student body,” he says. “They were photographed at 14.5 percent.”…

Rawlins says that showing inflated diversity can actually be a step toward creating a more diverse campus. It helps students imagine themselves at those schools. But balancing representation and aspiration is difficult.

It would be interesting to then take the next step and look at the effects of the differences between what is represented in the promotional materials versus what is actually happening on campus.

Sociologist argues neighborhoods with racial/ethnic diversity and social cohesion not possible

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An urban sociologist looks at whether neighborhoods can have both social cohesion and racially/ethnically diverse populations:

As reported in the American Journal of Community Psychology, Zachary Neal found that neighborhood integration and cohesion cannot co-exist.

“Is a better world possible? Unfortunately, these findings show it may not be possible to simultaneously create communities that are both fully integrated and fully cohesive,” Neal said. “In essence, when it comes to neighborhood desegregation and social cohesion, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

The reason has to do with how people form relationships. Neal said people usually develop relationships with others who are close rather than far away, and similar rather than different from themselves (be it through race, religion, social class, etc.).

Neal ran computer modeling of different fictional neighborhoods and, after millions of trials, consistently found the same thing: The more integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, and vice versa…

Neal said he started the project because past research had failed to turn up a city that is both truly integrated and cohesive – from the United States to the United Kingdom to Asia. But it’s not from lack of effort, he said.

This sounds similar to Thomas Schelling’s famous 1971 piece “Dynamic Models of Segregation.” Working with hypothetical models and different assumptions about what two racial/ethnic groups might desire for the best neighborhood composition, Schelling suggested the actions of the two groups tend to lead to more segregated than integrated outcomes. Later research based on these ideas suggests whites generally start moving out of a neighborhood when it becomes roughly 15% black while blacks say they are more comfortable with up to a 50/50 mix of whites and blacks.

If this doesn’t often work in neighborhoods and cities today, wouldn’t one solution be to try to focus less on particular locations and instead working at a more societal level to try to get people to be more comfortable interacting with and eventually living with people different than themselves?

Effects of residential segregation: American schools racially divided across districts

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A new sociological study finds more of the racial and ethnic variation in American education takes place across school districts:

Nearly 60 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ordered school districts to desegregate, schools seem to be trending back toward their segregated pasts. In the 1968-69 school year, when the U.S. Department of Education started to enforce Brown, about 77 percent of black students and 55 percent of Latino students attended public schools that were more than half-minority. By the 2009-2010 school year, the picture wasn’t much better for black students, and it was far worse for Latinos: 74 percent of black students and 80 percent of Latino students went to schools that were more than half-minority. More than 40 percent of black and Latino students attended schools that were 90 percent to 100 percent minority…

Whites are nearly a minority in the U.S. population under the age of five, and Census projections predict that by 2043, whites will no longer be the majority of the U.S. population overall. “There’s going to be fewer whites in minority schools because there are fewer whites in the population,” said Fiel.

Another part of the problem is with desegregation policies themselves. At the time of the Brown decision, schools in the same district were vastly unequal to one another, so efforts went toward integrating schools within each district. That made sense to combat segregation as it existed at the time.

Today, though…”The biggest barrier to reducing racial isolation…is racial imbalance between school districts in the same metropolitan area/nonmetropolitan county,” Fiel wrote in his American Sociological Review article.

In other words, where people can live, typically determined by wealth and income which are related to education and race and ethnicity, helps determines the differential outcomes of school districts. If residential segregation is common – and it is in many metropolitan areas in the United States – then we shouldn’t be surprised that other outcomes are unequal.

Updated data on interracial marriages in the US

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Pew published last year a report on interracial marriage in America and here are some of the findings:

The Pew Research Center study released last year, using 2010 data, is the most recent major look at interracial relationships. It found that among new marriages in 2010, Asians were the group most likely to intermarry, at 27.7 percent. Hispanics were next at 25.7 percent, then blacks at 17.1 percent and whites at 9.4 percent. For the Pew study, marriages between two people who are mixed-race weren’t considered interracial…

The prevalence of interracial relationships varies widely by region. Census data show that in 2008-2010, the Midwest had the fewest mixed-race newlyweds with 11 percent. The Northeast region was next with 13 percent and the South had 14 percent, boosted by the high numbers of blacks in states like Virginia and North Carolina who marry outside their race.

At 22 percent, the West had the most interracial newlyweds, with the majority involving an Asian, Hispanic or Native American. Hawaii was by far the state with the most mixed-race couples, followed by Oklahoma, Nevada, New Mexico, Alaska and California. Illinois ranked 29th among the states.

Interesting findings. This is a shift in American life – just 50 years ago this would have been quite rare. But, there are still big differences between whites and others.

Why does the Midwest have the lowest percentage of interracial marriages? Two quick ideas. One, the region might be the most white as the Census Midwest region stretches from Ohio to the northern Great Plains. Second, large cities in the Midwest tend to score quite high on residential segregation (as does the Northeast), suggesting people of different races don’t live in the same places. If marriage and dating is partly about who one is exposed to, living in more racially homogeneous areas could limit the pool.

