Citizens demand impeachment

Every day that passes brings more bad news from Donald Trump’s unhinged behavior. His actions and dictatorial executive orders have caused immeasurable harm to our country, our citizens and residents, our friends and allies in the world community, and the standing of our country as a leader and a moral example.

Trump’s unprovoked war against Iran has caused thousands of deaths, erosion of the US military capability, and vast economic disruption to the world economy. His tariffs have increased the cost of living for Americans, and his government’s assault on Medicaid and government-assisted health insurance has forced millions of Americans into deep health insecurity. His completely unwarranted hostility and war of words and tariffs against Canada are examples of his reckless and impulsive behavior. His administration’s foolish and unscientific rejection of vaccinations, including measles vaccinations for children, has led to the largest measles outbreak the United States has seen in decades. Trump’s personal and brazen financial corruption and conflicts of interest have led to growth of his personal wealth of over $2 billion — perhaps as high as $4 billion — since his inauguration in 2025, and his family’s exploitation of their relationship to the White House is well-known as well. And Trump’s narcissistic insistence on remaking the face of our nation’s capital, his mismanagement and threats against the Kennedy Center, and his determination to proceed with a 250-foot-tall arch show a narcissistic and fundamental disregard for the traditions and values of our citizens.

Trump has failed to perform the duties of the presidency. He has sought to avoid or ignore legal orders by Federal courts. He has created a private army of violent thugs who have committed violence against innocent people in multiple cities. He has engaged in racist rants against Africans and people of African descent like the Somalis of Minneapolis and the Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio. He is morally unfit to be the leader of our country.

The Republican Congress has shown zero willingness to exercise its authority and to restrain the president’s actions. Fear of losing office in primary challenges appears to be more important to most incumbent Republicans than making a sober appraisal of this president’s usurpations of power, recklessness, and contempt for the institutions and norms of our democracy. And yet their most basic moral duty is to preserve our constitutional order.

Imagine an alternative political world in which we the people have taken the lead. Imagine a movement that begins with “letters of impeachment” signed by 50 million Americans, demanding impeachment and trial of Donald Trump. Imagine 50,000 people assembling every week in front of the Kennedy Center or the proposed site for Trump’s arch, peacefully resisting demolition and construction. Imagine pro-democracy demonstrations in our major cities, each involving 100,000 people in New York, Miami, St. Louis, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, Detroit, Boston, and occurring every week. Imagine every city standing up for its population against ICE in the way that Minneapolis did, forcing a retreat by Homeland Security.

And imagine an unprecedented turnout for the November election, leading to a majority in House and Senate for principled and courageous leaders like Jon Ossoff, Sherrod Brown, Joyce Beatty, and James Talarico. Majorities in Congress can provide some degree of braking capacity on Trump’s dictatorship in the final two years of his presidency.

Winning the midterms is crucial for our future as a democracy. But it is only a beginning. Reasserting the authority of Congress against a dictatorial president, finding new and unconventional ways of opposing Trump’s policies (like his assault on Canada or his threat to withdraw substantially from NATO or his determination to build a triumphal arch), and demanding accountability from cabinet officials (Blanche, Hegseth, Mullin, …) — these are the minimal steps that Democratic majorities must take. And facing the new crises that have arisen, and that Trump has waved aside (like the warnings about rogue AI technology) must be addressed. (Elizabeth Warren is ready to do this.)

And the rising economic disparities we have witnessed in our country since the 1970s must be addressed. Tax cuts for the super-rich that are paid for by reductions in Medicaid, food assistance, and other social programs are grotesque; the fact that our tech-oligarchs pay a tiny percentage of their income in taxes (3.4% according to ProPublica); the fact that corporations have many ways of avoiding revenue taxes altogether — all of these facts have contributed to the sudden transformation of the US distribution of wealth and income into an oligarch’s utopia.

A large majority of Americans now disapprove of Trump for his policies, and do not trust his promises or assurances about the future. The American public deserves better, and Trump has broken his Constitutional oath of office in numerous ways. Trump should be removed from office through impeachment, and successor administrations should learn the lesson: the Federal government exists to serve the interests of the American people within the strictures of the Constitution — not the private interests of the president and his loyal administration. And we are watching.

On the Fourth of July

 

Selected materials removed from National Park sites at instructions from Trump administration (legal cases underway) (Gemini generated)

It is quite difficult to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country under the current conditions. The occasion has been hijacked by a president and a political party that have no dignity, no respect for the basic values of our country, no allegiance to our Constitution and the rule of law, and no benevolence for our people, and no respect for the international system and other nations that have been loyal partners throughout times of crisis in the past and present.

Like many Americans, I am ashamed of the lies told every day by our president, the cruelty and lack of compassion he and his administration show to the people of the United States and in other countries, the crassness of his constant efforts at self-promotion in attacking the great monuments of our capital city, and the corruption and massive conflicts of interest shown by the $1.2-$1.5 billion he has gained since taking office through industries he has promoted as president. Even the day of national celebration itself has been hijacked by his party’s Freedom 250 organization, converting the July 4h celebrations into a rally on the president’s behalf.

And yet this sense of shame about our nation’s current leader and his administration does not extend to a sense of disillusionment about our nation itself. My thoughts go first to Abraham Lincoln and the words of his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.

