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thoughts on immigration policy and race
President Lyndon Baines Johnson signing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 on Liberty Island (Lyndon B. Johnson Library Collection/Yoichi R. Okamoto) This weekend marked the 50th anniversary...
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Social Media and Public Engagement in the Wake of Halloween
Julian Povey//Flickr CC. This fall I’ve been working on the address I’m supposed to give as President of the Midwest Sociological Society in Chicago this coming March (23-26). Playing off of our...
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Refugee Realities
Map by Olivier Kugler, © New Yorker. Last month, The New Yorker published a great, extended form piece documenting the long, complicated, terrifying, and still uncertain journey of one Syrian refugee...
View ArticleThankful for Socks
Socks. A simple pair of socks. Amidst everything that seems to be going haywire in our world these days, it is good, right, and necessary to take this day and reflect on all that we have to be thankful...
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MLK: Sinking Shots, Sparking Thoughts
Via Joe Soss on Facebook. On Facebook, today, scrolling through my friends’ posts, I spotted U of M professor Joe Soss’s post featuring an eye-catching photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr....
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Sociologists Writing and Being Read
Happily, many of our fellow sociologists are showing off their spider-senses in public writing with big audiences and broad, synthetic ideas woven from rigorous research. Sociologists are uniquely...
View ArticleBeyonce is Black: Did You Know?
So, did you see the Saturday Night Live spoof “The Day Beyonce Turned Black” yet? It’s pretty amusing—from the opening sequence (“For white people, it was just another great week. They never saw it...
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Beyonce in the Belly of the Sporting Beast
Beyonce and her dancers practice their entrance before the performance. Via Beyonce, Instagram. Okay, I’ll make this quick since it’s a bit dated. After I wrote that little post about Saturday Night...
View ArticleRace, Resentment, Rage
The study of racial inequalities and identities has been one of my main areas ever since I started graduate school in the 1990s. In fact, persistent racial injustice is one of the main reasons I went...
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The Politics of Poverty Policy
Click to visit the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality website. Our friends over at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality are at it again—this time with a special, election-year issue...
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A New Era of Athlete Awareness and Advocacy
When even Michael Jordan—that erstwhile poster child of the transcendent, apolitical, super-star athlete—jumps into the fray, you know something is up. I am referring, of course, to the public...
View ArticleA Quick, Little Defense of Sociological Labor and Learning
“We simply do not need more poetry, gender studies or sociology majors. Starbucks is fully stocked with baristas for the foreseeable future.” (StarTribune, Monday, September 5, 2016). This is the pull...
View ArticleFirst Person Ethnography
There’s been a lot of talk among sociologists lately about the status of ethnographic research and knowledge, and writing has been at the center of it. Does well-written, powerfully argued fieldwork...
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The Return of Revolt – Tommie Smith and John Carlos Go to Washington
U.S. athletes Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos stare downward during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner after Smith received the gold and Carlos the bronze for the 200 meter run at the Summer...
View Article“They Out Here Sayin’ for $800:” SNL’s Most Hilarious and Insightful Skit of...
Saturday Night Live has been having great fun with the presidential campaigns and debates all fall, with Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon headlining in the roles of Trump and Clinton. These skits have...
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Elijah Anderson and the Cosmopolitan Canopy on Vox
Getting sociological research into public circulation is an ongoing challenge, especially when we are talking about sociologists writing in their own voice about their own original research. Obviously,...
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Beyonce, the Dixie Chicks, and Country Brilliance
Photo by Disney|ABC, Flickr CC Okay, so I’m short on time and more than a little bit intimidated by Beyonce and all her brilliance. But I grew up listening to country music, have long loved the Dixie...
View ArticleMornings After in America
I was in the 8th grade, in 1980, when Ronald Reagan got elected. As much as my white, southern Missouri friends idolized him, I was terrified. For reasons I only vaguely perceived at the time, I...
View ArticleLong-form Journalism, 2017 Late Summer Highlights
I turned 50 this summer so maybe I’m feeling a little sentimental. Nevertheless, in this season of tumult, Trump, and 140 character tweets that pass for news, I have found myself sustained by the some...
View ArticleFirst Day Note, 2017-2018
Good Morning, Everyone! It’s nerdy, I know, but I’ve always found the first day of school to be one of the most exciting, hopeful, and uplifting days of the entire calendar year. Maybe that’s what...
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