Tatter - Episodes Tagged with “Race”

Episode 62: Hard Knocks (w/ Seth Masket)

Michael Sargent — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:00:00 -0500

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
As Democrats were reminded (the hard way) in 2016, elections don't always turn out as we expect them to. When a political party loses an election, especially if it does more poorly than expected, it often has tough, self-reflective conversations about what happened. In so doing, parties try to learn lessons from their losses. University of Denver political scientist has written about these issues in his new book, Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020.

LINKS
--Seth Masket's DU profile
--Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020 (Amazon)
--"Amid tears and anger, House Democrats promise 'deep dive' on election losses," by Luke Broadwater and Nicholas Fandos (New York Times, 2020, Nov. 5)
--"Susan Collins was never going to lose," by Robert Messenger (New York Times, 2020, Nov. 6)
--Fair Fight (Voting Rights Organization founded by Stacey Abrams)

Special Guest: Seth Masket.

Episode 60: Pass the Torch (w/ Jean Rhodes)

Michael Sargent — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 07:00:00 -0400

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
My generation, and the ones before mine, have really screwed things up, it seems. But eventually, younger people will take their place as leaders (and some already are). For all our screw-ups, those of us who have some years under our belts can potentially play helpful roles as mentors, as younger folks find their way. I recently had a chance to talk about mentorship with Jean Rhodes, an influential expert on the topic, and the Frank L. Boyden Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She studies intergenerational relationships, especially formal and informal mentorship, and their effects on the development of youth, particularly marginalized youth. Among the issues we discussed: What is the impact of mentorship? When is it most effective? What’s the role of gender and race? What does it take to be a good mentor? And what kinds of policies can support effective mentoring?

LINKS
--Jean Rhodes web profile
--New York Times obituary on George Albee
--"The effects of youth mentoring programs: A meta-analysis of outcome studies," Raposa et al. (2019), Journal of Youth and Adolescence
--Older and Wiser: New Ideas for Youth Mentoring in the 21st Century, by Jean E. Rhodes

Special Guest: Jean Rhodes.

Episode 58: The Seamless Garment Goes On

Michael Sargent — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 07:00:00 -0400

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Father James Martin is a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large at America, a weekly magazine published by the Jesuits of the United States. Father Martin is widely know for his advocacy for the rights of LGBT people, including his book Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity. In 2017, Pope Francis appointed him as a consultant to the Vatican's Secretariat for Communications. He's appeared on such outlets as CNN, NPR, and Fox News. He's also been a guest on The Colbert Report, and was informally dubbed the "Colbert Report chaplain." Recently, he was also one of three members of the clergy who jointly delivered the benediction at the close of the Democratic National Convention.

In this episode, Father Martin and I resume discussion of what it means to be pro-life, broadly defined.

LINKS
--Father Martin's Wikipedia page
--Contemplation and Political Action: An Ignatian Guide to Civic Engagement
--"Pope calls faithful to pray, participate actively in politics," Catholic News Agency
--Pope Francis's Laudato Si'
--Ignatian Contemplation (a video of Fr. Martin discussing Ignatian prayer)

Special Guest: Father James Martin.

Episode 57: The Seamless Garment (Pro-Life Politics, w/ Fr. James Martin)

Michael Sargent — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 07:00:00 -0400

In this episode, Father Martin and I discuss what it means to him to be pro-life, the political implications of that position, and how it relates to Catholic teaching and action. We not only discuss abortion, but also immigration, race, and more.

LINKS
--Father Martin's Wikipedia page
--"Racism makes a liar of God: How the American Catholic Church is wrestling with the Black Lives Matter movement" (New York Times opinion piece, by Elizabeth Breunig; 2020, August 6)
--Sister Thea Bowman's Wikipedia page
--profile on Ralph McCloud, Director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development

Special Guest: Father James Martin.

Episode 55: Moment of Truth (w/ Robin Engel)

Michael Sargent — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 07:00:00 -0400

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
As promised, here's another episode inspired by the killing of George Floyd, and the subsequent protests. In this one, I remain focused on police behavior. This is my interview with Robin Engel, Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati, as well as Director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)/UC Center for Police Research and Policy. We discuss police decision-making--which she studies--as well as police reform. Not only has Engel studied these issues, but she's also been responsible for overseeing a department as it implemented reforms in the wake of a shooting of an unarmed Black man.

