In my previous post entitled “The Downside of Diversity,” I wrote about a new study by a Harvard professor which concluded that in areas with high levels of racial/ethnic diversity, residents are more likely to feel alienated and distrustful of each other.

In that context however, as the New York Times reports, in many churches around the country, an influx of new immigrants has led to increased racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in their churches. More importantly and in contrast to the findings of the above-mentioned, it has actually strengthened the social bonds between church members:

The Clarkston International Bible Church, which sits along an active freight rail line down the road from the former Ku Klux Klan bastion of Stone Mountain, is now home to parishioners from more than 15 countries. . . The church’s Sunday potluck lunch features African stews and Asian vegetable dishes alongside hot dogs, sweet tea and homemade cherry pie.

The transformation of what was long known as the Clarkston Baptist Church speaks to a broader change among other American churches. Many evangelical Christians who have long believed in spreading their religion in faraway lands have found that immigrants offer an opportunity for church work within one’s own community. And many immigrants and refugees are drawn by the warm welcome they get from the parishioners, which can stand in stark contrast to the more competitive and alienating nature of workaday America.

Indeed, evangelical churches have begun to stand out as rare centers of ethnic mixing in a country that researchers say has become more culturally fragmented, in part because of immigration.

The article describes that the transition to a multi-ethnic and multicultural church was not an easy one. As their town was experiencing these profound demographic changes, many old-time White residents were appalled and moved elsewhere, rather than live next to more immigrants and people of color.

Nonetheless, other long-time residents turned to the Bible to get guidance on how to deal with these social changes and found the answer in Jesus’s example of praying for unity among his followers. As a result, the church first rented out its facilities to Filipino, Vietnamese, and African groups for their own services. Eventually, the church invited these separate congregations to join them to form an expanded and inclusive congregation.

Further, the article notes that all groups involved had to change a little: ” Merging congregations has meant compromise for everyone. The immigrants who join the main congregation have to give up worshiping in their native languages. Older Southern Baptist parishioners have given up traditional hymns and organ music.”

This story about the evolution of the Clarkston International Bible Church is a great example of sociology in so many ways. The first lesson is that globalization and demographic change are practical realities of American society. With that in mind, “traditionalists” can try to keep running away and moving from town to town if they like, but eventually they will have to deal with these changes one way or another.

Alternatively, as illustrated by William Perrin’s example in the article, they can summon up the courage to consciously adapt to these changes and learn to even embrace these changes because it is these kinds of challenges that make us stronger and more united as a community and as a society.

A third “lesson” we might learn from this story is the positive power of religion to facilitate social unity and solidarity. Many Americans and particularly many academics, are rather skeptical and even hostile towards organized religion. In many cases, they see religion as a divisive force that only serves to perpetuate “us versus them” mentalities.

In many cases, these critics of religion certainly have a point and there are plenty of examples to support their perspective. Nonetheless, as this article illustrates, not all aspects of organized religion are divisive and in fact, as shown by the Clarkston example, religion can serve as a powerful and effective focal point that can bring together people from diverse backgrounds.

All combined, the final sociological lesson to be learned is that rather than leading to more alienation and distrust, racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity, with the help of some kind of “social glue” like religion, can indeed offer us the opportunity to socially evolve and to become better American citizens.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the controversy surrounding the Jena 6 -- six Black high school students who were charged with attempted murder for attacking a White classmate. That particular attack was preceded by Black students sitting under a tree where only White students normally sat. The next day, three nooses were hung from that tree. Then there were several racially-charged fights among students at the high school, an arson fire, and then the beating.

The issue that has so many of us up in arms is the fact the “criminal justice” system surrounding this episode has consistently treated Blacks much more harshly than Whites. Whereas White attackers at the high school may have been merely suspended or charged with simple misdemeanor battery, these Black attackers were charged with attempted murder.

It makes me wonder, exactly where is the “progress” that we as a society have supposedly made in terms of racial equality, because it’s certainly nowhere to be seen in this case and in many other recent examples.

In this post, I really only want to point to a brilliant column written by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald, who sums up what many of us feel:

White men taking sledgehammers to the door of the jailhouse in Marion, Ind., intending to murder three African-American prisoners. The sheriff orders his men not to interfere.