So many lines in this brief speech demonstrate a fundamental contrast to our current president. "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here" -- can we imagine the current occupant in the White House making such a humble remark? And just a moment later, Lincoln expresses a fundamental aspiration for the nation -- not for himself, not for his followers, not for his party, but for the nation: "That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Lincoln's thoughts in 1863 were for the people of the United States, for the institutions through which their freedom and equality is secured, and for our unity as a democratic people. Have we ever heard the current president make a sincere effort to speak to and on behalf of the whole of the people of the United States, not simply his "base"?

Recall as well the closing lines of Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address in 1861:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Or recall Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech in the same place as the current “Great American State Fair” has been staged — to a crowd of some 250,000 men, women, and children from around the country on August 28, 1963. What a dignified and affirming set of aspirations were articulated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on that day, and what a stunning contrast to the scene on the same location today. Here are a few of MLK's words on that day:

I say to you today, my friends, though, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

Or go back to Susan B. Anthony’s words in 1873 affirming women’s equality and demanding the right to vote for women after her own arrest for the crime of voting in the 1972 U.S. presidential election:

Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.

Think finally of a fearless defender of freedom and the rule of law in the U.S. Senate, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. She spoke up against Senator Joseph McCarthy's unconscionable and cowardly attacks on the loyalty of other Americans in these words in June, 1950:

I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.

The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity. ...

I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

• The right to criticize;
• The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
• The right to protest;
• The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.

Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr., Margaret Chase Smith -- these were all Americans with a deep and enduring commitment to the values of equality, freedom, and the rule of law upon which our nation rests. And they all spoke in terms that recalled the language of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. They recognized very clearly the distance still to travel before those values are more adequately realized. In their various ways, they stood courageously in the face of threats, violence, and unsettled times. And they did not stand alone. Countless other leaders, citizens, officials, and ordinary citizens stood up in their own times and places to support equality, freedom, and dignity for all.

The values that we share as Americans are profound, their goals are incomplete, and they are under attack today. The rule of law, the responsibility of government to act justly and in support of the common good, and the political morality of mutual respect and dignity are all threatened by the current administration and its supporters in Congress and in the nation.

So, yes, let us celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation on this Fourth of July, 2026. Let us embrace with renewed understanding the core values of equality and freedom, dignity and mutual respect, that are fundamental to a democracy that embraces all its citizens. And let us each take the actions that we can to help to ensure that our democracy survives these many challenges.

Discrimination in employment today

 

There is a view in the United States that impactful racial discrimination has declined significantly over time. This view flies in the face of an afternoon’s walk through Detroit, the south side of Chicago, or the Bronx, where racial segregation in housing and the disadvantages that flow from that system are evident. But what is the social-scientific evidence concerning the current situation of race-based discrimination?

This is a question that rigorous quantitative sociologists have studied in the past several decades, and the results are dismal. Consider the research agenda of Lincoln Quillian and his collaborators over that period of time (link). Researchers have studied race-based discrimination in employment using field experiments to test the relative success of equally qualified applicants in thousands of job applications. The experiments take two forms: correspondence tests (where fictitious resumés are paired with equivalent credentials but differing in signals indicating the race of the candidate) and audit tests (where pairs of job applicants played by trained actors are presented for in-person applications or interviews). Here is how Lincoln Quillian describes the procedure for in-person audits:

For in-person audits, researchers send teams of trained actors to apply for the same job vacancies (e.g., Attström 2007; Pager et al. 2009). Each team includes at least one actor belonging to the native or dominant racial group and another from a racial minority group. Teams are assigned equivalent fictitious employment credentials like education, training and previous experience. The majority and minority actors undergo a period of training that involves practice calls to employers, mock interviews and standardizing candidate responses to interview questions (Bendick et al. 2010). Actors are matched based on physical appearance, age and demeanor. In-person audit studies usually rely on at least two signals about the applicant’s race: the applicant’s name in the resume and the applicant’s in-person and physical appearance. (Quillian et al 2020 link : 734)

The experimenter then records the number of candidates by race who are “called back” for a subsequent interview. In an entirely race-blind world we would expect the callback rate to be approximately the same for “white” and “black” candidates; but almost all field experiments with this design show the opposite result.

Quillian and his colleagues conducted a major meta-study of virtually all existing field experiments on employment discrimination. In addition, he and his colleagues assessed the level of discrimination that occurs at the next stage of employment, the step from callback to job offer. In “Evidence from Field Experiments in Hiring Shows Substantial Additional Racial Discrimination after the Callback” Quillian, Lee, and Oliver (link) find that the level of discrimination from callback to job offer is even greater than that between application and callback. “Our results indicate that substantial, additional racial discrimination occurs even after minority candidates make it to the interview stage. Because of this, studies that only use callbacks seriously underestimate the complete extent of discrimination in the hiring process” (734). Here is a summary of their findings:

We begin with a basic meta-analysis of the level of discrimination at different stages. Results of the meta-analysis for each stage are shown in Figure 2 and Table 2 Panels A and B. For our sample of twelve studies, the results indicate that majority applicants receive 53% more callbacks than equally qualified minority applicants on average (discrimination ratio of 1.534; 95% confidence interval of 1.33–1.78).