LINKS
--Robin Engel's UC profile
--Report of Engel's naming as Vice-President for Safety & Reform
--Body camera footage of the Samuel DuBose shooting (from The Guardian)
--Does de-escalation training work? (Engel et al., 2020)
--Moving beyond "best practices" (Engel et al., 2020)

Special Guest: Robin Engel.

Episode 54: There's Got To Be A Better Way (w/ Lamar Stewart)

Michael Sargent — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 07:00:00 -0400

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This is my conversation with G. Lamar Stewart, a detective and head of community engagement in the office of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. Stewart is a former Philadelphia police officer, and was also Vice-President of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the National Black Police Association. We discuss policing, including its connection to race, a timely topic in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

LINKS
--New York Times video essay on the chronology of the killing of George Floyd
--An article about the kind of community engagement work Stewart does
--Larry Krasner, Wikipedia
--Death of Breonna Taylor, Wikipedia
--Intercept article on Bob Kroll
--New York Times article on police union leadership (also touches on Kroll)
--New York Times article on the social media scandal involving Philadelphia police

Special Guest: Lamar Stewart.

Episode 47: Above and Beyond (Respectability Politics, w/ David Crockett)

Michael Sargent — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 06:00:00 -0500

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Within Black communities, "respectability politics" is a term often used to describe efforts at racial uplift that involve efforts at self-regulation in the service of disproving negative racial stereotypes. It includes ensuring that one's conduct is beyond reproach, and that one's standards of dress meet certain high standards (often those of upper-middle class White society). The term also refers to demands that Black Americans engage in such self-regulation. Black figures such as Charles Barkley and Bill Cosby have famously (and infamously) made such demands.

One's consumption choices--ranging from clothing to housing--can constitute a domain in which respectability politics plays out. And University of South Carolina marketing professor David Crockett has studied exactly that topic. We discuss respectability politics, consumption, and more in this episode.

LINKS
--David Crockett's University of South Carolina webpage
--Crockett, D. (2017). Paths to respectability: Consumption and stigma management in the contemporary Black middle class. Journal of Consumer Research
--Detroit Urban League brochure photo (HS6701) , from Detroit Urban League records; Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (used with permission)
--Coates, T. (2014, October). Charles Barkley and the plague of "unintelligent Blacks." The Atlantic.
--Coates, T. (2017, Jan/Feb). My President was Black. The Atlantic.
--Starkey, B. S. (2016, December). No, President Obama does not practice respectability politics. The Undefeated
--Charles Barkley 7/12/16 appearance on the Dan Le Batard show
--Higginbotham, E. B. (1994) Righteous discontent: The women's movement in the Black Baptist church, 1880-1920. Harvard University Press.

Special Guest: David Crockett.

Episode 46: Measure for Measure (Wil Cunningham & Uli Schimmack Discuss the Implicit Association Test)

Michael Sargent — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 06:00:00 -0500

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Since Tony Greenwald, Debbie McGhee, and Jordan Schwartz introduced the Implicit Association Test to the published literature in 1998, the IAT has taken social psychology by storm, and the notion that implicit bias is prevalent and impactful has taken the world by storm. But to what extent are popular beliefs, and popularizing claims, about implicit bias and the IAT well-supported by the science? What improvements are needed in the science of implicit bias? Does that research qualify as good science? Is it useful? And what does "implicit" even mean in this context? Psychologists Wil Cunningham and Ulrich Schimmack engage with each other and with me in a lively discussion of such issues, including conversation about Uli's 2019 paper, "The Implicit Association Test: A Method in Search of a Construct."

LINKS
--Wil Cunningham's profile at the University of Toronto
--Uli Schimmack's profile at the University of Toronto
--Project Implicit website
--Schimmack (2019), The Implicit Association Test: A method in search of a construct, Perspectives on Psychological Science
--link to a free version of the paper, housed at Schimmack's site
--Cunningham, Preacher, & Banaji (2001). Implicit attitude measures: Consistency, stability, and convergent validity. Psychological Science

Special Guests: Uli Schimmack and Wil Cunningham.

