In another ignorant white people moment, we have this comment from Elizabeth Edwards.

As her husband trails Clinton and Obama in national polls, Elizabeth Edwards has been an outspoken critic of his opponents. Last month, she said her husband would be a better champion for women as president than Clinton and more recently said, “We can’t make John black, we can’t make him a woman. Those things get you a lot of press, worth a certain amount of fundraising dollars.”

Some of her other points in the full AP article are legitimate, but this quote is just nonsense.  Being white and male doesn’t get a candidate press?  Being white and male makes it hard to raise funds?  If this is the case, then why is it that out of the field of nearly 20 major candidates only 2 are not white and male.

The quote seems to suggest that Clinton’s gender and Obama’s race are why they get media attention and financial supporters.  I’m not saying that the gender and race angles haven’t been covered, but to insinuate that that is the reason for their early success in fundraising and polls is unfair.  Perhaps they are both getting attention because people like what they have to say.  Maybe Clinton is getting attention because of her tremendous name recognition.  Maybe Obama has hired a creative and talented campaign staff. 

If white women, women of color, and men of color have been so successful at running for President then why have white men been the only ones to win? 

This certainly isn’t going to help Edwards move up in the polls with white women and people of color (he’s already doing poorly with African American voters).  I was thinking about voting for Edwards, but if the campaign is sending Elizabeth Edwards out to make these types of comments, John Edwards is moving down on my list of preferred candidates.

This one from the AP “Whites now minority in 1 in 10 counties.” Couldn’t this headline also be “Whites majority in 9 of 10 counties”?

And it is really funny given the discussion that Rory and I were having in this thread. I was telling him how there are many places in the northern tier of this country that are nearly all white. He was asking me if it really was that rare to see a black person in (rural) areas of the north. Here’s the comment I left. You should check out the graphs in the pdf files:

It’s not so much rare as it is concentrated into segregated areas in and around major cities. Check out page 6 of this pdf file; the map is the percent white for various counties (some would say it underestimates % white because it include Latinos who identify as white, but it demonstrates the general point). Look how many counties are 90-99% white–notice how most of them are in the north. In many states like Ohio, you can spot the counties where the bigger cities are because they are not darker blue.

Now check out page 6 of this pdf file. Look how many counties have fewer than 5% black. For that matter look how many states have no counties where more than 4.9% of the population is black–Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Hawaii. You have a few states where all but one or two counties are less than 5% black, but the dark blue counties are pretty much all in the south.

Now I was specifically talking about Blacks, not people of color broadly. But there are still many counties, probably the majority where people of color are less than 10% of the populations. Even the graph, pictured in association with the article, could just as easily have made my point about how many counties are very white.

If you read the article, you would like there is a huge Latino invasion, but is 1 in 10 impressive. I don’t think so.

Tariq sent me this link from a NYT article, which I later read in my backlog of post vacation newspapers.  The article discusses Dr. Mary Bucholtz’s research on the connection between nerdiness and whiteness.  The article says,

Nerdiness, she has concluded, is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.” 

Later the author, Benjamin Nugent, makes the following argument based on Bucholtz research,

By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white. Bucholtz sees something to admire here. In declining to appropriate African-American youth culture, thereby “refusing to exercise the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded,” she writes, nerds may even be viewed as “traitors to whiteness.” You might say they know that a culture based on theft is a culture not worth having. On the other hand, the code of conspicuous intellectualism in the nerd cliques Bucholtz observed may shut out “black students who chose not to openly display their abilities.” This is especially disturbing at a time when African-American students can be stigmatized by other African-American students if they’re too obviously diligent about school. Even more problematic, “Nerds’ dismissal of black cultural practices often led them to discount the possibility of friendship with black students,” even if the nerds were involved in political activities like protesting against the dismantling of affirmative action in California schools. If nerdiness, as Bucholtz suggests, can be a rebellion against the cool white kids and their use of black culture, it’s a rebellion with a limited membership.

I personally would like to read more about the methodology of the researcher before I make too many criticisms of the actual research, but at the same time, I worry that this research and the article could be misinterpreted.  It could be misconstrued as saying “black people are hip, cool and in style.” One problem potential problem with making any generalizations from this work is that the research comes primarily from California schools, which are not representative of the US.  The reporter also doesn’t discuss the distinction between being in a predominantly white school, a mixed school, or a predominantly Black/Asian/Latino/American Indian school.  I suspect the racial make-up of the school could make a difference in how race and nerdiness or hipness is constructed.  I’m not sure exactly how nerdiness is operationally defined in this study, but it seems to me to be more a set of behaviors and images that transcend race.  Additionally, if we are talking about nerdiness, we also need to address it’s counterpart coolness/hipness. 

I’m not sure we should want any racial group to be cool or hip after all fashions come and go.  For example, a few years ago many pop culture pundits were talking about the “Latin explosion.”  According to the “Latin Explosion” proponents, Latinos were hip and cool, and they were taking over American pop culture.  This claims was based on the success of about 4 or 5 musical artists and actors.  Do 4 or 5 people really make a trend?  Not really.  In fact, just a few years later you don’t even hear about the Latino explosion, unless it’s some bigot lamenting how many Latino immigrants are entering the US.  Does this mean that Latinos aren’t hip and cool anymore?  Would we ever hear the claim that whites and whiteness are hip and cool?  Probably, not. 