White men hearing testimony tying two white defendants conclusively to the kidnap, torture and murder of a black boy in Money, Miss. The jury takes less than an hour to set them free.

White men with badges arresting three civil rights workers for an alleged traffic violation in Neshoba County, Miss. Forty-four days later, the workers’ bodies are dug out of an earthen dam.

There are other examples -- literally thousands -- but let three suffice to make the point. Which is that African Americans have frequently found the justice system to be about anything but justice. From the day slavery ended, that system has often been a tool used specifically for the suppression and control of black people.

There was no artifice about it. This conspiracy of beat cops and county sheriffs and DAs and judges and senators and attorneys general operated openly and with impunity. Everyone knew there were simply different rules, different enforcement and different punishment for blacks.

Maybe your impulse is to seal all that off in a mental box called history, interesting, lamentable, but hardly relevant. In which case, what will you say about Jena?

Meaning, of course, the tiny Louisiana town now infamous for a series of events that began a year ago when a black high school student asked the principal if it was OK for him to sit under a shade tree white kids claimed as theirs. The principal told him yes. But the next day, nooses were found hanging in the tree.

The principal wanted the white kids who did it expelled, but the superintendent overruled him, briefly suspending them instead. Expulsion, he felt, was excessive for this “prank.”

There followed weeks of racial brawls and even an arson fire. A black student, Robert Bailey, was hit in the head with a beer bottle by a white kid who was later charged with simple battery and released on probation.

After a white student, Justin Barker, supposedly taunted Bailey about it, six black kids allegedly jumped him, kicking and stomping. Barker was knocked out and had a black eye. He was treated and released at the hospital and felt well enough to go out that same night.

Yet the DA called it attempted murder.

Yes, charges against five of the six were eventually reduced. Yes, an appeals court just overturned the aggravated battery conviction of the only student whose case has been adjudicated.

But it is hard to be sanguine. This unjust justice is hardly unique. Consider Genarlow Wilson, 17, sentenced to 10 years for consensual with a 15-year-old. And Marcus Dixon, 18, who drew 10 for having sex with an underage white girl.

And Shaquanda Cotton who shoved a white teacher’s aide and got seven years from a judge who had earlier given probation to a white girl who burned down her family’s house. A 2000 study co-sponsored by the Justice Department codifies the obvious: People of color receive starkly unequal treatment in the ‘’justice'’ system.

As much as it hurts me to say it and as much as I want to believe otherwise, the simple truth is that racism is still alive and well today in 21st century America.

Freedom of speech and academic freedom are both cornerstones of American society and particularly, of academia. As scholars, we could not do our jobs as teachers and researchers properly without knowing that we have these protections to challenge conventional ideas, take a critical look at social institutions here in the U.S. and around the world. and on occasion, to say things that may upset the status quo.

But as we also know, there is frequently a thin between freedom of speech and hateful speech and the boundaries between the two aren’t always very clearly marked. That’s the area where confusion and contradictions live. Two recent events highlight this delicate balance between academic freedom and excluding hate speech.

The first is in regard to the hiring process of the inaugural Dean for the new law school of the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine, my undergraduate alma mater). As the Los Angeles Times reports, the candidate in question, Erwin Chemerinsky, is a nationally-renowned legal scholar and in virtually all respects, is the perfect candidate for the position.

The problem that arose however, was that Chemerinsky is known to be have a “liberal” perspective. As such and apparently, some more “conservative” constituent groups associated with UC Irvine opposed his candidacy. Upon learning of this opposition, UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake decided to rescind his offer to Chemerinsky.

Subsequently, scholars at UC Irvine and from around the country blasted Drake’s actions as an insult and threat to academic freedom. Shortly after facing this new firestorm, Drake decided to reverse course again and reinstate his offer to Chemerinsky to be the inaugural Dean of UC Irvine’s law school. Nonetheless, Drake still faces the wrath of faculty members over his initial decision to rescind the offer:

In a conference call with reporters, the chancellor and new dean agreed that Chemerinsky would enjoy absolute academic freedom and would continue to write opinion articles on a wide range of issues, not just legal education as Drake suggested last week.