Episode 35: Fear of Falling (w/ Ashley Jardina)

Michael Sargent — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 06:00:00 -0500

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Ashley Jardina, a faculty member in political science at Duke University, is the author of White Identity Politics, which is scheduled to go on sale on Thursday, February 28. She and I recently talked about her book, which examines White identity and its political impact. As much as Whiteness has often been treated as a kind of cultural default, and even though it's often assumed that their own race isn't salient to White Americans and that they don't feel solidarity with other Whites, many actually do think about their race and do feel such solidarity. And it's not just the types who gained infamy in Charlottesville. Jardina's book explores what White identity is and what White consciousness is. She also documents some of the political correlates of those variables. We discuss that research, as well as her own background. And we even highlight one thing that Donald Trump has done "expertly."

LINKS
--Ashley Jardina's webpage at Duke
--White Identity Politics, at Cambridge University Press
--White Identity Politics, at Amazon
--"White Identity Politics Aren't Going Anywhere" (by Thomas Edsall, in the New York Times, and including discussion of Jardina's book)
--Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue

Special Guest: Ashley Jardina.

Episode 21: Brotherly Love

Michael Sargent — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 05:00:00 -0400

On April 12, 2018, Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, two Black men, were waiting in a Philadelphia Starbucks for another man to join them for a business meeting. As was widely reported, they were asked to leave after not buying anything and ultimately were arrested for trespassing after refusing to leave. (The manager who called 911 is no longer with Starbucks.)

As soon as I learned about this incident, I wanted to talk to a police officer in Philadelphia about what happened, how officers are trained to handle such incidents, and issues of policing and race more generally. G. Lamar Stewart, a Philadelphia police officer and, importantly, Vice-President of the National Black Police Association: Greater Philadelphia Chapter, agreed to this interview.

We discussed the Starbucks arrest and a range of other issues, including his work as a minister.

LINKS
"Starbucks, police and mayor Respond to controversial arrest of 2 Black men in Philly" (NPR)
"Philly cops issue new trespassing policy in response to criticism over Starbucks arrest" (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Memo describing the new trespassing policy
Facebook page for the National Black Police Association Inc.: The Greater Philadelphia Chapter
"Taylor Memorial Baptist: Growing into a complete community church" (Philadelphia Tribune)

Cover art credit: Skyfox11 (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain images)

Special Guest: Lamar Stewart.

Episode 20: The Humean Stain, Part 2

Michael Sargent — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 15:00:00 -0400

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Implicit bias has been studied by many social psychologists, and one particular measure, the Implicit Association Test (or IAT) has often been used in that research. It has also been used by practitioners, often for purposes of raising participants' awareness of their own biases. And millions have completed IAT's online at the Project Implicit website.

In this episode, I continue a discussion with six people who have all thought about the IAT, with the conversation covering such topics as (a) how well the IAT predicts discriminatory behavior and other behavior, (b) whether it's appropriate for the Project Implicit website to give individualized feedback to visitors who complete online IAT's there, and (c) the content and effectiveness of implicit bias training. My guests are psychologists Calvin Lai, Brian Nosek, Mike Olson, Keith Payne, and Simine Vazire, as well as journalist Jesse Singal.

