Below is another announcement about an online survey in need of Chinese American respondents:

Greetings. My name is William Nguyen, MA and I am a Ph. D Candidate at Alliant International University: CSPP. I am conducting a study that explores the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of Chinese American-identified undergraduate students attending a 2 or 4 year college/university in regards to their career decision-making process. I believe that the career theories currently in the literature fail to fully capture the Asian American experience and often neglect key facets of who we are: our culture, our experiences of acculturation, and the influence of honor and family.

If you are interested in participating, you will complete a 20 – 30 minute survey that asks you a myriad of questions related to your career decision-making process. All responses and identifying information will be kept confidential. As incentive for your participation, all participants that provide contact information will be entered in a raffle for either a $75, $50, or $25 gift card to Gap, Inc. (or any other department store of choice).

Should you have any questions about the research please contact: William Nguyen at wnguyen@alliant.edu. If you would like to participate, please click go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DQKGz8ZQQ58Uuyq4aROxvA_3d_3d. Also, if you are interested in receiving results to this study, please contact William Nguyen with that request. Thank you for your time and consideration.

In Peace,

William W. Nguyen, MA, Ph. D Candidate
Alliant International University: California School of Professional Psychology
San Francisco, CA

My fellow sociologist blogger Joe Feagin at Racism Review mentions that David Segal over at Slate has a very interesting and informative slideshow of racist commercial caricatures over the years. For those who are too young to remember, blatantly derogatory and stereotypical images of Blacks, Latinos, Native American Indians, and Asians were routinely used to sell products not too long ago. Below is just one example:

Nasty stereotypes have helped move the merchandise for more than a century, and the history of their use and abuse offers a weird and telling glimpse of race relations in this country. Not surprisingly, the earliest instances were the most egregious.

This circa-1900 ad for a rodent-control product called “Rough on Rats” doesn’t just exploit the then-popular urban legend that Chinese people eat rats. It also underscores the intensity of American xenophobia of the day. There were anti-Chinese riots at the time, as well as legislation like the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal ban on immigration passed in 1882. (It was on the books until 1943.) In the ad, “They must go” refers both to the rodents and the Chinese.

For those interested in the sociology of media and cultural images, my colleagues at Contexts magazine host a very interesting blog titled “Sociological Images” that you should definitely check out.

Unfortunately, as the Slate slideshow and captions point out, there are a few racist caricatures that are still with us today and you may be surprised at what they are.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the incident in which Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates alleges that he was racially profiled by the Cambridge Police Department after he tried to open the front door of his house that was stuck only to have a neighbor mistakenly think he was a burglar trying to break into the house and call the police, who subsequently arrested him after a confrontation at his house. The following CBS News video summarizes the incident:

For those who are regular readers of this site and blog, it will not surprise you to hear that I am squarely behind Professor Gates on this one for many reasons — being an academic as well, being a person of color, and being a sociologist who studies racial dynamics in this country.

As Professor Gates and his supporters argue, this entire incident is a stark example of the persistence of racial profiling in American society, where many Whites are quick to assume that any Black man in a well-to-do neighborhood is suspicious, where police are much less likely to believe a Black man’s word than a White man’s, and where police are much more likely to arrest a Black man while letting a White man go for the same behavior.

I don’t want to go into a long and detailed analysis about this particular incident nor the legal issue of racial profiling specifically. Some of the better commentaries that I’ve read about the Gates incident can be found at Racism Review, All About Race, and the New York Times.

For those who are interested in delving into the background issues that frame racial profiling (and the related topic of White privilege), I highly recommend starting with some of the books written by Professor Joe Feagin, such as White Racism: The Basics, Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage, and The Many Costs of Racism.

Certainly, this is not the first incident of racial profiling in American history. Neither is it the first incident in which an African American professor was arrested trying to do a seemingly routine and mundane task in public. I refer to a 2005 incident involving Antwi Akom, an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University and personal friend of mine, who was stopped from entering his office and subsequently arrested by campus police while his two young daughters were sleeping in his car.

Sadly, these two incidents illustrate many unfortunate points about the state of race relations in American society today. The first is that even Blacks such as Professors Gates and Akom with high-status occupations or professional characteristics are not immune from racism and racial profiling. In fact, incidents like this remind me of a “joke” that an African American mentor told me years ago (please excuse the language, I’m just repeating it as it was told to me): “What does White America call a Black man with a Ph.D.? A nigger.”

