sociology

Maria Kefalas has written an interesting post at The Atlantic. She begins by relaying a phenomenon she heard immigration scholar Frank Bean discuss, pointing out the decrease in the number of native-born men who have completed the 12th grade while also noting the increase in the number of men enrolling in post-secondary education. Kefalas and Bean posit that immigrant men--mainly from Mexico--account for the discrepancy. On the ladder of social mobility, both black and white native men from the working class are going head-to-head at an increasing rate with the immigrant men, and the latter group is winning.

Why? Kefalas explains:

In this competition, immigrant men have the edge, not simply because they take lower wages and don't have union protection, but also because, as a group, they have lower rates of criminality and drug abuse--and that may become even more true as today's out-of-work blue collar workers remain out of work for a year or two or more. So as more and more native high-school-educated workers find themselves unemployed (and possibly become unemployable), Bean speculates that immigrant workers may fill the gap, and get many of the blue collar jobs that return, as we recover.

Kefalas, while noting her support of immigration and its societal benefits (which I also share), goes on to raise a concern regarding what this means for young native men who, out of options, look for some way to express their frustrations. The consequences of a large, downtrodden segment of the population recognizing their impotence would probably have enormously detrimental--possibly destructive--effects on society, especially when other complicating factors like race, ethnicity, and generational dynamics are thrown in (cue the footage of the London riots).

Kefalas sees the notion of "college-for-everyone" as a pipe dream doing a disservice to this group of native men; even as someone working in higher education, I tend to agree that college is not for everyone. Yet, school systems today won't hear any of this. Kefalas proposes her own solution.

Americans hate the idea of educational tracking, and I'm not proposing is a system that would give teachers and administrators all the power to determine a teenager's educational trajectory. But right now the only tracks are "college" or "bust." We need to provide alternative pathways for high school students, including those that would mix classroom learning with apprenticeship and applied-skill training.

What would be wrong with creating a system that honors a young person's dreams but also respects the practical concerns of a kid's abilities and talents? What purpose does it serve to tell a kid graduating from high school who tests below 9th-grade levels in math and English that he or she should head off to college to become a doctor?

No other system in the developed world would allow such a thing to happen. It wastes people's time, money, and resources. And it is soul-destroying for the young people who endure it. Foundations and philanthropists should be looking to programs like those in Germany where kids can finish the equivalent of high school (for free) with the training to enter the full-time labor force in a good job. Here, high school graduates end up in community colleges only to languish in remedial courses when they could be in trade and vocational programs preparing them for work that is respected, well-paying, and secure.

I mostly agree with Kefalas' proposal. I do believe that our educational system does a relatively poor job of preparing students for a variety of options not including college. One report from 2006, called "The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts" and released by Civic Enterprises in association with Peter D. Hart and Associates for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, cited a handful of reasons why high school students drop out. Two of the reasons are particularly interesting when thinking about the dilemma of young native men discussed above:

• Nearly half (47 percent) said a major reason for dropping out was that classes were not interesting. These young people reported being bored and disengaged from high school. Almost as many (42 percent) spent time with people who were not interested in school. These were among the top reasons selected by those with high GPAs and by those who said they were motivated to work hard.
• Nearly 7 in 10 respondents (69 percent) said they were not motivated or inspired to work hard, 80 percent did one hour or less of homework each day in high school, two-thirds would have worked harder if more was demanded of them (higher academic standards and more studying and homework), and 70 percent were confident they could have graduated if they had tried. Even a majority of those with low GPAs thought they could have graduated.

In addition to agreeing with Kefalas that more educational "tracks" may be needed, the statistics above also leave me wondering if part of the problem lies with the staffing of junior high and high school teachers. Are we hiring teachers whose experiences connect with these students? Are we providing educational experiences that match a variety of students' backgrounds, situating the learning in their worlds, or are we shoving the cliched square peg through the round hole in the name of efficiency and standardized testing? Granted, The Silent Epidemic statistics represent the experiences of both men and women, but they still hint that many of those young men leaving school experience significant boredom with their education. They, and we, deserve better.

I just wanted to pass on a few good reads about the Haiti situation -- not so much the news, but some commentary on how elites, such as the media and organizational leadership (the UN), model institutional racism and classism.

First, Campus Progress published an interesting interview with Dr. Kathleen Tierney, professor of sociology and behavioral science and director of the Natural Hazard Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Tierney had some interesting things to say about the behavior of media outlets when reporting on large scale disasters.

And what did the early research discover?

If you go back to the 1950s and you look at some of those writings, a lot of it’s about disaster myths—what people say happens in disasters versus what really happens. What these researchers discovered was that the media—even way back in the 1950s and 1960s—approached huge disasters with certain frames. When the media reports on disasters, they’re inevitably going to focus on the dramatic and antisocial, even if it’s one percent of the population committing these acts. And even back then, the looting myth always came to the fore of media reports.

