Volume II, Issue I

COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE COLLECTIVE Sociolog y Research Journal VOLUM E 2 | I S SU E I

WILLIAM & MARY

The Collective Sociology Research Journal

VOLUME 2, ISSUE I FALL 2020 1

Executive Board Editor-in-Chief Robert Metaxatos

Layout Editors Rhea Chesson Judith Hahn Allyson Lowe

Public Relations Director Jasmine Geonzon

Finance Director Chris Hettwer

Copy Editor Nico Bronson

Review Board Nafisa Ahmed Gus Espinoza Celia Lu Kibiriti Majuto Naomi Marin Gavin Meister Chitra Singh Laura Tutko

2

Contents

4 5 13 16 21

Editor’s Note

Tweeting your ‘Thoughts and Prayers’: American Political and Public Responses to Mass Shootings Charles Pritz

The Impact of Labeling Theory: Racial Disparities in the United States’ Criminal “Justice” System Kristen Hutchens

The Impact of Structural Racism and Sociohistorical Events on Birth Outcomes of Black Mothers Maya FarrHenderson

Stability and Social Trajectory: Change in the Metaphysics of Gender Jake Beardsley

3

Editor’s Note Dear Reader, Those who are looking at The Collective in the current moment – and those who are looking back – will already know that we are publishing Volume 2, Issue 1 at the end of a long year in which perennial social issues have come suddenly to the fore. As of December 2020, 300,000 people in the United States and 1,500,000 worldwide have died from COVID-19. With tens of thousands more cases unreported or not assigned to the disease on death certificates, media outlets, public health officials, and citizens have in different ways turned their attention to the most vulnerable and/or historically marginalized populations. We have ‘learned’ several things. People of color are overrepresented in essential work; minority communities face increased risk of mortality owing to untold environmental and social factors; and though the virus is held to be a major issue by government and citizens alike, neither group is uniform in their response. At the same time, previously undervalued movements such as Black Lives Matter take on new meaning as the usual mechanisms for exercising or resisting power have been reconfigured according to circumstance. It should no longer be possible to privilege our readymade beliefs and practices without considering their value as social facts, to quote Durkheim: “[T]his term fits … quite well, for it is clear that, since their source is not the individual, their substratum can be no other than society, either the political society as a whole or some one of the partial groups it includes.”

4

This year, an ensemble of violent forces has widened the U.S.'s deep fissure of discrimination, releasing to the surface vital voices in the fight for justice. Collective action and solidarity help us frame what we feel is important about the four articles you will find in our second-ever issue. In no way can academic writing purport to solve the world’s otherwise knotty social facts, but it can unravel them: it permits the author to pass on their sociological imagination to the reader, empowering them to traverse an unbalanced social landscape so endless but so unique to each person. Such writing clarifies what complexities emerge and evolve from those things with which we are already familiar – for this issue, Twitter, crime, motherhood, and gender. Contributing a content analysis of U.S. senators’ tweets and a survey of William & Mary students, Pritz finds no evidence to support the common assumption that tweeting “thoughts and prayers” in response to mass shootings is partisan. Hutchens urges us to think about implicit bias in the criminal justice system through the lens of “labeling theory”: when individuals take on the traits ascribed to them by those in power. FarrHenderson contends that we require a more rigorous framework to understand the disparity in health outcomes between Black and white mothers, which takes into account the former group’s sociohistorical distrust of the medical profession. And Beardsley in many ways gives us a clear overview of sex-based discrimination, showing most specifically that there are times when trans people are subordinated or privileged based on their movement across social positions. Each topic serves to challenge and inform our understanding of an always-dynamic social world.

You will find here a rich tapestry of our students’ minds. Perhaps unlike other academic journals, The Collective is not supposed to be seamless; we publish cross-disciplinary perspectives because their real-world analogs are just as varied, though not as candid. I hope you enjoy exploring what we’ve assembled (online) this semester! I feel that all of our readers make up part of this collective effort to spread intentional scholarship across campus. With warm wishes,

Tweeting Your “Thoughts and Prayers”: American Political and Public Responses to Mass Shootings Charles Pritz Another mass shooting, followed by another outpouring of solidarity, emotion, and calls for policy reform – this cycle seems to repeat itself continually on social media, especially in the sphere of politics. However, there has been little research done specifically on political responses to mass shootings on Twitter. Rebecca A. Hayes, Julia C. Waddell, and Peter M. Smudde (2017) have examined the role of social media platforms as spaces for public grief and social solidarity following public tragedies, which they define as “disruptive, catastrophic events that cause physical or psychological trauma for individuals, communities, organizations, and social support networks regardless of whether they are directly or indirectly impacted by the circumstances” (258).

Mass shootings, under this definition, are public tragedies, and Guggenheim et al. (2015) note that they receive a disproportionate amount of attention from the public, despite making up only a small fraction of gun violence nationwide (209). Similarly, Croitoru et al. (2020) find that in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings, there is a spike – followed by a sharp decline – in public search interest (345). Thus, as tragedies like mass shootings unfold, people not locally or directly impacted “witness the events and vicariously feel the grief and loss of the victims” (Hayes, Waddell, and Smudde 2017:258).

News media and opinion pieces published in the aftermath of contemporary mass shootings lay out a common narrative in regard to how politicians publicly respond to tragedies. According to such media, politicians respond predictably and uniformly along party lines in three distinct stages.

1. Republicans offer their thoughts and prayers. According to Dana Milbank (2019) of The Washington Post, “Republicans’ reflexive response to the endless massacres has become a cruel joke, as effective as a Hallmark sympathy card.” Katy Steinmetz (2017) of TIME similarly notes that offerances of thoughts and prayers have become “cliche.” Further, David Leondhart, Ian Prasad Philbank, and Stuart A. Thompson (2017) of The New York Times revealed that of the top ten recipients of funding from the National Rifle Association (NRA) in both the U.S. Senate and House, all were Republican, and all but one tweeted his or her thoughts and prayers following the 2017 Las Vegas massacre.

2. Democrats criticize Republican offerances of thoughts and prayers as insufficient, and instead call for policy change in the form of gun safety legislation.

Milbank (2019) cited a tweet by Senator Ed Markey, in which he said, “My Republican colleagues cut and paste the words ‘thoughts and prayers’ into a tweet and then do nothing on gun violence.”

Similarly, Katie Reilly (2017) wrote in TIME that “Democratic leaders and gun control advocates shut down the immediate and familiar outpouring of ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the victims of the South Texas church shooting on Sunday, calling for stronger gun laws.” Jennifer Rubin (2017), a Democratic contributor to The Washington Post, argued that critics of Republican thoughts and prayers “understand that prayers are no excuse for refusal to act in responsible ways to address the menace of gun violence.” However, Steinmetz (2017) notes that criticisms of thoughts and prayers are becoming just as common as the original cliche itself.

3. Republicans criticize Democrats for politicizing such tragedies and argue that the aftermath of mass shootings is a time for compassion and grievance, not politics. Katelyn Beaty (2017) of The Atlantic wrote that “prayer is not inaction,” but instead “a responsible reaction” to mass shootings. Milbank (2019) cited a tweet from Representative Barry Loudermilk, in which he called out Democrats who “criticize our calls for earnest prayer.” Similarly, Rubin (2017) noted that then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan chided critics from the left, saying “the right thing to do is to pray in moments like this, because you know what? Prayer works.”

As the media narrative indicates, many politicians respond with their “thoughts and prayers” to mass shootings, which is often seen as an empty, meaningless response. According to Hayes, Waddell, and Smudde (2017:269), Genuinely supportive actions, even those as seemingly simple as those expressed through social media, not only add to the collective rituals required for recovery but they also may generate goodwill from stakeholders of the organization and build social capital, trust, and credibility. However, involvement that is seen as exploitative or self-serving likely has the opposite effect and may be damaging to an organization or its reputation.

