Month: March 2014

Harry Brighouse calls the book Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality “essential reading if you want to understand the culture of a large public university well”:

The authors lived for a year in a “party” dorm in a large midwestern flagship public university … and kept up with the women in the dorm till after they had graduated college. The thesis of the book is that the university essentially facilitates (seemingly knowingly, and in some aspects strategically) a party pathway through college, which works reasonably well for students who come from very privileged backgrounds. The facilitatory methods include: reasonably scrupulous enforcement of alcohol bans in the dorms (thus enhancing the capacity of the fraternities to monopolize control of illegal drinking and, incidentally, forcing women to drink in environments where they are more vulnerable to sexual assault); providing easy majors which affluent students can take which won’t interfere with their partying, and which will lead to jobs for them, because they have connections in the media or the leisure industries that will enable them to get jobs without good credentials; and assigning students to dorms based on choice (my students confirm that dorms have reputations as party, or nerdy, or whatever, dorms that ensure that they retain their character over time, despite 100% turnover in residents every year).

The problem is that other students (all their subjects are women), who do not have the resources to get jobs in the industries to which the easy majors orient them, and who lack the wealth to keep up with the party scene, and who simply cannot afford to have the low gpas that would be barriers to their future employment, but which are fine for affluent women, get caught up in the scene. They are, in addition, more vulnerable to sexual assault, and less insulated (because they lack family money) against the serious risks associated with really screwing up. The authors tell stories of students seeking upward social mobility switching their majors from sensible professional majors to easy majors that lead to jobs available only through family contacts, not through credentials. Nobody is alerting these students to the risks they are taking. So the class inequalities at entry are exacerbated by the process.

Last year, Allie Grasgreen talked to co-author Laura T. Hamilton about what prospective students should keep in mind:

Prospective college students who are working class and not wealthy, whose parents do not have extensive social connections — those on the mobility pathway — should be wary of attending a four-year residential university like Midwestern, Hamilton said. Rather than basing their decision on prestige, which is often encouraged, they should consider whether a university will meet their specific needs. That means looking at retention rates for minority and first-generation students, whether student services are large and accessible (universities often have small creaming programs that serve low-income students well, but only a very small number of them), which academic programs and pathways are well-resourced, and the visibility of Greek life and the party scene.

Listen to an interview with the book’s authors here.

Scott McLemee reviews the French bestseller A Philosophy of Walking:

Walking is not a sport, [author Frédéric] Gros takes care to emphasize. You don’t need any equipment (not even shoes, for an old-school Cynic) nor is any instruction required. The skill set is extremely limited and mastered by most people in infancy. Its practice is noncompetitive. But in a paradox that gives the book much of its force, we don’t all do it equally well. It’s not just that some of us are clumsy or susceptible to blisters. Gros contrasts the experience of a group of people talking to one another while marching their way through a walking tour (an example of goal-driven and efficiency-minded behavior) and the unhurried pace of someone for whom the walk has become an end in itself, a point of access to the sublimely ordinary. And so he has been able to give the matter a lot of thought:

“Basically, walking is always the same, putting one foot in front of the other. But the secret of that monotony is that it constitutes a remedy for boredom. Boredom is immobility of the body confronted with emptiness of mind. The repetitiveness of walking eliminates boredom, for, with the body active, the mind is no longer affected by its lassitude, no longer drawn from its inertia the vague vertigo in an endless spiral.… The body’s monotonous duty liberates thought. While walking, one is not obliged to think, to think this or that. During that continuous but automatic effort of the body, the mind is placed at one’s disposal. It is then that thoughts can arise, surface or take shape.”

How Fox is spinning the ACA numbers:

Charles Gaba’s final estimate on enrollments:

I’m gonna go with a range: Between 6.9 Million and 7.0 Million. That’s right, I think there’s an outside chance of exchange [Qualified Health Plans] pushing past the “magic” 7 million mark by midnight after all.

Cohn examines data on how many enrollees were perviously uninsured. He looks “at numbers from a handful of states that are collecting this kind of data and have reported it”:

Last week, New York officials told CNBC that 59 percent of people getting insurance through the state marketplace had no coverage before. The numbers were even higher in Kentucky, where officials told the network that 75 percent of people selecting plans had been uninsured before.

