Social Problems: A Human Rights Perspective [2 ed.] 1138040908, 9781138040908

Citation preview

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Eric Bonds has written a different kind of social problems textbook: engaged, critical, and international in scope. Social Problems: A Human Rights Perspective rejects the value-​ neutral approach common to scholarship in social problems. By developing a human rights perspective, Bonds offers his readers a coherent, overarching framework for understanding contemporary social problems and enduring inequalities. Social Problems: A Human Rights Perspective will help students to understand the world they encounter beyond the classroom, as well as the ongoing efforts of activists and social movements to promote equality and justice. Jared Del Rosso, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Denver and author of Talking About Torture: How Political Discourse Shapes the Debate Thanks to its emphasis on topics of great concern to today’s undergraduates, such as climate change, pollution, immigration, racial discrimination, and the growing concentration of wealth and power that will increasingly impact their lives, this book provides an ideal way to engage students’ attention. The human rights approach does so in a way that is less likely to raise hackles, and thereby opens students up to possible solutions to these pressing social problems. G. William Domhoff, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of Who Rules America:The Triumph of the Corporate Rich I have built social problem courses around this book as it is engaging, well organized, and provides comprehensive treatment to core problems. Students connect to Bonds’ approachable style when tackling difficult subject matter. The new edition provides updated material on the COVID-​19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and human rights debates on immigration, which will undoubtedly help to create dynamic class engagement. Kristina Kahl, Professor of Sociology at Front Range Community College

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Social Problems

Social Problems:A Human Rights Perspective, Second Edition evaluates U.S. society through an international human rights framework.The book provides a critical discussion about what rights mean, along with a sociological exploration of power and inequality to explain why human rights are so often violated or left ignored and unfulfilled in the United States. In each chapter, the book offers numerous policy alternatives that could provide a pathway toward the increased fulfillment of rights, while also stressing the important role that nonviolent social movements have had, and must have in the future, in achieving greater justice, dignity, wellbeing, and environmental protection in our society. This edition includes several new chapters on topics of major interest to students, including:

• the human right to health; • climate change and human rights; • immigration and human rights violations in U.S. society; and • a new discussion of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Social Problems gives social science students a new way to understand pressing social issues that exist in their own communities. Eric Bonds is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Mary Washington, a small public school in Virginia. Bonds studies and teaches about inequality, violence, environmental problems, and human rights. He also remains engaged in his community through garden projects and climate change activism.

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Framing 21st Century Social Issues Series Editor: France Winddance Twine University of California, Santa Barbara

The goal of this new, unique series is to offer readable, teachable “thinking frames” on today’s social problems and social issues by leading scholars.These are available for view on http://​routledge.customgateway.com/​routledge-​ social-​issues.html. For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide “overviews” to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses. As an instructor, click to the website to view the library and decide how to build your custom anthology and which thinking frames to assign. Students can choose to receive the assigned materials in print and/​or electronic formats at an affordable price. Available The U.S. Immigration Debate The Myths and Realities of Immigration in the United States Greg Prieto Social Problems, 2nd Edition A Human Rights Perspective Eric Bonds Debating the Drug War Race, Politics, and the Media Michael L. Rosino Series Advisory Board: Rene Almeling, Yale University, Joyce Bell, University of Pittsburgh,Elizabeth Bernstein,Barnard College,David Embrick,Loyola University—​ Chicago, Tanya Golash-​Boza, University of California—​ Merced, Melissa Harris, New  York University, Matthew Hughey, University of Connecticut, Kerwin Kaye, SUNY—​Old Westbury, Wendy Moore, Texas A&M, Alondra Nelson, Columbia University, Deirdre Royster, New  York University, Zulema Valdez, University of California—​Merced,Victor Rios, University of California—​Santa Barbara.

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Social Problems A Human Rights Perspective Second Edition Eric Bonds

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Second edition published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Eric Bonds to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 2014 Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Bonds, Eric, 1976– author. Title: Social problems : a human rights perspective / Eric Bonds. Description: Second Edition. |New York City : Routledge Books, 2021. | Series: Framing 21st century social issues | Revised edition of the author’s Social problems, 2013. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020041668 (print) | LCCN 2020041669 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138040908 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138040915 (paperback) | ISBN 9781315169521 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Human rights–United States. | Social problems–United States. | Social justice–United States. | Human rights. | Social problems. Classification: LCC JC599.U5 B584 2021 (print) | LCC JC599.U5 (ebook) | DDC 323.0973–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041668 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041669 ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​04090-​8  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​04091-​5  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​315-​16952-​1  (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

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To my students, Past, present, and future, With love and hope

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures  Preface  Acknowledgments  1 Introduction to the Human Rights Perspective  2 Rights to Wellbeing and Property in an Unequal Society 

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3 American Inequality and Rights to Speech and Democracy  30 4 Racism and the Human Right to Be Treated Equally Before the Law 

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5 Violations of Women’s and LGBTQ Rights in U.S. Society 

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6 The Human Right to Health and the Toxic Politics of Expendability 

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7 Carbon Pollution, Climate Change, and Human Rights 

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8 U.S. Immigration Policy and Violations of Human Rights 

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9 U.S. Society, Global Inequalities, and Human Rights 

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10 Volunteerism, Activism, and the Pursuit of Human Rights  111 Glossary  Appendix:The Universal Declaration of Human Rights  Index 

120 127 133

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Tables and Figures

Tables 2 .1 Income Inequality by Nation 2.2 Compensation of Selected CEOs Compared with Average Worker Compensation in 2018 3.1 Amount of Money Raised by Winners per Office, 2018 Elections 7.1 Per Capita Carbon Emissions by Selected Nation 9.1 Origins and Uses of Critical Minerals

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Figures 2 .1 Share of National Income by Quintile 2.2 Distribution of U.S. Wealth in 2019 4.1 Median Family Wealth by Race 7.1 Mauna Loa Observatory Monthly Average Carbon Dioxide Concentrations

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Preface

The study of social problems is a longstanding, sizable, and lively sub-​ discipline within sociology. Students might find it funny to learn, however, that there is no shared agreement between sociologists about what a “social problem” actually is. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the study of social problems has been so successful as an academic enterprise; without a concrete definition about what constitutes a “social problem,” it allows for a great deal of openness and flexibility in the field. But this lack of a common agreement is debilitating as well. Injustice and suffering are real, but we sociologists often lack a common framework to distinguish these as legitimate social problems as opposed to the crazes and overblown “scares” that we are often told to worry about, but that upon further inspection are not really so troublesome after all. A main goal of this book is to provide a new definition for what constitutes a social problem. I define it as the violation of a group’s human rights, which are commonly upheld standards about what people deserve and should be protected from in life that have been codified by some widely recognized international body. I use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is included in the Appendix to this book, as a paradigmatic expression of shared standards about the treatment of persons in the contemporary world. I  will argue that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be used as a tool to evaluate U.S.  society, and I  show how we might do so in order to better understand a range of pressing issues in the following chapters. However, I also recognize that human rights are defined and understood within the context of intersecting forms of social inequality and struggles for political power. Using human rights to evaluate wellbeing can therefore never be part of a purely objective academic exercise. The approach that I advocate recognizes that there is no one single interpretation of what rights mean, and that different groups with differing interests are going to promote divergent views. Even so, I argue that some interpretations are better than others. Interpretations that recognize the worth and dignity of all persons, that seek to maximize wellbeing across society, and—​where appropriate—​ that strike a balance between groups with conflicting interests are, in my view, the most useful.

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The achievement of rights, as lived realities rather than idealized standards, involves building the grassroots movements necessary to equalize power differentials between conflicting groups and, ultimately, change government policies. To this end, I  offer several public policy alternatives intended to inspire student discussions and help students consider ways that we in the United States can create change to make human rights consequential in the lives of more Americans. To explain how students might achieve this change, I describe various strategies U.S. social movements have used in the recent past to win important human rights victories. I hope that the perspective I  provide in this book will give students the conceptual tools to look at U.S. society in new ways, and that some of the ideas expressed here will be useful in their lives ahead. Given the many crises that now unfold before us, a human rights perspective is not only relevant, it’s essential.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Kristina Kahl and Emily Taylor for reading much of this manuscript and for giving very helpful feedback. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Charlotte Taylor and Tyler Bay for their support and encouragement for this project—​it is much appreciated.

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1 Introduction to the Human Rights Perspective

These are strange and difficult times. As I write this, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, there is so much upheaval, loss, and uncertainty in the United States. An estimated 220,000 people have died so far because of the virus, while countless more have suffered due to the disease. The pandemic has sent the economy into a nosedive, with millions left unemployed or with reduced hours and pay, and now at risk of being evicted from apartments or losing their homes. On top of all this, many of our nation’s political leaders have proved ineffective at dealing with the crisis, and often seem more interested in fighting and hurling insults at one another than in helping the American people. But we Americans are, of course, deeply divided ourselves. The pandemic has made the fissures between us brutally evident. But there are good things happening now too. Some restaurants and multitudes of volunteers have kicked into high gear in order to help get food to people in need. As a people, we have rallied to make contributions to food banks and other social support organizations.We have come to better appreciate the invaluable work done by janitors, grocery store employees, farm laborers, and delivery drivers, now calling them “essential workers” when, in the past, it was easy to overlook their contributions to society. And we have celebrated and cheered on our healthcare workers as they put in long hours and as they constantly take personal risks to care for us and our community. All these positive happenings remind us that, despite everything that divides us as Americans, we share some basic values. I  would wager that almost every American believes all people should be treated with dignity and should be allowed some basic material conditions for living. Practically all Americans agree that racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination that give some individuals special advantages over others should be prohibited. And, as a nation, we mostly agree that children and young people are special and deserve support, protection, and educational opportunities from their communities. Finally, as Americans, we typically believe that all people should be given an opportunity to express themselves, to form their own beliefs, and to develop their own capacities to think. These principles that we share are, in fact, a starting place for “human rights.” When it comes down to it, human rights are nothing more than shared standards and ideals about the moral treatment of persons in our

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contemporary world. While some of these ideals have been under attack in recent years, both in the United States and around the globe, they still provide a beacon guiding us toward a more peaceful, free, equitable, and prosperous world. Of course, when you typically hear about human rights, it’s frequently about terrible events happening in some other land—​perhaps when a government somewhere in Asia, Africa, or Latin America has arrested critics, shut down newspapers, or even killed unarmed citizens.These are certainly human rights abuses, but this is far from the only way to think about human rights. As I’ll demonstrate over the course of this book, human rights also apply right here in the United States, giving us a powerful tool that we can use to better understand our society and a guide to improving life for more people in our nation. Eleanor Roosevelt, the former First Lady and wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–​45) and one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, once asked, “Where do human rights begin?” The answer, she said, is “in small places, close to home—​so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.Yet they are the world of the individual person.” Human rights begin when people across the world and in our own nation expect to live with justice and dignity. They begin when families insist upon safety and access to adequate resources to care for themselves and others. Human rights begin when we demand the opportunity to develop and grow as individuals. In this sense, human rights are one way to measure progress in contemporary societies, something that is as true in the U.S. context as in any other country. Human rights are a way of knowing when things are going as we might hope. They are fulfilled when, for instance, an unemployed parent receives temporary government support in the form of checks that can help pay the mortgage on their family’s house until they are able to find a new job. Human rights are also achieved when a government treats all its citizens fairly, whatever their race, gender, religion, or sexuality. Our society also meets its human rights obligations when a graduating high school senior who shows great academic promise receives the support they need to attend college. As the above examples indicate, we can use a human rights framework to assess our society in terms of our shared values. This applies not only when things are going well, but also when our society fails to live up to our collective expectations. When justice is lacking, dignity is denied, and when the futures of young people are being deflated rather than being filled with hope and opportunity, then we can say that human rights are not being fulfilled. In this way, I will employ the notion of human rights as a means of indicating that there is a social problem. Though this topic is frequently studied by sociologists, it is rarely defined.

The Social Construction of Social Problems Politicians, news-​media figures, celebrities, social-​media influencers, corporate advertisers, activists, and campaigners are all competing for our

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Introduction  3 attention. Taken together, that’s a whole lot of noise, and frequently this noise is highly discordant—​even contradictory. Some of these folks might tell us about a dire “problem” they see in the world that should be addressed immediately, while others would like us to think that the very same thing is no big deal and that, perhaps, we should pay attention to some other terrible thing they’re worried about instead. Some might tell us, for instance, that climate change is a serious threat, while some politicians and media personalities would have us believe—​contrary to the scientific consensus—​that concerns about the climate are overblown. Others might call attention to immigration to the United States as a major social problem, while others focus instead on the mistreatment of immigrants as the important issue that should hold our attention. Add into this mix America’s partisan divide, in which people decide what is or what isn’t a social problem based upon their Democratic or Republican party identification, and we’ve got a serious challenge on our hands. How can we possibly know what is or isn’t a social problem? Some sociologists say that the best way to deal with this dilemma is not to weigh into these debates at all and to avoid taking a side one way or the other, but to instead study the process by which something gets defined as a problem and how that definition then influences behavior (Best 2013; Spector and Kitsuse 1977).To call something a problem, these theorists point out, necessarily means relying upon the group values and norms of the community to which one belongs.Think, for example, of the “social problem” of witchcraft. If we were alive in New England during America’s early colonial period, we might very well take it as a serious condition plaguing our community, which requires our attention and serious action. Of course, from today’s perspective, the “problem” of witchcraft sounds absurd. But the point is that we all view the world, and consider what is and what isn’t problematic, from within it. We can’t help but to view “problems” from the standpoint of our own community. Just as we might find the problem of witchcraft laughable today, others—​maybe living hundreds of years in the future—​might find some of our own contemporary preoccupations and concerns equally ridiculous. This approach to social problems, called social constructionism, draws from a long intellectual tradition asserting that people do not act based upon the world itself, but rather upon interpretations or definitions of that world. Early American sociologist W. I. Thomas summed up the social constructionist position best when he said, “if men (or people) define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (quoted in Merton 1995). This is a fundamental principle of sociology, which can be applied in innumerable ways, but I’ll provide a couple of examples that might help you think the idea through. For the first example, I’d like to ask whether you are someone who loves hot and spicy food? Or maybe you prefer your food without the burn.Where I teach in Virginia, the mix of my students’ spice preference is about even. What explains this difference? Why do half of my students enjoy the heat

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provided by chili peppers, but the other half like their food calmer? Looking at the student characteristics between the two groups in class, which are roughly even, it’s clear that the difference in taste is not based on genetics. And while I  personally love chili peppers, the consistently large number of students who don’t want to go anywhere near them shows that there is nothing inherently delicious about the flavoring. In fact, one of the reasons these plants developed capsicum, which is the chemical inside chili peppers that make them spicy, was to keep mammals like us away (Walton 2018). From a social constructionist perspective, the explanation behind the question of why some people enjoy spicy foods while others don’t is simply that some of us come from family or friendship circles in which eating spicy food is defined as enjoyable, and members of these groups are taught to cultivate—​despite the experience of some pain—​an appreciation for it. Here we see the Thomas Theorem in action. In this case, it’s not the taste of spice itself that people act on, but their community’s interpretation of it. Those interpretations—​whether fiery hot food is good or not—​influence how people act. How about a more serious application of the idea? In the United States, there has been a decades-​old idea that boys are innately better at math than girls, despite considerable evidence to the contrary (Kersey, Csumitta, and Cantlon 2019). Still, for years and years, this mistaken idea persisted and became real in its consequences. It’s easy to understand why: if teachers think boys have a greater aptitude for math, they’ll likely give them a little more attention in class, or apply additional pressure to a boy who “doesn’t get it,” while being more likely to let a girl’s lack of comprehension slide. Parents sharing this mistaken idea are going to amplify this effect, investing in their sons’ mathematical development while neglecting that of their daughters. This effect is only heightened if kids themselves succumb to the myth, which may convince girls and young women that it’s okay if “math isn’t their thing.”To bring in the Thomas Theorem, it’s again not young people’s mathematical aptitude that makes the difference, because in this case the aptitude is equivalent. Instead, it’s people’s definition of it that matters because definitions create their own reality, even if based on mistaken assumptions. Even today, boys are much more likely to join “math clubs” (Cain-​Miller and Queally 2018) and mathematics and math-​driven professions remain heavily dominated by men (Price-​Mitchell 2019). Applying this line of thinking to social constructionists studying social problems, nothing in the world is inherently problematic. Some things simply get defined that way while others don’t (Spector and Kitsuse 1977). Yet these definitions become consequential because they provide motivations for human action. For this reason, social constructionists encourage us to study the careers of social problems, through which certain aspects of the world are defined as problematic, and how those changed definitions influence people’s behavior (Best 2013). This process typically begins with claims-​making by such people as writers, experts, celebrities, influencers, or activists, who first define

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Introduction  5 something as problematic and seek to convince others to share their concern (Best 2013; Spector and Kitsuse 1977). News organizations then pick up these claims. Hopefully, these organizations will do serious reporting on the issue, vetting claims and discerning for the public what’s true. But with little money to pay for in-​depth investigative reporting while still trying to attract and maintain a readership, some news organizations might instead rush to sensationalize the newly developing “problem,” sometimes overgeneralizing from a few isolated incidents and exaggerating consequences. These claims might then be picked up by members of the public as appropriate definitions of reality, and politicians looking to score points with constituents may act to craft policies in order to address this perceived malady (see Best 2013 for one elaboration of this process). As a consequence, problems—​whether well founded or not—​become socially constructed and come to influence the behavior of individuals, communities, and institutions. A social constructionist perspective is invaluable to the study of social problems for at least a couple of reasons. First, the perspective teaches that a problem doesn’t just exist in the world, no matter how harmful it might be. It must first be defined as such before people act on it. One example is smoking. For decades in American society, smoking cigarettes wasn’t defined as a social problem despite credible scientific evidence of its harm. A growing chorus of claims-​makers ultimately changed Americans’ minds about it, thereby also changing behaviors and ushering in countless new restrictions. Second, the social constructionist perspective reminds us that some conditions may not be harmful at all, even if they are collectively defined as problematic. For instance, during the time I’m writing this book, the nightly news, talk shows, and social media have carried alarming warnings about a so called “murder hornet.” Headlines allege that these wasps, which were unintentionally brought to the United States from Asia,“have a sting that can kill” (Geranios 2020) and that the new predator may “decimate honeybee populations” (Cohen 2020). Despite all the media hype, experts are also trying to weigh in by assuring us that while Asian giant hornets—​the real name for these insects—​have a painful sting, they are no more deadly than the native bees or wasps that can also cause anaphylactic shock in individuals who are allergic to them (Kawahara 2020). It also seems as if honeybees have natural defenses against Asian giant hornets, which they developed to protect themselves from other predators (Kawahara 2020). Of course, the introduction of a non-​native species to an ecosystem is never a good thing, but the fear caused by all this panicked news coverage is not consistent with the threat this hornet poses to humans. It does, however, match a familiar pattern of social problem construction in the United States. News reporting of “social problems” frequently has as much to do with the social organization of major media outlets in America as with the issues being reported on themselves. Today in the United States, most news media organizations are businesses that ensure their profitability by doing two main things: pushing costs down and attracting viewers’ attention to keep advertising revenue up. By giving us sensational stories

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about an invasion of “murder hornets” from Asia, and by reporting on other scary-​sounding things across the nation, news organizations can accomplish both goals: they give us an eye-​catching story that costs practically nothing to produce. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon and declaring these things to be “real” problems ourselves, the perspective of social constructionism helps us develop our critical thinking abilities and encourages us to examine claims carefully before we also get riled up about something that maybe isn’t such a major threat after all. Powerful insights from social constructionism can be combined with ideas from the sociology of human rights in order to create a comprehensive and productive study of social problems.

The Human Rights Approach Social constructionism teaches important lessons about the world in which we live, but it is not in itself sufficient for a fully developed study of social problems. After all, are we really comfortable with the social constructionist position of moral relativism, which holds that no condition is inherently problematic? In order to think this through, let’s consider the example of child abuse. In the United States, attitudes about the appropriate treatment of children have changed a great deal over time. During earlier periods of American history, beating a child or subjecting them to other severe physical punishment was not considered abusive, but was instead widely considered an appropriate form of discipline (Pollard-​Sacks 2003).Today, such treatment of children is largely deemed both immoral and illegal. A social constructionist perspective is helpful here, in that it calls our attention to how something like harm committed by adults against children may not be considered a social problem in one era (or in one culture) but might be in another. The perspective, however, is mostly blind to the real suffering, pain, and physical impacts such treatment might have, regardless of whether or not it is called a problem. It also neglects issues of power and inequality. In America’s early years as a nation, children might have experienced corporal punishment and harsh treatment as extremely problematic. But they lacked the social power necessary to make their views known in a way that was deemed legitimate by adults in the society. In essence, social constructionism emphasizes the relativity of social problems, which is appropriate on a purely cultural level; however, its neglect of issues of harm and power also begs further analysis. So how might we draw from social constructionism while developing a broader perspective that accounts for suffering, power, and inequality? It is here, I think, that the sociology of human rights becomes invaluable. Social theorist Brian Turner (2006) argues that human rights emerge out of our shared human vulnerability and capacity to suffer. As humans, each of us has the ability to feel pain, indignity, and insecurity. Although young people frequently believe themselves to be invincible, it is likely that all of us will—​at one point or another—​experience accidents, sickness, or physical

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Introduction  7 debilitation, all of which cause us to suffer. But as humans, we don’t simply accept this fate. Rather, we work to protect ourselves and others from pain and the anguish it brings. Indignity, we might say, is social pain, experienced when one is unable to fulfill the conditions that constitute normal personhood within any given society. Insecurity, on the other hand, occurs when one’s existence, or the continued existence of one’s family, is threatened.This may mean living at serious risk of physical attack, but it also might mean living from day to day without knowing where one will find the next meal, or how one will house and clothe one’s children. Suffering, in other words, is real. Human rights, according to Turner (2006), are the means by which contemporary societies acknowledge suffering and seek to lessen its prevalence in our communities. Other theorists have sought to justify human rights not just based on our shared capacity to suffer, as Turner (2006) does, but also on a shared recognition that all persons have the potential to contribute to the development of the societies in which they are born (Sen 1999). Some sociologists think of human rights in a different way, as claims upon social power arrangements that are required to promote human life and dignity in the aftermath of the cataclysmic wars in the first half of the 20th century (Sjoberg, Gill, and Williams 2001). Regardless of how sociologists theorize the basis of human rights, all agree that they are not “natural.” They are not “inalienable,” nor are they timeless. Rather, from a sociological perspective, human rights are social constructions that only make sense within particular historic contexts. Building upon these insights, for the purpose of this book we will define human rights as broadly shared agreements, codified through some widely recognized deliberative body, about what every person deserves and should be protected from in life simply on account of being born into our contemporary global society. While human rights are social constructions, there is also something special about them.They are widely agreed-​upon norms and ethical guidelines with centuries-​long histories of conflict and consensus, forged through grassroots advocacy and government policy at the local, national, and global levels (Blau and Moncado 2009; Tilly 1990; Wallerstein 2011).While there is no one definitive list of human rights, a very good place to start is with the Universal Declaration. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted between 1947 and 1948, it is no exaggeration to say that the world had just been shattered by the events of the preceding 40 years. Both World War I and World War II rank among the deadliest sprees of violence in human history, with World War I claiming 37 million lives and World War II killing over 60 million people, devastating practically all of Europe, Japan, and significant areas elsewhere in Asia and North Africa. The moral consciousness of the world was roused not only by the scale of these catastrophes, but also by the particular horror of the Nazi genocide, involving the systematic murder of six million Jews along with millions of other individuals, part of the Roma ethnic group, prisoners of war, and sexual minorities. In between these two terrible periods of violence was a global economic depression in the 1930s.

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The global economic slowdown was so severe—​driving unemployment up to 25  percent in the United States, for instance—​that many levelheaded people wondered whether capitalism, as a form of social organization, would survive. In this international context, the newly formed United Nations responded to pressure from civil society groups and national governments by establishing a committee to write an “international bill of rights” (Morsink 1999). The Declaration is an international document, having been drafted by representatives from eight different nations and adopted by the United Nations. Importantly, while eight countries abstained from voting either up or down, no nation in the world cast a single vote against the adoption of the Universal Declaration1 (Morsink 1999). The preamble to the document states that: Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people. The drafters of this document—​living in the wake of a terrible global economic depression, two devastating world wars, and the Nazi Holocaust—​ sought to establish an international framework that could help secure a better and more hopeful future. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been immensely significant in our particular era. While it is not, of course, a legally binding treaty, it did provide the framework for subsequent international agreements, like the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the International Convention Against Torture (Blau and Moncado 2009). But perhaps it is the moral power of the document, rather than the subsequent treaties that it helped generate, that is more important. Indeed, the Universal Declaration has been awarded the Guinness World Record for being the most translated document in the world, having been transcribed into 370 different languages and dialects (Guinness World Records 2014). It has also provided a catalyst for human rights activism and advocacy around the world, from both large organizations with a global reach such as Amnesty International, which specifically references the Universal Declaration in its mission statement, to innumerable smaller grassroots campaigns in countries around the world. The rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration will be our starting place for a human rights approach to social problems (please read the full document in the appendix). But when using the Universal Declaration, we will also be cognizant that it is by no means a perfect or complete expression of human rights. As a social construction, it is a product of its time, and it is limited accordingly. Most crucially, when the Declaration was being

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Introduction  9 drafted in 1948, much of Africa, Southeast Asia, and some of the Caribbean was still claimed as colonial territory by European nations. In this regard, colonialism structured who possessed political rights and who didn’t. It is a striking limitation that, when it was being drafted, many people of Asian, African, and indigenous ancestry were excluded. Moreover, people who were then considered sexual dissidents (gays, lesbians, bisexuals) and people with disabilities were also left out. Further, given that the Declaration was written before the environmental movement awakened people’s awareness about the dire consequences of pollution and unrestrained resource use, rights to clean air, water, and an environment free from toxins were never considered. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that rights are subject to different kinds of interpretations between conflicting groups and interests. The Declaration, however, gives little advice on how such dilemmas may be resolved. For instance, some have argued that Americans should have unrestricted access to firearms because they could, hypothetically, be used in self-​ defense to achieve a person’s fundamental right to security (Ryun 2018; Schmidt 2007). Others argue that because guns are used to kill more than 30,000 Americans every year, and because the widespread availability of military-​assault rifles creates a general atmosphere of fear and apprehension regarding mass shootings, more restrictions on firearms should be introduced in order to protect people’s right to life and sense of safety (Beckett 2018). So who is correct? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of course, provides no instructions on how conflicting interpretations such as these might be negotiated. But resolving deep and complicated political problems like guns in America is probably asking too much for any single document. The Universal Declaration does, at least, clarify for us what is important, then leaves it up to each nation—​depending upon its values, governmental capacities, and economic situation—​to achieve the best result possible. In sum, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an imperfect and incomplete document, but it was never intended to be the final decree on all rights that humans may achieve. Rather, when it was written within its particular historic context, as the preamble of the document itself explains, it was intended to be a powerful call to action to make the world a better place for all of us who call it home. It was intended as a: Common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance. Human rights, in other words, constitute the global framework by which contemporary individuals can evaluate their own society. By providing this framework, human rights become a basis from which individuals and groups can work to advance the human condition. So, while many people simply

10

10 Introduction

think of “human rights” as a set of international and often quite toothless treaties, we will think of them in a more expansive way, as a set of normative expectations that provide an impetus for social action for people around the world. More than that, we will use an international human rights framework as a means to evaluate U.S. society. When undertaking our evaluation, we will use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a starting point, while recognizing that the document is necessarily incomplete and that human rights themselves are a project always in the making. As we move forward, we will also consider what happens when rights are interpreted in contradictory ways, and how inequality and differences in power influence whose rights prevail over those of others. Following William Domhoff (2012), power can be defined in two ways, one with positive and one with negative connotations. Distributional power refers to one group’s control or influence over another. Collective power, however, is something much more positive. It simply refers to a group’s ability to achieve a shared goal or desired outcome. The actual expression of power can take many forms, including political power (the ability to get a government to do what you’d like it do to do), ideological power (the ability to get other people to think about things in a way that’s conducive to your interests), and plain old coercive violence. As we move forward with the book, we must remember that when different groups have competing interpretations and priorities regarding human rights, the viewpoints of the most powerful prevail. The clear implication here is that maximizing human rights across society typically means building the collective power of traditionally marginalized or dominated groups, thereby decreasing extremes in distributional power. Ultimately, we must recognize that there is a utopian aspect to thinking about human rights, in the sense that the full granting of all the rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration is likely impossibly far away for all the world’s people –​even for all U.S. citizens.While this is true, it is certainly within our nation’s capacity to fulfill rights to a much greater degree for many more people than exists today. This is the work at hand for our particular historical era, there for us if we choose to take it up.

Discussion Questions 1. Can you identify and describe examples of things you have been told are terrible problems, only to later realize that they weren’t so bad after all? How might a constructionist perspective help us understand how this example of a “non-​problem” social problem came into existence and gained popularity as a way to interpret the world? 2. Social constructionists take the position that no set of conditions is inherently problematic. Anything could potentially be interpreted as such, but this depends on the cultural and historical context. Do you agree? In contrast to social constructionism, can you think of any conditions that might be inherently problematic? When thinking about your example,

1

Introduction  11 how do you know that you are not simply applying your own normative framework, which is specific to your own time and place? 3. Do you believe that the rights expressed in the Universal Declaration are an adequate articulation of our shared expectations of the things all people deserve and should be protected from in life? When looking over the document, are you personally willing to forgo any of these expectations for your own life? If you are personally unwilling to forgo any of these expectations, is it fair to say that others should be denied these rights? 4. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is very much a product of its time. From our historical vantage point, do you think any of the rights it pronounces should be removed? Can you think of any additional rights that should be included if the member countries of the United Nations were, hypothetically, to update the document?

Note 1 The eight countries that abstained from voting were the Soviet Union and five aligned communist nations (the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia), along with South Africa and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Morsink 1999).

References Beckett, Lois. 2018. “A Human Rights Crisis: US Accused of Failing to Protect Citizens from Gun Violence.” The Guardian, September 12. Retrieved May 8, 2020 from www.theguardian.com/ ​ u s- ​ n ews/ ​ 2 018/ ​ s ep/ ​ 1 2/ ​ u s- ​ g un- ​ c ontrol- ​ h uman- ​ r ights-​ amnesty-​international. Best, Joel. 2013. Social Problems. New York: W.W. Norton. Blau, Judith and Alberto Moncado. 2009. Human Rights: A Primer. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Cain-​Miller, Claire and Kevin Quealy. 2018. “Where Boys Outperform Girls in Math: Rich, White, and Suburban Districts.” The New York Times, June 13. Retrieved May 7, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2018/​06/​13/​upshot/​boys-​girls-​math-​ reading-​tests.html. Cohen, Li. 2020. “Murder Hornets Have Now Entered the U.S. and they May Decimate the Honeybee Population.” CBS News, May 8. Retrieved May 11, 2020 from www. cbsnews.com/​news/​murder-​hornets-​us-​honeybees-​washington. Domhoff, G.William. 2012.“The Class Domination Theory of Power.” Who Rules America Website. Retrieved May 8, 2020 from https://​whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/​power/​class_​ domination.html. Geranios, Nicholas K. 2020. “Murder Hornets, with Sting that Can Kill, Land in the U.S.” ABC News, May 5. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from https://​abcnews.go.com/​US/​ wireStory/​murder-​hornets-​sting-​kill-​lands-​us-​70495354. Guinness World Records. 2014. “Most Translated Document: Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Retrieved January 29, 2014 from www.guinnessworldrecords.com/​ records-​1000/​most-​translated-​document. Kawahara, Akito. 2020.“What Are Asian Giant Hornets, and are They Really Dangerous?” The Conversation, May 11. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from https://​theconversation. com/​what-​are-​asian-​g iant-​hornets-​and-​are-​they-​really-​dangerous-​5-​questions-​ answered-​137954.

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12 Introduction Kersey, Alyssa J., Kelsey D. Csumitta, and Jessica F. Cantlon. 2019. “Gender Similarities in the Brain During Mathematical Development.” npj Science of Learning 4: 19. Merton, Robert K. 1995. “The Thomas Theorem and the Matthew Effect.” Social Forces, 74: 379–​424. Morsink, Johannes. 1999. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pollard-​Sacks, Dianne. 2003. “Banning Corporal Punishment.” Tulane Law Review 77: 575–​643. Price-​Mitchell, Marilyn. 2019. “Learning Math: Are Boys Better Than Girls?” Psychology Today, December 2.  Retrieved May 7, 2020 from www.psychologytoday.com/​us/​ blog/​the-​moment-​youth/​201912/​learning-​math-​are-​boys-​better-​girls. Ryun, Ned. 2018. “The Second Amendment is a Human Right: Ignorance Toward it is Troubling.” The Hill, February 25. Retrieved May 8, 2020 from https://​thehill. com/​opinion/​criminal-​justice/​375511-​the-​second-​amendment-​is-​a-​human-​r ight-​ ignorance-​toward-​it-​is. Schmidt, Christopher J. 2007. “An International Human Right to Keep and Bear Arms.” William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 15: 983–​1020. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Random House. Sjoberg, Gideon, Elizabeth A. Gill, and Norma Williams. 2001. “A Sociology of Human Rights.” Social Problems 48(1): 11–​47. Spector, Malcolm and John I. Kitsuse. 1977. Constructing Social Problems. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings. Tilly, Charles. 1990. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–​1990. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell. Turner, Bryan S. 2006. Vulnerability and Human Rights. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2011. Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–​1914. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Walton, Stuart. 2018. The Devil’s Dinner: A Gastronomic and Cultural History of Chili Peppers. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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2  Rights to Wellbeing and Property in an Unequal Society

In San Antonio, thousands of cars filled up parking lots and snaked along streets as people showed up to a local foodbank in hopes of receiving groceries for their families (Burnett 2020). In a foodbank outside of Pittsburgh, it was much the same, except this line of cars stretched for more than a mile (Cole 2020). Scenes like these played out across the United States in the late spring of 2020 as the American economy began to slow down due to the COVID-​19 coronavirus pandemic, throwing millions out of work. But it is important to ask why so many Americans became so desperate for food even after just a few short weeks of the onset of the virus. Why didn’t they have the necessary savings that could help get them through? The answer is that, despite the stock market’s boom during the 2010s and record low employment, a seemingly flourishing economy was producing a great deal of vulnerability in the lives of most Americans. A study published by the U.S. Federal Reserve (2019) before the Coronavirus pandemic struck warned us that the finances of many Americans were very precarious, teetering on the brink of collapse. Specifically, the study found that almost 40 percent of respondents would not be able to cover a financial emergency (such as an unexpected car or home repair) costing $400 or more. But what does any of this have to do with human rights? First, we will need to remember the expansive definition of human rights provided in the Universal Declaration. When most Americans think about human rights, to the extent they think about them at all, it is typically in the form of “first-​generation rights” (Blau 2016). These are the kinds of protections enumerated in the U.S. Bill of Rights, asserting the freedoms to live without interference in worship, speech, assembly, and voting, and to be treated equally, along with the right to privacy and the right to a fair trial if charged with a crime. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights goes further, asserting that contemporary humans should also be entitled, in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1941), not only to freedom of speech and freedom of belief, but also to freedom from want (in other words, Roosevelt was proclaiming that Americans should live free from poverty). Today we might refer to these rights to dignity and wellbeing as “second-​ generation rights,” which are closely linked to one way to think about the “American dream.”

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14  Rights to Wellbeing and Property

There are, of course, different ways to imagine the American dream. To some, it is the belief that if a person works hard enough, is smart enough, or is just plain lucky enough, they can move from “nothing” into “something.” It’s the familiar idea that every person in our country has a chance to get rich no matter how poor they may have been when they started out in life. This conception of the American dream is tied to our nation’s mythology as a “land of opportunity,” which is continuously celebrated in the rags-​to-​ riches stories we see on TV, in movies, and in music. Of course, income and class mobility does exist in the United States. However, rates of income mobility are much lower today than they were decades ago (Chetty et al. 2017) and class mobility in the United States is no greater than it is in many European countries (Isaacs 2017). It is important to remember that most members of the very rich started out with very significant resources (Collins, Ocampo, and Paslaski 2020). Perhaps just as importantly, there is a dark side to this way of thinking about the American dream, in that it implies that the tens of millions of very poor persons in the United States are somehow to blame for their own poverty because they supposedly had just as much chance as everybody else to find success, but failed to do so. But there is another more positive, and I  think more realistic, conception of the American dream, one that is closely akin to the human right to wellbeing. This version of the American dream is basically the idea of a social contract, which holds that if a person makes an honest effort in life and contributes to their community, they will have access to the “good life.” They can have the opportunity to live in a safe and happy home, raise kids who have access to quality education, go on a vacation every once in a while, plan for retirement, and so on. If you look back again at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—​our list of shared expectations about what people deserve in life and what they should be protected from—​you’ll see several articles that speak directly to these needs and desires. Unfortunately, in the United States, despite the ubiquity of the “American dream,” the wellbeing rights of millions of persons are routinely left unfulfilled. In this chapter, we will examine U.S. society in regard to these rights and try to explain why this is so.