As it has in Haiti.

Yes. For example, the day after this earthquake in Haiti, it was reported that a prison had collapsed and prisoners had gotten away—the presumption being that they had escaped to go and loot. The prisoners didn’t go to check on their mothers or their sisters, they went to loot. And we presumably know this, because they’re bad people, they’re criminals. The bad people frame reached its nadir with Katrina.

It's really rare to gain exposure to a media outlet not run by a multimillion dollar corporation. Consequently, it's even more challenging these days to trust a media outlet's reporting on these larger events. With powerful corporations running these outlets, it's not hard to see how ratings and advertising drive sensationalism in our media. If the story's made more juicy, the idea is that more people tune in. But "juicy" apparently doesn't mean accurate. Tierney explains the looting fallacy the media reported in its coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Do you think that because the victims of both Haiti and Katrina were poor and black, the media approached the stories with a certain perspective?

Definitely. There is an institutionalized racism in the way these poor black disaster victims are treated. The victims of Katrina were treated with so much presumption, as if you could assume they were going to loot, because they were black. Just like we know that the people in Haiti are bad because they’re black. Black men especially are demonized. During Katrina, the media picked up on every rumor—whether it was raped four-year-olds in the Superdome or people shooting each other. Actually, for a paper me and a couple of my graduate students wrote called “Metaphors Matter,” we found some transcripts of TV programs in which members of the media expressed regret. They were saying, “We really blew it during Katrina; we acted on all of these rumors.” I myself was on Jim Lehrer’s show, where they were asking about the looting [in Katrina], and I got into it with a police officer, and he ended up agreeing with me that it was a myth. It’s not real...

This institutionalized fear is also at play in the Haiti earthquake rescue efforts, only it might be a bit less based on race than class. To CNN's credit, it does a good job of shining a light on the questionable behavior of the UN leadership. Last night, a Haitian resident assisting those critically injured in the attack told CNN's Sanjay Gupta that the UN medical personnel had fled, ordered out by UN officials because of safety concerns. A retired Army Lt. General explained what was going on:

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said the evacuation of the clinic's medical staff was unforgivable.

"We can't be leaning so much toward security that we allow people to die," he said Saturday.

"Search and rescue must trump security," Honoré said Friday night. "I've never seen anything like this before in my life. They need to man up and get back in there."

Honoré drew parallels between the tragedy in New Orleans and in Port-au-Prince. But even in the chaos of Katrina, he said, he had never seen medical staff walk away.

"I find this astonishing these doctors left," he said. "People are scared of the poor."

It's very interesting to me that there's constant talk of the world uniting together to support Haiti, yet the very people charged with the responsibility of assisting the Haitian people bail when they stereotype the poor and imagine the bad things that might happen. In fairness, the rescue teams did return to Haiti this morning as the article noted, but the time they were gone last night is telling. As Dr. Tierney points out in her interview, it invalidates the "We're all Haitians" sentiment. Even though it sounds nice, realism tells us we're not. This fear of the impoverished and subsequent withdrawal from the area by UN forces is a display of cultural ignorance. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's something that should be recognized. The reality is that the wide majority of non-Haitians has no clue what it's like to be Haitian, to live in such deplorable conditions.

I'm not writing this because I'm pissed off that this is going on. I simply think it's important that as many people as possible dig deeper than the glossy, convenient stories today's newscasts offer us. There's some compelling sociology and anthropology existing underneath the reporting. Once we become aware of that, I believe we can improve our responses -- both in the rescue work and reporting work -- to similar disasters in the future.

About a year ago, I wrote about the difference between Cleveland's and Pittsburgh's responses to brain drain, a rough economy, and their impotent positions within the economy. The "Brain Drain" is one of the large elements of this discussion, given its ability to steal away a community's future.

In a recent essay in 2007, Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser argued that funneling resources into "place-based strategies" to reinvigorate worn-down cities is wasteful and ineffective. Instead, Glaeser argues that any redevelopment effort should incorporate "people-based strategies," investing in the people living in a community -- acknowledging that these new skills could be put to use in places like Buffalo (the focus of his essay) or Las Vegas. Yes, Glaeser accepts the notion that people might leave.

Glaeser's point is that communities need to begin looking long-term as opposed to short term. Jim Russell's blog at Burgh Disapora takes a shot at what this might look like in a place like Erie, PA, a community definitely suffering from Brain Drain:

I propose starting a boomerang migrant incubator in downtown Erie. Boomerang migrants are natives who left and then returned. As you probably know, moving back home is almost an impossible task. Employment is scarce and relocation logistics can be a nightmare, particularly during a deep recession. Yet people find a way to pull it off. More might do the same if they knew how and had some help. The key is motivation and the willingness to overcome any obstacle. These are the traits of entrepreneurs and Erie could use more of them.