More generally, these kinds of incidents remind us that, contrary to what many and perhaps most Whites think, race is still a deeply-entrenched issue in American society, just waiting to boil over. As evidence, a second CBS News video summarizes how this incident has touched off a national debate about race relations and racial profiling:

What strikes me the most about not just this particular incident involving Professor Gates, but the reaction of Americans from different racial backgrounds around the country is this: I find it ironic that in general, many (as in a large number but certainly not all) Whites feel unaccustomed and therefore uncomfortable talking about racial issues (this recent article published by the American Psychological Association summarizes this tendency among Whites to avoid talking about race very well). Instead, consciously or unconsciously, they try to be “colorblind” and act like they don’t notice racial differences around them.

In theory, that’s a great idea but in practice and within the realities of American society, it is just not practical and ultimately, naive. The result of this dynamic is that when incidents like this (or when a group of Black and Latino children are turned away by a predominantly White swimming club, or when I notice that virtually all of the people who volunteered to stay and clean up after a Buddhist retreat are people of color) become publicized, many Whites are surprised and taken aback when the “R-word” (racism) is used.

In fact, many Whites become quite defensive when the R-word (or the idea of White privilege) comes up, as though they are being personally accused of acting in a racist way against a person of color, or that they are being told that they are personally more privileged than every single other person of color in the country.

But here’s the problem: what many Whites don’t realize is that one of the reasons why people of color invoke racism as the cause of such incidents is that on a collective and institutional level, we as a society have yet to honestly and fully reconcile our racial history and how it continues to form the basis for the conflicts such as this.

In other words, the fact that many Whites don’t want to or can’t talk about racism (as well-meaning and well-intentioned as they are) is part of the reason why racism still exists. In fact, this inability or unwillingness to discuss racism is a big reason why many Whites get defensive when the topic of racial discrimination or White privilege comes up — they are not able to depersonalize the issue, place it outside of their own personal experiences, and examine it from it from an institutional point of view.

Ultimately, this is also why relationships, opinions, experiences, and conversations between Whites and non-Whites on the individual and institutional levels remain emotionally fraught beneath the superficial veneer of colorblindness and in fact, will continue to boil over for the foreseeable future.

Yes, denial that race is a problem is part of the problem. And the more most Americans deny it, the more it festers and the more it erodes our sense of national identity and unity. The fact that this incident has become a national controversy should be plenty of proof that race is still a unresolved issue in this country. For those who think that I’m being “extremist,” or even “racist,” then take a look at the following NBC News video from this past weekend that basically says the exact same thing:

As part of this blog’s mission of making academic research and data more easily accessible, understandable, and applicable to a wider audience and to practical, everyday social issues, I highlight new sociological books about Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups as I hear about them. As always, please remember that I highlight them for informational purposes only and do not necessarily endorse their entire content or arguments.

Twenty-First Century Color Lines: Multiracial Change in Contemporary America, edited by Andrew Grant-Thomas and Gary Orfield (Temple University Press)

The result of work initiated by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, this collection provides an excellent overview of the contemporary racial and ethnic terrain in the United States. The well-respected contributors to “Twenty-First Century Color Lines” combine theoretical and empirical perspectives, answering fundamental questions about the present and future of multiracialism in the United States:

• How are racial and ethnic identities promoted and defended across a spectrum of social, geopolitical and cultural contexts?
• What do two generations of demographic and social shifts around issues of race look like ‘on the ground?’
• What are the socio-cultural implications of changing demographics in the U.S.?
• And what do the answers to these questions portend for our multiracial future?

This illuminating book addresses issues of work, education, family life and nationality for different ethnic groups, including Asians and Latinos as well as African Americans and Whites. Such diversity, gathered here in one volume, provides new perspectives on ethnicity in a society marked by profound racial transformations.

The contributors include: Luis A. Aviles, Juan Carlos Martinez-Cruzado, Nilanjana Dasgupta, Christina Gomez, Gerald Gurin, Patricia Gurin, Anthony Kwame Harrison, Maria-Rosario Jackson, John Matlock, Nancy McArdle, John Mollenkopf, John A. Powell, Doris Ramirez, David Roediger, Anayra Santory-Jorge, Jiannbin Lee Shiao, Mia H. Tuan, Katrina Wade-Golden and the editors.

You might be interested to read the following posts from July of years past:

• 2008: Michael Chang’s Significance to Asian Americans
  Discussing the effect that Chinese American tennis star Michael Chang had on Asian Americans in general and me personally.
• 2007: The Future of Chinatowns
  Examining the intersecting changes faced by American society, urban and suburban development, and Asian American demographics.
• 2006: Sen. Biden’s Comments About Indians
  Democratic Senator Joe Biden puts his foot in his mouth again, this time about Indian Americans.
• 2005: Welcome to the Neighborhood — Or Not
  The misguided premise of a reality tv show illuminates the fallacies of being colorblind in a society that is still strongly racialiazed.