Noam Levey estimates that “at least 9.5 million previously uninsured people have gained coverage”:

Some have done so through marketplaces created by the law, some through other private insurance and others through Medicaid, which has expanded under the law in about half the states. The tally draws from a review of state and federal enrollment reports, surveys and interviews with insurance executives and government officials nationwide.

Philip Klein claims this is below projections:

At the time the law was passed, however, in March 2010, the CBO projected that in total, the ranks of the uninsured would be reduced by 19 million in 2014 relative to what would have been the case if not law had been passed. It’s true that since that time, the Supreme Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion, as designed, was unconstitutional, giving states the option of not expanding Medicaid — which limited the effect of that provision.

But even as recently as February — when analysts knew how many states weren’t going along with the Medicaid expansion and were aware of the early technical glitches facing the rollout of Obamacare — the CBO still projected that the law would reduce the number of uninsured by 13 million.

Regardless of the final numbers, Drum points out that enrollment doesn’t stop this year:

Enrollment of around 6 million makes Obamacare hard to repeal, but for now that’s not really what’s holding it in place. What’s holding it in place is the fact that Democrats control the Senate and Barack Obama occupies the White House. And even if the Senate switches parties next year, I think we can all agree that Obamacare is going nowhere as long as Obama stays president. So 2017 is the earliest it could even plausibly be repealed.

But what do things look like in 2017? The chart on the right shows the latest CBO estimates. By 2017, a total of 36 million Americans will be covered by Obamacare. Of that, 24 million will have private coverage via the exchanges and 12 million will be covered by Medicaid. Those are very big numbers. Even if Republicans improbably manage to get complete control of the government in the 2016 election and eliminate the filibuster so Democrats can’t object, they’ll still have to contend with this.

Douthat agrees that Republicans will be politically constrained:

[A]ny kind of conservative alternative will have to confront the reality that the kind of tinkering-around-the-edges alternatives to Obamacare that many Republicans have supported to date would end up stripping coverage from millions of newly-insured Americans. That newly-insured constituency may not be as large as the bill’s architects originally hoped, or be composed of the range of buyers that the program ultimately needs. But it will be a fact on the ground to an extent that was by no means certain last December. And that fact will shape, and constrain, the options of the law’s opponents even in the event that Republicans manage to reclaim the White House two years hence.

In our first video from Nigerian-American journalist Dayo Olopade, author of The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa, she lets people in the First World know that when it comes to trying to help Africans, they can keep their old t-shirts:

The poster she refers to is here. In a followup, Dayo responds to the routine conflation of “Africa” with the 54 unique countries that make up the continent:

Dayo Olopade is a journalist covering global politics and development policy, and has written for The New Republic, The Root, The New York Times, and many other publications. She’s also a Knight Law and Media Scholar at Yale University. Here’s how Dayo explains the reason she wrote The Bright Continent:

Growing up in the United States, I was always surprised at how little the world thinks of Africa. What news is covered consistently dwells on governmental failures and troubling poverty. Development and aid work is likewise often framed around the question “What can the Western world do for Africa?” not “What can Africa do for itself?”

This book changes that. Over the course of three years, I made my way through seventeen countries and saw time and again that what Africa can do for itself is tremendous. Africa is a place teeming with commercial opportunities and technological innovations, but these vibrant, authentic, and economically significant interactions are happening between individuals and decentralized groups, not between governments or conventional institutions. In The Bright Continent, I argue that the best, and quite possibly the only, way to effectively address the globalized challenges Africa faces is to harness the tools that Africans are already using to solve these problems themselves.

Kirkus calls it a “refreshingly hopeful argument.” In the next video from Dayo, she criticizes the myopia of the Western media when it comes to Africa and then shares the kind of success story the media often misses:

(Archive)

More readers add their perspective to the thread:

Even those born and raised here do not always readily grasp the “racial resonances” you write of. I’m a 40-year black man who was born and raised in the suburbs, to parents who came here from Jamaica. That upbringing shaped my view of the United States into one that may share many characteristics with other immigrants to this country. I was raised to see this country as a place where you could accomplish whatever you wanted if you worked hard, studied hard, and did well in school. I had that luxury because of the environment my parents created, despite the fact that they didn’t have much money.