The idea is that whether or not youth leave (they actually probably would if given the education necessary in a people-based approach), we should be investing in everything possible to prepare to welcome them back in ten or fifteen years. That is what Pittsburgh did when it went through its own hard times in the 1980s, and it has paid off beautifully now.

It is unconventional, and it might hollow out a community before making it better, but eventually it could work. The question is do we have the patience?

A back and forth with a commenter on my personal blog this week made me reflect on this topic over the last few days. The offending post was the "lazy journalism" piece that I wrote and published here last week. The commenter mostly took issue with the introduction of the post, in which I offered a general commentary on the Millennial generation, noting our generation's penchant for civic involvement and the necessity of a strong, independent press to get the most out of our high level of engagement. The commenter's main issue, after several back-and-forth comments, was my "lauding" of Millennials, as he sought to downplay Millennials' activism compared to the military service of the GIs and Boomers in World War II and Vietnam respectively. Such a comparison is obviously ill-conceived, and it demonstrates a hierarchical view of service, in which military service is valued over other civic opportunities, something I wrote about last summer when McCain showed signs of subscribing to this point of view.

I think it's first important to recognize that whether one is serving his/her country overseas in combat, or doing so on one's homeland, it's still service, and it's still valuable. The famous Kennedy call-to-service ("Ask not what your country can do for you...") doesn't discriminate by whether or not one is fighting overseas. It implies that service of all varieties is a universal value, and certainly an American one. Yes, incredible bravery and patriotism is required to put your life on the line for your country. But distinguished patriotism can also be seen in soup kitchens across the country. It can be seen in community organizers, in hospitals, in non-profits, in school districts, in colleges and universities, in those more fortunate paying taxes to invest in our country's future. One of the best things about America is that everyone has a gift and is able to give back to society should he/she choose to do so.

But if we are going to accept the commenter's argument asserting the importance of military service, let's dig in. Yes, the GI Generation largely fought World War II for America, staring the Nazi's down and defeating them. And young Boomers formed the crux of the American effort in Vietnam, with Elwood Carlson, in his book The Lucky Few, suggesting that Boomers lost 50,000 from their ranks while fighting.

But let's not forget the wartime military service of Millennials. As of last fall, 1.7 million Americans had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Millennials made up just over 1 million of that number. Ross Cohen, the Director of Civilian-Military Partnerships at Be The Change, Inc. (an organization encouraging citizen-based activism to pursue systemic change), estimates that out of the 185,000 currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, approximately 139,000, or 75 percent of those deployed, are Millennials. On top of these numbers, Millennial veterans also face numerous issues upon their return to the United States. For example, over sixty percent of employers admitted to not completely understanding how military experiences translate into relevant job qualifications. The mental health stigma attached to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans only makes job prospects worse, and that's before the current jobs environment is even considered. So while the wartime efforts of GIs and Boomers should be celebrated, Millennial military service and its undesirable consequences should also be acknowledged.

In the end, whether or not one serves as an activist, a soldier, or in some other way, the important thing is that they're serving. And that brings us back to Kennedy's proclamation made nearly 50 years ago. Kennedy's oft-quoted statement exhorting Americans to serve is well-known, but the following sentences are usually cropped from historical footage.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love...

In other words, America only works when the government believes in it citizens, when the citizens believe in the government, and when the citizens of the world believe in the United States. This relationship is based on a compromise: American citizens, in doing all that they can for their country (through military service and a strong sense of civic engagement), will be promised that their representatives serving them will replicate that effort in their own work, nationally and globally.

The experiment that is America spans many generations, and, as we know from Howe and Strauss, Winograd and Hais, and other generational scholars, each generation possesses distinguished talents and faces unique challenges. When I write about generations here and other places, I'm not saying that one (Millennials) is better than any other; I'm simply commenting on the skills our generation has that, in partnering with other generations' talents, can help make America better.

This video's gotten plenty of traffic this week, especially since Seth Godin discussed it on his blog, but I thought it was worth posting here as well.

The set-up: a lone dancer decides to express his appreciation for the music being played at a music festival. Hundreds of other festival-goers sprawled on the ground surrounding him either try to ignore him as much as possible, or they simply tune him out, not interested in his counter-cultural behavior. Except for one person. He decides he wants to join the dude, even if it's because it looks like a good time and he's doing it for the enjoyment of his friends. Some time passes before a third person arrives, dancing, and obviously enjoying himself. You'll see that eventually the counter-cultural dancer becomes the new leader of a dominant culture - a carefree dance party that happens to be attending a music festival.

A WordPress blog on strange maps gives us this gem that compares the major cotton-producing areas of the antebellum South to Obama's 2008 strongholds. Notice the overlap.

There is a pretty intriguing correlation here. The votes for Obama correspond to the settlement patterns of African-Americans two centuries ago.

It's not directly youth-related, but I found it too interesting to not share.