Thus, the impact of an offerance of “thoughts and prayers” matters just as much as the intention behind such a statement. In examining the value that people place in thoughts and prayers, Linda Thunstrom and Shiri Noy (2019) found that such responses should be “employed selectively,” as Christians place a higher value in prayer than do

5

6

nonreligious people (19798). They also show that the religiousness of the person offering his or her thoughts and prayers impacts the value that the recipient places in such a response. This finding may be important in understanding common responses to thoughts and prayers in the aftermath of mass shootings. According to Scott Clifford and Ben Gaskins (2015), candidates for public office often emphasize their religiousness in order to appear trustworthy and moral. Further, they find that “displaying generic religious values can increase perceptions of a candidate’s trustworthiness and favorability” (Clifford and Gaskins 2015:1090). Thus, when a politician offers their thoughts and prayers after a mass shooting, they signal – whether intentionally or not – that they are a trustworthy person who should be viewed favorably.

Taken together, these findings reveal that there are many factors that influence how a politician responds to a mass shooting, and many factors that influence how that response is received. A politician may seek to respond to a mass shooting due to genuine emotional reaction, public relations considerations, or both. Also, they may choose to respond with thoughts and prayers, or a similar religious response based on personal religiosity, a strategic signaling to boost favorability, both, or neither. Finally, this response is received differently depending at a personal level depending on factors including stake in the tragedy, political party, and religion.

With mass shootings dominating national headlines throughout the decade with little federal policy being made to address them, my research seeks to determine if the aforementioned media narrative actually exists as characterized and to examine the factors that are in play as a politician responds to a mass shooting and the public reacts to that response. In doing so, the following questions were asked. Do trends exist among politicians’ responses to a mass shooting based on their religious affiliation, level of religiosity, or political affiliation?

Do trends exist among reactions to such responses based on the same qualities of members of the public?

METHODOLOGY Two separate pathways were developed to address my primary research questions. First, I sought to determine if the common media narrative on political responses to mass shootings – as characterized above – could be substantiated by my analysis of politicians’ tweets, and what factors impact how politicians respond to mass shootings on Twitter. Then, a survey was conducted to determine public reactions to such political responses to mass shootings.

I. CONTENT ANALYSIS According to data from Everytown for Gun Safety, beginning with the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, there have been 12 mass shootings in the United States that have left ten or more people dead. These shootings, listed in the Table 1, make up the sample from which responses in their immediate aftermath on Twitter were analyzed.

Table 1

The sample of politicians for this research includes all U.S. Senators in office for the entire period between and including the shootings at Sandy Hook in 2012 and El Paso in 2019. 55 Senators fit these criteria, divided along partisan lines, with 28 Republicans and 27 Democrats.2 The religious affiliation of Senators was classified based on coding done by Pew Research Center (2019). Among the sample of Senators, 87.3 percent identified as Christian. Among these Christian Senators, 62.5 percent identified as some sort of Protestant, 31.3 percent as Catholic, and 6.3 percent as Mormon. Of the non-Christian Senators, 85.7 percent identified as Jewish, and 14.3 percent – one Senator – declined to answer (Pew 2019).

To determine a Senator’s level of religiosity, the metric of religious saliency from Daniel Arnon (2018) was used. Arnon (2018) coded the religious saliency of every member of the U.S. Senate based on a coding scheme used by Guth (2014) on members of the House of Representatives. Senators were classified using a four-point scale: “no apparent religious involvement – (0); formal membership in a congregation, but no evidence of regular activity – (1); frequent or regular attendance at services – (2); and, leadership positions in a congregation and/or in a church group in the past or present – (3)” (Arnon 2018:7).

For each Senator, a Twitter Advanced Search was conducted to find all the Twitter activity from any of their personal, official, or campaign accounts in the immediate two days following each of the 12 mass shootings. A Senator was classified as “inactive” if all of his or her Twitter accounts had no activity in the month leading up to the relevant two-day period. If a Senator was “active,” his or her tweets about gun violence in the two-day period were counted and categorized into a classification scheme consisting of the following nine categories: Thoughts and Prayers, Thoughts, Prayers, Alternative Sympathetic Response, Criticism of Thoughts

and Prayers, Not Time for Politics, Thoughts and Prayers + Action, Action/Policy, and Other. For tweets coded as “Thoughts and Prayers + Action” or “Action/Policy,” I noted whether the call to action was about gun control, gun rights, mental illness, or another category.

II. SURVEY The second portion of this research focused on public reactions to political responses to mass shootings, again examining the variables of political affiliation, religious affiliation, and religious saliency. First, survey participants were asked questions to determine their political party affiliation, religious affiliation, and religious saliency. These questions were based on a survey published by Pew Research Center (Pew 2014). Next, participants were presented with a series of four screenshots of tweets by Senators found in the content analysis. One tweet from each of the following categories was chosen, as it was seen as generally representative of the messaging of that category: Thoughts and Prayers, Alternative Sympathetic Response, Criticism of Thoughts and Prayers, and Action/Policy. The senator’s name associated with the tweet was not included in the screenshot; as such, the tweets were anonymous. For each tweet, participants were asked the following questions.

Democrats for politicizing such tragedies by pushing for gun reform.3 From 975 tweets, there are only 72 instances of thoughts and prayers messaging, meaning 7.4 percent of tweets include thoughts and prayers. Among tweets with sympathetic messaging, thoughts and prayers responses only account for 13 percent of this total. When expanded to include all tweets that offer thoughts and/or prayers, these tweets make up 28.5 percent of the total tweets, and 52 percent of tweets with sympathetic messaging. Thus, thoughts and prayers messaging is not the most common response to mass shootings on Twitter.

DISCUSSION

I-1. POLITICAL AFFILIATION When broken down by political party, there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats in terms of overall offerance of thoughts and prayers. While Democrats make up 49.1 percent of the sample population and Republicans make up 50.9 percent, Democrats tweeted 51.4 percent of the tweets with thoughts and prayers messaging, compared to the 48.6 percent from Republicans.

Additionally, on average, each Democrat tweeted 1.37 thoughts and prayers tweets, compared to an average of 1.25 from each Republican in the sample.

But in examining the offerance of either thoughts or prayers, a different response arose.

Democrats offered just their thoughts at a much greater rate than Republicans, who alternatively offered just their prayers much more frequently than Democrats. 70.8 percent more "thoughts" tweets came from Democrats than Republicans, and 31 percent more prayers tweets came from Republicans than Democrats. Additionally, Democrats offered an alternative sympathetic response to a mass shooting at a much greater rate than Republicans, with a difference of 52.4 percent between how many such tweets came from the two parties.

Even more significantly, a partisan difference was observed in tweets containing calls to action following mass shooting events. There were 380 instances of calls to action from the 975 tweets, meaning that 38.8 percent of tweets contain a call to action. 53.3 percent of total tweets from Democrats contained a call to action, compared to 9.2 percent of total tweets from Republicans. Furthermore, Democrats authored 92.4 percent of the tweets containing a call to action, compared to 7.6 percent from Republicans. It should be noted, however, that three senators, all Democrats – Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, and Bernie Sanders – each accounted for over 10 percent of tweets with action messaging, with 43, 42, and 40 tweets each, respectively. The highest number of action tweets coming from a Republican senator was 11, coming from John Cornyn.

Despite the common media narrative, this study does not find evidence to support the claim that Republicans overwhelmingly offer their thoughts and prayers on Twitter in response to mass shootings. Similarly, this study does not find evidence to support the claim that Democrats continually criticize Republicans for their offerance of thoughts and prayers, nor that Republicans continually criticize

I-2. RELIGIOUS SALIENCY There is no apparent relationship between a senator’s religious saliency and their offerance of thoughts and prayers in response to a mass shooting. Similarly, comparably high levels of senators of all levels of religious saliency offered their prayers.

Additionally, the average number of tweets including thoughts and prayers messaging did not follow a

1. Tweets 1, 2, and 3: Thoughts and Prayers, Alternative Sympathetic Response, and Criticism of Thoughts and Prayers a. Please rate your level of agreement or disagreement with the following statements: i. The sentiment expressed in this tweet seems genuine. ii. The message in this tweet serves as a sufficient response to a mass shooting. b. What do you guess the political affiliation of this senator to be?

2. Tweet 4: Action/Policy (Gun Control) a. Please rate your level of agreement or disagreement with the following statements: i. The action proposed in this tweet is an effective response to this tragedy. ii. The message in this tweet serves as a sufficient response to a mass shooting. b. What do you guess the political affiliation of this senator to be?

