Whiteness Interrupted

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Bell
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
Black Schools ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
American Society ◽  
Depth Interviews

In Whiteness Interrupted Marcus Bell presents a revealing portrait of white teachers in majority-black schools in which he examines the limitations of understandings of how white racial identity is formed. Through in-depth interviews with dozens of white teachers from a racially segregated, urban school district in Upstate New York, Bell outlines how whiteness is constructed based on localized interactions and takes a different form in predominantly black spaces. He finds that in response to racial stress in a difficult teaching environment, white teachers conceptualized whiteness as a stigmatized category predicated on white victimization. When discussing race outside majority-black spaces, Bell's subjects characterized American society as postracial, in which race seldom affects outcomes. Conversely, in discussing their experiences within predominantly black spaces, they rejected the idea of white privilege, often angrily, and instead focused on what they saw as the racial privilege of blackness. Throughout, Bell underscores the significance of white victimization narratives in black spaces and their repercussions as the United States becomes a majority-minority society.

Becoming White Teachers: Symbolic Interactions and Racializing the Raceless Norm in Predominantly Black Schools

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-222
Author(s):  
Marcus Bell
Keyword(s):  
Effective Teachers ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Whiteness Studies ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
Black Schools ◽  
Interview Method ◽  
Critical Whiteness ◽  
Symbolic Interactions ◽  
The Invisible

Under the banner of critical whiteness studies, scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum have spent the past several decades investigating whiteness and white racial identity, both in the United States and abroad. Of the numerous findings, perhaps none is more pervasive than that of white racelessness: the idea that whites do not see themselves in racial terms but instead think of themselves as just normal. This article complicates white racelessness by examining whiteness that is spatially situated as the racial minority. Using an inductive interview method, the author interviews 32 white teachers who currently work in urban, predominantly black schools. Despite previous socialization as the invisible norm, white teachers were effectively racialized by repeated and continuous symbolic interactions with black students and their families. Through a multistep and mutually reinforcing process, teachers went from thinking of themselves as the invisible, raceless norm to seeing themselves as the hypervisible, racial other. Findings also show that white teachers devised ways to navigate their personal racial identities, all while trying to remain effective teachers to nonwhite students. The experiential loss of white privilege is also discussed.

Mobilized by Injustice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah L. Walker
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Depth Interviews

Springing from decades of abuse by law enforcement and an excessive criminal justice system, members of over-policed communities lead the current movement for civil rights in the United States. Activated by injustice, individuals protested police brutality in Ferguson, campaigned to end stop-and-frisk in New York City, and advocated for restorative justice in Washington, D.C. Yet, scholars focused on the negative impact of punitive policy on material resources, and trust in government did not predict these pockets of resistance, arguing instead that marginalizing and demeaning policy teaches individuals to acquiesce and withdraw. Mobilized by Injustice excavates conditions under which, despite otherwise negative outcomes, negative criminal justice experiences catalyze political action. This book argues that when understood as resulting from a system that targets people based on race, class, or other group identifiers, contact can politically mobilize. Negative experiences with democratic institutions predicated on equality under the law, when connected to a larger, group-based struggle, can provoke action from anger. Evidence from several surveys and in-depth interviews reveals that mobilization as result of negative criminal justice experiences is broad, crosses racial boundaries, and extends to the loved ones of custodial citizens. When over half of Blacks and Latinos and a plurality of Whites know someone with personal contact, the mobilizing effect of a sense of injustice promises to have important consequences for American politics.

scholarly journals Big Data and Journalism: How American Journalism is Adopting the Use of Big Data

Novum Jus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-89
Author(s):  
Julián Rodríguez ◽  
Andrew M. Clark
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Big Data ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Format ◽  
American Journalism ◽  
Depth Interviews

This research uses in-depth interviews with three data journalists from the Houston Chronicle and the New York Times in the United States to describe the role of data journalists, and to illustrate how and why they use big data in their stories. Data journalists possess a unique set of skills including being able to find data, gather data, and use that data to tell a compelling story in a written and visually coherent way. Results show that as newspapers move to a digital format the role of a data journalist is becoming more essential as is the importance of laws such as the Freedom of Information Act to enable journalists to request and use data to continue to inform the public and hold those in power accountable. 