One reason whites aren’t cool, hip or trendy is that we are always in style.  Cool whiteness is usually coded as the All American or Preppy style and it is epitomized by thin white people with blond hair and blue eyes¹.  Perhaps hyperwhiteness, whatever that is, is not cool.  I have heard people on occasion pejoratively say–”That’s so white.” But what is most striking to me is that in American culture there are always white celebrities and pop culture icons who get to define the trends.  There are a few token blacks, Latinos, and Asians as pop culture makers, but whiteness always gets a place at the cool kids table.  In fact, it seems like many people of color aren’t really cool until they are embraced by the “mainstream,” which is usually a code word for whites.  Two artists that exemplify this are Jamie Fox or Queen Latifah, both of whom have been well established actors and musical artists for at least 15 years.  Now that they are embraced by a whiter audience; they are Hollywood A-listers.  Some would use this example to say, “Well, many Black Americans were way ahead of whites in noticing how cool these two artists are.”  I’m reluctant to make such a claim because I think cool is a moving target, and it is obviously very subjective.  Moreover, if being cool means being in style or being someone who is very popular than it is mostly whites who dictate coolness because there are more whites here in the US than other groups and whites disproportionately own and operate media outlets and other businesses that strongly influence coolness.  So, if black people get high cool points from pop culture makers, it’s because a critical mass of whites say black people are cool not because black people see themselves as cool. 

The other question I’m left asking is, “What about black nerds?”  I know some, and of course, most of us know America’s favorite black nerd Steve Urkle.  Are they labeled nerds because they allegedly “act white” or is it something else?  To me it’s something else.

Unlike Blacks, Asians don’t fair so well when it comes to the hip and cool portrayals in pop culture.  The last time I checked “the racial stereotypometer,” Asians were scoring very high on nerdiness.  I’m not sure how the Asian students fair in Dr. Bucholtz’s research, but I’m having trouble imagining that whiteness is considered less cool than Asianess, given the very common racist stereotype that Asians are nerds.  I suppose one could argue that Asians are stereotyped as both cool and nerdy, but it is clear that many portrayals of nerds and geeks include the token Asian². 

I don’t know exactly what this author’s methods or study found, so I can only comment on the New York Times write-up about her research, but I personally think that most of what defines nerdiness is not racially coded–wearing thick glasses, being clumsy and nonathletic, being bookish, and being socially awkward.  To the extent that race enters our discussion of nerdiness it is more about racial stereotypes than it is about racial realities.  Thus, we need to tread lightly into this territory, focusing on how racial stereotyping creates images of hipness and nerdiness.  We also need to discuss how media and business influence pop culture, keeping in mind that most businesses and media outlets are run by whites and those arbiters of taste are catering primarily to the tastes of a predominantly white audience.  If we don’t make this clear, then many people in the audience, are going to come away from the article saying yeah blackness is hip and cool, and whiteness is not.

1. Undoubtedly, this is class coded was well–middle and upper income whites get way more cool points than working class or poor whites. (back)
2. My own sense is that Asian cultural products are considered cool, but Asian people are not as cool.  I haven’t studied this, so it is just a anecdotal observation. Perhaps the same distinction could also be made for African Americans–African American cultural products are cool, and African American people are not as cool. (back)

The 15th Erase Racism Carnival is up over at Race Wire.   Go check it out. For those who are unfamiliar with the blog, it is the blog for Colorlines Magazine, which is a great magazine that focuses on race and ethnic related issues.

Ok, not so serious question: what’s the deal with kids and boxes? I remember loving boxes as a kid, and one of my early memories is of me playing in a box in the kitchen. My parents had bought something big, and I was playing in the box like it was a boat. Here we have pictures of the Brandenator (new nickname) at 4 and a half. Rather than playing with the toy, he started by playing “in” the box. I think he was hiding or something.

Not only did he want to be in the box, but he figured Daddy wanted to be in the box, too. In this picture, he was trying to put Daddy in the box, and he couldn’t figure out why Daddy didn’t fit.

Now fast forward to 7 years old. I had this box sitting on the floor by the trash. He picked it up, and put it on his head. Then proceeded to play video games with the box on his head. That’s when I took this picture.

I think this must be some kind of developmental stage or something because almost all kids I know of love boxes–in particular sitting in them, crawling in them, or in the picture above using the box as a “mask.” I’m sure a child psychologist or child development expert tell me why this is. As an adult, it’s really entertaining to watch because playing with boxes usually involves some kind of creative play, and it’s often much more creative than the play associated with the toy or product in the box.

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post, you can look at this post from July 2nd where I discuss the different dimensions of residential segregation.  That post discusses a few of the methodological issues, and it links to the Census Bureau report where the data comes from.  So if you are confused about the differences, between clustering and exposure (for example), you can get more information from that post.  If you link to the actual Census report, they show statistical formulas that are used in calculating segregation using each method described.  They also discuss other issues related to measuring segregation. 

You should also keep in mind this is only measuring segregation for Asians and Pacific Islanders, and it’s only measuring urban segregation.  I am preparing future posts on Native Americans, and you can read the previous posts on

• The Dimensions of Segregation
• The most and least segregated cities for Black Americans.  
• The most and least segregated cities for Latinos.
• The most segregated cities for Asians

 The analysis of Asians includes 20 metro areas which met the Census criteria of having at least 3% representation–the number was 43 metros for African Americans and 36 metros for Latinos.

All data comes from the US Census Bureau

5 Most Even Metro Areas (cities where Asians are most evenly spread; this number reflects the percent of people who would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed across the metro area)

1. Portland, Vancouver
2. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
3. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
4. Newark
5. Bergen, Passaic, NJ

5 Highest Exposure Metros (cities where Asians have highest chance of having contact with whites)

1. Baltimore
2. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
3. Portland, Vancouver
4. Detroit
5. Newark

5 Least Concentrated Metros (cities where Latinos are most least concentrated/most evenly spread throughout the metro area)

1. Bergen, Passaic, NJ
2. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
3. Orange County, CA
4. Oakland, CA
5. Newark

5 Least Centralized Metros (cities where Asians are least concentrated in the central core of the city)

1. Portland, Vancouver
2. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
3. Bergen, Passaic, NJ
4. Orange County, CA
5. Baltimore 

5 Least Clustered Metros

1. Baltimore
2. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
3. Portland, Vancouver
4. Detroit
5. Newark

Overall Least Segregated Metros for Asians (Averaging ranks for all 5 major dimensions) Drumroll…..

1. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
2. Baltimore
3. Newark
4. Bergen, Passaic, NJ
5. Detroit
6. Philadelphia
7. Portland, Vancouver
8. Riverside, San Bernardino, CA
9. Orange County, CA
10. Oakland, CA 

A Few Points for Discussion:

On these measures the east coast cities tend to fair relatively well, except for the segregation capital of American New York.  Well, it’s not quite that simple; suburban New York–Long Island and northern New Jersey–do well.  I think for Asians in New York, the segregation dynamic is affected by class and immigration status.  When immigrants first arrive they tend to live in segregated areas of New York city, but if they managed to accumulate wealth, they are then able to move out into suburban areas and do their best to blend in to the predominantly white suburbs.  This may also be true in California.  The bigger cities tend to be much more segregated for Asians, but the outlying suburban areas are not as segregated.

I think, as someone pointed out earlier, Asian Americans seem to have a less entrenched form of segregation than their Black counterparts.

Even if you are a little late, I would try to send something anyways.

This month, RaceWire will be home to the 15th Erase Racism Carnival. The Carnival is a monthly collection of blog posts aimed at provoking discussion about race and catalyzing the eradication of racism.  

Read more about the Carnival here.

RaceWire is accepting submissions from all over the Blogosphere and on a gamut of topics. In addition to these blog posts, RaceWire wants to run some focused pieces looking at:

Race and the environment
Black-Brown divide
And what funny bloggers and video bloggers have to say about race, culture, and the economy

So with these in mind, please email your topics/and or blogs (250-700 words) to Malena Amusa at mamusa (at) arc (dot) org. Final deadline for blog submission is July 17. The Carnival will go up the third week of July in a series on RaceWire.

Looking forward!

My 7 year-old stepson Branden is here for part of his summer vacation, and we decided to take this time to teach him how to ride his bike without the training wheels. We took him out to the park in front of our building and put him on the bike in an area with a downward slope and after about 25 tries he finally got it. This was last Sunday, and by Wednesday he was able to ride around the perimeter of the park in a full circle.

Surprisingly he didn’t crash until Wednesday. It was ironic because his Daddy was saying how he wished that Branden had a wreck so he would watch where he’s going, and so he could “get it over with.” His Dad and I were talking, and agreeing that bicycle wrecks are a rite of passage, and literally 3 minutes later he took a hard fall on the pavement. He stayed on the ground and Daddy rushed over to help him up. He scratched his knee and his finger, but not too bad. Well in our view it wasn’t bad, but as soon as he realized his cut was bleeding and we were giving him attention, he started bawling and limping. We took him inside, and took a picture of his first bicycle injury. He was crying even harder at that point because he thought I was going to pour alcohol on the cut. I couldn’t convince him that I was going to put neosporin on it and it wouldn’t burn.

Even though he fell, he was happy about two things. He got to wear bandages, and he got to show off his cut to other kids.

Here’s a picture of the scraped knee, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him with that sad face.

Then, we have a close-up because he wanted everybody to see the blood, and the cut on his finger.

Branden, Daddy, and I are happy to report that his cut is healing, and he wasn’t the least bit scared about getting back on the bike a few days later.

Now we’re working on tying shoes.

I’ve felt for a long time that the right wing here in the US puts too much faith in religion (Yes, that’s a deliberately ironic word choice).  Christianity becomes a means to solve all kinds of social problems, and perhaps some of those problems are better fixed through non-religious social institutions–governments, the economy, family, and so on. 

However, more recently I’ve also started to feel that some on the left have put too much faith in science and by extension the academy.  Now given that I am a “social scientist” (the kind some folks think are not real scientists) and an academic, this is a fairly controversial position.  It’s not that I do not think science and education are valuable, but it seems like some people on the left lose track of the fact that science is evolving (Once again, a deliberately ironic word choice), and we forget that claims of objectivity frequently have underlying assumptions and biases.  For example, even the choice of a particular subject for scientific inquiry reflects some subjectivity.  Moreover, the scientific method itself may be limiting our thinking at times.  I’m not going to give any thorough critique of the scientific method or objectivity in this post, but what I am curious about how people feel about the relationship between the social/political left and science/the academy. 

What do you think? 

I know I said much more about the left having too much faith in science and the academy, and that’s because I would like to focus on this since Alas is a progressive site and most commenters will likely agree with my statement about the right and religion.  However, I also don’t want to go into too much depth about my personal opinions on the second proposition because I’m open to persuasion on this topic.

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post, you can look at this post from July 2nd where I discuss the different dimensions of residential segregation.  That post discusses a few of the methodological issues, and it links to the Census Bureau report where the data comes from.  So if you are confused about the differences, between clustering and exposure (for example), you can get more information from that post.  If you link to the actual Census report, they show statistical formulas that are used in calculating segregation using each method described.  They also discuss other issues related to measuring segregation. 

You should also keep in mind this is only measuring segregation for Latinos, and it’s only measuring urban segregation.  I am preparing future posts on Asians and Native Americans, and you can read the previous posts on

• The Dimensions of Segregation
• The most and least segregated cities for blacks.  
•  The most segregated cities for Latinos.

 The analysis of Latinos only 36 metro areas met the Census criteria for analysis–the number was 43 metros for blacks.