“Chancellor Drake reaffirmed in the strongest possible way the academic freedom that I would have, as all deans and faculty members do,” Chemerinsky said. He later noted that he was aware that his role as dean also would require him to build a broad base of support. Before he was ousted, the dean had sought conservatives for some slots on his board of advisors. . . .

Business Professor Richard McKenzie did not think the chancellor could keep his job. “I personally do not see how [Drake] can be effective going forward given the opposition across campus to what he did. I’ve never seen the faculty so unified.” The cabinet of UCI’s Academic Senate met in closed session Monday to consider a response to the furor.

The second case over the boundaries of academic freedom centers on Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary under Clinton and President of Harvard University until he was forced to resign over his controversial statements that suggested that women were naturally inferior to men when it came to succeeding in the science disciplines.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Summers was initially invited to be a speaker at an upcoming dinner event of the University of California Regents, but many faculty members objected to his selection and the offer to Summers was subsequently rescinded:

“I was appalled and stunned that someone like Summers would even be invited to speak to the regents,” said UC Davis Professor Maureen Stanton, who helped put together the petition drive. “I think many of us who were involved in the protest believed that it wouldn’t reflect well on the university that he even received the invitation.”

The petition called Summers’ invitation “not only misguided but inappropriate” at a time when the university is working to diversify its community. “Inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the University community and to the people of California,” the petition said.

So, let’s review -- in the Chemerinsky case, faculty cried foul because they felt that rescinding the offer to Chemerinsky was a threat to academic freedom. But in the Summers case, faculty supported the effort to rescind the offer to Summers. Therefore, the question becomes, is this a contradiction, perhaps even hypocrisy?

Why is it okay to support Chemerinsky’s right to academic freedom but not Summers’?

The most obvious answer is that Chemerinsky is seen as having a liberal perspective while Summers, at least judged by his controversial comments about women in the sciences, is seen as having a more “conservative” perspective. Combined with the well-established fact that faculty members, particularly in humanities and social science disciplines, are overwhelmingly liberal, one can understand why Chemerinsky found support while Summers did not.

In my blogs and in regards to what I tell my students, I make no secret of the fact that I consider myself to be quite liberal as well. But I am also a strong believer in freedom of speech for everyone, provided it is not blatantly hateful. In that sense, I cannot help but see these two events surrounding Chemerinsky and Summers as nothing less than hypocrisy.

Freedom of speech is a universal right that belongs to everyone, not just the ones with whom you agree. That means that even if someone says something that I completely disagree with, I still support his/her right to express his/her views, again provided that it’s not blatantly hateful.

In this case, I have no problems whatsoever with faculty disagreeing with Summers’ views, as I do myself. However, I cannot support the decision to rescind the offer to let him speak based purely on such philosophical or political differences of opinion, especially in light of faculty’s support for Chemerinsky’s freedom of speech.

In the SF Chronicle article that I quoted above, Professor Stanton argues that inviting Summers sends the wrong message at a time when the UC system is trying to diversify its community. There is some truth to that statement and indeed, appearances do matter.

However, I would argue that what would send an even more powerful message in support of diversity is to show that all opinions, perspectives, and experiences deserve to be heard, regardless of whether they happen to lie outside of the prevailing political environment or establishment.

This is the same valid argument that I and other faculty have used to promote Ethnic Studies and multiculturalism on campuses all around the country, so why shouldn’t it apply to Summers’ case?

In addition, another way to send a strong message in support of cultural diversity would have been to allow Summers to speak and then for faculty and others who disagree with him to directly and publicly challenge him on his views. The same right that allows Summers to suggest women are inferior gives us the right to suggest that Summers is completely wrong.

This would again demonstrate that the UC system, academia, and our society in general are founded on principles of critical analysis and confronting prejudicial statements, not selective censorship.

As my personal heroes such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dalai Lama have so acutely observed, when it comes to achieving real, meaningful social justice, we must be inclusive. That is, rather than solely concentrate on trying to address just one form of discrimination or inequality in isolation, we need to take a holistic view and recognize that all injustices are interrelated.