What happens after the callback? The discrimination ratio for job offers conditional on receiving a callback (i.e., only for applicants who made it to the interview stage) is 1.53418; this indicates that even when both candidates receive an interview, majority applicants still receive about 50% more job offers than comparable minority applicants. Looking at the overall level of discrimination in job offers, majority applicants receive about 145% more job offers than comparable minority applicants (discrimination ratio of 2.450, 95% confidence interval of 1.68–3.57). The difference between the callback discrimination ratio and the unconditional (or overall) job offer discrimination ratio is statistically significant at p < 0.05 (shown in Panel B of Table 2). These results indicate that there is a considerable degree of additional discrimination against racial minorities as they move from callback to job offer. The point estimates suggest that minority candidates experience an average more than twice as much discrimination overall in the job offer outcome as in the callback outcome. (747-748)

Here is a graph summarizing the findings of their meta-analysis of all studies that include callback-job offer data.

Meta-study estimates of employment discrimination

These are striking and apartheid-like conclusions. Here is the most salient point: “Looking at the overall level of discrimination in job offers, majority applicants receive about 145% more job offers than comparable minority applicants”. Out of 1000 white applicants and 1000 equally well-qualified black applicants, close to 2.5 times as many white applicants will receive job offers as black applicants. Assume there are 350 positions to be offered; this implies that 100 black applicants will receive an offer, compared to 250 white applicants — all equally qualified. By any measure, this is an enormous level of discrimination in employment.

What are the mechanisms that underlie these highly discriminatory results? Two observations in the article are suggestive:

Discrimination by employers does not appear to function in a categorical way, in which employers who know the race or ethnicity of an applicant pre-callback automatically rule out minority applicants in favor of equally qualified majority applicants. Instead, racial discrimination in hiring has a probabilistic character across stages of hiring, in which minority applicants are less likely to advance at each stage. (753)

So — no evidence of widespread “categorical” discrimination in these studies. But second, Quillian et al suggest that implicit bias is an important mechanism of discrimination by race, and they note that this factor may be even more important in face-to-face interactions:

The preferences underpinning taste-based discrimination can encompass many specific forms of racism and prejudice. For instance, employers may hold prejudices against racial and ethnic minorities rooted in suspicions of or hostility toward foreign cultural norms, values or attitudes (Pager and Shepherd 2008). On the other hand, biases that affect hiring may be unconscious, as demonstrated by studies of “implicit” racial attitudes. (735)

Many tests for implicit attitudes such as the Implicit Attitudes Test (IAT) use images of individuals from different racial and ethnic groups, which suggests that the general salience of race might be heightened in the context of face-to-face interactions. (736)

This is enormously important research in a time when the pressure on efforts to reduce and eliminate racism is even greater than the Jim Crow years, if that is possible. The field studies reported here, and the meta-analysis offered by Lincoln Quillian and his colleagues, are a wake-up call. The work is highly rigorous, and the results are unambiguous: racial discrimination in employment is substantial today, and it has not decreased over the past twenty-five years.

And what does this say to the young black man or woman leaving high school, community college, or university about their future? It provides a very bleak picture. The idea that the US economy embodies a “meritocracy” in which each individual reaches a level of achievement determined by experience, education, training, and discipline and nothing else is a self-pleasing fantasy for the majority, and a cruel and obvious lie for the minority.

(Here is a very good summary of the recent research methods and findings involved in Quillian’s research in the Harvard Business Review; link.)

A more pluralistic analytical sociology

A central theme in Rethinking Analytical Sociology is my concern that the founders of analytical sociology presented the field as a general and universally applicable approach to sociological research. Associated with this claim is what I called “ABM fundamentalism” — the view that computational models could and should be applied to all sociological research problems. Against these views, I argued in Rethinking Analytical Sociology that analytical sociologists should take a more pluralistic and collaborative approach to other research methods in sociology, including institutional and organizational sociology and comparative historical sociology.

In March I presented some of these ideas online at the Institute for Analytic Sociology in Sweden, and in April I had the chance to make several specific arguments on this subject to small groups of students and faculty in Como and Torino, with lively discussions following. In Como I focused on the need for a much more nuanced and “thick” theory of the actor, using the example of the US civil rights movement and the current surge of right-wing extremism in many liberal democracies. In Torino I focused on organizations as “meso-level” social entities with dynamic and relatively autonomous causal properties. This is a view rejected by the founders of analytic sociology, who champion a generativist view of the social world that leaves no place for relatively autonomous meso-level social entities. Attributions of apparent causal properties to meso-level structure should ideally be replaced with the individual-level mechanisms that constitute these properties. I argued that this position makes it impossible to explain the sociology of episodes like the Montgomery bus boycott, where dynamic organizations played a crucial role in bringing about the course of events. Doug McAdam’s detailed historical sociology of the period does a great job of uncovering the multi-level dynamics involved over the thirteen months of the ultimately successful boycott, whereas no “generativist” account leading from grievances to a sustained social movement has come close.

The comments I received from analytical sociologists at the Torino talk suggested that I’ve overstated both the commitment to methodological individualism and the rejection of social structures at the heart of analytical sociology. The commentators suggested that practitioners are more open-minded about research methods than I suggest, less committed to generativism, and very open to collaboration with sociologists who proceed from different premises. And agent-based modeling is just a tool, not a way of treating every sociological puzzle.