LINKS
--Interpreting correlation coefficients (by Deborah J. Rumsey)
--Project Implicit (where you can take an IAT)
--Brian Nosek's departmental web page
--Calvin Lai's departmental web page
--"Psychology's favorite tool for measuring racism isn't up to the job" (Jesse Singal, in The Cut)
--Keith Payne's departmental web page
--Michael Olson's departmental web page
--Simine Vazire's departmental web page
--The Black Goat (podcast on which Simine Vazire is a co-host)
--"Understanding and and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity (Greenwald, Poehlmann, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009)
--"Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects" (Greenwald, Banaji, & Nosek, 2015)
--"Using the IAT to predict ethnic and racial discrimination: Small effects sizes of unknown societal significance" (Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Mitchell, & Tetlock, 2015)
--"Arbitrary metrics in psychology" (Blanton & Jaccard, 2006)
--"The bias of crowds: How implicit bias bridges personal and systemic prejudice" (Payne, Vuletich, & Lundberg, 2017; access is subscription-controlled)
--"Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test" (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998)
--A summary of David Hume's thoughts on the association of ideas
--Two Psychologists Four Beers (podcast featuring psychologists Yoel Inbar and Mickey Inzlicht)
--Very Bad Wizards (podcast featuring psychologist David Pizarro and philosopher Tamler Sommers)

Cover art credit: "Still Life with Bottles, Wine, and Cheese," John F. Francis (1857; public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copyright tag: PD-US)

Special Guests: Brian Nosek, Calvin Lai, Jesse Singal, Keith Payne, Michael Olson, and Simine Vazire.

Episode 19: The Humean Stain, Part 1

Michael Sargent — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 05:00:00 -0400

On April 12, 2018, Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, two African-American men, were arrested for trespassing at a Philadelphia Starbucks. They were waiting for another person to join them for a meeting, when a manager called the police because they hadn't made a purchase. In the face of ensuing controversy, Starbucks closed stores nationwide one afternoon at the end of May in order to hold anti-bias training sessions for employees. As in this case and elsewhere, the topic of implicit racial bias has captured many imaginations.

Implicit bias has been studied by many social psychologists, and one particular measure, the Implicit Association Test (or IAT) has often been used in that research. It has also been used by practitioners, often for purposes of raising participants' awareness of their own biases. And millions have completed IAT's online at the Project Implicit website.

In this episode, I talk with six people who have all thought about the IAT, with the conversation covering such topics as (a) what kinds of mental associations might be revealed by performance on the IAT, (b) how reliable is it as a measure, and (c) whether or not the research debates surrounding the IAT are an example of good science. My guests are psychologists Calvin Lai, Brian Nosek, Mike Olson, Keith Payne, and Simine Vazire, as well as journalist Jesse Singal.

LINKS
--Scientific American Frontiers episode on implicit bias
--Project Implicit (where you can take an IAT)
--Brian Nosek's departmental web page
--Calvin Lai's departmental web page
--Michael Olson's departmental web page
--Keith Payne's departmental web page
--Simine Vazire's departmental web page
--"Psychology's favorite tool for measuring racism isn't up to the job" (Jesse Singal, in The Cut)
--"Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects" (Greenwald, Banaji, & Nosek, 2015)
--"Using the IAT to predict ethnic and racial discrimination: Small effects sizes of unknown societal significance" (Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Mitchell, & Tetlock, 2015)
--A summary of David Hume's thoughts on the association of ideas

Cover art credit: "Still Life with Bottles, Wine, and Cheese," John F. Francis (1857; public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copyright tag: PD-US)

Special Guests: Brian Nosek, Calvin Lai, Jesse Singal, Keith Payne, Michael Olson, and Simine Vazire.

Episode 13: Open, Bar None

Michael Sargent — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 05:00:00 -0400

According to the Brewers Association, in 1994, there were 537 brewpubs, microbreweries, and regional craft brewers in the U.S. In 2017, that number had risen to 6,266. Coast to coast, there's been an explosion in craft brewing, with brewers producing a delightful diversity of types of beer. But demographic diversity has been a different story. It's a story still being written, but it's still a different story.

In this episode of Tatter, I talk with J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham, who has written about beer and was recently named the new Diversity Ambassador for the Brewers Association, and I also talk with Carla Jean Lauter, a Maine-based beer writer who has written under the name "The Beer Babe." We discuss the status of women and people of color in the craft beer industry.

I learned a lot from our conversation, including about the Pink Boots Society. Check out this episode. (Music in this episode is by Slavic Soul Party!, used by permission.)

Also, if you listen via iTunes, please post a review. I value feedback immensely--not as much as I value craft beer, but still immensely.

Special Guests: Carla Jean Lauter and J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham.