April 8, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
How can you account for the Obama effect, especially the enthusiasm he generates among the young? Accounting for the reaction against Obama and his supporters is it a bit easier. It’s that old parental ambivalence. We encourage our kids to be independent, but then we feel uneasy when they actually behave independently of us.
The New York Times has a front-page story today, “Obama’s Young Backers Twist Parents’ Arms.” The tone is ambivalent-affectionate – those gosh darned kids again.
Often, the reactions are nastier. Typically, they accuse the kids of not being independent enough; that is, the kids have become dependent and mindless followers, in a word (the word much favored by the anti-Obamists), a cult. From the left-hand side of the Times op-ed page, Paul Krugman points a finger and says that the Obama campaign is “dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.” (Historical note: the phrase Krugman chooses for Obama came into currency when Khrushchev used it to refer to Stalin.)
On the right-hand side, David Brooks slips into a character so that he can dismiss Obama as “the Hopemeister” doing “schtick,” a “messiah” whose supporters are like Moonies: “soon they'll be selling flowers at airports and arranging mass weddings.” The “Yes We Can” video shows celebrities in “escalating states of righteousness and ecstasy.”
Joel Stein in the LA Times is worried that he felt moved by an Obama speech. “Did I want to be some dreamer hippie loser?” The title of his article is “The Cult of Obama.” That word again. Here’s Charles Krauthammer: “ABC's Jake Tapper notes the ‘Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities’ of ‘Obama worshipers.’” (Historical note: Helter-Skelter is an allusion to mass-murderer Charles Manson.)
Stalin? Manson? I hadn’t realized how dangerous it is when young people get involved in mainstream politics. This is the Democratic party we’re talking about, not Lyndon LaRouche. And these are the same young people whose apolitical apathy scribblers – perhaps some of these very same scribblers – were wringing their hands about just a few years ago.
The Obama phenomenon is real, and of course it’s about Obama. But it’s also about the people supporting him. We need to look at the demographics. I don’t have the data, but it appears that the people Obama has energized are young middle-class whites, who have the luxury of idealism, and blacks of all social classes.
I also wonder if there is a generational factor, whether the historical circumstances and experiences count for much of the energy. C. Wright Mills said, sociology is about the link between biography and history. But I’m not sure how you get data to show how historical events affect people. We assume a connection. The conventional wisdom is that the Depression and World War II shaped the consciousness and behavior of “the Greatest Generation.” Stories of the 1960s feature the Pill, drugs , and Vietnam, though perhaps demographic facts – cohort size, suburbanization, economic prosperity, etc. – also counted for much.
What historical and demographic forces shape the consciousness of those who are now in their teens and twenties? We assume that 9/11 is important, but do we have any good evidence of how? The same goes for other obvious possible factors: Eight years of George W. Bush and five years (and counting) of Iraq and all the stains these have brought upon the idealized image Americans might have had about their country – Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, “intelligence” (a.k.a. lies) about WMDs. Awareness of global warming. The widening gulf between the very rich and the rest of us. The Internet.
These are the sorts of things a David Brooks can toss off a 750-word column about before breakfast and not have to worry too much about systematic evidence (something like the first paragraph of this blog entry). But how do we do real research about the effects of unique historical events?
The Phantom Chasm
April 5, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
An article by David Sirota in In These Times (a solidly southpaw monthly) has been getting a lot of attention lately, mostly for this graph.
Sirota says, “when you chart Obama’s margin of victory or defeat against the percentage of African-Americans living in that state, a striking U trend emerges.” Sirota calls it “the race chasm.”
Now Brendan Nyhan has offered a much more detailed look at this question using more refined data. His blog offers a critique that might serve as a unit in a methods course. For one thing, if you look closely, you’ll see that the X-axis plots the states according to rank order on percent-black. If you use the actual percentage, the U-shape becomes much less U-ish.
Second, Sirota’s graph makes it tempting to talk about “white voters” in these states. But as I hope my students remember, to use state-level data to draw conclusions about individuals is to commit the ecological fallacy. So Nyhan uses exit polls to estimate the percentages in each state of whites voting for Obama. The scatterplot is not U-shaped at all. In fact, a straight regression line yields a correlation of -.53.
Not a U-shape at all, but a straight line: the greater the percentage of blacks in a state, the less support Obama gets from that state’s white voters. Nyhan has much more analysis and more graphs. You can find them all here.
Posted by Jay Livingston
An article by David Sirota in In These Times (a solidly southpaw monthly) has been getting a lot of attention lately, mostly for this graph.
Sirota says, “when you chart Obama’s margin of victory or defeat against the percentage of African-Americans living in that state, a striking U trend emerges.” Sirota calls it “the race chasm.”Now Brendan Nyhan has offered a much more detailed look at this question using more refined data. His blog offers a critique that might serve as a unit in a methods course. For one thing, if you look closely, you’ll see that the X-axis plots the states according to rank order on percent-black. If you use the actual percentage, the U-shape becomes much less U-ish.
Second, Sirota’s graph makes it tempting to talk about “white voters” in these states. But as I hope my students remember, to use state-level data to draw conclusions about individuals is to commit the ecological fallacy. So Nyhan uses exit polls to estimate the percentages in each state of whites voting for Obama. The scatterplot is not U-shaped at all. In fact, a straight regression line yields a correlation of -.53.