This 23-question survey was distributed using Qualtrics to a sample of current William & Mary students. A link to the survey was sent to various political, religious, and community-focused student organizations and groups using Facebook, GroupMe, and text message, with a goal of at least 150 respondents.

7

trend in terms of level of religious saliency; although senators of higher levels of religious saliency offered their prayers more on average than senators of lower levels of religious saliency, there was not enough evidence to support a definite conclusion.

However, generally fewer senators of higher levels of religious saliency offered their thoughts than did senators of lower levels of religious saliency. In addition, on average, senators of higher levels of religious saliency that offered their thoughts did so less than senators of lower levels of religious saliency.4 Thus, although conclusions cannot be made supporting the assertion that the offerance of thoughts and prayers or prayers follows a trend by level of religious saliency, there is evidence to support the claim that a senator’s level of religious saliency is inversely related to his or her likelihood to offer thoughts in response to a mass shooting.

8

I-3. RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION Multiple trends appeared when examining the relationship between a senator’s religious affiliation and his or her response to a mass shooting on Twitter.

Religious affiliation was examined at three levels in this study: Christians v. non-Christians, denominations of Christianity, and traditions within Protestantism. To begin, I looked for differences in responses between Christian and non-Christian senators. There was no substantial difference evident between these two groups in terms of their offerance of thoughts and prayers, prayers, or alternative sympathetic responses. However, Christians offered just their thoughts at a much lower rate than non-Christians, with 31.3 percent and 85.7 percent of each group offering their thoughts respectively.

The same trend was found in terms of criticisms of thoughts and prayers responses, with 27.1 percent of Christians and 85.7 percent of Non-Christians offering a criticism of thoughts and prayers following a mass shooting. It should be noted, however, that the entire sample of non-Christian senators is a part of the Democratic Party.

To account for this possible confounding variable, I again examined the difference in responses, this time only comparing Christians and non-Christians within the Democratic caucus. Within the Democratic Party, the same trend was evident in the difference between Christians and non-Christians in offering thoughts and criticisms of thoughts and prayers, although of a smaller magnitude.5 When examined without the confounding variable of political party, it became more clear that there is no substantial difference between Christians and non-Christians in terms of offerances of alternative sympathetic responses to mass shootings, with only a 5.0 percent difference between the rate at which the groups offered such a response. However, the opposite occurred when looking at offerances of thoughts and prayers and just prayers – the gap between the rates at which Christians and non-Christians offer such responses grew when political party was a non-factor. This shift indicates that religious affiliation may play a role in if a senator responds to a mass shooting with thoughts and prayers and prayers. Further statistical study is necessary to determine the significance of such a relationship that likely exists. Overall, this study has shown that re-

ligious affiliation does play a role in how a senator chooses to respond to a mass shooting, especially in regard to which type of sympathetic message he or she offers.

Next, I examined the difference in responses to mass shootings within the sample of Christian senators, specifically looking at the categories of Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons. Despite Protestants making up a larger proportion of this sample, a smaller percentage of such senators offered all relevant responses – thoughts and prayers, thoughts, prayers, alternative sympathetic responses, and criticisms of thoughts and prayers – than did Catholic senators. This data is shown in Figure 1. With only three Mormon senators in the sample, there was not enough evidence to draw any larger conclusions in regard to their religious affiliation and responses on Twitter to mass shootings.

Finally, I looked within the Protestant senators for differences in responses between Evangelical Protestants and Mainline Protestants. To do this, I only compared the Protestant senators within the Republican party, as every Evangelical Protestant in the sample was a Republican. Although there was a numerical difference between the offerance of thoughts and prayers, thoughts, prayers, alternative sympathetic responses, and criticisms of thoughts and prayers between Evangelical and Mainline Protestants, this difference was not substantial, and thus no conclusions could be made regarding how belonging to these two different religious groups impacts a Twitter response to mass shootings. Further study would be necessary to gain understanding of any relationship that may exist here.

Figure 1: Protestant v. Catholic Responses

I-4. TRENDS OVER TIME Multiple surprising trends were discovered when examining changes in the corpus of tweets responding to mass shootings over time. It was expected that the number of tweets in response to each mass shooting would increase as time progressed, as Twitter was a relatively new and less popular platform in the earlier years for which this study began its analysis of mass shootings. However, the number of tweets in response to each mass shooting fluctuated greatly and did not follow any trend, as shown in Figure 2. In fact, the second-to-last shooting examined in this study had the lowest number of tweets in response to it, at only 21, compared to the fourth shooting, which had the highest number of tweets in response, with 147. Other factors – including the location of the shooting, number of casualties, coinciding political developments, and the identity of

the shooter – likely impacted the rate at which senators responded to mass shootings; further study is necessary to determine the impact that such factors have on the overall level of responses in the aftermath of mass shooting.

Figure 2: Total No. of Tweets in Response to Mass Shootings over Time

Figure 3: Percentage of Respondents by Political Party

Additionally, somewhat unexpected was the rate at which Senators of both political parties stayed silent on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings. On average, 64.7 percent of all Senators responded to a shooting, meaning that over one third of the Senators in the sample stayed silent. However, fewer Republican senators than Democratic senators responded to every mass shooting on Twitter, as shown in Figure 2. Although it fluctuated greatly by shooting, the average percent of Democratic respondents was 81.8 percent, compared to an average of 48.2 percent of Republicans. The greatest difference in responses by political party occurred following the Virginia Beach shooting, when 66.7 percent of the Democratic senators tweeted in response to the event, compared to 0.0 percent of Republicans.

II-1. DEMOGRAPHICS The survey received 154 complete responses from current William & Mary students. Of these students, 76 identified as Christian; among Christian students, 40 identified as Protestant, 35 identified as Catholic, and 1 identified as Orthodox. Of the 40 identifying as Protestant, 15 identified as “bornagain” or Evangelical, 15 did not identify in this manner – and were as such coded as Mainline Protestant – and 10 were unsure. Of the 78 students that did not identify as Christian, 63 identified as

Atheist, Agnostic, or Nothing in Particular, and 15 identified as another religion. In terms of religious saliency of respondents, 29.2% identified that religion is very important in their lives, 22.1% said somewhat important, 13.0% said not too important, and the largest group – 35.7% – said not at all important. For the purposes of this research, these four self-identified categories of respondents are parallel with the four categories of religious saliency used to identify the religiosity of the senators. Finally, the largest group of respondents – 99 – identified as Democrats, followed by 38 Independents and 17 Republicans. In terms of political ideology, respondents skewed liberal, with an average of 3.81 on a scale in which one equals very conservative and five means very liberal.

II-2. POLITICAL AFFILIATION When broken down by political party, there is a substantial difference in reactions to the Thoughts and Prayers response. While 82.4 percent of Republicans thought that the thoughts and prayers response seemed genuine, only 37.4 percent of Democrats felt the same way. As is represented in the media narrative, Republicans see thoughts and prayers responses as genuine significantly more than Democrats do. Additionally, while only 5.1% of Democrats felt that the thoughts and prayers tweet served as a sufficient response to a mass shooting, a majority of Republicans – 52.9 percent – felt the same way. Taken together, these findings indicate that Republicans are generally more receptive to and less critical of offerances of thoughts and prayers that are Democrats.

Alternatively, there was not as substantial of a partisan difference in reactions to the tweet including an alternative sympathetic response. Republicans were still more receptive to this response than were Democrats, with 88.2 percent and 70.7 percent, respectively, agreeing that the response seemed genuine. However, while 81.8 percent of Democrats felt that the response did not serve as a sufficient response to a mass shooting, only 29.4 percent of Republicans felt the same way. Thus, Democrats and Republicans generally are in agreement that such alternative sympathetic responses are genuine, yet they disagree on whether or not such responses are sufficient.

For the tweet including a criticism of thoughts and prayers, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the sentiment expressed seemed genuine. However, this majority included over 90 percent of Democrats and less than three-quarters of Republicans. Further, while almost three-quarters of Democrats viewed the response as sufficient, only slightly over a quarter of Republicans viewed the response the same way.