To complement my earlier post on recent studies on the second generation, another special issue from an academic journal focuses on issues related to social justice and activism among Asian Americans: “Asian American and Pacific Islander Population Struggles for Social Justice” in the journal Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict, and World Order (2008-2009, Volume 35 Issue 2):

This issue of Social Justice offers an overview of the struggle for social justice in the United States by Asian and Pacific Islanders, including the factors that shape oppositional consciousness and the possibility for collective action. Authors address Asian American activism in urban communities — particularly traditional Asian ethnic enclaves — around land use, affordable housing, as well as labor and community preservation.

Articles address grass-roots efforts to launch an anti-drug offensive, an environmental justice and leadership skills organization, to develop tools for Muslim women of South Asian descent to fight anti-Islamic sentiment, to confront the marginalization and stereotyping of Asian Americans in popular culture, to critique the racial differentiation of the Asian and Latino immigrant populations, and to expose how the model minority myth reinforces established inequities and places second-generation Asian Americans within a precarious, defensive dilemma in which they must constantly prove their worth as “real” Americans regardless of their legal citizenship status.

• Adalberto Aguirre, Jr., and Shoon Lio: “Spaces of Mobilization: The Asian American/Pacific Islander Struggle for Social Justice”
• Michael Liu and Kim Geron: “Changing Neighborhood: Ethnic Enclaves and the Struggle for Social Justice
• Jinah Kim: “Immigrants, Racial Citizens, and the (Multi)Cultural Politics of Neoliberal Los Angeles”
• Diane C. Fujino: “Race, Place, Space, and Political Development: Japanese-American Radicalism in the “Pre-Movement” 1960s”
• May Fu: “‘Serve the People and You Help Yourself'”: Japanese-American Anti-Drug Organizing in Los Angeles, 1969 to 1972″
• Bindi Shah: “The Politics of Race and Education: Second-Generation Laotian Women Campaign for Improved Educational Services”
• Etsuko Maruoka: “Wearing ‘Our Sword’: Post-September 11 Activism Among South Asian Muslim Women Student Organizations in New York”
• Lisa Sun-Hee Park: “Continuing Significance of the Model Minority Myth: The Second Generation”
• Meera E. Deo, Christina Chin, Jenny J. Lee, Noriko Milman, and Nancy Wang Yuen: “Missing in Action: ‘Framing’ Race in Prime-Time Television”
• Gregory Shank: “Paul T. Takagi Honored”

Here are some more announcements and links out that have come my way relating to Asians or Asian Americans. As always, links to other sites are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of their contents:

National Directory of Scholarships, Internships, and Fellowships for Asian American and Pacific Islander Students

As the pressures of the economy place financial obstacles to Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, State Farm, the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA), the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), and the Asian American Studies Program at University of Maryland (AAST) collaborated to present the 2009-2011 National Directory of Scholarships, Internships, and Fellowships for Asian American and Pacific Islander Students.

According to Camden Lee, an OCA intern and University of Maryland student, the directory is “an amazing resource that provides opportunities that I never even knew about.” Available at OCA & JACL events and online at the University of MD AAST site, this one of a kind Directory includes information and resources for AAPI students and their families. . . .

Professor Larry Shinagawa, director of AAST, said: “The directory is a handy reference that can be used by all students and parents who are interested in finding the financial means and experiential resources to pursue higher education. You will find here a wealth of information, tips, and resources that can help enable students to pursue a quality higher education. The adage that education can never be taken from you and enables you to persevere and succeed continues to be the age-old truth. We hope this directory serves the purposes of advancing educational opportunities to collegiate-age students of APA background.”

Normal Mineta Fellowship at the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL)

The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) announces an opening for the JACL Norman Y. Mineta Fellowship in the Washington, D.C. office of the JACL. This fellowship is in the Washington, D.C. office of the JACL and will be focused on public policy advocacy as well as programs of safety awareness in the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. The fellowship is named for the Honorable Norman Y. Mineta, former Secretary of Transportation and former Secretary of Commerce, and is funded by State Farm Insurance.

Support Federal Hate Crimes Legislation

Earlier this week, Senator Leahy introduced the Leahy/Collins/Kennedy/Snowe Hate Crimes Amendment (identical to the text of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act) to S. 1391, the FY 2010 Department of Defense Authorization Bill. The Senate has begun periodic debate on the amendment that would provide significant improvements to our current hate crimes prevention laws. The House of Representatives already passed the bill in April.

This bill expands the coverage of existing hate crime laws to include crimes not only based on race, color, religion, and national origin, but also bias-motivated crimes based on the victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.

It also provides the federal government jurisdiction to prosecute hate crimes in states where current law or local law enforcement action are inadequate. This increased protection will help ethnic and racial groups that continue to be subjected to bias-motivated violence and intimidation.

