Organizational Structure

Recently, I stumbled across an interactive map as it was circulating its way around the internet. Put forth by the University of Virginia's Cooper Center for Public Service, the map simply shows one dot per person in the United States, and it color codes the dots by race. I encourage you to take a look and zoom into to your own neighborhood. But before you do, answer this question:

Is your neighborhood segregated? 

Check out the map here. 

The Racial Dot Map: Cooper Center for Public Service, University of Virginia

My knee jerk response to that question would have been "maybe a little bit." I can certainly identify areas of my neighborhood that might have a higher concentration of one race or another. After looking at the map, however, I saw just how concentrated groups of certain races were in different areas. And after looking at the map, though it pains me to admit it, my neighborhood, town, and city are all segregated to some extent.

I am from am exurb of Detroit, about 45 minutes north of the city center. My town, Lake Orion, is predominately white. The school I went to? Predominately white. The church? Predominately white. In truth, I think my town was so racially homogeneous that race really never even entered our minds. I can only identify one time when it actually did. When I was a sophomore in high school, there were rumors about making our school into what is called a School of Choice. In Michigan, Schools of Choice accept students from outside the school district, preventing students from being constrained to a below average school district. At my school, it was very likely that we would get an influx of students from Pontiac, the next town over. I soon learned that people were expecting an influx of black students, but being new to the area, I didn't quite understand that. I thought it pretty unlikely that a predominately white town would directly neighbor a predominately black one. What I mean by that is, it seemed like such blatant racial segregation that I didn't think it was possible. Turns out, it was. 

As you can see in the map above, Lake Orion is a cluster of blue dots, and Pontiac is a cluster of green dots. This map was pretty striking to me, as the segregation is so clearly visible. I also want to share another, even more striking example.

The city of Detroit is known for its rich black history and community, but also for its corruption and blight. The map below shows racial segregation in the city of Detroit.

You can see the obvious separation to the north of the city, a straight line with a predominately white population to the north and a predominately black population to the south. Anyone familiar with the city would recognize the divide as 8 mile, made infamous through pop culture as an area filled with violence, blight, and crime. 


I was interested to see how income varied between these areas, and I was able to find a lot of great stats at the US Census Bureau's American FactFinder website. You can see from the graphs that Lake Orion has a much higher median household income than those of both Pontiac and Detroit. And following that, the number of individuals living below the poverty line is much higher in Pontiac and Detroit as well. I believe that these patterns of race and income are related. 

There are undoubtedly many interrelated reasons why races are segregated geographically, and why there are disparities in income. It is a multifaceted issue. To many people, it might be a bit of a shock to see this type of segregation; after all, the Civil Rights Act was passed over 50 years ago. While we might think that there is equal opportunity for all, the statistics suggest this might not be the case. I am not suggesting that there are not equal opportunities, but rather unequal access to those opportunities. A fairly straightforward example would be education. Every child in America is entitled to a free public education. That's great, but for some kids, getting that diploma at the end also means graduating out of a system that sets them up to fail. A child from Lake Orion will likely go to school, come home and do some homework, eat dinner, maybe participate in an extracurricular activity or two, go to bed, wake up and do it again the next day. That same child, had they been born into a family that lives in the predominately black neighborhoods south of 8 mile, will have a different experience. They will come home and they might not have a parent there because that parent has to work several jobs. No one is there to help with with homework and cook them dinner. What they eat may not be a nutritious dinner but instead a dinner of processed foods purchased to make food stamps stretch. Their family may not be able to afford any extracurricular activities, so this child will be left to their own devices, and could be out roaming the streets and getting into trouble. As they get older, this child might have to take a job to support the family, causing studying to fall by the wayside. Education may be the only way for this child to break the cycle, but in the decision between getting homework done or getting food on the table, the latter wins out. 

This is just one example of how an unequal access to opportunity can cause the patterns of geographical racial segregation and income disparity we see above. Though our society has the pretense of being socially just, it is organized in a way that, in some respects, perpetuates inequalities. Moving forward, I think it is best not to place blame on any one group, and instead work to recognize where changes can be made and make them. 

American FactFinder Website: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml

Violating a Gender Norm

Recently a group of friends and I did a small social experiment in the form of violating a gender norm. In our society, there are very clear distinctions for how a man should act and how a woman should act. We are conditioned from a very young age to adhere to these norms. For example, boys are taught to like blue and red, trucks and sports. Girls are taught to like pink and purple, princesses and playing house. When they're older, men are to be tough and strong, and women nurturing and gentle. Gender norms extend to outward appearances, too. In America, women are expected to have long hair, wear make-up and dress in feminine clothing like skirts and more form fitting clothes. Men are expected to keep their hair short, wear minimal jewelry, and dress in masculine clothing.  The gender norms of outward appearance are what my friends and I chose to investigate.

Two members of our group, both of them males, wore dresses through Wal-Mart on a busy Saturday afternoon. We decided to be pretty obvious about it so that we could garner as many responses from people as possible. It is also worth noting that the location of this experiment is a fairly small and conservative town. We all acted as if we were on a normal shopping trip, pushing a cart through the aisles and picking up food items as we went. The most common reaction was laughs, usually from the adults we came across. A few people shook their heads, and one man said "Looks like somebody lost a bet." The older people we saw seemed to look away and avoid us. On our way out, the cashier said "Have a nice day ladies," with a bit of a laugh. Interestingly, some of the most enthusiastic reactions came from the kids. Several asked their parents why the boys were wearing dresses, and others would point or stare with confused looks on their faces. I found it pretty interesting that the kids were doing the most in terms of social sanctioning. This could be because kids are separated so often by gender that they are more acutely aware of what is "for boys" and what is "for girls."

When I was talking to one of the guys who wore the dresses, he said it was "honestly one of the most awkward experiences of [my] life." He was, in effect, socializing himself. Without anyone even saying anything to him, he felt extremely uncomfortable in the dress. He said he felt like he wasn't supposed to be wearing it, and that he was afraid of what people might think of him. It is interesting that violating a gender norm like this could induce a biological reaction such as fear or stress, but the concept of gender is not biological at all. Our ideas of what is ideally male or female are something that we as a society created. Proof of this can be found when looking back through history. The ideals of male and female beauty have changed dramatically throughout recorded history. The roles of men and women in history are varied. For example, the traditional view of a women's role would be that of a homemaker, but viking women were warriors right alongside the men. The color pink is now associated solely with girls, but in the past wearing pink was a perfectly acceptable men's clothing choice. These changes in male and female standards over time proves that these norms are constructed by society. Today, male and female gender roles are so deeply ingrained in our society that they have become subconscious for us.

So, why does this matter? Well, for starters, the gender binary is simply not all inclusive. Many people don't neatly fit into the categories "male" or "female." It is doing these people a disservice to attempt to socialize them into one or the other. By doing so, we could be distorting these people's sense of self. By not recognizing deviations from the gender binary as acceptable, we are setting these people up for discrimination and other inequalities. I think awareness of the issues surrounding gender norms is not as prevalent as many may think. There is still a lot of confusion about all of the related terminology and the differences people can have. I even just recently learned that gender may be best viewed as a continuum, with male and female on either end. With a little bit of education, I think more people will be open to a the idea of a range of gender possibilities. And if that happens, a new social construct of gender could start to form.