For the final tweet proposing a gun control policy as a solution to mass shootings, 58.8 percent of Republicans viewed the policy proposed as effective, compared to 92.9 percent of Democrats. Similarly, Republicans viewed the tweet as a sufficient response to a mass shooting at much lower rates than Democrats, with 29.4 percent of Republicans and 63.6 percent of Democrats agreeing.

9

10

II-3. RELIGIOUS SALIENCY In terms of the religious saliency of respondents, there is a general downward trend of the view of the thoughts and prayers response as genuine as religious saliency decreases. While over two-thirds of the most religious respondents view the thoughts and prayers response as genuine, less than one-third of the least religious respondents feel the same way.

Although the vast majority of respondents across all levels of religious saliency do not view the response as sufficient, it is worth noting that over a quarter of the most religious respondents agreed that it seemed sufficient, compared to only 1.8 percent of the least religious respondents – only one person. In comparison, the alternative sympathetic response tweet was viewed as genuine at a higher rate by more religious respondents than less religious respondents. However, there was no trend found in terms of views of this tweet as sufficient among levels of religious saliency Alternatively, an opposite trend was found when examining the tweet including a criticism of thoughts and prayers. As religious saliency increased, the tweet was viewed as genuine at a lower rate. In fact, all but one of the least religious respondents – 98.2 percent – viewed the tweet as genuine, compared to 82.2 percent of the most religious respondents. However, no trend was found in terms of views of this tweet as sufficient among levels of religious saliency.

For the final tweet – calling for action/policy on gun control – respondents of religious saliency level 2 viewed the tweet as sufficient at the highest levels, and respondents of religious saliency level 3 – the most religious – viewed it as sufficient at the lowest levels. Similarly, the most religious respondents viewed the policy proposed as an effective response to mass shootings at a level much lower than respondents of the other three levels of religious saliency.

II-4. RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION In terms of religious affiliation, the same subgroups were compared among survey respondents as were Senators in the content analysis: Christians v. non-Christians, Protestants v. Catholics, and Mainline v. Evangelical Protestants.

Christians overwhelmingly viewed the thoughts and prayers response as genuine, which was opposite the opinion of non-Christians, who did not agree that the sentiment was genuine. Although the vast majority of respondents across all religious affiliations do not view the response as sufficient, it is worth noting that almost a quarter of Christians agreed that it seemed sufficient, compared to only 2.6 percent of non-Christians. In comparison, a majority of both Christians and non-Christians viewed the alternative sympathetic response tweet as genuine yet insufficient. Somewhat surprisingly, Christians and non-Christians viewed the criticism of thoughts and prayers as genuine at overwhelmingly high rates, and sufficient – albeit at a lower rate. Similarly, Christians and non-Christians viewed the final tweet calling for action on gun control as effective at a rate above 80 percent, and sufficient at a rate above 50 percent.

When examining responses by Protestant and

Catholic respondents, there were found to be no major differences for any of the tweets or questions between adherents to the two denominations, as similar levels of agreement and disagreement were reported for almost every statement.

Finally, in examining responses by Mainline and Evangelical Protestant respondents, differences were found in reactions to all tweets but the one containing a criticism of thoughts and prayers which both groups found genuine and sufficient at similarly high rates. For the thoughts and prayers response, Evangelicals found the tweet to be genuine at higher levels than did Mainline Protestants, yet both groups found the messaging to be an insufficient response. This trend continued when examining the alternative sympathetic response tweet, with Evangelicals again finding the tweet to be genuine at higher levels than were Mainline Protestants, and both groups finding the messaging as generally insufficient as a response. Somewhat surprisingly, both Evangelical and Mainline Protestants viewed the policy proposed in the final tweet as effective at near-unanimous levels, yet only a majority of Evangelicals viewed the tweet as a sufficient response.

CONCLUSION Despite the common media narrative, this study does not find evidence to support the claim that Republicans overwhelmingly offer their thoughts and prayers on Twitter in response to mass shootings. With Democrats and Republicans offering their thoughts and prayers at comparable levels, the most striking partisan difference in responses to mass shootings was found to be the rate at which Republican Senators remained silent on such events, oftentimes while tweeting on unrelated, and even trivial, matters. When constructing this study, it was not considered that political party would be a factor in whether someone offered sympathy following a national tragedy; it was assumed that national leaders such as senators would respond in kind. This assumption, however, was found to be far from true. Finally, though a significant number of Democrats remained silent on Twitter following the same mass shootings, they always responded at higher rates than the Republican caucus.

While it is true that thoughts, prayers, alternative sympathetic responses, and calls for action were offered at different rates by the senators of each political party, the clear partisan divide that was expected in such responses was not found to be of the magnitude that was predicted. Indeed, this study does not find evidence to support the claim that Democrats continually criticize Republicans for their offerance of thoughts and prayers, nor that Republicans continually criticize Democrats for politicizing such tragedies by pushing for gun reform.

Furthermore, although Democrats called for action to solve the mass shooting crisis at significantly greater levels than Republicans did, there appeared to be more room for compromise and cooperation than the media narrative would lead one to believe. Gun control measures are overwhelmingly considered to be policies supported strictly by Democrats, yet almost one in five Republican Senators in the sample – including powerhouse Republicans

such as Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn as well and thus not indicative of any larger trends. as some more known for compromise, like Susan The results of this research can be of further use Collins and Pat Toomey – called for some gun conin two ways. First, as this research has proven that trol at least once in the wake of a mass shooting. the common media narrative generally does not Similarly, almost one third of Democrats called for hold, our politics should begin to move past parimprovements in mental healthcare, a position oftisan bickering following mass shootings. Repubten taken by Republicans following mass shootings. licans and Democrats have both offered thoughts Thus, this study demonstrates that political cooperand prayers at similar levels throughout history, ation in the face of the mass shooting crisis may be and more Republicans support gun control polieasier than many Americans are led to believe. cies than the media would indicate. There is room Although there is not enough evidence to for real growth and cooperation, and a hyperbolsupport conclusions on the relationship between ic media narrative does no one any good. Second, offerances of thoughts and prayers or prayers and politicians and public officials of many offices and religious saliency, we may conclude that higher capacities can learn generally from the survey’s relevels of religious sasults on how to better liency are associated respond to mass shootWhile it is true that thoughts, with less offerances of ings, especially, but not thoughts in response only, if the audience of prayers, alternative sympathetic to mass shootings. concern leans young, As one’s level of reliresponses, and calls for action were liberal, or nonreligious giousness is difficult – as do many college offered at different rates by the sen- populations, and the to determine through publicly available data, corpus of Twitators of each political party, the clear general any conclusions based ter users. on this measure of relicontinuation of partisan divide that was expected in this Aresearch gious saliency likely do would innot capture the whole such responses was not found to be clude a content analysis picture. of all relevant tweets of the magnitude that was predicted. by all Senators, RepreFinally, in examining religious affiliasentatives, Governors, tion as a variable impacting a Senator’s response on and other relevant public officials in office for any Twitter to mass shootings, there were found to be portion of the period of time used in this research. some trends along religious lines. Christians tend Additionally, a survey using a broader sample more to offer stand-alone thoughts – as well as criticisms representative of the American population – instead of thoughts and prayers – at much lower rates than of a liberal arts university – would provide better non-Christians. In general, Protestants were less insight into the opinions of the entire American likely than Catholics to offer any relevant response public on such political responses on Twitter. to a mass shooting. However, within ProtestantHowever, we all must hope and work for a ism, there were no differences found between the future in which this research will be moot and no responses of Mainline and Evangelical Protestants. longer necessary – that is, a future without mass The survey results illuminated that political party shootings in America. No one wants our children was the most important variable in determining to die in schools, or our families to be murdered how the public will react to political responses to in Church, or our friends to be gunned down mass shootings on Twitter. Republicans are generwhile out on the town. This research has shown ally more receptive to and less critical of offerances that, despite any partisan or religious differences of thoughts and prayers that are Democrats. Alin opinions on this social media aftermath of mass though Democrats and Republicans generally are shootings, there is so much that is held in common. in agreement that alternative sympathetic responsWe must use these shared emotions, opinions, and es to mass shootings are genuine, they disagree on experiences as a building block to greater policy and whether such responses are sufficient, with Republisocietal changes to end America’s epidemic of mass cans more likely to view any emotional response as shootings. sufficient. Further, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to view both criticisms of thoughts and ENDNOTES 1 prayers and gun control proposals as sufficient, genLess than 24 hours after this shooting, another uine, or effective. Thus, these responses generally mass shooting occurred in Dayton, Ohio. align with the aforementioned media narrative.

