The Politics of "Othering"

Frank Rich’s column from Saturday’s New York Times is too good to go unnoticed here at Social Science Lite. Rich brilliantly tackles the “birthers” (proponents of The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World*), placing their rhetoric within our so-called “national conversation on race:”

“Obama’s election, far from alleviating paranoia in the white fringe, has only compounded it. There is no purer expression of this animus than to claim that Obama is literally not an American — or, as Sarah Palin would have it, not a “real American.” The birth-certificate canard is just the latest version of those campaign-year attempts to strip Obama of his American identity with faux controversies over flag pins, the Pledge of Allegiance and his middle name. Last summer, Cokie Roberts of ABC News even faulted him for taking a vacation in his home state of Hawaii, which she described as a “foreign, exotic place,” in contrast to her proposed choice of Myrtle Beach, S.C., in the real America of Dixie.

[…]

One of the loudest birther enablers is not at Fox but CNN: Lou Dobbs, who was heretofore best known for trying to link immigrants, especially Hispanics, to civic havoc. Dobbs is one-stop shopping for the excesses of this seismic period of racial transition. And he is following a traditional, if toxic, American playbook. The escalating white fear of newly empowered ethnic groups and blacks is a naked replay of more than a century ago, when large waves of immigration and the northern migration of emancipated blacks, coupled with a tumultuous modernization of the American work force, unleashed a similar storm of racial and nativist panic.”

Racial panic over minority invasions and challenges to white hegemony is nothing new; the history of “othering” minorities is a long and storied one, with its organizational zenith going as far back as the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. There, white Americans celebrated the supposed supremacy of American culture, collectively embracing whiteness as they mocked and ridiculed “savage” foreign societies. White Americans defined their unstable racial identity in opposition to an ill-defined, uncivilized racial “other.” At the Chicago World’s Fair, whiteness, nationalism and modernity were all intertwined: to be intellectually superior, patriotic, and American was to be white; to be white was to be intellectually superior, patriotic, and American. Sounds familiar, right?

This collective re-drawing of racial boundaries has been a common American practice during times of economic distress and demographic change. Take the influx of African-Americans into manufacturing jobs during the 1930s and 40s. This onslaught of blacks into Northern industrial cities during the Second Great Migration precipitated violent resistance in formerly all-white neighborhoods and workplaces. In more recent decades, the growing Hispanic population in America has spawned a pervasive anti-immigrant ethos with blatantly racist overtones. In each instance, white Americans enacted social, political, and economic structures—such as restrictive covenants, redlining, and political gerrymandering—to limit upward mobility when people of color challenged their hegemonic power.

So-called “birthers”—questioning President Obama’s country of birth—are only the latest in a long line of white Americans dead-set on “othering” minority populations. There's just no way this Obama guy is one of us. This "othering" of President Obama is exactly where we need to focus our discussions of race in America—not on individualized instances of racial discrimination, but on historical continuities and the institutionalization of racial animus. Our “national conversation on race” won’t happen over beers, but through careful historical analyses of racial identity formation and the hoarding of economic and political resources.

The politics of “othering” has long been a dominant facet of public discourse. No “national conversation on race” is going to do much if we don’t address this core aspect of American political identity.


* I'm officially coining "The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World" as my new term for the "birther" claims.

Reinventing Academic Publishing Online. Part I

Volume 14, Number 8 / 3 August 2009

Abstract

While current computing practice abounds with innovations like online auctions, blogs, wikis, twitter, social networks and online social games, few if any genuinely new theories have taken root in the corresponding “top” academic journals. Those creating computing progress increasingly see these journals as unreadable, out-dated and irrelevant. Yet as technology practice creates, technology theory is if anything becoming even more conforming and less relevant.

We attribute this to the erroneous assumption that research rigor is excellence, a myth contradicted by the scientific method itself. Excess rigor supports the demands of appointment, grant and promotion committees, but is drying up the wells of academic inspiration.

Part I of this paper chronicles the inevitable limits of what can only be called a feudal academic knowledge exchange system, with trends like exclusivity, slowness, narrowness, conservatism, self-involvement and inaccessibility.

We predict an upcoming social upheaval in academic publishing as it shifts from a feudal to democratic form, from knowledge managed by the few to knowledge managed by the many.

The technology trigger is socio-technical advances. The drive will be that only democratic knowledge exchange can scale up to support the breadth, speed and flexibility modern cross-disciplinary research needs. Part II suggests the sort of socio-technical design needed to bring this transformation about.