Dignity and Wellbeing Compromised Imagine a family in your community that comprises a parent and two children who live on an income of $25,000 a year, which works out to approximately $1,900 per month after payroll taxes. After paying $1,000 in rent for a modest one-​bedroom apartment, the family has $900 for food, clothing, medicine, toiletries, transportation, and childcare. The question is whether, after paying for rent, this income is sufficient to pay for all the things that are required for a life of dignity in the United States. This hypothetical family is representative of hundreds of thousands of real families across the country. Are its members poor?

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Rights to Wellbeing and Property  15 When answering this question, it is necessary to account for the all the expenses that a family might have in order to be comfortable and to be deemed “normal” in the United States. For instance, after paying for the essentials, is there money left over to buy nice-​enough clothes for the children from time to time? Is there money left over for the dentist in order to make sure that the kids have healthy teeth that don’t develop painful cavities, which if left untreated can diminish the children’s quality of life? Is there money left over for school sports and fieldtrips, for which underfunded schools are increasingly asking parents to pay? Finally, is the food that is purchased for these kids full of the more expensive fruits and vegetables that we know are important for a healthy diet, or can this parent only afford the highly processed, high-​fat foods that, while being cheaper, are associated with the development of obesity and diabetes? Depending on how one defines a “necessity,” we might say that this family is poor, and that poverty constitutes a serious social problem that compromises human dignity. The human rights of this family’s children, in other words—​like those of millions of other children in the United States—​ are not adequately being met. Surprisingly, while we might find the children in such families to be poor—​using a relative measure of poverty that considers whether a family’s earnings are sufficient to provide a life of dignity in a given society—​this family would not officially be designated as poor by the U.S. government. In fact, this family’s annual income of $25,000 is about $4,000 higher than the official threshold used by the U.S. government to measure poverty. When the U.S. government assesses poverty, it uses an absolute measure of poverty, which has to do with the lack of the material conditions—​ food, clean water, clothing, shelter—​that are necessary for life. The official U.S. threshold was first determined using an estimate of the average cost of a nutritionally adequate diet, depending upon family size, then multiplying it by three to account for other crucial household expenses such as housing, clothes, healthcare, and transportation (Fisher 1997). Using these calculations, the U.S. Census Bureau conducts surveys to measure how many people live on annual incomes that are less than the official poverty threshold.1 In 2019, the official poverty threshold was set at $12,450 for an individual, or $21,330 for a family consisting of a parent and two children. That year, even before the coronavirus struck and began taking its terrible economic toll, 12  percent of Americans lived on annual incomes below these levels, meaning that more than 39 million people in our country lived below the official poverty rate (Semega et al. 2019). More troubling still, almost 22 percent of children in the United States—​or more than one in five kids—​live in families whose income is below the official poverty line (DeNavas-​ Walt, Proctor, and Smith 2012). The extent of poverty in the United States constitutes an obvious collective failure to live up to the standards outlined in the Universal Declaration. As high as these numbers are, many sociologists, policy experts, and Congressional legislators argue that they still underestimate poverty in the

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16  Rights to Wellbeing and Property

United States (Heiner 2012; Short 2013). For one, much has changed in the U.S. economy since 1965, when the official poverty threshold measure was first developed. Family expenses for childcare and healthcare, for example, have increased dramatically since then. Furthermore, a measure developed in 1965 is clearly unable to account for the expense of a smartphone, computer and internet connection that many people deem essential to raise educated and well-​prepared children. Moreover, the Census Bureau does not account for the ways that the cost of living differs depending upon location in the lower 48 states. Housing and food are much more expensive in some places compared with others, especially in some large American cities, where those living at even 200 percent of the poverty line may be challenged to survive. The Census Bureau has developed an alternative measure for poverty, the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which is not based on extrapolations of the cost of food decades ago like the current model, but instead determines a threshold based upon the cost of important family expenses such as healthcare and childcare, while also accounting for some forms of public assistance as types of income (Short 2013). This new threshold is yet to be fully institutionalized and, while an improvement, still fails to capture the true scope of deprivation and economic insecurity in the United States. Perhaps this is because it is politically expedient to underestimate the extent of poverty in the United States (Heiner 2012). If our official measure of poverty showed even greater amounts of destitution across the country than revealed by the current measure, people might be more likely to demand that changes occur. Beyond the extent of poverty itself, many other rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration go unfulfilled in the United States, including the right to work. In December 2019, before the coronavirus struck and unleashed waives of layoffs, the official U.S. unemployment rate was 3.5 percent (BLS 2020). This might sound pretty good from today’s perspective, but it is important to remember that it too is a gross underestimate of joblessness. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics determines this number through telephone surveys, where persons are counted as employed if they did any work at all in the past week for pay, even for just a few hours. In reality, a person who only works a few hours per week, maybe by doing yard work for a neighbor or doing a day’s temporary work at a factory‚ should be considered unemployed because they are not earning nearly enough income to live on and most likely yearn for a regular job.What’s more, the survey doesn’t count jobless persons as unemployed if they haven’t been out actively searching for work in the past four weeks (BLS 2013). This means that people who have dropped out of the workforce altogether, after having given up after spending months applying for jobs with no luck, are not technically counted as unemployed, despite lacking work. But because the official unemployment statistics leave these individuals out, the final tabulation underestimates the extent of joblessness in the United States. In the end, the official unemployment figures can tell us something about the relative health of the economy, but in terms of human wellbeing in the United States, they need to be taken

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Rights to Wellbeing and Property  17 with a grain of salt. However we count them, tens of millions of Americans are regularly denied work, which is an important human right in contemporary society. The next section will consider some policy alternatives that could make life better for millions of people throughout our nation.

Achieving Wellbeing for All in U.S. Society In 1964, the Food Stamp Act was passed in order to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by providing public support to low-​income Americans. Since then, it has literally been a lifeline for millions of families—​including children—​ experiencing tough economic times. In 2019, the Food Stamp Program’s replacement, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), provided more than $55 billion in food support. Even so, the average daily benefit is only $4.20, which falls far short of the cost of a healthy diet. SNAP could be improved to ensure that the funding it provides is enough to allow families to purchase the nutritious fresh ingredients necessary for healthy living. Some communities, for instance, have had real success partnering with local farmers to get fresh produce to those on SNAP, making fresh locally grown food more available to low-​income earners who might find it otherwise unaffordable. There is no reason why, at least technically speaking, these programs couldn’t be scaled up to a national level (Agyeman 2013). The Head Start program, begun in 1965, now provides preschool education to almost a million children every year whose families could not otherwise afford it. It plays an important role in U.S.  society by enabling children from poor families to enter school at similar reading levels as their middle-​class peers, making sure poor kids don’t fall behind in primary school before they even begin. Over the years, there have been numerous calls to make Head Start available to all four-​year-​olds from low-​and moderate-​ income families. But other nations do not stop at providing public funding to preschool and K–​12 schooling when educating upcoming generations. New Zealand and many European nations provide much more substantial support to students in college, making the price of a university degree there a small fraction of that paid by students in the United States (Taylor 2012). Of course, we know that practically all other wealthy nations provide universal health coverage to their citizens, something that further promotes wellbeing rights for all (as discussed in Chapter 6). One major reason why the needs of the poor remain unaddressed in the United States is due to a lack of employment, which is considered a right in and of itself in the Universal Declaration. Unemployment is a durable feature of capitalism, but economic downturns and other trends (such as globalization and the automation of work, which we will explore later in the book) can make it much worse. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government sought to curb unemployment and promote economic growth by employing millions of workers through the Works Progress Administration—​which built roads, bridges, schools, and libraries across the nation—​ and through the Civilian Conservation Corps—​ which created

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18  Rights to Wellbeing and Property

many buildings and roads in our national and state parks that are still used today (Taylor 2008).These programs built some of the key infrastructure that helped fuel economic growth in subsequent decades. When these programs gave millions of Americans jobs, they also provided them with money that they could use to pay the bills and—​just as importantly—​helped provide a sense of dignity and self-​worth that was in tatters from the effects of the Depression (Taylor 2008). Similarly, many young people today have been inspired by the idea that the U.S. government could create a program to provide jobs to those who need and want work, but who are nonetheless unable to find employment in the private sector. Like the New Deal, this proposed jobs program would again build the infrastructure necessary to spur future economic growth, but this time the focus would be on renewable energy and a more sustainable U.S.  economy. This Green New Deal might, for instance, train workers and pay them to retrofit homes and apartments to make them more energy efficient while also building a high-​speed rail transit system across the country—​as already exists in Japan, China, and Europe—​and building expansive solar panel and wind-​turbine systems to generate clean electricity (Jones 2008). While government programs to promote wellbeing in the United States might sound nice as ideas, we are often told that in reality they are hopelessly impractical, especially given our nation’s current fiscal constraints. These programs, some experts say, are simply too unaffordable. The next section considers the extent to which this is true.

Concentrations of Income and Wealth in the United States in a Human Rights Context The United States has the world’s largest economy. When we divvy up the size of the economy based on population, in a measure called per capita gross domestic product, and compare the United States with the rest of the world, we see that while it is not number one on the list, it is very close to the top, and that the U.S. economy maintains a position that is the envy of most of the world. But averages can be misleading. Benefits from the U.S. economy are distributed very unequally. One way to measure inequality is the Gini index, which ranks the distribution of family incomes in a nation. Based on this index, the United States is a highly unequal nation, with an income distribution on par with other countries such as Jamaica, Cameroon, and the Philippines, as shown in Table 2.1. Looking further at income distribution in the United States, Figure 2.1 shows that the poorest 20 percent, or bottom quintile, of the U.S. population earns only 3 percent of the nation’s total income, and that the bottom two quintiles combined—​that’s 40 percent of America’s working population—​ earned less than 12 percent of the total income distributed across the nation. The top earning 20 percent of the population, on the other hand, earned just over 50 percent of all income for that year. The richest 5 percent make

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Rights to Wellbeing and Property  19 Table 2.1 Income Inequality by Nation (Ranked Most to Least Unequal) Rank 1 2 3 40 41 42 145 146 147

Country

Gini Index

Lesotho South Africa Micronesia ↓↑ Peru U.S.A Guyana ↓↑ Germany Moldova Sweden

63 63 61 45 45 45 27 27 27

Source: CIA World Factbook (2020).

60

50.3%

50 40 30

23.4%

20 10 0

3.3% Lowest earning 20%

8.5%

2nd lowestearning 20%

14.6%

Middle 20%

2nd highestearning 20%

Highest earning 20%

Figure 2.1 Share of National Income by Quintile Source: Semega et al. (2019).

an even more disproportionate share, earning more than 21  percent of America’s income total (Semega et al. 2019). The higher we go in America’s economic echelons, the greater the inequality. The chief financial officers of major corporations earn thousands of times more than the average salary of their U.S. workers, as Table 2.2 shows. In 2018, for instance, Walt Disney CEO Larry Iger was paid more than US$65 million in annual compensation, which is 1,424 times the average pay for U.S. workers in the electronics/​ technology sector (AFL-​CIO 2020). And because Elon Musk of Tesla gets his extremely generous compensation through shares in his valuable company, his total compensation for 2018 ended up being an astronomical $2.2 billion. But rather than looking at income, a better way to assess economic inequality is by looking at wealth, which is the sum total of everything

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20  Rights to Wellbeing and Property Table 2.2 Compensation of Selected CEOs Compared with Average Worker Compensation in 2018 CEO

Company

CEO compensation

Average employee compensation

Pay ratio

Elon Musk Stephen Easterbrook Robert Iger C. McMillon Kevin Johnson

Tesla McDonald’s Walt Disney Corp. Walmart Starbucks Corp.

  $2.2 billion $15.9 million $65.6 $23.6 million $23.4 million

$56,000 $7,433 $46,127 $21,952 $12,754

40,668: 1 2,124: 1 1424: 1 1076: 1 1049: 1

Source: AFL-​CIO (2020) “Company Pay Ratios.”

40% 35% 30%

37% 33% 28%

25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

1% Wealthiest 1%

Next Wealthiest 9099%

Next 50-90%

Bottom 50% of Wealthholders

Figure 2.2 Distribution of U.S. Wealth in 2019 Source: U.S. Federal Reserve (2020).

a person owns (including property, stocks, bonds, business ventures, and money in the bank) minus debts (home loans, credit card debt, college loans, etc.). After all, income can come and go, even for relatively high earners who might live paycheck to paycheck. But wealth is significant because it can produce income, because it can provide an important “cushion” during economic hard times, and—​most importantly—​because it is a form of inequality that can be handed down between generations (Conley 1999; Shapiro and Oliver 1997). As Figure 2.2 shows, the great majority of Americans have no, or only very little, wealth. The least wealthy 50 percent of Americans own only 1 percent of the nation’s total wealth, most of which is bound up in home ownership. In contrast, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess 33 percent of everything that can be owned in the nation, while those in the next wealthiest 9 percent hold an additional 37 percent of all wealth (Federal

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Rights to Wellbeing and Property  21 Reserve 2020). Wealth inequality is even more stark than these stunning figures show; in 2018, the combined wealth of just three individuals—​Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—​was greater than the total wealth held by everyone in the bottom 50 percent of wealth-​holders in the United States (Collins and Hoxie 2018). To put this another way, Bezos, Gates, and Buffett together hold as much wealth as is owned by about 160 million other Americans, if we combine it all. It is important to remember that wealth is often inherited, and once wealth is inherited, it can be used to produce more wealth. One analysis of members of the Forbes 400 richest Americans found that a full one-​third of them were simply the inheritors of fortunes built by their parents or grandparents (Collins and Hoxie 2018). We might consider the story of Sam Walton, who was something of a “self-​made man.” As the founder of Wal-​ Mart, he became the wealthiest person in America. When he died, he left billions to his wife and children, each of whom is now worth more than $25 billion; they are all highly ranked on the Forbes list of the richest Americans (Forbes 2012). All of this is to say that there is no lack of money or other financial resources in the United States that could be used to provide for the increased fulfillment of wellbeing rights. Lack of money is not the issue; it is more a matter of priorities and power. It is important to understand that the American social structure is built on the foundations of capitalism, which is an economic system of immensely productive potential that promotes continuous technological innovation. It is also one that tends to concentrate wealth over time and produce increasing economic inequality, both within and between nations. This trend is not necessarily inevitable, however, because governments can intervene with tax, educational, and welfare policies to promote greater equality. We know that this is true because we can look at the examples of other capitalist nations, or we can even look at U.S.  society during different historical periods. There is a long line of economic thinking, in fact, that argues that such government intervention to diminish inequality is a good thing for capitalism because it promotes stability and ensures that the vast majority of would-​be consumers have enough money to actually purchase the products that companies make and sell (Reich 2016). Yet efforts to institute governmental policies to promote greater equality are hindered by a worldview, or ideology, in America that tends to celebrate wealth while overlooking the suffering of the poor, along with the substantial political power of the richest Americans (which we will consider further in the next chapter). If there is such thing as a single American worldview, it is one that typically doesn’t “see” the plight of low-​income and working people. For instance, when the stories of the top 52 news outlets were indexed over several years, an analysis showed that less than 1 percent of the news stories each year were about poverty (Froomkin 2013). Even in our own communities, many middle-class and wealthy Americans rarely see the poor, who typically live in different neighborhoods and whose children often

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attend different schools. Increasingly, a number of American cities have enacted codes that ban loitering, sleeping, and panhandling in parks, on sidewalks, and in other public spaces (NLCHP 2018). While these codes are often couched in terms of protecting public health, the outcome of such policies—​either by intention or by effect—​is to make homelessness and poverty less visible in the areas where they are enforced. While Americans have little capacity to learn about the plight of the poor from the daily news, movies, or television shows that they watch, they can learn a great deal about how to celebrate wealth and material success. Americans are constantly taught that everyone should have it. And because success and fortune are depicted in the American media as obtainable for the smart and the hardworking, the lesson is that the poor have themselves to blame. This is hardly a cultural context that is conducive to satisfying wellbeing rights, especially if doing so is seen to impinge on the right to possess all those material riches in the first place. Since the 1980s, there has been a concerted effort in the United States to roll back social spending on the poor.This endeavor has been led by a number of think tanks and political organizations, including the Heritage Society, the American Enterprise Institute, and—​perhaps most successfully—​Americans for Tax Reform. This latter group mounted a campaign in 1985 to convince politicians to pledge that they will not raise taxes. The campaign was tremendously effective: by 2011, almost 95 percent of the Republican members of Congress had signed on (Horowitz 2011). These organizations portray assistance to the poor not in terms of human rights, but often as wasteful and unnecessary expenditures of everybody else’s money. Furthermore, these organizations typically portray taxation as a violation of people’s right to their possessions. The result is that in the face of a fairly large government debt, politicians in the United States—​as in some European countries—​have sought to institute policies of austerity, or rollbacks of public spending, rather than increasing taxes on the well-​to-​do.This means that, in the United States, the social support system that provides basic human rights for the poor has come under constant attack and has increasingly been whittled down over the past few decades. The right to property certainly is a fundamental right in the contemporary era, mentioned specifically in Article 17 of the Universal Declaration. It is a right that practically no serious person today wants to abolish. But at the same time, this right can’t be absolute in contemporary societies either. In modern economies, wealth is achieved through complex networks of dependency that span entire regions—​in many cases, even the whole globe (as we will see in Chapter 9). No one would doubt, for instance, that Jeff Bezos should be highly compensated for the brilliant work he did by founding Amazon and helping to build it into what it is today. But Bezos’ $150 billion fortune was not created by him alone, but also by the taxpayers who built and take care of the roads and internet infrastructure that help make Amazon’s business model possible. Taxpayers have additionally funded hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local government subsidies to

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Rights to Wellbeing and Property  23 build Amazon’s warehouses and data centers (Good Jobs 2020), while also funding the public education necessary for Amazon’s high-​tech workforce. In this sense, no one’s fortune is entirely self-​made. It is for this reason that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights notes, in Article 29, that societies don’t just grant rights to individuals, but also obligate individuals to respect the rights of others. There has to be, in other words, a way to balance the tension between the rights to wellbeing and the right to property in the United States.

Striking a Balance Between Property Ownership and Wellbeing to Satisfy Rights In the United States, as we have seen, government policies tend to disproportionately favor the rights to property of the few over the wellbeing rights for all. This, we have said, is due both to our American worldview that celebrates material success while ignoring poverty and depravation, along with the political mobilization of the very wealthy. This underscores an important principle from the sociological study of human rights: when there is friction between the satisfaction of rights between two groups—​that is, when the granting of rights to one group is seen as diminishing the rights of another—​then we should expect that the group with the greater amount of social power will prevail in political contests over their fulfillment. In the United States, members of the wealthiest ranks of our society are typically very politically active, contributing money to both political candidates and to think tanks and other political organizations that fight for low taxes and diminished public services (Domhoff 2013). In the past several decades, they have been very successful on the whole. But we don’t have to accept our contemporary situation in the United States as inevitable. If lower-​income and less wealthy Americans were to become more politically active, there is no reason why a new balance could not be struck between satisfying both rights to property and rights to wellbeing in the United States. Here are a few ideas about how that might look. One obvious place to begin would be to dramatically increase the estate tax that is levied on large inheritances when they are passed down to the next generation. In 2019, it was estimated that only 2,000 Americans paid the estate tax (Rosenberg 2020). These inheritances are taxed at a top rate of 40 percent, but only on any amount of money beyond an $11.4 million exemption, which means that anyone inheriting less than $11 million is not required to pay this tax.The estate tax in the United States was once far more hefty, with a higher top rate of 77 percent and a much smaller exemption set at $60,000 between 1942 and 1976 (Cook and Cook 2012). Accounting for inflation, this exemption was valued between $270,000 (in 1976)  and $944,000 (in 1942) in today’s dollars, depending upon the particular year in question. By going back to these historic levels of estate taxes, or even taxing inherited wealth at higher rates, we could provide an important source of revenue for programs that help provide wellbeing rights in the United States. Doing so could be an important way to balance rights between property and wellbeing. While wealthy Americans and their advocates might claim a

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right to wealth earned in their lifetimes, do they have an inviolable right to pass that wealth on to their kids? Our current system of inheritance means that the heirs of the rich are lifted far up above others in their generation only because they happened to be born lucky, while it also means that the less fortunate children of others go without a healthy diet and access to preschool. Is this the best balance between the rights to property and wellbeing that we can find? It’s not surprising that socialists like Karl Marx wholeheartedly disagree, arguing that the inheritances of the very wealthy could have a higher social value than being passed on in great concentrations to heirs and heiresses. But other critics of wealth inheritance come from less obvious places. Andrew Carnegie, for instance, was a 19th-​century steel magnate who became one of America’s most wealthy men. He was, in other words, about as far away from being a socialist and as big a booster of capitalism as you can get. At the same time, he was a supporter of high taxes on inherited wealth, writing that, “of all forms of taxation, this seems the wisest … By taxing estates heavily at death, the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life.” Carnegie continued, “the more society is organized around the preservation of wealth for those who already have it, rather than building new wealth, the more impoverished we will all be” (quoted in Miller 2004: 116). One of the most successful businessmen in our era, Warren Buffett, seems to agree. He has said that he “doesn’t believe in dynastic wealth,” calling those who gained their fortunes from their parents “members of the lucky sperm club” (quoted in Thomas 2006). Both Buffett and billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates have pledged to give away the vast majority of their wealth before they die. Buffett has also been an outspoken critic of today’s tax rate on “capital gains,” or the income generated through wealth. In the United States, capital gains are taxed at 15 percent, which is much less than the effective rate paid by middle-​class Americans on their income taxes. The consequence is that, according to Buffett (2011), “if you earn money from a job, your [tax] percentage will surely exceed mine, most likely by a lot.” Under this current system, in other words, wealthy individuals who live on profits returned from investments pay less as a percentage of their earnings compared with the vast majority of Americans who earn a living through a paycheck. The tax rate on capital gains could, of course, be increased, and this could provide another possible means of paying for programs that could better fulfill the wellbeing rights of Americans. The need for such a change is bolstered by the fact that billionaires have a tax obligation that’s 79 percent less today, measured as a percentage of their total wealth, compared with what it was in 1980 (Collins, Ocampo, and Paslaski 2020). These are just two ideas of ways that the tensions between the rights to property and wellbeing might be better negotiated in U.S. society. But possibilities abound, such as the simple idea that businesses pay employees a minimum wage that is enough to cover basic necessities and that allows a modicum of security and dignity—​in other words, a living wage. The federal minimum wage’s purchasing power has eroded since the late 1960s

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Rights to Wellbeing and Property  25 (Cooper 2019). If it had retained its value in 1968, it would be set at $11.50 an hour today, rather than at its current level of $7.25, which was first set back in 2009.This is why low-​wage workers around the country have joined protests and informal strikes for a higher wage, many advocating for $15 an hour. The declining value of the federal minimum wage also explains why voters from a diverse range of states—​from Arkansas to California—​have ushered in a wave of new increased state-​mandated minimum wage laws (Selyuhk 2020; Tedeschi 2019). In terms of the economic impact of higher minimum wages, the research is mixed. Some research shows that higher wages can force employers to cut back on the number of employees they hire (CBO 2020), while other research finds no relationship between higher wages and employment (Cengiz et al. 2018; Allegretto, Godoey, and Nadler 2018). Research on the social and health impacts of higher wages is far more clear. Increased pay for low-​income workers result in large benefits. For instance, with more money in their pockets, lower-​income parents can afford to purchase better and more nutritious food for their children, and are more likely to take them to the doctors (Desmond 2019). Higher wages for low income workers can reduce toxic levels of stress, resulting in measurable decreases in child abuse, depression, and smoking in cities or states with laws set above the minimum threshold (Desmond 2019). For similar reasons, increasing the minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour, according to some research, would measurably help Americans live longer lives (Tsao et al. 2016). The point of this exercise is to make it clear that, while U.S. society favors property rights over rights to wellbeing, this doesn’t have to be the case. We are often told that there is no money for increased spending to address poverty, especially in these times of austerity and government debt. But we see from the examples provided in this chapter that funding is available if there is a political will to change existing policies. None of the policy alternatives offered here disregard the right to property, but they do make some increased demands on businesses and the wealthy in order to more fully satisfy wellbeing rights. Such efforts, of course, will be, and have been, contested by many Americans who do not want to see any limits placed on their capacity to possess wealth.The estate tax, for instance, has been maligned by organizations funded by wealthy donors as a “death tax.” These organizations have sought to achieve its repeal—​with some success, as we’ve seen. This brings us to an important lesson: the actual fulfillment of human rights is not just about what is just and unjust in a particular society, but about the balance of power between groups. This balance of power can change over time toward the increased achievement of human rights, but it doesn’t just happen on its own: large numbers of people must organize and work together to make it so.

Discussion Questions 1. How might inheriting wealth make a difference to a family’s economic prospects? Imagine two families with kids just barely getting by on their

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income. One family inherits $50,000 and the other does not.What kinds of new opportunities—​home ownership, college tuition, etc.—​might be opened up for this family that remain closed for the other family? 3. This chapter made the case that governments play an important role promoting wellbeing rights, and some ideas were presented to suggest ways the U.S. government might do better. Did any of these ideas capture your imagination and seem especially important? Did any seem unworkable and/​or ineffective? Explain why or why not. 4. While we are often told that there is simply no money to provide for the increased wellbeing of poor and low-​income people in the United States, this chapter argued that more revenue can be found by increasing the taxation of wealth or by requiring companies to pay their employees living wages. Do you think this is fair? Should those with large amounts of wealth be asked to pay more to promote broader wellbeing in America? If you answered no, what do you think are the best alternatives?

Note 1 In determining the poverty rate, the Census Bureau does not include forms of non-​ cash assistance like SNAP benefits (food stamps) or housing vouchers as contributing to the family income, but it also does not deduct from people’s incomes to account for the payroll taxes and other taxes they pay.

References AFL-​CIO. 2020. “Company Pay Ratios.” Retrieved May 13, 2020 from https://​aflcio. org/​paywatch/​company-​pay-​ratios. Agyeman, Julian. 2013. Introducing Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning, and Practice. London: Zed Books. Allegretto, Sylvia, Anna Godoey, Carl Nadler and Michael Reich. 2018. “The New Wave of Local Minimum Wage Policies: Evidence from Six Cities.” Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, September 6. Retrieved May 20, 2020 from https://​irle.berkeley. edu/​the-​new-​wave-​of-​local-​minimum-​wage-​policies-​evidence-​from-​six-​cities. Blau, Judith. 2016. “Human Rights: What the United States Might Learn from the Rest of the World and,Yes, from American Sociology.” Sociological Forum, 31: 1126–​1139. BLS. 2013. “How the Government Measures Unemployment.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved July 4, 2013 from www.bls.gov/​cps/​cps_​htgm.htm. BLS. 2020. “Civilian Unemployment Rate.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from www.bls.gov/​charts/​employment-​situation/​civilian-​unemployment-​ rate.htm. Buffett, Warren E. 2011. “Stop Coddling the Super-​ Rich.” New  York Times, August 14. Retrieved July 5, 2013 from www.nytimes.com/​2011/​08/​15/​opinion/​stop-​ coddling-​the-​super-​r ich.html. Burnett, John. 2020.“Thousands Line Up at One Texas Foodbank as Job Losses Hit Hard.” NPR,April 17. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from www.npr.org/​2020/​04/​17/​837141457/​ thousands-​of-​cars-​line-​up-​at-​one-​texas-​food-​bank-​as-​job-​losses-​hit-​hard. CBO. 2020. “The Effects on Family Income and Unemployment by Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage.” Congressional Budget Office, Report No. 55410. Retrieved May 20, 2020 from www.cbo.gov/​publication/​55410.

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Rights to Wellbeing and Property  27 Cengiz, Doruk, Arindrajit Dube, Attila Lindner and Ben Zipperer. 2018. “The Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-​Wage Jobs: Evidence from the United States Using a Bunching Estimator.” Center for Economic Performance Discussion Paper, No. 1531. Retrieved May 20, 2020 from http://​cep.lse.ac.uk/​pubs/​download/​dp1531. pdf?mod=article_​inline. Chetty, Raj, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, and Jimmy Narang. 2017. “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940.” Vox CEPR Research Portal, May 5. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from https://​voxeu.org/​article/​trends-​us-​absolute-​income-​mobility-​1940. CIA. 2020. “Country Comparison: Distribution of Family Income.” World Factbook. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from www.cia.gov/​library/​publications/​the-​world-​ factbook/​fields/​223rank.html. Cole, Brendan. 2020. “Pennsylvanian Food Bank Draws Mile-​Long Line of Cars as Trump Approves State’s Disaster Declaration.” Newsweek, March 31. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from www.newsweek.com/​pennsylvania-​food-​bank-​draws-​mile-​long-​line-​ cars-​trump-​approves-​states-​coronavirus-​disaster-​1495222. Collins, Chuck, Derric Asante-​Muhammed, Josh Hoxie, and Sabrina Terry. (2019). Dreams Differed: How Enriching the 1% Widens the Wealth Gap. Institute for Policy Studies Report. Retrieved June 1, 2020 from https://​inequality.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​ 2019/​01/​IPS_​RWD-​Report_​FINAL-​1.15.19.pdf. Collins, Chuck and Josh Hoxie. 2018. “Billionaire Bonanza 2018: Inherited Wealth Dynasties of the United States.” Institute of Policy Studies. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from https://​ips-​dc.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2020/​04/​Billionaire-​Bonanza-​2020.pdf. Collins, Chuck, Omar Ocampo and Sophia Paslaski. 2020. “Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes and Pandemic Profiteers.” Institute for Policy Studies. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from https://​ips-​dc.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2020/​04/​ Billionaire-​Bonanza-​2020.pdf. Conley, Dalton. 1999. Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Cook and Cook. 2012. “Current and Historical Federal Estate Tax Structure, Exemptions and Rates.” Cook Law Blog, December 17. Retrieved July 5, 2013 from http://​cooklaw. co/​blog/​current-​historicalfederal-​estate-​tax-​structure-​exemptions-​rates. Cooper, David. 2019. “Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15 by 2025 Would Lift Wages for Over 33 Million Workers.” Economic Policy Institute Report, July 17. Retrieved May 20, 2020 from www.epi.org/​publication/​minimum-​wage-​15-​by-​2025. DeNavas-​Walt, Carmen, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith. 2012. Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2011. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau. Desmond, Matt. 2019. “Dollars on the Margins.” The New  York Times, February 21. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2019/​02/​21/​magazine/​minimum-​wage-​saving-​lives.html. Domhoff, G. William. 2013. Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich. New York: McGraw Hill. Federal Reserve. 2019. “Dealing With Unexpected Expenses.” U.S. Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-​being of American Households in 2018. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from www.federalreserve.gov/​publications/​2019-​economic-​well-​being-​of-​us-​ households-​in-​2018-​dealing-​with-​unexpected-​expenses.htm. Federal Reserve. 2020. “Distribution of U.S. Wealth in Households Since 1989.” U.S. Federal Reserve Data Table. Retrieved May 13, 2020 from www.federalreserve.gov/​ releases/​z1/​dataviz/​dfa/​distribute/​table.

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28  Rights to Wellbeing and Property Fisher, Gordon M. 1997. “The Development of the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds and Their Subsequent History as the Official U.S. Poverty Measure.” U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved July 2, 2013 from www.census.gov/​hhes/​povmeas/​publications/​orshansky. html. Forbes. 2012. “The Forbes 400:The Richest People in America.” September 19. Retrieved July 4, 2013 from www.forbes.com/​forbes-​400. Froomkin, Dan. 2013. “It Can’t Happen Here: Why is There So Little Coverage of Americans Who are Struggling with Poverty?” Nieman Reports, Winter. Retrieved July 4, 2013 from www.nieman.harvard.edu/​reports/​article/​102832/​It-​Cant-​Happen-​ Here.aspx. Good Jobs. 2020. “Amazon Tracker.” Good Jobs First Data Table. Retrieved May 15, 2020 from www.goodjobsfirst.org/​amazon-​tracker. Heiner, Robert. 2012. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press. Horowitz, Jason. 2011. “Grover Norquist, the Anti-​Tax Enforcer Behind the Scenes in the Debt Debate.” Washington Post, July 12. Retrieved July 4, 2013 from http://​articles.washingtonpost.com/​2011-​07-​12/​lifestyle/​35236400_​1_​g rover- ​ norquist-​debt-​talks-​americans-​for-​tax-​reform. Isaacs, Julia B. 2017. “International Comparisons of Economic Mobility.” The Economic Mobility Project: An Initiative of the Pew Charitable Trust. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from www.brookings.edu/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2016/​07/​02_​economic_​mobility_​ sawhill_​ch3.pdf. Jones, Van. 2008. The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. New York: HarperCollins. Miller, John. 2004. “Tax Wealth: Great Political Economists and Andrew Carnegie Agree.” In Chuck Collins and Amy Gluckman (Eds.), Wealth Inequality Reader, pp. 111–​116. Cambridge, MA: Dollars and Sense. NLCHP. 2018. Housing Not Handcuffs: Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S.  Cities. Washington, D.C.: National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Retrieved July 4, 2013 from https://​nlchp.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2018/​10/​ Housing-​Not-​Handcuffs.pdf. Reich, Robert. 2016. Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few. New York: Penguin Random House. Roosevelt, Franklin D. 1941. “The January 6th Four Freedoms Speech.” Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from www.fdrlibrary.org/​ four-​freedoms. Rosenberg, Eric. 2020. “Fewer than 2,000 Households will Pay Estate Tax this Year.” Business Insider, January 8. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from www.businessinsider.com/​ personal-​finance/​what-​is-​estate-​tax-​a-​tax-​on-​inheritance. Selyuhk, Alina. 2020. “ ‘Gives Me Hope’: How Low-​Paid Workers Rose Up Against StagnantWages.” National Public Radio, February 26. Retrieved May 20, 2020 from www. npr.org/​2020/​02/​26/​808113169/​g ives-​me-​hope-​how-​low-​paid-​workers-​rose-​ up-​against-​stagnant-​wages. Semega, Jessica, Melissa Kollar, John Creamer, and Abinash Mohanty. 2019. Income and Poverty in the United States: 2018. U.S. Census Bureau Policy Report #60–​266. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from www.census.gov/​library/​publications/​2019/​demo/​ p60-​266.html. Shapiro, Thomas M. and Melvin L. Oliver. 1997. Black Wealth/​White Wealth: A New Perspective. New York: Routledge.

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Rights to Wellbeing and Property  29 Short, Kathleen. 2013. The Research Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2012.Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved December 16, 2013 from www.census.gov/​prod/​ 2013pubs/​p60-​247.pdf. Taylor, Nick. 2008. American-​ Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA. New  York: Bantam Books. Taylor, Adam. 2012. “Here’s What College Education Costs Students Around the World.” Business Insider, June 12. Retrieved July 5, 2013 from www.businessinsider.com/​ tuition-​costs-​by-​countrycollege-​higher-​education-​2012–​6. Tedeschi, Ernie. 2019. “Americans are Seeing Highest Minimum Wage in History (Without Federal Help). The New  York Times, April 4.  Retrieved May 20, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​2019/​04/​24/​upshot/​why-​america-​may-​already-​have-​its-​ highest-​minimum-​wage.html. Thomas, Landon. 2006. “A $31 Billion Gift Between Friends.” New  York Times, June 27. Retrieved July 5, 2013 from www.nytimes.com/​2006/​06/​27/​business/​27friends. html?_​r=0. Tsao, Tsu-​Yu, Kevin J. Konty, Gretchen Van Wye, Oxiris Barbot, James L. Hadler, Natalia Linos, and Mary T. Bassett. 2016. “Estimating Potential Reductions in Premature Mortality in New  York City from Raising the Minimum Wage to $15.” American Journal of Public Health 106: 1036–​1041.