However, the Dayton shooting had a death Survey results in terms of religious saliencount of less than 10, so it was not included in cy indicate that more religious respondents view this research.

2 thoughts and prayers more favorably and criticisms Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is classified of thoughts and prayers less favorably than less relias a Democrat for the purposes of this regious respondents. This trend – also found, with a search.

3 larger magnitude, when comparing Christian and There were only two instances found in the samnon-Christian respondents based on religious affilple in which Republicans criticized Democrats iation – is reflective of the findings of Thunstrom for politicizing a tragedy, making up 0.21 and Noy (2019). Generally, results for other divipercent of total tweets. Additionally, although sions of religious affiliation and the other tweets more common of an occurrence, Democrats viewed in light of religious saliency were less clear did not overwhelmingly criticize the offerance

“

“

11

of thoughts and prayers, with 48 instances of this messaging coming from Democrats and one instance from a Republican, this messaging makes up 5 percent of total tweets – far from the rate that would be expected based on the media narrative.

4 26.3 percent of senators of religious saliency level 2 and 0.0 percent of senators of religious saliency level 3 offered their thoughts at least once, compared to 42.9 percent of senators of religious saliency level 0 and 56.5 percent of senators of religious saliency level 1.

5 Within the Democratic caucus, 50.0 percent of Christians and 85.7 percent of non-Christians offered their thoughts, and 60.0 percent of Christians and 85.7 percent of non-Christians offered criticisms of thoughts and prayers.

12

REFERENCES Arnon, Daniel. 2018. “The Enduring Influence of Religion on Senators’ Legislative Behavior.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 57(3): 1-18.

Beaty, Katelyn. 2017. “The Case for ‘Thoughts and Prayers”–Even If You Don’t Believe in God.” The Atlantic, May 15.

Clifford, Scott, and Ben Gaskins. 2016. “Trust Me, I Believe in God: Candidate Religiousness as a Signal of Trustworthiness.” American Politics Research 44(6): 1066-1097.

Croitoru, Arie, Sara Kien, Ron Mahabir, Jacek Radzikowski, Andrew Crooks, Ross Schuchard, Tatyanna Begay, Ashley Lee, Alex Bettios, and Anthony Stefanidis. 2020.

“Responses to mass shooting events: The interplay between the media and the public.”

American Society of Criminology 19(1): 335360.

Guggenheim, Lauren, S. Mo Jang, Soo Young Bae, and W. Russell Neuman. 2015. “The Dynamics of Issue Frame Competition in Traditional and Social Media.” The Annals of the American Academy 659(1): 207-224.

Guth, James L. 2014. “Religion in the American Congress: The case of the US House of Representatives, 1953–2013.” Pp. 109-134 in Mediating Religion and Government, edited

by K.R. den Dulk and E.A. Oldmixon. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hayes, Rebecca A., Julia Crouse Waddell, and Peter M. Smudde. 2017. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims: Explicating the public tragedy as a public relations challenge.”

Public Relations Inquiry 6(3): 253-274.

Leonhardt, David, Ian Prasad Philbank, and Stuart A. Thompson. 2017. “Thoughts and Prayers and N.R.A Funding.” The New York Times, October 4.

Milbank, Dana. 2019. “Republicans’ thoughts and prayers have become a cruel joke.” The Washington Post, August 5.

Pew Research Center. 2014. “2014 Religious Landscape Study (RLS-II) Topline.” Retrieved August 1, 2020 (https://www.pewforum.org/ about-the-religious-landscape-study/).

Reilly, Katie. 2017. “‘Thoughts and Prayers Are

Not Enough’ Gun Control Advocates Demand Action After Texas Shooting.” TIME, November 6.

Rubin, Jennifer. 2017. “We object to Republicans’ hypocrisy on guns, not ‘thoughts and prayers.’”

The Washington Post, November 7.

Sandstrom, Aleksandra. 2017. “Faith on the Hill: The religious composition of the 116th Congress.” Pew Research Center, January 3.

Steinmetz, Katy. 2017. “Why ‘Thoughts and Prayers” Is a Double-Edged Sword.” TIME, November 9.

Thunstrom, Linda, and Shiri Noy. 2019. “The value of thoughts and prayers.” National Academy of Sciences 116(40): 19797-19798.

The Impact of Labeling Theory: Racial Disparities in the United States’ Criminal “Justice” System Kristen Hutchens Central to the United States’s criminal justice system (CJS) is a belief that hinges entirely on the following notion of “justice,” defined as “To punish or reward appropriately, [and] to treat justly” (OED 2020). Similarly, the word “just” is defined as “Honest and impartial in dealing with people; that gives everyone his or her due; administering justice fairly,” as well as being “[c]onsonant with principles of moral right or of equity” (OED 2020). Indeed, many Americans believe that the CJS was created and continues to support fairness and equality for all. Throughout history, however, the founding principles of the CJS have not gone without scrutiny (Mayeux 2018). For Black people in the country in particular, this belief in equity can easily appear as a fallacy. Viewing the CJS through this perspective raises the question of how a system designed on the principles of justice could be so prejudiced, and how several other factors impact the outcomes of court cases and citizens’ lives.

It is imperative to clarify that discussions of criminal cases tainted with racial bias are not considered here to absolve a defendant’s guilt, but rather to highlight the injustices prevalent within the CJS. Additionally, in efforts to gain a more holistic understanding of such occurrences, using labeling theory – which theorizes that criminal classification is based on stereotypes applied to individuals who possess socially-defined characteristics or ideas of criminality – is fruitful to understanding more about the CJS and helps to delineate in what instances such biases are created and perpetuated (Becker 1973). Examining the case of Duane Buck, a man whose imposed death sentence was influenced by his race, in conjunction with the criminological perspective of labeling theory, provides insight into one example of how the U.S. CJS is tainted with racial bias. While such cases are common and vast throughout the U.S. CJS, this article aims to examine the explicit details of a singular case to provide a deeper understanding of the complexity of the CJS. Duane Buck, a thirty-two-year-old Black man, entered the home of his ex-girlfriend, Debra Gardner, on July 30, 1995. Buck shot Debra Gardner, her friend Kenneth Butler, and his stepsister Phyllis Taylor, who was the only one to survive. In 1997, Buck was tried and convicted of capital murder (Buck v. Davis 2017). Once found guilty, “the jury was charged with deciding two issues,” the first being whether or not Buck would be a “future danger” to society (Buck v. Davis 2017). At the time, under Texas’ state law, a jury could “impose the death penalty only if it found

“unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt” that the defendant would be a future threat to public safety (Buck v. Davis 2017). The second issue that the jury addressed was “whether mitigating circumstances nevertheless warranted a sentence of life imprisonment instead of death” (Buck v. Davis 2017). In short, whether there were circumstances of Buck’s case that would make life in prison, not the death penalty, the proper punishment.