Contents

• The role of academic knowledge exchange
• Feudal knowledge exchange trends
• Cross–disciplinary research
• Conclusions

The Role of Academic Knowledge Exchange

Introduction

Caveat lector: Previous iterations of what you’re about to read have been dismissed by information systems (IS) editors and reviewers since a first draft written in 1999 after an ISWorld rigor/relevance discussion. Many years of rejection confirm it as unpublishable in IS. This seems partly because high–level papers always have faults, and partly because suggesting to his tailors that the emperor of academic publishing is wearing only the fig leaf of rigor is unwise. If you find the academic publishing system “excellently attired” please read no further, as here we argue it has serious problems that need addressing. Yet our target is not the many good authors, wise reviewers and supportive editors in our field, many of whom are personal friends.

Our target is the feudal knowledge exchage system they currently work under. While academia covers many disciplines, our evidential case is the field of technology use — the reader must judge for themselves in their field. Yet as much the same case has been made in the field of quantum physics (Smolin, 2006) our conclusions may benefit others.

Part I argues that the current gate–keeping model of academic publishing is performing poorly as knowledge expands and interacts, and that academic publishing must reinvent itself to be inclusive and democratic rather than exclusive and plutocratic. Part II suggests a design to do this using already successful socio–technical tools.

Knowledge exchange systems

[snip]

While science may once have consisted of amateurs cultivating private knowledge gardens, today it is organized into specialist fiefdoms that defend themselves vigorously. Academics are now gate–keepers of feudal knowledge castles, not humble knowledge gardeners. They have for over a century successfully organized, specialized and built walls against error. However the problem with castles, whether physical or intellectual, is that they dominate the landscape, they make the majority subservient and apathetic, and battles for their power reduce productivity. As research grows, knowledge feudalism, like its physical counterpart, is a social advance that has had its day.

The theory–practice divide

[snip]

Each case had a grain of truth, but for technology use the predictive power of theory has been low and the gap between theory and practice is widening. In Eric Raymond’s (1997) analogy, the bazaar of technology practice is booming while the cathedral of technology theory is declining, because one is open and one is closed.

Bridging the divide

[snip]

Yet creating a new online global society is a socio–technical system as complex as any space program, as socio–technical systems need both social and technical performance to succeed (Whitworth and Moor, 2009c). We cannot expect to progress by trial and error alone. If theory and practice are the two legs of scientific progress, a crippled theory leg is a serious problem. We now suggest the main cause of this is unbalanced rigor.

The rigor problem

[snip]

We believe in rigor, but see system performance as a mix of many criteria (Whitworth, et al., 2008), which “bite back” if one criteria is exclusively pursued at the expense of others (Tenner, 1996). The better model of knowledge exchange performance is of an efficient frontier — a line of many points that defines the best one can get of rigor given a value of relevance (Keeney and Raiffa, 1976). Pursuing rigor alone produces rigor mortis in the theory leg of scientific progress.

The role of research

If excess rigor reduces innovation and causes theory to lag behind practice, in IS at least, why not change the strategy? Surely academics prefer to ride the technology wave rather than struggle along behind it?

[snip]

When a system becomes the mechanism for power, profit and control, idealized goals like the search for truth can easily take a back seat. Authors may not personally want their work locked away in expensive journals that only endowed western universities can afford, but business exclusivity requires it. [snip]

[snip]

One can justify distributing rare economic resources to the few, as there is not enough to go around, but one cannot justify distributing knowledge this way, as giving knowledge away does not diminish it. While physical resources distribute by a zero–sum model, information resources follow a non–zero–sum model (Wright, 2000), where the more one gives the more synergy is created (Whitworth, 2009a). Economic scarcity is no argument for knowledge exclusivity.

Conformity training

The modern academic system has become almost a training ground for conformity. PhD students spend three–six years as apprentices under senior direction, then another three–six years seeking the security of a tenured appointment. At both stages, criticizing the establishment is unwise if one wants a career. It is not surprising that six–12 years of such training produces people who toe the party line.[snip]

[snip]

Due to publishing pressure senior IS leaders explicitly advise new faculty not to innovate if they want a career! As the word “unfortunately” suggests, they take no responsibility for a system that actively drives innovators out to make their breakthroughs in practice, e.g., the movement of automatic indexing from universities to commercial enterprises like Google (Arms, 2008).