Rust Belt cities look to attract immigrants to help turn things around

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Rust Belt cities have struggled for decades but are now welcoming seeking out immigrants:

Other struggling cities are trying to restart growth by luring enterprising immigrants, both highly skilled workers and low-wage laborers. In the Midwest, similar initiatives have begun in Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Lansing, Mich., as well as Detroit, as it strives to rise out of bankruptcy. In June, officials from those cities and others met in Detroit to start a common network.

“We want to get back to the entrepreneurial spirit that immigrants bring,” said Richard Herman, a lawyer in Cleveland who advises cities on ideas for development based on immigration.

The new welcome for immigrants reflects a broader shift in public opinion, polls show, as the country leaves behind the worst of the recession. More Americans agree that immigrants, even some in the country illegally, can help the economy, giving impetus to Congressional efforts to overhaul an immigration system that many say is broken.

Concerns about uncontrolled illegal immigration, which produced strict curbs in Arizona and other parts of the country, have not been an issue in Dayton. Officials here say their goal is to invite legal immigrants. But they make no effort to pursue residents without legal status, if they are otherwise law-abiding.

Read on for more information on what happened in Dayton, Ohio which has welcomed thousands of Turkish immigrants. This will be worth watching in the long run.

Three other thoughts:

1. The article doesn’t say much about this but recent immigration debates have been marked by two opposites: more opposition to less educated and skilled immigrants and more interest in educated, wealthier immigrants. Perhaps it doesn’t matter much in Dayton.

2. A student asked me recently where Middle Easterners fit into typical American definitions of race and ethnicity. For example, where do they fit in Census categories? The article suggests the immigrant residents haven’t encountered much opposition in Dayton but they do occupy an unknown sort of racial and ethnic space. (Also see discussions in Europe about Turkish immigrants as well as whether Turkey should be allowed in the European Union.)

3. This article hints at a broader reality: population growth in plenty of places, including a number of suburbs as well as the United States as a whole, has depended heavily on immigration.

Naperville mayor names volunteer leaders for outreach to Chinese, Indian residents

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Naperville has a growing Asian population and the mayor recently named two volunteers as leaders of outreach efforts from the city to Chinese and Indian residents:

Pradel this week announced the creation of the outreach positions to be filled by Bill Liu, who will work with Chinese residents, and Krishna Bansal, who will reach out to the city’s Indian community.

“We have such a diversified city that I’ve been wanting to kind of get on the cutting edge of bringing all our groups together,” Pradel said.

The outreach managers mainly will work to answer questions for Chinese and Indian residents and help them become more comfortable with the processes and procedures of city government, Pradel said. Liu and Bansal also will connect city leadership to important groups in the Chinese and Indian communities and stand in for Pradel if he’s unavailable for their meetings and events…

Pradel said he chose to begin outreach efforts among Chinese and Indian residents because they are two of the city’s largest minority groups. According to 2010 census data, 7.4 percent of Naperville residents are Indian and 3.9 percent are Chinese.

Appointing a similar leader to begin Hispanic outreach could be next, Pradel said. Hispanics and Latinos from all countries make up 5.3 percent of Naperville’s population, according to 2010 census figures. The rest of the city’s roughly 142,000 population is made up of 76.5 percent white people and 4.7 percent blacks.

Interesting move within the diversification of the suburbs more broadly but also within Naperville. It sounds like this is primarily about business opportunities, cultural events, and transmitting information from City Hall. The business part doesn’t surprise me – Naperville is known for its high-tech and white-collar jobs as well as growth – and suburbs are always looking for ways to improve communication with residents. The cultural events side could be interesting: could there be Chinese or Indian events in downtown Naperville in the near future? It also bears watching how outreach to Chinese, Indian, and Latino residents might differ in the future as issues of race/ethnicity, social class, and cultural practices intersect.

Updated data on continuing residential segregation in the United States

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Emily Badger sums up some recent data on residential segregation: here is a set of maps of residential segregation over the years in a few American cities, a long  infographic on the costs of segregation, and some snippets of data.

    • On average, affluent blacks and Hispanics live in neighborhoods with fewer resources than poor whites do.
    • Census data from 2000, for example, showed that the average black household making more than $60,000 lived in a neighborhood with a higher poverty rate than the average white household earning less than $20,000.
    • A longitudinal study run from 1968-2005 found that the average black child spent one-quarter of his or her childhood living in a high-poverty neighborhood. For the average white child, that number is 3 percent.
    • The black child poverty rate in 1968 was 35 percent; it is the same today.
    • Minorities make up 56 percent of the population living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities.
    • Middle-income blacks (with household incomes between $50,000-$60,000) live in neighborhoods that are on average more polluted than the average neighborhood where white households making less than $10,000 live.

All in all, residential segregation is an ongoing issue. Where people live and the consistent sorting that takes place by race and ethnicity matters for life chances. I’d love to see a second edition of American Apartheid…it is its 20th anniversary after all.

