Race and Public Space

Been thinking a lot about the recent arrests of two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. This isn't a full post on the matter. I'm just starting to build a class session in my head for the next time I teach my Social Psychology course. Race and public space. Race and racism in everyday life. Here's what I have on file for now, to be developed into a class session.

1) Robin Roberts' interview of the men (Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson) on Good Morning America.

2) Jamelle Bouie's article "White Spaces," in Slate. He quotes Elijah Anderson in the article.

3) "Being Black in Public" - also in Slate, an interview featuring Jamelle Bouie, Gene Demby, Aisha Harris, and Tressie McMillan Cottom.

4) "Beyond Starbucks: How Racism Shapes Customer Service" - Alexandra C. Feldberg and Tami Kim. In this New York Times article, the authors state: "Over the past two years, we have investigated discrimination in customer service by conducting large-scale field experiments in the hospitality industry. We have repeatedly found that front-line workers exhibit racial bias in the quality of customer service they provide."

5) "Who's Really Welcome at Starbucks?" by Vince Dixon

6) "Race, Space, and Belonging" by Neeraj Rajasekar. Includes a listing of pertinent academic articles.

People Are Surprisingly Nice On Occasion (The Claw Machine Edition)

Since the tine my kids became old enough to ask to play the claw machine, I have worked hard to tell them it's a scam and a waste of money. Sometimes you gotta be a killjoy parent. When the moon might be blue we'll give each of our kids a dollar and let them have at it. Today was one such day. Our kids ran across a restaurant and were back in thirty seconds flat after predictably not retrieving a stuffed animal that they would have forgot about thirty seconds later had they happened to grab one. I digress. The point of this is that a couple was sitting near the claw machine, and, apparently having observed our kids experience the agony of defeat, gave them two dollars to try again. This was two more dollars for the claw machine to enjoy for dessert but there was winning in the losing. You see, this was an act of kindness from strangers (albeit within the constraints of late capitalism) and though our kids were twice disappointed, my wife and I were happy to point out how nice it was for these kind folks to try to help them achieve the thrill of victory. Across the room we hollered thank you and thanked them one more time when they left the restaurant. The weekend is only half over but no matter what happens the rest of the way, it has already been a good weekend.

Compliment From a Stranger

An hour ago I received a compliment at the grocery store from the person scanning my groceries. He liked my jacket. I thanked him and noted the jacket is old, around 10 years old. He asked if I get a lot of compliments on it. I said no. The person behind me (a woman) jumped in to say "Nice jacket!" As we laughed, the person behind her (a man) joined the fun and also said "Nice jacket!" It felt nice to get an unexpected compliment. A nice, simple, appropriate compliment (although, I would say, appropriate compliments are in the eye of the beholder) from a stranger is an unusual social interaction that I generally welcome.

It's interesting that the first song I heard on the ride to work this morning was "You've Got a Friend," the Carole King version. First of all, her voice is so lovely in the song. I wonder if you prefer her version or the one by James Taylor. Did you know that Carole King wrote it? I didn't recall that until googling it just now. It's from her Tapestry album in 1971. Here's Carole being awesome:



Anyhow, while driving to work the song put me in a reflective mood about friendship and I was thinking about trying to be a better friend to my friends and then the song took the turn that always catches me by surprise. You see, I don't hear the song a lot so when I do I tend to have forgotten that the song takes a cynical turn. As a Hall of Fame cynic, I like her cynical observation:

"...When people can be so cold
They'll hurt you, and desert you
And take your soul if you let them, oh but don't you let them"

Damn it's true that people will take your soul if you let them. All the more reason that it helps to have a friend, as Carole suggests. And sometimes it even helps to get a compliment from a stranger.

Finally, here's the jacket:

Society Sucks Until It Doesn't

It's interesting when people vent to me in public. When people who didn't go to college (or those who did but can't remember their sociology course) ask me "What's sociology?" I give them a short answer ("If it happens in society, we study it") before I attempt to go into a longer answer. I usually don't get to the longer answer because people tend to stop me when they hear the word society. "Society sucks," a person once said to me during one of these conversations. This week my barber and I were shooting the breeze and when he asked me about sociology and I said the word society he proceeded to offer critical observations about society.

This morning a car pulled in front of me in traffic after they had left a drive thru and I was behind the car at a red light. When the light turned green the car didn't move, so I lightly tapped the horn. The person gave me the finger. Me tapping the horn at volume 1 in no way shape or form warranted the middle finger but people will do what they do, and, like the critics say, society sucks.

Our destination was soccer practice and while 9-year-old played soccer our 6-year-old was bored. So was the sibling of someone else playing soccer, and she was saying to her mom that she wanted to go to the nearby playground. Her mom was chatting with my wife. We all know each other. I offered to take her to the playground with my son and it was win-win all around. When it was time to head back to the practice, my son and his friend ran back from the playground. Something that cracks me up is when a kid is running and suddenly busts into a cartwheel, which is exactly what his friend did. That kind of thing makes me very happy. See, when I run I'm just trying to get from A to B in one piece. When a kid goes from running to cartwheel I'm reminded that kids are great and that they haven't been stained by society yet. I'm also thankful to kids for reminding me that society sucks until it doesn't.

When we got back to practice a big beautiful dog was standing near us with his huge tongue hanging out, dripping saliva. Dogs rule and dogs are way better than people, we all know that already. I motioned to the dog to come see me because I love dogs and love to love them up. He was skeptical but slowly sidled up to me and started licking me and splashing me with saliva. Another win-win and another reminder that dogs are a vital part of society and a major reason that society doesn't suck 100% of the time.

After practice there was a variety of adulting taking place. My wife ran into a store to buy a birthday gift, then she ran into Lowe's to return something, then when we got home I mowed the lawn while she did assorted yard work. The highlight of my day (other than the cartwheeling kid and the slobbering dog) was that I put a half cup of vinegar in a bowl in our dishwasher and ran it through a hot cycle and that seemed to clean up our dishwasher nicely. We still need to vacuum and do all the kids' laundry but that's adulting that can probably wait until tomorrow.

Yesterday I met a deadline by submitting work. It's something that was on my plate for several months. It was a relief to meet the deadline and my priority for the rest of the day is to celebrate.

Agree or Disagree: Society Sucks

Ran into a relative who I don't see often.

Her: What do you teach?

Me: Sociology.

Her: What's sociology?

Me: Study of society.

Her: Society sucks!

I find it difficult to refute her point.

The Value of a Slow Social Interaction

I'm too much in a hurry at work. Do e-mail fast. Quick meeting with student. Review notes for class. Fast bathroom break. Eat fast. Drink coffee fast. There a text, here a text. Clever quips exchanged with colleagues in the hallway.

A nice interaction I had this morning went a different way. In the parking lot I ran into a colleague who I don't see very often. I usually walk and talk with colleagues when we cross paths in the parking lot. In this case, she stopped to talk. We made eye contact as we caught up. We asked about each other's families. We agreed the summer heat was unbearable. We talked a bit more and both said it was nice to see each other. It really was. Life is too busy and stressful to enjoy one sustained interaction after another, but I sure value the ones I get. I feel good about those slower interactions in a way that I don't after the split second ones.

(Dis)Trust of Fellow Man

Walking through the supermarket parking lot today, a young man seemed to be walking toward me. I tensed up a bit, wondering why he was coming close to me. He said "Gotta love it when you can't find your car," or something like that. He pivoted away from me and walked on. I watched him until he in fact stepped into his car. Hmmm. Nothing more than a guy walking to his car.

I have documented a beating I received, long ago, at the hands of a stranger. Since then, I've been on edge in public space. Also, recall I recently witnessed an angry man shouting obscenities in a crowded store. You just wonder when someone is going to snap.

And yet, my brief parking lot interaction was only about twenty minutes after a pleasant interaction with a stranger who sold me chairs. I responded to a Craigslist ad for these chairs.

$35 for the pair. A pretty good find, I'd say.

I was only a little nervous going to meet the seller, who turned out to be friendly and easy to deal with. I wonder how one's position in society (race, gender, class, etc.) influences their anxiety level prior to a Craigslist transaction. The man I dealt with actually made a remark about Craigslist. I already forgot how he put it, but the point he was making was that there are dangerous people in the world and you never know who you might encounter. Maybe we were both relieved at the ease of our transaction.

On a lighter note, the reason I went to the grocery store was to buy a sweet potato, so I could make sweet potato pancakes for lunch. Can you have sweet potato pancakes for lunch? It's an important food question, much like the question of whether a hot dog is a sandwich (of course it is not). I don't know what the rule book says about sweet potato pancakes for lunch, I just know I need to eat something other than deli meat and salads for lunch on occasion.

E-Mail and Conversations

Sherry Turkle's opinion piece, "The Flight From Conversation," was published more than a month ago in The New York Times. Her main point is that nothing substitutes for face-to-face conversation. Alongside Twitter and Facebook, she mentions e-mail as a form of communication that pales in comparison to face-to-face conversation. She says that when we communicate using technology, we do so in a faster, less nuanced manner than when we converse in person. In face-to-face conversations, she says, we are more attentive to other people's viewpoints.

I've thought about her piece a lot since reading it last month. Today, it occurred to me that my best friendship has been sustained by e-mail. My best friend and I graduated from college in 1994. Since then, we have almost always lived 500 miles apart. We get together in person a few times a year. Between visits, we rely on e-mail to stay in touch. Neither of us like to use the phone. Never have. But we both like e-mail and have consistently used it in the course of our friendship. Sometimes the messages consist of frivolous one-liners and not-so-important updates. Other times they have included serious exchanges filled with deep meaning. There are things that are hard for me to say to anyone's face, for fear of being judged for what I have to say or how I say it. E-mail has allowed me to say what I want to say in a careful and measured way. Turkle sees this as a problem. Human relationships are messy and we use technology to clean them up, she says. To that I would say without e-mail, there are things I never would have said to anyone in any way. In college and graduate school I hid a lot of my thoughts in diaries. I've opened up since then, but not totally. There are lots of thoughts I choose not to share. E-mail allows me to carefully share some of those sensitive thoughts. I don't see this as being shortchanged. Nor do I want to pick up the phone every time I want to share a book recommendation with my friend or ask him for a movie recommendation. Occasionally he sends me a hilarious account of something that happened to him. Then I can read it 2-3 times because it's such a great story and I get to enjoy it more than once.

Aside from describing the centrality of e-mail in an important friendship, I want to briefly say something about conversational skills. Being a college professor, most of my daily conversations are with students. Unlike me, they grew up with cell phones. For many of them, Facebook is a vital part of their lives. And yes, they are experts at texting. I also find they possess good conversational skills. I regularly speak with students face-to-face. I am generally impressed by how they carry on conversations. They send me e-mails too, but it's not a flight from conversation. Turkle is right in saying that human relationships are rich. I think that all of the ways we communicate make our relationships rich. We talk, we text. We text while we talk. There are so many ways to enjoy each other. I like a good conversation as much as anyone. But in my life I've found that good conversations are hard to find. So I'm happy to connect with people in any way that I can.

"Living by the Book" - A Video about Facebook

This is a student-made video about Facebook. One of my students reached out to me for a sociological perspective of Facebook. I briefly appear in the video after being described as a "social media expert." That's a generous introduction, but not quite true. Anyway, it was a nice compliment, and I was glad to add my sociological two cents to this terrific video. I think the students did an outstanding job.

Living By The Book from Amanda Galster on Vimeo.

Alone, Well Enough

A couple of years ago it seemed like everybody was in their own world, lost in their headphones, focused on keeping to themselves. Now it seems like everybody is connected all the time (see Facebook). People seem eager to be part of something, to be a valued piece of a network. Has the balance shifted to near-constant interaction and connectivity? Can anyone strike a balance between solitary contentedness and social interaction? Does anyone care to?

Author's note: this post is just a simple thought that occurred to me during a quiet moment this morning.

How Babies Influence People

He's only seven months old, but my son Mack has a lot of influence. He has the ability to stop people in their tracks and to facilitate interaction. I've lived in my neighborhood for six years but only know a few of my neighbors. I'm lucky if I can get a nod or a hello from most of the people on the street. But once I put little Mack in the stroller, the game changes. Recently a middle-aged man was walking with a bag of groceries. Upon seeing Mack, he dropped to his knees in front of the stroller to greet him. A woman who I'd never seen before Mack was born has stopped us to chat a few times and to try to get him to smile. Other people wave and smile when we walk by. "How's the baby today?" is a question that people will ask from their porches. But when I'm alone, I'm left alone. I like the influence that Mack has on people. I have the simple belief that neighbors should be friendly and at least be on a "hi" basis. I don't see the point of ignoring your neighbors. If it weren't for babies and dogs, I wonder how much less interaction there would be.

Of course, Mack is not the only infant to influence people. Most of the parties I go to these days include lots of children. My social circle is full of parents and their kids. So I spend a lot of time around children. So much conversation centers around parenting. We fawn over each other's babies and say things like "Your baby is so cute!" and "Oh my God, your baby is beautiful!" That leads to comparing notes about parenting practices and other small talk. Babies really are talented at starting and sustaining conversations. That's a lot of influence for a group of people who can't talk or walk!