Ethnic studies: Chapter 1

• "I can't breathe." George Floyd repeated this phrase at least 20 times while held on the ground in police custody on May 25, 2020
• During the 9 1/2 minutes in which Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd's neck depriving him of his breath, Floyd repeatedly called out "Mama," though his mother was already deceased
• Following Floyd's lynching, multiracial Black Lives Matter mass protests erupted immediately in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, and countless cities and towns throughout the U.S. and the world
• Protesters pushed for justice and reforms to challenge systemic racism in policing, including defunding and disbanding police departments
• In many cases, though not all, police unleashed riot gear and tear gas on the mostly non-violent protesters
• In response to the mass protests and in a rare case of police accountability of excessive use of force, Chauvin and three other Minneapolis police officers were fired and charged with Floyd's murder
• W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963): '"The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line"'
• DuBois was a civil rights activist and the first African American to earn a PhD in Sociology from Harvard
• Sociology


  The systematic study of society and social interaction
• Sociologists


  • Identify cultural patterns and social forces
  • Determine how they affect individuals and groups
• Social structure


  The social patterns through which a society is organized
• Sociology provides a lens for understanding the human condition and the structural forces that influence our behavior and attitudes
• We are often not aware of the impact of societal forces
• Most Americans agree they enjoy a great amount of freedom


  We may have less freedom than we think
• Although we have the right to choose how to believe and act, many of our choices are affected by our society, culture, and social institutions in ways we do not even realize
• We are perhaps not as distinctively individualistic as we might like to think
• The struggle over state shut-downs, social distancing and mandatory masks in public, threw this debate over freedom into the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic
• The secret ballot is one of the most cherished principles of American democracy
• We vote in secret so that our choice of a candidate is made freely and without fear of punishment
• It is possible to predict the candidate for whom any one individual will vote if enough is known about the individual
• Our choice (in this case, our choice of a candidate) is affected by many aspects of our social backgrounds and, in this sense, is not made as freely as we might think
• CNN exit poll data found that Obama won 66% of the vote from people aged 18-24
• A prediction that each of 100 randomly selected 18-24 year old voters voted for Obama would be correct 66 times and incorrect 34 times
• Someone betting $1 on each prediction would come out $32 ahead
• Exit poll data found that 67% of white men in Wyoming voted for McCain
• A prediction that each of the 100 men voted for McCain would be right 67 times and wrong 33 times
• Someone betting $1 that each man voted for McCain would come out $34 ahead
• Young people in the US and white men from Wyoming had every right and freedom to vote for whomever they wanted in 2008
• They still tended to vote for a particular candidate because of the influence of their age (young people) or their gender, race, and state of residence (white men from Wyoming)
• Former President Donald Trump stoked racial strife and polarization during his presidency and through this campaign cycle
• Trump made positive references to white power during the Charlottesville protests
• Trump tweeted chastising protesters as thugs, blaming COVID-19 on China, or refusing to demand that the far-right Proud Boys "stand down"
• Trump catered to his base who hold more polar views from the rest of the nation, including more staunch opposition to immigration
• Nearly 80% of white Evangelical voters checked the box for Trump
• Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris, the first-ever woman of color on a major political party ticket, won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes
• There were unique niches, and overall increasing numbers, of voters of color supporting Trump, such as Cuban and Venezuelan Americans in Florida
• The overwhelming majority of people of color cast a vote for the Biden-Harris ticket, including Latinx and Native American populations in Arizona who helped turn the state blue
• A majority of men voted for Trump while the majority of women voted for Biden
• Trump made gains with all groups of women from 2016 to 2020 elections, but a consistently high majority of Black women cast their vote for the Biden-Harris ticket
• The overwhelming majority of the white electorate cast a vote for Trump, though a smaller percentage of white men voted for Trump as compared to 2016