Bike sharing programs in Chicago, NYC, Boston, Washington D.C. skew white

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The Chicago Tribune looked at the locations of the new Divvy bike sharing stations in Chicago and found overall they were more accessible to white residents:

By design, the Emanuel administration’s freshly launched Divvy bike-sharing network is centered in crowded neighborhoods. But one byproduct of the strategy is that the new transportation alternative is far more convenient for white residents than those who are black or brown, a Tribune analysis shows…

Federal and local taxpayers bankrolled $22.5 million in seed money for the bicycle system, but to thrive and eventually expand it needs to quickly attract a solid customer base and demonstrate financial viability…

Nearly half of all whites in the city live within a short walking distance — a quarter mile or less — of spots the city has designated for bike rental and drop-off, according to the analysis, which overlaid census data on the locations announced for Divvy stations.

By comparison, fewer than 19 percent of Latinos and nearly 16 percent of African-Americans live within a quarter mile of the bike stations, the data show…

In New York, nearly three times the size of Chicago, about 20 percent of white residents but only 8 percent of blacks and Latinos live within a quarter mile of a docking station for that city’s new Citi Bike system, the Tribune found. The two-year-old Hubway system in the Boston area puts a docking station within a quarter mile of 44 percent of the white population, but just 26 percent of Hispanics and 19 percent of blacks.

The proximity gap closes somewhat in the Washington, D.C., area, where the Capital Bikeshare system places a docking station within easy one-quarter mile reach of half of all white residents, 44 percent of Hispanics and 31 percent of African-Americans, according to the newspaper’s analysis.

A recent user survey released by Capital Bikeshare concluded that not only are 80 percent of the responding customers white, but nearly six in 10 are men, nearly two-thirds are under 35 years of age, 95 percent have an undergraduate college degree and 56 percent have a postgraduate degree.

Are bike sharing programs a new strategy for attracting or retaining young professional males in cities? Is bike sharing primarily a program aimed at the Creative Class and tourists? This would not be surprising as plenty of cities are looking to expand their downtown populations of young professionals.

It would be interesting to hear more about the process that went into locating the bike stations in Chicago. How exactly did the city try to balance population figures with economic figures? Now that I think about, we tend not to hear such insider information from Chicago…

Another thought: why not also map the bike locations by social class? Even for whites, are the bikes located more in upper-end neighborhoods or are they aimed at the working class?

The changing definition and use of “Latino”

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Here is a quick recap of how American society has defined and used the term Latino in recent decades:

If all ethnic identities are created, imagined or negotiated to some degree, American Hispanics provide an especially stark example. As part of an effort in the 1970s to better measure who was using what kind of social services, the federal government established the word “Hispanic” to denote anyone with ancestry traced to Spain or Latin America, and mandated the collection of data on this group. “The term is a U.S. invention,” explains Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center. “If you go to El Salvador or the Dominican Republic, you won’t necessarily hear people say they are ‘Latino’ or ‘Hispanic.’?”

You may not hear it much in the United States, either. According to a 2012 Pew survey, only about a quarter of Hispanic adults say they identify themselves most often as Hispanic or Latino. About half say they prefer to cite their family’s country of origin, while one-fifth say they use “American.” (Among third-generation Latinos, nearly half identify as American.)

The Office of Management and Budget defines a Hispanic as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race” — about as specific as calling someone European.

“There is no coherence to the term,” says Marta Tienda, a sociologist and director of Latino studies at Princeton University. For instance, even though it’s officially supposed to connote ethnicity and nationality rather than race — after all, Hispanics can be black, white or any other race — the term “has become a racialized category in the United States,” Tienda says. “Latinos have become a race by default, just by usage of the category.”

A good discussion throughout. And, the definition and usage of the term Latino or Hispanic is likely to change in decades to come. All together, it suggests racial and ethnic categories can be quite fluid based on a whole host of social factors.

Replacing the “master” in master bedroom

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The term master bedroom is falling out of favor in the Washington D.C. area:

A survey of 10 major Washington, D.C.-area homebuilders found that six no longer use the term “master” in their floor plans to describe the largest bedroom in the house. They have replaced it with “owner’s suite” or “owner’s bedroom” or, in one case, “mastre bedroom.”

Why? In large part for exactly the reason you would think: “Master” has connotation problems, in gender (it skews toward male) and race (the slave-master).

Enter the owner’s suite…

Winchester, Pulte Homes, NV Homes and Ryan Homes (both under the NVR Inc. umbrella), Van Metre Cos. and D.R. Horton Inc. have all replaced “master” in their floor plans, some more recently than others…

Over time, “master” will be filtered out entirely, he said. The change is “just working through the industry, and finally, bingo, we got it.”

Randy Creaser, owner of D.C.’s Creaser/O’Brien Architects PC, said he ditched “master” in the early 1990s in his home designs. He vaguely recalled a few lawsuits brought against builders over the phrase. Pulte spokeswoman Valerie Dolenga said Pulte made the shift maybe three or four years ago.

How long will it take to get through the entire industry? This clearly hasn’t reached HGTV yet…