americans

6Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

With New Controversial Cases That Stand To Change Many Americans’ Lives, The Supreme Court Is Back In Session – Here’s What To Expect

Following a dramatic year of controversial rulings, the Supreme Court began hearing new cases on Oct. 3, 2022, with a full agenda. The court overturned abortion rights and expanded gun rights in June 2022 as the new conservative supermajority began to exert its influence. Some of the court’s most important upcoming cases focus on the future of affirmative action, equal treatment of LGBTQ people, and the control of election laws. The court will hear the cases in the fall and then likely issue rulings in spring 2023. As a close observer of the court, I think this term’s rulings will continue to reject the court’s previous liberal decisions and instead reflect a conservative interpretation of the historical meaning of the Constitution. At least three of those upcoming rulings are likely to...

Americans Think They Know A Lot About Politics – And It’s Bad For Democracy That They’re So Often Wrong In Their Confidence

5Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Americans Think They Know A Lot About Politics – And It’s Bad For Democracy That They’re So Often Wrong In Their Confidence

As statewide primaries continue through the summer, many Americans are beginning to think about which candidates they will support in the 2022 general election. This decision-making process is fraught with difficulties, especially for inexperienced voters. Voters must navigate angry, emotion-laden conversations about politics when trying to sort out whom to vote for. Americans are more likely than ever to view politics in moral terms, meaning their political conversations sometimes feel like epic battles between good and evil. But political conversations are also shaped by, obviously, what Americans know – and, less obviously, what they think they know – about politics. In recent research, I studied how Americans’ perceptions of their own political knowledge shape their political attit...

White Americans See An Increase In Discrimination Against Other White People And Less Against Other Racial Groups – Poll Reveals

7Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

White Americans See An Increase In Discrimination Against Other White People And Less Against Other Racial Groups – Poll Reveals

Despite largely holding the political, economic and social levers of power, nearly a third of white Americans say they have seen “a lot more” discrimination against white people in the past five years – and more than half of them say they have not seen a rise in discrimination against Black and Latino Americans. A May 2022 University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll further found that a majority of white Americans do not believe that there has been a rise in discrimination against minority groups. In stark contrast, the poll found a large majority of Black Americans believe they have been on the receiving end of discrimination. That many white Americans, the dominant racial group in U.S. society, see more discrimination against other white people than those who have historically endured...

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

3Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IMPACT, SOCIETY

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 ...

In Preventing Older Americans From Lacking Enough Quality Food, Social Security Benefits Play Key Role

27Jun

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

In Preventing Older Americans From Lacking Enough Quality Food, Social Security Benefits Play Key Role

Social Security benefits make it easier for older Americans to afford the food they need to live a healthy, active life, according to our recently published research. Although this finding may seem obvious, to our knowledge this is the first study to directly examine the link between income from Social Security in old age and food insecurity, whereby a household can’t get adequate food because it has insufficient money and other resources. We used data from a unique national household survey, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to examine changes in the ability of a household to purchase food from year to year. We focused on how just under 1,000 households receiving Social Security benefits for the first time or experiencing an increase in Social Security benefits affected their food ins...

When Americans Thought Hair Was A Window Into The Soul

14Jun

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE

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...

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

3Jun

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

LGBTQ

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 le...

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

15Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

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...

If Congress Makes Daylight Saving Time Permanent – 5 Ways Americans’ Lives Will Change

6Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

If Congress Makes Daylight Saving Time Permanent – 5 Ways Americans’ Lives Will Change

The U.S. Senate approved the Sunshine Protection Act in March 2022, with the goal of making daylight saving time permanent starting in November 2023. If that happens, the U.S. will never again “spring forward” or “fall back.” Following the Senate’s vote and a recent hearing in the House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce – at which I testified – the subcommittee is now considering the issue. The full House of Representatives will need to vote in support of permanent DST before the bill goes to President Biden’s desk for his signature. In my research on DST, I have found that Americans don’t like Congress messing with their clocks. However, the move to DST year-round makes a lot of sense. In an effort to avoid the biannual time change in spring and fall, some DST critics ha...

How To Help Older Americans Given The Wrong Idea About Online Safety

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

How To Help Older Americans Given The Wrong Idea About Online Safety

Recently, the U.S. Social Security Administration sent out an email to subscribers of its official blog explaining how to access social security statements online. Most people know to be suspicious of seemingly official emails with links to websites asking for credentials. But for older adults who are wary of the prevalence of scams targeting their demographic, such an email can be particularly alarming since they have been told that the SSA never sends emails. From our research designing cybersecurity safeguards for older adults, we believe there is legitimate cause for alarm. This population has been schooled in a tactical approach to online safety grounded in fear and mistrust – even of themselves – and focused on specific threats rather than developing strategies that enable them to ...