That is, in the words of Dr. King himself, “A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” I interpret that to mean that we cannot pick and choose which groups deserve justice and equality while which groups do not.

That is why I personally find it very painful when I hear, for example, when African Americans express homophobic thoughts against gays and lesbians, or when Asian Americans denounce the rights of illegal immigrants to become Americans.

In the same way that equality and justice belong to everyone, so too does freedom of speech.

Has the war on terrorism made us more paranoid and fearful, to the point where we are more likely to support torture? As reported by BBC News, new research shows that there are interesting differences across nations on how they likely they are to feel that some forms of torture are acceptable (the red bars) versus those who say that all torture is wrong (the blue bars) -- the graph is courtesy of Swivel.com:

While most polled in the US are against torture, opposition there is less robust than in Europe and elsewhere. . . . All of the countries surveyed have signed up to the Geneva Conventions which prohibit the use of torture and cruel and degrading behaviour.

But countries that face political violence are more likely to accept the idea that some degree of torture is permissible because of the extreme threat posed by terrorists. Israel has the largest percentage of those polled endorsing the use of a degree of torture on prisoners, with 43% saying they agreed that some degree of torture should be allowed. However, a larger percentage - 48% - think it should remain prohibited.

I suppose it’s understandable that countries that have experienced political violence are more likely to support torture. But I also find it quite interesting that citizens in countries that have experienced more political violence than the U.S. -- France, Germany, Great Britain, Egypt -- are all less likely to support torture than Americans.

Hopefully, most Americans know by now that climate change is a reality and that much of it is caused by human activity. But to properly understand the global context of climate change, we need to understand that citizens in some countries and cities around the world are in greater danger to their physical safety than others. With that in mind, Time Magazine reports that a new study from the Blacksmith Institute has identified the top ten most polluted cities around the world (the list is unranked):

• Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
• Linfen, China
• Tianying, China
• Sukinda, India
• Vapi, India
• La Oroya, Peru
• Dzerzhinsk, Russia
• Norilsk, Russia
• Chernobyl, Ukraine
• Kabwe, Zambia

The article notes that according to the World Bank, 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China. Overall, India’s environment is a little better but as the article notes, it’s mainly because India is growing more slowly than China. Pretty scary.

The U.S. certainly has its own environmental problems, but as I wrote about in my other blog on food safety in China, it is a little humbling to know that in the entire global context, we Americans are actually very lucky and that we generally have it much easier than millions, even billions of other humans around the world.

As I and other sociologists and economists have been saying for quite some time, wealth and class inequality in the U.S. has been getting worse. It’s one thing for us academics to point this out and to “sound the alarm” about its likely consequences for American society, but that does not automatically mean that “ordinary” Americans would listen or even agree. But as the Pew Research Institute reports, perhaps that is starting to change -- more and more Americans now recognize that our country is increasingly being split between the haves and the have-nots:

Over the past two decades, a growing share of the public has come to the view that American society is divided into two groups, the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Today, Americans are split evenly on the two-class question with as many saying the country is divided along economic lines as say this is not the case (48% each).

In sharp contrast, in 1988, 71% rejected this notion, while just 26% saw a divided nation. Of equal importance, the number of Americans who see themselves among the “have-nots” of society has doubled over the past two decades, from 17% in 1988 to 34% today.

As this accompanying table shows, this increase in the number of Americans saying that the country is increasingly divided between haves and have-nots is true all across the social, demographic, and political spectrum, although not surprisingly, there are gaps between particular groups, such as Democrats and Republicans, even though the latter have seen increases in this perception.

So when academics, ordinary Americans, economists like Alan Greenspan, and even President Bush himself increasingly agree with one another that class and wealth inequality is getting worse (when he made a speech to Wall Street CEOs in February 2007), the question now becomes, what are we going to do about it? Or will it just be business as usual and we as a society sit by and let the gap widen even more?

I’ve written before about how many academics and commentators have observed that cheating in its various forms, is becoming a social epidemic here in the U.S. and around the world. To give us some more perspective on it, the San Francisco Chronicle explores the issue in good detail:

It used to be that cheating was done by the few, and most often they were the weaker students who couldn’t get good grades on their own. There was fear of reprisal and shame if apprehended. Today, there is no stigma left. It is accepted as a normal part of school life, and is more likely to be done by the good students, who are fully capable of getting high marks without cheating. . . .