Hate crimes cut across every community. Passing this bill will ensure that all people have the right to be safe and free from physical harm and intimidation. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act sends a clear message that Americans do not have to live in fear.

Senators will vote soon. Please call your Senators toll-free at 866-659-9641 and urge his or her support of the Leahy/Collins/Kennedy/Snowe Hate Crimes amendment (Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act), which will provide safety and security for all individuals. We appreciate your support and the action you will take to help fight hate crimes.

Florence Tan Moeson 2010 Fellowship

The Asian Division Friends Society announces the Florence Tan Moeson Research Fellowship Program for 2010. This Fellowship Program is made possible by a generous donation of Florence Tan Moeson, for 43 years a Chinese Team cataloger in the Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division at the Library of Congress before she retired in 2001. Mrs. Moeson passed away on November 15, 2008.

The purpose of the Fellowship Program is to give individuals the opportunity to use the Asian and Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) collections in the Library of Congress to pursue scholarly research projects. The Library’s Asian collections are among the most significant outside of Asia and consist of over 2.8 million monograph, serial, newspaper, manuscript and microform titles in the vernacular languages of East, South and Southeast Asia.

The Library’s AAPI collection was officially launched in 2007. It contains primary resource materials including monographs, serials, government reports, newspapers, census data, photos, oral histories, sound recordings, film, and miscellaneous ephemera pertaining to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

For more details regarding this fellowship and information about past awardees, please visit the ADFS website. The deadline for the 2010 application season is September 30, 2009.

The Florence Tan Moeson Research Fellowship awards total $14,000 each year for 10 years in support of grant support for research projects employing the Asian Division’s Reading Room and the Library’s extensive Asian collections.

The grants are awarded upon demonstration of need through a competitive process. Grants are intended to subsidize the researcher’s transportation fares to and from Washington, DC, overnight accommodations and photocopying fees. Graduate students, independent scholars, community college teachers, researchers without regular teaching appointments, and librarians with a demonstrated need for research fellowship support are eligible to apply.

The Library’s Asian collections began in 1869 with a gift of 10 works in 933 volumes from an emperor of China to the United States. Spanning a diversity of subjects from China, Japan, Korea, the South Asian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and the Asian Pacific American community, the Library’s Asian and AAPI collections have become one of the most accessible and comprehensive sources in the world. To learn about the content of LC Asian and AAPI collections, visit the Library’s Asian Division’s website.

Contact: Dr. Anchi Hoh, Co-Chair, Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship Program Committee, adia@loc.gov, 202-707-5673.

Asian Pacific Community Fund Annual Gala

Join the Asian Pacific Community Fund (APCF) in celebrating its 3rd Annual Giving For All Seasons Fundraising Gala on Thursday, July 23, 2009 at the Grammy Museum Terrace in LA Live (800 W. Olympic Blvd.). The event is about promoting philanthropy and civic engagement in the diverse community throughout Los Angeles County.

Reception starts at 6:30 pm. Program starts at 8:00 pm and includes the 2009 Grant Distribution to our Affiliate Agencies and an Awards Presentation. Attire is Cocktail or Business.

APCF is honoring Assemblymember Mike Eng and Edison Chinese Connection for their leadership and service for the advancement of Asian Pacific Islanders throughout Los Angeles County.

Tickets can also be purchased by contacting Christine at cvasquez@apcf.org or (213) 624-6400 ext. 4.

Sponsors Needed for 2010 Asian Olympics

“Dai Hoi The Thao (Asian Olympics) is an ongoing tradition for 30 years. Hosted by the University of Texas Vietnamese Student Association, this three-day event gathers Asian-Americans from all over the U.S. to compete in many sporting games and activities. In addition to these activities, we also host an opening ceremony that consists of cultural and modern performers from all over the state. The growing number of participants and spectators has reaches huge numbers (3000), making it one of the biggest Asian-American sporting events in Texas.

At this current time, we are looking for sponsors to help fund an event of this magnitude. Sponsoring an event here in the capital of Texas not only promotes goodwill and high public relations, but also offers a chance to meet and gain prospective employees as well as a chance to help developing minds. If you are interested, please visit our website at http://daihoithethao.org/sponsors.html and/or e-mail rh22875@gmail.com.

Ronnie Huynh
Dai Hoi The Thao Coordinator ’09-’10

Earlier this month, my family and I attended the annual Family Retreat at the Deer Park Monastery. The monastery was founded by the well-known but sometimes controversial Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn and is set in the hills and desert just outside of Escondido, California. Some of our friends in the Los Angeles have attended this retreat for yours and this was the second year that we attended.

Overall, we really enjoyed the retreat and its nature-centered activities and sessions of relaxed meditation and discussions on being mindful in our daily lives, geared towards adults, children, and both together. We also enjoy being able to camp with other families (dorms are also available) and socializing with like-minded friends and newly-made friends. It’s a nice and much more relaxed change of pace from the more traditional and strict Vipassana Meditation Center that we also participate in.