That’s where the problem with using a term like “culture of poverty” comes in. Such a term assumes that a group of people thinks and behaves in the same way because they are poor. Not very far under the surface of that assumption is the older, uglier one that those who are poor are somehow less industrious, moral and virtuous than those who are not. There is an intellectual laziness in the use of that term. It’s an attempt to shift responsibility from government institutions who have done very little to prevent the continued shrinkage of the middle class in general (and blacks in particular).

Whether you call it pessimism or gloom, I would not be so quick to brand it as out of place. Growing income inequality is a quantifiable reality, as is the increasing lack of economic mobility. It is difficult to believe that decades of government policy that tax investment at significantly lower rates than wages (under presidents of both parties) don’t play some role in that. For all the real progress this country has made, whether we have a black president or not, the United States is still a country where one political party actively strives to make it harder for citizens of color to exercise their right to vote. It is also still a country where someone at a hotel can assume I’m a valet (instead of a guest) or ask me if I’m a chauffeur when they see me parking my wife’s luxury car. My hope for a better future is paired with an awareness that only concrete actions will bring that better future about – and that my actions alone are not sufficient. The majority of society needs to see the advancement of minorities as somehow in their interest in order for lasting and sustainable change to occur.

A different emphasis from a bi-racial reader:

It seems like the Dish posts on school suspensions and the argument between Coates and Chait regarding are linked. Let me share an example.

My kids go to a small Catholic school in the south suburbs of Chicago. I personally chose the school because it provided a solid Catholic education and it is diverse. Many of the schools in this area are all white or all black. I didn’t like either of those options for my kids. I grew up in a very diverse area and want my kids to experience the same thing.

Unfortunately, discipline problems had progressively been on the rise before the principal resigned last summer. Also unfortunately, many of the kids who have been involved in these discipline problems are African American. They range from calling a teacher a bitch to bringing a knife to school to assaulting a much younger (and white) child in a bathroom.

I’m bi-racial, so I have a kinda distinctive view of the dynamics within the community of the school, which unfortunately is often self segregating. I remember a school function where most white parents sat on one side of the gym while most black parents sat on the other. Since I hadn’t grown up around here and wasn’t used to such a thing, it was very jarring for me. I walk with comfort on both sides of the spectrum, but I would say most here don’t, for whatever reason. It has sometimes been very difficult to get black and white parents together for social events, such as fundraisers.

The parents of students who live in the neighborhood of the school – which is upper-middle class to downright rich and mostly white – have been very disturbed by the recent discipline issues. There has been a call to be much harsher with punishment, and some want to make the school exclusively Catholic. But that really isn’t workable, because the school has suffered through enrollment declines in recent years due to the economy, and shutting some kids out would probably mean shutting down the school. Catholic schools all over the nation are shutting down in alarming numbers.

Here’s the problem if you are a non-African American parent: how do you voice your concern with these issues without being viewed as a racist by some (though not all) black parents at the school? Is there an underlying cultural issue that makes it more likely that kids who are non-Catholic and who come to the school from outside the neighborhood will end up having discipline problems? I don’t know the answer, but it is worth thinking about. There are parents here who are racist, who revel in bringing up such issues behind closed doors at parties and such. But I’m not one of them. How do I demand safety for my kids without being tarred with the ugly “racist” label? It really is a tight rope walk.

This is why I welcome the president making these speeches. He has a credibility that people like me can’t possibly have, despite the fact that I’m very active at the school with both ends of the spectrum. At some point, people like me who are not racist should be able to point out issues like discipline problems at school or poor service at business establishments on the merits without having to worry about the race issue hanging over our heads. I don’t see that happening in the near future. Maybe Barack Obama can help. He’s surely trying, which I appreciate. I voted for the man twice on issues that have nothing to do with this one, but I do like his personal responsibility stance on this.

I’ve always been a fan of TNC and his writing, especially his historical perspectives. But it seems to me lately that he has fallen to the Jackson/Sharpton point of view, which I find disappointing. Racism is definitely everywhere. I’ve seen it personally, having a father who was DARK brown. I’ve seen it in my own neighborhood from people who I’m friendly with (and from BOTH races). Still, it would seem like blaming the plight of African Americans today solely on white supremacy would be like blaming WWI on one cause. There can be more than one cause.