All data comes from the US Census Bureau

5 Most Even Metro Areas (cities where Latinos are most evenly spread; the number is the percent of people who would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed across the metro area)

1. St. Louis
2. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
3. Fort Lauderdale, FL
4. Portland, Vancouver
5. Baltimore

5 Highest Exposure Metros (cities where Latinos have highest chance of having contact with whites)

1. St. Louis
2. Baltimore
3. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
4. New Orleans
5. Portland, Vancouver

5 Least Concentrated Metros (cities where Latinos are least densely concentrated/more spread throughout the metro area)

1. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
2. Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater
3. Orange County, CA
4. Detroit
5. Baltimore

5 Least Centralized Metros (cities where Latinos are least concentrated in the central core of the city)

1. Oakland, CA
2. Naussau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
3. Orange County, CA
4. Newark 
5. Baltimore

5 Least Clustered Metros

1. St. Louis
2. Baltimore
3. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
4. New Orleans
5. Portland, Vancouver

Overal Least Segregated for Latinos (Averaging ranks for all 5 major dimensions) Drumroll…..

1. Baltimore
2. St. Louis
3. Fort Lauderdale, FL
4. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
5. Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater
6. Detroit
7. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
8. Atlanta
9. Oakland, CA
10. Cleveland, Lorain, Elyria

A few points for discussion:

By this point in our analysis of the most segregated cities readers should notice a trend for the least segregated metro areas–the cities with relatively small percentages of a group tend to have lower levels of segregation for such groups.  Of course this is not always true, but it is frequently the case.  For example, St. Louis and Detroit aren’t well known for their Latino populations in part because they are relatively small.  Just as the black population in Orange County, CA or Portland, Oregon are relatively small, but these cities all rank as less segregated.  Of course, we have to ask, does less segregation necessarily mean that a particular city/metro would be a good place to live?  Is St. Louis really that welcoming for Latinos?  My guess is probably not.  Same for Detroit.  I attended school in Detroit, and I had several Latino friends and acquaintances, who were from other places like New York City or Texas.  Many of these friends missed having the variety of restaurants, shops, dance clubs, and other places that reflected their ethnic backgrounds.  I would not be surprised if a black person living in Seattle felt the same way.  I bring this up because I think integration/segregation is just one factor that affects the well being of people of color.

Now whites are a different story, since we can generally access products and services that cater to us in almost any place in the US.  This is why we really need to have data on whites that reflects white’s level of integration in these metro areas.

In my continuing posts on segregation, I am adding lists of the least and most segregated metro areas for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans.  I’m posting the least segregated metros for each group here at Alas, and I’ll post both the least and most segregated cities at Rachel’s Tavern.

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post, you can look at this post from a few days ago where I discuss the different dimensions of residential segregation.  That post discusses a few of the methodological issues, and it links to the Census Bureau report where the data comes from.  So if you are confused about the differences, between clustering and exposure (for example), you can get more information from that post.  If you link to the actual Census report, they show statistical formulas that are used in calculating segregation using each method described.  They also discuss other issues related to measuring segregation. 

You should also keep in mind this is only measuring segregation for Blacks, and it’s only measuring urban segregation.  I am preparing future posts Asians, Latinos and Native Americans.

All data comes from the US Census Bureau

5 Most Even Metro Areas (cities where blacks are most evenly spread; the statistical formula represents the percent of people who would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed across the metro area)

1. Orange County, CA
2. San Jose
3. Phoenix, Mesa
4. Riverside, San Bernadino, CA
5. Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News

5 Highest Exposure Metros (cities where blacks have highest chance of having contact with whites)

1. Orange County, CA 
2. San Jose
3. Portland, Vancouver
4. Phoenix, Mesa
5. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett

5 Least Concentrated Metros (cities where blacks are least densely concentrated/most spread throughout the metro area)

1. Orange County, CA
2. Atlanta
3. Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News
4. Phoenix-Mesa
5. Cincinnati

5 Least Centralized Cities (cities where blacks are least concentrated in the central core of the city)

1. Nassau, Suffolk (Long Island, NY)
2. Orange County, CA
3. Oakland, CA
4. Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater
5. Newark

5 Least Clustered Cities

1. Orange County, CA
2. San Jose
3. Phoenix, Mesa
4. Portland, Vancouver
5. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett

The 10 Least Segregated Cities (Averaging all five dimensions of segregation)

1. Orange County California
2. San Jose
3. Norfolk-Virginia Beach
4. Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater
5. San Diego
6. Providence, Fall River, Warwick
7. Seattle, Bellevue, Everett
8. San Antonio
9. Oakland, CA
10. San Francisco

A few notes final notes:

The western US does very well, in particular California’s suburban areas. Southern cities do better than most people would expect.  They tend to be in the middle of the pack, but they lean toward the less segregated side. I also think the centralization measure really doesn’t work well when the metro area is a suburban area, since they are not organized around a central core.  The Nassau Suffolk area, only scores well on centralization because the 3-4 towns with large black populations are not close to each other, and there is no central area since it is all suburbs.  In fact, that same metro area is the 10th most segregated on eveness (which is the most commonly used measure of segregation).  Atlanta is also an interesting case because it does very well on concentration, which reflects the large number of predominantly black suburban areas in Atlanta.  However, the reason Atlanta doesn’t do as well on the other measures is because the individual towns themselves are often relatively segregated.