Not a U-shape at all, but a straight line: the greater the percentage of blacks in a state, the less support Obama gets from that state’s white voters. Nyhan has much more analysis and more graphs. You can find them all here.
Why Don't You Go Play Outside?
April 2, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
The Teenager-in-Residence assures me that everyone already knows about this game. Everyone, obviously, did not include me. I found it today at Orbital Teapot, who in turn found it someplace else, so maybe Teenager is right.
Posted by Jay Livingston
The Teenager-in-Residence assures me that everyone already knows about this game. Everyone, obviously, did not include me. I found it today at Orbital Teapot, who in turn found it someplace else, so maybe Teenager is right.
Ethnocentrism of the Relativists
April 2, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
Other sociologist bloggers have offered their take on Stuff White People Like and why it’s so popular. kristina b picks up on its message not to take ourselves too seriously. Whole Foods, for example, risks becoming not just a place to shop but an “attitude and style . . .that’s just… um… annoying. dogmatic. preachy.”
A word of clarification. By “white people,” clander (the Stuff White blogger) doesn’t mean all white people. He doesn’t even mean most white people. He does not, for example, mean the people who subscribe to Field and Stream (and certainly not to Guns & Ammo). His list will never include line dancing or NASCAR, probably not even bowling. No he’s referring to us – educated, mostly urban, cosmopolitan rather than local, politically liberal. In many ways, he’s
just expanding on the “chablis-sipping, brie-eating, Volvo-driving” stereotype that Republicans have been using for years to denigrate liberals and even Democrats in general.
Stuff White, when it’s on target (or on Target), exposes our ethnocentrism. That’s an odd tag to hang on liberals; usually, liberals get taken to task for their cultural and moral relativism. But I think that ethnocentrism is similar to what kristina means by “dogmatic”: we think our own preferences are objectively right even when they are merely preferences. We like to think that the stuff we choose to spend our money on is good – better than other stuff – and that this inherent quality is why we choose it. But Stuff White reminds us that there’s nothing inherently better about sushi or snowboarding. We’d like to think that Michel Gondry films are better than Sylvester Stallone movies, but there’s no objective way of converting that preference into a fact.
The trouble with ethnocentrism is not just that you can’t prove that one taste is superior to another, and it’s not just that making such a claim pisses people off. But if you’re a social scientist, ethnocentrism gets in the way of understanding. Sure, it’s tempting to dismiss line dancing as an inferior and ridiculous form of movement for the rhythmically challenged. But that’s not going to help you understand what’s in it for the line dancers or anyone else.
But there are times when you stop being a social scientist, when you have to make judgments or choose policies. And when you do that, you do have to impose your values and say that one thing is right and the other wrong or that some goals are better or more worthwhile than others. Goals like keeping the planet livable and the air breathable.
The preference for recycling (#64 on Stuff White’s list) is different from the preference for Sarah Silverman (#52) or giving dinner parties (#90).
Posted by Jay Livingston
Other sociologist bloggers have offered their take on Stuff White People Like and why it’s so popular. kristina b picks up on its message not to take ourselves too seriously. Whole Foods, for example, risks becoming not just a place to shop but an “attitude and style . . .that’s just… um… annoying. dogmatic. preachy.”
A word of clarification. By “white people,” clander (the Stuff White blogger) doesn’t mean all white people. He doesn’t even mean most white people. He does not, for example, mean the people who subscribe to Field and Stream (and certainly not to Guns & Ammo). His list will never include line dancing or NASCAR, probably not even bowling. No he’s referring to us – educated, mostly urban, cosmopolitan rather than local, politically liberal. In many ways, he’s
just expanding on the “chablis-sipping, brie-eating, Volvo-driving” stereotype that Republicans have been using for years to denigrate liberals and even Democrats in general.Stuff White, when it’s on target (or on Target), exposes our ethnocentrism. That’s an odd tag to hang on liberals; usually, liberals get taken to task for their cultural and moral relativism. But I think that ethnocentrism is similar to what kristina means by “dogmatic”: we think our own preferences are objectively right even when they are merely preferences. We like to think that the stuff we choose to spend our money on is good – better than other stuff – and that this inherent quality is why we choose it. But Stuff White reminds us that there’s nothing inherently better about sushi or snowboarding. We’d like to think that Michel Gondry films are better than Sylvester Stallone movies, but there’s no objective way of converting that preference into a fact.
The trouble with ethnocentrism is not just that you can’t prove that one taste is superior to another, and it’s not just that making such a claim pisses people off. But if you’re a social scientist, ethnocentrism gets in the way of understanding. Sure, it’s tempting to dismiss line dancing as an inferior and ridiculous form of movement for the rhythmically challenged. But that’s not going to help you understand what’s in it for the line dancers or anyone else.
But there are times when you stop being a social scientist, when you have to make judgments or choose policies. And when you do that, you do have to impose your values and say that one thing is right and the other wrong or that some goals are better or more worthwhile than others. Goals like keeping the planet livable and the air breathable.The preference for recycling (#64 on Stuff White’s list) is different from the preference for Sarah Silverman (#52) or giving dinner parties (#90).
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