Changing the system

Can this system change itself? IS academics traditionally judge journal importance by measures like internal expert perceptions, number of citations and publication numbers (Hamilton and Ives, 1982). These internally generated and self–reinforcing measures all favor the status quo. As an academic publishing review notes: “What gives this enterprise its peculiar cast is the fact that the producers of knowledge are also its primary consumers.” [6]

Current research into journal quality illustrates the contrast between science as a search for gain and science as a search for truth. While accepting that “science can be perceived as a social network which accumulates, distributes and processes new knowledge” [7], they see journal “quality” in terms of stakeholder gains:

1. So authors can publish in quality journals (for better career impact);


2. So readers can select quality journals (to save time);


3. So tenure and promotion committees can choose staff (more easily); and,


4. So libraries can more easily choose quality publications [8].

The analysis contains no mention of the community good of uncovering the truth, or of any reality beyond individual gains. “Quality” is assumed to equate to rigor ... .

Yet, as argued, equating quality with rigor is an error, as quality needs both rigor and relevance. When academia incestuously rates itself by citation studies and expert ratings it can easily become a self–reinforcing system disconnected from external reality (Katerattanakul, et al., 2003).

The IS case

[snip]

[snip] There was a major strategic failure of vision and leadership in IS, as a growing academic discipline should be a melting pot of new ideas, not a stagnant pool of old ones.

How rigor constricts

Even respected IS journal editors recognize there is a problem: “Research publications in IS do not appear to be publishing the right sort or content of research.” [13] The cause we suggest is social conformity to old theories. [snip]

[snip]

The problem lies not with “old but good” theories but with a system that seems unable to grow new ones around them. Given the enormous changes of the last decade in computing, the lack of matching theoretical innovation over the same period is nothing short of astounding.

[snip]

The reality is that it is hard to publish a new theory in mainstream IS, if “new” means not an old theory tweak and “theory” means more than speculative conjecture. Innovation is not a term that comes to mind as one reviews technology use theory yet in technology use practice precisely the opposite is true. That progress is coming from practice — not theory — suggests that theory has its priorities wrong.

Feudal Knowledge Exchange Trends

We have described a feudal knowledge exchange system run by the few for the few, supported ideologically by the church of rigor, financed by university factories of knowledge, whose goal is to dominate and defend the purity of specialized intellectual fiefdoms. We now outline some inevitable trends of such a system, again for the IS case.

Exclusive

[snip]

The trend is for a few exclusive top journals to dominate the theoretical landscape. The alternative proposed in Part II, is a more democratic system.

Outdated

A KES is outdated when its information flows mainly address issues that are no longer current. Lack of timeliness due to publication delay is a Type II opportunity loss. What use is quality that is too late to affect things, when others have either solved or bypassed the problem?

[snip]

The rigor justification that truly good papers will end up published somewhere, so nothing is lost by Type II errors is simply not true. In the glacial world of academic publishing one rejection can delay publication by two–four years. Of the good papers rejected, some despair, some move to greener pastures, but most just conform to reviewer “suggestions”. If rejectees do not try again, publishing delayed, like justice, is publishing denied, as some leave academia for good [snip].

Conservative

A KES is conservative if it resists change and innovation. A rising rigor bar means that new theories face a greater burden of proof than old ones (Avison, et al., 2006). That new theories respect the old is reasonable, but when they face critiques that old theories don’t answer either, then those who have climbed the tree of knowledge have pulled the ladder up behind them. New theories rarely rise like Venus from the sea, fully formed and faultless. Usually new ideas begin imperfect and only develop over time with help from others. So if anything, the bias should be the other way. When new theories must be fully proved before they can even be proposed as research questions, then we have got science backwards.

As Einstein is said to have said: “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?”

[snip]

Authors who innovate risk their careers, as even their successful innovations may not flourish until after their tenure decision. It should not be this way. Innovators are the “whistle blowers” of academia — they challenge false claims of knowledge profits. A system that rejects its own agents of change rejects its own progress.

[snip]

New ideas by definition contradict the agreed norm, so can be expected to polarize reviewers. A proposal that offends no one probably changes nothing. Yet in academic hiring one bad reference can kill an appointment [18], and in journal submissions and grant proposals, a “perfect” application must get a perfect score not one person must dislike it. Yet if no one dislikes your work you probably aren’t doing anything worthwhile. Indeed a hallmark of innovation is that it polarizes people — some love it and some hate it. The score tick box system of most grant reviews weeds out creativity.

A hundred years ago Einstein invented special relativity working in the Swiss Patent Office because no university would appoint him. Yet he revolutionized physics. Is the academic system today any more inviting to unorthodoxy? [snip]

Part II explores how to change this.