Modern Buddhism seems to be an increasingly popular and multicultural practice among many Americans and around the world, particularly forms related to the less formal Mahayana version (as opposed to the stricter monastic Theravada version). As a reflection of such, this retreat was truly a multicultural and multiracial event — of the 120-150 or so people in attendance (from babies to grandparents), about 40% were Asian/Asian American, 40% were White, and the rest were African American, Latino, and other races/ethnicities.

With this in mind, it was truly gratifying to see everyone interacting with each other in a very mindful, mutually-respectful, and genuinely peaceful way throughout the event, in contrast to some of the sad examples of racial hostility that still exists in other parts of American society. Within this environment, I and my family felt very comfortable and refreshed and certainly, this is one of the main reasons why we plan on attending in future years.

At the same time, there were a couple of incidents that again highlighted for me the nature of racial differences that still pervade American society, even within the confines of a insulated and “conscious” environment like this. Both of these incidents are not significant or upsetting enough for me to stop attending — it’s only because I am a sociologist that I focus on them.

The first involved a group of families visiting from Viet Nam (as distinguished from Vietnamese American), about 20 individuals in all. For the most part, they were indistinguishable from the rest of the attendees and in fact, as a Vietnamese American, I was very pleased to see them participating in the retreat (although I regret that because of my lack of fluency in Vietnamese that I couldn’t really personally communicate with them).

Unfortunately, their “foreignness” became apparent at the end of each day’s events.

Each day’s activities generally concluded around 9pm, after which attendees would prepare to go to sleep, either in their tents in the campground area or in the dorm area. At 9:30pm, the guidelines called for “noble silence” when everyone is expected to stay quiet for the night.

For whatever reason, this group of Vietnamese families did not understand these guidelines or chose to ignore them because each night, almost everyone could hear them staying up and being quite loud in both the dorm and tent areas. This involved not just talking, but often included shouting, yelling, and arguing very loudly and disruptively well into the night.

Needless to say, this made getting a good night’s sleep rather difficult for many of us. The other part of these incidents were that even though many of us talked to the monks about this situation, for whatever reasons, it continued every night until the end of the retreat.

This leads me to wonder whether the monks (who were about 80% Vietnamese American and the rest were White) felt shy in confronting the Vietnamese group, perhaps fearful that they (and perhaps by implication, the rest of us as attendees) were being too harsh or authoritarian towards them as foreigners visiting the U.S. Symbolized by Barack Obama as our President, these days many Americans are more mindful not to come across as judgmental and “superior” towards others around the world.

But on the other hand, the Vietnamese group’s behavior may have reinforced the notion of them as loud and crude foreigners and “outsiders” to the rest of the attendees. As such, failing to confront their behavior could have caused more harm than good in terms of helping to bridge social divisions and dispel lingering cultural stereotypes toward non-Whites and/or foreigners.

For me personally, this is a complicated issue that highlights some of the ironies and contradictions involved in being Asian American, as I wrote about earlier in regards to a similar incident in an airport security line — standing up for and defending Asians in racial solidarity, but also being embarrassed and even annoyed by their “foreignness” as an American myself.

In contrast, the second “racial” incident at the retreat does not involve much ambiguity at all.

Specifically, during the retreat, families were assigned to different “service meditation” work groups, helping the monks with different tasks involved with running the retreat, such as cleaning bathrooms, setting up the meditation hall, etc. Our family was assigned to one of three teams who helped to clean up, wash, and dry plates, pots, and utensils after one meal each day.

My family and I actually enjoyed this work as it allowed us to give something back to, or at least directly help in the mundane, behind-the-scenes operation of the retreat — a sense of ownership perhaps. We also felt a sense of community in working as a team within not just our family, but with the other families in our group, each of us doing our part to contribute to the larger purpose and becoming closer to each other in the process.

However, after the last meal (lunch) on the last day of the retreat, there were no teams assigned to clean up afterward and instead, the monks asked for volunteers to stay a little bit to wash dishes, etc. Our family was not in a rush to leave so we joined in the effort.

As it turned out, of the 15 or so people who stayed to help clean up, all but one was a person of color — there was just one White person who helped in the cleanup.

In particular, I took notice of one young White couple who came to the morning activities (apparently on the last day of the retreat, the monastery invites those from the surrounding community to come in and participate in a group walk and lunch). During lunch, this couple actually raised their hands when the monks asked for volunteers to stay and clean up, but for whatever reasons, just walked away and left once they finished their lunch.