TNC grew up in a tough neighborhood. Barack Obama spent a lot of time in a tough neighborhood on the South Side as an adult, so he is hardly insulated from the issues. Maybe Obama’s perspective is worth exploring rather than just derisively shoving it aside because it isn’t wrapped in the cloak of the white supremacy cause. Maybe it’s time to actually judge someone not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, while still taking into account our nation’s tainted history.

Racism still needs to be fought and uprooted, but I think today’s generation is well on its way to that. Maybe as they get older, it will truly be time to say goodbye to all that.

Readers continue the aforementioned “Pre-K Prejudice?” thread:

The reader responses to black suspension rates actually brought tears to my eyes. As a black woman who is the proud mother of six-month-old black son and the proud wife of a black man whom I love dearly, it breaks my heart that people are so quick to blame the statistics on extreme misbehavior by black kids. Essentially, their argument is black kids may just be that bad. I understand that’s not the way it’s stated and it’s always cloaked with the caveat that this is likely because of socioeconomic factors and single mothers. etc, but it stings nonetheless.

The anecdote from the reader with the daughter at the suburban school was a perfect example. Even accounting for “cultural” differences, does it really make sense that every single black male at that school had serious behavior problems? 100 percent? How is that even possible and what must it have been like to be a black male at that school? It sounds to me much like the situation with black men and cabs in urban areas. It’s hard for black men to catch a cab anywhere, presumably because cab drivers assume they might get robbed. Now, granted, there are some black men who may have robbed cabbies. But the vast majority of black men are not thieves, and yet men like my husband get punished for the sins of the few. That’s the nature of racism; black people are not fully realized individuals, but instead just a part of a dysfunctional mass.

I have to wonder if that wasn’t the case at this school. I would bet that there were some black boys at that school that had serious behavior problems, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other black boys were just engaging in routine misbehavior when they were lumped in with those with real social problems. And the bit about the black fathers who are “degreed professionals” actively encouraging their sons to be “black and stand their ground aggressively” doesn’t represent any reality I’ve been exposed to. Are we to believe that these black professionals, who did not get where they are by cursing out their superiors, would teach that to their sons. Why? It makes no sense, unless you just buy into the idea that black men are randomly angry.

A counterpoint from another reader:

Regarding your skeptical reader who wondered about whether racial disparities in student discipline are still different after accounting for student behavior, the answer would appear to be yes. For just a starter, here’s a 2011 article from School Psychology Review. It notes that the factors contributing to discipline disparities are numerous and complex, but that there is still a racial component to this. For example, in their literature review (citing multiple past studies), they note, “[R]ace continues to make a significant contribution to disproportionate disciplinary outcomes independent of SES [socioeconomic status],” and “Investigations of student behavior, race, and discipline have consistently failed, however, to find evidence of differences in either the frequency or intensity of African American students’ school behavior sufficient to account for differences in rates of school discipline.”

In their own analysis, based on a nationwide data sample, the authors find, “[A]cross an expansive national sample, significant disparities exist for African American and Latino students in school discipline. Patterns are complex and moderated by type of offense, race/ethnicity, and school level. Nevertheless, the overall pattern of results indicates that both initial referral to the office and administrative decisions made as a result of that referral significantly contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in school discipline.” This is much more rigorous than “unequal outcome = racism,” as your reader put it, though they are also correct in pointing out that the Department of Education’s argument was much less nuanced.

If you want another layer of complication, check out a different 2011 article from Economics of Education Review (published paywalled form here, earlier working version accessible for free here). Its author, looking specifically at a sample of schools in North Carolina, found that the black-white disparities come from differences between schools in how they responded to misbehavior. In other words, schools treated their own black and white students roughly equally for equal infractions. The statewide disparities are a result of African-American students being clustered in schools with stricter discipline systems. The author does not speculate in great detail about why this might be.

A separate, but related question, is whether conventional exclusionary punishments like out-of-school suspensions are the right approach to misbehavior in the first place. To many people, these look like a law enforcement approach emphasizing punishment and isolation, and they question whether we want to subject our students to that in school. An alternative practice, based on a response to racial disparities in the law enforcement, court, and prison systems, is to adopt a restorative justice framework for addressing misbehavior. I’d also add a call for more support professionals in schools who can help students work through issues before they manifest in disruptive misbehavior. Too many schools don’t have enough nurses, counselors, or school social workers for their students’ needs, and the result is loss of learning and safety for all.

Another counters with another study:

Many commenters on the pre-school discipline rates seemingly could not wait to say that disproportionate numbers do not mean that there is disproportionate treatment.  They are logically correct.  However, a major study of school discipline disparities published this month found no evidence that racial disparities in discipline are due to higher rates of misbehavior by Black students.  And, if anything, those students are punished more severely for similar or less serious behaviors than their peers. Some quotes from the attached paper:

“Studies comparing the severity of behavior by race have found no evidence that students of color in the same schools or districts engage in more severe behavior that would warrant higher rates of suspension or expulsion.” It goes on to say, “even controlling for teachers’ own ratings of disruptive behavior, race remains an independent predictor of office referral and suspension. In short, the data are consistent: there is simply no good evidence that racial differences in discipline are due to differences in rates or types of misbehavior by students of different races.” The conclusion: “Research has failed to support the common perception that racial and ethnic disparities in school discipline stem from issues of poverty and increased misbehavior among students of color.”

Jeremy Bentham’s collected writings on religion and sex have recently been published for the first time. Bentham argued for a perspective on sexual morality that was, to say the least, unusual for his era:

Bentham’s point was that, given that sexual gratification was for most people the most intense and the purest of all pleasures and that pleasure was a good thing (the only good thing in his view), and assuming that the activity was consensual, a massive amount of human happiness was being suppressed by preventing people, whether from the sanction of the law, religion, or public opinion, from engaging in such ‘irregular’ activities as suited their taste …

If an activity did not cause harm, Bentham had argued as early as the 1770s and 1780s, then it should not be subject to legal punishment, and had called for the decriminalization of homosexuality. By the mid-1810s he was prepared to link the problem not only with law, but with religion. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was taken by ‘religionists’, as Bentham called religious believers, to prove that God had issued a universal condemnation of homosexuality. Bentham pointed out that what the Bible story condemned was gang rape. Paul’s injunctions against homosexuality were also taken to be authoritative by the Church. Bentham pointed out that not only did Jesus never condemn homosexuality, but that the Gospels presented evidence that Jesus engaged in sexual activity, and that he had his male lovers — the disciple whom he loved, traditionally said to be John, and the boy, probably a male prostitute, who remained with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane after all the disciples had fled (for a more detailed account see ‘Not Paul, but Jesus’). …

Bentham looked to ancient Greece and Rome, where certain forms of homosexual activity were not only permitted but regarded as normal, as more appropriate models for sexual morality than that which existed in modern Christian Europe.

Bentham attacked the notion, still propagated by religious apologists, that homosexuality was ‘unnatural’. All that ‘unnatural’ meant, argued Bentham, was ‘not common’. The fact that something was not common was not a ground for condemning it. Neither was the fact that something was not to your taste. It was a form of tyranny to say that, because you did not like to do a particular thing, you were going to punish another person for doing it. Because you thought something was ‘disgusting’ did not mean that everyone else thought it was disgusting. You might not want to have sex with a sow, but the father of her piglets thought differently.

These writings were, for Bentham, a critical part of a much broader attack on religion and the ‘gloomy terrors’ inspired by the religious mentality. By putting forward the case for sexual liberty, he was undermining religion in one of the areas where, in his view, it was most pernicious. Bentham did not dare publish this material. He believed that his reputation would have been ruined had he done so. He died in 1832. He would have been saddened that it still retains massive relevance in today’s world.

But for me, what an encouraging sign that these profound human truths could be understood and grasped by someone as long ago as this. We sometimes feel as if we are having this debate for the first time. And we are – in a big, public, game-changing way. But the question of non-procreative sex has been around for a very long time, as have, we now see, the defenses of it. Just because so much of that viewpoint was suppressed doesn’t mean it did not exist.

(Painting: The burning of the knight of Hohenburg with his servant before the walls of Zürich, for sodomy, 1482.)