To help determine if Buck was a threat to society, the defense brought in Dr. Walter Quijano, a psychologist who had been “appointed by the presiding judge to conduct a psychological evaluation” on Buck (Buck v. Davis 2017). Dr. Quijano was asked to discuss his findings and provide his professional opinion on the matter. Most of his report was beneficial to Buck’s defense, arguing that the crimes arose from romantic involvements that would not be made in prison, and thus he was not likely a future threat to society. However, Dr. Quijano also spoke of statistical factors that he took into consideration when determining an individual’s likelihood of being a future societal danger. In his report, he inserted the fourth statistical factor: “Race. Black: Increased probability” (Buck v. Davis 2017). Dr. Quijano reasoned that “certain factors were ‘known[n] to predict future dangerousness’” and race, specifically Blackness, was one of them; citing the overrepresentation of Black people in the CJS as evidence to support his claim. During cross-examination by the prosecution, Dr. Quijano was again asked to discuss these statistical factors, where he affirmed the prosecution’s statement that “the race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons” (Buck v. Davis 2017). Dr. Quijano’s statements acknowledged overrepresentation, yet failed to bring forth concerns regarding systemic racism and implicit biases to the jury’s attention, thus failing to provide vital information regarding the complex reasons for such overrepresentation in the statistic he previously presented. While Dr. Quijano was brought in to complete and report a psychological evaluation of Buck, he arguably provided the jury with statistics without possessing the expertise to discuss their complex nature. In addition, court documents did not reflect that an explanation was given to the jury to help them understand the statistics he provided. Despite this, it was noted that the testimony from Dr. Quijano was taken into serious consideration by the jury, who later sentenced Duane Buck to death. Noting the negative influence of Dr. Quijano’s testimony, Buck continued to appeal his case. Twenty-two years later,

13

on February 22, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court To examine why such disparities exist within the reviewed his case and reversed his death sentence.

CJS that have grave impacts on Black defendants, The majority decision proclaimed that, in response like Buck, it is imperative to consider the influence to Dr. Quijano’s prejudiced testimony, that “the of labeling theory at every level of the CJS, with District Court erroneously rejected [the] petitioner’s emphasis on the court system as it relates to the Sixth Amendment ineffective-assistance-of-counsel case of Duane Buck. Research reveals that “a strong claim,” effectively violating Mr. Buck’s Sixth stereotypic association between Black individuals Amendment rights (Buck v. Davis 2017). and criminality leads to the endorsement of One study, published in the academic harsher treatment” of Black people at every level journal Law and Human Behavior, examined the of the CJS (Glaser et al. 2015:539). Examples of differences in conviction this phenomenon, although rates between Black and not an all-inclusive Simply put, labeling theory certainly white defendants when list, are seen through the faced with the death penalty. differential, prejudiced examines the designation Unfortunately, Buck is not treatment of Black people and categorization of certain in “stops and searches, alone in his experiences with the CJS; a 2015 audit study arrests, prosecutions and individuals as criminals, of 276 participants found plea negotiations, trials, and the processes and that instances where an and sentencing” (American assumptions that maintain Civil Liberties Union 2014). individual’s race influenced determinations of guilt labeling theory and reinforce such labeling. Where and punishment were comes into play, however, is dishearteningly not rare in discussing what motivates occurrences (Glaser, Kahn, and Martin 2015). The and perpetuates these stereotypes, and thus study concluded that when respondents, acting as subsequent actions against certain groups of people. mock jurors, were presented with cases whose only Simply put, labeling theory examines the difference was the name of the accused (researchers designation and categorization of certain individuals used stereotypical names for defendants, and as criminals, and the processes and assumptions controlled for the confounding variable of victim that maintain and reinforce such labeling. This race), the outcomes were vastly different. When theory focuses primarily on two questions: who is presented with Black defendants, the mock jurors applying the deviant label to whom, and who is in a were “significantly more likely to convict’’ them, position of power over whom (Schram and Tibbetts with eighty percent of respondents recommending 2018:293). The typical perpetrators of racial bias the death penalty for Black defendants, as opposed and prejudice in the CJS are those in power, the to approximately fifty-five percent for white dominant group. Police, judges, prosecutors, etc. all defendants (Glaser et al. 2015:539). These same attain a certain authority in the CJS, from which results were mirrored in a replication of the study, they hold the power to effectively assert their where “Black defendants were still convicted at a dominance through suppression, dehumanization, higher rate (80.4%) than were White defendants and negative labeling, whether subconsciously or (56.5%)” (Glaser et al. 2015:543). Subsequent not, over others whom they may have an implicit research supports these statistics (Sommers 2007), bias toward. In relation to Duane Buck’s case, the concluding “that race has the potential to impact group in power maintains their dominance through trial outcomes” (Sommers 2007:171). These the assertion that Black people are more violent stunning results highlight the certainty and severity and dangerous, thus reinforcing the label of a Black of racial bias’ impact on criminal sentencing, person as more fitting of the “criminal” stereotype especially in cases regarding capital punishment. and more deserving of the most severe punishment: Findings such as these are extremely problematic a death sentence. In Duane Buck’s case, arguably because they suggest that racial biases may be more several individuals and groups are simultaneously prevalent within the CJS, particularly among and exhibiting their higher authority over Buck. In against certain groups/races. concordance with the above mentioned definition, Additional research has found that “As of Dr. Quijano’s testimony effectively applied the January 1, 2014, 42 percent of defendants under deviant label to Duane Buck, again, whether sentence of death in the United States were Black... subconsciously or not. Essentially, the application although Blacks make up only 13 percent of the of labeling theory to Buck’s case highlights how overall population” (American Civil Liberties the individual, implicit biases, and prejudices of Union 2014). From this, it is plausible to conclude those in power (those applying the deviant label) that the death penalty, the most extreme form of are present and influental in court proceedings, and punishment, is disproportionately imposed on thus how such biases and prejudices subsequently Black offenders. Studies have found that even when contribute to and participate in an unjust CJS for controlling for variables like one’s “socioeconomic some more than others. status, [the] type of crime, criminal histories, and According to Introduction to Criminology: victim race,” white offenders receive more lenient Why Do They Do It? (Schram and Tibbetts sentences than Blacks (Glaser et al. 2015:540).

2018:298), labeling theory has nine basic Findings like these, however, raise the question of assumptions, several of which are crucial when how and why the possible prejudicial behaviors and analyzing and discussing Duane Buck’s case. One biases among various actors within the CJS and assumption states that “Criminal definitions are society overall are created and maintained. enforced in the interest of the powerful.” This

14

“

“

assumption relates to Buck’s case in that it was in the interest of the dominant group (in this case, those in law enforcement and those who work within the CJS), to label Buck, a Black man, as a dangerous criminal, thus perpetuating the stereotype and effectively maintaining their dominance through the suppressive methods of labeling an individual as “criminal.” That is to say that the potential for underlying biases of those in power can ultimately be responsible for the labeling of Duane Buck as a criminal, and future danger to society. Another assumption of labeling theory argues that “A person does not become a criminal by violating the law;” a person becomes a criminal when those in power designate them as such. In relation to Duane Buck’s case, the argument is that his crimes are not what made him a criminal, but rather he was deemed as such because the authority declared him to be so. Another assumption of labeling theory asserts that “Criminal sanctions also vary according to other characteristics of the offender.” Essentially, this assumption of labeling theory argues that the distribution and severity of punishments varies depending on the characteristics of the offender. In Buck’s case, Dr. Quijano’s racially biased statistical measure resulted in Buck being labeled and stereotyped as a violent and dangerous Black man, and therefore a threat to society who was deserving of the most severe punishment. Applying this assumption to Buck’s case, the characteristic of race, particularly Blackness, coupled with the negative label reinforced by Dr. Quijano likely affected the jury’s decision to sentence Buck to death, the most extreme sentence the CJS can impose, as opposed to life in prison. While undoubtedly Buck had committed a very serious offense and should be punished in the court of law, it is certainly questionable if the sentence and outcome of the case would have been different if Buck was not a Black man.

Considering Buck’s case in connection with labeling theory, it is clear that the criminal justice system stereotypically and unjustly considers an individual’s race when determining guilt and punishment, thus proving that its proceedings are contaminated with racial bias. Examining Duane Buck’s case alongside other supporting research reveals that too often prejudiced labeling impacts proceedings of justice, tarnishing the very concept of justice itself.

Future research is necessary to advance discussion of the impact of implicit biases and prejudices as it relates to labeling theory within other levels of the CJS, particularly law enforcement and corrections (for this paper’s focus is on the court system, as it applies to one, singular case). Such research should aim to reveal biases that individuals within the CJS may possess and how those biases can influence not only outcomes and sentences of defendants, but also experiences and proceedings at other levels, as well. Furthermore, additional research at both the individual and institutional level would be fruitful in identifying possible factors that encourage, engrain, and perpetuate such beliefs.

Additional research should also consider variables such as age and level of education to provide more insight into how various biases impact the outcome

of criminal justice proceedings. Findings from such studies would contribute to policies that work to identify, address, and reduce instances of biases and prejudices tainting some CJS proceedings. Moving forward, special attention to the implications of labeling theory at both individual and broader, systemic levels is suggested, leading to an advanced, more holistic understanding of the effects of implicit biases and prejudices in connection to the U.S. CJS. From that, special training and other safeguards could be developed and implemented in efforts to reduce instances of implicit bias that have the potential to cause significant harm to those negatively impacted.

REFERENCES American Civil Liberties Union. 2014. Written

Submission of the American Civil Liberties Union on Racial Disparities in Sentencing.

Retrieved August 1, 2020 (https://www.aclu. org/sites/default/files/assets/141027_iachr_ racial_disparities_aclu_sub mission_0.pdf ).

Becker, Howard. 1973. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York, NY: Free Press.

Buck v. Davis, No. 15 U.S. 8049 (2017).

Glaser, Jack, Karin D. Martin, and Kimberly B. Kahn. 2015. “Possibility of Death Sentence Has Divergent Effect on Verdicts for Black and White Defendants.” Law and Human Behavior 39(6): 539-546.

Mayeux, Sara. 2018. “The idea of ‘The criminal justice system.’” American Journal of Criminal Law 45(1): 55-94. “justice, v.” 2020. OED Online, Oxford University Press, Retrieved August 1, 2020 (https://www.oed.com/ view Entry/102199?rskey=Vsaw8b&result=2#eid). “just, adj.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, Retrieved August 1, 2020 (https://www.oed.com/ view/Entry/102189?rskey=5XCGEe&result=5#eid) Schram, Pamela J. and Stephen G. Tibbetts. 2018.

“Chapter 11: Labeling Theory and Crime.”

Pp. 290-323 in Introduction to Criminology: Why Do They Do It?, edited by P.J. Schram and S.G. Tibbetts. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Sommers, Samuel R. 2007. “Race and the decision making of juries.” Legal and Criminological Psychology 12(2): 171-187.

15

The Impact of Structural Racism and Sociohistorical Events On Birth Outcomes of Black Mothers Maya FarrHenderson

“

“

16

In 2000, the United Nations issued a challenge not only, high-income countries with an increasing to all 191 member states in the form of the MillenMMR. With the highest GDP, the U.S. certainly nium Development Goals (MDGs). The UN asked has the resources to reduce and prevent maternal each country to set several goals to be achieved bemortality, yet these resources are not shared equally fore 2015 all in the hopes of combating “poverty, nor equitably. We have one of the highest degrees of hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradaincome inequality among Global North nations; in tion, and discrimination against women” (WHO 2019, this rating was the highest it has been in the 2019). One of these MDGs called for a 75 percent past 50 years (World Population Review 2020). reduction in maternal mortality over the course of The MMR not only indicates the ability of a the next15 years. Many countries worked tirelessly health care system to care for its patients but is also towards this goal, resulting in a 45 percent reduca major indicator of other birth outcomes includtion in the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) worlding preterm birth, infant mortality, and stillbirths. wide since 1990, with most of this reduction occurBlack mothers are 3.2 times more likely to experiring since 2000 (MDG Monitor ence pregnancy-related mortality 2019). Somehow, it seems the than white women, and their baUnited States read this memo- Worse birth outcomes for bies are more than twice as likely randum in reverse, as the Amerito experience infant mortality, can MMR has trended up instead Black mothers not only low birth weight, and preterm of down. Despite the MDGs, the delivery (CDC 2019; Rosenthal estimated MMR for 48 states threaten their lives, but and Lobel 2011). Babies who lose and Washington, DC increased their children’s, and their their mothers in childbirth are between 2000 and 2014 (Macless likely to survive their first year Dorman et. al. 2016). Excluding children’s quality of life. and infants who survive prematuCalifornia and Texas, MacDorrity and/or low birth weight risk man et. al. found that after conpoorer development and health trolling for the differences in state’s record-keeping in infancy, childhood, and adulthood (Rosenthal of maternal death, the MMR increased by 26.6 perand Lobel 2011). Worse birth outcomes for Black cent (from 18.8 to 23.8) between 2000 and 2014 mothers not only threaten their lives, but their chil(2016:447). The brunt of this increase has been dren’s, and their children’s quality of life. At its most borne by Black women. White women experienced fundamental level, the goal of public health is to pregnancy-related mortality at a ratio of 12.7 per increase life expectancy and quality of life. Discov100,000 compared to 40.8 per 100,000 for Black ering the reasons behind worse birth outcomes for women (CDC 2019). This difference is staggering Black mothers is imperative. and demands to be analyzed. Given that the same disparity is observed for Black women of all ages, CONTROLLING FOR AGE, SOCIOeducation, and socioeconomic levels, I argue that ECONOMIC STATUS AND EDUCATION Black American women experience a unique type In the United States, and much of the world, there of stress before and during pregnancy that interexists social determinants of health: disparities desects with a learned fear of medical institutions and termined by socioeconomic status and education. professionals which both lead to adverse birth outAs a part of historical de jure racism, Black people comes. have been systemically denied access to the same Losing mothers is tragic, but fortunately, it education and wealth as White Americans. This is also rare; in 2018, 658 women died within 42 has resulted in Black Americans’ disproportionate days of pregnancy termination in the United States representation among those with lower SES or less (Hoyert and Miniño 2020). But the MMR can also education. If Black women experience worse health be used to illuminate and identify problems facing outcomes than white women when SES and educaan entire country’s health system. Countries with tion are controlled for, then the inequity has to do the highest MMRs are mostly low or middle inwith class and not race. But it appears that race is come. Communities in these countries often lack the crux of this issue. the basic resources necessary to prevent maternal Black women experience worse birth outcomes death and interventions to change culture and practhan White women at every age (Figure 1). Black tices around childbirth are slow to take hold. Mawomen of greater socioeconomic status experience ternal mortality is less of an issue in higher-income the same outcomes as Black women with fewer countries. The United States is one of the few, if means, and White women of the same or fewer

Figure 1: Adjusted Probability of Infant Death, by Maternal Age: White, Black, and Mexican Mothers, US, 2013. From Cohen, P. N. (2016)

means. The same is true for education. None of the most likely social determinants of health are culprits in this case. The next logical conclusion may be that Black mothers receive a poorer quality of care as a result of racial discrimination.

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN HOSPITALS Most maternal deaths and most neonatal deaths occur on the day a woman gives birth. It is logical to analyze what a mother experiences the day she arrives at the hospital if this is where and when tragedy is most likely to occur. The concern is that Black mothers may experience worse health outcomes because of receiving substandard care because of racial discrimination. Unfortunately, there is a significant amount of evidence and literature that indicates Black Americans do receive a lower standard of health care.

Approximately 100,000 Black Americans die every year who would likely have survived if their mortality rate were equivalent to White Americans (Williams and Jackson 2005). Black Americans are more likely to have a misdiagnosis or late diagnosis for chronic illnesses and once they are diagnosed, Black Americans have a higher mortality rate with chronic illnesses and diseases that are curable or treatable (McFayden 2009). Black assault victims are less likely than their white counterparts to receive “timely emergency transportation and subsequent high-quality medical care” (Williams and Jackson 2005). Black Americans are also less likely than Whites to receive preventative care, screening, diagnoses, treatment, and rehabilitation services for cancer (Williams and Jackson 2005).

Many have pointed to implicit bias as the culprit for these disparities. A 2005 study showed that hospitals where the majority of Black Americans visit “disproportionately tended to be teaching institutes, they were often operated by state governments and were often for-profit medical institutes,” based on this, McFayden (2009) suggests that Black Americans receive poor quality of healthcare when it is perceived that they are not able to pay and may be more of a liability than a financial opportunity for a hospital” (123). This possibility is supported by an anecdote offered by Rosenthal and Lobel: “Sharon Ford, a young Black woman on welfare in the San Francisco Bay Area [who] gave birth to a stillborn child because two hospitals declined to

treat her, even though she was covered by a health plan” (2011:979).