Unread

[snip]

If the democratic KES outlined in Part II lets everyone publish, won’t that worsen the not–reading problem, as there will be more to read? It would — if the motivation didn’t change, but it will. While in a risk–avoiding system more papers are more error to avoid, in a value–seeking system more papers are more potential value. Readers will use electronic tools, like Google Scholar, to do positive searches. While the literature seems huge, a search on a specific research topic may produce only a handful of relevant papers. Even imperfect papers may have good parts or stimulate new ideas. When the motive moves from following normative ideas to finding useful knowledge, more people will read a greater variety of papers.

The opposite of apathy is involvement and participation, and in Part II we suggest that socio–technical tools can turn readers from passive recipients of pre–selected “quality” to active participants in value generation.

Inaccessible

A KES is inaccessible when most of its potential users cannot write to it or read it.

In academia, to contribute one must pass the reviewer firewall. [snip] The rigor trend predicts negatively driven reviewing based on denying faults rather than growing value. In contrast the democratic KES outlined in Part II can report review contributions and still respect anonymity, which increases incentives for quality reviewing.

Specialized

[snip]

As more rigorous and exclusive “specialties” emerge, the expected trend is an academic publishing system that produces more and more about less and less. The alternative proposed in Part II is to tear down the walls to instead allow more and more about more and more.

The end point

Under a rigor trend top journals will be exclusive in participation, innovation averse, few in number, outdated in content, restricted in scope, largely unread and increasingly specialized. Authors will duplicate, imitate and supplicate rather than innovate. They will recycle old theories under catchy new labels, develop minor “tweaks” to gatekeeper theories and never rock the boat of received opinion. Reviewers will deny, critique and oppose author attempts to publish while readers will graze, skim and browse the old ideas in new clothes that get through — if they read them at all.

The feudal answer to more people writing is more rejections and more people not reading. The expected end point will be journals that are more rigorous than relevant, authors more prolific than productive, reviewers denying not inspiring, and readers grazing but not digesting. The reader can decide if this applies to their field.

This final vision of journals as exclusive and isolated castles of specialist knowledge, manned by editor–sovereigns and reviewer–barons, raising the barricade of rigor against a mass assault by peasant–authors seeking tenure knighthoods, is not inspiring.

The worry that opening the gates of the knowledge citadel will let in a flood of error confuses democracy with anarchy. Government by the people does not mean no rules, it just means new rules. It does not destroy hierarchies, just opens them to all by merit. To the academic realists now playing the publishing game, this is “the way it is”, and ideas of knowledge democracy are unreal idealism. Yet the same would have been said of physical democracy in the middle ages. Social change emerges as individuals evolve.

The cracks in the current system are already showing ... . A democratic knowledge economy will outperform its feudal equivalent for the same reason that democratic physical economies outperform feudal ones — that people produce more when control is shared.[snip]

Cross–Disciplinary Research

In multi–disciplinary research academic specialists work side by side on the belief that specialty ideas will cross–fertilize, but increased specialization reduces this likelihood. In contrast cross–disciplinary research uses faculty trained in more than one discipline to merge knowledge across specialties. [snip]

The nexus of technology use

We identify cross–disciplinary research at the nexus of technology use as an area of knowledge expansion. Terms like Web science (Fischetti, 2006), socio–technical systems (Whitworth and Moor, 2009c), information communication technology (ICT), information systems, social computing, information science, informatics and Science 2.0 (Shneiderman, 2008) all point to a nascent “knowledge flower” growing at the crossroads of technology use (Figure 1).

[snip]

Figure 1

[snip]

Cross–disciplinary crunch

As the number of knowledge specialties increases the number of cross–disciplinary connections grows geometrically. The two–dimensional Figure 1 cannot illustrate this, as with eight disciplines there should be 256 potential overlaps, not just eight as shown. A science with hundreds of distinct disciplines has tens of thousands of knowledge intersections, each potentially another specialty.

[snip]

Knowledge expansion at the intersection of disciplines is a chance for evolutionary progress, rather than a sign of failure. Building walls to protect knowledge is necessary in a land of bandits and thieves, but in a land of earnest artisans it only reduces beneficial synergies, and forces each specialty to reinvent the intellectual wheels of others.

[snip]

Conclusions

1. The demands of cross–disciplinary research suggest that academia should:
2. Replace the myth that rigor is excellence with research as a risk–opportunity mix;
3. Reduce business influence on the grounds that academic truth is good business; and,
4. Reinvent academic publishing as a democratic open knowledge exchange system.