I know some people will be tempted to say, hey I’ve been to _____ and it is fairly segregated.  Keep in mind this is just how the cities compare to each other, and the segregation numbers for African Americans are considerably higher than they are for all other minority groups.  For example, in Orange County, CA, which is by far the least segregated area on almost every dimension, 37% of African Americans would have to move to other areas for African Americans to be evenly spread throughout the area. The overall average number of people who would have to move for the group (we’re talking ALL metro areas) to be evenly spread throughout the metro area is 64% for blacks, 50% for Latinos, 41% for Asians, and 33% for American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Before I put up the full post on the Supreme Court decision on voluntary desegregation programs, I want to briefly discussion the dimensions of of residential segregation. Segregation is a really hot topic in sociology these days. This is probably true for a few reasons, including the fact that it is fairly easy to measure with statistics and it’s one of those areas where we still have significant progress to make.

For the most part, sociologists are interested in residential segregation, which simple means refers to the racial/ethnic mix of blocks, neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas. We tend to be less concerned with segregation as a legal concept, and it seems that a minority of sociologists studying segregation focus on school segregation or segregation in other social institutions such as churches and families.. I suspect that we don’t focus as much of school segregation because it is so highly correlated with residential segregation. I think too often people start by looking at school segregation, but they ignore the fact that more integrated neighborhoods would lead to more integrate schools. I suspect that people don’t focus on residential segregation because it is much harder to challenge, and it’s much more firmly entrenched (at least it is in recent history).

So what are the dimensions of residential segregation. The Census Bureau website identifies 5 major dimensions of segregation: eveness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering.¹ Each one of these measures a slightly different element of segregation, and some cities may do well on some measures and poorly on others. One major weakness is that the census doesn’t give segregation data for whites in it’s general report on housing segregation, so the data is lacking in that area.

Eveness

Evenness refers to the distribution of a particular population group.

The most widely used measure of evenness and the most-widely used measure of residential segregation, in general, is dissimilarity. Conceptually, dissimilarity, which ranges from 0 (complete integration) to 1 (complete segregation), measures the percentage of a group’s population that would have to change residence for each neighborhood to have the same percent of that group as the metropolitan area overall.

For example, if a group has a dissimilarity score of .75, then 75% of the people in that group would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed throughout the given area. The table below highlights the eveness for major racial and ethnic minority groups in the US, keep in mind the closer the number is to one the more segregated the group is.

Exposure

Exposure measures potential contact with other groups, and it is measured with the isolation index, which measures how much contact people have with members of their own group. It is also between 0-1, and higher number mean high segregation.

Concentration

Concentration measures “the relative amount of physical space occupied” by a group. Generally, concentration figures are based on a group’s relative density in a particular area, usually a city or a metro areas. If a group is more segregated it is more dense. In the tables below, I have recorded the Census figures for the delta index, which measures concentration and has figures between 0-1, with those closer to one indicating more segregation. This index measures the proportion/percent of people who would have to move to have a group be distributed across a given area without having greater density in any place. This may sound similar to eveness, but it is different because it is measuring spacing, not percents.

Centralization

Centralization measures how closely a group is to the center of an urban area. This is measure is useful because many cities currently have a pattern, which some call the “chocolate city vanilla suburbs” phenomenon. In these metro areas, the cities are predominantly people of color and the suburbs are predominantly white. Of course, some day the US could also have the reverse pattern as they do in places like Paris, where ethnic and racial minority groups are concentrated in suburban ghettos.

Absolute centralization examines only the distribution of the minority group around the metropolitan area center and varies between -1 and 1. Positive values indicate a tendency for group members to reside close to the center, while negative values indicate a tendency to live in outlying areas as compared with the reference group. A score of 0 means that a group has a uniform distribution throughout the metropolitan area.

As you read the table below keep mind the numbers closer to zero mean less segregation, and those closer to 1 or -1 mean more segregation.

Clustering

The final dimension is clustering, which “measures the degree to which minority group members live disproportionately in
contiguous areas.” For this, the Census Bureau uses the spacial proximity measure, which

basically measures the extent to which neighborhoods inhabited by minority members adjoin one another, or cluster, in space. Spatial proximity equals 1 if there is no differential clustering between minority and majority group members. It is greater than 1 when members of each group live nearer to one another than to members of the other group, and it is less than 1 in the rare case that minority people lived nearer, on average to nonminority people than to members of their own group.

A Few Trends Of Note From the Graphs

Looking carefully over the graphs, we can see a few trends of note. First, across measures of segregation there have been some declines in segregation for Blacks and American Indians from the 1980 to 2000. The declines are modest, but nevertheless, they are declines. For Asians and Latinos, the trends are more mixed. In a few areas there has been lower segregation, and in other areas there are no changes or increased segregation depending on which measure is used. Some of the increases of lack of changes for Latinos and Asians is likely attributable to the large increases in their populations.² Overall, African Americans are by far the most segregated racial minority group.³ American Indians and Alaska Natives are the least segregated racial minority group and Latinos, and Asians fall somewhere in between.

I think this is very important background information that needs to be addressed before we can adequately discuss school segregation, so keep these figures in mind as we go on to discuss school segregation.