I hate to say it, but the actions of this particular couple and the White attendees present at this last lunch seem to be a microcosm of the White-privileged notion that service work should be left to people of color and that unless they are specifically assigned to do so, many Whites seem to think that they are “above” such “demeaning” work and physical labor.

These two incidents go to show that even at an event that shows us the peace, harmony, and mindfulness that exists in American society and among people from all kinds of backgrounds, in many ways, American society is still quite racialized, even if most of us may be completely oblivious to such dynamics.

So much for the Obama effect.

Many Americans seemed to think that Barack Obama’s victory to become our nation’s first non-White President represented the end of racism in America and that our society had finally moved past skin color as a marker of social hierarchy. Sadly, they were and continue to be wrong.

As many media organizations and blogs have reported and summarized in the MSNBC video below, a private club in suburban Philadelphia reneged on an arrangement to allow a group of Black and Latino children to use their swimming pool, with many White club member parents allegedly uttering racial slurs to the children:

Alethea Wright, director of Creative Steps, a summer camp for minority children, said the organization paid for weekly swim time at the pool. But during a trip there June 29 some of the children said they heard people asking what “black kids” were doing at the club, Wright said. . . .

Creative Steps, located in northeast Philadelphia, had contracted for the 65 children at the day camp to go each Monday afternoon, Wright said. But shortly after they arrived June 29, she said, some black and Hispanic children reported hearing racial comments. . . .

“Some of the members began pulling their children out of the pool and were standing around with their arms folded,” Wright said. “Only three members left their children in the pool with us.” Several days later, the club refunded the camp’s payment without explanation, said Wright. . .

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission will immediately open an investigation into the actions of The Valley Club in the leafy suburb of Huntingdon Valley, chairman Stephen A. Glassman said. . . . “Allegedly, this group was denied the use of a pool based on their race,” Glassman said. “If the allegations prove to be true, this is illegal discrimination in Pennsylvania.” . . .

Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., issued a statement calling the allegations “extremely disturbing” and said he was looking into the matter.

My fellow blogger sociologist Jessie at RacismReview.com elaborates on some of the details of the incident and sums up the sociological context of this incident quite well:

It’s a good thing that there are laws in place that prohibit racial discrimination of this sort, and that people were outraged this happened, and that a U.S. Senator is stepping up to investigate and, at least potentially, take some action against these perpetrators of swimming pool racism.

Yet, it’s an appalling fact to realize that nearly fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts, we are still grappling with the continuing significance of racism in public places. We are, apparently, still at a point where we’re having to investigate people for violating the prohibition against racial discrimination in public accommodations.

Think about these kids in Northeast Philly next time you hear someone use the phrase “post-racial.”

Seriously, this is 2009, not 1909, right?

Without doubt, the actual incident is pretty shocking and appalling — White parents pulling their children out of the pool once Black and Latino children began using it, allegedly using racial slurs against the non-White children, and then the club abruptly canceling their earlier arrangement without any apology or explanation.

These events by themselves are pretty clear violations of federal and state laws which prohibit racial and ethnic discrimination in public and private facilities and I hope the club is prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent possible. Incidents like this are completely unacceptable in American society.

But as a sociologist, I also find it interesting to observe the club’s subsequent explanation and “apology,” offered several days after the incident and only after it was bombarded with media coverage and the threat of criminal prosecution. Specifically, as the MSNBC article quoted above notes, the club’s officials denied that race was a factor in the club’s actions and rather, it was safety concerns and a lack of space.

Most recently, the club has offered to have the summer camp kids back, but only “as long as safety issues, times and terms can be agreed upon.” Nice try, but that just basically means that as long as club members have enough advance notice, they can stay away from the club on the day the summer camp kids use it. How magnanimous of them.

These club officials need to wake up and smell what they’re shoveling.

This line of thinking is an example of colorblind ignorance at its best (or would that be, at its worst?) — taking pains to deny that race was ever a factor in one’s actions and trying to pretend or convince oneself that you, your members, and your organization has any hint of racial prejudice at all. After all, that would be so 20th century and we’re living in a “post racial” society now, aren’t we?

The sad truth is, we are living in American society, one that is still highly racialized and one in which the misguided allure of colorblindness has instead blinded us to the fundamental racist sentiments that many individual Americans consciously or unconsciously still have, the social segregation that still divides us along color lines, and the institutional racial inequalities that allow such sentiments to exist.

The calendar may say it’s 2009 but apparently, the racial consciousness of many Americans is about a 100 years behind.

As part of this blog’s mission of making academic research and data more easily accessible, understandable, and applicable to a wider audience and to practical, everyday social issues, I highlight new sociological books about Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups as I hear about them. As always, please remember that I highlight them for informational purposes only and do not necessarily endorse their entire content or arguments.