I don’t think I’ve overstated the core ideas of the “manifesto” of analytical sociology, as put forward by Hedström, Demeulenaere, and Manzo. And Joshua Epstein’s dogmatism about generativist social science stands unparalleled. But I’m very glad to hear that the discussants from the Gen Z generation of sociologists in this tradition are more open to pluralism in methods and approaches. I suggested to them that the time is right for a new manifesto, one which is explicitly open to a range of research approaches. This would mean at least three things: recognizing the need for thicker descriptions of actors, recognizing the causal importance of mid-level social entities like organizations, and abandoning the commitment to generativism as the sole legitimate model of explanation. And most importantly, it would emphasize the synergy that results from collaboration with other research approaches within sociology when treating a complex and extended social process.

As for computational tools like agent-based modeling — perhaps the most an updated manifesto should say about the relevance of agent-based simulation techniques is that they are valuable but limited tools for exploring some of the dynamics of the assumptions we make about inter-agent influence in the setting of mobilization and activization around a set of grievances and demands.

What does this leave from the original premises of AS? It leaves a commitment to empirical rigor, a preference for “theories of the middle range”, an insistence on the importance of discovering causal mechanisms, and a special interest in computational models of simple agent-based processes. This no longer looks like a declaration of a new and general approach to all sociological research — a claim invoked in the earlier manifestos for analytical sociology — but it looks like a much less constraining set of prescriptions than the guiding precepts of the earlier formulations. It is more receptive to a pluralistic approach to sociological research. And it therefore serves better as a guiding framework within which talented researchers can pursue productive research agendas.

Another point was made during the discussion in Torino that deserves comment. A listener suggested that this kind of discussion of “methodology and ontology” has taken up way too much space in the social sciences, and that we would be better off if sociologists just went ahead with their empirical work without worrying too much about the meta-issues. But this seems incorrect to me. Scientific research requires some antecedent ideas about how the world works and how to fruitfully investigate its properties. These ideas are of course provisional. But the history of science shows us that bad “framework” assumptions often lead to bad science. I think here of the harmful effects that radical behaviorism had on psychology in the first half of the twentieth century. So it is important to be as insightful as we can manage as we design research programs in the sciences. And this means that debating the assumptions involved in the analytical sociology research tradition is not wasted effort.

A focus for discussion and comment in the Como presentation was the need for a much deeper understanding of the development of the attitudes and values of young people. How can we explain the rapid rise of extremist right-wing ideologies and values among young people in the United States and many European countries, including Italy? One or two of the people in the Como lecture room were faculty with their own early-teenage children, and they expressed bewilderment about what was driving the surge of support for neo-fascist groups like CasaPound in Italy among young people. Students of contentious politics have not paid enough attention to the mechanisms and pathways through which political attitudes and values gain traction with young people; and yet answering this question is crucial for understanding the success of recruitment and mobilization of followers for organizations and parties like CasaPound. Here is a brief description and history of the neo-fascist CasaPound movement (link).

Social psychologists on the appeal of antagonism and hate

Our current political scene presents an unresolved and important question: why have the ideologies of hate, fear, nationalism, antagonism, and violence had such appeal to a segment of young men across many countries in the past thirty years? How does it happen that many fairly typical twelve-year-old boys somehow become captivated by the extremist right-wing political ideas of racism, sexism, and nationalism? Previous posts have considered major generational events and pervasive social influencers as causes of the rise of extremist attitudes among young people. But this leaves the psychological question unanswered: why do these particular divisive attitudes and ideas find such a receptive audience among some young people? And why do messages of inclusion, democracy, and tolerance not have a similar appeal?

Kathleen Blee has devoted her career to understanding the minds of racist activists in the United States, and she emphasizes the importance of the developmental process involved in becoming racist. In Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (2002) she writes:

Intense, activist racism typically does not arise on its own; it is learned in racist groups. These groups promote ideas radically different from the racist attitudes held by many whites. They teach a complex and contradictory mix of hatred for enemies, belief in conspiracies, and allegiance to an imaginary unified race of “Aryans.” (Blee 2002:3)

A new generation of social psychologists have attempted to theorize about the emotional and cognitive systems of children and young people that might help to answer these questions. They have focused on the underlying “needs” that children and young people have, to which various ideologies and belief systems are appealing to a greater or lesser extent. Especially influential is work by Susan Fiske and her collaborators, including especially Social Beings (Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor, 4th edition, 2021). Fiske and Taylor offer a compact theory of social motives, which they summarize as the “BUC(k)ET” scheme:

Social cognition is animated by social motives traceable to belonging, including understanding, controlling, enhancing self, and trusting others. This framework fits the history of motivations in psychology (S. T. Fiske, 2008) as well as current work in social psychology generally (S. T. Fiske, 2010) and social cognition in particular (S. T. Fiske, 2002). Although other frameworks are possible, this highlights some motives that determine when and how people operate in more automatic or more controlled modes. (Fiske and Taylor 94)

BUC(k)ET scheme

This is a proto-theory of what an adolescent is looking for as he or she approaches adulthood as a grounding of his emotional and social landscape. Fiske’s model places a quest to gain a sense of belonging at the center of this set of needs, as well as a thought framework that helps to “make sense” of the world the young person is beginning to experience (through personal experience, media, social media, clubs, and other social associations). The young person wants to find ways of feeling that he or she is able to control some aspects of the social environment he confronts; to find a basis for developing a positive view of himself; and perhaps most importantly, find ways of forming relationships of trust with some other people. Notice how closely this corresponds to some of the themes of extremist messaging and activism.