1. Iceland, John, Daniel Weinberg and Erika Steinmetz. 2000. US Census Bureau, Series CENSUR-3, Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. (back)
2. Their rates of intermarriage have also decreased from 1990-2000. (back)
3. I would really like to see data for whites here because I would suspect comparable figures. (back)

1. River Vices, which is a blog about politics in my hometown, has a great post about the problem of letting religious zealots control government and media.  The post is called Evanjekylls, which is how many southern Ohioans say Evangelicals.
2. I get some link love, and a personal compliment from Tereza at anti-Racist Parent in an essay about predominantly white schools.
3. Also, via Racialicious, Carmen is providing a free e-book called “How To Be An Anti-Racist Parent”
4. Migra Matters on the case of Alex and Yaderlin Jimenez (a good education for people who don’t know about immigration policy, in particular the myth that marrying a US citizen is going to solve all of your problems).
5. (Saw this one on the news, and found it on a blog.)  A New Jersey High School decided to black out a yearbook photo of two male students kissing. I also though it was interesting that the two male students are black (one guy may have been a dark complexioned Latino, but he sure could pass for black in the picture), and the school appeared to be predominantly white.¹  Now before anybody says well they don’t need pictures of students provocatively kissing in the yearbook: I actually agree with that, but that would mean that they should have blacked out the other pictures of heterosexual students kissing.  The gay black couple got blacked out,² and the heterosexual white couples were muggin’ it up all over the book.
6. Reappropriate on Black/Korean tensions in the $54 million pants lawsuit. (By the way–the judge lost the case.)
7. Racists attacked Tariq’s Mosque, and the people at the Mosque need support.
8. It looks like Isiah Washington may have gotten a raw deal.  He still appears to have made the homophobic slur, but not in the context as it was originally suggested.  Keith Boykin has the details. Here and Here.

Ok, this is getting way too long, and it’s also an open thread, so feel free to add your two cents on other issues.

1. I’m noting this not because I think racism was a motivator, but because people often treat gay and lesbian people of color as invisible. (back)
2. Ironic word choice intended. (back)

Ok, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say something about the latest crime to become a media circus.  I’m sure by now most of you have heard about the murder of Jessie Davis, who was almost 9 months pregnant and was likely killed in front of her two year old child by the child’s father.  Since Davis and Cutts were a black/white couple and I am someone who studies black/white interracial relationships and who is in a black/white interracial relationship, I know many people are wondering what I think about this case.  I’m not here to offer any opinions on the particulars of the case¹ , but I do want to talk about the media coverage of the case.

I went around to a few blogs, and I visited AOL Blackvoices and a couple white supremacist message boards to see what they were saying, and quite frankly it was horrible.  Many people were saying that the victim deserved it; that she was “white trash;” that her child was ugly; and that she was a sleazy, homewrecking whore.  Not surprisingly, the accused murderer, who is the poster boy for anti-black stereotypes, was also being trashed as a violent womanizer who lusted after white women.  I can’t tell you how many racist and misogynistic comments I read; and not surprisingly the white supremacists were giddy over this case.² 

Terrence Says has a reasonable post, which anonymous bigots tried to take over in the comment thread, and in his post, Terrence engages with the question that many folks are thinking–is the media circus surrounding this case about race? Terrence cites a recent case of a white man who killed his white wife and three children:

Today, like Bobby Cutts, Jr. who was arrested in Ohio, Christopher Vaughn was also arrested. Christopher Vaughn was arrested two hours prior to the funeral of his family in St. Charles County, Missouri (suburban St. Louis) where the family originated; yet, so far, there has not been a mention of Vaughn’s arrest that I have been able to observe on the weekend news shows.

As sad and tragic as the Jessie Davis story is, I can’t help but wonder if this story had involved a missing pregnant black or Latina woman if it would have the same media traction.

Well several of the anonymous commenters went crazy, saying that the case received so much attention because Davis was pregnant, because Cutts was a cop, because the child was left in the house alone, and everything but race.  I certainly agree that all of those things make the story more sensational, but I really can’t fathom that it is much more sensational than the Vaugh family case mentioned above.  However, I find myself having a slight disagreement with Terrence.  I agree that white women victims get much more attention than Black, Asian, Latino, and American Indian women, and I agree that race is a big factor in the media attention the case has gotten, but I would be more specific than Terrence.

It’s about interracial sex.  Interracial crimes make big sensational news stories, but crimes that involve interracial sexuality arouse the deepest passions of American bigotry.  The OJ Simpson case, the Duke Rape, the Kobe Bryant rape case, and now this one–they all have tremendous sexual overtones.  For a long time, I was surprised at how much attention the Duke case received, because I was focused on the fact that the accuser in the case was black, but I missed the mark.  It’s more than the races of the people involved; if the crime is perceived as involving interracial sex, something snaps in people, suddenly they perk up.

The truth of the matter is that the US is a culture obsessed with interracial sex, but nobody will say this in polite company.  During the slave era and the Jim Crow era, white people spoke with repulsion and disgust at interracial sex even though many white men were routinely engaging in sexual encounters with black women. In the colorblind era, people are still obsessed with interracial sex.  However, they do not publicly say, “Wow, interracial sex is: bizarre, disgusting, exciting, adventurous, morally repugnant,” and so on.  That’s part of the reason nobody in the mainstream polite media is going to openly say–”Damn that negro had two white baby mama’s.  He must have really been packing some heat below the belt.  Why else would those white women be interested in him?” ³  Nobody is going to say, “Those white women are white trash, whores for sleeping with this black guy.  They probably only did it for his big dick.”  Nobody is going to say, “Why can’t these black men just take care of their kids and stopping hopping from bed to bed.  Only a white women with no self esteem will get with a guy like that.”  They are not saying these dispargaing comments publicly, but when they get home to their families and friends, they are saying it.  When they go on line to search for interracial porn, they are thinking it.  When they can leave anonymous comments on blogs, they are expressing it.

I think my traffic at this site is evidence for the American obsession with race and sex.  Within the last week here are a select few searches I have received:

• black men impregnating white women stories
• savages on blondes
• Biracial family pictures black and white
• BLACK ATHLETE MARRYING WHITE WOMEN
• Black men breeding white girls
• black negro slave woman naked pictures
• black women with white men in adult movies
• differences between white and black women’s breasts
• blacks in bed sexing
• george lucas in love black women
• how do you feel about interracial relationship

And this was a really slow week, I’ve gotten at least 100 searches over the past few months for “savages on blondes,” which was a popular racist pornographic website featuring black men who act like “savages” who want to have sex with white women.  I mentioned that site exactly one time on this blog, and I still get people looking for it. 