Socio–technologies like wikis show what is possible when communities activate, but wikis are not the academic answer as they don’t attribute or allocate accountability, nor offer anonymous review. The easy options in academic publishing have already been tried, so Part II of this paper suggests a socio–technical hybrid.

A democratic KES would reaffirm academia’s original goal of publishing knowledge freely for mutual critique and benefit. The search for knowledge should be open not closed, dynamic not static, inclusive not exclusive, current not outdated, affirming not denying, innovative not conservative and most of all, living not dead. To achieve this goal academics must hold to the goal of knowledge growth. If we do our duty as others do theirs, progress will occur naturally. Lest academia forget, its very reason to exist is to grow knowledge, not to guard it, nor to profit from it.

Notes

References

This paper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Source and Full Text

[http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2609]

NOTE: Pre-Print Of Part II > SOCIO-TECHNICAL VISION Self-Archived PDF Full Text Available At

[http://brianwhitworth.com/BWRF-FM-Part1.pdf]

Monday's Musing: Race Makes Scripted Appearance Yet Again

Quick Point: Race makes Scripted, Ten Second Appearance (Yet Again)

Suffice it to say, Hollywood loves the Hood.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to accompany her to see the film version of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. I had no idea what the movie was about so I checked out the trailer and then researched the book and its author a little bit. I said, sure, it's five dollars, “Why not?” So I go. And yes, like the other millions of people who saw the movie, the tears began to roll well before the movie got going. I was ready to say “job well done” until a short ten second segment came across the screen that immediately didn’t sit right with me but I wasn’t sure why.

I am speaking specifically about the new ending the directors gave to the movie. For those of you who have not seen the movie or read the book, read no further unless you don’t care that I ruin both. First, it must be said that even Picoult did not hold her tongue about the movie’s alternative ending. However, I believe her distaste for the ending came from a different place than my own. She disliked it because they changed which daughter dies. In the book, Kate, the sick daughter, lives because Anna, the younger daughter, gets into an accident where she is deemed brain-dead. Thus, the accident allows Kate access to Anna’s organs and the lifesaving medical procedures they could not do otherwise. In the movie, the family moves on but comes together to remember Kate by traveling as a family on her birthday. The mother returns to work as a lawyer, the son focuses on his art, and the father retires to work with inner-city youth. Picoult argued that it flattened the story and made it too neat of ending. I was troubled by something much more viral.

Race was not a factor in this film. Or rather, due to the racial composition of the family and their surroundings, race is invisible, unmarked, thus white. Sure there were issues of class and privilege—the mother was able to leave work as a semi-high powered lawyer to take care of Kate and the father worked as a fireman with some pull—but even this was not a factor in the movie. To be specific, my reaction did not come from the rescripting of Kate’s death, the son’s artistic rather than arsonist behavior, or the mother’s life post Kate’s death; it was the rescripting of the father’s. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why Brian, the stargazer, would all of a sudden volunteer with inner-city youth (shown as all black), the very few black bodies that you see in this movie besides the one nurse who herself plays the part of the stereotypical “black nurse.” Hollywood Strikes Again.

What are we to make of the fact that in their right to exercise artistic license with the movie, in their freedom to bring this book to “life” in a way they saw fit, they included poor, inner-city youth as the mechanism through which the father regains his life? I say it once more: Hollywood Strikes Again. I spoke about the scripting of race in movies with Pixar’s UP. Although this particular incident in My Sister’s Keeper was less than ten seconds of the total movie as compared to being the “major” minor character that Beta was, it stands as yet another example that the representation of African Americans in different mediums is so often conflated with class—and a specific class (read: lower class)—and place—this time, as with many times before it, the inner city. In other words, in an otherwise good (for its content) and homogenously white (for its cast and setting) movie, the dark birthmark of American race relations and images of racial groups, stands out the same way as it did on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Georgiana from the short story The Birthmark.

I do not believe that I am making a mountain out of ten second molehill. In their concerted and calculated actions to adapt a Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, they casted dark bodies to fulfill that old familiar role of those in need to help, those in need of aid.

Black In America 2: Africanism and Black Divisions by Class and Age

Many academics, public intellectuals, and fellow bloggers have now voiced their opinions about Black In America 2. Some have praised it as being better than last year while others have said that Black In America 2 and the number 2 had much more in common than CNN would like to admit. I am more on the side of it being better than last year but agree that it is still off the mark. One of the key differences that made it better than last year is that in the first segment (of which I will speak about further below) they grounded the discussion of the poorer students and the problems they face in the historical legacy of and lasting effects of the rapid deterioration of their neighborhood as well as urban decline. I may be giving Black In America 2 too much credit here because even this discussion was short and rather weak. If you are going to begin with such an opening, then structural forces—decline of jobs, residential segregation, and the like—must be put at the forefront and stated explicitly, not in passing. Nevertheless there were some, for lack of a better word, problems with it that stuck out to me beyond what has been talked about in other venues. I focus on two points that I felt slipped under the radar.