Consider these passages from Michael Kimmel’s description of some of the young men and boys attracted to the neo-Nazi movement in Sweden. (See this previous post on Kathleen Blee’s excellent special volume on ethnographies of the far-right (link).) Here Kimmel describes a twelve-year-old boy Edward and his inner life:

Insecure and lonely at twelve years old, Edward started hanging out with skinheads because he “moved to a new town, knew nobody, and needed friends.” Equally lonely and utterly alienated from his distant father, Pelle met an older skinhead who took him under his wing and became a sort of mentor. Pelle was a “street hooligan” hanging out in street gangs, brawling and drinking with other gangs. “My group actually looked down on the neo-Nazis,” he says, because “they weren’t real fighters.” “All the guys had an insecure role as a man,” says Robert. “They were all asking ‘who am I?’” …

Already feeling marginalized and often targeted, the boys and men described themselves as “searchers” or “seekers,” kids looking for a group with which to identify and where they would feel they belonged. “When you enter puberty, it’s like you have to choose a branch,” said one ex-Nazi. “You have to choose between being a Nazi, anti-Nazi, punk or hip- hopper—in today’s society, you just can’t choose to be neutral” (cited in Wahlstrom 2001, 13-14). …

For others, it was a sense of alienation from family and especially the desire to rebel against their fathers. “Grown-ups often forget an important component of Swedish racism, the emotional conviction,” says Jonas Hallen (2000). “If you have been beaten, threatened, and stolen from, you won’t listen to facts and numbers.” (209-210)

Belonging is the recurring theme here. And experts on far-right mobilization suggest that the “influencers” who craft messages of hate, antagonism, and racism are just as aware of these underlying cravings of young people as marketers of sports shoes and cell phones: they find persuasive messages and narratives that play into the need for meaning, direction, belonging, and influence that Fiske describes. The impulses of “belonging” and “narratives of meaning” are powerful, according to Fiske, and these deep psychological needs help to explain the appeal of right-wing extremism and “us-them” antagonism. Fiske’s guiding idea here is that political ideas, attitudes, and ideologies are adopted by the young person as ways of forming a link between a group and the individual’s own course in life. Racism is one way of defining one’s primary group for “belonging”: by defining other groups as separate, threatening, and inferior, the individual simultaneously creates an identity group for himself. And this construction of one’s social identity is fertile ground for aggression, hostility, and prejudice towards other groups.

Lior Zmigrod and co-authors have attempted to discover correlations between cognitive traits and ideological propensities (Zmigrod, Leor, Ian W. Eisenberg, Patrick G. Bissett, Trevor W. Robbins, and Russell A. Poldrack. 2021, “The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376 (1822)). Their research is relevant to the theories of social cognition offered by Susan Fiske (though they do not mention her work). Here is a relevant description from their abstract:

Even less is known about how cognitive dispositions—individual differences in how information is perceived and processed— sculpt individuals’ ideological worldviews, proclivities for extremist beliefs and resistance (or receptivity) to evidence…. We uncovered the specific psychological signatures of political, nationalistic, religious and dogmatic beliefs. Cognitive and personality assessments consistently outperformed demographic predictors in accounting for individual differences in ideological preferences by 4 to 15-fold. (Abstract)

The methodology pursued here is statistical, based on surveys of a moderate number of subjects. (In fact, the authors are critical of the social-psychology approach that begins with an analysis of psychic needs.) Two kinds of survey instruments are used: one to evaluate the individual’s level on several cognitive measures; and the second to evaluate the individual’s level with regard to a set of political attitudes. The two sets of variables are illustrated on the following table. As the table indicates, “Strategic Information Processing” (a cognitive trait) is strongly negatively associated with each ideological feature except “Social Dominance”. “Caution”, another cognitive feature, is positively associated with each ideological feature across the board.

What were those “psychological signatures” (bundles of psychological attributes strongly associated with features of ideological susceptibility) that Zmigrod and her colleagues discovered? Here is their description of the “religion” signature:

The psychological signature of religiosity consisted of heightened caution and reduced strategic information processing in the cognitive domain (similarly to conservatism), and enhanced agreeableness, risk perception and aversion to social risk-taking, in the personality domain (figure 4 and electronic supplementary material, figure S6). The finding that religious participants exhibited elevated caution and risk perception is particularly informative to researchers investigating the theory that threat, risk and disgust sensitivity are linked to moral and religious convictions [92–97], and that these cognitive and emotional biases may have played a role in the cultural origins of large-scale organized religions [98,99]. (11)

This empirical study is interesting and suggestive, and it has some similarity to research surrounding the Right Wing Authoritarianism scale discussed in earlier posts (link). However, it does not illuminate what seems to be a key question: how are these cognitive attitudes formed, and how does a given set of cognitive attitudes bring about a high (or low) level of receptiveness to racist ideology and extremist political attitudes? We might even ask whether the causal influence might flow in the opposite direction: the person indoctrinated into religious dogmatism is thereby led to develop a low affinity for the cognitive skill of strategic information processing. These are the questions that Fiske’s work seems to provide a basis for answering.