Artifacts of Loss: Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, by Jane E. Dusselier (Rutgers University Press)

“Dusselier has given us an excellent thick description of the ways that Japanese American prisoners of both generations used arts and crafts as tools of survival. Future camp studies will have to take her work into account.”
– Roger Daniels, University of Cincinnati

In Artifacts of Loss, Jane E. Dusselier looks at the lives of Japanese American internees through the lens of their art. Dusselier urges her readers to consider these often overlooked folk crafts as meaningful political statements which are significant as material forms of protest and as representations of loss.

Jane E. Dusselier is an assistant professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at Iowa State University. Her previously published works include “Does Food Make Place? Food Protests in Japanese American Concentration Camps”.

For my readers who like (or are brave enough) to keep on top of the latest sociological research on immigration, assimilation, and the adaptation of second generation Asian Americans and Latino Americans, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2009, Volume 35 Issue 7) has just released a special issue that they’ve titled, “Local Contexts and the Prospects for the US Second Generation.”

Unfortunately, if you’re not in academics, you’re unlikely to find this journal in your local public library, only in college libraries. Below are the citations and abstracts for each of the articles contained in the issue:

Local Contexts of Immigrant and Second-Generation Integration in the United States

• Authors: Mark Ellis and Gunnar Almgren
• Pages 1059 – 1076
• Abstract: Our paper introduces this special issue of JEMS on the role of the local context in immigrant and second-generation integration in the United States. Recent literature has argued that national contexts are important for understanding the integration of immigrants and their descendents. The articles in this issue make the case that local contexts, broadly defined at any sub-national scale, are also important for understanding integration within the US; they suggest that it is incorrect to think of a singular and spatially undifferentiated integration process for US immigrants. In addition to previewing the contents of the articles in this issue, our paper includes a review of the meaning of generations and integration and a general discussion of the roles of local contexts in mediating processes of integration. This discussion raises questions about the appropriate spatial scale for the analysis of integration and for comparisons of the integration experience across contexts. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research on local contexts of integration within the US.

The Adaptation of the Immigrant Second Generation in America: A Theoretical Overview and Recent Evidence

• Authors: Alejandro Portes, Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, and William Haller
• Pages 1077 – 1104
• Abstract: This paper summarizes a research programme on the new immigrant second generation initiated in the early 1990s and completed in 2006. The four field waves of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) are described and the main theoretical models emerging from it are presented and graphically summarized. After considering critical views of this theory, we present the most recent results from this longitudinal research programme in the form of quantitative models predicting downward assimilation in early adulthood and qualitative interviews identifying ways for the disadvantaged children of immigrants to escape it. Quantitative results strongly support the predicted effects of exogenous variables identified by segmented assimilation theory and identify the intervening factors during adolescence that mediate their influence on adult outcomes. Qualitative evidence gathered during the last stage of the study points to three factors that can lead to exceptional educational achievement among disadvantaged youths, and which indicate the positive influence of selective acculturation. Finally, the implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.

Emerging Contexts of Second-Generation Labor Markets in the United States

• Author: Jamie Goodwin-White
• Pages 1105 – 1128
• Abstract: In this paper I examine how local labor market contexts matter for the Hispanic adult children of immigrants in the United States. Specifically, I consider how these workers fit into ethnic divisions of labour in five metropolitan areas: the traditional immigrant cities of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, and the newer immigrant gateways of Atlanta and Phoenix. I focus on the changing economies of these cities in the 1990s, and how industrial changes affect the jobs and relative wages available to immigrants and their adult children. I also examine the extent to which the adult children of immigrants are occupationally clustered in ‘immigrant jobs’. Intergenerational occupational shifts vary by metropolitan area, but are heavily gendered across all of them. I also discuss the interactions of other scales of context, since state and national-level legislation, local organizing efforts and internal migration all shape the settings within which the children of immigrants come of age.

Immigrants and Neighborhoods of Concentrated Poverty: Assimilation or Stagnation?

• Author: Paul A. Jargowsky
• Pages 1129 – 1151
• Abstract: Immigrants in the United States often live, at least for a time, in neighborhoods that have high concentrations of fellow immigrants. Typically, these neighborhoods also have high poverty levels and are located near concentrations of the native-born poor. Conventional wisdom is that living in extremely poor neighborhoods leads to ‘concentration effects’ that exacerbate the problems of poverty and limit economic opportunity. While immigrants are not immune to the problems of crime, gangs, dilapidated housing and failing schools associated with high-poverty neighborhoods, it has been argued that immigrant neighborhoods provide advantages as well. These include the creation of parallel institutions, vernacular information networks and familiar cultural practices. The analyses presented here provide some support for this notion, by showing immigrants’ progress from higher- to lower-poverty neighborhoods over time. Yet Mexican immigrants do not transition nearly as rapidly, providing support for the segmented assimilation hypothesis