The first has to with the apparent Africanism in the first segment but also its place in larger society. Although highlighting the work of Malaak Compton-Rock giving to the community, they presented Journey for Change as a program not to expose inner-city youth to a different way of life per se, but rather to a poorer, more destitute way of life so that they can appreciate what (little) they have back home in Bushwick. I am sorry but if that is not a variation of Edward Said’s Orientalism I do not know what is. One point Said makes of the harmful effects of orientatlism is how “the Occident” began to see “the Orient” and conduct themselves toward the region itself and also those from that region.

I must stop here and say that I am an unapologetic Americanist, though one with humanist tendencies. Nevertheless, maybe because I am an Americanist, I do not jump on the bandwagon of those who go outside the United States to help those in need. If two houses are burning, which one do you put out first: your’s or your neighbor’s? I know that framing it this way makes it an either/or question without moral implications and as one that ignores present day politics and the history of colonialism and the like. However, the question remains that if there is a cancer threatening to destroy your body from the inside from the same mechanisms, through the same actions, and that of someone else, what do you do first?

The way in which it was framed also obscures the plight of blacks, Latinos, and some whites here in the United States. I am sorry, if you wanted to show them more extreme poverty than what they are used to, there are pockets here in the United States that are just as or even worse off economically. Both urban and rural. Let us not forget the work of Amartya Sen who found that even though one may live in a richer nation, one’s life expectancy and quality might be quite lower than those in poorer nations. If you wanted to show them the detrimental effects the AIDS virus has on communities, there are pockets in many Chocolate Cities that have as high or higher concentration of AIDS than many parts of Africa. I mean to speak honestly, the way in which they first introduced Journey for Change overshadowed the positive cultural, educational, and political aspects of the program. It was almost as if they used Africa—since there was so little (i.e. none) conversation about how Africa is more than just South Africa and that it was a heterogeneous place (another form of Africansim with roots in the theme of orientalism)—as a tool to shock, awe, and inspire. I am sorry, but this is both amoral and wrong. As those over at The Retort noted, Compton-Rock spoke as if this trip was to act as a panacea of social and academic ills. I am sorry, it doesn’t work like that.

Before I continue, I must say that I appreciate programs like this and those who invest time into them, the organizers, family, and students themselves. However, I stand with my previous criticism of this program.

The second aspect of the first segment that stuck with me was the lack of parallel between the ages of the low income black students from Connecticut and New York and middle class blacks. This may seem like a minor point but I do not believe it is; in fact, I think it highlights both some of the assumptions and prejudiced thoughts about blacks in America. If you notice, the poor blacks were middle and high school aged individuals. The middle class blacks were college aged or above. Remember, we only saw low-income older adults as parents with medical, mental health, or financial issues. Even though I too appreciated the awareness of racial issues of this year’s cohort of middle class interviewees, I was troubled by this age divide.

I think that parallel would have been stronger if they would have went to Exeter, Andover, St. Paul, Deerfield, and the other prep, day, and boarding school in the Northeast to see the experience of same aged middle class blacks at these predominately white institutions. Or, to flip it the other way, found some low-income college black college students to parallel those middle class blacks that spoke of their experiences. Believe it or not, poor blacks (and minorities for that matter) make it to both the Ivy and non-Ivy halls as well. Instead of a smorgasbord of black people and education, CNN, NOT SOLEDAD O’BRIEN ALONE, missed an opportunity for a richer and deeper glimpse inside Black America.

We missed another opportunity to access what it means to be black in America. Though I have to admit this year was a step forward rather than backward (though I admit that would have been hard even for Black In America). I do not know if what I have presented here is more of me responding more to what was in the show or the way it was presented. I am happy if it is both.

He’s Assertive; She’s a Bitch

A while back, I wrote about the racial privilege associated with speaking forcefully and having your message heard. I argued—and continue to believe—that folks of color are more susceptible to racially charged interpretations of their tone of voice. In other words, a black guy offering the same message as me would, more often than not, be painted as “angry” or “militant,” while I would, more often than not, be seen as “passionate” or “engaging.” When I get into an impassioned rant, my audience—particularly white audiences—may think I’m a bit over the top; I’ll concede that. But my words and tone aren’t going to trigger the racialized stereotype of black male hyper-masculinity and irrational anger, since, of course, I’m a white guy.