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3 American Inequality and Rights to Speech and Democracy

Because democracy is so central to American values and Americans’ self-​ conceptions, it seems as though it would be one of our most protected and cherished human rights. It was perhaps for this reason that Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page (2014) caused such a stir when they published a study comparing how much influence average Americans, compared with organized interest groups and the wealthy, have in determining what happens in Washington, D.C. In over one thousand proposed national policy changes over a twenty-​year period studied in the research, Gilens and Page found that the preferences of the average American had almost no independent influence compared with the wealthy and special interests. The authors concluded that, “when a majority of citizens disagree with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose” (Gilens and Page 2014: 576). Perhaps the results of this research shouldn’t have been so surprising. Even a casual glance across the American landscape shows that the rights to participate in free and fair elections, and the right to have a meaningful voice in government, which are included in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, aren’t fulfilled for all citizens. For instance, the United States has one of the lowest voter participation rates compared with 32 other peer nations, with large segments of the American population staying away from the polls (Desilver 2018). In fact, in federal midterm elections for members of Congress, which are “off-​year” from the Presidential race, the majority of Americans don’t even vote. There are many factors that help explain the low voter participation rates in the United States. Rather than allowing people to register to vote on the day of an election, or having automatic voter registration when a person turns eighteen, most states require advanced registration that has the effect of dampening participation (Weiser 2016). Strict voter ID laws in many states likewise have the impact of keeping many elderly or poor Americans who don’t have a car away from the polls, along with other Americans who live in cities and use public transportation and therefore don’t need a current driver’s license (Hopkins 2018). The underfunding of the election process can also shut Americans out of democracy, as limited polling places with very long lines in some cities and towns during important elections can make it difficult for working parents to find time to vote (Khalid, Gonyea, and Fadel

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Inequality: Rights to Speech and Democracy  31 2018). Laws in some states make it additionally difficult, if not impossible, for individuals convicted of felonies from ever regaining the right to vote, even after they have served their time. Americans’ human right to democracy is undermined in other ways as well. For instance, numerous voting districts have been gerrymandered, with boundaries carefully engineered by political parties to produce predetermined outcomes. And millions of Americans—​for instance, those living in Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia—​have been denied full representation in Congress. Of course, the very existence of the Electoral College means that the will of the majority of Americans doesn’t matter if the candidate they support fails to gain as many electoral delegates as their competitor, something that happened in the 2016 presidential race and that has previously occurred four times in U.S. history. All these deficiencies in American democracy have relatively straightforward solutions, even if they would be politically difficult to achieve. Cities, states, and the federal government can invest more in the election process and take down roadblocks to voting, rather than build them up. Examples on how to increase voter participation abound from other nations and individual states that have had more success. Even if it would mean amending the constitution, residents of D.C., Puerto Rico, and other overseas U.S. territories can be allowed to fully participate in American democracy through federal representation and elections, and the Electoral College could be abolished in favor of the popular vote for the president. The rest of this chapter, however, will deal with a thornier problem about the disproportionate influence of the very wealthy in elections. This issue seems to pit two fundamental human rights—​the right to free speech and the right to democracy—​against one another.

Contradictory Rights to Speech and Democracy? Have you ever heard of Uline Incorporated or the Blackstone Group? Chances are that you haven’t. Uline is a maker of boxes and shipping supplies, while Blackstone is a private investment firm for the mega rich. Both organizations spend big on elections. As I write this, the 2020 election is still six months away, but Uline has already contributed $27  million to candidates and outside groups working to influence the election outcome, while Blackstone has contributed more than $21 million, making them two of the biggest contributors so far (CRP 2020a). It is important to note that the exact amount of money that’s being spent is not always clear because, under current U.S.  law, campaign money can be funneled into political organizations that are not required to fully disclose their contributions. Nonetheless, it’s clear that Uline and Blackstone’s contributions—​ even if they seem like huge chunks of money to you and me—​are just a tiny fraction of overall election spending, at least judging by the 2016 election, in which a total of $6.5 billion was spent to influence both the presidential and congressional election outcomes (Ingraham 2017). But maybe there’s no

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problem with any of this. Don’t the rich, just like everyone else, have a right to spend money to support their favorite candidates? U.S. citizens, after all, firmly believe in both the importance of free speech and the idea that all people have a right to meaningfully participate in and have influence on our various levels of government. Free speech is guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and the notion of a right to democratic participation is perhaps even more fundamental in our nation, being a quintessential way Americans understand themselves. Mostly, we think of these rights as complementary. By having the right to political speech, after all, Americans often presume that if they have something important to say, others will listen. If enough of these other individuals agree with what is said, so we like to believe, politicians will take heed and enact corresponding changes to law and policy. These politicians, after all, depend on votes from members of the public, so they had better do what the public wants or they risk losing their jobs. This is the idea of pluralism: everyone’s speech is protected, and everyone’s speech is, hypothetically, equally influential, depending upon what’s being said. The right to speech and the right to participate in one’s government go hand in hand. Unfortunately, as we will see in this chapter, things get messy in very unequal societies like ours.The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently interpreted campaign spending as a form of free speech, making this case most forcefully in the 2010 decision Citizens United vs. FEC. But if money in politics is considered a kind of speech, what happens when a few individuals have vastly more money on hand to spend than everyone else? This chapter will show that the predictable result is that the democratic rights of the majority of Americans are undermined. To consider this argument, we will first examine the role of political contributions in today’s electoral campaigns. We will then consider how this money distorts the relationship between candidates, elected officials, and voters. Finally, we’ll consider some possible ways that rights to speech and rights to democracy might be better balanced, something which would improve governance in the United States and would likely even increase rates of public participation in the political process.

Running for Office in America (It Takes Millions) Just how much money does it cost to run for public office in the United States? The answer is a whole lot, especially if we are talking about national office. For example, in the 2018 election cycle, the major-​party candidates for the U.S. House spent more than $1.5 million each on average, and candidates for the Senate spent almost $10 million, with the winners (as you can see in Table 3.1) raising far more than this already large sum (CRP 2020b). When collecting this money, of course, candidates must ask donors to conform to national campaign finance limits. In 2020, a person was limited to giving $2,800 per candidate per election cycle.This is undoubtedly far more money than most people can afford to contribute, no matter how much they want their favorite candidate to win. For more well-​to-​do Americans, though,

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Inequality: Rights to Speech and Democracy  33 Table 3.1 Amount of Money Raised by Winners per Office, 2018 Elections Average Amount of money raised by winning House candidate Amount of money raised by biggest earner in the House Average amount of money raised by winning Senate candidate Amount of money raised by biggest earner in the Senate

$2,054,000 $30,092,000 $15,753,000 $83,545,000

Source: Center for Responsive Politics (2020b).

there are ways to legally give beyond these initial limits—​for instance, by giving to a candidate both in a primary and during a regular election, effectively doubling the total contribution. And if this wealthy patron is married, they could convince a spouse to give at this limit as well, doubling the contribution again. What’s more, wealthy supporters can give an additional $5,000 to political action committees (PACs) and up to $35,000 to national political parties, all of which can then use this money to campaign on behalf of this individual candidate. But since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, some wealthy Americans have found that even these very generous spending limits are far too restrictive. Consequently, they have also put money into 501(c)4 “social welfare groups” to campaign on behalf of candidates. For instance, these outside groups spent an estimated $1 billion to influence the 2018 election, setting a record for a non-​presidential election year (Massoglia 2019). About half of this amount came in the form of so called “dark money,” which is money contributed by donors in such a way as to make it difficult, if not impossible, for the public to learn who is behind these large sums. Our political system is no doubt awash with money, some of which is kept in the shadows. But the question is, does it matter?

How Money in Politics Undermines Democratic Rights To be clear, most of the money raised by candidates for national office in the United States comes from large donations, those over $200 in size. What’s more, only a tiny fraction of Americans are making donations this large, less than one half of 1  percent of the total population (CRP 2013). The money that drives political campaigns, in other words, comes largely from the few relatively wealthy Americans who can afford to donate it. But those that think pluralism is a good way to see and understand America’s political system aren’t too concerned with this state of affairs. After all, they argue, both Democratic and Republican candidates have financial supporters among the mega-​r ich. And wealthy funders have a range of personal political interests—​for example, some support a woman’s right to choose abortion while others seek to restrict abortion access, some are in favor of more regulations on the sale of firearms and some are not, and some favor renewable energy as a solution to climate change while others advocate cutting existing pollution limits for fossil fuels. To pluralists, then, all this money just cancels itself out and is therefore not worth worrying about.

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Others, however, are not nearly so sanguine and believe that political candidates’ need for donations from wealthy supporters distorts our nation’s political process. Money by no means guarantees an election victory—​for instance, more money was spent campaigning for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election compared with Donald Trump, but she still ended up with fewer Electoral College votes. Nonetheless, having more money certainly helps. The ability to raise and spend more campaign money is seen as a tremendous advantage for political candidates. In 2018, for example, the winners of U.S. Senate seats raised almost three times the amount of their opponents on average in the general election (CRP 2020c). During that same election, the Senate candidate with the most money won 83 percent of the time, while in the U.S. House of Representatives, the most-​funded candidate won 89 percent of the races (CRP 2020d). This is partly caused by an “incumbent advantage.” Candidates who are working toward reelection have a much greater ability to raise money than first-​time candidates, and consequently are much more likely to maintain their seats after having once won. Politicians know that the more money they have, the greater chance they have of winning.This profoundly influences how they spend their time once elected. Americans might like to think that their members of Congress will continue to take the time to hear from their constituents once elected, and will work diligently to learn about the significant issues facing the nation. We Americans might like to think of members of Congress working to craft elegant policies based on what they learn, while devoting a significant amount of time to forging compromises across the aisle. And while our Congress members might do some of these things while in office, we also know that they allocate a substantial amount of time to fundraising for the next election. Members of the House, for instance, are up for election every two years, meaning they need to raise around $2 million during this period on average to keep their seats. The amount of time politicians spend fundraising, however, means they have less time to do the important legislative work they were elected to accomplish in the first place. Elected officials’ reliance upon contributions from the wealthy creates yet another kind of distortion in the U.S. political system, which legal scholar Lawrence Lessig (2011) calls institutional corruption. Lessig believes that personal corruption has been a real problem in America’s political system, which involves the quid pro quo exchange of money for political favors. Political scandals erupt from time to time, letting us know that this form of corruption is still around.1 But Lessig argues that it is probably not as severe as in America’s past. More pressing, he believes, is the entirely legal form of corruption that permeates today’s political environment, in which members of Congress give more access and attention to wealthy contributors compared with everyone else. This form of corruption may be more subtle than personal corruption, but in today’s system it is far more corrosive. Institutional corruption operates through a system of both dependency and fear. If an elected official has received a large contribution from one wealthy person, it is certainly reasonable to assume that they are going to

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Inequality: Rights to Speech and Democracy  35 be more willing to meet with this contributor and give a more sympathetic hearing to their concerns compared with those constituents who do not have the capacity to make large gifts. Lessig (2011) compares this with the example of a drug company that pays a doctor to give talks recommending one of its brands of medicine. The doctor’s talks are based on their professional and independent opinion. But at the same time, if the doctor wants to continue receiving the money the drug company is giving, then they had better continue making the same recommendations or the paid talks will quickly come to an end. There is nothing illegal about this relationship of influence, but still the influence is there. With regard to the situation for the member of Congress, their relationship of dependency upon wealthy contributors is characterized by a hefty dose of fear. Such wealthy backers, after all, not only have the power to discontinue their financial support, but can also promise to spend money to support the opponent of that candidate in the next election if things don’t go their way. Perhaps very large campaign contributions distort American politics in an even more fundamental way by influencing who can effectively run for office in the first place. Sociologist William Domhoff (2013) argues that Americans have their choices severely constrained by the time they get to cast their ballots in an election, or even in a primary. Because raising large sums of money is so important when it comes to running for office in America’s contemporary campaign-​finance environment—​at least for those who are not already very rich—​only those individuals who show fundraising promise are considered “serious” candidates. But because this money mostly comes from the wealthy segments of U.S.  society, it also means that the “serious” candidates are only those who are able to garner elite support. Those individuals—​in both the Republican and Democratic parties—​who do not say the things that potential wealthy backers most want to hear will effectively be cast out of the race. So while Domhoff (2013) acknowledges that there are some crucially important differences between Democratic and Republican candidates, by the time of the general election Domhoff also thinks that these candidates—​all having garnered substantial elite support regardless of party affiliation—​will also have proved themselves sympathetic to the viewpoints of the wealthy. These three distortions we have discussed undermine democratic rights. When Americans elect a person to Congress, they hope that person will quickly get to the serious legislative work at hand, not immediately begin fundraising for the next election. And they certainly don’t regard it as fair, in a representative democracy, when elected officials place the interests and needs of wealthy backers over those of their constituents at large. What’s more, we have seen that the need to raise huge sums of money whittles down the range of positions that “serious” candidates can take, ultimately ensuring that both Democratic and Republican candidates will have very similar stances on some important economic and fiscal issues before any votes are actually cast. So, while the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that campaign contributions should be considered a form of protected free

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36  Inequality: Rights to Speech and Democracy

speech, an important constitutional and human right, we have also seen that a system of largely unrestrained finance can undermine democracy. Here again, we have a situation in which rights seem to be at odds with one another, and when the rights of the powerful few seem to prevail against the rights of the many—​especially those of marginalized communities. But, as sociologists, we should point out that it does not need to be like this. There are possible ways in which the right to speech and the right to participation in democracy could be better balanced in U.S. society.

Striking a Balance Between Political Rights in U.S. Society The Supreme Court’s interpretation of campaign money as speech, affirmed in the Citizens United case, sets some very significant constraints on what might be done to promote democratic rights in the United States. But this doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless. It means that dealing with this problem will take a while and require a great deal of hard work, accomplished by countless individuals. For one, the composition of the Supreme Court does change, so one long-​term strategy might be work to influence that composition in the hope that future courts will be more willing to change course and allow more significant limits on campaign expenditures. Rather than waiting for the court to change, some activists and elected officials are working to build support for another long-​term strategy to enact a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to more thoroughly limit the amount of money individuals can spend on politics. Indeed, more than one proposal for such an amendment has already been introduced to Congress over the past decade. The proposed “Democracy for All Amendment,” for instance, was introduced to Congress in 2019 with an impressive 46 co-​sponsors. The proposed amendment would add the following to the Constitution: “to advance democratic self-​ government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections” (Udall 2019). While amending the U.S. Constitution is a daunting undertaking—​requiring a two-​thirds majority in both the House and the Senate and ratification by three-​quarters of the states in order to succeed—​it is nonetheless possible, something that’s been done 27 times before. Advocates of prohibition were, after all, able to achieve this goal for what proved to be a much less worthy cause in the Eighteenth Amendment. Other democracy advocate argue for robust publicly financed elections in the United States. Lessig (2011), for instance, envisions an election finance system in which every American is given a certain amount of money—​say $200—​in “democracy vouchers” out of the federal taxes that they already pay on income and payroll. Individuals can then divvy up their vouchers however they like in order to make awards to candidates of their choice. The catch is that any candidate that accepts these vouchers must forgo

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Inequality: Rights to Speech and Democracy  37 large private campaign contributions. This system isn’t at odds with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of campaign money as speech because it allows candidates to choose whether or not they will participate. Rather, the system here understands that the political “speech” of Americans who do not own large sums of money is at a significant disadvantage compared with the speech of the very wealthy, who amplify their ideas and arguments with lots of cash. This policy idea envisions a political system that not only guarantees the right to political speech, but also includes the voices of poor and middle-​class Americans who don’t have spare money to contribute to political campaigns. These kinds of ideas have already become part of established practice at a more local level, with numerous major American cities introducing campaign limits and public support for elections in their jurisdictions. In one recent example, the new “Democracy for the People” initiative in Denver, Colorado creates a public fund to match small grassroots donations to local candidates while also limiting the size of donations, prohibiting campaign contributions from corporations, and requiring disclosure of dark money (Millard 2018). This chapter underscores the more general point that, while in abstract human rights are about what is just and fair, in the real world actual policy has to do with power and interpretation. American society is premised upon both the right to free speech and the right to democratic participation, but we have seen here that—​just as with the rights to property and wellbeing covered in the last chapter—​the rights of the few have been interpreted in such a way that they undermine the rights of the majority, in this case the right to have a meaningful voice in democracy and be represented by sincere officials legislating out of concern for the wellbeing of their constituents, not someone spending their time furiously raising money. A better balance could be struck between these rights, but this will not happen on its own accord. If it happens at all, it will only be through the development of a national grassroots campaign powerful enough to make rights to both free speech and democracy real in the United States.

Discussion Questions 1. The Center for Responsive Politics, a non-​profit public interest organization, runs an important website that allows users to learn who the main financial contributors are to congressional and presidential candidates. Go to the website at www.opensecrets.org/​races/​index.php to look up a senator or house member from your state. What can you find? How do you think the contributors listed here relate to the position and voting record of this member of Congress on important issues? 2. What is the difference between personal and institutional corruption? Do you agree with Lessig that institutional corruption is a greater threat to contemporary American democracy than personal corruption? Why or why not?

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3. The concluding section of this chapter discussed several reform ideas to balance rights between speech and democratic participation. Do any of these ideas capture your imagination? Do any of these reforms seem as if they might be effective, or are they hopelessly naïve? Please explain your thinking.

Note 1 President Trump’s 2019 impeachment, for instance, was based on an accusation of quid pro quo personal corruption: that the President had promised an exchange of military funding for Ukraine if the government started a public investigation of Joe Biden in order to boost Trump’s chance of winning the presidential election.

References CRP. 2013. “Donor Demographics.” Center for Responsive Politics. Retrieved July 7, 2013 from www.opensecrets.org/​overview/​donordemographics.php. CRP. 2020a. “Organization Profiles: Top Contributors.” Center for Responsive Politics. Retrieved May 23, 2020 from www.opensecrets.org/​orgs/​all-​profiles. CRP. 2020b. “Election Trends.” Center for Responsive Politics. Retrieved May 27, 2020 (www.opensecrets.org/​overview/​election-​trends.php). CRP. 2020c. “Incumbent Advantage.” Center for Responsive Politics. Retrieved May 27, 2020 from www.opensecrets.org/​overview/​incumbs.php. CRP. 2020d. “Did Money Win?” Center for Responsive Politics. Retrieved May 27, 2020 from www.opensecrets.org/​elections-​overview/​did-​money-​win. Desilver, Drew. 2018.“U.S.Trails Most Developed Nations in Voter Turnout.” Pew Research Center Fact Tank, May 21. Retrieved May 23, 2020 from www.pewresearch.org/​fact-​ tank/​2018/​05/​21/​u-​s-​voter-​turnout-​trails-​most-​developed-​countries. Domhoff, G. William. 2013. Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich. New York: McGraw Hill. Gilens, Martin and Benjamin I. Page. 2014. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics 12: 564–​581. Hopkins, John. 2018. “What We Know About Voter ID Laws.” FiveThirtyEight, August 21. Retrieved May 23, 2020 from https://​fivethirtyeight.com/​features/​ what-​we-​know-​about-​voter-​id-​laws. Ingraham, Christopher. 2017. “Somebody Just Put a Price Tag on the 2016 Election.” The Washington Post, April 14. Retrieved May 23, 2020 from www.washingtonpost. com/​news/​wonk/​wp/​2017/​04/​14/​somebody-​just-​put-​a-​price-​tag-​on-​the-​2016-​ election-​its-​a-​doozy. Khalid, Asma, Don Gonyea, and Leila Fadel. 2018. “On the Sidelines of Democracy: Exploring Why So Many Americans Don’t Vote.” NPR, September 10. Retrieved May 23, 2020 from www.npr.org/​2018/​09/​10/​645223716/​on-​the-​sidelines-​ of-​democracy-​exploring-​why-​so-​many-​americans-​dont-​vote. Lessig, Lawrence. 2011. Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It. New York: Twelve. Massoglia, Anna. 2019. “State of Money in Politics: Billion-​ Dollar ‘Dark Money’ Spending is Just the Tip of the Iceberg.” Center for Responsive Politics, February 21. Retrieved May 27, 2020 from www.opensecrets.org/​news/​2019/​02/​somp3-​billion-​ dollar-​dark-​money-​tip-​of-​the-​iceberg.

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Inequality: Rights to Speech and Democracy  39 Millard, Hazel. 2018. “Another Election Winner—​Public Financing.” Brennan Center for Justice, November 12. Retrieved May 28, 2020 from www.brennancenter.org/​our-​ work/​analysis-​opinion/​another-​election-​winner-​public-​financing. Udall, Tom. 2019. “Democracy for All Amendment: Proposed Amendment Introduced to the 116th Congress.” Retrieved May 28, 2020 from www.tomudall.senate.gov/​ imo/​media/​doc/​Democracy%20For%20All%20Amendment%20Final%20Bill%20 Text.pdf. Weiser, Wendy. 2016. “Automatic Voter Registration Boosts Political Participation.” Stanford Social Innovations Review, January 28. Retrieved May 23, 2020 from https://​ ssir.org/​increasing_​voter_t​ urnout/e​ ntry/a​ utomaticAcknowledgments_v​ oter_r​ egistration_b​ oosts_p​ olitical_​participation#.

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4  Racism and the Human Right to Be Treated Equally Before the Law

During the time I am writing this, hundreds of thousands of protesters have been filling the streets each night in cities and towns across the United States in reaction to the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd. You might have even been part of one of these marches yourself, given that more people participated in these protests than any other single protest event in American history (Buchanan, Bui, and Patel 2020). Like other similar incidents captured on smartphone video, George Floyd’s death calls for a reckoning about the unequal treatment of people of color by America’s criminal justice system. As you probably already know, it all began when police in Minneapolis were called by a store owner who reported a customer’s use of a potentially fake $20 bill. Responding to the scene, police engaged with George Floyd and placed him under arrest, putting him on the ground in handcuffs. Bystanders nearby filmed as a police officer put his knee on Floyd’s neck and kept it there for almost nine minutes, even as bystanders implored him to stop and as Floyd himself stated several times, “I can’t breathe” (Hauser, Bryson, and Vigdor 2020). The officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck even after he lost consciousness. Evidently hoping to cover things up, the police department’s initial report states that Floyd died during a “medical incident” (Hauser et al. 2020).The video, now watched millions of times, shows police rolling Floyd’s lifeless body onto a gurney to be carried away. The question is, of course, why do incidents like these keep occurring? Why is it that the victims of police use of excessive force are disproportionately people of color? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights insists, in Articles 2 and 7, that no person should be discriminated against based on race, and that governments should treat all people equally. When the document was adopted by the member nations of the United Nations in 1948, the political organization of much of the world was openly racist. Many of the signatory nations themselves maintained policies that intentionally promoted racial inequality, both within and between the societies they governed. But social movements were already well underway in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean,

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Racism and Equality  41 and the United States that were demanding racial equality. Many of these movements achieved real and lasting success. In the formerly colonized regions, these movements helped rid their nations of direct political domination by external powers. And within the former colonial powers themselves, movements made important headway toward racial equality. Of course, rights were not granted by the powerful because it was the fair and appropriate thing to do, but because these movements demanded and required it. U.S.  society in 1948, at a time when the powerful Civil Rights Movement was about to emerge, is an important example. By pioneering new grassroots tactics and expertly wielding more time-​ tested protest methods—​such as boycotts, sit-​ins, marches, community-​wide protests, and voter registration drives—​black leaders would force white power-​holders to acknowledge the fundamental human rights of all people, regardless of race (McAdam 1983). The successes in the 1950s and 1960s were real, as were those of the Chicano and Red Power movements that followed. In particular, the Civil Rights Movement was successful at achieving increased civil and political rights of black Americans by, for instance, abolishing Jim Crow segregation and securing the right to vote in practice, not just as something that was technically guaranteed as a right in the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but all too frequently denied. Many in the Civil Rights Movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—​did not want to stop with these victories, but hoped to advance broader wellbeing rights for people of color who had, as a whole, been excluded for generations from the better-​paying jobs in America’s economy. But America’s culture and structure of racism, which upheld whites over other racial groups, proved to be too resistant to much more change at the time, so the movement fell short of its fullest aspirations. For this reason, racism remains an enduring characteristic of U.S. society. In this chapter, we will consider what sociologists mean when they talk about race and racism, paying particular attention to the ways that differences between races are reproduced over generations even in a society that often claims to be “colorblind.” In doing so, we will examine the differential enforcement of U.S. criminal justice policies regarding illegal drugs in order to better understand violations of human rights in relation to race across our society. Finally, we will consider what particular remedies citizens are pursuing in order to achieve greater racial justice in the United States.

Historical Policies of Explicit Racism in U.S. Governance We should begin our discussion by making clear that, from the perspective of contemporary biologists, race makes absolutely no scientific sense as a means of categorizing people. It is, instead, a social construction and an important example of the W.I. Thomas Theorem (see Chapter 1), in which human interpretations of the world become a real part of that world in their

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consequences. In this case, otherwise insignificant physical characteristics are imbued with very significant social meaning. With its very founding, the U.S. government was in the business of creating and maintaining strict and unequal racial categorizations. This is certainly made clear with the black American experience and the historic role of federal, state, and local governments in perpetuating slavery. After the end of slavery, governments not only played a role in maintaining Jim Crow segregation in the South, but in increasing segregation across the entire nation. The U.S.  federal government played an especially important role here, using several tools. First, numerous U.S. cities created racialized zoning laws around the turn of the last century, which created specific boundaries where Americans could live based upon race. Even when the Supreme Court ruled that such laws were unconstitutional in 1917, the U.S. government largely looked the other way, allowing some cities to maintain their laws for decades (Taylor 2014). In cities that lacked racial zoning laws, thousands of white neighborhoods across the country created race-​based restrictions on their home deeds, which prohibited white homeowners from selling their houses to people of color (Rothstein 2017). Despite the obviously unconstitutional nature of such restrictions, the U.S. government allowed their proliferation and use until 1968. Beginning with the New Deal and continuing through the 1960s, the federal government actively worked to create segregation through its program to subsidize home loans and suburban housing development. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) determined that loans in neighborhoods with black residents would be too “risky” to issue. Maps were created for every major metropolitan area with neighborhoods inhabited predominantly by people of color shaded in—​hence the term “redlining.” The FHA also decided that allowing black Americans to buy homes in the newly built suburbs that it was subsidizing would lower property values there, so it required that homebuilders sell only to buyers perceived as white. Taken together, black Americans were effectively blocked from receiving subsidized home loans for decades. These very same loans became an extremely important mechanism for qualifying whites to begin building wealth and accessing the middle class during this period (Rothstein 2017). All these policies together, along with centuries of lost educational and economic opportunities due to slavery and Jim Crow laws, help us to explain why median wealth for whites today is so much higher compared with other racial groups (see Figure 4.1). It also helps us to understand that America’s segregation of neighborhoods, which still exists at levels similar to that before the Civil Rights Movement, was not created by accident. Local, state, and federal governments played key roles in creating it. The continuing segregation of communities has a tremendous impact on peoples’ lives, including children’s educational quality, economic opportunities, and—​as we will see below as one extended example—​law enforcement.

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Racism and Equality  43

$140,500

White

$3,600

$6,600

Black

Latino

Figure 4.1 Median* Family Wealth by Race *Median wealth is the equivalent of “middle” wealth. If we could line all white American families up in order of wealth, $140,500 would be the total amount owned by the family in the middle. If average wealth was depicted, this number would be even higher because it would be skewed by America’s very rich, who are mostly white. Source: Collins et al. (2019).

Human Rights, Racism, and Drug Enforcement A number of years back, when I was 25 years old, I had an experience that still sticks with me. A police officer knocked on my door while conducting an investigation in the neighborhood and, feeling I  had nothing to fear, I invited him in. We sat for a few minutes having a friendly discussion in my living room. My roommate walked in and sat down to join the conversation, but seemed nervous. After the officer left, she pointed out that her marijuana pipe was there on the table, in plain view for anyone to see. For years after this incident, I wondered why the officer didn’t issue a citation, given that I lived in Wyoming, a place where cannabis was—​and is still—​illegal. Was the officer just a “nice guy,” who didn’t want to make any arrests or give tickets that day? Or maybe he was just unobservant and bad at his job? But as I learned more about systemic racism, and as I accounted for my white skin, I realized that there is a more sociological explanation. Research has consistently demonstrated that white people and people of color use illegal drugs at very similar rates (SMAHS 2012). Those convicted of drug crimes in the United States, however, are overwhelmingly people of color. While non-​Hispanic whites make up almost 63  percent of the U.S. population, they make up only 30 percent of those individuals serving time in state prisons for drug sales or possession (Carson and Sabol 2012). Blacks, on the other hand, make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population.

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But this group comprises a full 50 percent of those persons in state prisons for drug crimes. With regard to marijuana alone, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU 2013) found that black Americans are more than four times more likely to be ticketed or arrested for possession despite similar rates of use to white Americans. Clearly there is a tremendous underrepresentation of white drug users and sellers in the prison system, and an overrepresentation of people of color, which indicates that Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is being violated in the United States. But how did this disparity come about? Some of this has to do with personal, or individual, racism. Consider, for example, Rafik Mohamed and Erik Fritsvold’s (2011) study of self-​ professed drug dealers—​the majority of whom were white—​in a wealthy private college in Southern California. While many drug dealers might take elaborate precautions to avoid being busted, these white “dorm-​room dealers” took few measures to protect themselves. Indeed, Mohamed and Fritsvold found that there was practically no reason for them to be concerned, as they largely escaped the attention of the police and were mostly ignored by college administrators, who did not want to upset parents or draw negative attention to their campuses. Although these students were distributing marijuana and various prescription medicines for illicit purposes, they mostly did not think of themselves as criminals, which was a view mostly shared by others in their community. In one telling story, after a white and well-​to-​do dealer was robbed of his money and drugs, he felt entitled to report it to the police. And when the police caught the suspect, they actually returned the stolen money, though they of course did not hand over the stolen drugs, which the dealer wisely did not claim as his own (Mohamed and Fritsvold 2011). We are born into a racist culture in the United States, which often ignores the ways in which racism has benefited white people over generations. This culture also typically blames people of color for not achieving full economic equality with whites, and often portrays people of color—​especially young black and Latino men—​as “suspects” and as being potentially dangerous. To use one easy-​to-​imagine example, a police officer, consciously or unconsciously, is acting on the prejudices of our broader society when they don’t look twice at a white female drug user after giving her a speeding ticket, but instead let her go on her way. Likewise, this same police officer is acting on broader cultural prejudices when subjecting a Latino male driver and his car to a thorough search after pulling him over for the same traffic violation.The police officer might justify this different treatment by saying that the Latino driver “looked suspicious,” but we should remember that we live in a society that has trained the officer to think that way, while also allowing many white drug users to evade apprehension. As we can see, racism results in real disadvantages for those born as people of color. But the other side of racism, white privilege, results in comparative advantages in the lives of others. Peggy McIntosh has defined white privilege as an “invisible knapsack containing a set of unearned privileges.” Robert Jensen (1998) argues that this privilege is unearned and does not necessarily

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Racism and Equality  45 need to be sought after. Rather, it is a privilege that simply accrues to white people, as a whole, when living in a racist society.The dorm-​room dealers in Mohamed and Fritsvold’s study were obviously beneficiaries of white privilege, as was I in that personal experience I shared earlier. Certainly, white drug sellers and users are regularly and routinely penalized for their activities, often in very severe ways, but evidence continuously shows that it is at much lower rates than that experienced by people of color. One way to think of it, according to a comment made to me by sociology professor Kristina Kahl, is that “white privilege doesn’t mean your life hasn’t been hard. It just means that the color of your skin isn’t one of the things that makes it harder.” These kinds of differences are produced by much more than personal and cultural biases. They are also caused by something more fundamental to the very organization of American society. Systemic racism is the important sociological concept that centuries of racist economic, political, and educational practices have deeply entrenched racial inequalities into the United States, to such an extent that real material advantages for whites are passed down across generations (Bonilla-​Silva 2001; Feagin and Ducy 2018). For this reason, creating a more equal society goes beyond changing ideas about race: it also means changing the ways in which our political and economic institutions operate. On the political level, for instance, we can think about the history of the social construction of illicit drugs. From this perspective, “drugs”—​or chemical substances that produce desired impacts on the brain—​don’t become illegal based only on the danger they pose to individuals. If this were the case, alcohol and tobacco would certainly be on the list of prohibited substances, given all the tremendous harm and early deaths they cause each year. Instead, alcohol and tobacco are legal—​even if regulated—​substances in America, likely because they were important drugs that America’s first governing elites (also known as our “Founding Fathers”) either enjoyed or, as with tobacco, commercially profited from (Butler 2009). Other drugs that are now criminalized, or partially criminalized, weren’t always illegal. But the process by which they became so has strong racial overtones. For instance, during the early 1900s, anti-​drug campaigners played upon racist images and antipathy toward Chinese immigrants in efforts to criminalize opium (Provine 2011). Likewise, during the same period, hyped-​up stories of out-​ of-​control black people high on cocaine were used to successfully make that drug illegal. And in the 1910s and 1920s, racial sentiment against Mexicans and Mexican Americans was mobilized in efforts to criminalize marijuana (Provine 2011). Racial biases continue to be embedded in drug laws today. In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michele Alexander (2012) writes that while crack cocaine and powdered cocaine are pharmacologically almost identical, crack cocaine—​which is a more affordable form of cocaine available to poor people in inner cities—​ was demonized in the 1980s and a federal law, the Anti-​Drug Abuse Act of 1986, was passed that was so punitive it mandated a five-​year sentence for

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possession of 5 grams.This new sentence was exceedingly lopsided compared with the sentence for the more expensive powdered cocaine favored by many wealthy whites, at which 500 grams (or a ratio of 100 to one) would be required to trigger a mandatory five-​year sentence (Alexander 2012). While Congress moved in 2010 to raise the amount of crack cocaine needed to mandate the five-​year sentence to 28 grams, a huge disparity between sentencing for possession of the two types of cocaine remains today, which has ultimately impacted the racial composition of America’s prison population (Abrams 2010). Systemic racism shows up in drug enforcement in other ways as well—​for instance, in the starkly different styles of policing between poor and wealthy neighborhoods. Racism has been embedded in our economy, and this is reflected in the social and racial geography and urban development of virtually all American cities. When America’s segregationists created cities divided by race, they not only concentrated people of color together in the same neighborhoods, they also concentrated people who had long been denied equal educational and economic opportunities. For this reason, many of America’s disproportionately black and brown neighborhoods are also disproportionately poor. Whereas many wealthy and whiter neighborhoods experience an infrequent and friendly police presence, neighborhoods in poorer communities experience a much more heavy and aggressive policing, with residents—​especially young men—​ regularly subjected to frequent searches. New  York City’s “stop and frisk” policy, which has now been overturned, is perhaps the most notorious example of such aggressive policing in poor and black/​brown neighborhoods. As an outcome of the policy, young Latino and black men between the ages of fourteen and 24 made up 40 percent of all stops in the city, though they only make up 4.7  percent of the city’s total population (NYCLU 2013). Clearly, then, if members of various racial groups in America do drugs at similar rates, these kinds of racialized policing strategies, in which people of color are stopped and searched more, help explain the discrepancies by race for those incarcerated in U.S. prisons for drug crimes. And we should remember that similar dynamics are at work at all levels of the criminal justice system, from trials, to sentencing, to decisions about probation and early release. By following these dynamics, we can begin to understand why incarceration rates are more than five times higher for black Americans compared with white Americans (Nellis 2016). And while not all crimes committed by different racial groups are the same, as they are with drug use, we should keep in mind that one in five people locked behind bars today is there for a nonviolent drug crime (Sawyer and Wagner 2020). We should also keep in mind that the racial biases in the enforcement of drug laws exist in the policing of all kinds of crimes, not just drugs. As a whole, this helps us understand how the criminal justice system frequently works differently in the United States depending upon one’s race and background. The United States, in other words, is a racist nation, even if it is mostly populated by individuals who would, if asked, emphatically insist that they

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Racism and Equality  47 are not racist (Bonilla-​Silva 2009). Typically, people working in America’s criminal justice system sincerely believe in equality between persons in principle, but they also may subconsciously act on their socialization in our racist culture that teaches that some people are more “suspect” than others. Politicians and law enforcement officials also enact policies, like New York’s “stop and frisk,” that disproportionately impact communities of color, even if such policies seem to be colorblind on their surface. This is one example of how race functions in the United States.We would find a similar story if we were to examine America’s educational system, or the hiring and promotion practices of large corporations. But we examined instead the United States’ “war on drugs” and found that it unfairly impacts people of color in the nation. Its consequences are devastating, locking convicts away from their families for years and even decades, revoking their right to vote—​permanently in some states—​and dramatically diminishing their employment prospects throughout their entire lives. Because the impact is so severe, and because the implementation is so uneven, the U.S. “war on drugs” has resulted in the widespread violation of human rights. The next section considers what might be done in order to achieve greater racial justice.

Promoting Racial Justice in the United States There are a number of specific goals activists and social movements might pursue in order to diminish the racist impacts of the “war on drugs,” such as pushing city-​wide policies that would prevent police departments from discriminating based on race, which happened in New  York City after enough people became outraged over “stop and frisk.” Legal scholar Michele Alexander also encourages activists to work to eliminate the mandatory minimum drug sentences that uniformly impose long sentences on those convicted of drug crimes, regardless of the individual circumstances of the person accused. The beginning of such reform has already commenced in several states. We might also work to end the widespread practice that denies felons, including those convicted for the possession of drugs, their right to vote while in prison, on probation, or—​ in some states—​for life. Paul Butler, a law professor and former federal prosecutor who worked to send drug dealers and drug users behind bars, advocates an even more far-​ reaching goal. As a prosecutor, Butler (2009) became convinced that the drug war was ultimately unwinnable and that it unfairly impacted people of color. He now advocates the decriminalization of drugs. Such an approach does not mean we need to ignore the fact that drug use can do real harm to people and their communities. The approach instead insists that criminalizing drugs has not diminished this harm, but has instead increased it. After all, alcohol can play a destructive role in some people’s lives too, but we can see from the history of prohibition in the 1920s that its criminalization was hardly a recipe to reduce the harm that alcohol caused to the American social fabric.

