Cameron D. Lippard

Group Position, Threat, and Immigration: The Role of Interest Groups and Elite Actors in Setting the "Lines of Discussion"

The purpose of this paper is to move research on racial attitudes away from studying intraindividual attitudes toward studying broader structural factors that contribute to the attitudes and feelings of U.S. citizens. We focus on how interest groups and elite actors play a role in shaping the discourse on immigrants and the immigration debate in the twenty-first century. Herbert Blumer posed that over time, the dominant group develops certain feelings toward subordinate group members and that these feelings form the basis of racial prejudice. These feelings include notions of superiority, the alienation of other groups, proprietary claims over valued resources, and finally, a feeling that resources are threatened. While not dismissing the importance of interpersonal interactions, Blumer posed that elite entities within the dominant group play prominent roles in producing and managing these feelings among the masses because they have access to the public ear. To assess how the elite attempt to manage feelings toward immigration, we use qualitative data from 33 amicus briefs submitted in support of Arizona’s SB 1070 law in the Arizona v. United States case. Findings reveal that each of the feelings was prominently represented in all briefs, which supports the notion that elite entities use arguments that promote feelings Blumer associated with racial prejudice.

Latino Health Care in Southern Appalachia a Community-Engaged Examination

Between 2007 and 2009, we created a research-based community partnership to identify and assess the health care needs of Latino1 families in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. This report presents the survey and focus group findings for 159 Latinos concerning their views of health care services and barriers to accessing resources. Only 20 percent of the sample reported health as a major concern in their daily lives; however, notable proportions accessed health care within the last year through free or reduced-fee clinics (36%), hospital emergency rooms (25%), and individual doctors (18%). Most (82%) reported cost of care as the most significant barrier to accessing health care along with language fluency and facing discrimination. Many suggested they waited to seek care until symptoms worsened; hence the high number of hospital visits. Most (82%) did not have any health insurance. However, based on the focus groups, respondents felt that once a serious disease afflicted them, only faith and family could help them, as accessing American health care was a luxury they could not afford.

Beyond Bigotry: Teaching about Unconscious Prejudice

Researchers have demonstrated that unconscious prejudices around characteristics such as race, gender, and class are common, even among people who avow themselves unbiased. The authors present a method for teaching about implicit racial bias using online Implicit Association Tests. The authors do not claim that their method rids students of biases. Instead, the authors show that this approach helps students recognize that they and many other people may hold implicit biases that can affect perceptions and actions and realize that prejudice is not reducible to overt bigotry. The authors also show that the exercise helped some students recognize that talking about race and challenging unconscious associations are better methods of combating prejudice than simply pretending not to notice race. Qualitative and quantitative data reveal that the approach described here was effective in building students’ understanding of unconscious prejudice.

Playing the “Immigrant Card” Reflections of Color-blind Rhetoric within Southern Attitudes on Immigration

Polls measuring attitudes on immigration suggest that Americans generally agree that immigration is good for the United States. However, these same polls suggest that Americans support strict border enforcement and racial profiling to curtail illegal immigration. These same mixed responses about immigration also characterize southern views, particularly in new immigrant destinations. Drawing on 180 in-depth interviews from southern college students, this article uses color-blind racism and racist nativism theories to examine immigration rhetoric. Results suggest that respondents fear immigrants “taking over,” racializing the immigration debate to only focus on Mexican immigrants. They also conflate their views of blacks and Mexican immigrants, suggesting these two groups are essentially the same. However, they deflect being blatantly racist nativist by camouflaging their comments with color-blind frames. Many note that the mistreatment of immigrants is “fair” in comparison with their immigrant ancestors, and because immigrants are here “illegally.” These findings advance color-blind rhetoric research beyond the black-white dichotomy by focusing on non-white immigrants. It also demonstrates that researchers should consider how at least respondents in new southern immigrant destinations intertwine various color-blind and racist nativist devices to shape immigration attitudes.

One Day on the Red Hills of Georgia”: The Effects of Immigration Status on Latino Migrants’ Experience of Discrimination, Utilization of Public Services, and Attitudes toward Acculturation

This study documents the experiences and identities of undocumented Spanish-speaking migrants in Georgia vis-a-vis their counterparts who have legal status. Structured interviews were used to collect data from 127 adults (49 percent undocumented at their time of arrival and 38 percent undocumented at the time of data collection) regarding their experience of discrimination, utilization of services, identity preferences, mental health, and beliefs in five domains: vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. Significant immigration status differences emerged for education, income, utilization of some city services, and a few of the belief scales. However, the documented and undocumented samples were more similar than different.

