Dr. Frasure-Yokley Profiled by PBS NewsHour for Her Work with UCLA’s First-Generation College Students

, , ,

John Vande Wege/UCLA

May 16, 2018

Dr. Lorrie Frasure-Yokley, Associate Professor of Political Science, was recently profiled by the PBS NewsHour to discuss her important work with UCLA’s first-generation college students.  This new retention initiative connects first-generation faculty with first-generation college students to guide them along their educational pathways.  In this effort, Professor Frasure-Yokley teaches Fiat Lux courses and mentors first-generation students, in order to increase their persistence, improve their sense of belonging, and ensure that they graduate.  Watch the full interview and news segment HERE.

/by

Dr. Lytle Hernandez and Million Dollar Hoods to be Honored with Freedom Now Award on June 16

, , ,

May 15, 2018

Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez and Million Dollar Hoods will be honored by the Los Angeles Community Action Network with a Freedom Now Award for their groundbreaking digital mapping project that uses police data to monitor incarceration costs in Los Angeles. The 8th Annual “Freedom Now” Awards and Celebration will take place on June 16, 2018 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at 838 E. 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021.

For more details, click HERE

/by

Why Trump Can’t Have Tariffs and More Restrictions on Immigration

, ,

By Margaret E. Peters

Assistant Professor, Political Science

The Trump administration recently announced tariffs on 1,300 types of goods from China, including televisions, medical devices and batteries. On a seemingly unrelated note, President Trump also said that he will “send troops” to the U.S.-Mexico border to stop immigrants from crossing illegally.  While these two policies play to Mr. Trump’s base, it will be extremely difficult for Trump to restrict both trade and immigration. As I show in my new book, Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization, trade restrictions lead to more open immigration policies and immigration restrictions lead to more imports and offshoring.

Trade and immigration policy affect one another through their impacts on business. Over time, globalization and increasingly lower barriers to trade change the amount and kind of labor businesses need, which changes their level of support for more welcoming immigration policies.

Lower trade barriers are good for many businesses, but they can also cause the closure of companies who tend to be large employers of immigrant workers. When these businesses close, they no longer exist to lobby lawmakers for more open immigration policies. For example: the textile industry was once a major employer of immigrant labor in the U.S. but, since it lost much of its trade protection in 1990, it has shed almost 70% of its workforce. Today, textiles are mostly produced abroad. Not surprisingly, the textile industry went from a major proponent of immigration in the 1950s and 60s to barely showing up to lobby Congress in the 2000s.

Policies that allow companies to move overseas also tend to lower businesses’ willingness to lobby on immigration. Why should businesses fight to bring Chinese workers to the U.S. when they can move their factory to China?

Finally, the pressures of globalization often lead companies to automate their production. With automation, businesses need fewer workers. The U.S. steel industry, which Trump has promised to protect, produces as much steel today as it did in 1960, but it does so with a third of its former workforce. When companies automate, they need fewer workers, and that also tends to make them stop lobbying for open immigration. Together, these trends mean that there has been less lobbying by businesses for immigration and, consequently, greater immigration restrictions.

The effects of globalization and trade openness on immigration mean that Mr. Trump’s efforts to restrict both trade and immigration are unlikely to be successful.  If the administration succeeds in restricting trade and bringing back more manufacturing, don’t be surprised if businesses clamor for more open immigration policies. Since business interests are a powerful lobbying group, Trump will face huge pressure to soften his stance on immigration.

On the other hand, if Trump continues down the path of deporting undocumented immigrants and limiting legal immigration, more and more businesses will close or move. These restrictions will have an especially large effect on employers here in California. A crackdown on undocumented immigrants will lead to much higher farm labor costs. In turn, that might lead more farmers to give up farming (at least in the U.S.) and drive up food imports. Increased limits on high-skill migrants will hurt technology firms, leading more of them to invest overseas. Without access to immigrant labor, then, businesses producing here in America will be unable to compete with businesses abroad.

The Trump administration cannot have it both ways. It can enact new tariffs to bring back manufacturing or enact new restrictions on immigration, but it can’t do both.

Margaret E. Peters is an assistant professor of political science at UCLA and the author of the award-winning book, Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization; she can be found on Twitter at @MigrationNerd.

/by

Coming Out and “Outing Pigs”

, ,

By Abigail C. Saguy

Professor of Sociology, UCLA

In late 2017, over 30 women accused Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, assault or rape. Shortly after—following the lead of actress Alyssa Milano—millions of women began posting “#MeToo” on Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and other social media platforms, effectively “coming out” as victims of sexual harassment, assault or rape. As Milano acknowledges, “Me Too” isn’t new: African American activist Tarana Burke first used “Me Too” in 2007 as part of an offline campaign to let sex abuse survivors–especially young women of color—know that they were not alone. Milano says she hopes the social media campaign will shift the focus from Weinstein to victims and “give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”

The #MeToo movement underscores the power of collective mobilization. It also shows how suddenly the status quo can shift. Despite having studied sexual harassment in the United States and France for almost 30 years – and publishing a book and several articles on the topic[1] – even I did not see this coming.

Recently, I have been studying how people “come out” to resist stigma and mobilize for social change. As I show in a series of articles and a forthcoming book with Oxford University Press titled Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are: Identity Politics in the 21st Century, the concept of coming out—first developed by the gay rights movement in the 1970s—has expanded well beyond lesbians and gay men. The undocumented movement, fat rights movement, and Mormon fundamentalist polygamists—to name a few—all now use “coming out” politics to make real changes to laws, public opinion, interpersonal relationships and to claim their civil rights.

Notably, the #MeToo movement embraces not just the politics of “coming out” as a victim of sexual harassment or assault, but also the “outing” of harassers, assaulters and rapists. “Outing”—another term coined and developed by the gay rights movement in the 1980s and 1990s—originally referred to the act of disclosing a politician or celebrity’s homosexuality, typically because they publicly opposed gay rights or promoted heteronormativity (i.e. the idea that everyone is heterosexual) by “passing” as straight.

#MeToo has already led to significant change in the culture around sexual harassment and assault. Many of the men recently “outed” as sexual offenders have lost their jobs and, in some cases, faced criminal prosecution. Some have argued that employers and authors may now take women who claim to have been assaulted or harassed more seriously. The movement may bring real systemic changes to how employers and courts address sexual harassment.

Exactly what will come of the #MeToo movement remains to be seen, but this movement—and the others of which it is both a product and a part—are a reminder that the social life of humans is fluid and deserving of true inquiry by social scientists.

Abigail Saguy is a UCLA Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies and author of What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne (California, 2003), What’s Wrong with Fat (Oxford, 2013), Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are: Identity Politics in the 21st Century, over 30 scientific journal articles and several op-eds published in leading news outlets. You can see more of her work at www.abigailsaguy.com and https://soc.ucla.edu/faculty/abigail-saguy.

Footnotes

[1] Abigail C. Saguy, What Is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press., 2003); “Employment Discrimination or Sexual Violence?: Defining Sexual Harassment in American, and French Law,” Law & Society Review 34, no. 4 (2000); “Europeanization or National Specificity? Legal Approaches to Sexual Harassment in France, 2002-2012,” Law & Society Review 52, no. 1 (2018).

/by

Chronicling the Transformation of Black LA

, , , ,

Photo Credit: Leroy Hamilton

By Marcus Anthony Hunter

Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Division of the Social Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, CHAIR, Department of African American Studies; Principal Investigator

Over the course of the 20th century, Black Los Angeles has shifted from the east side of the city (Central Avenue in the early 1900s) to the west side of the city (the Crenshaw district after 1960). The organization of Black life along Central Avenue in the first half of the 1900s was produced by legalized forms of segregation, barring Black residents from accessing housing outside the Central Avenue area. Over time, however, Black residents integrated parts of the adjacent West Adams community that were not restricted by legal forms of discrimination.

Soon, though, the construction of the 10-Freeway in Los Angeles displaced much of the growing Black neighborhood in West Adams, pushing the center of Black Los Angeles further west to Leimert Park. By the 1960s, Leimert Park and the surrounding communities became major destinations for Black migrants from the American South, Africa and the Caribbean. With the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, Black movement out of the Central Avenue area continued, leading to the rise of the area commonly known as South Central Los Angeles. Since then, this area has been the nexus of Black life, culture, entrepreneurship, arts and political power in Los Angeles.

Today, these neighborhoods are poised to undergo the most significant transformation they have experienced in decades. Los Angeles County has increasingly turned to transit improvement projects to alleviate traffic as the region continues to grow. In 2008 and 2016, voters approved sales tax increases to fund the expansion of regional transportation options, including: a light rail; a subway line that will connect the east and west parts of the city; and a Crenshaw/LAX Transit Line linking this network from the north southward to the Los Angeles Airport (LAX). City leaders consider it vitally important to connect the area’s rapidly improving transit infrastructure to LAX as well as the to the newly constructed Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park – especially in advance of major events like the Olympics and Super Bowl. But these changes, and the ways that residents negotiate and navigate them, will inevitably transform Black LA.

So, how are we researching these changes?

The Chocolate Cities of Los Angeles: A Digital and Public Archive of Black Los Angeles is a multi-year, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research project examining the processes of urban displacement, gentrification and rebranding (e.g. Destination Crenshaw) as it is occurring leading up to and through the 2019 opening of the Crenshaw/LAX transit line. Our aim is to develop a lasting and much-needed repository and digital archive of the myriad chocolate cities thriving, surviving and disappearing across Los Angeles and surrounding communities since the city’s founding. Our diverse 12-person team includes members from three countries (the United States, Nigeria, and India), over eight U.S. cities and three UCLA departments (African American Studies, Sociology, and Social Welfare).

Upcoming Events:

Please join us TOMORROW, May 9th, 2018 at the California African American Museum at 6:00 PM to honor and engage in conversation with authors Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria Robinson on their new book Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life. 

This event will encompass an engaging conversation with the authors, amongst other speakers such as Scot Brown, Alma Burrell, Lynnée Denise, and Frankie “Kash” Waddy.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP

/by

UCLA’s Beltran-Sanchez receives the Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America

,

May 4, 2018

Assistant Professor Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, of the UCLA Division of Social Sciences’ California Center for Population Research (CCPR) and Department of Community Health Sciences, was recently awarded the Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America (PAA) at the 2018 Awards Ceremony and Presidential Address Session. The PAA Early Achievement Award recognizes distinguished contributions to population research during the first ten years after receipt of the Ph.D. Contributions may be original research published as articles or books, significant newly collected data, or public policy achievement that broadens the impact of demography.

The award citation commended Dr. Beltran-Sanchez’s original contributions in all three areas: his innovative development of theory and rigorous research, his leadership in creating the Latin American Mortality Database, and the direct relevance of his research for public policy.  More specifically, Dr. Beltran-Sanchez’s research addresses major themes at CCPR, including the health of immigrants, the effects of early life experiences on health in late life, and health and aging in Mexico, and the development and application of demographic methods to investigate health inequalities using macro and micro data. This year he has been involved in CCPR’s informal working group on demography and big data, in addition to teaching in the graduate demography program and serving on several major CCPR committees.

/by

Million Dollar Hoods Goes to Sacramento

, , ,

May 4, 2018

Last week, Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernandez, professor of History and African American Studies and the interim director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, along with Associate Professor Chandra Ford, Chancellor Gene Block, and UCLA students, journeyed to Sacramento to meet with members of the California Legislative Black Caucus. There they discussed Million Dollar Hoods and the policy interventions and solutions that can be implemented to improve Los Angeles and advance justice reinvestment campaigns. Connecting research to actionable policy is a major objective of Million Dollar Hoods and Professor Lytle Hernandez’s work.

 

Related post: Mapping LA’s Million Dollar Hoods

 

/by

Eavesdropping on Human Personality Variation: An Evolutionary Perspective

,

By Joseph H. Manson

Professor of Anthropology

Among our acquaintances and co-workers are the calm and the worried, the conscientious and the disorganized, the kind and the callous. Is there an overall pattern to the variation among these and other personality dimensions? And can this pattern be linked to people’s biological characteristics, such as how fast they grow up and how quickly they age? My research explores personality variation using “life history theory,” an evolutionary biological framework that describes and explains how people decide to dedicate their time and energy between the competing demands of physical growth, health maintenance, dating and parenting. A “slower” life history strategy (LHS) means investment in long-term health maintenance, monogamous relationships and a more nurturing, involved approach to parenting. In terms of personality traits, this slower LHS is usually associated with people who exhibit higher levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability.

Previous data collection in this area has relied almost exclusively on questionnaires. My current project will use direct behavioral observation to supplement and validate these “self-report measures,” in order to determine whether some of these traits often appear together in sets and clusters. I recruited 92 UCLA students to spend three days wearing an iPod running the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) app, which made a 30-second audio recording every 12.5 minutes between 6 a.m. and midnight. Participants knew the overall sampling pattern, but not the particular times when the app was recording. They also kept an hourly event diary noting their general activities. At the end of the three-day recording period, participants had the opportunity to listen privately to their audio clips and to delete any they wished (only about 1% were deleted). Participants also completed two self-report personality inventories and a questionnaire developed by other researchers, which purports to measure LHS.

