TheConversation, Author at Milwaukee Independent

Knowing Who Won: The formalities of declaring the 2020 presidential election

Posted by TheConversation | Oct 19, 2020 |

By Amy Dacey, Executive Director of the Sine Institute of Policy and Politics, American University With the U.S. presidential election rapidly approaching at a time of extraordinary political and social disruption, the possibility of an unclear or contested result is coming under scrutiny. Unlike many other countries, where the president or prime minister is chosen by direct popular vote, in the U.S., a candidate may win the popular vote and still not be elected to the nation’s highest office. The U.S. also differs from most other democracies in that it has no independent electoral commission to certify the final...

Quarantine Envy: It took a pandemic to wake people up to the systematic inequalities of life in America

Posted by TheConversation | Oct 18, 2020 |

By Jessica Rosenfeld, Associate Professor of English Literature, Washington University in St Louis In recent months, mental health experts have been drawing attention to what they have dubbed “quarantine envy.” Many people, they note, have been sizing up the extent to which they’ve been affected by lockdowns and economic hardship. Who still has a job? Who gets to work from home? Whose home is spacious, light-filled and Instagram-worthy? The start of the school year adds another layer of comparison. Parents stuck in a small apartment with two kids forced to learn remotely might feel pangs about the fact that...

Everybody’s Racist: Deprogramming the bias teaching and negative stereotypes rooted in White society

Posted by TheConversation | Oct 17, 2020 |

By Benjamin Waddell, Associate Professor of Sociology, Fort Lewis College; R. Nathan Pipitone, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Florida Gulf Coast University Progress toward a more just and equitable society may be on the horizon. Since the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in May, around the United States, millions of people have taken to the streets, statues have been felled, leaders have been fired and pressured to resign, and activists-turned-politicians have gained traction in prominent political races. But until people recognize that racism is wired into the American mind, we believe that few of these efforts...

Principle-Policy Gap: How White Americans previously failed to support systemic change to end racism

Posted by TheConversation | Oct 12, 2020 |

By Candis Watts Smith, Associate Professor of Political Science & African American Studies, Pennsylvania State University The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the support of less than half of white Americans. Given that Americans tend to have a very narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in...

What Christian sex advice websites reveal about evangelical sexual culture

Posted by TheConversation | Oct 11, 2020

By Kelsy Burke, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Many recent headlines have speculated publicly on the sex lives of Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki Falwell. Reports allege that Falwell Jr. was a complicit voyeur in his wife’s affair with a former pool attendant and business partner. The scandal forced Falwell to resign on August 25 as president of Liberty University, the ultra-conservative evangelical college founded by his father. As as a sociologist who has spent years studying the world of online Christian sex advice message boards and blogs, I have read stories from evangelical Christians...

Minority-owned homes remain undervalued despite laws that forbid using race to evaluate worth

Posted by TheConversation | Oct 3, 2020 |

By Junia Howell, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh; and Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of New Mexico Racial inequality in home values is greater today than it was 40 years ago, with homes in white neighborhoods appreciating $200,000 more since 1980 than comparable homes in similar communities of color. Our new research on home appraisals shows neighborhood racial composition still drives unequal home values, despite laws that forbid real estate professionals from explicitly using race when evaluating a property’s worth. Published in the journal Social Problems, our study The Increasing Effect of Neighborhood Racial Composition...