A few of our thoughtful (and sharp) readers suggested that the racial privilege I wrote about was also gendered—meaning that women are not afforded the same privilege to speak forcefully without fear of negative stereotyping.

I have to admit, this was a pretty egregious oversight on my part. Given the current political climate—from Hilary Clinton to Sonia Sotomayor to Michelle Obama—it's clear that strong, prominent women haven’t exactly received the most positive national news coverage. Clinton’s been called “shrill,” Sotomayor’s been called a “bully,” and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin begins each post on Michelle Obama with a picture of the First Lady scowling or frowning—a racially charged attempt to depict her as excessively scary and militant.

Such instances are not simply relegated to high profile women; it’s a safe bet that most of our (assertive, thoughtful, vocal) female readers can relate to this pervasive stereotype. Moreover, this isn’t simply an example of a “double standard;” rather, it’s male privilege in action. If I bang my finger on the table during a rant in a seminar here at Harvard, no one’s going to call me “shrill” or “domineering.” These are words used to describe folks that defy stereotypes and resist domination or subservience. These are words used to put them in their place, to remind them they’re not white; they’re not men. These are words that evoke, employ, and perpetuate privilege.

While I can't really speak from personal experience, dating a woman in corporate America has helped make these gendered stereotypes salient. Big business—a male dominated field predicated on assertiveness and team-based problem solving—is probably one of the better examples to illustrate male privilege and the gendered interpretation of tone. Consider a corporate team planning a company’s new investment strategy. The team leader is, statistically speaking, most likely a white man. He’s leading the group in a brainstorming session, and invites input from the team. The majority of the team is, statistically speaking, most likely white and male. Everyone is generally cordial and polite considering they're working together toward a common goal. But when male and female team members assert their respective dominance, they prompt two very different responses.

See, when a male team member speaks out of turn, interrupting the flow of conversation to interject his brilliant idea, he’s a valuable asset to the company. He’s being a good team member. He’s assertive. But when a female team member tries to compete, simply asserting her equality and intellectual evenness with her male counterparts, she’s excessively domineering. She’s overstepping authority, displaying improper professional etiquette. She’s a bitch.

Ultimately, these stereotypes may—perhaps, obviously—fall most severely on the shoulders of black women. Black women that forcefully assert intellectual or physical equality with men are doubly susceptible to negative stereotyping as “ghetto,” “shrill,” or a combination of the two. Privilege isn’t an either/or phenomenon; multiple social identities create multiple structures of privilege, and black women find themselves at the bottom of this stratified order.

Look, this (admittedly oversimplified) example is not meant as an indictment of corporate America, nor is it indicative of every woman’s professional or personal experience. But it most certainly reflects decades of social science research on the perceptions of women in positions of power. And, more importantly, it most certainly underscores an underappreciated mechanism influencing social inequality.

The problem here is when privilege translates into material winners and losers; when privilege affords job promotions, favorable peer evaluations, and wage premiums, and lack thereof results in economic, political, or social ceilings. Privilege is a very real—and pernicious—component of inequality. The measures needed to correct these racist, sexist, and generally misguided notions are, of course, debatable. But the privilege is real, and it carries a material impact. Exposing and recognizing it is a necessary first step toward greater equality.

The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World

Eat your heart out, Monica Lewinsky. Move over, Kenneth Starr. There’s a new group of political truth-seekers out there, and they just uncovered a bombshell that’s going to shock the world. Were you irate when Clinton lied about his infidelity? Or when Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction? Well these minor scandals pale in comparison to The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World: President Obama is not a United States citizen!

A few brave fellow patriots are joining the venerable Ken Starr in the courageous struggle against lying, deceitful politicians. Thank goodness for Real Americans. They (uh, awkwardly) call themselves the “birthers,” and their ranks range from good ol’ normal folks like this lady in Delaware to high-ranking political leaders like California Republican Congressman John Campbell. Some outwardly question President Obama’s citizenship, while others admirably “just want to see these question put to rest.” Turns out, these inquisitive folks have uncovered President Obama’s true citizenship: He’s not American—he’s African.

Of course, these (incorrect) rumors have been around since the election. Snopes sufficiently debunked them, but folks are still clinging to the pervasive notion that there’s just something not right about this Obama guy. As Liz Cheney noted on Larry King Live Tuesday night—validating and legitimizing the birthers’ invalid and illegitimate claims—Americans are “fundamentally uncomfortable” with Barack Obama. He just doesn’t seem like one of “us.” He’s, well, he’s something other than us.