Group identities and inclusive multicultural democracy

The United States is a multicultural democracy. This is simply an empirical fact; the country is a democracy (imperfect by many important measures); and it is multiracial, multi-ethnic, and multi-national. So what is involved in helping bring about a transition to an “inclusive” multicultural democracy — a social and political order embodying fundamental equality across all groups, developing a political psychology of mutual respect for the dignity and freedoms of members of other groups, and creating an environment of reasonably harmonious social and political life across and within different communities?

Jack Citrin and David Sears address some of these questions in American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism (2014). The book is a notable contribution in many dimensions, but of special interest to the topic of inclusive democracy is their effort to gain empirical insight into the “ethnic” or group identities of the groups that make up our population, and some ideas about the social processes that contribute to the formation of those identities. Here is how they characterize social identities:

Social identities refer to the dimensions of one’s self-concept defined by perceptions of similarity with some people and difference from others. They develop because people categorize themselves and others as belonging to groups and pursue their goals through membership in these groups. They have political relevance because they channel feelings of mutuality, obligation, and antagonism, delineating the contours of one’s willingness to help others as well as the boundaries of support for policies allocating resources based on group membership. Indeed, the intimate connection between the personal and the social bases of self-regard becomes clear when one recalls how quickly an insult to the dignitity of one’s group can trigger ethnic violence. (Citrin and Sears 2014: 31)

A person’s social identity may depend on many different kinds of personal characteristics: religion (evangelical vs. Protestant vs. Muslim), gender (M, F, X), region (Midwestern vs. South vs. Long Island), or occupation (blue collar, white collar, service). But Citrin and Sears underline the particular importance of racial and ethnic affiliations in U.S. social and political life.

This approach views racial and ethnic minorities as having especially strong ethnic identities, a sense of common fate with fellow group members, and perceptions of discrimination against their own group. These psychological foundations, we suggest, underlie the normative precepts of identity politics and multiculturalist ideology, particularly resonating with its emphasis on privileging ethnicity as a primary social identity. (19)

And they draw special attention to the relatively unique features of African-American identity in the United States, which they refer to as “black exceptionalism”:

Third, the black exceptionalism model hypothesizes that African Americans have always faced a uniquely powerful color line, one that is not completely impermeable but that continues to be difficult to crack. Despite their linguistic assimilation and their significant and ongoing contributions to a common popular culture, many blacks are excluded by the legacy of the past from the level of integration into the mainstream that voluntary immigrant groups have undergone, and, we argue, are continuing to undergo. Indeed, of all the major ethnic and racial groups blacks have, on average, by far the strongest levels of aggrieved ethnic group consciousness. Young blacks are especially likely to have strong group consciousness, suggesting enduring obstacles to interethnic cooperation. (22)

The black exceptionalism perspective argues that African Americans remain subjectd to uniquely high levels of prejudice and discrimination. Key to this view is the notion of the inertial power of history. Even as laws change, fundamental social practices and the mentalities of ordinary people typically follow only slowly, as in the classic contrast of “stateways” with “folkways.” The residues of racial prejudice in the behavior and attitudes of ordinary Americans have persisted long after the Emancipation Proclamation and 1960s-era civil rights legislation eliminated formalized racial inequality from the law books. (35)

It is important to reflect on these last two points. The persistence of racial prejudice and discrimination in US society is evident. There is indeed a “uniquely powerful color line” in the US. Likewise, the consequent social, economic, and political disparities for African American individuals and families are well-documented, whether we consider health status, family wealth, or educational opportunities. Black exceptionalism is not simply a perspective; it is a well understood historical reality (though a reality that the Trump administration is working very hard to conceal). (Here is an earlier post on this topic.)

In this book, and the research supporting it, Citrin and Sears are primarily interested in a problem that is somewhat distinct from the question of white racial attitudes. They are interested in the question of “national identity” in the context of multiple “ethnic or racial identities”, which they regard as the key issue raised by multiculturalism. Does the fact that Alice identifies as an African American woman make her less likely to have a strong affinity with the nation as a whole? Is she less “patriotic” than a typical member of another ethnic group? Is there a process of “assimilation” through which local identities (“Polish-American”, “Cuban-American”) subside in favor of a composite “American” identity? (For that matter, is this part of the hysterical reaction offered to the Bad Bunny halftime show by the right?)

On this orientation, the question raised by American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism is whether specific ethnic and racial identities are compatible with an overarching “civic” or “national” identity. They consider three broad frameworks: cosmopolitan liberalism, soft multiculturalism, and hard multiculturalism. The question of whether levels of “racial and ethnic antagonism” have changed in various groups is secondary. In fact, the topic of generational change in racial attitudes — the question of whether Millennials are less racist than Boomers — is not addressed here directly at all. And yet Sears is himself one of the chief architects of the “symbolic racism” school of thought — the idea that the key change between generations has been the replacement of “old-fashioned biological racism” by a more “color-blind” racism that nonetheless perpetuates antagonism and fear by whites of African Americans.