One team of undergraduate research assistants coded the 21,000+ audio clips for over 40 activities and behaviors, including class attendance, arguing and watching TV or video. We also transcribed every intelligible word (almost 80,000 of them) of the participants’ speech. A second team of research assistants used each participant’s complete set of clips and event diary as the basis for describing their personality using an instrument called the California Adult Q-Sort (CAQ).

My analyses of these data confirm that people whose personality most closely resembles a slow LHS CAQ template (created by other researchers) are high in conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability. However, in contrast to some earlier claims, the other two major dimensions of personality – extraversion and openness to experience – have more complicated relationships to LHS. For example: among the facets of extraversion, interpersonal warmth was associated with a slower LHS, whereas excitement-seeking was associated with a faster LHS. I also found LHS-related differences in word use: for example, people with a faster LHS use more “negative emotion words.” As a follow-up, my research assistants are now coding participants’ inferred emotional states directly from isolated audio clips. Other ongoing analyses are exploring the relationships of self-reported levels of the so-called “Dark Triad” traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy) to both LHS and everyday social interaction patterns.

Joseph H. Manson, a Professor in the Anthropology Department, is an evolutionary social scientist interested in primate behavior, human ethology and social interaction, and personality variation.

 

/by

Mapping LA’s Million Dollar Hoods

, , , , , ,

milliondollarhoods.org

By Kelly Lytle Hernandez

Professor of History and African-American Studies

Los Angeles County operates the largest jail system on Earth. At a cost of nearly $1 billion annually, more than 20,000 people are caged every night in county jails and city lockups. Conventional wisdom says that incarceration advances public safety by removing violent and serious offenders from the streets – but the data shows that isn’t necessarily true.

According to Million Dollar Hoods (MDH), a digital mapping project that uses police data to monitor incarceration costs in Los Angeles, not all neighborhoods are equally impacted by L.A.’s massive jail system. In fact, L.A.’s nearly billion-dollar jail budget is largely committed to incarcerating many people from just a few neighborhoods, in some of which more than $1 million is spent annually on incarceration. Leading causes of arrest in these areas are primarily drug possession and DUIs, and the majority of those arrested are black, brown and poor.

The bottom line: the data shows that local authorities are investing millions in locking up the county’s most economically vulnerable, geographically isolated and racially marginalized populations for drug and alcohol-related crimes. These are L.A.’s “Million Dollar Hoods.” Maybe they deserve more.

Additional information on “Million Dollar Hoods” (MDH):

Launched in summer 2016, MDH is an ongoing collaboration between UCLA researchers and local community-based organizations, including Youth Justice Coalition, Los Angeles Community Action Network, Dignity and Power Now, JusticeLA and more. Together, we conceptualized the project, acquired the data and mapped it, making a wealth of data broadly available to advocates and activists who are pressing local authorities to divest from police and jails and invest in the community-based services needed to build a more equitable community: namely health, housing, employment, and educational services. To date, the MDH maps and reports have received significant media coverage and are being marshaled by advocates to advance a variety of justice reinvestment campaigns.  Our research on cannabis enforcement shaped the development of the city’s social equity program. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty references our research in his report on the criminalization of homelessness in America. Our report on the money bail system was the first to document how the money bail system amounts to asset stripping in Black and Latino Los Angeles.

Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez (History/African American Studies) leads the Million Dollar Hoods project. Her research team is comprised of an interdisciplinary group of UCLA staff and students, including Danielle Dupuy (School of Public Health), Terry Allen (Graduate School of Education), Isaac Bryan (Luskin School of Public Policy), Jamil Cineus (Institute for Digital Research and Education), Marcelo Clarke (African American Studies/Sociology), Chibumkem Ezenekwe, Luz Flores (African American Studies), Oceana Gilliam (Luskin School of Public Policy), Harold Grigsby (African American Studies), Andrew Guerrero (International Development Studies), Sofia Espinoza (Luskin School of Public Policy), Yoh Kawano (Institute for Digital Research and Education), Albert Kochaphum (Institute for Digital Research and Education), Ricardo Patlan (Political Science),  Alvin Teng (Luskin School of Public Policy), Taylore Thomas (African American Studies), and Estefania Zavala (Luskin School of Public Policy).

 

Related post: Million Dollar Hoods Goes to Sacramento

/by