The process of “othering” minorities remains a fundamental component of our nation’s history. That it is so shocking for folks to associate a black man in power with American citizenship is not wholly surprising. Princeton scholar Mellissa Harris-Lacewell offered a fascinating discussion on this very topic after Obama’s election, detailing the innovative steps his campaign took to overcome racial cognitive dissonance. See, we’ve been so used to a certain style of person (read: white, male) in positions of power that our brains had difficulty making the shift toward accepting a different looking First Family. This cognitive shift—a significant racial barrier, to be sure—was integral to Obama’s success last November.

Yet some folks haven’t fully made that cognitive shift. They’re still pretty reticent to accept that a smart black guy can actually be an American, and, even worse, be their Commander in Chief. But it’s far too easy to condemn their racist ignorance without offering any critical analysis. In the social sciences, we delve into every possible explanation for the behaviors of poor, predominantly minority populations and communities. We untangle their social networks, carefully scrutinize their positions within the economy and polity, and go out of our way to talk to them personally in our research, often letting their own words drive our analysis.

Yet we rarely place that same critical eye on the lives of poor white folks—particularly poor racist white folks. We (correctly) note the lack of mainstream models of success in many urban neighborhoods. We talk about the role of social structure in shaping a group’s worldviews, but rarely apply that same analysis to folks outside the so-called ghetto. It’s unfortunate; in our knee jerk reactions to overt racism, we neglect comprehensive social research and, more importantly, comprehensive pursuits of social justice.

These folks—crazy as we may think they are—are expressing real feelings and real fear. Calling them foolish isn’t productive. Telling them they should know better is ineffective. And, apparently, showing them Obama’s actual birth certificate doesn’t do much either.

But that doesn’t mean we should write these folks off. In Black Picket Fences, sociologist Mary Pattillo writes about black gang members in a Chicago neighborhood. She discusses how these kids have multiple identities; they’re gang members, sure, but they’re also someone’s brother, son, or neighbor. As a white guy from upstate New York, these racist white folks—lawn jockeys and all—could easily be one of my neighbors, friends, or relatives. Well, maybe not one of my friends—but you get the idea. They’re human beings with little access to quality information, born to a world that has taught them to fear blacks.

Questioning their intelligence does little to expand their worldview and educate them on the complicated contours of race and racial inequality. No, Obama’s not a Kenyan citizen. And no, this isn’t the Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World. Sure, these “birthers” are woefully misguided, and yes, their ideological underpinnings are exceedingly racist. But this is an opportunity—an opportunity to tackle racism and inequality head on through careful analysis and education. Who knows, it just might bring us closer to the ever-elusive "post racial America" everyone keeps talking about.

Cell Press and Elsevier > Article of the Future

Cell Press and Elsevier have launched a project called Article of the Future that is an ongoing collaboration with the scientific community to redefine how the scientific article is presented online. The project's goal is to take full advantage of online capabilities, allowing readers individualized entry points and routes through the content, while using the latest advances in visualization techniques. We have developed prototypes for two articles from Cell to demonstrate initial concepts and get feedback from the scientific community.


KEY FEATURES OF THE PROTOTYPES

• A hierarchical presentation of text and figures so that readers can elect to drill down through the layers of content based on their level of expertise and interest. This organizational structure is a significant departure from the linear-based organization of a traditional print-based article in incorporating the core text and supplemental material within a single unified structure.


• A graphical abstract allows readers to quickly gain an understanding of the main take-home message of the paper. The graphical abstract is intended to encourage browsing, promote interdisciplinary scholarship and help readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests.


• Research highlights provide a bulleted list of the key results of the article.


• Author-Affiliation highlighting makes it easy to see an author’s affiliations and all authors from the same affiliation.


• A figure that contains clickable areas so that it can be used as a navigation mechanism to directly access specific sub-sections of the results and figures.


• Integrated audio and video let authors present the context of their article via an interview or video presentation and allow animations to be displayed more effectively.


• The Experimental Procedures section contains alternate views allowing readers to see a summary or the full details necessary to replicate the experiment.


• A new approach to displaying figures allows the reader to identify quickly which figures they are interested in and then drill down through related supplemental figures. All supplemental figures are displayed individually and directly linked to the main figure to which they are related.


• Real-time reference analyses provide a rich environment to explore the content of the article via the list of citations.

Article Prototype #1 / Article Prototype #2

Source

[http://beta.cell.com/]

Press Release

[http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_01279]