This ain't Chicago: race, class, and regional identity in the post-soul South

diagnose institutional racism within the German police, despite considerable evidence pointing in that direction. While this book is not the first to analyse the recreation and reproduction of antiMuslim racism within mainstream media or within blogs dedicated to demonizing Islam and Muslims in Europe, the connection that it establishes between the two is pertinent; Shooman’s account demonstrates a close proximity between discourses endorsed by anti-Muslim blogs and some of the narratives reproduced in mainstream media and within established political circles. What is more, there is little awareness that this collectively shared body of knowledge serves to legitimize structural social inequalities and everyday discriminatory practices. One of the examples offered here is worth quoting at full length: A mainstream television show broadcast the case of a dentist, who placed the following notice in his surgery: ‘A strict ban of hijabs worn by Islamistic (sic!) women and girls applies in this surgery. Islamistic (sic!) families with more than 5 children will not be treated. Basic knowledge of the German language is obligatory’ (translation AL, 80). The exorbitance and unlawfulness of this statement remained unchallenged during the following discussion. The television presenter uncritically reproduced the conspiracy theory of the ‘infiltration through disproportional birth rates’, evaluating the sign itself as ‘perhaps going too far’, but acknowledging the courage of the dentist ‘who did not want to remain silent and act’. (80). Drawing on rich and detailed sources, Shooman shows how depictions of Muslims tend to oscillate between inferior and passive victims who deserve pity (mostly women), and paternalistic demands that they should surrender to superior German values and regulations (mostly men) – and unmasks the need for self-assurance and an enlightened and impeccable occidental self-image behind these projections. I share Shooman’s concluding observation that further research is needed to explore the discriminatory effects of anti-Muslim stereotypes in diverse areas of social life and her book has certainly made a significant contribution to paving the way for further research in this area. The book not only offers an account of contemporary history that is ahead of its time in its national context, the analysis also provides key insights into mainstream attitudes at a time when thousands of people weekly take to the streets of Dresden (whose Muslim population is below 1%) to protest against the alleged ‘Islamization’ of Germany.

Book Review: Public Sociology: Research, Action, and ChangePublic Sociology: Research, Action, and Change, by NydenPhilipHossfeldLeslieNydenGwendolyn, Thousand Oaks, CAPine Forge Press. 2012. ISBN: 9781412982634,

with doing sociology. It is one way, not the only or necessary way (even if I feel that, by and large, it is the right way). I work as a researcher in the corporate world and do what I can to bring sociological theory, perspective, and method to what I am doing, these days essentially as an applied sociologist doing marketing research and consulting. I’ve been a stone progressive since my undergraduate days at Antioch College, but, as I said, I am uncomfortable with anything doctrinaire, and I do not even try to imbue my work with my ideology. Let 10,000 flowers bloom, and all that—do not confute using sociology with any particular ideology, perspective, or doctrine. Another issue is that I do not, I suspect, share the authors’ and contributors’ implicit definition of what sociology is and what it means to do sociology (which are never clearly brought out into the open). One might argue, as some of the case studies appear to do, that “sociology” inheres in research methods pioneered or developed by twentieth-century sociologists, largely associated with the Columbia School—in particular surveys and focused interviews. Certainly, the likes of Lazarsfeld (and, before him, Floyd Robinson) were major figures in the development of modern survey research. And, of course, Merton and his colleagues pioneered the core approach of focus groups and depth interviews. One might contend that using such methods implicitly is doing sociology, but, in my opinion, that strips the soul out of the sociological endeavor. I do not think we can legitimately claim that using such techniques or training others to do so makes what one does with them applied or public sociology—and I say this as one who makes a living using them. I wish more sociologists claimed this particular turf as our own, but it is largely dominated by asociological (and largely atheoretical) researchers and practitioners who would not recognize the social if it hit them in the face. However, I remain uncomfortable with the idea that sociocultural critique and full-blown praxis are sociological practice as we have championed it. Yet, Public Sociology seems to accept this as an alternative meaning of “doing sociology.” I believe strongly that sociological theory, concepts, perspectives, and methods are valuable in and of themselves, that there is a vital role for “pure” as well as applied research, and that practice is most effective when taking into account an eclectic range of sociological theory and content. Although, of course, the map is not the territory nor ever all the territory, I would say that this body of thought is sociology, and that one of the defining traits leading many or most of us to become sociologists is the widely shared compulsion to find patterns, making sense of human life in a systematic, scientific (albeit not necessarily mechanistic, behaviorist, or objectivist) way recognizing, as a common thread, that one cannot take the person out of their sociocultural context or dissociate social realities from the human actors who construct and constitute them. The bottom line is that this book is a solid piece of work. It definitely gets across its authors’ passion for and model of organic public sociology. I do not know that I would use it in a graduate or undergraduate course except as supplementary reading, or to whom I would target it if I were the publisher. But then, again, this volume leaves me thinking about ways that I might find a place and time to do some of this organic public sociology.