For some reason, people think interracial sex is exotic and daring, particularly when it involves Black men and white women and Asian women and white men.  Numerous people, who clearly have no random sample to draw from believe that race is correlated with penis size.  They believe race is correlated with a person’s level of sexual desire.  They believe people who engage in interracial sex are deviant, rebellious, daring, gross, odd, oversexed, and ugly. But, most of them will not admit it publicly.  Instead they go home and post horrible messages discussion boards. (Probably while masturbating to interracial porn.)  They try their best to hide their discomfort, but most interracial couples can see how the stares they get in public often belie the facade of tolerance.

When it comes to interracial sexuality, the US is still not ready to come to grips with our racism, and the discomfort with the intersection of race and sexuality fuels the public obession with many interracial crimes.

NOTE TO READERS: I know this thread is going to be an ultra-sensitive subject, and white supremacist trolls will likely be coming out of the woodwork, so I am limiting this thread to anti-racists and racial abolitionists only.  Moreover, this is not a thread to debate the merits of any of the cases mentioned in the text, so let’s focus on the larger issues.  Finally, anyone who leaves bigoted white supremacist comments will be banned immediately.

Amending The Note To Readers to include feminist posters as well.  So the thread is opened to anti-racists (or racial abolitionists) and feminists only.

1. I also want to say that my heart goes out to the family of Jessie Davis and her child.  I hope they are able to get justice in this case. (back)
2. I have a policy of not linking to organized white supremacist sites, but you can check out the big ones to see what they are saying. (back)
3. I don’t know if his wife is white or not, so I can’t comment on the third “baby mama.” (back)

When I went to bed last night, the Cherokee website had Chad Smith leading by a considerable margin, so I figured at that point that he was probably going to take the election. Then, I woke up this morning to this:

Smith received 7,974 votes, or 59% of the vote, beating challenger Stacy Leeds, who received 5,593 votes, or 41%.

The race for Deputy Chief saw incumbent Joe Grayson, Jr. defeating Raymond Vann. Grayson received 8,230 votes, 61% of the total cast. Vann finished with 5,205 votes, or 39%.

They also have the results for all of the districts and the at large representatives on the Cherokee Nation website. 

I think Stacy Leeds was fighting an uphill battle against Chad Smith’s $$$$$.  The fact that he is an incumbent, didn’t help either, but she fought fairly, and she tried to look out for the best interest of all of the Cherokee people.

I am fairly certain there will be a challenge to the proposed Constitutional Amendment, since it was introduced so late that many people didn’t even get it on their absentee ballots.  This is the Amendment that would make it so that the federal government will not be part of the approval process for the Cherokee Constitution.  I don’t know how the Bureau of Indian Affairs is going to react to this, but I would think they are not going to be happy. 

Then, we have this bill floating around Congress to defund the Cherokee Nation.  I have no idea where that will go.  Paul pointed me to a letter from the BIA, saying that they do not have any plans to cut funding based on the Freedmen lawsuit, unless a federal court or the Congress directs them to do so.

What does this mean for the Cherokee people?  What does it mean for Black Cherokees and more specifically the descendants of the Freedmen?  I have no idea, but I will continue to watch this.

Rumors are swirling around everywhere, but the biggest news, which is not a rumor, is that the Congressional Black Caucus member Diane Watson introduced a bill (link is to s PDF of the full text) to sever federal ties with the Cherokee Nation.

The bill is the talk of the message board over at Cornsilks, and Principal Chief candidate Stacy Leeds has a statement about the bill on her site.  Time magazine is also covering the Freedmen debate, but they didn’t say much at all about the election. 

Time had a good interview with a professor, Tiya Miles who is a Native American Studies professor at the University of Michigan.  I strongly agreed with her assessment of the Native American/Black relations:

Perhaps more importantly, they (the Freedmen) have considered themselves Cherokee their whole lives. “There’s a tremendous amount of cultural identification that former slaves felt with Native tribes, of shared homeland, food, familial ties,” says Tiya Miles, a historian who runs the Native American Studies program at the University of Michigan. Cherokee had slaves. Cherokee also married, and slept with, blacks. And there were blacks who were adopted into the Cherokee tribe though they had no blood or slave ties. They all walked the Trail of Tears with the Cherokee, from the Deep South to Oklahoma.

These are the facts, but for blacks, especially, the mythology holds equally strong sway. A kinship with Native Americans has been a logical way to claim some sort of “non-black” status in a society where black is the most demeaned racial category. It’s also helped ground many black people searching for an original homeland, says Miles. “Native America was connected to freedom,” says Miles. “It was said slaves could run away to tribes and find shelter.” Clearly that wasn’t always the case, and the Cherokee controversy is, for Miles, “the end of innocence about what the historical relationship between African Americans and Native Americans really consisted of.”