Since 1945: New Amenities, New Hazards

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
World History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Society ◽  
Service Employment

If the average citizen's surroundings defined the national climate, then the United States grew markedly warmer and drier in the postwar decades. Migration continued to carry the center of population west and began pulling it southward as well. The growth of what came to be called the Sunbelt at the "Snowbelt's" expense passed a landmark in the early 1960s when California replaced New York as the most populous state. Another landmark was established in the early 1990s when Texas moved ahead of New York. In popular discussion, it was taken for granted that finding a change of climate was one of the motives for relocating as well as one of the results. It was not until 1954, though, that an American social scientist first seriously considered the possibility. The twentieth-century flow of Americans to the West Coast, the geographer Edward L. Ullman observed in that year, had no precedent in world history. It could not be explained by the theories of settlement that had worked well in the past, for a substantial share of it represented something entirely new, "the first large-scale in-migration to be drawn by the lure of a pleasant climate." If it was the first of its kind, it was unlikely to be the last. For a set of changes in American society, Ullman suggested, had transformed the economic role of climate. The key changes included a growth in the numbers of pensioned retirees; an increase in trade and service employment, much more "footloose" than agriculture or manufacturing was; developments in technology making manufacturing itself more footloose; and a great increase in mobility brought about by the automobile and the highway. All in one way or another had weakened the bonds of place and made Americans far freer than before to choose where to live. Whatever qualities made life in any spot particularly pleasant thus attracted migration more than in the past. Ullman grouped such qualities together as "amenities." They ranged from mountains to beaches to cultural attractions, but climate appeared to be the most important, not least because it was key to the enjoyment of many of the rest. Ullman did not suppose that all Americans desired the same climate. For most people, in this as in other respects, "where one was born and lives is the best place in the world, no matter how forsaken a hole it may appear to an outsider."

Ethnocultural Political Analysis: A New Approach to American Ethnic Studies

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Swierenga
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
American Society ◽  
Nathan Glazer

At the seventy-ninth annual meeting of the American Historical Association in 1964, a panel of scholars enlivened one of the sessions with a heated debate over the effects of ethnic assimilation in American culture. The topic of debate, ‘Beyond the Melting Pot: Irish and Jewish Separateness in American Society’, focused on a recent controversial study of ethnic mixture in New York City by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both sociologists. Glazer and Moynihan in their bookBeyond the Melting Pottraced the ‘role of ethnicity’ in the seaboard city. The melting pot ‘did not happen’, they concluded, ‘at least not in New York and,mutatis mutandis, in those parts of America which resemble New York’. This frontal assault on the concept of Americanization, long a cherished ideal in the United States, drew a sharp reaction from several panellists, especially William V. Shannon, editorial writer for dieNew York Timesand author ofThe American Irish, and Irving Greenberg, professor of history at Yeshiva University. Both Shannon and Greenberg insisted that Irishmen and Jews had indeed been assimilated in American society, either for better or for worse. At this point, the discussion degenerated into the traditional moralistic debate on the merits and demerits of assimilation. Reflecting the divergent views of their colleagues in the history profession, Shannon praised assimilation and Greenberg condemned it.

scholarly journals Forestland Parcelization in Upstate New York Despite Economic Stagnation and a Declining Population

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 280-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
René H. Germain ◽  
Kevin Brazill ◽  
Stephen V. Stehman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
New York State ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
Central New York ◽  
Parcel Size

Abstract Nonindustrial private forestlands (NIPFs) account for a majority of the forested working landscape in the eastern United States. Throughout the United States, NIPF average ownership sizes continue to decline. Smaller parcel sizes create declining economies of scale for forest managersand timber harvesters, threatening the viability of the forested working landscape and, in turn, wood supply. This study documents the parcelization of NIPF holdings in a central New York State county during the last 25 years of the 20th century. The findings indicate the average parcel sizeof NIPFs decreased from 36 to 24 ac over the study period, despite a decline in population in the county. Although average parcel size is declining, a large percentage of the rural forestland remains in acreage classes suitable for forest management, as long as the forest products industrycan adapt to changes on the landscape. North. J. Appl. For. 23(4):280–287.

