Monday, January 12

Tag: americans

Millions Of Working Americans Still Can’t Afford Food And Rent – Forget The American Dream
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FINANCIAL HEALTH

Millions Of Working Americans Still Can’t Afford Food And Rent – Forget The American Dream

Jeffrey Kucik, University of Arizona and Don Leonard, The Ohio State University The Biden administration is likely celebrating a better-than-expected jobs report, which showed surging employment and wages. However, for millions of working Americans, being employed doesn’t guarantee a living income. As scholars interested in the well-being of workers, we believe that the economy runs better when people aren’t forced to choose between paying rent, buying food or getting medicine. Yet too many are compelled to do just that. Determining just how many workers struggle to make ends meet is a complicated task. A worker’s minimum survival budget can vary considerably based on where the person lives and how many people are in the family. Take Rochester, New York. It has a cost of living that’s ...
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When Americans Thought Hair Was A Window Into The Soul
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HAIR

When Americans Thought Hair Was A Window Into The Soul

In 2004, the North Korean government launched one of the oddest television campaigns in recent history: “Let’s trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle.” Accompanied by radio and print ads, the five-part TV series urged North Korean men to wear their hair short. State-approved haircuts, the campaign explained, ranged in length from one to five centimeters, with seven centimeters permitted for men over 50 who sought to hide a balding scalp. Why, exactly, did the government care so much about how North Korean men chose to wear their hair? Long hair, the campaign argued, “consumes a great deal of nutrition” and thus threatened “human intelligence development” by depriving the brain of necessary energy. Pseudoscientific ideas aside, state media also suggested that hair repre...
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Poll Finds: A Record Number Of Americans Back Same-Sex Marriage
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RELATIONSHIPS

Poll Finds: A Record Number Of Americans Back Same-Sex Marriage

Support for marriage equality remains high across the United States, with new Gallup polling published Wednesday finding that a record 71 percent of Americans are in favor of it. The results are slightly higher than last year’s, when 70 percent of respondents backed same-sex marriage. The findings, from telephone interviews conducted throughout May, carry extra significance in the wake of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. LGBTQ+ legal experts have warned that overturning Roe could endanger marriage equality by eroding the right to privacy typically protected by the 14th Amendment’s right to due process. The Gallup polling underlines how the court’s potential decision on Roe — and the potential consequences for Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that lega...
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An Intimate Glimpse Into Segregation-Era Life For African Americans – The Gordon Parks Exhibit
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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

An Intimate Glimpse Into Segregation-Era Life For African Americans – The Gordon Parks Exhibit

In the spring of 1950, Gordon Parks, the first African-American photographer for Life Magazine, returned to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas. On assignment for the magazine, Parks photographed his middle school classmates, who were dispersed among Fort Scott and other Midwestern cities and towns. The resulting images – while quite personal to Parks – offer a glimpse into a community and a set of experiences shared by many African Americans of his generation. Depicting the realities of discrimination without the veil of nostalgia, it’s a body of work that captures the resiliency of a community at a significant point in American history – just prior to the Civil Rights Movement. But for reasons unknown, Life never published the series. Now, the powerful exhibit of over 40 segregation-er...
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African Americans Have Long Celebrated Black Culture In Public Spaces Defying White Supremacy
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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

African Americans Have Long Celebrated Black Culture In Public Spaces Defying White Supremacy

From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are coming down by the dozens. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It’s now a new community space where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my research, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history. But those African American memorial cultures have often been o...
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Research Shows Family Rifts Affect Millions Of Americans – Here Are Possible Paths From Estrangement Toward Reconciliation
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FAMILY

Research Shows Family Rifts Affect Millions Of Americans – Here Are Possible Paths From Estrangement Toward Reconciliation

Family relationships are on many people’s minds during the holiday season as sounds and images of happy family celebrations dominate the media. Anyone whose experiences don’t live up to the holiday hype may find this difficult or disappointing, but those feelings may be felt even more acutely among those involved in family rifts. I have done a significant amount of research on ambivalence and conflict in families, which led to a five-year study of family estrangements. At the outset, I was surprised at how little evidence-based guidance exists on the frequency, causes and consequences of family estrangement, or how those involved cope with the stress of family rifts. There are few studies published in academic journals on the topic, as well as limited clinical literature. I sought to fil...
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Can Churches Help African Americans In A Mental Health Crisis?
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MENTAL HEALTH

Can Churches Help African Americans In A Mental Health Crisis?

Brad R. Fulton, Indiana University Centuries of systemic racism and everyday discrimination in the U.S. have left a major mental health burden on African American communities, and the past few years have dealt especially heavy blows. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that Black Americans are twice as likely to die of COVID-19, compared with white Americans. Their communities have also been hit disproportionately by job losses, food insecurity and homelessness as a result of the pandemic. Meanwhile, racial injustice and high-profile police killings of Black men have amplified stress. During the summer of 2020, amid both the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, a CDC survey found that 15% of Black respondents had “seriously considered suicide in the pa...
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Want To Persuade Americans To Swap Out Beef For Plant-Based Burgers, Taste Alone Won’t Do It
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NUTRITION

Want To Persuade Americans To Swap Out Beef For Plant-Based Burgers, Taste Alone Won’t Do It

The big idea Consumers are more likely to choose a plant-based meat substitute when the restaurant’s advertising highlights the social benefits of doing so rather than its taste, according to recently published research I conducted with a colleague. We also found that showcasing the social costs of meat consumption also leads to a preference for plant-based “meats.” To reach this conclusion, we conducted two online experiments to examine the advertising of plant-based burgers and meatballs. Participants were recruited via the crowdsourcing website Amazon Mechanical Turk. In the first one, 156 participants were shown one of three commercials for a plant-based burger. They saw either a social appeal (“good for the environment and animal welfare”), a health appeal (“good for your health – n...
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Almost Two-Thirds Of Older Black Americans And Even More Latinos Can’t Afford To Live Alone Without Help
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FINANCIAL HEALTH

Almost Two-Thirds Of Older Black Americans And Even More Latinos Can’t Afford To Live Alone Without Help

Older Americans who want to live independently face serious economic challenges. Half who live alone don’t have enough income to afford even a bare-bones budget in their home communities, and nearly 1 in 4 couples face the same problem. Those numbers add up to at least 11 million older adults who are struggling to make ends meet, a new analysis shows. The numbers are worse for older people of color. Dramatically higher percentages of Black, Latino and Asian older adults live on incomes that don’t meet their cost of living, even with Social Security. That can mean skipping needed health care, not having enough food, living in unhealthy conditions or having to move in with family. These disparities often reflect lifelong disadvantages that add up as people of color encounter structural ra...
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African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces
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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces

From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are coming down by the dozens. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It’s now a new community space where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my research, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history. But those African American memorial cultures have often been o...
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