The article author also made the following statement, “And it creates new complications for the relationship between blacks, who have long held a romantic view of their kinship with American Indians, and Native Americans, some of whom owned black slaves and fought for the Confederacy.”  I think there definitely is a difference in how African Americans and Native Americans view their relationships with each other.  I have very rarely heard any anti-American Indian sentiment from Blacks who I know. ¹ Most African Americans may be ignorant about the issues facing contemporary Native Americans, but I tend to agree with the professor; many African Americans do have a romantic notion of Black/Indian relations, and with this whole Freedmen issue, the romance may be over.²  I’m afraid that anti-black sentiment among Native Americans is much stronger than anti-Native American sentiment among blacks; of course, someone needs to do an actually study of this, but for now that would be my hypothesis.  I will also add that there are many Native Americans who are not anti-black and see this Cherokee fiasco and the Seminole Freedmen case as evidence of Native Americans engaging in self destruction.  The people in this group generally believe that American Indians should not base tribal and national identity only on “blood quantum” and race, opposed to culture and history.  The idea here is that blood quantum was created by Europeans as part of the genocide against American Indian people and cultures, so continuing to use it, is racist and self destructive. ³

Having followed this very closely, I think it is fair to say that the mainstream media (MSM) hasn’t done well at covering the complexities of this election and the Freedmen issue.  My first critique would be that many MSM outlets consistently ignore Native American political issues, so the Cherokee election is completely off the radar for many media outlets. ⁴  A few MSM outlets have covered the Freedmen issue, and very few (mostly local Oklahoma papers) have covered the election.  What so many of the mainstream media articles miss is how Cherokee politics play into these debates.  They usually let Chief Smith give his “we are a tribe of Indians” answer, but they don’t talk to the council members and the other candidate for Chief.  I’m glad they talked with David Cornsilk, but they also need to bring in other elected officials, so people realize that this view that the Freedmen need to be ousted is highly contentious, and it hasn’t even been supported by the Cherokee Supreme Court.⁵

With the Freedmen issue at the forefront, the election will be held tomorrow.  There has been some preliminary voting, and if I have any Cherokee voters reading this article provides a list of polling places, and a phone number to call for people who are having voting problems.  I will probably be back on Monday or Sunday to talk about the election results.

1. The same could not be said for Asians and Latinos; I’ve heard plenty of African Americans make disparaging stereotypical comments about these two groups. (back)
2. I’d venture to say that very few blacks or whites know that some Native American tribes had black slaves. I suspect many Native Americans don’t know that either. (back)
3. If you really want to see this debate play out go read the comments in this thread over at Wampum, where MB Williams and The Local Crank take on a commenter named Charlotte. (back)
4. One very obvious example of ignoring Native American politics would be the Jack Abramhoff scandal.  Many of his clients were Native American Nations, and he was caught making many disparaging remarks about his Indian clients and stole millions of dollars from them.  That angle of the story was buried in much of the coverage. Of course, there are other issues not so directly connected to white politicians, including sovereignty issues, poverty, racial identity politics, and numerous other issues that we don’t even hear about at all. (back)
5. It really makes the Cherokees look like a huge mass of racists, with only a few dissenters, but I think there are many more dissenters, including powerful political people. (back)

Some paparazzi took pictures of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal breastfeeding her child in public. Somehow I missed this, when the “scandalous” photos were taken a couple weeks ago. They are posted all over the place at entertainment blogs. I thought I would pick out a few choice comments from sexist pigs for your reading (dis)pleasure.

Here are some comments from A Socialite’s Life

Here’s one from Conrad:

I am sure plenty of women find this beautiful, but thats a beauty that needs to be shared between mother and child in a quiet, discreet location. She had to know 1 million plus ASL readers would be viewing this spectacle. I never had much of an opinion of her, but now I know she’s an animal. It reminds of that childhood question - “what’s grosser than gross…”

Another from What Betheny said:

Gross. I like her, but this picture is gross. There are more private ways to breastfeed your baby in this country. We’re not living in Africa. I can’t stand the self-righteous breastfeeding moms who just show absolutely everything without thinking for one minute that just maybe not everyone is comfortable with seeing their body parts and their child sucking off of them. It’s a personal bond between you and your baby, so make if personal.

Now here is the good news: most people on the thread were supportive (at least the last time I read the comments a week ago).

Then, you have this site, where they put up a not safe for work warning and blurred out her breast (But apparently the pictures in this post are A-OK). Here are a few of the comments (out of 490+).

From eva:

hmmm… imo if you want to breastfeed in public, pump your tits at home, bottle it, and feed them that way.

From combustion8:

shes so ugly… look at that puppy sag.

From Frenchie:

Ewww…not good. She could have covered up a bit with a blanket. I know it’s a natural act but that is pretty tacky. Her tit hanging all over the place is not natural. She should be more conscientious of not offending the general public by being more subtle.

From Rebecca:

Discusting! I’ve seen women do that before but at least they had the decency to cover their breasts. What a freakin peasant! Yes breastfeeding is natural but so is urinating and defecating, does this mean we’ll catch people doing that in public too? This is what I call no self-respect. (Gee where has Rachel heard this one before.)

I couldn’t bare to read through all of the comments. This thread had many breastfeeding defenders even though it wasn’t quite as pro-breastfeeding as the other thread.

The fact that this was covered as a controversy reflects anti-breastfeeding attitudes. A few sites treated it as such, and I found a few that put disclaimers admonishing people to behave. A Hollywood actress is feeding her child in a public place should be a non-issue, and I even hesitated to post this. However, people do need to be reminded that many anti-breastfeeding attitudes are puritanical, sexist, and unhealthy. I think the number of commenters who feel the need to personally attack Gyllenhaal commenting on her appearance, her sexuality, and her morality (or supposed lack there of) is indicative of why breastfeeding is such an important feminist issue.

Shout Out to Jennifer at Black Breastfeeding Blog!

It is now time to send in your submissions! All, not just white anti-racist parents, are welcome to submit work. To submit a post written by you or someone else, go here and click on “submit your blog article to this carnival”. Along with the URL of the article, be sure to include your name and email. You can also send me your submition at warpblog at gmail dot com.This is a traveling carnival. The idea is to get more people blogging and/or reading about creating a world free of racism. More info about the carnival and how you can become a host can be found here.

For More Info. Check Out White Anti-Racist Parent