COPING WITH COVID-19: RESILIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING IN THE MIDST OF A PANDEMIC

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 561-570
Author(s):  
Edward D. Sturman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Perceived Control ◽  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

Introduction: As the novel coronavirus rapidly spreads around the world it will become increasingly important to understand its psychological impacts on the larger population. Few studies have been conducted in this regard, which is unsurprising considering the sudden emergence of the disease. Methods: The present study looked at mood (anxiety and depression), stress, resilience, grit, perceived control, happiness, and satisfaction with life in two samples hailing from small towns in upstate New York. These outcomes were assessed at two time points: pre-coronavirus (November/December 2019) and peak-coronavirus (mid-April 2020). Results: Contrary to expectations, the results indicated no significant differences on any of the variables between the pre-coronavirus sample and the peak-coronavirus sample. Discussion: The results suggested that people, at least in this region of the United States and more broadly in smaller towns, may be psychologically coping with the pandemic to a better degree than might be expected. This finding may be useful to policy makers and health care workers.

Introduction: Immigration and Incorporation

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén G. Rumbaut
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Immigrant Settlement ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Subject ◽  
American Society

In at least one sense the “American century” is ending much as it had begun: the United States has again become a nation of immigrants, and it is again being transformed in the process. But the diversity of the “new immigration” to the United States over the past three decades differs in many respects from that of the last period of mass immigration in the first three decades of the century. The immigrants themselves differ greatly in their social class and national origins, and so does the American society, polity, and economy that receives them—raising questions about their modes of incorporation, and challenging conventional accounts of assimilation processes that were framed during that previous epoch. The dynamics and future course of their adaptation are open empirical questions—as well as major questions for public policy, since the outcome will shape the future contours of American society. Indeed, as the United States undergoes its most profound demographic transformation in a century; as inexorable processes of globalization, especially international migrations from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, diversify still further the polyethnic composition of its population; and as issues of immigration, race and ethnicity become the subject of heated public debate, the question of incorporation, and its serious study, becomes all the more exigent. The essays in this special issue of Sociological Perspectives tackle that subject from a variety of analytical vantages and innovative approaches, covering a wide range of groups in major areas of immigrant settlement. Several of the papers focus specifically on Los Angeles and New York City, where, remarkably, fully a quarter of the total U.S. immigrant population resides.

Stephen Foster

Music ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deane L. Root ◽  
Codee Spinner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Tin Pan Alley ◽  
George Gershwin ◽  
Instrumental Works ◽  
American Society

Stephen Collins Foster (b. Lawrence, near Pittsburgh, PA, 4 July 1826–d. New York, 13 January 1864) was the first professional songwriter in the United States, and the earliest to write songs whose images pervaded American culture and whose melodies endure into the 21st century. For his most familiar songs, he wrote both lyrics and music, though he also set poems that had appeared in household magazines, and toward the end of his life he partnered with poet George Cooper. His oeuvre includes principally songs for solo voice (or solo voice plus four-voice chorus) with piano accompaniment, four-voice hymns, and instrumental works (mostly dances, for piano). His songs for blackface minstrels (which provided him with the majority of his income, though they amount to less than one-tenth of his 287 authenticated compositions) were controversial from the start; they made Foster’s reputation, even as he attempted to create “refined” songs in a genre he considered to be rife with “trashy and really offensive words” (Foster letter to E. P. Christy, 25 May 1852). He was of Scots-Irish descent, and as a resident of a northern industrializing urban center that drew workers from throughout Western Europe, he was attuned to different national styles of song and common sentiments of lyric poetry not confined by ethnicity, race, or social class. His song structures and lyrics became models for other songwriters well into the Tin Pan Alley era; his inability to control copyrights (which were owned by his publishers) and his death in poverty (with 38 cents in his pocket) were factors in the establishment of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) fifty years later. It is perhaps not coincidental that songs quoting Foster’s “Swanee River” (“The Old Folks at Home”) helped launch the careers of two of the most significant American songwriters of the 20th century, Irving Berlin (“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”) and George Gershwin (“Swanee”). This bibliography summarizes the major sources of archival, published, and online information about Foster’s life, career, music, and their interpretation and influence in the social and cultural history of the United States, Europe, and East Asia. It omits the sound recordings, plays, films, novels, and other creative works that reflect and contribute to that influence.

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