Adam Bohannon's Library tagged politics → View Popular

Structurally, social networks are driven by homophily even when there are individual exceptions. And sure enough, in the digital world, we see this manifested right before our eyes.
One thing to keep in mind about social media: the internet mirrors and magnifies pre-existing dynamics.
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- Although most of you call these sites "social networking sites," there's almost no networking going on. People use these sites to connect to the people they know.
- In many ways, the Internet is providing a next generation public sphere. Unfortunately, it's also bringing with it next generation divides. The public sphere was never accessible to everyone. There's a reason than the scholar Habermas talked about it as the bourgeois public sphere. The public sphere was historically the domain of educated, wealthy, white, straight men. The digital public sphere may make certain aspects of public life more accessible to some, but this is not a given. And if the ways in which we construct the digital public sphere reinforce the divisions that we've been trying to break down, we've got a problem.
- 1) Social stratification is pervasive in American society (and around the globe). Social media does not magically eradicate inequality. Rather, it mirrors what is happening in everyday life and makes social divisions visible. What we see online is not the property of these specific sites, but the pattern of adoption and development that emerged as people embraced them. People brought their biases with them to these sites and they got baked in.
  
  2) There is no universal public online. What we see as user "choice" in social media often has to do with structural forces like homophily in people's social networks. Social stratification in this country is not cleanly linked to race or education or socio-economic factors, although all are certainly present. More than anything, social stratification is a social networks issue. People connect to people who think like them and they think like the people with whom they are connected. The digital publics that unfold highlight and reinforce structural divisions.
- 3) If you are trying to connect with the public, where you go online matters. If you choose to make Facebook your platform for civic activity, you are implicitly suggesting that a specific class of people is more worth your time and attention than others. Of course, splitting your attention can also be costly and doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be reaching everyone anyhow. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. The key to developing a social media strategy is to understand who you're reaching and who you're not and make certain that your perspective is accounting for said choices. Understand your biases and work to counter them.
  
  4) The Internet has enabled many new voices to enter the political fray, but not everyone is sitting at the table. There's a terrible tendency in this country, and especially among politically minded folks, to interpret an advancement as a solution. We have not eradicated racism. We have not eradicated sexism. We have not eradicated inequality. While we've made tremendous strides in certain battles, the war is not over. The worst thing we can do is to walk away and congratulate ourselves for all of the good things that have happened. Such attitudes create new breeding grounds for increased stratification.

27 Jun 09

In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South - New York Times

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infantmortality africanamerican race politics inequality culture

Persistent Peril: Why African American babies have the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world | RaceWire Article

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infantmortality africanamerican race politics inequality culture

It’s known, for example, that a child is more likely to be born low birth weight if her mother was also born that way. If the cause is not a shared gene, perhaps it’s a shared experience. For instance, the immune system begins to develop in utero and matures over time. During certain critical periods of development, Dr. Lu points out, the immune system can be adversely affected by certain experiences and exposures, such as repeated infections or undue stress. These exposures may pattern the immune system in a particular way that sets the stage for increased risk to poor health and poor birth outcomes. A mother with less than optimal immune response may give birth to a baby with less than optimal immune response and so on.
Chronic emotional stress results from many factors, including physically demanding jobs and a lack of control in the workplace, single parenthood, and financial worries–all problems experienced disproportionately by women of color. Discrimination is also a documented source of harmful stress. One study found that women who gave birth to very low birth weight babies were more likely to have experienced racial discrimination than women who had normal weight babies.
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- Another key area is culture. Research by Dr. Collins and others has shown that while some foreign-born women (specifically African and Mexican women) have babies with better birth weights, the birth outcomes of their daughters show a decline. The same is true of Native American women who leave reservations. While women of color in the U.S. may gain from certain aspects of living in mainstream American society, they may also miss out on some of the protective effects of culture and close familial and community ties that serve as a buffer to stress and racial discrimination.