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The harm-​reduction approach advocated by Butler would decriminalize drugs, but would also work to create public awareness campaigns about the potential negative consequences of drug use and allocate more resources to the treatment of addiction. The approach would further seek to create a context—​by, for instance, monitoring the ingredients in drugs and providing needle exchanges—​that would make drug use safer for those who continue to use them. Regardless of the specific policy changes we might pursue, both Butler and Alexander encourage us not to do so using a “colorblind” framework. We should remember that the whole premise of the drug war is one that has historically thought of people of color as expendable, and that the harm done to their families and communities is justified. It is based on a whole way of seeing the world that ignores large-​scale suffering caused by the mass depravation of fundamental human rights. Instead, such efforts should be bound up in a broad movement committed to transform America in order to achieve human rights for all. The activists of the #BlackLivesMatter movement are seeking to create this kind of transformative social change. The phrase was first created as an expression of protest, anger, and grief after the killing in Florida of Trayvon Martin, a young black man killed by a neighborhood vigilante at the age of 17—​carrying nothing but a bag of skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea—​because he “looked suspicious” (Pleasant 2015). #BlackLivesMatter soon became a rallying cry across America by activists in, as described by one of its co-​founders, a “revolutionary peace movement” (Abdullah 2017). The movement has now spilled out onto the streets after the killing of George Floyd, becoming historically consequential. When speaking to my students about #BlackLivesMatter, many are of course very supportive, some of them being movement activists themselves. Sometimes, however, students—​mainly white students—​find problems with the movement for two main reasons. First, some students object to the name because they feel that it implies that other lives don’t matter. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. But saying “black lives matter” does run contrary to what sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-​Silva (2009) argues is America’s contemporary racial ideology, that of colorblindness. Colorblind racism asserts that, because of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, everyone has an equal chance to succeed in the United States. If people fail to do so, it’s their own individual fault. But the very name of the #BlackLivesMatter movement points out that this simply isn’t the case. Black people in America have, as a whole, been given unequal life chances and have consequently had their lives undervalued. Perhaps this is why the name makes some of us so uncomfortable. Perhaps it is also why such a movement working to confront the dangerous consequences of anti-​blackness is so important. Some students also dislike the disruptive nature of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. As I write this, in fact, a very small minority of protests against the killing of George Floyd have devolved into riots. Sometimes this is due

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Racism and Equality  49 to opportunists looking to commit crime. Most frequently, it is a cry of anguish and frustration that is the result of living in a racist society. And while the #BlackLivesMatter movement is itself nonviolent and peaceful, it also seeks to disrupt the normal functioning of a racist society in order to create social change. Again in the words of one of the movement’s founders, the goal is for “black bodies [to] fill the streets, disrupting traffic, inhibiting white shoppers, and making the normalcy of white American middle-​class existence less certain” (Abdullah 2017). Disruption is in fact the very purpose of civil disobedience as a social movement tactic. As Martin Luther King Jr. explained in his famous 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” if people who have been excluded from decision-​making in a society can’t create a racial disruption, those in charge have no reason to give up any power and/​or make any changes to government policy. Many of us in the United States learn a highly sanitized and largely inaccurate history of the Civil Rights Movement in our schools, which fails to include this valuable lesson. The Civil Rights Movement was highly disruptive to American society, but in creating such commotion and causing many whites to feel discomfort, it also provoked the positive changes that we now celebrate. Like the Civil Rights Movement before it, the #BlackLivesMatter movement intentionally acts to create a disturbance that calls forth a demand for equality. It is just one iteration of America’s Long Black Freedom Struggle, something that began in America’s earliest colonial days when black people resisted slavery and will continue into the future until everyone in the United States enjoys their full human rights, regardless of race.

Discussion Questions 1. It was noted earlier in this section that many American metropolitan areas remain as segregated today as they were decades ago. Is your own community segregated? Can you think of different neighborhoods where certain racial groups—​ including whites—​ predominate? If so, how do you think life is different in these various communities? 2. Given that whites and members of other racial groups use drugs at similar rates, what are the major reasons for the disparity between those in U.S. prisons who have been convicted of drug crimes? 3. Can you think of some other examples of “colorblind” systemic racism, or the social/​economic dynamics that create racial differences despite being race neutral on their surface? 4. What do you think about Butler’s (2009) advocacy of a “harm reduction program,” rather than the criminalization of drugs? What do you think might be the benefits and drawbacks of such a policy change in the United States? 5. What do you think of the #BlackLivesMatter movement? Have you participated in the movement yourself? If not, what have you heard about it?

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References Abdullah, Melina. 2017. “Black Lives Matter is a Revolutionary Peace Movement.” The Conversation, October 11. Retrieved June 3, 2020 from https://​theconversation.com/​ black-​lives-​matter-​is-​a-​revolutionary-​peace-​movement-​85449. Abrams, Jim. 2010. “Congress Passes Bill to Reduce Disparity in Crack, Powder Cocaine Sentencing.” Washington Post, July 29. Retrieved July 22, 2013 from www. washingtonpost.com/​wp-​dyn/​content/​article/​2010/​07/​28/​AR2010072802969. html. ACLU. 2013. “The War on Marijuana in Black and White: Billions of Dollars Wasted in Racially Motivated Arrests.” American Civil Liberties Union Report. Retrieved June 1, 2020 from www.aclu.org/​report/​report-​war-​marijuana-​black-​and-​white? redirect=criminal-​law-​reform/​war-​marijuana-​black-​and-​white. Alexander, Michele. 2012. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Bonilla-​Silva, Eduardo. 2001. White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-​Civil Rights Era. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Bonilla-​Silva, Eduardo. 2009. Racism without Racists: Color-​Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Buchanan, Larry, Quoctrung Bui and Jugal K. Patel. 2020. “Black Lives Matter May Be the Biggest Movement in U.S. History.” The New York Times, July 3. Retrieved August 6, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2020/​07/​03/​us/​george-​floyd-​protests-​ crowd-​size.html. Butler, Paul. 2009. Let’s Get Free: A Hip-​Hop Theory of Justice. New  York: The New Press. Carson, E. Ann and William J. Sabol. 2012. “Prisoners in 2011.” NCJ 239808.Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Collins, Chuck, Dedrick Asante-​Muhammed, Josh Hoxie, and Sabrina Terry. 2019. Dreams Deferred: How Enriching the 1% Widens the Racial Wealth Divide. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies. Retrieved October 19, 2020 from: https://​ips-​dc.org/​ wp-​content/​uploads/​2019/​01/​IPS_​RWD-​Report_​FINAL-​1.15.19.pdf. Feagin, Joe and Kimberley Ducey. 2018. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations. New York: Routledge. Hauser, Christine, Derrick Bryson Taylor, and Neil Vigdor. 2020. “I Can’t Breathe. 4  Minneapolis Officers Fired After Black Man Dies in Custody.” The New  York Times, May 26. Retrieved June 3, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​2020/​05/​26/​us/​ minneapolis-​police-​man-​died.html. Jensen, Robert. 1998. “White Privilege Shapes the U.S.” Baltimore Sun, July 19. Retrieved January 29, 2014 from http://​uts.cc.utexas.edu/​~rjensen/​freelance/​whiteprivilege. htm. McAdam, Doug. 1983. “Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency.” American Sociological Review 48: 735–​54. Mohamed, A. Rafik and Erik D. Fritsvold. 2011. Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Nellis, Ashley. 2016. “Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons.” The Sentencing Project, June 14. Retrieved August 16, 2020 from www.sentencingproject. org/​publications/​color-​of-​justice-​racial-​and-​ethnic-​disparity-​in-​state-​prisons. NYCLU. 2013. Stop and Frisk 2012. New  York: New  York Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved July 23, 2013 from www.nyclu.org/​files/​publications/​2012_​Report_​ NYCLU_​0.pdf.

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Racism and Equality  51 Pleasant, Liz. 2015. “Meet the Woman Behind #BlackLivesMatter” Yes Magazine, May 2. Retrieved June 3, 2020 from www.yesmagazine.org/​issue/​make-​r ight/​2015/​05/​ 02/​meet-​the-​woman-​behind-​black-​lives-​matter-​the-​hashtag-​that-​became-​a-​civil-​ rights-​movement. Provine, Doris M. 2011. “Race and Inequality in the War on Drugs.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 7: 41–​60. Rothstein, Richard. 2017. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York. W.W. Norton. Sawyer,Wendy and Peter Wagner. 2020. Mass Incarceration, the Whole Pie 2020.Washington, D.C.: The Sentencing Project, March 24. Retrieved August 16, 2020 from www. prisonpolicy.org/​reports/​pie2020.html. SMAHS. 2012. Results from the 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of National Findings. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Taylor, Dorceta. 2014. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. New York: New York University Press.

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5  Violations of Women’s and LGBTQ Rights in U.S. Society

While I was writing these pages, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in the long historical effort to achieve equal treatment and full human rights for all Americans. On June 15, 2020, the Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects all citizens from discrimination in hiring and employment, including members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. Before this ruling, there was no national employment protection for members of the LGBTQ community. While some states, counties, and cities had anti-​discrimination laws, throughout much of America a person identifying as LGBTQ could be fired or openly discriminated against. Sociological evidence indicates that this discrimination and bias against members of the LGBTQ community is very real in hiring decisions, especially in more conservative states and in more traditionally “masculine” workplaces (Tilcsik 2011). But this research also shows that the presence of laws barring discriminatory practices make a real difference in diminishing bias. This Supreme Court ruling was, in other words, a real and meaningful victory for human rights.What’s more, it shows that success on the path toward greater equality can be achieved in our era, giving us reason to keep working toward the full expansion of human rights even when current events may otherwise seem grim. We do, after all, have a long way to go to achieve true equality for members of the LGBTQ community and for women in the United States. We continue to live a society that is both sexist and heterosexist. Feminist scholars have a name for a society such as ours: a hetero-​patriarchy. This word might sound a little intimidating at first, but I urge you to hear me out. The definition of hetero-​patriarchy is quite simple. It is a society in which: 1. straight men disproportionately hold positions of power in relation to women and members of sexual minorities 2. behaviors, traits, and occupations traditionally associated with heterosexuality and with masculinity are given greater material and cultural rewards, and 3. straight men feel compelled to both demonstrate their masculinity (for fear of being “diminished” as weak or feminine) and to defend the

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Violations of Women’s and LGBTQ Rights  53 hetero-​patriarchal order from which they receive rewards, potentially giving rise to violence (see Harris 2011). Over the course of this chapter, we will consider evidence that we live in a hetero-​patriarchal society, and how this undermines the achievement of human rights. We will pay special attention to the violence that is endemic to hetero-​patriarchy, and how this results in widespread violations of the human rights to security, wellbeing, and bodily integrity in the United States. Then we will move on to consider how students and community members are fighting to achieve equality and human rights across our country by confronting and acting to reverse sexism and heterosexism.

Hetero-​Patriarchy and Human Rights On what basis could we fairly describe U.S. society as both patriarchal and heterosexist? Let’s first consider evidence of sexism in the United States, starting with economic data. Women’s annual income on average is about 80 percent of that of the average male worker (Payscale 2020). Some of this difference is due to different gender socializations. Women and men in our society have been socialized into unequal norms of parenthood, such that they are often subtly taught that women should take more time away from work compared with men in order to care for children, consequently spending less time at work on a daily or weekly basis or leaving the workplace altogether for a number of years while children are young. While it might at first seem like there is an element of “choice” here, we should remember that children can be raised either by mothers, by fathers, or by both parents equally. But in a sexist society, this is work that is disproportionately allocated to women. And while raising children may be immensely enriching to a person’s life and crucial for the continued existence of our society, it also is given practically no economic value and, to the contrary, is an activity that can exact real losses in terms of women’s earning potential over the course of their lives. Combined with other factors we’ll discuss, this “motherhood penalty” helps explain why women, on average, earn $900,000 less than men over a 40-​year period (PayScale 2020). The motherhood penalty can play out in other ways as well if parents do not share the work of raising children equally. Sexism at home frequently means that mothers are more likely than fathers to pick up sick kids from school and stay home with them until they get better, to take time off from work to attend afterschool activities, and to be home when a bus arrives. In a sexist society like ours, mothers are also less likely to spend time doing additional work at the office on the evenings or over the weekends in order to perform childcare responsibilities. Consequently, inequalities at home can transfer into inequalities at work, as employers promote their most “dedicated” employees, who are perceived as less likely to miss work and are more likely to be seen burning the midnight oil in order to complete an important project. Female employees are, of course, just as dedicated, but

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unequal family work may mean that some mothers do not have the same freedom to demonstrate it compared with male colleagues. Additionally, different gender socializations between girls and boys in the United States channel women and men into different occupations. Those occupations that historically have been filled by women, the so-​called “pink-​ collar jobs,” are typically less well paid compared with male-​dominated activities, regardless of educational requirements, skill level, and importance. For instance, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average carpenter made a little more than $48,000 a year in 2019 and the average carpet installer made $41,000. These two occupations that are predominated by men are paid much more highly compared with the average preschool teacher, who made just $31,500 a year.While building houses, laying carpets, and keeping four-​year-​olds happy, mentally active, and safe all require skill and are all important to our society, these jobs are not all equally valued or remunerated, which has to do with the history of sexism in America. Remember again how we are defining hetero-​patriarchy, it is a society in which the activities and work traditionally associated with men will be more highly rewarded. In addition to these factors, plain old gender discrimination continues to exist, though it is illegal and consequently operates in subtle ways. We can see the effects of this gender discrimination when we compare salaries for different occupations, accounting for the specific job type, years of experience, qualifications and educational experience. In some fields, the differences between male and female earners is small. In many others, it is significant. In 2018, male servers at restaurants earned more than $2,000 more each year than female colleagues, while male police and sheriff officers received $5,000 more in annual compensation and male anesthesiologists commanded $59,000 more in additional yearly pay compared with their female coworkers (PayScale 2020). Beyond looking at economic data, we can also examine politics and the law for evidence that we live in a sexist society. Historically, of course, women enjoyed very few legal rights in the United States. The right to vote, secured through the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, was only achieved in 1920 after women had mounted a powerful, widespread, and decades-​ long social movement. During that era, women had few rights regarding self-​ determination compared with men, and were often instead considered the legal property of husbands and fathers. It wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s, due to the achievements of the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement, that it became illegal for a husband to rape his wife. Today, the male-​dominated nature of U.S. society continues to be reflected in its legal code, most crucially in the failure to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment and the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was drafted in the 1920s by Alice Paul, who was a key leader of the movement to secure women’s right to the vote. The proposed amendment to the Constitution simply states: “Equality of rights under the

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Violations of Women’s and LGBTQ Rights  55 law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The ERA languished for decades until it was championed and pushed forward by the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement in the early 1970s. While the amendment secured the supermajority approval needed to pass through Congress, oppositional forces mobilized to frame the amendment as a threat to traditional American family values. In the end, 35 states ratified the statement, falling just short of the 38-​state total needed to amend the Constitution. Recently, the states of Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia took steps to ratify the amendment as well, but it is unclear whether they did so too late. This question will likely be resolved by the Supreme Court. As of now, however, the U.S. constitution fails to explicitly codify equality between men and women. As with the Equal Rights Amendment, U.S. lawmakers have also failed to ratify the international Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). President Jimmy Carter signed the treaty in 1980, but in order to become part of the law of the land, it must be approved by two-​thirds of the Senate. So far, this has proved insurmountable for women’s rights advocates who urge the adoption of CEDAW. Consequently, the United States is among only a tiny handful of nations in the world that have not ratified the accord, including Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. Of course, it would be a terrible mistake to conclude that gender inequality is worse in the United States because it has not joined the Convention compared with other nations, like Afghanistan or Pakistan, that have.This is far from the case. After all, many international human rights treaties, like CEDAW, have weak enforcement mechanisms and offer few legal avenues to challenge the male domination that has been embedded in social institutions for generations. Even so, ratification is at the very least symbolically important because it is a way national governments communicate to the world, and to their own citizens, the extent to which women’s basic human rights are acknowledged. The failure of U.S. lawmakers to ratify CEDAW is further evidence that we live in a sexist society.1 One important reason why the United States has not ratified CEDAW and the Equal Rights Amendment—​along with other important laws that could promote pay equity and provide more support for families with children—​is that U.S.  political institutions remain largely the province of men. While women made record gains in the U.S. Senate in 2020, for instance, they still only account for 26 of the 100 senators, which is barely more than one-​ quarter of the Senate, even if it represents a historical high point in terms of women’s representation. The situation in the U.S. House is even worse, where women make up only 23 percent of all Representatives. On a state level, women also remain underrepresented, filling up 29 percent of legislative seats (CAWP 2020). As at the federal level, this is the greatest representation women have ever had among state legislators, but it still falls far short of true equality. We don’t only need to look at economic and legal/​political evidence to understand that the United States remains a sexist society; we might come

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to a similar conclusion simply by turning on the TV, following social media, playing video games, or opening up a magazine. Women are constantly the subject of objectification throughout our media. This is a process of dehumanization in which women are not represented as fully developed persons, but as bodies that exist primarily for male sexual pleasure or as desirable ornaments that can enhance male prestige. And it doesn’t help matters that the actual bodies being represented are literally impossible to achieve for average, healthy persons. Many of the women featured in our mass media are dangerously thin, have had their bodies altered through surgical processes, and have had normal blemishes, wrinkles, and fat removed digitally on computer screens after the cameras were turned off. These representations of women have consequences because they instruct us all how to see the world, but from a male-​oriented perspective. It encourages men to view women’s bodies as things, while compelling women to achieve an impossible ideal of beauty. Although men’s bodies might well be increasingly objectified in contemporary mass media, such treatment pales in comparison with that of women. There is, then, a great deal of evidence—​looking at culture, politics, and the economy—​to conclude that we live in a sexist, or patriarchal, society. But do we live in a heterosexist society? Again, let’s consider some data. Research on pay disparities between LGBTQ persons and heterosexuals is difficult to come by, but we do know that members of the LGBTQ community face significant discrimination when it comes to hiring. Audit surveys (or research in which fictional résumés are sent out in response to job adds) show that including membership in a college LGBTQ organization can significantly decrease an applicant’s chances of getting a call back for an interview for certain jobs and in certain regions of our country (Mishel 2016; Tilcsik 2011). Other evidence suggests that bias and discrimination in hiring and the workplace result in very real consequences. For example, individuals who identify as LGBTQ are much more likely to live in poverty and are twice as likely to experience unemployment on a yearly basis (Badgett, Choi, and Wilson 2019; Charlton et al. 2018). In terms of politics and government, we need only remember that the U.S. Congress has never passed a law outlawing employment discrimination against sexual minorities, and such behavior wasn’t made illegal until the recent Supreme Court ruling mentioned earlier. Historically, sodomy laws—​which broadly prohibited gay sex and also frequently criminalized oral sex between men and women—​were in place in every state in the 1960s and weren’t ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, as a violation of privacy, until 2003. For people targeted by these laws, their enforcement frequently resulted in fines, arrests, jail time, job loss, and exposure in local newspaper stories. Culturally, significant progress has been made in terms of more positive portrayals of sexual minorities in movies and television, with more full representation and the important inclusion of people of color who identify as LGBTQ (GLAAD 2019a; Townsend 2020). Research suggests that these

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Violations of Women’s and LGBTQ Rights  57 more accurate representations of gay, lesbian and trans people has helped the public to become more accepting of equality (Ayoub and Garretson 2017). Of course, there is still much work to do to adequately portray members of the LGBTQ community as the full and complex persons they are, placing them at the center—​rather than on the periphery—​of stories. Despite this progress in terms of LGBTQ representation in popular culture, intolerance continues to exist in schools and communities across America. In a national survey of 10,000 LGBTQ youth, 40 percent of respondents said that the community in which they lived was not accepting of gay, lesbian, or transgender persons, and 26 percent of respondents said that they lived in a family that wasn’t accepting of their identity (HRC 2012). Based on these findings, it is perhaps easier to understand why, according to Center for Disease Control survey research (CDC 2016), young LGBTQ persons are more than twice as likely to have reported feeling sad or hopeless during the past year, and are more than three times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to their heterosexual peers. Surely, this is evidence of the difficulties and suffering that young gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans persons face when living with a lack of acceptance and an anti-​LGBTQ culture in so many places across our nation. It is further proof that our society can be characterized as a hetero-​patriarchy. As we see here, a hetero-​patriarchal society imposes real costs on women and those that do not comply with standard ideals about femininity and masculinity, including experiences of violence.

Violence, Hetero-​Patriarchy, and Human Rights The ability to be safe and secure, free from violence and the threat of violence, is among the most basic of all rights, without which the enjoyment of other rights is impossible. Expanding upon this, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 5 that all people have a right not to suffer from “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” In the United States, however, sex and gender-​based violence is all too common. Young people who identify as LGBTQ are twice as likely to report being physically injured by peers compared with heterosexual youth, and they are three times as likely to skip days at school because they fear violence (CDC 2016). Anti-​LGBTQ violence can continue into adulthood; one-​fifth of all hate crimes target members of the LGBTQ community (BJS 2017), in which trans persons are especially at risk of experiencing bias-​driven murder (GLAAD 2019b). Violence against women is pervasive in our society. Nearly one out of seven women in the United States will be injured by an intimate partner (a boyfriend or husband) (CDC 2016), and more than half of all female murder victims are killed by a current or former romantic partner (Khazan 2017). Additionally, survey results consistently show that nearly one out of every five women in the United States will experience rape or attempted rape, along with even higher rates of unwanted sexual touching that can be classified as sexual assault (CDC 2016).

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It is important to note that the FBI’s “uniform crime reporting” program defines rape in this way: ‘Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.’ Common rape myths holds otherwise: that in order to constitute rape, it must be accompanied by violence or the threat of violence. However, the legal definition of rape in the United States means that a person has committed the crime by penetrating another person’s body without consent, including instances in which a person is unable to give consent due to being too drunk, high, or having been drugged. Each of these forms of violence can take a toll long after the initial incident. Rape survivors, for instance, are more likely to report experiencing frequent headaches, difficulty sleeping, and poorer mental and physical health compared with others who did not experience this kind of violence (Black et al. 2011). But beyond causing very real harm and suffering, some of which can be lasting, what else do all these forms of violence have in common? They are all committed within the overall social context of the hetero-​ patriarchal social order. Whether wanted or not, straight men receive benefits and unearned rewards due to life in a patriarchal society, though living in a hetero-​patriarchy imposes real costs for them too. Some of those costs have to do with masculine socialization, in which—​often starting at a very young age—​boys and young men are pressured to prove to themselves and others how tough, strong, and sexually active they are. They are pushed to avoid, at all costs, any behavior that might be seen as weak, or that might get them labeled as a sissy, a pussy, gay, a fag, and so on. Consequently, violence is strongly connected to hetero-​patriarchy, in at least three ways. First, because boys and men living in a patriarchal society are constantly compelled to demonstrate their “manliness,” some end up performing a hyper or toxic masculinity, leading to aggressive and sometimes violent displays. This might include making demeaning comments or bullying other boys/​ men perceived as less strong. It might even mean enacting violence against people believed to be members of the LGBTQ community, or committing sexual assault, rape, and other violence against women. It is important to note that most boys and men in the United States do not perform these extreme forms of toxic masculinity in our society, but because enough do so it makes an enormous difference in rates of violence and violations of human rights. And while millions of boys and men in our nation may seek to embody a more nuanced, full, and complex kind of masculinity that allows for sensitivity, vulnerability, and compassion, patriarchal socialization remains a powerful social force that continues to push toward displays of strength, power, and domination of others. In fact, violence is further linked to patriarchy exactly because it is a tool that can be used toward these ends. Men in abusive relationships may use violence along with a range of other coercive methods in order to control the behavior of a partner—​for instance, by causing emotional cruelty, controlling

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Violations of Women’s and LGBTQ Rights  59 finances and limiting access to money, and using social media to track and monitor a partner (Hess and Alano 2018). Emphasizing this point, the most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive relationship is when she leaves it (Snyder 2019). More broadly, some men may use violence to “police” the gendered order of hetero-​patriarchy, committing violence against members of the LGBTQ community or “out-​of-​line” women who are perceived as violating traditional gender norms. Bringing all this together, some men in a patriarchal order might commit violence in order to display and affirm their masculinity, to control and dominate others, and defend the gendered order—​all at once. Violence is further linked to patriarchy in one more way: our culture often minimizes violence against women and sexual minorities as a “woman’s issue” or a “LGBTQ issue,” not as a violation of fundamental human rights about which everyone should be concerned.As such, major social institutions in our nation have all too often put violence against women and LGBTQ persons on the backburner, giving it much less attention and resources compared with other crimes. Both the U.S.  military and universities and colleges around the nation have, for instance, struggled with high rates of sexual assault. Survey data indicates that rates of sexual assault in both types of social organizations are roughly similar, with more than 20  percent of women on college campuses and 20 percent of those serving in the military reporting an experience of sexual assault (BJS 2014; Wilson 2018). While the U.S.  military and university campuses are now taking more proactive measures to reduce the incidence of rape and sexual assault, this is after years of inadequate attention and frequent efforts to minimize or cover up the problem. But beyond college campuses and the military, law-​enforcement agencies in the United States have not always given sexual assault and domestic violence the resources it deserves. This is perfectly exemplified in the history of rape kits, which are an important tool used by hospitals to collect evidence of rape for future criminal investigation and prosecution. The idea of rape kits came from Martha Goddard, who was a volunteer at a rape crisis center in the 1970s and a campaigner for better public policy to reduce its prevalence. The kits weren’t named after Goddard, however, but became known as “Vitullo Rape Kits” after Sergeant Louis Vitullo, the male police investigator who first put the idea into practice (Kennedy 2020). Before this time, police had no systematic way of collecting evidence of rape, making prosecution of offenders extremely difficult. For this reason, the rape kits were a real game-​changer, helping law enforcement to treat sexual assaults like the crimes that they are. Nevertheless, it still fell to Martha Goddard to raise money in order to put kits together for distribution and then train nurses and police on how to use them, starting first in Chicago and then moving throughout the nation (Kennedy 2020). Even worse, many police departments around the nation began developing backlogs of unanalyzed kits, claiming a lack of funding necessary to evaluate evidence collected for all sexual assaults. Today, there is an estimated stockpile of more than a hundred thousand unanalyzed kits across the country (ETB 2020; Kennedy

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2020). Advocacy organizations have been working for years to both raise money to help fund rape kit analysis and to pass laws at the state level that require law enforcement agencies to work through their backlogs. But in what other crime do victim advocacy organizations need to raise money to help fund crime-​scene investigations and analysis? Taking all of this together, it is clear that we live in a patriarchal society, in which violence against women and sexual minorities is too often treated as less important than other crimes, and sometimes even ignored. Nevertheless, people are working across the United States to rethink hetero-​patriarchy and to achieve equal rights for all people, regardless of gender and sexual orientation.

Working to Fulfill Women’s and LGBTQ Rights as Human Rights Taken together, the hetero-​ patriarchal nature of U.S.  society leads to inequalities in pay and promotion, inequalities at home, bullying and lack of acceptance, and even violence, all of which constitute violations of human rights. But people are attempting to change this, on your own campus and in your hometown, and you may want to join them if you haven’t already done so. For one, you might be interested in volunteering at a rape crisis or domestic abuse center, both of which provide invaluable support to survivors of these crimes while educating the public about the extent of violence against women.You are also likely to find a feminist student group on your campus. Women’s groups like these have had a tremendous impact on higher education, helping to advance women’s studies as an academic area, confronting sexual harassment on campus, and changing the ways universities and colleges deal with campus sexual assault. I have no doubt that feminist organizations will continue to make important changes on campuses across the country in the future. Likewise, LGBTQ organizations do extremely important work on campuses to create supportive and welcoming communities for queer students, to confront heterosexism and bias on campus, and to build pride in LGBTQ identities, which is a necessary step to achieving other kinds of change in a hetero-​patriarchal society. If organizations like these don’t yet exist on your campus, perhaps it is your role to help create one. I would like to stress that there is important work for straight men to do here. For far too long, for instance, universities have tried to reduce the prevalence of sexual assault by offering workshops to women on rape-​ avoidance strategies. This kind of approach is not only ineffective, but it doubly burdens women and implicitly makes them responsible for crimes committed against them, rather than focusing instead on the potential and actual assailants. Research indicates that universities are increasingly doing a better job educating men and women about what consent means, and that sexual activity without consent constitutes rape or sexual assault. But the research also shows that many students only understand consent in an

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Violations of Women’s and LGBTQ Rights  61 abstract way that frequently misunderstands what it actually looks like in practice (Hirsch et al. 2018). Actual consent, in practice, is an unambiguous and enthusiastic invitation to sexual activity. But university students’ frequent misunderstanding of consent means that more education is necessary, which would most helpfully be done through workshops or interactive sessions for men, along with further education about criminal penalties for rape and bystander intervention tactics to help prevent it (Gidycz, Orchowski, and Berkowitz 2011; Hirsch et al. 2018). If you’re a straight man, it would be further helpful for you to spend some time thinking about how growing up in a hetero-​patriarchal society has shaped you and some of your behavior. For example, have you ever been picked on because you didn’t meet other boys’ gender expectations? Or perhaps you made hurtful comments or jokes about others who didn’t in order to fit in and feel better about yourself? Maybe you stood aside while others made sexist or homophobic comments, afraid that speaking up would make you a target too? Maybe you shared stories about your sexual encounters in order to make yourself look good to other boys or men? Maybe you’ve done worse …? Taking time to think about these things can not only promote greater self-​understanding, but can also help to create a more equal and just society, especially when combined with legal changes and the increased representation of women in power. Clearly, there’s still much to do.

Discussion Questions 1. Going back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, identify specific rights that are at risk of being violated or left unfulfilled for many women in the United States. How about for people who identify as LGBTQ? Be sure to explain your thinking. 2. For the remainder of this day, try to pay attention to the objectification of bodies in the media you watch—​for instance, on your computer, TV, or smartphone. Are women’s bodies objectified much more then men’s bodies? Is the objectification of men’s and women’s bodies fundamentally the same, or is this objectification different for men and women when it occurs in a sexist society like our own? 3. In this chapter we spent some time discussing the extent of sexual violence on college campuses and how universities are responding. Is your school enacting meaningful policies to reduce and ideally eliminate sexual assault? If not, what do you think needs to be done to push your school administrators to create more effective policies? 3. Throughout this book, we have seen that rights only become fulfilled when groups organize and develop the collective power necessary to challenge existing social relations. Based on what we’ve discussed in this chapter, what kinds of gains do you think a future movement for equality against hetero-​patriarchy could achieve?

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Note 1 The United States by and large has a very poor track record on ratifying international human rights treaties. It has, however, ratified some important treaties like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the International Convention Against Torture.

References Ayoub, Phillip M., and Jeremiah Garretson. 2017. “Getting the Message Out: Media Context and Global Changes in Attitudes Toward Homosexuality.” Comparative Political Studies 50: 1055–​1085. Badgett, M. V. Lee, Soon Kyu Choi, and Bianca Wilson. 2019. LGBT Poverty in the United States: A Study of Differences Between Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Groups. Berkeley, CA: Wilson Institute: UCLA School of Law. Retrieved June 19, 2020 from https://​williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/​wp-​content/​uploads/​National-​LGBT-​ Poverty-​Oct-​2019.pdf. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). 2014. Rape and Sexual Victimization Among College-​Aged Females, 1995–​2013. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.bjs.gov/​content/​pub/​pdf/​rsavcaf9513.pdf. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). 2017. Hate Crime Victimization: 2004–​2015. Washington, D.C.: BJS. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.bjs.gov/​content/​pub/​pdf/​hcv0415_​ sum.pdf. Black, Michele C., Kathleen C. Basile, Matthew J. Breiding, Sharon G. Smith, Mikel L. Walters, Melissa T. Merrick, Jieru Chen, and Mark R. Stevens. 2011. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP). 2020. Women in State Legislatures. Washington, D.C.: CAWP. Retrieved June 18, 2020 from https://​cawp.rutgers.edu/​ women-​state-​legislature-​2020. Centre for Disease Control (CDC). 2016. “Sexual Identity, Sex of Sexual Contacts, and Health-​Risk Behaviors Among Students in Grades 9–​12: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance.” Washington, D.C.: CDC. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.cdc.gov/​ mmwr/​volumes/​65/​ss/​pdfs/​ss6509.pdf. Charlton, Brittany M., Allegra R. Gordon, Sari L. Reisner, Vishnudas Sarda, Mihail Samnaliev, and Bryn Austin. 2018. “Sexual Orientation-​ related Disparities in Employment, Health Insurance, Healthcare Access and Health-​Related Quality of Life.” BMJ Open, doi: 10.1136/​bmjopen-​2017–​020418. End the Backlog (ETB). 2020. “What is the Rape Kit Backlog?” Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.endthebacklog.org/​backlog/​what-​rape-​kit-​backlog. Gidycz, Christine A., Lindsay M. Orchowski, and Alan D. Berkowitz. 2011. “Preventing Sexual Aggression Among College Men: An Evaluation of a Social Norms and Bystander Intervention Program.” Violence Against Women 17: 720–​742. GLAAD. 2019a. “2019 Studio Responsibility Index.” In GLAAD Annual Report. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.glaad.org/​sites/​default/​files/​GLAAD%20 2019%20Studio%20Responsibility%20Index.pdf. GLAAD. 2019b.“Incidence of Anti-​LGBTQViolence.” GLAAD report, June 24. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.glaad.org/​blog/​incidents-​anti-​lgbtq-​hate-​violence-​2019. Harris, Angela P. 2011. “Heteropatriarchy Kills: Challenging Gender Violence in a Prison Nation.” Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 37: 13–​65.

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Violations of Women’s and LGBTQ Rights  63 Hess, Cynthia and Alona Del Rosario. 2018. Dreams Deferred: A Survey on the Impact of Intimate PartnerViolence on Survivors’ Education, Careers, and Economic Security. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from https://​ iwpr.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2018/​10/​C474_​IWPR-​Report-​Dreams-​Deferred. pdf. Hirsch, Jennifer S, Shamus R. Khan, Alexander Wamboldt, and Claude A. Mellins. 2018. “Social Dimensions of Sexual Consent Among Cisgender Heterosexual College Students: Insights From Ethnographic Research.” Journal of Adolescent Health 64:  26–​35. Human Rights Campaign (HRC). 2012. Growing Up LGBT in America. Human Rights Campaign Report. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from https://​assets2.hrc.org/​files/​assets/​ resources/​Growing-​Up-​LGBT-​in-​America_​Report.pdf?_​ga=2.265972047.1503235 843.1592512263-​316387653.1592512263. Kennedy, Pagan. 2020. “The Rape Kit’s Secret History.” The New  York Times, June 17. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2020/​06/​17/​opinion/​ rape-​kit-​history.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage. Khazan, Olga. 2017. “Nearly Half of All Murdered Women are Killed by Romantic Partners.” The Atlantic, July 20. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.theatlantic.com/​ health/​archive/​2017/​07/​homicides-​women/​534306. Mishel, Emma. 2016, “Discrimination Against Queer Women in the U.S. Workforce: A Résumé Audit Study.” Socius, doi: 10.1177/​2378023115621316. PayScale. 2020. “The State of the Gender Pay Gap.” Retrieved June 19, 2020 from www. payscale.com/​data/​gender-​pay-​gap#section06. Snyder, Rachel L. 2019. No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know about Domestic Violence Can Kill Us. New York: Bloomsbury. Tilcsik, András. 2011. “Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination Against Openly Gay Men in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 117: 586–​626. Townsend, Megan. 2020. “We are on TV.” GLAAD, November 7. Retrieved June 23, 2020 from www.glaad.org/​blog/​glaads-​where-​we-​are-​tv-​report-​shows-​tv-​telling-​ more-​lgbtq-​stories-​ever. Wilson, Laura C. 2018. “The Prevalence of Military Sexual Trauma: A Meta-​Analysis.” Trauma,Violence, & Abuse 19: 584–​597.