So how are we to move beyond this “uniquely powerful color line”? Racism is a reality that is conveyed through individual actions and institutional effects. Part of progressive change must take the form of change of attitudes and culture on the part of white people, and of young people in particular. So it is especially important to have empirical and sociological data about the evolution of white racial attitudes since 1950. How have white attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes about African American people changed during these decades? Has there been generational change? The “impressionable years” hypothesis—which suggests that individuals are highly susceptible to attitude change during late adolescence and early adulthood, and then “crystallize” and remain stable for the rest of their lives—is a cornerstone of some theories of political socialization (Krosnick and Alwin, “Aging and susceptibility to attitude change”). Did the dramatic moments and struggles of the civil rights movement change the way that young white people thought about their black compatriots? (The revolution was televised!) Did the Obama presidency or the Black Lives Movement move the dial? Are we a less racist society today when it comes to attitudes, stereotypes, and expectations? The arguments offered by DeSante and Smith in Racial Stasis suggest — not very much (link). And Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2022) fills in many of the blanks in Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. We need to have a new surge of practical thinking about how a more genuinely inclusive and respectful “culture of multiculturalism” will come about.

New thinking about generational change about race

The United States has a long history of racism against African-Americans, at multiple levels. At the level of individuals, we have a history of negative attitudes, stereotypes, fears, and antagonisms that are built into the social consciousness of white men and women about African-Americans. Racist attitudes about “genetic inferiority”, crime, and other negative stereotypes have persisted since the slave period. At the level of behavior, institutions and individuals in “majority society” discriminate against African-American men, women, and children. The code of inter-racial behavior embodied in the Jim Crow epoch has continuing relevance to contemporary society, and discrimination in employment and other socially important opportunities persists. And then there is “structural racism” or “institutional racism” — the persistence of patterns of disparity and disadvantage for African-American individuals and families that seem to result from the workings of the institutions themselves. Residential segregation and its consequences provide a clear illustration of structural racism, and the persistence of health and longevity disparities by race illustrates the deadly seriousness of these patterns of unequal treatment. (Here is an earlier post on racial disparities.)

Observers have recognized for decades that American society needs to change in order to eliminate these facts of racism and substantive disparity of outcomes. But what kinds of change are called for? There is a comforting theory of change that seems to have some empirical basis. It is the idea that each cohort of Americans has become less racist and more tolerant of diversity than its predecessor cohort. On this account, the “silent generation” (1928-1945) had more explicitly racist attitudes than the baby boomers (1946-1964), Gen X (1965-1980), and Gen Z (1996-?). Each successive cohort was more accepting of racial diversity than its predecessor. This narrative suggests that racism and its legacy will die out as the more tolerant generations replace their less tolerant predecessors. GlobeScan, a global public opinion research organization, published the results of a brief survey on this topic in 2023 (link):

This report offers an empirical snapshot of the change across generations that is evident in some public opinion surveys: that concern about racial discrimination has steadily increased across recent generations of people. This is a comforting storyline for anyone who cares about an inclusive multicultural democracy. But Christopher DeSante and Candis Watts Smith argue in Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics (2020) that the storyline is fundamentally incorrect.

DeSante and Smith do not dispute that the generations since the 1940s have indeed experienced a shift in racial attitudes away from overt and explicit “biological racism”. Generations since the baby boom of the 1950s have internalized more “race-neutral” ways of describing current realities. And they have expressed rising discomfort with the fact of continuing racial discrimination. But these generations — GenX, Millennials, and GenZ in particular — appear not to have moved forward to the logical conclusion — the need for supporting the policy changes that would be effective in addressing the continuing realities of racial discrimination. This is the “stagnation and stasis” to which DeSante and Smith refer in the title of the book: progress on ending racism appears to have stalled.

The heart of their argument involves the question of how to measure “racist attitudes” among individuals. For several decades the primary tool of social-psychological measurement of racial attitudes has been based on the concept of “racial resentment” or symbolic racism. Survey questions were designed to elicit the subject’s level of resentment, fear, or antagonism towards members of another race. DeSante and Smith argue that this approach is no longer satisfactory as a measurement tool. They maintain that racism is inherently multidimensional, involving emotions and cognitive assumptions and frameworks, and a satisfactory measure needs to permit observation of several of these dimensions in the subjects of a survey. Instead they offer a four-dimensional framework that they call FIRE (Fear, Institutionalist Racism, and Empathy), and they use a set of survey questions that allow measurement of each dimension. These questions are designed to capture the emotional and cognitive components of “attitudes about race” among individuals in a racially mixed society.

Their measurement tool elaborates on these four questions:

-- I am fearful of people of other races.
-- White people in the US have certain advantages because of the color of their skin.
-- Racial problems in the US are rare, isolated situations.
-- I am angry that racism exists. (DeSantes and Smith 2020: 227)

The questions are borrowed from several other survey instruments and are validated using statistical tools of consistency and predictive value. Here are the results of using these questions on the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (White respondents only).

The results are striking. Millennials are no less “racist” on average than the population of older whites on each of these measures. Here are the mean values for each question:

• -- “Fearful of other races” 3.83 vs. 3.87
• -- “Recognize whites have advantages” 2.98 vs. 2.48
• -- “Racial problems are rare” 3.64 vs. 3.68
• -- “Angry racism exists” 1.78 vs. 1.59

On average, Millennials demonstrate the same level of racist attitudes as older whites. The pattern is somewhat different when we compare “strongly agree” and “somewhat agree” responses to the four questions.