How Neighborhoods Matter for Immigrant Children: The Formation of Educational Resources in Chinatown, Koreatown and Pico Union, Los Angeles

• Author: Min Zhou
• Pages 1153 – 1179
• Abstract: This study examines the specific ways in which local institutions in inner-city neighborhoods affect the formation of educational resources for immigrant children. Local institutions here refer to observable neighborhood-based formal and informal organizations. Based on an ethnographic study of three Los Angeles immigrant neighborhoods—Chinatown, Koreatown and Pico Union (Mexican/Central American neighborhood)—I address two main questions. What types of institution exist at the local level, and how does ethnicity shape them? How do local institutions interact with one another to create tangible and intangible resources conducive to education, and how does ethnicity affect access to these resources? My findings suggest that the social structures of immigrant neighborhoods vary due to group-specific modes of incorporation, immigration histories and the host society’s reception; that community organising at the local level centers around certain common parameters in which co-ethnicity is a crucial component; and that neighborhood-based educational resources are available but the access is unequal and ethnically exclusive.

The Neighbourhood Context for Second-Generation Education and Labour Market Outcomes in New York

• Authors: John Mollenkopf and Ana Champeny
• Pages 1181 – 1199
• Abstract: While using a transnational optic to study first-generation immigrants is now widely accepted, most scholars assume that the same approach is not necessary when studying migrants’ children. They claim that, while immigrants might be involved in the economic, political and religious life of their homelands, their children are unlikely to follow suit. In this paper I argue against summarily dismissing the power of being raised in a transnational social field. When children are brought up in households that are regularly influenced by people, objects, practices and know-how from their ancestral homes, they are socialized into its norms and values and they learn how to negotiate its institutions. They also form part of strong social networks. While not all members of the second generation will access these resources, they have the social skills and competencies to do so, if and when they choose. Capturing these dynamics, and tracking how they change over time, requires long-term ethnographic research in the source and destination countries.

The Political Impact of the New Hispanic Second Generation

• Authors: John R. Logan, Sookhee Oh, and Jennifer Darrah
• Pages 1201 – 1223
• Abstract: The rapid growth of the Hispanic population in the United States, particularly those of the second generation, who have automatic rights of citizenship, could be expected to result in increased influence and representation in politics for this group. We show that the effect of a sheer growth in numbers at the national level is diminished by several factors: low probabilities of naturalization by Hispanic immigrants; non-participation in voting, especially by the US-born generations; and concentration of growth in Congressional Districts that already have Hispanic Representatives. It is a challenge for public policy to reduce the lag between population growth and political representation.

Roots and Routes: Understanding the Lives of the Second Generation Transnationally

• Author: Peggy Levitt
• Pages 1225 – 1242
• Abstract: While using a transnational optic to study first-generation immigrants is now widely accepted, most scholars assume that the same approach is not necessary when studying migrants’ children. They claim that, while immigrants might be involved in the economic, political and religious life of their homelands, their children are unlikely to follow suit. In this paper I argue against summarily dismissing the power of being raised in a transnational social field. When children are brought up in households that are regularly influenced by people, objects, practices and know-how from their ancestral homes, they are socialised into its norms and values and they learn how to negotiate its institutions. They also form part of strong social networks. While not all members of the second generation will access these resources, they have the social skills and competencies to do so, if and when they choose. Capturing these dynamics, and tracking how they change over time, requires long-term ethnographic research in the source and destination countries.

As part of this blog’s mission of making academic research and data more easily accessible, understandable, and applicable to a wider audience and to practical, everyday social issues, I highlight new sociological books about Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups as I hear about them. As always, please remember that I highlight them for informational purposes only and do not necessarily endorse their entire content or arguments.

Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church, by Gerardo Marti (Rutgers University Press)

In Christianity, as with most religions, attaining holiness and a higher spirituality while simultaneously pursuing worldly ideals such as fame and fortune is nearly impossible. So, how do people pursuing careers in Hollywood’s entertainment industry maintain their religious devotion without sacrificing their career goals?

For some, the answer lies just two miles south of the historic center of Hollywood, California, at the Oasis Christian Center. In “Hollywood Faith”, Gerardo Marti shows how a multiracial evangelical congregation of 2,000 people accommodates itself to the entertainment industry and draws in many striving to succeed in this harsh and irreverent business. Oasis strategically sanctifies ambition and negotiates social change by promoting a new religious identity as “champion of life” – an identity that provides people who face difficult career choices and failed opportunities a sense of empowerment and endurance.

The first book to provide an in-depth look at religion among the “creative class.” “Hollywood Faith” will fascinate those interested in the modern evangelical movement and anyone who wants to understand how religion adapts to social change.