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6  The Human Right to Health and the Toxic Politics of Expendability

A virus doesn’t discriminate, right? The coronavirus pandemic dominating the world during the time I write these pages has been hugely disruptive in the United States, impacting us all. But as the virus takes more and more lives, we’re learning that some folks are much more vulnerable than others. Older Americans and those with pre-​existing medical conditions have been especially hard hit. But people of color are also being affected by the disease at significantly higher rates. Black Americans have experienced twice the number of deaths compared to their overall share of the U.S. population, and in three states they account for four times the number of deaths we would expect based on population size (Godoy and Wood 2020). In terms of overall numbers of infections, Latinos are far more likely to suffer from the virus, with rates of infection twice as high as would be expected by population in 30 states, and four times higher in eight states. In my own home state of Virginia, Latinos account for almost half of all coronavirus infections, even if though they only constitute 10 percent of the state’s total population (Godoy and Wood 2020). The coronavirus is made worse for poor and low-​income Americans too. While more research is needed, early indications are that the coronavirus is about twice as deadly for those living in poverty or just above it (Fisher and Bubola 2020). What can explain all these differences? As we’ll see, the social determinants of health are profoundly influenced by America’s unequal social structure, and they speak in many ways to how race and class have been bound up together in our society. By using an intersectional lens, which combines an attention to both race and class, it becomes easier to understand why black and Latino Americans are more at risk of the worst effects from the coronavirus. While there are many very wealthy black and Latino Americans, and a significant black and Latino middleclass exists in the United States, as a whole black and Latino Americans hold much less wealth and command lower incomes compared with white Americans (as we discussed in Chapter 4). This has profound health consequences, because living at or closer to the poverty level means that one is more likely to have medical conditions—​ like high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, and obesity—​that increase vulnerability to the virus.  Additionally, evidence indicates that African Americans and Latinos are more likely to be “essential workers”—​in childcare,

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Health and the Politics of Expendability  65 healthcare, food service, delivery, and meat packing—​all of which lead to elevated exposure to the coronavirus compared with other occupations (Gould and Shierholz 2020). Despite the importance of this work, which the coronavirus has revealed to us in no uncertain terms, these jobs often aren’t paid like they’re essential. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute made this point clear when it found that during the coronavirus pandemic, higher paid jobs were more than six times more likely to be performed from the safety of home—​with significantly less exposure—​compared with lower-​ paid work (Gould and Shierholz 2020). This is compounded by the fact that low-​income Americans are often financially compelled to go to work despite feeling sick or being afraid of catching an illness. When you’re poor, missing a day’s paycheck just isn’t an option. Finally, low-​income Americans are more likely to live in smaller spaces, and more likely to double up with other families in order to afford rent or share a home with extended family. This means that if someone in a household has the coronavirus, it’s more likely to be spread to everyone else there despite precautions. These kinds of differences in health and wellbeing, which are literally matters of life and death, raise questions about the fulfillment of human rights for all Americans. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-​being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.” However, as we will see in this chapter, not all Americans have access to the resources and circumstances that are needed to make healthy living possible. We will consider the extent to which American society violates the human rights to health and wellbeing of poor persons and communities of color, and what might be done about it. We’ll pay special attention to a problem that is not frequently discussed, but is especially harmful to the wellbeing of young people in our country: preventable exposure to lead, which is a harmful neurotoxin.

Explaining Differences in Life, Death, and Health in U.S. Society In the United States, we love to think of ourselves as rugged individualists. We like to believe that we alone are solely in charge of our health. Yet demographers (those who study human populations) and sociologists know that this is far from the case. Where we live has a powerful influence on how long we live, and how healthy we are during that life. In major American cities, there are huge gaps in the average life expectancy between the poorest and richest neighborhoods. In Washington, D.C. and New York City, residents of neighborhoods with the greatest lifespan live almost 27  years longer on average than those of neighborhoods with the least longevity (Holder and Montgomery 2019). In Chicago, the lifespan gap extends to 30 years. Certainly, part of this discrepancy is due to differences in income. One analysis found, for instance, that across the entire United States, U.S. men with the highest incomes live fifteen years longer on average than

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men with the lowest incomes, while rich women live ten years longer than their counterpoints among the poor (Chetty et al. 2016). But the longest-​ lived and the shortest-​lived neighborhoods are also highly correlated with race (Holder and Montgomery 2019). Imagine that you’ve just been told that you have a few months to live. What would you pay for an extra ten or fifteen years of life? These are additional years to spend with your loved ones, years to watch your children and/​or grandkids grow up, years to chase your dreams and do what you enjoy doing. Whatever you’d be willing to pay under these circumstances is probably more than you have to give. It’s literally priceless. Let’s spend a few moments unpacking why some Americans have more of these precious years—​and healthier ones at that—​compared with others who don’t. First, of course, millions of Americans lack access to quality healthcare in our nation. This obviously includes the 11 percent of Americans under the age of 65 who lack health insurance (CDC 2020). Without insurance, routine prevention-​based medicine can become prohibitively expensive.Yet this kind of healthcare is critically important because doctors’ visits can identify health problems before they become devastating illnesses. I, for instance, found out just how important regular check-​ups are when I  went for an annual exam and found out that something was going seriously wrong with my kidneys, despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling sick at the time. The doctor told me that, had my condition gone on for another six months without treatment, I would have lost my kidneys entirely, and my life (and life expectancy) would be very different than it is today. It is startling to realize that if I  didn’t have insurance, I  likely wouldn’t have gone in for that annual health exam that proved to be so important. It would simply have been too expensive. Hospitals are legally obligated to provide life-​saving care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, which provides one way poor Americans can access healthcare. But even this can pose cascading problems in a low-​income person’s life. Even though poor Americans lack the basic income necessary to live comfortable lives, they are often still expected to make monthly payments for the healthcare they receive in order to pay off their medical debt, and are frequently harassed by credit agencies or even sued in court by hospitals if they miss payments (Simmons-​Duffin 2019). This can force low-​ income families to make tough choices between medical bills, food, and rent, and we should remember that housing and food insecurity in themselves can make a person more vulnerable to health problems in the future. But Americans without health insurance aren’t the only ones forced to make harsh choices in a society where healthcare is not available to all. According to a national survey conducted by the University of Chicago, 40 percent of respondents skipped a recommended medical test or treatment because they couldn’t afford it in the past year, and 32 percent were either unable to fill a prescription for medicine or took less than the recommended dose of medicine due to cost (NORC 2020). These numbers reflect that for many Americans, a lack of health insurance isn’t the only problem with the

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Health and the Politics of Expendability  67 country’s healthcare system. In fact, millions of Americans have insurance, but that insurance proves to be only minimally helpful and often carries high deductibles, which are costs that are owed by the individual or family before the insurance begins to pay out. These are problems faced almost entirely by poor and middle-​class Americans, and their existence helps to further explain some of the difference in life expectancy between social classes in our society. An additional reason has to do with the stress that comes from being poor. Imagine the times you’ve been most stressed in life (I hope you’re not feeling that way right now). Think of how wound up you were. Think of your anxiety, how frightened or threatened you felt. On a limited basis, stress can be very useful. It prepares us to take decisive action, to “fight or flee.” But imagine being in that state around the clock for long periods of time, it’s not hard to see how this would wear you down. High amounts of long-​ term stress can, in fact, do serious harm to a person’s body and mind—​so harmful, in fact, that some medical doctors have likened its impacts to that of a toxin. In particular, toxic stress can produce measurable impacts on a person’s immune system and cardiovascular system (Mariotti 2015). Perhaps even worse, when children are exposed to toxic stress, it can impact their cognitive development and result in decreased school achievement (Morsy and Rothstein 2019). Deep poverty in the United States is, of course, highly associated with toxic stress. Constant worries about bills coming in without money to pay them, worries about losing an insecure job upon which a whole family depends, worries about not having rent or having enough money for food next week can, when extended over months, years, or decades, can take a real toll on a person’s health and can therefore further explain differences in life expectancy between the rich and poor. Lack of nutritious food is, after all, its own health risk. The U.S.  government provides crucial food assistance throughout the United States, to the tune of—​at least in 2018—​$96 billion a year (USDA 2019). Most of these benefits, as we briefly discussed in Chapter 2, come from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), which issues EBT cards—​formerly known as food stamps—​that families can use to purchase qualifying products at grocery stores and farmers markets. Other important assistance comes from the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which provides additional food to pregnant women and families with small children, and the school lunch program. Taken together, these programs work to prevent millions of people from going hungry and otherwise help to reduce malnutrition in America, so helping to fulfill a fundamental human right. Even so, they are not sufficient to meet low-​income and unemployed Americans’ nutritional needs. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the SNAP program provides just $4.20 on average per person, per day in benefits (CBPP 2019).You can’t get a whole lot of nutritious food for $4.20 a day (or $1.40 per meal). Four bucks can’t even get you a fancy coffee at your neighborhood café. For this reason, non-​profit organizations and churches step up to try and fill in, offering food banks, free community

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meals, and food pantries. In so doing, they are also performing critical human rights work (as are you when you volunteer there). Despite these efforts, the extent of poverty in the United States is such that millions of people live in food insecurity, or only have access to low-​ quality, less-​nutritious food. According to survey data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2018, 11 percent of Americans experienced food insecurity for some portion of the year—​that’s 36 million people, and that was before the coronavirus pandemic caused unemployment to skyrocket (USDA 2019). Foods that are highly processed and high in fats and sugars are cheap, and are therefore the foods most available to the poor. Unfortunately, such diets are associated with numerous health impacts, including heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, all of which are associated with decreased longevity. On the other hand, nutritious fresh foods are more expensive. Many poor Americans live in food deserts, or neighborhoods that have no nearby stores that sell fresh nutritious foods, not because area customers don’t want fruits and vegetables, but because they don’t have the money needed to purchase them. Even worse, 4.4  percent of Americans lived in very low food insecurity in 2018, meaning that they not only lacked access to a high-​quality and varied diet, but that at some point in the past year, their shelves were so empty that they had to skip meals or otherwise reduce their food intake (USDA 2019). It is important to remember that food insecurity touches the lives of children: one in seven families with kids in the United States is impacted by this problem. Interviews with teenagers across America living in food-​insecure families reveal the tough choices young people have to make (Popkin, Scott, and Galvez 2016). Sometimes teens living in food-​insecure households skip meals for themselves so that younger brothers or sisters can eat. Living in food insecurity might also mean that teens contribute money from their own afterschool or summer jobs to a parent in order to purchase food for the household. And while teens in poor households say they would rather have an honest job to help pay for food, some also expressed a willingness to shoplift or sell drugs in order to procure nutrition for themselves and their family (Popkin et al. 2016). This is all to say that a lack of food security impacts health in yet another way, by producing toxic stress that comes from always worrying about food, and scrambling to put healthy food on the table—​and sometimes not being able to do so. This comes in addition to the worry that many parents may have about environmental risks in low-​ income neighborhoods, which impact the air their family breathes and the water they drink. Take a moment to ask yourself some questions: Do you live in area where you feel unsafe to exercise—​where you worry, for instance, that you might be hit by a car or become a victim of crime because your neighborhood lacks safe sidewalks or has a high number of deaths caused by gun violence? Do you live in a neighborhood shared by a polluting industrial facility that is releasing toxic emissions? Do you fear drinking from your faucet

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Health and the Politics of Expendability  69 because you’ve been told by a public health official that it is contaminated? If you have kids, do you worry about sending them out to play in the backyard because you’ve been told that your neighborhood has poisonous heavy metals in the ground that shouldn’t be disturbed? Hopefully you are able to answer all of these questions with a resounding “no.” But not all Americans are able to enjoy these same rights to a healthy environment, and in consequence live less healthy lives that, combined with the other factors we’ve discussed, can cause illness and diminish life expectancy. Environmental injustice, or unequal burdens of pollution and other environmental hazards based on either income or race, has been well documented by sociologists and other social scientists (Mikati et al. 2018). The consensus in the research literature is that both race and economic class independently drive environmental injustice. This means that black and brown neighborhoods are more likely to experience greater environmental burdens, regardless of income. Likewise, poorer folks face higher rates of pollution regardless of race compared with wealthier neighborhoods. For these reasons, again using our intersectional lens, it is easy to understand why neighborhoods that are both poor and disproportionately black and brown face an especially elevated risk of experiencing high amounts of toxic pollution. On one hand, neighborhoods adjacent to big polluting facilities, toxic dumps, and other health hazards are among the least desirable areas to live, and therefore offer much cheaper home prices and rents to those who can’t afford to live elsewhere. On the other hand, environmental injustice is often more accurately described as environmental racism, and has been caused by decades and decades of decisions made by white powerholders who have acted to protect their own neighborhoods by, in effect, placing pollution and environmental hazards near or within black and brown communities (Mohai and Saha 2015; Taylor  2014). Of course, you might point out that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn’t say anything about a right to a healthy environment, which is true. Having been drafted in the 1940s, the document predates more recent developments in the medical and environmental sciences that inform us about the health problems and increased rates of mortality that come from exposure to toxins in our daily lives. And the Universal Declaration came before the environmental movement that developed in the 1970s, which helped change the way we think about our relationship to the air, water, and to nature itself. Consequently, the document doesn’t say anything specifically about environmental injustice or a right to a healthy environment. But, if we acknowledge that human health and wellness are tied up with the wellbeing of the environment in the areas where we live, work, and play, then environmental rights are necessarily part of the expectations set in the Universal Declaration. But what could be done to ensure that rights to health are more broadly enjoyed across the United States? And what prevents it from happening?

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Expendability and Inequalities in Health All the problems we’ve discussed so far have relatively clear solutions. For instance, compared with ten other wealthy western nations—​Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—​the United States has some of the worst health outcomes but pays far more for healthcare when you look at average per-​person spending (Tikkanen and Abrams 2020). Specifically, the United States is an outlier in terms of its lower average life expectancy. The United States also comes in last place among these countries by providing its citizens with the fewest doctors’ visits per person and also has the highest total number of hospitalizations due to preventable causes such as high blood pressure and diabetes. These are all indications that Americans are underserved by our healthcare system in relation to other wealthy nations (Tikkanen and Abrams 2020).This low-​performing system has a hefty price tag: average per-​person spending in the United States is more than double what citizens in the United Kingdom, France, or Canada pay for healthcare, and this includes the tax dollars people in these countries pay to support their national health systems (Peterson Foundation 2020). Clearly, the United States could deliver universal health coverage as these other nations do—​either in the form of a government-​r un program as in the United Kingdom or through a program that combines private market insurance with additional government support and regulation, as in Germany. Doing so would ultimately mean that our policy-​makers in the United States would need to value the lives of poor, black, and brown Americans more than the interests of big healthcare and insurance companies. Similarly, with enough political will, our nation could address shortcomings in nutrition by providing more generous assistance to those in need or by increasing wages for low-​income workers, as suggested in Chapter  2. Doing so would also diminish the levels of toxic stress experienced in the homes of poor Americans and would produce additional health benefits. Finally, our nation could tackle the problem of environmental injustice by strengthening environmental regulations and by democratizing the decision-​making process about locating environmental hazards in communities by giving low-​income and black/​brown communities full representation and a meaningful voice. Furthermore, the United States could invest in neighborhoods that have been hurt by years of pollution and toxic dumping by helping to create a shift to more sustainable and less harmful industries. In sum, we in the United States have both the technical capacity and the resources necessary to promote health and wellbeing rights for all Americans. The lack of political will, and the extent to which disproportionately black/​brown and low-​income communities can be written off as expendable, are perfectly illustrated by the extent of lead contamination in our country.

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A Case Study in Expendability: America’s Toxic Lead Problem In 2014, Flint, Michigan became a national emblem of lead poisoning. In an effort to save money, the City of Flint switched its water source from treated Detroit city water to the highly acidic Flint River. The City of Flint further failed to treat the Flint River water with corrosion controls. As the water flowed through the city’s system of lead pipes, it began to eat through them, sending dissolved lead and other harmful minerals into residents’ homes. For a long period of time, officials from the city and the state claimed everything was fine, until a city-​wide protest movement and academic and medical researchers helped to draw national attention to the problem. As a result of the crisis, over 9,000 children in the city were given highly contaminated water, and the incidence of childhood lead poisoning in the city doubled. In some neighborhoods, the amount of lead poisoning even tripled (Denchack 2018). According to Flint pediatrician Mona Hanna-​Attisha, whose research helped bring attention to the problem, “lead is one of the most damning things you can do to a child in their entire life-​course trajectory” (quoted in Denchack 2018). In fact, there is no “safe level” of lead. Because children’s bodies are smaller and because their brains are in the process of developing, exposure to this neurotoxin can cause terrible lifelong impacts. Research bears this point out: exposure to lead in childhood has been linked with lower IQ scores, behavioral problems, depression and anxiety, and even increased incidence of crime (Benfer 2017). In addition, recent research has found that adolescents living in low-​income households in areas with high risk of lead contamination actually have changed brain structures and less brain volume compared with average adolescents (Marshall et al. 2020). It is important to note here that this relationship was found only among young people in low-​income households, likely because higher-​income families living in neighborhoods with high lead risk can afford to take more measure to mitigate for lead contamination—​for instance, by providing their children with the highest quality nutrition and through constant upkeep of houses to reduce lead dust. Unfortunately, it is low-​income households and black and brown communities that are most likely to suffer from lead contamination. National testing indicates that black children are almost twice as likely to suffer from elevated lead levels in their blood compared with white kids (Sacks and Balding 2018). Clearly, lead contamination exists far beyond Flint.Two thousand cities in the United States have drinking water systems that exceed federal regulations on lead (Young and Nichols 2016). Most lead poisoning in the United States, however, is the result of years of lead paint on walls. Even though this paint was made illegal in 1978, it still chips off the walls in older homes and crumbles into dust. While lead contamination in paint can be mitigated with proper care and upkeep, low-​income homeowners and landlords with

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low-​income tenants often fail to do so. As a whole, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that 23 million U.S. households contain a lead hazard that poses risks to residents (HUD 2014). So Flint isn’t exceptional in terms of its crisis, but is instead just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps the reason why it, for a time, caught the nation’s attention is that it dramatically exemplified how so many children can be needlessly harmed in failed attempts to save tax dollars. In this sense, it is truly representative of this problem as a whole. We in the United States could end childhood lead poisoning as a common public health concern. But doing so would require significant upfront investment. Julian Castro, a former director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, estimates that it would cost about $5 billion a year, over a period of ten years, to remove lead from older homes and replace lead pipes, starting in the neighborhoods with the highest incidence of contamination first (Yglesias 2019). This certainly sounds like a lot of money, but $5 billion is less than one-​tenth the amount of money Americans pay to attend sports games every year (O’Brien 2017).What’s more, this investment would more than pay for itself down the road, resulting in billions of dollars of savings in money that would otherwise be spent on healthcare, special education, teenage pregnancy, and crime (Sacks and Balding 2018). Regardless of the beneficial future cost-​benefit ratio, the whole idea of human rights insists that if a nation has the capacity to promote the growth and development of its children so that each can reach their full potential, then it should do so.The fact that the United States has failed to ensure rights to health and wellbeing for so many low-​income citizens and people of color indicates that, all too often, members of these groups are deemed expendable and not worth the money.

Getting Involved to Achieve Rights to Health There is much that you can do to get involved to help fulfill rights to health in your community. In fact, I  wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you’re already doing so in some way or another. For one, area food banks are almost always in need of volunteers to help sort through food donations and to help organize and package food for distribution in the community. College campuses around the nation are also setting up and running pantries with food supplies and other necessities for students in need, and would certainly benefit from your help. Additionally, at many university campuses, student groups organize “food rescue” efforts, picking up uneaten food from dining halls that would otherwise be thrown out and delivering it to soup kitchens, churches, and area social service providers. Likewise, some college students are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to get involved in student-​or community-​run gardens, which frequently share excess fresh veggies and fruit with community members. Finally, many cities and towns around the country have “free” clinics, through which health practitioners volunteer their time and expertise to treat low-​income community members who

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Health and the Politics of Expendability  73 wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford care. (Clinics like these can also provide great opportunities for students going into the healthcare profession, and who therefore need to complete a certain number of volunteer hours that are required by some postgraduate programs for admission.) All these efforts are important and deserve our support. Each helps to fulfill human rights in communities around the nation for folks who would otherwise go without needed nutrition and/​or medicine. And as an educator, I know that when students volunteer for organizations like these, it can be very eye-​opening, helping us learn about the lack of human rights that exists in our own backyard. But these efforts, by themselves, are also insufficient. They do not address the structural reasons why so many Americans lack full rights to health and wellbeing in the first place. One way to begin working to address these structural problems is to find ways to support local, statewide, and national efforts to increase wages for low-​income workers. As we saw in both this chapter and Chapter 2, even modest raises for low-​income workers can produce measurable and important health gains, both for themselves and their families. Additionally, healthcare reform seems to be perennially on the American political agenda.You might want to find and support candidates running for office with plans to overhaul our health system to help control costs, reduce the political power of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and provide better healthcare for all Americans who need it. Finally, you might look for opportunities to join or support neighborhoods in your area that are dealing with problems of environmental injustice. One increasingly important component of the environmental justice movement is the climate justice movement, which is organizing around the realization that those most impacted by climate change will be low-​income communities, people of color, and the people of subsequent generations who are not yet born. This topic is, in fact, the subject of our next chapter.

Discussion Questions 1. What was the time in your life when you were most stressed? What did it feel like, and how did your body react to being under so much stress? What do you think it would do to your body to be under this kind of stress for long periods—​even years—​at a time? 2. According to this chapter, there are multiple reasons why wealthier Americans have longer lifespans than poorer Americans. Which of these factors do you think could most easily be addressed? Which would be the most difficult to tackle, and why? 3. Examples of environmental inequality in the United States abound, and almost certainly exist in your own region. Consider first what environmental hazards are present around the area where you live. These might include anything from active or inactive industrial plants, to waste dumps or incinerators, power plants, trainyards, animal feedlots, etc. Now think about who lives closest to these hazards. Are there any connections with racial or economic inequality that you can see?

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References Benfer, Emily A. 2017. “Contaminated Childhood: The Chronic Lead Poisoning of Low-​Income Children and Communities of Color in the United States.” Health Affairs, August 8. Retrieved June 17, 2020 from www.healthaffairs.org/​do/​10.1377/​ hblog20170808.061398/​full. Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). 2019. “SNAP Helps Struggling Families Put Food on the Table.” Center for Budget and Policy Priorities Chartbook, November 7. Retrieved June 16, 2020 from www.cbpp.org/​research/​food-​assistance/​ chart-​book-​snap-​helps-​struggling-​families-​put-​food-​on-​the-​table. Centre for Disease Control (CDC). 2020. “Health Insurance Coverage.” Retrieved June 8, 2020 from www.cdc.gov/​nchs/​fastats/​health-​insurance.htm. Chetty, Raj, Michael Stepner, Sarah Abraham, Shelby Lin, Benjamin Scuderi, Nicholas Turner, Augustin Bergeron, and David Cutler. 2016. “The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001–​ 2014. JAMA 315: 1750–​1766. Denchack, Melissa. 2018. “Flint Water Crisis: Everything You Need to Know.” National Resources Defense Council, November 8. Retrieved June 17, 2020 from www.nrdc.org/​ stories/​flint-​water-​crisis-​everything-​you-​need-​know. Fisher, Max and Emma Bubola. 2020. “As Coronavirus Deepens Inequality, Inequality Worsens Its Spread.” The New York Times, March 16. Retrieved June 28, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​2020/​03/​15/​world/​europe/​coronavirus-​inequality.html. Godoy, Maria and Daniel Wood. 2020. “What Do Coronavirus Racial Disparities Look Like State By State?” National Public Radio, May 30. Retrieved June 4, 2020 from www.npr.org/​sections/​health-​shots/​2020/​05/​30/​865413079/​what-​do-​coronavirus​racial-​disparities-​look-​like-​state-​by-​state. Gould, Elise and Heidi Shierholz. 2020. “Not Everybody Can Work from Home: Black and Hispanic Workers are Much Less Likely to Be Able to Telework.” Economic Policy Institute, March 19. Retrieved June 4, 2020 from www.epi.org/​blog/​ black-​and-​hispanic-​workers-​are-​much-​less-​likely-​to-​be-​able-​to-​work-​from-​home. Holder, Sarah and David Montgomery. 2019. “Life Expectancy is Associated with Segregation in U.S. Cities.” City Lab, June 6.  Retrieved June 4, 2020 from www. citylab.com/​equity/​2019/​06/​segregation-​life-​expectancy-​study-​research-​racism-​ map/​591028. Housing and Urban Development (HUD). 2014. “Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control.” Retrieved August 14, 2020 from www.hud.gov/​sites/​documents/​ LEADHAZARDREDUCTION.PDF. Mariotti, Agnese. 2015. “The Effects of Chronic Stress on Health: New Insights Into the  Molecular Mechanisms of Brain–​ Body Communication.” Future Science 1(3): FSO23. Marshall, Andrew T., Samantha Betts, Eric C. Kan, Rob McConnell, Bruce P. Lanphear, and Elizabeth R. Sowell. 2020. “Association of Lead-​ exposure Risk and Family Income with Childhood Brain Outcomes.” Nature Medicine 26: 91–​97. Mikati, Ihab, Adam F. Benson, Thomas J. Luben, Jason D. Sacks, and Jennifer Richmond-​ Bryant. 2018. “Disparities in Distribution of Particulate Matter Emission Sources by Race and Poverty Status.” American Journal of Public Health 108: 480–​448. Mohai, Paul and Robin Saha. 2015.“Which Came First, People or Pollution? Assessing the Disparate Siting and Post-​Siting Demographic Change Hypotheses of Environmental Injustice.” Environmental Research Letters 10: 115008.

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Health and the Politics of Expendability  75 Morsy, Liela and Richard Rothstein. 2019. “Toxic Stress and Children’s Outcomes.” Economic Policy Institute, May 1.  Retrieved June 8, 2020 from www.epi.org/​ publication/ ​ t oxic-​ s tress-​ a nd-​ c hildrens-​ o utcomes-​ a frican-​ a merican-​ c hildren-​ growing-​up-​poor-​are-​at-​g reater-​r isk-​of-​disrupted-​physiological-​functioning-​and-​ depressed-​academic-​achievement. NORC. 2020. “American’s Views of Healthcare, Costs, and Coverage Policy.” NORC at the University of Chicago Issue Brief. Retrieved June 8, 2020 from www.norc. org/​PDFs/​WHI%20Healthcare%20Costs%20Coverage%20and%20Policy/​WHI%20 Healthcare%20Costs%20Coverage%20and%20Policy%20Issue%20Brief.pdf. O’Brien, Sarah. 2017. “Americans Spend $56 Billion on Sporting Events.” CNBC News, September 11. Retrieved June 17, 2020 from www.cnbc.com/​2017/​09/​11/​ americans-​spend-​56-​billion-​on-​sporting-​events.html. Peterson Foundation. 2020. “Per Capita Healthcare Costs, International Comparisons.” Peter G. Peterson Foundation, March 20. Retrieved June 17, 2020 from www.pgpf. org/​chart-​archive/​0006_​health-​care-​oecd. Popkin, Susan J., Molly M. Scott, and Martha Galvez. 2016. “Impossible Choices: Teens and Food Insecurity in America.” Urban Institute, September. Retrieved June 16, 2020 from www.urban.org/​sites/​default/​files/​alfresco/​publication-​pdfs/​2000914-​ Impossible-​Choices-​Teens-​and-​Food-​Insecurity-​in-​America.pdf. Sacks, Vanessa and Susan Balding. 2018. “The United States Can and Should Eliminate Childhood Lead Exposure.” CityTrends, February 2. Retrieved June 17, 2020 from www. childtrends.org/​publications/​united-​states-​can-​eliminate-​childhood-​lead-​exposure. Simmons-​ Duffin, Selena. 2019. “When Hospitals Sue For Unpaid Bills, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’ For Patients.” National Public Radio, June 25. Retrieved June 8, 2020 from www.npr.org/​sections/​health-​shots/​2019/​06/​25/​735385283/​hospitals-​earn-​little-​ from-​suing-​for-​unpaid-​bills-​for-​patients-​it-​can-​be-​ruinous. Taylor, Dorceta. 2014. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. New York: New York University Press. Tikkanen, Roosa, and Melinda K. Abrams. 2020. “U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2019: Higher Spending, Worse Outcomes?” The Commonwealth Fund, January 30, 2020. Retrieved June 17, 2020 from www.commonwealthfund.org/​ publications/​issue-​briefs/​2020/​jan/​us-​health-​care-​global-​perspective-​2019. USDA. 2019. “Food Security and Nutritional Assistance.” United States Department of Agriculture, September 12. Retrieved June 16, 2020 from www.ers.usda. gov/​data-​products/​ag-​and-​food-​statistics-​charting-​the-​essentials/​food-​security-​ and-​nutrition-​assistance). Young, Alison and Mark Nichols. 2016. “Beyond Flint: Excessive Lead Levels Found in Almost 2,000 Water Systems Across All 50 States.” USA Today, March 11. Retrieved June 17, 2020 from www.usatoday.com/​story/​news/​2016/​03/​11/​nearly-​2000-​ water-​systems-​fail-​lead-​tests/​81220466. Yglesias, Mathew. 2019. “The Case for Fully Cleaning Up America’s Lead Problem.” Vox News, June 12. Retrieved June 17, 2020 from www.vox.com/​policy-​and-​politics/​ 2019/​6/​12/​18661193/​lead-​pipes-​paint-​flint-​michigan-​usa-​cost-​fix.

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7  Carbon Pollution, Climate Change, and Human Rights

In the summer and fall of 2018, fires engulfed forests across the state of California, ultimately burning almost two million acres and destroying more than 24,000 buildings and 100 lives along the way (CalFire 2019). Two million acres is a lot of land. To put it in perspective, it’s about the size of 2.6 million tree-​covered football fields, including the end zones. The very next year, in 2019 and spanning into 2020, fires raged across Australia, charring 18 million acres and creating surreal images viewed across the world of neighborhoods burnt to ashes and of wildlife such as kangaroos and koalas injured by the smoke and flames (Yeung 2020). On another part of the globe at the same time, more than 40,000 individual fires burned hundreds of thousands more acres in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, gripping world headlines due to their link to deforestation, loss of critical animal habitat, and impacts on Indigenous people (Symons 2019). These fires became a dramatic illustration of the frightening reality of global warming. Of course, none of these fires was caused by climate change in a direct way. It is also important to note that, for many ecosystems, fires are a necessary part of natural cycles.Yet, despite all this, there is growing evidence that climate change, because it increases atmospheric temperatures while also increasing the frequency and severity of droughts, makes forest fires more common, and that it causes them to burn at hotter intensities and consume larger areas of land (Gray 2019; Union of Concerned Scientists 2020). For this reason, the fires burning huge amounts of forests in 2018–​ 2019 serve as a vivid warning that climate change isn’t just something to worry about for the future; it’s happening right now. While myriad environmental issues are associated with these enormous fires, they also show that climate change is a social problem that is going to diminish the security, dignity, and wellbeing of humans across the globe. Global warming, in other words, isn’t just about the climate: it’s about human rights. To continue with the example of recent climate-​linked forest fires, for instance, people and their loved ones obviously suffer from the blazes when they are killed or injured by the smoke and flames. Importantly, some of this harm occurs in areas far away from the immediate fires, as smoke degrades the air quality of nearby cities and thereby increases hospitalizations. And when tens of thousands of people’s homes are burned down due to the

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Carbon Pollution and Climate Change  77 fires, they suffer a loss of security and wellbeing. Additionally, if we’d like to expand our thinking beyond what is specifically written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include a right to live on a planet that maintains the integrity of its ecosystems, which are nature’s life-​support networks, then young people and those persons not yet born will suffer a real loss due to global warming-​linked fires because some of the damage they do to the environment can never be fully repaired. Of course, the human rights impacts of climate change are not limited to forest fires, but are far more extensive.We will explore some of these impacts in the next section while also discussing how social inequality influences climate vulnerability. In order to fully make the link between climate change and human rights, however, it is important to understand that the amount of warming we’re experiencing wasn’t inevitable. Quite the contrary in fact: current rates of warming have been largely preventable and are an outcome of choices made by those in power. We’ll conclude the chapter by stressing that, while climate scientists and sociologists are deeply concerned about the human impacts of climate change, not all is lost. People across the globe are working in thousands of different ways to address it. You might join them too, if you haven’t already done so.

The Carbon Budget, and the Choice to Surpass It One of the most tragic aspects of contemporary climate change is that so much of it has been preventable. By the 1860s, scientists—​especially due to the work of the Irish physicist John Tyndall—​understood that carbon dioxide was a heat-​trapping gas in our atmosphere and that increases of this gas in the atmosphere could increase the Earth’s temperature. By 1958, scientists were able to accurately measure the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere using measurements at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, which they could then see was indeed increasing year after year due to the amount of carbon emissions created by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. Since these first observation were made, carbon dioxide has increased from 310 parts per million to 410 parts per million—​g rowing, in other words, by almost 125  percent (as depicted in Figure  7.1). Continued research in the 1970s and 1980s created a consensus among climate scientists that carbon pollution would change the Earth’s temperature and, in so doing, would impact the planet’s entire climate. Some of this work was, in fact, sponsored or actually conducted by the oil giant Exxon (now known as Exxon-​Mobile), which largely concluded that burning fossil fuels had the capacity to cause global warming (Jennings, Grandoni, and Rust 2015). In 1988, James Hansen, who was the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s foremost experts in climate science, gave testimony before Congress that climate change from fossil fuel pollution was no longer something to speak of in the future tense, but was happening right now in a way that scientists could measure (Rich 2019).

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Figure 7.1 Mauna Loa Observatory Monthly Average Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Figure provided by the Scripps CO2 Program.

I present this very brief history on climate science in order to show you how long our scientists have been aware of the link between fossil fuel emissions and the reality of climate change, and how long they’ve been working to convince our leaders to take steps to transition our nation away from fossil-​fuel dependency. If our leaders had first acted in 1988, when they were presented with unequivocal scientific evidence of warming, the transition could have been achieved in a relatively slow and measured way, and it could have been done more cheaply. Most importantly, earlier action on climate would have averted a great deal of warming that is now all but inevitable (Klein 2015). Instead, at this very late date, the transition to a renewable energy economy will need to be done very rapidly in order to keep our atmosphere within “safer” levels of warming, and even these “safe” levels of warming will have extensive and damaging consequences to communities around the world (IPCC 2019; Wallace-​Wells  2019). In order to understand the dire need for a speedy transition away from fossil fuels, it is helpful to think of a “carbon budget.” Through the 2015 Paris Agreement, the member states of the United Nations agreed to take steps to limit the warming of our planet’s atmosphere to below 2ºC of

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Carbon Pollution and Climate Change  79 warming,1 with the caveat in mind that while 2°C is something that human societies can survive, it will still create a much-​changed world with significant sea level rise, altered weather systems, spreading tropical diseases, more intense droughts, and an increased likelihood of floods and other destructive storm events (IPCC 2019). Beyond 2°C, the Earth’s climate and natural systems will become much less recognizable and frighteningly unstable (Wallace-​Wells 2019). But in order to keep global warming below 2ºC, humans can only add so much carbon emissions into the atmosphere. That total limit of carbon we can allow is called the carbon budget. The problem, of course, is that time is running out. If we continue to emit carbon dioxide at our current rates, we have only 25 years left before we exceed our budget (MCC 2020). One way to visualize the carbon budget is as a bathtub, where the carbon dioxide is the amount of water filling it up. Back in 1870, when the Industrial Revolution was young, that tub was practically empty. It began filling only at a trickle at first. By the early 1990s we still had plenty of room in the tub, allowing us some time to begin slowly but steadily turning off the spigot in order to figure out what was next. Unfortunately, the United States, China, and many other nations around the world did the exact opposite, opening the spigot further so that the tub began filling faster and faster. At this point in time, we are getting very close to the top. The point here is that deliberate choices were made, and continue to be made, to exceed our carbon budget and to change our climate. Even though Exxon, for instance, had sponsored and produced its own high-​quality climate science indicating that climate change is real and is caused by burning fossil fuels, its corporate leaders decided that profits were more important. Consequently, the company joined other fossil-​fuel corporations funding a public relations campaign to spread uncertainty about climate science and to encourage Americans to think that climate change wasn’t a big deal—​or, even worse, that it was simply a hoax (Cook et al. 2019). Many of our political leaders in the United States continue to choose to ignore climate science and make decisions that are leading to a more dangerous and warmer world. Perhaps most dramatically, the Trump Administration took steps to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, making the United States the only major country in the world that has failed to join the commitment to limit global warming to less than 2ºC. Furthermore, the Trump Administration acted to weaken environmental standards in the United States and reverse national climate policies that, while still not sufficient by themselves, would at least have reduced carbon emissions. Climate change will lead to devastating impacts for millions of people and, if we don’t act to dramatically reduce carbon pollution very soon, these numbers will extend to most of humanity—​all because our leaders chose to ignore science and put other priorities ahead of our shared wellbeing. These impacts have everything to do with human rights, and these impacts won’t be felt evenly.