• -- “Fearful of other races” 14.36 vs. 14.35
• --  “Recognize whites have advantages” 43.06 vs. 59.01
• -- “Racial problems are rare” 21.28 vs. 19.59
• -- “Angry racism exists” 76.84 vs. 85.37

There are two significant differences in these “agree” responses. Millennials are more likely to agree that “whites have advantages” and agree more frequently that they are “angry racism exists”. Millennials are more likely to disagree or strongly disagree that they are “fearful of other races”. But overall, DeSantes and Smith argue that these differences are small, indicating that little change has occurred between the generations born before 1981 and the Millennials. Millennials have abandoned “old-fashioned racism” but have not advanced much further. Here is their summary statement:

Generally speaking, our results in this chapter also highlight the issue of racial stasis, as signs of the countervailing forces remain visible. For instance, White millennials do present more progressive attitudes. Compared to their predecessors, they are more likely to express anger about racism and more likely to acknowledge their privilege. But we also found that nearly one in five White millennials (20 percent) simultaneously feels angry that racism exists and does not believe Whites have advantages because of the color of their skin…. Ultimately we have a large number of walking contradictions in American society that are helping to produce and perpetuate ongoing racial inequities through their political stances and policy preferences. (244)

So if DeSantes and Smith are correct, then the hope that America’s conflicts over race and racism will disappear as a result of generational replacement is not likely to materialize. Instead, positive and purposeful steps will be needed in the realm of public and semi-public policy in order to address the effects of discrimination and prejudice. And since the burdens of discrimination are cumulative, it is not enough to ensure that opportunities are available on the basis of merit and achievement to solve the problem. If residential segregation makes it less likely that black children will receive equal educational opportunities, then all of their opportunities in later life will be stunted as well. If elementary schools or high schools are racially oriented so that black children on average receive lower quality educations, then “equal opportunity” at the university level is insufficient.

DeSante and Smith do not have much to say about what a “non-racist” mentality and culture would look like, but we can extend their thinking by emphasizing the importance of “education for an inclusive multicultural democracy”. This is a view of “civic education” for all of us based on respect across our various lines of division. A major part of such an education is a clear and honest knowledge of some of the sources of racist oppression and violence that have burdened our society in the past. Another is a deliberate and creative effort by educators, leaders, and students themselves to find our way to some of the ideals articulated by MLK and the beloved community. Without some idea of how young people can be genuinely transformed in their underlying attitudes about race, it is hard to see how the “stagnation of racial attitudes” called out by DeSante and Smith can be disrupted and reimagined. (Here is a more extensive discussion of what is needed for an inclusive multicultural democracy to become a reality; link.)

Maintaining social resilience

What is needed for a community of diverse people and groups to maintain its resilience in the face of hateful language, incidents, and provocations?

This question is particularly important for universities, which commonly seek to create a climate of welcome and respect for the various groups of students who make them up, and which are sometimes subjected to anonymous hateful attacks through graffiti, email, posters, social media, or other means. University communities have periodically been thrown into tense situations of fear, mistrust, and anxiety by hateful attacks — even when no physical threats of violence have emerged (NYT).

Hateful and racist propaganda campaigns like these are deeply destructive to the cohesiveness of a community for several reasons. They undermine trust across groups — “do those other people think this way about me?”. They harden the separations that sometimes begin to emerge across groups. They may lead to a cycle of “tit for tat” hostilities, which have the inherent possibility of escalation. And possibly they reinforce and amplify the latent hateful assumptions of some people to a more virulent and expressive form.

So how can a diverse and multicultural community best prepare itself for attacks like these? How can students, faculty, and staff “take on hate” in a university community?

One avenue is to devote the effort necessary throughout the community to establish strong forms of affiliation and trust across groups, so that members of different groups have a substantial basis for sustaining confidence in the motivations and allegiances of members of other groups. This means creating avenues of interaction and communication across groups in routine times, not just the occasions of crisis when threats to cohesion arise.

Another is for leaders to be explicit and passionate about the values of inclusion that hold the community together.

Third, an important source of social resiliency results from affirmative organizations that advocate for the values of mutual respect and inclusion and that have established strong networks of relationships throughout the community, both within and across groups. Student organizations can play the lead in creating and supporting such groups.

Another important source of resiliency is realistic communication about the continuing possibility of individual anonymous expressions of hate and intolerance. It is a fact that hateful expressions are possible in every social setting, and in fact we seem to be in a period where such expressions are becoming more common. So a community that is mentally prepared for such assaults is probably better able to resist their pernicious effects than the world that Mary Poppins lives in.

It also makes sense that a community will be stronger and more resilient if its institutions establish confidence in protection of all members of the community against violence and intimidation. Fear is a toxic emotion in a multicultural community. If a community can ensure that racist actions will be appropriately addressed, and that no one needs to fear racist or hateful violence, then the anxieties created by anonymous hateful messages should have less effect on the cohesiveness of the community. This means that effective and predictable policing and law enforcement is an important source of community resilience.

So we might say that a resilient multicultural community is one in which --

• there are lasting inter-group ties through organizations and person-to-person relationships;
• leaders from civil society and from important organizations publicly espouse the values of inclusion and respect;
• there is a broad understanding of the dynamics of hate and the possibility of occasional hateful occurrences; and
• there is deep confidence in the ability of the community to provide safety for all its members through effective law enforcement.

These circumstances are likely to build the ongoing trust and commitment to positive intergroup loyalties that will make the community resilient to the efforts of hateful outsiders (or insiders) to disrupt its harmonious fabric of civil life.