Denise Pope agrees. She’s an adjunct professor at Stanford University and founder and director of Stanford’s SOS: Stressed-Out Students Project. . . “Nationally, 75 percent of all high school students cheat. But the ones who cheat more are the ones who have the most to lose, which is the honors and AP (advanced placement) students. Eighty percent of honors and AP students cheat on a regular basis.”

The pressure to succeed weighs heavily on these students. An upper-middle-class senior at an East Bay private high school, whom I’ll call Sarah (who like many high school and college students I interviewed insisted on anonymity), sums it up succinctly: “There’s so much pressure to get a good job, and to get a good job you have to get into a good school, and to get into a good school, you have to get good grades, and to get good grades you have to cheat.”

The article goes on to describe how the culture of cheating has become so pervasive in many areas of American social life, not just academic: sports at all levels (such as the revelations against the New England Patriots earlier this week), the business world, media and file-sharing through the Internet, celebrities escaping criminal punishment, etc. The article also describes some of the attitudes that many students have about various forms of cheating, in which they say “It’s not cheating, it’s helping.”

The article also lists some specific tactics that educators can use to try to reduce the temptation and frequency of students cheating. But ultimately, I agree with their overall assessment that cheating has become so widespread because as a society, perhaps even as a human civilization, we have come to value achievement over character.

The volatile mix of race and politics has been around for a long, long time throughout American history. In the past, it usually meant that White politicians passing laws to exclude minority groups from full participation in American social institutions. But as CBS News reports, this time around, the controversy has been turned around -- many Blacks in a Tennessee district feel that a White U.S. Representative could never adequately represent their interests, based almost entirely on the fact that he is White, not Black:

When Steve Cohen, a white man, was elected last year to represent mostly black Memphis in Congress, it was seen as a sign that racial divisions were fading in the city. But less than a year later, Cohen is facing a movement led by black pastors and political activists to defeat him in 2008 and send a black representative to Washington instead. . . .

Emotions around Cohen’s abilities to represent his district have flared over the last week since Cohen spoke at a meeting of the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, a group of black ministers that has more than 400 members. Cohen wanted to address concerns that had been expressed by the black religious community over his support for a federal hate crimes bill that protects gays.

The meeting quickly turned adversarial, with some of the audience jeering and booing the freshman congressman with complaints that a white politician could not represent the concerns of a predominantly black district. “He’s not black, and he can’t represent me. That’s the bottom line,” the Rev. Robert Poindexter told the Memphis Commercial Appeal after the meeting.

Some of the black preachers were worried that the hate crimes bill could make them legally responsible if they preached against homosexuality and someone who heard the sermon went out and committed a hate crime. Some also regard homosexuality as a sinful choice and object to gays being grouped with blacks for legal protection. Cohen said his predecessor, Harold Ford Jr., who is black, drew no such criticism when he supported similar hate-crime legislation.

I see this particular controversy as being very similar to the debate regarding the sculptor for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC that I wrote about earlier. In both cases, the African American community is upset over the fact that a particular person who is seen as trying to “represent” them is not African American like them.

As I wrote in that previous post, on the one hand I can understand their argument. Not only have African Americans have been underrepresented in so many facets of the American political system for so long, but that most of the time, White politicians were using the political system to continue racially oppressing their community. In that sense, it is certainly understandable that they would want “one of their own” to be in that Representative’s seat.

On the other hand, it’s similar to the argument that a person can only fully understand and sympathize with someone who has cancer if s/he also has cancer him/herself -- an argument that I completely reject as superficial and unrealistic. I once again invoke the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he said that people should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character -- and in this case, their actions.

If the African American community in Memphis or anywhere else wants to oust a particular politician for not supporting their values and issues, that’s fine and that’s what we call democracy. But when the only reason to oust someone is because his/her racial identity does not match yours, even though the representative has done a good job in supporting your interests, that is only the worst example of divisive identity politics.