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Inequality and the Human Rights Impacts of Climate Change There is no exhaustive and definitive list of all the ways that global warming will negatively impact human communities. Nor can we know the exact magnitude and shape of these impacts because they depend so much upon whether or not we act quickly and deliberately to transition away from fossil fuels. Even so, this is a major focus area for scientists across the world. Using the best data they can collect along with sophisticated computer models, they are making some frightening predictions when it comes to future human wellbeing. For instance, warmer temperatures across the globe will allow for the increased spread of potentially deadly tropical diseases. And warmer temperatures in already hot places on the Earth will stress plants and make agriculture more difficult, while also increasing the likelihood and severity of drought in some areas. Based on these expected conditions, the World Health Organization predicts that an average of 250,000 additional people will die each year from climate sensitive diseases like malaria, dengue fever, malnutrition, and heat stress between 2030 and 2050, compared with current rates of mortality (WHO 2018). It’s important to point out that these years—​2030–​2050—​are right around the corner. Beyond 2050, if human societies don’t take dramatic action to limit climate change, more than a hundred million people will be at risk of experiencing climate-​related food insecurity alone, according to a group of 100 climate scientists working on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2019). With decreased access to nutritious food and with increased risk of disease, people’s rights to health and wellbeing will clearly be violated due to global warming, but it will degrade rights to health and security in other ways as well, including the right to shelter and to have a home. As you likely already know, when the Earth’s temperature warms, sea levels will rise. This is something caused both by the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets along with the expansion of ocean water itself as it gets hotter. For this reason, scientists conservatively estimate that 200 million people are now living in coastal areas that will be underwater by 2100 (Kulp and Strauss 2019). All these people will obviously be displaced from their homes due to rising waters, but so too will hundreds of millions of others who live just above that tidal zone, but still near the water and who are therefore at risk due to both rising seas and increasingly severe coastal flooding events from hurricanes and typhoons. How will these people’s rights to housing and security be upheld in a future of runaway global warming? Right now, there are no obvious answers and, of more concern, our world leaders aren’t spending nearly enough time or devoting enough resources to find solutions. In sum, it is safe to say that climate change will be one of the conditions that will most seriously limit the expansion and enjoyment of human rights in the upcoming decades, and it will do so in ways that build upon and deepen current social inequalities. In order to consider these inequalities,

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Carbon Pollution and Climate Change  81 let’s start where they are the most obvious by comparing nations. When we compare average per-​person carbon emissions, as in Table 7.1, it’s clear that some nations are much more responsible for climate change than others. The average person in the United States—​and in some other relatively wealthy nations, such as Canada, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia—​is responsible for vastly more carbon emissions compared with the average person in poorer nations like the Philippines, Nigeria, and Bangladesh. Yet it is these poorer nations that will probably be most harmed by climate change. Even though the people of Bangladesh have contributed practically nothing to the total levels of carbon in our atmosphere, hundreds of millions of Bangladeshis are at risk of being displaced due to sea-​level rise in this low-​lying and densely populated nation. Likewise, Nigerians have consumed only a miniscule amount of fossil fuels, but will face growing threats as Nigeria’s northern deserts grow. The island nation of the Philippines, where people as a whole consume very little fossil fuels, has already been hit by the world’s most powerful tropical storm to reach land in recorded history,Typhoon Haiyan, and is projected to be devastated by future storms as they become even stronger in a warmer and more atmospherically volatile world. This is the great injustice of climate change: those who’ve benefitted the least from humanity’s fossil fuel binge and have contributed only a tiny amount to the problem of climate change will be the most seriously harmed. But climate injustice doesn’t only exist on an international level, it also exists within the United States. Wealthy Americans’ carbon emissions are much greater than those of poor Americans. The rich are, after all, more likely to own very large homes that require more energy to heat and cool, more likely to own a vacation home (or even several residences), and much more likely to fly around the country and around the world for business and vacations, emitting more carbon emissions with each flight (Goldstein, Gounaridis, and Newell 2020; Lynch et al. 2019). Poor Americans, however, are much more likely to be harmed by global warming just, for instance, Table 7.1 Per Capita Carbon Emissions by Selected Nation Nation

Metric tonnes per person

Saudi Arabia United States Canada China United Kingdom France Philippines Pakistan Bangladesh Nigeria

19.4 16.5 15.1 7.5 6.5 4.6 1.1 0.9 0.5 0.5

Source: World Bank (2020) “CO2 Emissions.”

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due to rising temperatures. Cities across the United States have urban heat islands, or areas that are significantly hotter than elsewhere due to the pervasiveness of so much pavement and so few trees and parks. Poorer Americans are more likely to live in these hotter urban areas, and are also more likely to work outside, which means they are at additional risk of experiencing heat stroke and illnesses during heatwaves that will become more frequent and intense as our climate changes (Lim and Skidmore 2020). There is an important racial inequity here too. People of color living in the United States are more likely to live in urban heat islands as well (Harlan et al. 2007), and urban heat islands have been strongly correlated with the historic policies of redlining that segregated American cities (Wilson 2020). Finally, it is worth mentioning that an additional form of climate injustice exists between future generations. While climate change is already harming people around the world as droughts become more severe, storms become more intense, and wildfires become hotter and more expansive, it is future generations that will suffer the most as things only grow worse. One frequent question among those concerned about climate change concerns what future generations will think of us for exceeding the carbon budget and making the world’s climate more dangerous.While this is a difficult question to ask oneself, it can also be motivational. Perhaps future generations will be grateful that people living right now finally got serious about climate change and acted together to create much-​needed change.

Taking Action for a Safer Climate Global warming is such an enormous social problem, involving decades of neglect and denial from our political leaders, the interests of extremely powerful corporations, the difficulty of creating a whole new energy and transportation infrastructure, and the vastness and complexity of the Earth’s atmosphere itself. In the face of such a gargantuan tangle of a problem, what can we, as individuals, possibly do? First, it’s important to point out that there is a large and energetic climate justice movement at work right now. With this movement, and with the American public’s growing understanding of the need to take immediate and transformative action on global warming, there is a lot that can be achieved. It certainly won’t make the problem of climate change go away, since a certain amount of warming has been “locked in” to our atmosphere due to the carbon emissions already released into the atmosphere, which will pose difficult challenges for societies in the future. But without any action at all, those challenges will become cataclysmic scenarios for the next generations. All of this is to say that we are living in a unique historical moment.Together, we can help preserve a habitable planet. The climate justice movement is working in three main areas, not just in the United States but around the world.The first area is to stop the development of new projects that dig up, transport, and burn fossil fuels. One major focus has been on efforts to withdraw financing from fossil fuel enterprises by encouraging institutions not to invest money in oil, natural gas, or

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Carbon Pollution and Climate Change  83 coal companies. Non-​profit organizations such as churches, social welfare organizations, colleges, and universities have large pots of money set aside in endowments which, when invested well, grow each year. Unfortunately, endowments typically have few rules on how that money can be invested, and consequently some of that money is used to purchase stocks in major oil, gas, and coal companies. Even on a purely financial basis, such investments are questionable given the need to transition away from fossil fuels and given the recent bankruptcies and struggles in the industry (Penn 2020). However, the idea that non-​profit organizations, which are established to promote a public good, are investing in companies that are putting future wellbeing at risk strikes many as appalling. This has especially been the case for college and university students who have been distressed to learn that their schools’ endowments hold shares in fossil fuel companies. Consequently, students have formed movements on campuses across the United States and around the world to convince their schools to prohibit such investments. To achieve this goal, student have gathered petitions, held letter-​writing events, attended meetings with administrators, organized protests, and on numerous occasions held “sit-​ins” in administrative offices, refusing to leave until university leaders met student divestment demands. Some of these sit-​ins lasted days, others lasted weeks. In all, more than 60 U.S. colleges and universities have committed to fossil fuel divestment, including very notable institutions such as the entire University of California System, University of Maryland, University of Washington, Columbia University and Yale (Fossil Free 2020). In schools where students divestment campaigns have not yet been successful, students at the very least have started an important conversation: should our institutions of higher education invest in an industry that is putting our future at risk? But the divestment movement hasn’t been limited to colleges and universities alone. Some of the largest amounts of money divested from fossil fuels came when large pension funds like the New  York City Employees Retirement System withdrew investments from oil, coal and natural gas companies. Religious organizations around the world have been particularly active in the divestment movement, being led by the Episcopal and Anglican churches along with many Catholic dioceses (Fossil Free 2020). In 2018, Ireland became the first nation to divest all public funds from fossil fuels (Carrington 2018). Beyond the effort to reduce investments in fossil fuel enterprises, students and young people have played a key role in another focus area for the climate justice movement: the effort to expand renewable energy production. In many ways, this just makes financial sense as the costs of solar and wind generation continues to fall, making renewable energy consistently more affordable than energy produced from fossil fuels (IRENA 2020). Still, making a decision to install renewable energy sometimes requires an upfront investment, and it also requires that university administrators proactively think about where energy is coming from, rather than passively waiting for its delivery from an electrical utility. For this reason, students and young people

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have done important work educating leaders about the viability and importance of renewable energy. The combination of environmental awareness, student pressure, and the increasingly affordable price of solar power has motivated some leading universities to make the shift. More than 40 colleges and universities in the United States get 100 percent of their energy from renewable sources, which includes community college systems in Los Angeles and Austin (EA 2019). An increasing number of other schools—​again at least partly due to student encouragement—​are working to install solar panels on campus or helping to fund off-​campus renewable energy projects. Ultimately, in order to truly transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, governments at the local, state, and especially federal level must create the appropriate regulations and must provide the required investments.There is a tremendous amount of work to do if you’re interested.You can start by supporting candidates for office who understand the serious threats of climate change, and you can also reach out and communicate to those already in office to push them to demonstrate better climate leadership. You can also do some research on policy ideas to confront the climate crisis, like climate fee and rebate proposals that would put an increasing price on carbon in order to disincentivize its use, but would also send this money back to Americans each year in a check to benefit each household’s financial situation (see Citizens’ Climate 2020). As mentioned in Chapter 2, the idea of a Green New Deal has captured young people’s imaginations as a way to create a massive investment in American infrastructure in order to build a more efficient and sustainable economy, while also creating high-​quality jobs for Americans who need them (see Friedman and Gabriel 2019). While these kinds of major changes will eventually need to happen at a federal level in order to transition away from fossil fuels, city and state-​level policy also has a role to play. Many cities and states are already stepping up. Thanks to citizens’ movements pushing governments to do better, more than 150 cities and several states have committed to become powered by 100 percent renewable energy (Sierra Club 2020). If your city or state hasn’t made such a commitment, you can join this effort to help get there. And if your city or state has already done so, you can reach out to work with officials to find ways to make it happen sooner. So, as you can see, there is an enormous amount of activism and citizenship work that is being done, and which must increase, in order to help protect a livable climate for the future. Through their work, climate justice activists are also dedicated to confronting racism, sexism, and poverty. They do so by ensuring that their leadership ranks are filled with women and people of color, and that the renewable energy proposals that they advocate will benefit, rather than harm, poor people and black and brown communities. Of course, there is a role for individual action too. On a personal level, you can find ways to use less fossil fuels in your life by minimizing the time spent driving and by walking, biking, or taking mass transit more. Since aircraft have a very large carbon footprint, you can fly less. In terms of your diet, you can eat more locally grown food, waste less food, and eat less meat,

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Carbon Pollution and Climate Change  85 all of which are ways to decrease one’s own climate impact. But we must also keep in mind that not everyone has the capacity to do these things. Many Americans live in places where walking and biking are impractical or even unsafe, and where mass transit isn’t an option. And low-​income Americans fly very little in the first place, and often do not have access to farmers’ markets or the money available to purchase more expensive local foods. Finally, we need to keep in mind that with the scale of a problem as large as global warming, individual behavioral changes—​in a society built around fossil fuel use—​are not nearly enough. There is an important place for lifestyle changes to limit one’s personal carbon footprint, but not because doing so will make much of a difference all by itself. Rather, making individual changes can help shift norms about what it means to be a responsible person and about what it means to live “the good life.” Through changes like these, you can show others that a joyful and fulfilling life is very possible in a world using less fossil fuels. But these lifestyle choices are no substitute for citizenship, activism, and efforts to change the ways government and other institutions respond to climate change. Through this work, you and your friends have an opportunity to help steer the future from catastrophe toward a safer world that feels more like home.

Discussion Questions 1. Your friends might be surprised to learn that you’re covering the issue of climate change in this class. How would you answer them if they asked, “Why is climate change a sociological or human rights issue?” 2. As discussed in this chapter, poorer Americans and people of color are more vulnerable to climate change due to the unequal landscape of urban heat islands. Based upon what you know from other chapters, what are other ways in which poor folks and black and brown Americans will likely be more impacted by global warming? 3. Please do a little research to learn about your college or university’s climate and renewable energy policies. In what ways is your school doing well and in what ways could it improve? Is there a student group on campus working on these issues? If not, would it be possible to start one? 4. There is an important debate about the value of individual behavior changes in the face of a problem as big as climate change. Do you think individual lifestyle changes can make a difference? If so, are these individual actions enough to push human societies to a place where we use far less fossil fuels? If not, does this mean that we should all feel free to live without concern for our individual carbon impact?

Note 1 An amount of 2ºC is the equivalent of 3.6°F. While this may not sound like a lot, for the entire atmosphere to warm this much, this quickly, would be an unprecedented event in the Earth’s history that will have profound consequences.

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References CalFire. 2019. “The 2018 Fire Season.” CalFire Incident Archive. Retrieved July 16, 2020 from www.fire.ca.gov/​incidents/​2018. Carrington, Damion. 2018. “Ireland Becomes World’s First Country to Divest from Fossil Fuels.” The Guardian, July 12. Retrieved July 23, 2020 from www.theguardian. com/​ e nvironment/​ 2 018/​ j ul/​ 1 2/​ i reland-​ b ecomes-​ worlds-​ f irst-​ c ountry-​ t o-​ divest-​from-​fossil-​fuels. Citizens’ Climate Lobby. 2020. “The Basics of Carbon Fee and Dividend.” Retrieved August 11, 2020 from https://​citizensclimatelobby.org/​basics-​carbon-​fee-​dividend. Cook, John, Geoffrey Supran, Stephan Lewandowsky, Naomi Oreskes, and Ed Maibach. 2019. America Misled: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Deliberately Misled Americans About Climate Change. Fairfax, VA: Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Retrieved July 21, 2020 from www.climatechangecommunication. org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2019/​10/​America_​Misled.pdf. Environmental America (EA). 2019. America’s Top Colleges for Renewable Energy. Retrieved July 23, 2020 from https://​environmentamerica.org/​sites/​environment/​files/​reports/​ Environment-​America-​Renewable-​Campus-​Scorecard-​4_​4_​19.pdf. Fossil Free. 2020. “Divestment Commitments.” Retrieved July 23, 2020 from https://​ gofossilfree.org/​divestment/​commitments. Friedman, Lisa, and Gabriel Trip. 2019. “A Green New Deal is Technically Possible. Its Political Prospects are Another Question.” The New York Times, February 21. Retrieved August 11, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​2019/​02/​21/​us/​politics/​green-​new-​deal. html. Goldstein, Benjamin, Dimitrios Gounaridis, and Joshua P. Newell. 2020. “The Carbon Footprint of Household Energy Use in the United States.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1073/​pnas.1922205117. Gray, Ellen. 2019.“Satellite Data Record Shows Climate Change’s Impact on Forest Fires.” NASA Earth Science NewsTeam,September 10.Retrieved July 16,2020 from https://c​ limate. nasa.gov/​news/​2912/​satellite-​data-​record-​shows-​climate-​changes-​impact-​on-​fires. Harlan, Sharon L, Anthony J. Brazel, G. Darrel Jenerette, Nancy S. Jones, Larissa Larsen, Lela Prashad, William L. Stefanov. 2007. “In the Shade of Affluence: The Inequitable Distribution of the Urban Heat Island.” In R.C. Wilkinson and W.R. Freudenburg (Eds.), Equity and the Environment. pp. 173–​202. New York: Emerald Insights. International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). 2020. Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2019. Retrieved July 23, 2020 from www.irena.org/​publications/​2020/​Jun/​ Renewable-​Power-​Costs-​in-​2019. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2019. Global Warming of 1.5ºC. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report. Retrieved July 21, 2020 from www.ipcc.ch/​sr15. Jennings, Kate, Dino Grandoni, and Susanne Rust. 2015. “How Exxon Went from Leader to Skeptic on Climate Change Research.” LA Times, October 23. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from https://​g raphics.latimes.com/​exxon-​research. Klein, Naomi. 2015. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kulp, Scott A and Strauss, Benjamin H. 2019. “New Elevation Data Triples Estimates of Global Vulnerability to Sea-​level Rise and Coastal Flooding. Nature Communication 10: 4844. Lim, Jungmin and Mark Skidmore. 2020. “Heat Vulnerability and Heat Island Mitigation in the United States.” Atmosphere 11: 558.

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Carbon Pollution and Climate Change  87 Lynch, Michael J., Michael A. Long, Paul B. Stretesky, and Kimberly L. Barrett. 2019. “Measuring the Ecological Impact of the Wealthy: Excessive Consumption, Ecological Disorganization, Green Crime, and Justice.” Social Currents 6: 377–​395. MCC. 2020. “Global Carbon Clock.” Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. Retrieved July 21, 2020 from www.mcc-​berlin.net/​en/​ research/​co2-​budget.html. Penn, Ivan. 2020. “Oil Companies are Collapsing, but Wind and Solar Keep Growing.” The New York Times, April 7. Retrieved July 23, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​2020/​ 04/​07/​business/​energy-​environment/​coronavirus-​oil-​wind-​solar-​energy.html. Rich, Nathaniel. 2019. Losing Earth: A Recent History. New  York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Sierra Club. 2020. “What is Ready for 100%?” Retrieved July 23, 2020 from www. sierraclub.org/​ready-​for-​100/​about-​our-​program. Symons, Alexandria. 2019. “Amazon Rainforest Fires: Here’s What’s Really Happening.” The New  York Times, August 23. Retrieved July 16, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​ 2019/​08/​23/​world/​americas/​amazon-​fire-​brazil-​bolsonaro.html. Union of Concerned Scientists. 2020. “The Connection Between Wildfires and Climate Change.” Union of Concerned Scientists Explainer, March 11. Retrieved July 16, 2020 from www.ucsusa.org/​resources/​climate-​change-​and-​wildfires. Wallace-​Wells, David. 2019. Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. New York: Penguin Random House. World Health Organization (WHO). 2018. “Climate Change and Health.” Retrieved July 21, 2020 from www.who.int/​news-​room/​fact-​sheets/​detail/​climate-​change-​ and-​health. Wilson, Bev. 2020. “Urban Heat Management and the Legacy of Redlining.” Journal of the American Planning Association, doi: 10.1080/​01944363.2020.1759127. World Bank. 2020. “CO2 Emissions.” Retrieved July 21, 2020 from https://​data. worldbank.org/​indicator/​EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?most_​recent_​value_​desc=true. Yeung, Jessie. 2020. “Australia’s Deadly Wildfires are Showing No Sign of Stopping.” CNN, August 13. Retrieved July 16, 2020 from www.cnn.com/​2020/​01/​01/​australia/​australia-​fires-​explainer-​intl-​hnk-​scli/​index.html.

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8  U.S. Immigration Policy and Violations of Human Rights

Rosa Gutierrez Gonzalez has spent more than a year and a half living inside a church. This mother of three U.S. citizens is receiving sanctuary from Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland in order to avoid deportation. Rosa first came to the United States in 2005 from El Salvador, a violence-​torn Central American nation, after a relative was killed and she felt that she could be targeted next.While in the United States, Rosa worked at a restaurant and gave birth to three children. In 2014, however, she learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were looking for her because she did not have legal authorization to live in the United States, so she turned herself in. The agents put an ankle monitor bracelet on Rosa and asked her to come in for regular visits. Rosa did so, but things changed in 2018 when agents told her that if she did not voluntarily “self-​ deport” by flying herself to El Salvador, she would be forcibly deported (Hernandez 2018). Rosa purchased a one-​way ticket to El Salvador, but couldn’t bring herself to go back to the nation where she had feared for her life, nor could she leave her children—​aged eight to fourteen—​who are all U.S. citizens and have no connection to the nation of their mother’s birth. Rosa’s youngest child has Down Syndrome, and is in special need of the care she provides. Consequently, Rosa moved into the Cedar Lane Church and has not stepped off its property since, hoping that ICE agents would continue to avoid making arrests at churches, as traditionally has been the case (Lennon and Hurtado 2020). In this chapter, we consider what kinds of human rights are at stake here for Rosa and her family, and for hundreds of thousands of others in similar positions. There is nothing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that guarantees a person free ability to travel and live anywhere they would like, regardless of circumstances. But as we will see in this chapter, many crucial human rights principles come into play in a situation like that facing Rosa and her family—​for instance, the right to seek and enjoy asylum when facing persecution and violence in one’s country (Article 14), the right to a nationality (Article 15), and the right to a family (Article 16). We will consider each of these human rights in the context of U.S. immigration policy while also working to explain, using our sociological thinking, why the U.S. government would be willing to violate fundamental human

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U.S. Immigration Policy and Human Rights  89 rights in pursuit of a very strict immigration policy. Finally, we will envision how a new U.S. immigration policy could be crafted that both respects and promotes human rights while also maintaining the integrity of our nation’s borders. First, however, it is important to note that the Latino experience in the United States is not the same thing as the immigrant experience. But because the politics of immigration are wrapped up with the politics of race in the United States, sometimes Americans mistakenly assume the two are identical (Flores and Schachter 2019). This is inaccurate for several reasons. For one, a very significant proportion of Latinos in the United States have families who have lived in this nation for multiple generations. Obviously, for example, the highly Latino commonwealth of Puerto Rico is part of the United States. We should remember too that a major section of the United States—​including California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming—​were all once part of Mexico, which means that many Hispanic Americans have roots in this nation as deep as any other American who can trace their ancestry to Northern Europe.We also need to know that since 2010, the largest number of foreign-​born persons living in the United States came from Asia, not Latin America (Jordan and Tavernise 2018). So the Latino experience and the immigrant experience are definitely not one and the same.This chapter will nonetheless focus on Latino immigration to the United States, but for a very specific reason: the human rights of large numbers of immigrants from Mexico and Central America are especially threatened in this country, starting with the right to asylum.

Violating Human Rights to Asylum in the United States Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”This article was a direct outcome of World War II and the Nazi Holocaust. Several participants on the committee to draft the document were aware that their governments had turned away Jews, members of the Roma ethnic group, and others being persecuted by the Nazis, effectively condemning them to death (OHCR 2018). For this reason, those working to write the Universal Declaration included people’s right to seek refuge in other countries if they face violence and are at risk of death in their homeland. Sadly, the need for a right to asylum is as important today as it was in the 1940s.The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that nearly 80 million people around the world were displaced in 2019 due to war, violence, and persecution, which is a greater number of people than any time since the United Nations was formed in 1945. The great majority of these people are displaced within their own countries, but twenty million of them crossed national borders and became refugees (UNHCR 2020). Of course, twenty million desperate people fleeing for their lives is far too many for any one

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country to comfortably handle. But if all the nations of the world shared the responsibility of accepting refugees, then human rights could be balanced while still allowing countries to maintain their borders and ensure security. Striking such a balance is made easier by the fact that most forcibly displaced persons would like to return to their homes if conditions there improved. Not long ago, the United States was a global leader in the effort to accept and resettle refugees—​for instance, accepting 207,000 refugees in 1980. But the United States began taking far fewer refugees in 2001 with the onset of the “War on Terror,” accepting only 27,000 people fleeing war into our country in 2002 (Krogstad 2019). Under the Trump Administration, refugee resettlement has declined even further, down to 18,000 people in 2019.That same year, however, federal immigration judges granted asylum to an additional 38,000 persons. The main difference between refugee and asylum statuses with regard to U.S.  immigration policy is that persons seeking refugee status must go through a vetting process by applying for a “green card” (which allows permanent legal status) before arriving in the United States, whereas those seeking asylum status must go through this process after they have entered the United States. Both statuses are reserved for people fleeing deadly war or violence in their home countries. The comparatively large number of asylum status decisions made in 2019 by U.S. immigration judges is a direct outcome of the instability and violence that now exists in large parts of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. For instance, El Salvador has the world’s highest murder rate, while Honduras and Guatemala are not far behind (World Bank 2017). Extortion from criminal gangs, widespread sexual violence, and official corruption cause further harm and displacement. While the high rates of violence tearing at these Central American nations is well known, a survey of Central Americans traveling through Mexico conducted by the nonprofit humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) provides stunning evidence. This organization, which provides healthcare to refugees and displaced persons around the world, found that 40 percent of the respondents in their survey mentioned that the main reason they were fleeing was due to being a victim of violence, being targeted for an attack, or because a family member had been targeted for recruitment in a violent gang, an invitation to which a person can’t say “no” without facing dire consequences (MSF 2017). A  majority of Salvadorans (55  percent) in the survey also reported being the victims of blackmail or extortion with threats of violence. And more than 40 percent of the respondents from all countries reported that a close relative had been murdered within the last two years. As a whole, MSF found that the Central American migrants were reporting rates of violence that were the equivalent of war. When a person immigrates, it is due to a combination of “push” factors in that person’s homeland and “pull” factors that attract them to another nation. Pull factors can include economic prospects, educational opportunities for their children, or the presence of relatives or friends already living in that other country. Push factors are those that compel people to leave in

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U.S. Immigration Policy and Human Rights  91 the first place—​for instance, economic collapse and horrible poverty, famine and other natural disasters, or violence and persecution. The MSF (2017) study clearly found that, while migrants from Central America included those searching for new opportunities for themselves and their families, the majority were “forced to flee.” This is important because, as we’ve discussed, U.S. and international human rights doctrine seeks to provide protections for people who aren’t just immigrating by choice, but who are coming to this country to escape violence and death in their homelands. The threat of violence many Central American immigrants face in their home countries becomes even more clear when we consider the risks they are willing to take in their 1,500 mile journey to the United States. Due to a lack of funds, Central American immigrants frequently make the trip by jumping onto freight trains in order to hitch a ride and by spending a portion of the journey walking. Along the way, the MSF (2017) survey found, 68 percent face brutality or threats from those seeking to rob them, and 33 percent of women reported experiencing sexual abuse along the way. The perpetrators of this violence included both criminal gangs and Mexican security forces. In terms of distinguishing between push and pull factors, how bad would things need to be at home in order to convince you that it would be worth making such a dangerous journey? For many immigrants who have left their homes in certain areas of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, things must be very bad indeed. As a consequence of these conditions, tens of thousands of migrants have left Central America each year from 2014 to 2019 to travel to the United States, with an apex of almost 690,000 persons being “apprehended” at the U.S. border in 2019, most of whom intentionally crossed with the goal of immediately turning themselves over to Customs and Border Patrol officials in order to request asylum (CRS 2019). Yet U.S. officials have granted asylum to only a tiny fraction of the total number of people who have fled to the U.S.  border seeking protection. In 2018, for instance, only about 7,500 persons from these three countries were granted asylum (AIC 2020). The remainder face the risk of deportation, in which they would be sent back home to face the same dangers that they initially attempted to escape. In a study of Salvadorans deported from the United States between 2013 and 2019, Human Rights Watch documented that 113 people were murdered after being sent back to their home country (HRW 2020). But the researchers conducting this study warn that the actual number of immigrants murdered after having been returned from the United States to El Salvador is much higher because most murders in the country are not reported in the news and frequently go uninvestigated, so they cannot be included in the tally. Moreover, the authors caution that other kinds of brutal violence—​including rape, torture, and beatings—​ are also experienced by many Salvadorans after being deported from the United States (HRW 2020). While the extensive denial of asylum status is already a violation of human rights for migrants facing a credible fear of violence and persecution in their countries of origin, the Trump Administration has repeatedly sought to

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further limit or deny immigrants’ ability to make asylum claims. For instance, it has implemented policies that treat asylum applicants very harshly in order to—​so the thinking goes—​send a message to other would-​be undocumented immigrants that bad things will happen to them if they make the journey to the United States, and that they therefore should “stay put.” While most individuals apprehended at the border are quickly deported by U.S. authorities, those requesting asylum who can prove that they have credible fear of facing violence in their homeland have traditionally had the ability to live and work in the United States, even if only temporarily. In 2017, however, the Trump Administration sought to keep such persons in detention facilities until their asylum proceedings had been completed, which is frequently a months-​or even years-​long process (Amnesty International 2018). The U.S. government’s own internal investigations have documented extremely grim conditions in these facilities, including a lack of clean clothes and laundry facilities, a lack of showers, and a lack of nutritious food (Kanno-​ Youngs 2019). In 2019, the Trump Administration included families in this policy, attempting to indefinitely detain both parents and children together in such facilities as well. This policy initiative was, however, blocked in the courts (Shear and Kanno-​Youngs 2019). This came on the heels of another harsh policy that sought to detain children and parents separately. Again attempting to deter migrants from seeking asylum in the United States through punitive measures, in May 2018 the Trump Administration began taking children from their parents at the border. In total, an estimated 5,000 children, including infants and toddlers, were separated (International Rescue Committee 2020). After being detained, the children were held huddled together in fenced rooms without beds or blankets for several days for processing before being moved along to other facilities. Images and recordings of these caged children became headline news around the country, drawing so much criticism that the Trump Administration ended the policy at the end of June (SPLC 2020). Courts soon ordered the U.S. government to reunite the families that it had separated, although 470 parents had already been deported without their children (Alvarez 2019). The Trump Administration has since sought to end immigrants’ ability to seek asylum in the United States altogether. In 2019, the Administration introduced a rule prohibiting any person from applying for asylum if they traveled through another country without applying there first (International Rescue 2020). This rule is clearly targeted at asylum-​seekers from Central America, who must travel through Mexico in order to get to the United States. Of course, it would make no sense for such persons to seek asylum in Mexico, since it is a country with very high rates of violence itself, and is also a nation where migrants are frequently targeted for robberies, extortion, or sexual abuse. While this Trump Administration policy is being challenged in the courts, the U.S. government has further worked to end the asylum process under the mantle of public health, turning away all asylum-​seekers during the coronavirus pandemic. Going further, again citing the coronavirus, the U.S. government expelled 10,000 Central American immigrants

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U.S. Immigration Policy and Human Rights  93 who were already inside the United States and were awaiting asylum decisions into Mexico (Verza and Fox 2020). In consequence, Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has largely been abandoned by the United States with regard to desperate families seeking asylum at the nation’s southwest border.

U.S. Immigration Policy and the Right to a Nationality Because contemporary human rights must ultimately be guaranteed by governments, “stateless” people—​or those who are unable to effectively claim citizenship in any country—​are made vulnerable to violence, extreme poverty, and other human rights violations. It is for this reason that Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists the ability to be endowed with a nationality as a fundamental right in and of itself. This right, however, is at risk for hundreds of thousands of persons living in the United States who were brought here as young children. Under a 2012 program created by the Obama Administration called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), young persons between the ages of fifteen and 30 can register and receive a protected status, allowing them to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation. The program was not open to all immigrants, only young people without a criminal record brought to the United States before turning sixteen, and who are either in school or have recently graduated from a U.S. high school or served in the military (Shear and Dickerson 2020). Without this program, these “Dreamers” as they are sometimes called, would effectively find themselves without a nationality. On average, these young people were only six years old when they came to the United States, meaning that they attended U.S. schools and have become “American” in almost every way other than having legal citizenship (Gomez 2018). Because they arrived here as youngsters, they have very little or no connection to their country of origin. Without DACA, these young people run the risk of becoming “stateless” and losing the right to the nationality that they have known for most of their lives. In 2017, the Trump Administration unveiled a new policy to eliminate DACA. In June 2020, the Supreme Court found that the Administration did not follow the proper legal processes to do so, and ruled that DACA must therefore be reinstated. Nevertheless, the Trump Administration stopped enrolling new qualifying applicants into DACA in 2017, leaving tens of thousands of Dreamers unprotected from deportation. If any of these young people are deported, they would be separated from their families here in the United States, which would constitute another type of human rights violation.

U.S. Immigration Policy and the Right to Family Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled

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to protection by society and the State.” Much of the importance of the family—​and we should keep in mind that the shape and composition of families can vary greatly—​has to do with the fact that it is the social institution ultimately responsible for nurturing and raising children. In the United States, however, many families are not protected, but are instead split apart in order to pursue strict immigration policy goals, thereby violating an essential human right. In the United States, as in most nations, citizenship is conferred at birth, so that any child born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen regardless of the citizenship status of their parents. As such, the children of immigrants born in the United States have the same rights and responsibilities as every other American, except—​under current U.S. immigration policy—​the right to live without fear of being separated from their parents. Data from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency shows that from 2013 to 2018, the U.S.  government deported 231,000 parents whose children are U.S. citizens (Preston 2020). Each of these deportations severs a family, separating loved ones across national borders and frequently causing lasting harm. Research indicates that when a parent of a U.S. citizen is deported, that family’s income drops an average of 43 percent, thus increasing the likelihood that children in such families will experience deep poverty (Preston 2020). On a more personal level, when children are separated from loved ones, it can cause toxic stress that can lead to lower academic performance and negative mental health outcomes like depression and post-​traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Zayas and Heffron 2016). But why would the U.S. government pursue such policies, resulting in human rights violations? Sociological thinking can help us find answers.

Ethnonationalism and Its Myths Ethnonationalism is a powerful social force that has upended politics in recent years, not only in the United States but also in such diverse places as India, Europe, and Russia. It is based on an ideal of a nation tied to dominant religious, racial, or other cultural identities, thereby dismissing the value—​ and even the existence—​of the actually existing diversity in a society. In fact, some aspiring politicians attempt to use ethnonationalism—​sometimes successfully—​as a winning election strategy by campaigning against “dangerous” others who threaten the supposed purity of a nation’s culture. In India, for example, ethnonationalism takes shape through efforts to marginalize the country’s large Muslim population and move the nation from a secular to a Hindu state. In the United States, ethnonationalism motivates efforts to maintain white cultural and political dominance by ending immigration from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Because the ideals of ethnonationalism are squarely at odds with widely shared human rights ideals of equality and inclusion, it is necessarily bound up with styles of speaking and with myths that help justify the exclusion/​expulsion of some groups from the nation. In the United States, this

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U.S. Immigration Policy and Human Rights  95 becomes visible when we consider the dehumanizing words used to refer to people who have crossed the border without legal authorization. Such people are sometimes called “illegal aliens” or simply “illegals.” This kind of language objectifies undocumented immigrants, robbing them of their personhood.When people are dehumanized, it becomes harder to feel empathy for them and the difficult conditions they may face, while it simultaneously becomes easier for governments to enact policies that violate their human rights. Beyond dehumanizing language, there are also a large number of myths and misunderstandings about immigration in our country, often repeated by prominent politicians, that help sustain ethnonationalism. One common myth is that there is an unprecedented “crisis” at the U.S. border. The reality is very different. For example, the number of apprehensions the Customs and Border Patrol Agency made in 2017, at just above 300,000 persons, was at a 45-​year low (CRS 2019). And while the number of undocumented people crossing the border significantly increased in 2019 according the Congressional Research Service, this was still about half the total number of apprehensions in the year 2000 (CRS 2019). In other words, unauthorized border crossings were much more frequent in previous years and our nation survived just fine. Another myth is that undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit crime than U.S. citizens.While crossing the border without permission is technically a violation of the law, this does not make immigrants more likely to commit property crimes or enact violence than anyone else. In fact, research consistently indicates that undocumented immigrants are slightly less likely to commit crime compared with American citizens (Flagg 2019). This makes intuitive sense if you think about it. Undocumented persons living in America have a strong incentive to work and raise families without violating the law in order to avoid attracting the attention of immigration authorities. Some Americans also mistakenly think of immigrants not as contributors to our society, but as “takers” competing for American jobs while avoiding taxes and burdening our educational and social welfare systems. Most economists, however, agree that immigration as a whole adds dynamism to the economy and boosts growth. Undocumented immigrants are less likely to be unemployed than American citizens of the same age (PBS 2018). And the work they do is as a whole more difficult and dangerous than the work done by the typical U.S. citizen (Dramski 2017). Immigrants are also more likely to take shifts in the evening or early morning hours that are otherwise difficult for employers to fill (Dramski 2017). The majority of undocumented immigrants pay taxes on the income they earn, along with paying sales taxes and property taxes (directly through homeownership or indirectly by renting). As a whole, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (2016), undocumented immigrants pay a larger percentage of their income each year in taxes compared to the effective tax rate of the richest 1 percent of Americans. Finally, undocumented immigrants do not qualify

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for welfare assistance like SNAP (food stamps) and other benefits, and while educating the children of immigrants does cost local communities some money, research indicates that it is an investment that more than pays off in time (National Academies 2017). One final myth about undocumented immigration is that such persons chose to come to the United States illegally instead of going through the proper legal channels. This idea can be summed up with the phrase, “Why don’t they just get in line?” For most immigrants from Mexico or Central America, however, there is no “line” to get in.The main routes to temporary or permanent residency in the United States come (1) from either being a highly skilled employee (think computer programmer, doctor, or engineer); (2) from having a spouse or close family member who is already an American citizen through the U.S. “family reunification” policy; or for humanitarian protection (AIC 2020). As we have seen, because the U.S. government rarely gives asylum to people fleeing violence or persecution from these Latin American countries, there is almost no legal route for most individuals from these nations to seek residency in the United States. And while opponents of immigration might say that these immigrants should not have chosen to come to the United States if there were no legal avenues available to do so, this assumption ignores the causes that motivate many people around the world to leave their homes in the first place. People fleeing for their lives from violence, corruption, or desperate poverty likely feel that there is no real choice. If desperate people have a chance to find a safe place to live and raise their children, they will take it regardless of its legality. Rather than “Why don’t they get in line?” perhaps the better question is “How can we develop a comprehensive federal policy that balances human rights with the rule of law and border security?”

Achieving an Immigration Policy that Upholds Human Rights Advocates of severe limits on immigration and asylum in the United States often portray the alternative as a completely open border, with little to no immigration regulation and no border security. In fact, both of these positions are more like two different sides of a spectrum on immigration policy, between which there are many other possibilities. Here’s what an immigration policy might look like that seeks to balance the two: 1. Reducing “push” factors that drive people from their homes: Because people only flee their homes and undertake extremely dangerous journeys to other nations out of desperation, the United States would be wise to develop and invest in additional programs to alleviate poverty in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico. The United States could further develop programs to reduce violence and corruption in these nations.The United States has a special responsibility in Central America, given that the U.S. government undermined human

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U.S. Immigration Policy and Human Rights  97 rights in this region during the Cold War, supporting military violence against governments in Nicaragua and Guatemala while funding or directly supporting death squads that targeted civilians in several Central American nations. In many ways, past U.S.  policy helped create the current instability in this region that makes life dangerous for many living there now (Gonzalez 2011). As an additional measure, our nation should act to quickly and meaningfully reduce its carbon emissions, which are causing climate change, because increasingly intense droughts and tropical storms that come along with a warmer world will only further displace people from their homes and push them to the U.S. border in the years to come. 2. Granting asylum to qualifying migrants: As discussed earlier, the ability to secure asylum when fleeing violence and persecution is a fundamental human right. The United States should therefore provide this status to all people at the border who have convincing reason to believe that they would be murdered or abused if returned to their country of origin. In order to more quickly adjudicate asylum requests, given the sizable backlog that exists in U.S. immigration courts, lawmakers should invest in hiring more officials overseeing the process. 3. Creating a path to citizenship for persons brought to the United States as children: Because having a nationality is a basic human right, U.S. lawmakers should safeguard the DACA program and allow it to enroll all qualifying persons. As a next step, the U.S. Congress should create a pathway to citizenship for these Dreamers. Doing so is not only important from a human rights perspective, but also for the good of our national economy. Because Dreamers are so thoroughly enmeshed in U.S. society, their absence would create an enormous economic blow to the country. 4. Protecting children and preserving families: First and foremost, U.S. immigration policy should focus on doing what is best for children. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks directly to the crucial role played by families in society as they nurture and raise the next generation of citizens, and U.S.  immigration policy should therefore grant families special protections and help keep them intact by opting not to deport undocumented immigrant parents whose children are U.S. citizens. President Obama’s administration initiated such a policy, but it was blocked in the courts. Judges ruled that such a substantial change to U.S. immigration policy would need to come from Congress. By implementing these policy recommendations, the U.S.  government could better uphold human rights while still maintaining the security and integrity of our southern border. Such changes would, of course, constitute a major shift from business as usual. For this reason, these ideas will probably not become law unless a groundswell of citizens get involved in politics and encourage lawmakers to make it a priority. In other words, all of us have a role to play in the historic effort to ensure that the U.S. government adheres to human rights norms when enforcing its immigration policies.

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Discussion Questions 1. I used the story of Rosa Gutierrez Gonzalez, who is living in sanctuary in a church in Maryland to avoid deportation, as a way to introduce this chapter. What are the different ways her story connects to the human rights violations in U.S.  immigration policy that we discussed in the chapter? 2. What are different push and pull factors that can motivate immigration? How do push factors relate to the human right to asylum? Does thinking about push factors change some of your own thinking about unauthorized immigration? 3. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights only recognizes the right to asylum for people fleeing their homeland due to violence and persecution. Are there other categories of people who deserve asylum protection—​for instance, those trying to escape from desperate poverty? What about “climate migrants” who leave their homes due to floods or droughts associated with climate change? 4. I concluded the chapter by describing four changes to U.S. immigration policy that would better uphold human rights principles. What do you think? Would you be opposed to some of these changes? If so, please explain. Maybe you’d like to see other kinds of changes in our government’s immigration policy that relate to human rights. If so, again please discuss.

References American Immigration Council (AIC). 2020.“Asylum in the United States.” Retrieved July 29, 2020 from www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/​research/​asylum-​united-​states. Alvarez, Priscilla. 2019. “471 Parents Were Deported from US Without Their Children During Family Separations.” CNN, March 7. Retrieved July 29, 2020 from www.cnn. com/​2019/​03/​06/​politics/​f amily-​separation-​update-​immigration-​border/​index. html. Amnesty International. 2018. You Don’t Have Any Rights Here: Illegal Pushbacks, Arbitrary Detention, and Ill-​Treatment of Asylum-​Seekers in the United States. New York: Amnesty International. Retrieved July 29, 2020 from www.amnesty.org/​download/​ Documents/​AMR5191012018ENGLISH.PDF. Congressional Research Office (CRS). 2019. Immigration: Recent Apprehension Trends in the Southwest Border. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Office, November 19. Retrieved July 29, 2020 from https://​fas.org/​sgp/​crs/​homesec/​R46012.pdf. Dramski, Pavel. 2017. On the Clock: How Immigrants Fill Gaps in the Labor Market by Working Unconventional Hours.Washington, D.C.: New America Foundation. Retrieved July 30 from www.newamericaneconomy.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2017/​07/​NAE_​ UnusualWorkingHours_​V5.pdf. Flagg,Anna.2019.“IsThere a Connection Between Undocumented Immigrants and Crime?” The Marshal Project, May 13. Retrieved July 30 from www.themarshallproject.org/​ 2019/​05/​13/​is-​there-​a-​connection-​between-​undocumented-​immigrants-​and-​crime. Flores, Rene D. and Ariela Schachter. 2019. “Examining Americans’ Stereotypes About Immigrant Illegality.” Sociology for the Public 18(2): 36–​41.

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U.S. Immigration Policy and Human Rights  99 Gomez, Alan. 2018. “Who Are the DACA Dreamers, and How Many are Here?” USA Today, February 13. Retrieved August 1, 2020 from www.usatoday.com/​story/​news/​ politics/​2018/​02/​13/​who-​daca-​dreamers-​and-​how-​many-​here/​333045002. Gonzalez, Juan. 2011. Harvest of Empire: The History of Latinos in America. New York: Penguin. Hernandez, Arelas. 2018. “She was Supposed to be Deported, Leaving 3 Children, Instead she Hid in a Church.” The Washington Post, December 12. Retrieved July 24, 2020 from www.washingtonpost.com/​local/​immigration/​she-​was-​supposed-​to-​be-​ deported-​leaving-​3-​children-​instead-​she-​hid-​in-​a-​church/​2018/​12/​12/​7ecc4d06-​ fdc9-​11e8-​83c0-​b06139e540e5_​story.html. Human Rights Watch (HRW). 2020. Deported to Danger: United States Deportation Policies Expose Salvadorans to Death and Abuse. Human Rights Watch, February 5. Retrieved July 28, 2020 from www.hrw.org/​report/​2020/​02/​05/​deported-​danger/​united-​states-​ deportation-​policies-​expose-​salvadorans-​death-​and#. International Rescue Committee. 2020. “How the Trump Administration is Eliminating Asylum in the U.S.”International Rescue Committee,February 4. Retrieved July 29,2020 from www.rescue.org/​article/​how-​trump-​administration-​eliminating-​asylum-​us. Institute on Taxation. 2016. Undocumented Immigrants’ State and Local Tax Contributions. Washington, D.C.: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Retrieved July 31, 2020 from https://​itep.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/​immigration2016.pdf. Jordan, Miriam and Sabrina Tavernise. 2018. “One Face of Immigration in America is a Family Tree Rooted in Asia.” The New York Times, September 16. Retrieved July 24, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​2018/​09/​16/​us/​immigration-​family-​chain-​ migration-​foreign-​born.html. Kanno-​ Youngs, Zolan. 2019. “Squalid Conditions at Border Detention Centers, Government Report Finds.” The New York Times, July 2. Retrieved July 29, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​2019/​07/​02/​us/​politics/​border-​center-​migrant-​detention.html. Krogstad, Jens Manuel. 2019. “Key Facts About Refugees to the United States.” Pew Research Center Fact Tank, October 7. Retrieved July 28, 2020 from www.pewresearch. org/​fact-​tank/​2019/​10/​07/​key-​facts-​about-​refugees-​to-​the-​u-​s. Lennon, Will and Anahi Hurtado. 2020. “A Woman Avoiding ICE Officials in a Md. Church Experiences a Different Kind of Social Isolation.” City Paper, July 23. Retrieved July 24, 2020 from www.washingtoncitypaper.com/​news/​coronavirus/​ article/​21141115/​a-​woman-​avoiding-​ice-​officials-​in-​a-​md-​church-​experiences-​a-​ different-​kind-​of-​social-​isolation. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). 2017. Forced to Flee Central America’s Northern Triangle: A Neglected Humanitarian Crisis. Retrieved July 28, 2020 from www. doctorswithoutborders.org/​what-​we-​do/​news-​stories/​research/​report-​forced-​flee-​ central-​americas-​northern-​triangle. National Academies. 2017. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. Office of the High Commission on Human Rights (OHCHR). 2018. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70: Article 14.” Office of the High Commission on Human Rights. Retrieved July 28, 2020 from www.ohchr.org/​EN/​NewsEvents/​ Pages/​DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23923&LangID=E. PBS. 2018. “4 Myths About How Immigrants Affect the U.S. Economy.” PBS Newshour, November 2. Retrieved August 14, 2020 from www.pbs.org/​newshour/​economy/​ making-​sense/​4-​myths-​about-​how-​immigrants-​affect-​the-​u-​s-​economy. Preston, Julia. 2020. “The True Cost of Deportation.” The Marshall Project, June 18. Retrieved August 3, 2020 from www.themarshallproject.org/​2020/​06/​22/​the-​true-​ costs-​of-​deportation.

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100  U.S. Immigration Policy and Human Rights Shear, Michael D. and Caitlyn Dickerson. 2020. “Trump Delays Effort to End Protections for ‘Dreamers.’ ” The New York Times, July 28. Retrieved August 1, 2020 from www. nytimes.com/​2020/​07/​28/​us/​politics/​trump-​daca.html. Shear, Michael D. and Zolan Kanno-​ Youngs. 2019. “Migrant Families Would Face Indefinite Detention Under New Trump Rule.” The New  York Times, August 21. Retrieved July 29, 2020 from www.nytimes.com/​2019/​08/​21/​us/​politics/​flores-​ migrant-​family-​detention.html. SPLC. 2020. “Family Separation Under the Trump Administration.” Southern Poverty Law Center, June 17. Retrieved July 29, 2020 from www.splcenter.org/​news/​2020/​06/​17/​ family-​separation-​under-​trump-​administration-​timeline. UNHCR. 2020.“Global Displacement.” United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Retrieved July 28, 2020 from www.unhcr.org/​ph/​figures-​at-​a-​glance. Verza, Maria and Ben Fox. 2020. “U.S. Expels Thousands to Mexico After Largely Halting Asylum.” Associated Press, April 9. Retrieved July 29, 2020 from https://​apnews.com/​ 7e9426532434bdda47f270a57d091c91. World Bank. 2017. “Homicide Rates” Retrieved July 29, 2020 from https://​data. worldbank.org/​indicator/​VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?most_​recent_​value_​desc=true. Zayas, Luis H. and Laurie Cook Heffron. 2016. “Disrupting Young Lives: How Detention and Deportation Affect US-​Born Children of Immigrants.” American Psychological Association CYF News, November. Retrieved July 30 from www.apa.org/​pi/​families/​ resources/​newsletter/​2016/​11/​detention-​deportation.

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9  U.S. Society, Global Inequalities, and Human Rights

Please take out your phone, if you don’t already have it in front of you. I’m not going to ask you to turn it off so it won’t distract you from these words, although that’s probably a good idea. What I would like you to do is to take a moment to consider how this slim little device links you to the rest of the world. And I’m not just talking about its capacity to cruise the internet or call and send messages to people across the globe, although that truly is remarkable. What I’m talking about is the very construction of your device: its physical components and the process by which it was put together. For example, all smartphones these days use a category of elements called rare earth minerals, which actually aren’t all that rare at all, but they are hardly ever found in concentrated amounts that can profitably be mined. The United States produces some rare earth minerals at a mine in California, but only after it was closed down for several years because it produced a large amount of radioactive waste that began leaking from storage facilities (Oskin 2013). Right now, the vast majority of rare earth minerals in our smartphones and other computers come from China, where the government has used police power to crush citizen protests over levels of environmental contamination caused by rare earth mining that would not be tolerated in the United States (Downey, Bonds, and Clark 2010). Our cell phones also use small amounts of the uncommon minerals palladium and platinum in their electrical circuitry; the mining of these minerals is also extremely destructive and mostly done overseas. Our platinum, for instance, largely comes from South Africa, where miners work in harsh conditions to remove riches from underground, which are then shuttled off to global markets.The miners and their families often live in slum conditions that have improved little since the end of apartheid, with limited electricity and sanitation for their homes and few educational opportunities for their children (Essa 2013). And when these miners and other community groups protest, they are sometimes greeted with police violence reminiscent of the days of apartheid. Human Rights Watch (2019) and other nongovernmental organizations have documented the killings, abuse, and harassment faced by miners and mine-​impacted communities in South Africa when they dare to speak out about low pay, unsafe working conditions, or environmental hazards caused by mining. Conditions are, of course, different in

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Russia, which produces most of the palladium we use, largely from a single mining region and smelter at Norilsk, Siberia that was first built in the 1940s using communist-​era forced labor. The pollution there is extensive, producing more toxic sulfur dioxide than the entire nation of France. While it is reported that conditions are too toxic for trees to grow for miles around the smelter, the actual extent of the pollution is impossible to know because the Russian government limits the reporting and scientific study that can be done there (Bonds and Downey 2012). Finally, our phones all use an uncommon mineral named tantalum in their electrical circuitry. While much of this tantalum comes from either Australia or Brazil, some of it also comes from the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The decades-​long conflict that has plagued this region, resulting in millions of deaths and the terrible mistreatment of civilians, is one of the great tragedies of our time.The conditions that started this war and that sustain it are numerous and complex. Sadly, our global hunger for tantalum and other minerals in the Congo is one of these factors. Tantalum mines in the DRC can be dug by hand and provide an important source of income for armed groups to buy guns, munitions, and other tools used for making war (Kasinof 2018). Consequently, the government of the DRC and armed rebel groups fight with one another over the mines, and use them to sustain their fighting elsewhere in the region. Thus the physical components of our smartphones link us to human rights concerns around the world, and this says nothing about the labor conditions in factories where our cell phones are actually assembled. As you may be aware, there are human rights concerns here too. A Taiwanese company called Foxconn, which makes iPhones and iPads as well as other electronics such as Amazon’s Echo and Kindle, has drawn the most public attention, not necessarily because its labor practices are worse compared with other electronics manufacturing companies, but due to its huge size, employing hundreds of thousands of workers. Prominent investigations of Foxconn in China have revealed that workers there are, not surprisingly, paid relatively low wages—​ just pennies on the dollar compared to the valuable products they work to produce (China Labor Watch 2019a; 2019b). But perhaps more worrying, investigations have reported unsafe conditions—​ for instance the requirement for some workers to stand for ten-​hour days while exposing others to toxic chemicals. When the workday is over, many Foxconn employees live at the factory in cramped dorm rooms that may hold as many as nine persons (China Labor Watch 2019a). Perhaps most worrying, Foxconn has the power to compel young people still in school to work in its factories during busy times through forced “internships,” which can include nightshifts and long hours without additional overtime pay (China Labor Watch 2019a). So looking again at your phone, think back and see if you can remember that almost magical moment when you opened up its package and held it for the first time. Didn’t it seem almost pristine? So shiny and polished, smooth, somehow untouched by human hands. We know, of course, that this was an illusion. The phone that we use every day is material evidence

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Global Inequalities, and Human Rights  103 of a very real relationship we have with people around the globe, even if these relationships typically remain unseen and unacknowledged. This poses a real challenge with regard to human rights. If you had personally traveled to the place where the tantalum or palladium in your phone came from to meet the miners, or if you visited the factory where your phone was assembled, you might be willing to pay a little extra to ensure that human rights were being respected along the production process, and you might even take political action to pressure companies to respect human rights and to encourage politicians to create new laws requiring this to happen. But our human relationships with people around the world don’t appear to us as such; instead, as Karl Marx wrote, these relationships appear to us as “things,” even if they are highly advanced things that are themselves amazing technological feats. In this chapter, we will explore our global interconnections and consider their human rights implications in the context of the contemporary world economy. We will close by examining the strategies some groups have used in attempts to promote human wellbeing across nations.

Human Rights in the Global Economy In his classic book, The Open Veins of Latin America, Uruguayan historian and writer Eduardo Galeano (1973) gives us the image of Potosí, a city that was founded in the mid-​16th century in Bolivia to mine the incredible riches from the nearby mountain, Cerro Rico. Despite being located at 13,000 feet above sea level, the city for a while became one of the largest in the Americas due to the vast richness of its silver mine. Over the centuries, literally thousands of tons of silver were removed from the mine.Yet little of this wealth stayed. Most of the actual mining was conducted by forced indigenous labor, and then by labor from African slaves brought to extract the silver ore. So to say the least, this labor process caused tremendous suffering and took a huge toll on local populations, rather than contributing to the economic development of the region. The actual silver was shipped off to Spain and what was formerly known as Great Britain (now the United Kingdom). What is left is a city with much poverty and a hollowed-​out mountain, the surface of which has mostly been denuded of its native vegetation. The image of Potosí is useful because it provides several reminders. First, while we hear a great deal about globalization in regard to recent developments in transnational economic production, thinking about Potosí helps us remember that since the very emergence of colonialism and the development of capitalism, economic production has spanned the Earth. After all, many of the raw materials that fueled and funded the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe, and then in the United States, came from the Global South, such as cotton, timber, rubber, gold, and silver from Africa and the Americas. So when scholars discuss “globalization” today, they are typically describing a new phase in the world economy, in which transnational production has become intensified and companies have become increasingly mobile. In a U.S.  or European context, “globalization” is also

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often what we mean when we are thinking about deindustrialization, which is a process that began in the 1970s when transnational corporations moved their factories from the Global North to take advantage of cheaper labor in the Global South. Today, of course, the U.S. economy is completely dependent upon materials from overseas. One way to think about this is in terms of critical minerals, which are used to create the technologies and infrastructure of everyday life (see Table  9.1). There are no known replacements for these minerals and, while they are necessary for our American way of life, they overwhelmingly come from overseas (NRC 2008). As we’ve already discussed, rare earths are necessary for our electronics, but they come primarily from China. And we might not think much about the relatively recent aesthetic revolution in which all our television and computer screens became flat and our laptops became very thin, but this is due to the remarkable properties of a mineral called indium, which is not produced in the United States and comes primarily from Asia. So capitalism always has been and remains global. And we can see from the example of critical minerals that much of the technology and infrastructure of the contemporary economies in the Global North are built with materials from the Global South. Additionally, the image of Potosí reminds us that global economic production has never been equitable and mutually beneficial to all the parties involved. Rather, when global production networks draw resources and manufactured products from the regions in the Global South, it often involves a process of underdevelopment, in which great wealth is removed Table 9.1 Origins and Uses of Critical Minerals Mineral

Uses

% of world production

Platinum

Electronics and pollution control

Palladium

Electronics and pollution control

Rare earth elements

Computers and electronics Steel and cast iron

South Africa (77%), Russia (13%), Canada (4%), Zimbabwe (2%), United States (2%) Russia (44%), South Africa (38%), United States (6%), Canada (6%), Zimbabwe (3%) China (76%), France (9%), Japan (4%), Russia (3%), other (8%) South Africa (19%), Australia (18%), China (13%), Brazil (12%), Gabon (11%) China (60%), Japan (9%), South Korea (9%), Canada (9%), Belgium (5%) Brazil (90%), Canada (9%)

Manganese Indium Niobium Vanadium

Flat screens and computer display panels Building materials for aircraft and weapons Building materials for aircraft and weapons

Source: Downey, Bonds, and Clark (2010).

South Africa (39%), Canada (31%), Russia (27%)

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Global Inequalities, and Human Rights  105 but little lasting value is added to local communities. From this perspective, Potosí was not “developed” through the establishment of the silver mine at Cerro Rico, so much as a whole region was underdeveloped as valuable minerals ultimately worth billions of dollars were pulled out and shipped far away, using the cheapest methods available and leaving little in the way of investment for future economic production. This should not be a surprise, as this exploitative relationship was inherently part of the colonial experience. Relationships of underdevelopment did not end with the formal ending of colonialism, but persist today. We might look, for instance, at Nigeria and its substantial oil production. The nation is the top oil exporter in Africa, producing almost 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, practically all of which is exported overseas. This oil, to say the least, is extremely valuable, grossing close to $45 billion a year (OPEC 2020). However, while this revenue has produced a few extremely wealthy Nigerians and helped enrich a broader national elite, most Nigerians have benefited very little from their nation’s oil wealth. It is estimated that 40 percent of all Nigerians live in absolute poverty, sustaining themselves on incomes of less than a dollar a day (Akwagyiram 2020). Global networks of production have, in other words, underdeveloped Nigeria, removing much of its oil wealth that might have been used to fund education and healthcare, or that simply might have been used as a source of domestic fuel to drive other kinds of economic production in the future. What many Nigerians have received instead is a conflict-​ridden society, as groups fight over the uneven distribution of the money generated by oil, along with a tremendous amount of environmental degradation. The extent to which manufacturing and apparel production can contribute to the fulfillment of human rights in the Global South, or whether it will constitute another form of underdevelopment, is a complicated question. On the one hand, many nations hope that by attracting multinational corporations to their shores to invest in factories to make clothes, shoes, and electronics for global consumption, they will get a great deal in return, including much-​needed jobs and an opportunity to spur economic growth. Often, however, countries may compete with one another to offer transnational companies the lowest rates of taxation, the lowest wages, and the fewest environmental and worker protections. This global race to the bottom means that multinational corporations can pick and choose between countries in order to find the cheapest rates of production. After selecting a location, if the costs of production begin increasing, then they can always choose to move again. Such a global context has proved to be a recipe for underdevelopment in many nations rather than a means to increase wellbeing for their citizens as a whole. Historically, these processes of underdevelopment were achieved through the military power of colonizing nations.Today, terms of unequal exchange typically are achieved through other means. To begin with, the history of colonialism is not that old. It wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s that many previously colonized areas in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean achieved independence. When these nations became independent, their economies and

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political systems had been malformed by centuries of imperial governance (Wallerstein 2004). Their economies were geared toward the exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor for external markets, and they had very little infrastructure in place that could be used for the betterment of their own societies. The international financial organizations that were created at the end of World War II didn’t help much either. The World Bank, for instance, is an institution that was created to fund economic development projects in the Global South in order to reduce poverty. In practice, the World Bank has historically funded megaprojects like big dams and big mines that are very profitable to multinational companies, but often end up hurting local people as much as helping them (Goldman 2006). World Bank-​funded gold mines in Ghana, for instance, have displaced thousands of people from their homes and cropland, while piling up massive amounts of toxic waste and contaminating drinking water. Moreover, few members in the communities adjacent to mines have been given jobs due to the high degree of mechanization in modern mineral extraction (McCarthy 2011). Along with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created to promote global economic security by providing short-​lived loans to nations experiencing financial difficulties, in the hope that those difficulties would not ripple throughout world markets. In practice, the IMF has indeed provided loans to nations in the Global South, but they have often been given with conditions that require recipient nations to undertake reforms that are at odds with human rights, for instance by reducing public expenditures on education or healthcare (Blau and Moncado 2009). According to many critics of the contemporary global economy, these financial institutions, along with the dynamics of the “global race to the bottom,” have worked to maintain unequal terms of trade between nations even after the end of formal colonial rule. While these relationships have been around for a long time, they are not, of course, necessarily permanent. Things can change, and many people throughout the world are pushing to change them sooner rather than later in ways that advance global human rights.

Efforts to Promote Global Human Rights It is clear that we live in a very interconnected world, and that we cannot easily separate ourselves from human rights violations in other countries, especially when they provide some of the food, raw materials, and labor that make our daily lives possible. But what people in the Global North can do to promote wellbeing rights in other nations is not an easy question to answer. In this era of growing nationalism around the world, where some leaders seek to advance the interests of their own nations at the cost of others, some believe that the answer is to retreat from the global economy and manufacture or otherwise produce everything we consume from within U.S. borders. Such a goal is not realistic, as the example of critical minerals shows, nor would it be desirable for the vast majority of Americans. Our lives

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Global Inequalities, and Human Rights  107 are deeply entwined with products and materials that come from all over the planet. Changing this would create massive upheaval in global economic and political systems, and our individual lives would become much less rich and less fulfilling. Instead, some human rights innovators have sought to use the purchasing power of U.S. consumers as a force for good by creating Fair Trade certification. The goal is to create market incentives in order to encourage producers of goods destined for U.S. or European markets to respect labor rights, to pay a living wage, and to contribute to community development. When producers adhere to these standards, a third-​party organization like Fair Trade USA certifies them and gives them a fair trade label to use on their products.With the proper education, the hope goes, U.S. and European consumers will be willing to pay a little extra to buy fair trade-​labeled products, knowing that their coffee, bananas, chocolate, and whatever else were not produced in abusive conditions, but instead under conditions that respected and improved people’s wellbeing. Over the past fifteen years, fair trade-​certified production has shown surprising growth. Today, Fair Trade products now account for nine billion dollars in global trade (Fairtrade America 2018). More than 30,000 different products have been certified as fair trade, including those you can probably find at your local coffee shop and grocery store. Fair Trade production has helped improve the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people around the world in sometimes quite profound ways (Fairtrade America 2018). Globally, however, this is only a small minority out of the total number of people toiling in the global economy. The fair trade system is also imperfect. While it might better pay and working conditions, it does not guarantee a pathway out of poverty for those working to produce fair trade-​certified products. But for those consumers who are able to afford it, buying fair-​trade certified is at least a small step towards helping to promote human rights throughout the world. But that, of course, is the major hitch. As we have discussed in previous chapters, a large number of Americans are struggling just to get by. And even for those technically able to afford it, many Americans may not feel like they can pay extra, given that their incomes, on average, have either stagnated or declined for several decades now. Consequently, fair trade products remain a niche market, accounting for just a drop in the bucket of global commerce between the Global South and the Global North. For instance, while coffee is the most successful fair trade certified product in terms of the total revenue it produces, it only accounts for 2 percent of the U.S. market (Elliot 2012). Some activists have recognized the limitations of relying on individual consumers to promote fair trade, and have since sought to create policy changes in order to achieve more just global trade relationships. In the mid-​1990s, for instance, many students became very concerned that the high-​priced clothing sold at university book stores was being produced in overseas sweatshops where employees worked long hours in poor and unsafe conditions for little money. Rather than trying to change these

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conditions through their individual purchasing power, students mounted campaigns to pressure their universities to ensure that clothing that carried a university logo was certified as being produced under conditions that protected workers’ rights. Students across the country at all kinds of universities and colleges convinced their schools to comply, sometimes even resorting to sit-​ins at administrators’ offices and going on hunger strikes (Featherstone 2002). Ultimately, the impact was mixed. While the certification scheme did help some workers, any improvements were dwarfed by the vast scale of the global assembly line, which has remained unchanged (Seidman 2009). But undoubtedly these students’ collective action had more of an impact than would have been possible through their individual purchasing decisions alone. More recently, human rights activists successfully pushed the U.S. Congress to require electronics manufacturers to publicly disclose whether any of the minerals used to produce their computers originally came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a result, rather than being accused of using “blood minerals,” companies must conduct “due diligence” to ensure that the minerals they use do not come from global conflict zones. While the law has had some impact on global mineral sourcing, valuable minerals produced in mines controlled by armed groups in the Congo continue to be smuggled out of the country and onto world markets (Kasinof 2018). As you can see, there is no silver bullet when it comes to improving human rights in the global economy. But I personally find hope in the fact that so many smart and passionate people are working in different ways around the world—​as journalists, as advocates at NGOs, and as labor activists—​to expose human rights abuses in the global workplace and to pressure lawmakers and corporations to improve standards. It is further heartening that social movements have never been so interconnected as they are today, and that our particular historical moment seems to be one of significant social change (Wallerstein 2004), as we will discuss in the next chapter. The direction of this change is not yet determined, but global justice activists hope to push it towards the greater fulfillment of human rights.

Discussion Questions 1. In this chapter, you were asked to consider the global human rights implications of the production of your cell phone. But this was only one example used to illustrate global inequalities and the ways in which our contemporary economic system is tilted in favor of nations in the Global North. See whether you can replicate this example by, for instance, doing some internet research to learn about the production of the denim jeans you are wearing, or about the production of the ingredients for the chocolate bar or fruit smoothie you might buy for yourself today as a reward for reading this chapter. 2. Global inequalities were once maintained primarily through the violence of colonial relationships. How, according to this chapter, have these

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Global Inequalities, and Human Rights  109 inequalities been built into the contemporary world order, and how are they maintained today? 3. In this chapter, we considered three main ways in which global justice activists in wealthier nations like the United States have sought to promote human rights in the Global South. Which of these do you think might be the most effective? Are there any that seem destined to fail? Is it possible that all three strategies could be used simultaneously, or are they mutually exclusive? Please explain your answer.

References Akwagyiram Alexis. 2020. “40 Percent of Nigerians Live in Poverty.” Reuters, May 2.  Retrieved August 4, 2020 from www.reuters.com/​article/​us-​nigeria-​economy-​ poverty/​forty-​percent-​of-​nigerians-​live-​in-​poverty-​stats-​office-​idUSKBN22G19A. Blau, Judith, and Alberto Moncado. 2009. Human Rights:A Primer. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Bonds, Eric, and Liam Downey. 2012. “ ‘Green’ Technologies and Unequal Ecological Exchange:The Environmental and Social Consequences of Ecological Modernization in the World System.” Journal of World-​Systems Research 18: 167–​186. China Labor Watch. 2019a. “Amazon’s Supplier Recruits Illegally: Forces Interns to Work Overtime.” China Labor Watch, August 8. Retrieved August 6, 2020 from www. chinalaborwatch.org/​report/​143. China Labor Watch. 2019b. “iPhone 11 Illegally Produced in China: Apple Allows Supplier Factory Foxconn to Violate Labor Laws.” China Labor Watch, September 8. Retrieved August 6, 2020 from www.chinalaborwatch.org/​report/​144. Downey, Liam, Eric Bonds, and Catherine Clark. 2010. “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environmental Degradation.” Organization and Environment 23: 417–​445. Elliot, Kimberly. 2012. Is My Fair Trade Coffee Really Fair? Trends and Challenges in Fair Trade Certification. Washington, D.C.: Centre for Global Development. Retrieved August 26, 2013 from www.cgdev.org/​publication/​my-​fair-​trade-​coffee-​really-​fair-​ trends-​and-​challenges-​fair-​trade-​certification. Essa, Azad. 2013. “The Meaning of Marikana.” Al Jazeera, August 16. Retrieved August 26, 2013 from www.aljazeera.com/​features/​2013/​8/​16/​the-​meaning-​of-​marikana. Fairtrade America. 2018. “Fairtrade Tops $9 Billion in Global Sales for First Time on 8%.” GlobalNewswire, October 29. Retrieved August 4, 2020 from www.globenewswire. com/ ​ n ews- ​ release/ ​ 2 018/ ​ 1 0/ ​ 2 9/ ​ 1 638502/ ​ 0 / ​ e n/​ F airtrade-​ Tops-​ 9 -​ B illion-​ i n-​ Global-​Sales-​for-​First-​Time-​on-​8-​Growth.html. Featherstone, Liza. 2002. Students Against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement. London: Verso. Galeano, Eduardo. 1973. The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. New York: Monthly Review Press. Goldman, Michael. 2006. Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Human Rights Watch (HRW). 2019. Our Lives are in Danger: An Environment of Fear in South Africa’s Mining Affected Communities. Retrieved August 4, 2020 from www. hrw.org/​report/​2019/​04/​16/​we-​know-​our-​lives-​are-​danger/​environment-​fear-​ south-​africas-​mining-​affected. Kasinof, Laura. 2018. “An Ugly Truth Behind ‘Ethical Consumerism.’ ” The Washington Post, April 19. Retrieved August 4, 2020 from www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​ theworldpost/​wp/​2018/​04/​19/​conflict-​free.

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110  Global Inequalities, and Human Rights McCarthy, Terence S. 2011. “The Impact of Acid Mine Drainage in South Africa.” South African Journal of Science 107(5/​6): 7. NRC (National Research Council). (2008). Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. OPEC. 2020. “Nigeria Facts and Figures.” OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2020. Retrieved August 4, 2020 from www.opec.org/​opec_​web/​en/​about_​us/​167.htm. Oskin, Becky. 2013. “Radioactive Mountain is Key in US Rare-​Earth Woes.” LiveScience, June 11. Retrieved August 26, 2013 from www.livescience.com/​37356-​heavy-​rare-​ earth-​mining-​america.html. Seidman, Gay. 2009. Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism. New York: Sage. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2004. World-​Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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10  Volunteerism, Activism, and the Pursuit of Human Rights

Sometimes we in the United States tell ourselves comfortable myths about the origins of progressive social change. In one story, for instance, we like to think that politicians ultimately decided to abolish Jim Crow segregation because they were swept up in a broader cultural transformation happening across our country, being spurred on by the eloquence and wisdom of civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.While there is certainly some truth in the idea that changes in people’s thinking and attitudes can instigate broader changes in the priorities of governments, sociologists who have studied the Civil Rights Movement argue that the story is much more complicated. For example, conventional narratives of the Civil Rights Movement overlook the real person of Dr. King by glossing over the fact that he wasn’t simply on a mission to promote “diversity” in American institutions and did not only challenge legally codified racism, but rather sought to challenge the ways racism was embedded in the U.S. economy (Dyson 2001). Dr. King was also a strong critic of the Vietnam War and expressed a vision for the fundamental transformation of the United States in order to achieve justice, peace, and equality, both at home and around the world (King 1967). The typical stories we tell ourselves about social change also mislead us into thinking that the Civil Rights Movement’s victories came from the top down, rather than the bottom up. But sociologists who have studied the Civil Rights Movement stress that politicians did not end segregation because it was the right thing to do, but rather because thousands of people at the grassroots level were working in different ways—​pushing, pressing, and putting their bodies on the line—​to force otherwise reluctant politicians to act (McAdam 1983). The main lesson here is that the stark inequalities that threaten human rights do not typically diminish on their own accord. Even so, grassroots movements can sometimes create profound social changes that diminish inequalities, and when this happens governments can enact laws and create institutions that enhance human rights and wellbeing. In this chapter, we consider how grassroots movements can work to propel advances in human rights. We will situate these movements within our particular historical moment, which is one that is tumultuous and seems as if it could move toward either a more hopeful or a more menacing future in

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regard to the human condition. First, though, we will discuss the importance and limitations of volunteerism as a kind of human rights work.

Volunteering to Fulfill Human Rights When learning about a social problem, many of us—​for obvious reasons—​ feel the need to do something about it. For many, volunteering in one’s community is the best place to start. Indeed, volunteer-​based nonprofit organizations do absolutely crucial human rights work in every city, town, and rural outpost throughout the United States. In my own town, for instance, a coalition of church groups works to run a program that provides free dinners each night for homeless and low-​income residents. Volunteers, moreover, help run the local food bank, which provides donated food to low-​income and jobless community members who might otherwise go without. And it’s a local nonprofit organization in my hometown that, again running largely on volunteer power, works to provide support to victims of rape and sexual assault. Through the work of volunteers—​many of them college students—​community organizations also help tutor students from low-​income households. All of this work is clearly being done in order to help fulfill basic human rights in my community. Undoubtedly my town, and the United States as a whole, would be a much colder, much more cruel place without people’s voluntary efforts to promote and fulfill the human rights of others. Volunteerism is a celebrated aspect of U.S.  culture. Even conservative activists and politicians who are working to end or scale back government programs that feed, house, and educate the poor don’t really want to see these fundamental human rights go unfilled. They just believe that this shouldn’t be the work of the government and that it shouldn’t consume tax dollars. Instead, they argue, this work should be the province of churches and other community groups. The question, of course, is whether or not volunteerism is sufficient. The Declaration of Human Rights was written from the perspective that it most certainly is not. The scale is so vast that governments are the only social institutions with the capacity to deliver food support, housing, medicine, and education to those who would otherwise go without. Moreover, as we have seen, achieving human rights often means challenging vested interests that privilege some while disadvantaging others. In democratic societies, governments can play a necessary role as arbiters between conflicting interests and enforcers of new laws that dismantle old oppressions. To talk about the essential role of governments in promoting human rights is not to belittle or dismiss volunteerism in any way. By providing desperately needed resources and services, volunteers can work to improve the lives of real individuals while contributing more broadly to their communities as a whole. This gives volunteers a chance to make new connections and bridge divides across race and class while gaining greater insight about the city or town where they live. Additionally, volunteering provides a way

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Volunteerism, Activism, and Human Rights  113 to live up to our personal or religious beliefs about what it means to be a good person, allowing us to earn both self-​respect and the respect of others. Nonetheless, ultimately volunteerism is not enough. Those who work directly with the poor through religious or community groups will often tell you as much themselves. Achieving the full range of human rights in U.S.  society will mean changing what governments do. Governments are, however, usually reluctant to make big changes, and are instead typically committed to a status quo that serves the interests of the powerful and privileged. For this reason, work to build grassroots pressure to change government policy is also an important form of human rights work in the United States.

Taking Political Action to Promote Human Rights The ability to cast a vote in elections and the ability to freely express one’s political views are fundamental human rights. However, as we saw in Chapter 3, given the huge amounts of money that are necessary to influence politics in the United States, the actual impact of these rights is often quite limited in terms of shaping what our government does and does not do. For this reason, many human rights proponents—​whether they call themselves this or not—​take up activism by working to influence politics outside the traditional arenas of voting and campaign finance. The major ways activists work to create change is through legal strategies, cultural strategies, and nonviolent protest. While social movement campaigns typically employ all three strategies simultaneously, they often come to rely on one method more than others, depending upon the resources they have available and the political environment in which they operate. The contemporary Gay and Lesbian Movement, for instance, has made use of all three strategies. Initially in many American cities, the movement often engaged in high-​profile and disruptive tactics in an attempt to challenge heterosexist policies that targeted or excluded people who do not abide by conventional gender norms (Bernstein 1997). More recently, the movement has had tremendous success utilizing a legal strategy of social change to challenge laws banning same sex marriages as unconstitutional. While gay and lesbian activists began filing lawsuits in the 1970s to gain the right to marry, the approach did not begin to make waves until the 1990s when the Hawaiian State Supreme Court ruled that a ban on same-​sex unions was unconstitutional (Stolberg 2013). And while citizens in Hawaii amended their constitution through a referendum to outlaw same sex marriage, a tactic that would be used by foes of same-​sex marriage in other states, ultimately the legal strategies used by the Gay and Lesbian Movement proved very successful. In 2003, the movement won a watershed legal victory when the Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay and lesbian advocates, declaring that laws barring same-​sex marriage created second-​class citizens, something forbidden by the state constitution (Stolberg 2013). Other legal

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challenges were filed against a California constitutional amendment barring same-​sex marriage and against a federal law—​the 1993 Defense of Marriage Act—​that did the same. Both challenges were ultimately victorious and, establishing a powerful legal precedent for gay and lesbian rights, were eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013. Ultimately, the Supreme Court acted in 2015 to outlaw all state laws prohibiting same-​sex marriage, effectively legalizing these unions across the United States. It is, of course, an oversimplification to credit the Gay and Lesbian Movement’s legal advocacy for its recent success because social movements are diverse and are made up of many organizations that stress different kinds of tactics, but the Gay and Lesbian Movement has placed a major emphasis on achieving human rights by challenging unjust laws, and has achieved major victories by doing so. Since the 1960s, and the beginnings of what is referred to as the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement, feminist activists have also utilized a range of tactics, including the use of lawsuits challenging discriminatory laws and efforts to mount disruptive protests. But the Women’s Movement has possibly been most successful through a cultural strategy of social change by transforming women’s understandings about themselves and their world. In the 1960s and 1970s, women across America formed consciousness-​ raising groups, local women’s support networks, and feminist bookstores (Burns 1990). This was an opportunity for women to begin talking with one another to understand the commonality of their experiences—​that, for instance, being subjected to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and job discrimination wasn’t the result of individual decisions. Rather, these were shared experiences common to countless numbers of women and were ultimately the consequence of living in a sexist society. Consciousness-​raising groups and grassroots women’s organizations aimed to make the personal political by proposing that a different kind of society and a different kind of life was possible. Women were thus empowered to stand up against sexism in their personal spheres, whether it was in the family or the workplace, and to raise children with different kinds of expectations and much broader views about what women can achieve. Like the Women’s and the Gay and Lesbian Movements, black Americans have long utilized both legal and cultural strategies to promote rights, pioneered by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This civil rights organization was founded in 1909 in order to end segregation and the common practice of lynching and other forms of white mob violence directed against black communities. The legal strategies of the NAACP were pivotal in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement, especially in the landmark 1954 victory of Brown vs. Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the black litigants challenging school segregation. It was, however, the use of disruptive nonviolence that Civil Rights Movement organizations made previous legal and political victories real in the lives of black Americans. Building from the successful use of nonviolence in South Africa and India, the goal of this strategy was to provoke a crisis in U.S. society that would

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Volunteerism, Activism, and Human Rights  115 compel reluctant white federal lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to intervene in the politics of Southern states in order to force them to recognize the basic civil and political rights of African Americans (McAdam 1983). For instance, black Civil Rights Movement leaders strategically chose to mount community-​wide protests in Birmingham, Alabama, knowing that the Chief of Police Bull Connor would react brutally to peaceful protesters (Burns 1990). The resulting protests and the violence committed by authorities paralyzed the city of Birmingham and forced local business owners and politicians to cede to some of the movement’s demands. More significantly, the images of fire hoses and police dogs being used against peaceful protesters, including children, were spread across the world and compelled the otherwise recalcitrant Kennedy and Johnson presidential administrations to press for and ultimately sign into law the Civil Rights Act, which outlaws racial discrimination. These three examples show that legal, cultural, and nonviolence strategies are all used by social movement organizations working to advance human rights in the United States, and that individual movements will come to stress one of these strategies over others as they assess what resources they have available (like money, access to lawyers, people willing to protest and go to jail, etc.) and what the political environment looks like in their particular situation (such as the presence of sympathetic judges, vulnerable politicians and other elites, or the extent of police repression). Regardless of the particular strategies in question, however, the larger point is that social movement activism was necessary to win fundamental human rights for gays and lesbians, women, and black Americans in U.S. society. Historically, gains in human rights have not come about because people in power simply agreed that it was the right thing to do. Gains were made because people fought for them, often times at great personal sacrifice. This is an important lesson to remember as we evaluate U.S.  society from a human rights perspective today. In the course of this book, we have measured our nation in terms of the goals and ideals set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and we have found that it is lacking in many important ways. As a nation, we can do better in terms of human rights. But doing better won’t be easy. Even if we all ultimately suffer in the long term when human rights are violated or are otherwise left unfilled, at least in the short term some individuals do benefit. White people benefit from historic and contemporary racism. Men benefit from sexism. The very wealthy benefit, at least initially, when their riches are not taxed at high enough rates to fund governmental programs to provide wellbeing rights to the poor, and when large businesses are not compelled to pay wages to workers that would allow them to purchase things like adequate nutrition and healthcare for their families. Working to promote human rights now and in the future will mean challenging this system of privileges and benefits that have been entrenched within our social structure. For those who take up this work, it will mean filing lawsuits, engaging in arguments and working to change people’s

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attitudes, and even protesting and—​for some—​risking arrest or suffering other costs. It will mean forging ahead even when people say, “I agree with you, but now’s not the time.” It will mean making waves and being noisy even when some advise that, “You’re right, but please stop making such a ruckus.” This is what King’s (1963) famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is about: when sympathetic white religious leaders publicly encouraged him to be patient and forgo disruptive tactics. King famously answered that, “history is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.” Waiting for privileged groups to negotiate about their unearned rewards effectively means waiting forever—​that is, until activists are able and willing, according to King, “to create a situation so crisis-​packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” King’s words echo those of another human rights hero from America’s past, the former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglas (1857), who said that “if there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”

Human Rights, Turbulent Times, and our Uncertain Future Steven Pinker (2012), an evolutionary psychologist by training, likes to think about the big picture in terms of human history. And in that big picture, he writes, people have been treating each other much, much better, thanks in part to broad cultural changes he calls the “rights revolution.” It is instructive to remember, according to Pinker, that before the turn of the last century, lynchings and white mob violence against black Americans were far from infrequent. Additionally, women and children enjoyed few legal rights and could be abused by husbands and fathers without consequence. Finally, it is worth remembering that not so long ago LGBTQ Americans could be victimized by groups of thugs that acted with impunity, or could be harassed and thrown into prisons or psychiatric wards by police. Thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the Gay and Lesbian Movement—​all bound up in a larger rights revolution—​the United States has come a long way. This, perhaps, is what Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he famously said in 1965 that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This is a compelling image, and one that is rooted in Dr. King’s spiritual worldview. But as social scientists we must recognize that there is nothing inevitable about social progress toward the increasing fulfillment of human rights. Unfortunately, human rights reversals are equally possible on the road ahead. Indeed, we live in an incredibly turbulent time right now and there are several forces at work that may lead to declines in human rights and wellbeing in the United States and around the world. One important force at work is the coronavirus. At the point of this writing, it has infected at least five million Americans. While the virus

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Volunteerism, Activism, and Human Rights  117 has killed at least 220,000 people in our country, the number of lives it has wrecked is even greater. A large number of survivors of the virus, whose lungs, kidneys, brains, and hearts have been damaged by the disease, will live profoundly different lives. But beyond the impact of COVID-​ 19 on individual bodies, the impact of the pandemic on society has also been devastating. While the very richest Americans have so far seen their fortunes increase (Collins 2020), tens of millions of working Americans have been thrown out of their jobs. Levels of unemployment are greater than any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s. If our government fails to take extraordinary action, high rates of unemployment and poverty will likely become entrenched in the United States for a long time to come, severely dampening our nation’s fulfillment of human rights for its citizens. But this bleak outcome is not written in stone. It was, after all, in the midst of the Great Depression that Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared his commitment to achieving the four freedoms—​freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—​which helped inspire the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was also during this period that Roosevelt’s vision of a New Deal was developed, which created the bedrock for today’s safety net. Perhaps, as Americans rebuild from the impacts of the coronavirus, our nation will institute an equally bold vision that will reduce inequality and achieve a greater fulfillment of human rights. Another force at work in the world that poses significant challenges to the fulfillment of human rights, as discussed in Chapter 7, is climate change. There is no getting around the fact that it will create profound hardships and terrible consequences for a large number of people around the world in the coming years. Even so, the development of a revamped economy powered by renewable energy gives us a new opportunity—​perhaps the best opportunity we’ll ever get—​to make sure that it works equally well for everyone and leaves no one behind (Klein 2014). We should also mention that the increasing automation of work may further limit or even reverse human rights around the world in the years to come. As technology advances and becomes more affordable, employers have a strong fiscal incentive to replace human labor with computers and other machinery. If this trend accelerates in the near future, as it is almost certain to do, it creates the potential that more and more of our fellow countrymen and women will become “surplus Americans,” unneeded by the economy and, without regular paychecks, deprived of their human rights (Derber and Magras 2012). Again, this outcome isn’t predetermined. In fact, automating work could potentially lead to greater human wellbeing and liberation if it means that less of our lives are spent in drudgery, doing jobs that no one really likes. But achieving human rights in a future era of reduced work will mean finding novel ways of sharing the jobs that remain by reducing work hours and increasing the compensation employees receive for their labor. Lawmakers will need to proactively guide such a process, without which life will become much more bleak for those left out.

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With all the disruption and upheaval that exists in the world, and with all that’s to come in future years, there is an additional risk that authoritarian populist leaders will rise to power who frequently blame immigrants, people of color, gay and lesbian people, and poor people for economic problems and “social decline” (Mason 2013). These leaders, who have recently emerged across the world, may promise quick fixes to a nation’s problems by taking a “tough” approach to any dissent. Such leaders can make further appeals to ethnonationalism by advocating a return to previous eras when male privilege and the dominance of select racial or religious groups was the norm (Robinson and Barrera 2012). Needless to say, the emergence of these sorts of leaders and political movements could mean a decline in human rights such as racial equality, freedom of expression and of belief, the ability to seek asylum in other nations, and democracy itself. But nations around the world have pushed back and recovered from authoritarian regimes in the past, deepening and strengthening democratic norms in the process. What will happen next in our particular era is not yet clear. The main theme here is that, despite all these very worrying trends, the future remains unwritten. And as social actors ourselves, we may want to have a say in how that future turns out. In the beginning of this text, we introduced the idea of human rights as both a morally grounded means of assessing wellbeing in societies while also being a political project, in the sense that human rights are a widely shared set of aspirations toward which we might collectively strive in order to improve the human condition. This book has argued that the United States, when measured against human rights standards, fails to live up to our shared ideals about what people deserve and should be protected from in life. This book has also offered a number of different policy alternatives through which rights could be increasingly fulfilled. But the book has stressed that these policies won’t enact themselves. Our contemporary historical moment offers both peril and potential in terms of human wellbeing. The choices we make today and the extent to which we advocate and work for human rights will help to shape tomorrow.

Discussion Questions 1. According to this chapter, what is the importance of volunteerism in terms of the fulfillment of human rights in the United States? What are the limitations of volunteerism as a means of satisfying rights? 2. Thinking back to a policy recommendation discussed in a previous chapter that would promote human rights in the United States, what social movement strategy discussed in this chapter—​stressing either legal campaigns, efforts to change attitudes and values, or nonviolence—​do you think would be the most effective way to advance it? 3. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for the future advancement of human rights in the United States? Where do you see the biggest risks in terms of human rights reversals? Please explain your answer.

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Volunteerism, Activism, and Human Rights  119 4. This book closed by stating that human rights are necessarily political. What do you think this means? Does thinking about human rights work as a kind of politics change how you feel about them? Why or why not?

References Bernstein, Mary. 1997. “Celebration or Suppression:The Strategic Uses of Identity by the Gay and Lesbian Movements.” American Journal of Sociology 103: 531–​565. Burns, Stewart. 1990. Social Movements of the 1960s: Searching for Democracy. New York: Twayne. Collins, Chuck. 2020.“Billionaires are Getting Even Richer from the Coronavirus.” CNN, May  11. Retrieved August 5, 2020 from www.cnn.com/​2020/​04/​28/​perspectives/​ inequality-​coronavirus-​billionaires/​index.html. Derber, Charles and Yale Magrass. 2012. The Surplus American: How the 1% is Making Us Redundant. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Douglas, Frederick. 1857. “West Indian Emancipation.” Speech delivered at Canandaigua, New  York, August 3.  Retrieved September 3, 2013 from www.lib.rochester.edu/​ index.cfm?PAGE=4398. Dyson, Michael E. 2001. I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: The Free Press. King, Martin Luther. 1963. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” New  York Times, March 28. Retrieved September 3, 2013 from www.nytimes.com/​2013/​03/​28/​us/​maine-​ lawyer-​credited-​in-​fight-​for-​gay-​marriage.html?pagewanted=all. King, Martin Luther. 1965.“Our God is Marching On.” Speech delivered in Montgomery, Alabama on March 25. Retrieved September 3, 2013 from http://​mlk-​kpp01.stanford.edu/​index.php/​kingpapers/​article/​our_​god_​is_​marching_​on. King, Martin Luther. 1967. Beyond Vietnam. Speech delivered at New  York City’s Riverside Church on April 4. Retrieved September 3, 2013 www.democracynow. org/​2013/​1/​21/​dr_​martin_​luther_​king_​in_​1967. Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New  York: Simon & Schuster. Mason, Paul. 2013. Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere. New York: Verso. McAdam, Douglas. 1983. “Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency.” American Sociological Review 48(6): 735–​754. Pinker, Steven. 2012. The Better Angels of Our Nature:Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Penguin. Robinson, William I. and Mario Barrera. 2012. “Global Capitalism and Twenty-​First Century Fascism: A U.S. Case Study.” Race and Class 53: 4–​29. Stolberg, Sheryl G. 2013. “In Fight for Gay Marriage, ‘She’s our Thurgood Marshall.’ ” New  York Times, March 27. Retrieved September 3, 2013 from www.nytimes. com/ ​ 2 013/ ​ 0 3/ ​ 2 8/ ​ u s/ ​ m ainelawyer- ​ c redited-​ i n-​ f ight-​ f or-​ g ay-​ m ar r iage. html?pagewanted=all.

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absolute measure of poverty: defined as the inability to access the basic conditions that make human life possible activism: participation in a social movement or other efforts to promote social change outside elections and political campaigns American Civil Liberties Union: the ACLU has been one of the most effective organizations dedicated, since 1920, to defending and promoting civil and political rights in America. Its website is: www.aclu.org Amnesty International: one of the largest and most prominent international human rights organizations. Founded in 1961, it has focused primarily on protecting civil and political rights from government abuse. Its website is: www.amnesty.org asylum: the ability to seek refuge in another country when one faces risks of persecution and violence in one’s homeland authoritarian populist: an anti-​establishment leader or candidate for office who promises to deal with crises by getting “tough” on dissent, and who frequently blames racial, religious, or sexual minorities for economic problems facing the country austerity: cuts to or limitations on the amount of public spending automation of work: the introduction of robotics or other technologies to reduce labor costs, resulting in fewer jobs at the same levels of production carbon budget: this is the ever-​diminishing amount of fossil fuel emissions human societies can emit into the atmosphere without producing extremely dangerous levels of climatic warming careers of social problems: the idea, advocated by Spector and Kitsuse (1977) that social problems can be studied by uncovering their origin, their amplification in the news media, and their eventual demise civil disobedience: the intentional violation of unjust laws in order to promote social change Civil Rights Movement: the powerful American social movement of the 1950s and 1960s that overturned the legal and political exclusion of African Americans common in the Jim Crow era, but had less success in challenging poverty and the economic exclusion of people of color civil society: those elements of public life that take place outside the institutions of government and business. Important civil society

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Glossary  121 institutions include professional and civic organizations along with nonprofit advocacy groups. claims-​making: the process of calling attention to some aspect of the world and labeling it a problem class mobility: the extent to which children born to wealthy, middle-​class, or poor parents shift to a different class as adults. While class mobility does exist in the United States, most children born into poor families earn lower incomes as adults. climate change: also called global warming. While the Earth’s climate has always changed over time, this phrase today refers to the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere due to carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases produced by humans. climate justice movement: a social movement that seeks to reduce social inequalities as it strives for climate solutions colonialism: an inequitable relationship between peoples, maintained through the use or threat of military violence, in which one territory or society is administered for the benefit of another colorblind racism: refers to statements that approve of the abolition of overt forms of racism but also overlook the ways in which racism has been structured into our economy and society consciousness-​raising groups: a tactic used in the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement to help women understand the commonality of their experiences and the shared nature of their oppression critical minerals: specific materials that are essential to technology and infrastructure used in the U.S.  economy, but that mostly come from outside the United States cultural strategy of social change: efforts to secure human rights by working to change people’s attitudes and understandings of the world Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): an Obama-​ era policy that has been upheld by the Supreme Court, which grants a protected status from deportation to qualifying immigrants brought to the United States as children deindustrialization: the process, beginning in the late 1970s, by which U.S. corporations shifted manufacturing overseas Dreamers: a nickname for young people living in the United States who lack citizenship, but who have lived in the United States for many years, graduated from American schools, and are “American” in almost every other way ecosystem: the interconnected web of plants and animals upon which all life, including human life, depends. Damage to ecosystems therefore also poses risks to human wellbeing. environmental injustice: a kind of inequality in which low-​income and black or brown communities face greater health risks from environmental hazards, such as polluting facilities Equal Rights Amendment: a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting discriminate based on sex. The proposed

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amendment achieved support from Congress in 1972, but was not ratified by 38 states until 2020. Due to this time lag, it remains to be seen whether the amendment will be enacted. ethnonationalism: an effort to protect the dominance of a religious or racial group, which may include excluding, expelling, or marginalizing those deemed “others” Fair Trade: a third-​party certification that ensures that a product was made under conditions that promoted and protected workers’ wellbeing feminist: a person who works to protect and advance human rights for women food desert: a community without access to fresh fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious food gender socialization: the process by which individuals in our society, starting at birth but continuing throughout life, are taught how to be “normal” boys, girls, women and men global race to the bottom: the downward pressure on wages, taxes, and environmental regulations due to the mobility of multinational corporations Global South: a term that does not refer exclusively to nations in the Earth’s southern hemisphere, but to nations that were colonized by European powers. This term is also used to refer to what used to be called the “Third World” and is still sometimes termed the “developing world” globalization: while the world economy is very old, this concept refers to the recent intensification of global economic production that began in the 1970s Green New Deal: a proposed federal works program that would build mass-​ transit infrastructure and renewable energy installations in the United States, while also creating new job opportunities and reducing poverty harm-​reduction approach: an alternative to the “war on drugs,” based on the idea that decriminalization can lead to more effective ways to limit the harm caused by drug addiction Head Start: a federal program, founded in 1965, to promote early childhood education for families that would otherwise not be able to afford preschool hetero-​patriarchy: a society in which straight men have disproportionately more power and material rewards compared with women and LGBTQ persons, and one in which activities and traits associated with heterosexuality and masculinity are awarded more value Human Rights Watch: a large and highly respected advocacy organization that monitors and studies human rights abuses around the world, including those happening in the United States. Its website is www. hrw.org ideology: a worldview that has political implications and effects. According to some Marxist and other critical sociologists, the ability to shape

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Glossary  123 ideology is an important form of power that can be used to maintain or extend inequality. indignity: social pain caused when one is deprived of conditions that constitute full personhood in a particular society insecurity: concern about one’s ability to regularly secure the material conditions—​food, shelter, and clean water—​that make life possible Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): an international organization that convenes the world’s most prestigious climate scientists to study global warming and predict its future impacts on the environment and human societies intersectional lens: a method of analysis in the social sciences that focuses on the cross-​ cutting and frequently compounding intersection of experiences based on race, gender, and class institutional corruption: refers to the ways in which campaign contributions influence a politician’s behavior International Monetary Fund (IMF): a multilateral organization created in 1944 to promote global financial stability, frequently requiring nations to enact policies of austerity in order to receive loans Jim Crow segregation: legal policies that separate and exclude people based on perceptions of race legal strategy of social change: efforts to secure human rights by filing lawsuits in order to abolish discriminatory laws living wage: a wage that is sufficient to provide for a life with dignity, commensurate with the cost of living in different locations mandatory minimum: laws that require a predetermined time behind bars for convictions of particular crimes, regardless of extenuating circumstances moral relativism: the position that, because values differ depending on cultural and historical context, there is no definitive answer to questions about what is good and just motherhood penalty: the real financial losses women on average experience in the form of reduced pay in the workplace due to having children, compared with women without children and men with or without children National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): an interracial civil rights organization formed in the United States in 1909 to advance justice for African Americans nationalism: an effort to advance one nation at the cost of another, viewing the world as a zero-​sum game of winners and losers in which nations must compete, rather than viewing global society as a cooperative endeavor from which all can benefit New Deal: a series of laws passed between 1933 and 1939 that broadened access to healthcare, bolstered security for disabled and retired Americans, and created safety-​net programs

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nonprofit organizations: a broad range of groups, from charities to environmental organizations to sports clubs, that are funded primarily through donations nonviolence: the strategic use of civil disobedience, as famously articulated and practiced by such leaders as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., exercised to create a constructive tension that compels power-​ holders to enter into negotiations with challengers objectification: the portrayal of human beings as objects that exist for others’ gratification Paris Agreement: the international document drafted in 2015 through which the nations of the world committed to reduce their carbon emissions to levels that would keep global warming below 2ºC beyond preindustrial average temperatures partisan divide: the difference in the ways individuals view and interpret the world based on membership in either the Republican or Democratic parties personal corruption: refers to the granting of personal gifts or rewards to influence a politician’s behavior personal, or individual, racism: individual behaviors that advantage and disadvantage others based on perceptions of race pink-​collar jobs: occupational categories that have been associated with “women’s work,” and which are typically less well paid compared with jobs with comparable skill and educational requirements in more male-​dominated  fields pluralism: the belief that no one group holds disproportionate influence in a political system, but rather that power is shared between shifting coalitions of different political groups political action committees (PACS): organizations that exist to raise and spend money to elect or defeat political candidates. They offer wealthy persons a way to spend money on elections beyond the federal caps on individual donations. power: a concept referring both to a group’s collective ability to achieve shared goals and a relationship of domination between different groups race: a social construction that infers differences between people based upon skin color or other physical traits racism: a social process that advantages and disadvantages people based upon perceptions of the their race rape: the sexualized penetration of any person’s body without consent rape myths: common but mistaken beliefs about rape—​for instance, that it only occurs when accompanied by force or threat of force, or that it is most frequently committed by strangers relative measure of poverty: defined as the inability to afford a life that meets basic standards of wellbeing in a particular society Second Wave (of the Women’s Movement): the American Women’s Movement of the 1960s and 1970s that fought for human rights regardless of gender or sex

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Glossary  125 sexism: social processes that advantage some and disadvantage others based on their gender or sex sexual assault: unwanted sexual touching, including rape Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): formerly known as the Food Stamp Program in its pilot form (1939–​1943); was created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” The aim of both programs has been to eliminate hunger and malnutrition in the United States. social constructionism: the sociological perspective that humans do not act on the world itself, but rather based on interpretations of that world social determinants of health: the social conditions—​such as access to healthcare, nutritional quality of diet, neighborhood violence, exposure to toxins, and the likelihood of being injured at work—​that influence rates of health, illness, and longevity social movement: a group of individuals and organizations working to promote social change outside political campaigns and elections social problems: a concept that is defined differently by different sociological perspectives. The perspective used in this book is that a social problem occurs when a group’s human rights are violated or left unfilled social structure: the durable organization of society, typically marked by inequalities in power and resources between groups, that is reproduced over time social welfare group (501(c)4): an organization that, in the new political landscape created by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. the FEC, can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections and is not required to publicly disclose the names of its contributors stateless: a condition of being effectively denied a nationality. Without the rights and protections that come with citizenship, a person is vulnerable to poverty, violence, and other human rights violations systemic racism: the embedded nature of racism in U.S.  economic, political, and educational institutions over the past several hundred years, which continues to create racist outcomes today, regardless of intent toxic masculinity: a kind of hypermasculinity, in which men aggressively display their toughness, their sexual prowess, and their commitment to heterosexual norms toxic stress: high levels of stress caused by trauma that has a measurable impact on the human body—​for instance, by increasing the risk of high blood pressure and impacting the immune system underdevelopment: the result of colonization or contemporary inequitable relationships between nations that can result in the loss of natural resource wealth, environmental degradation, and increased poverty undocumented immigrant: a person who has crossed a border into another country without the proper legal authorization. This is a preferred term, rather than the phrase “illegal immigrant.”

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unequal exchange: inequitable relationships of trade between nations in the Global South and Global North Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a statement adopted by the United Nations in 1948 that sought to “establish a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” The document has inspired both grassroots and international political movements, while also providing a foundation for several international treaties. urban heat island: areas in cities with a large amount of concrete and pavement that are measurably warmer than nearby areas with more trees and green spaces U.S. Census Bureau: the U.S.  agency created to gather and tabulate demographic data about the U.S. population.The agency developed and institutionalized a measure of poverty that has been consequential for both sociological practice and U.S. political life. volunteerism: efforts to satisfy human needs and improve communities through unpaid work voter participation rate: the percentage of the number of voters in an election, in relation to the total voting-​age population wealth: total assets owned minus debts—​often a better indicator of economic inequality than income white privilege: unearned rewards that people socially classified as “white” receive due to the historic legacy and continued operation of racism in America World Bank: a multilateral organization founded in 1944 that provides loans to finance development projects in the Global South. These loans, however, frequently benefit multinational corporations much more than they do local community members. The president of the World Bank has always been an American.

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Appendix The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people. Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law. Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations. Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom. Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-​ operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge. Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

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128  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-​self-​governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6 Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7 All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8 Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

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Article 9 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10 Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11 1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. 2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14 1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. 2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-​political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15 1. Everyone has the right to a nationality. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

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Article 16 1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. 2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. 3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17 1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18 Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. 2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21 1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. 2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. 3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

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Article 22 Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-​operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23 1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. 2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. 3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. 4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24 Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26 1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. 2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and

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friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. 3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27 1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28 Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29 1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. 2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. 3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30 Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and bold indicate tables on the corresponding pages. absolute measure of poverty 15 activism, human rights 113–​116 African Americans 41, 48, 49, 111, 114–​115, 116 Alexander, M. 45, 47, 48 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 44 American dream 13–​14 American Enterprise Institute 21 Americans for Tax Reform 21 Amnesty International 8 Anti-​Drug Abuse Act of 1986 45–​46 asylum 89–​93 austerity 21 authoritarian populist leaders 118 automation of work 17 Bezos, J. 21 #BlackLivesMatter movement 48–​49 Blackstone 31 Bonilla-​Silva,  E.  48 Brown vs. Board of Education 114 Buffett, W.  21, 24 Butler, P. 47–​48 carbon budget 77–​79, 78 careers of social problems 4 Carnegie, A. 24 Carter, J. 55 Castro, J. 72 cell phones 101–​102 Citizens United vs. FEC 32, 36 civil disobedience 49 Civilian Conservation Corps 17–​18 Civil Rights Act of 1964 52, 115 Civil Rights Movement 41, 48, 49, 111, 114–​115, 116

civil society 8 claims-​making  4–​5 class mobility 14 climate change 76–​77; carbon budget and 77–​79, 78; inequality and human rights impacts of 80–​82, 81; taking action on 82–​85 climate justice movement 73 Clinton, H. 34 colorblind racism 48 Connor, B. 115 consciousness-​raising groups  114 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 55 COVID-​19 pandemic 1, 13, 64–​65, 116–​117 critical minerals 101–​102, 104, 104 cultural strategy of social change 114 dark money 33 Defense of Marriage Act 114 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) 93 deindustrialization 104 dignity see wellbeing Domhoff, W.  10 Douglas, F. 116 “Dreamers” 93 drug enforcement 43–​47 ecosystems 5, 77 environmental justice 69 Equal Rights Amendment 54–​55 ethnonationalism 94–​96 expendability and inequalities in health 70

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134 Index Fair Trade  107 family, right to 93–​94 Federal Housing Administration (FHA) 42 feminism 52, 114 first-​generation rights  13 Flint, Michigan 71–​72 Floyd, G. 40, 48–​49 food banks 72 food deserts 68 Food Stamp Act 17 Forbes 21 Foxconn 102 freedom of belief 13 freedom of speech 13, 31–​32 Fritsvold, E. 44, 45

society and 8; climate change impacts on 80–​82, 81; efforts to promote global 106–​108; in the global economy 103–​106, 104; hetero-​patriarchy and 53–​57; immigration policy that upholds 96–​97; income and wealth in the U.S. in context of 18–​23, 19–​20, 19–​20; moral relativism and 6; racism, and drug enforcement 43–​47; taking political action to promote 113–​116; in turbulent times 116–​118; violence, hetero-​patriarchy, and 57–​60; volunteering to fulfill 112–​113; working to fulfill women’s and LGBTQ rights as 60–​61 Human Rights Watch 91, 101

Galeano, E. 103 Gates, B. 21 gender socializations 53 Gilens, M. 30 Gini index 18 global economy: cell phones in 101–​102; critical minerals in 101–​102, 104, 104; efforts to promote global human rights and 106–​108; human rights in 103–​106, 104 globalization 17 Global North 104, 106 global race to the bottom 105 Global South 103–​104, 106 global warming 76–​77; see also climate change Goddard, M. 59–​60 Gonzalez, R. G. 88 Great Depression 17–​18, 117 Green New Deal 18

ideology 21 immigration policy 88–​89; asylum and 89–​93; ethnonationalism and 94–​96; right to a nationality and 93; right to family and 93–​94; that upholds human rights 96–​97 income: concentrations of wealth and 18–​23, 19–​20, 19–​20; pink-​collar jobs and 54; poverty and 15–​16 institutional corruption 34 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 80 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 106 intersectional lens 64

Hanna-​Attisha,  M.  71 Hansen, J. 77 harm-​reduction approach  48 Head Start program 17 health: expendability and inequalities in 70; explaining differences in U.S. life, death, and 65–​69; getting involved to achieve rights to 72–​73; race and 64–​65; social determinants of 64–​65; toxic lead in Flint, Michigan, water and 71–​72 Heritage Society 21 hetero-​patriarchy: defined 52–​53; human rights and 53–​57; violence, human rights, and 57–​60 human rights 1–​2; in approach to social problems 6–​10; asylum and 89–​93; civil

Jensen, R. 44–​45 Jim Crow segregation 41, 111 Johnson, L. 115 Kahl, K. 45 Kennedy, J. F. 115 King, M. L., Jr. 49, 111, 116 lead contamination in water 71–​72 legal strategy of social change 113 Lessig, L. 34, 36 LGBTQ community 52–​53; cultural acceptance of 57; discrimination against 56–​57; legal strategy of social change and 113–​114; violence against 57–​59; working to fulfill human rights of 60–​61 living wage 24–​25 mandatory minimum drug sentences 47 Martin, T.  48 Marx, K. 24, 103 McIntosh, P. 44

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Index  135 Mohamed, R. 44, 45 moral relativism 6 motherhood penalty 53–​54 MSF 91 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 114 nationalism 106 nationality, right to 93 New Deal 18, 42, 117 New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The 45 news reporting of social problems 5–​6 nonprofit organizations 112 Obama, B. 93 objectification 56 Open Veins of Latin America,The 103 Page, B. 30 Paris Agreement 78–​79 partisan divide 3 Paul, A. 54 personal corruption 34 personal/​individual racism  44 pink-​collar jobs  54 Pinker, S. 116 pluralism 32 political action committees (PCA) 33 political action to promote human rights 113–​116 politics: freedom of speech and 31–​32; money spent in 32–​36, 33; striking a balance between political rights in U.S. society and 36–​37; voter participation rates and 30–​31 pollution 69 poverty: absolute measure of 15; relative measure of 15; toxic stress and 67; U.S. Census Bureau measurement of 15–​16 power 10 property: right to 22–​23; striking a balance between wellbeing and 23–​26 race 41; health and 64–​65; wealth and 43 racial justice 47–​49 racism 40–​41; colorblind 48; historical policies of explicit 41–​42, 43; human rights, drug enforcement, and 43–​47; personal/​individual 44; systemic 43 rape 57–​60 relative measure of poverty 15 riots 48–​49 Roosevelt, E. 2 Roosevelt, F. D. 2, 13, 117

second-​generation rights  13 Second Wave of the Women’s Movement 54, 55 sexism 54; objectification and 56 sexual assault 57–​60 social change 113–​114 social constructionism 3–​6 social determinants of health 64–​65 social movements 40–​41, 48–​49 social problems: careers of 4; claims-​ making of 4–​5; human rights approach to 6–​10; news reporting of 5–​6; social construction of 2–​6 social structure 21 social welfare groups 33 stateless people 93 stress, toxic 67 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) 17, 67 systemic racism 43 Thomas Theorem 3, 4, 41 toxic masculinity 58 toxic stress 67 Trump, D. 34, 79, 90, 91–​92, 93 Turner, B. 6 Tyndall, J. 77 Uline 31 underdevelopment 104–​105 undocumented immigrants 92 unequal exchange 105–​106 United States, the: achieving wellbeing for all in 17–​18; the American Dream in 13–​14; asylum in 89–​93; Bill of Rights 13; Bureau of Labor Statistics 16, 54; Census Bureau 15–​16; concentrations of income and wealth in 18–​23, 19–​20, 19–​20; Department of Housing and Urban Development 72; election spending in 31–​32; ethnonationalism in 94–​96; explaining differences in life, death, and health in 65–​69; Federal Reserve 13; food deserts in 68; free speech in 31–​32; historical policies of racism in 41–​42, 43; how money in politics undermines democratic rights in 33–​36; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 88; immigration policy in 88–​97; low voter participation rates in 30–​31; New Deal in 18, 42, 117; promoting racial justice in 47–​49; running for political office in

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136 Index 32–​33, 33; social movements in 40–​41; volunteerism in 112–​113 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 2, 7–​10, 13, 69, 77; on asylum 89, 93; on property rights 22–​23; on racial discrimination 40; on right to family 93–​94; on right to health 65; on right to nationality 93; on voting rights 30 urban heat islands 82 violence, hetero-​patriarchy, and human rights 57–​60 Vitullo, L. 59 volunteerism 111–​112; to fulfill human rights 112–​113 voter participation rates 30–​31 Wal-​Mart  21 Walton, S. 21 wealth 19–​23, 20; race and 43

wellbeing: achievement for all in U.S. society 17–​18; compromised 14–​17; and dignity as the American dream 13–​14; striking a balance between property ownership and 23–​26 white privilege 44–​45 women 52–​53; Equal Rights Amendment and 54–​55; gender socializations and 53; motherhood penalty and 53–​54; objectification of 56; pink-​collar jobs and 54; Second Wave of the Women’s Movement and 54, 55; violence against 57–​60; working to fulfill human rights of 60–​61 Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program 67 Women’s Movement 114 work, right to 16 Works Progress Administration 17 World Bank 106