On the other side of healthcare professional’s implicit bias, there is also the woman’s choice in hospital that could influence substandard care. In New York City there is a six-to-seven-fold difference in birth outcomes between hospitals (Howell 2019). Meaning, visiting one hospital versus another could increase her chance of adverse birth outcomes by six-to-seven-times. Black and Latina women are more likely to visit these hospitals than White women. Three-quarters of Black women delivered in hospitals that annually report worse birth outcomes for both Black and White women, but only one-fifth of White women delivered in these hospitals (Howell 2019). If this were only an issue of racial discrimination in the hospital, then Black and White women would experience different birth outcomes at these hospitals, but their outcomes are similar. Hospitals with poorer resources are likely in areas that, because of historical segregation, are more accessible to Black patients than White.

Likewise, if worse birth outcomes were only based on racial discrimination, then Black immigrants would experience the same poor birth outcomes, but they do not. Black immigrants from the Caribbean or Africa do not have the same adverse birth outcomes as Black women who were born in the United States (Rosenthal and Lobel 2011:978).

On average immigrants report better health than U.S. born (Youngtae et al. 2004). This difference in immigrants and Americans is mostly explained by ‘cultural buffering’ which suggests that “other cultures, compared with the United States, are more likely to be characterized by norms and values that restrain risky behaviors (e.g., smoking, abuse of alcohol or drugs) and promote stronger familial and social support networks and better nutrition” (Youngtae et al. 2004:189). The protective advantage of ‘cultural buffering’ is smaller among immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for ten or more years (Youngtae et al. 2004). But as discussed, individual behavior cannot account for the disparity in birth outcomes between White women and Black women, therefore cultural buffering cannot explain why Black immigrants have better birth outcomes than Black Americans. And if Black immigrants are not subjected to substandard care during childbirth, racial discrimination in the hospital cannot account for the disparity in birth outcomes.

While racial discrimination is certainly a factor, it cannot fully explain why Black American women have worse birth outcomes than their White counterparts or even their Black immigrant counterparts. If not racial discrimination on the day of delivery, we must consider how the living in the United States as a Black woman impacts birth outcomes. Two main effects are influencing this inequity, allostatic load and a learned distrust of the medical community.

ALLOSTATIC LOAD Allostatic load refers to the cumulative wear and tear on the body, especially concerning stressors experienced throughout one’s life. Arline Geronimus coined the ‘weathering’ hypothesis, which postulates that Black Americans experience worse health

17

outcomes because their health deteriorates faster than White Americans as a result of the allostatic load they carry (Carpenter 2017). Black women are burdened with an even greater allostatic load as they experience both the stress of ethnic and gender discrimination. Collins et al. (2009) found that stress induced by experiencing racism over one’s lifetime, during pregnancy, and exposure to racism toward other Black Americans is a predictor of low birth weight and preterm delivery. Weathering does not just result in worse birth outcomes, but Geronimus argues it contributes to Black Americans carrying the greater burden of disease for cervical cancer, asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease as well (Carpenter 2017).

Cohen’s (2016) results on infant mortality trends by maternal age and ethnicity are consistent with the weathering hypothesis. White women benefit from delayed childbearing, they have a lower likelihood of infant mortality over 35 years versus between 18 and 24 years old adaptive (Figure 2). The opposite is true for Black women, having children earlier lowers the risk of infant mortality (Figure 2). Cohen (2016) concludes that early

18

Figure 2: Infant Death Rates, by Maternal Age: White, Black, and Mexican Mothers, US, 2013. From Cohen, P. N. (2016)

childbearing is adaptive because Black women experience deteriorating health status through the childbearing years as a result of the weathering effect. As to what stressors Black women uniquely endure during the childbearing years that could so increase their allostatic load, Rosenthal and Lobel (2011) offer three: 1) abuses of Black American women by the medical system and issues of power in obstetrics that disadvantage Black American women; 2) contradictory societal pressures exerted on Black American women about whether they should have children; and 3) historical and contemporary stereotypes about Black American women related to sexuality and motherhood (977).

The third stressor listed refers to stereotype threat which is the situational predicament where someone fears they will confirm negative stereotypes about their group. The classic example is when young women are told before a mathematics exam that men tend to receive better grades in math, not only will these women garner worse scores than they would otherwise, they experience a physiological stress response (Spencer et al. 1999; Schmander et al. 2008).

There are hundreds of studies testing stereotype threat in different situations, but especially regarding the achievement gap between boys in girls or Black and White students in school, but this can also be applied to pregnancy as well. Many Black women are aware of the cultural expectation of delayed childbearing and the scorn than can be expected for women who fit the stereotype of a young, single, Black mother, or the ‘welfare queen’ imagery popularized during the Ronald Reagan presidency.

Fear of stereotype threat may explain why Black women of higher socioeconomic status experience the same adverse birth outcomes as Black women with fewer means. Women who have a greater ability to plan their pregnancy may choose to wait until later in life fearing the stereotype of a young, Black, welfare mother. Or like many professional women, wait until they have completed their education or achieved greater job security before having children, but because of the greater allostatic load Black women carry, waiting can increase the risk of adverse birth outcomes. Younger pregnant women may experience stereotype threat during throughout their entire pregnancy, fearing that people, especially white healthcare professionals, view them as irresponsible or promiscuous. In 2006, the American Medical Association published data on the gender and ethnic make-up of obstetrician-gynecologist practices, only two percent of obstetricians and gynecologists were Black women (Weeks and Wallace 2006; Rosenthal and Lobel 2011). It is unlikely that most Black women will have another Black woman as their OBGYN, which only exacerbates stereotype threat, but when a doctor and patient are concordant in ethnicity, patients report a greater level of satisfaction (Gardner 2005).

The immense pressure before and during pregnancy can impact the body’s ability to accommodate carrying a fetus or the colossal task of actually birthing and caring for a newborn. A double-edged sword exists for Black women. If a woman decides to give birth earlier in her life, she is less likely than older Black women to experience adverse birth outcomes. But the stress of stereotype threat accompanied by her accumulated allostatic load still means that she is more likely to have worse birth outcomes than a White woman of the same age, who at a younger age is giving birth at a riskier time for White woman. If a Black woman decides to give birth later in life, controlling for multiparity and prior birth complications, she is more likely to experience negative birth outcomes than a woman 10 to 20 years younger than her, and much more likely to experience worse birth outcomes than a White woman her same age.

SOCIOHISTORICAL DISTRUST OF MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS Fear or stress of medical institutions and their perceptions of Black women is not limited to stereotype threat. Black people in the United States have had a torrid and tumultuous history with the medical community which has led to a racial disparity in the trust of medical professionals. While 80 percent of White patients trust their physician, only 43 percent of Black patients do (Grumbach and Mendoza 2008). Washington (2006) published a

“

full chronological review of These fears do have an immedical abuse against Black pact on people’s behavior Black women cannot separate and how they approach people in the United States titled Medical Apartheid: own medical care. A themselves from their race their The Dark History of Medical 1990 survey found that Experimentation on Black when entering this relationship 10% of Black Americans Americans From Colonial thought AIDS had been with a physician and, vice Times to the Present, but I created in a laboratory to versa, the obstetrician cannot will briefly summarize some infect Black people and of the most salient mo- separate themselves from their another 20% believed that ments in this history that was a possibility it was association from the medical there have culminated in a coltrue (Gamble 1997). On lective distrust of medical average, Black Americans community which carries institutions amongst Black are 10% less likely to receive both overt and implicit ties to Americans. routine vaccines than White Beginning with slavAmericans (OMH 2018). A abuse of Black bodies. ery, Black women suffered disproportionate number of sexual abuse both at the Americans in need of organ hands of owners and doctors and endured medical donation are Black, but conversely, a disproporexperimentation by doctors (Collins 1990; Gamble tionately small number of Black people are organ 1997). Folded into the start of American gynedonors. A 2019 study completed a series of focus cology, Dr. Marion Sims practiced his method of groups with Black Americans to ask about their rearepairing vesicovaginal fistulas on enslaved women sons for being or not being organ donors and found without anesthesia. It was not until he determined that medical mistrust is the most prominent barrier the most successful method that he worked on to organ donation (Williamson et al. 2019). ParticiWhite female volunteers with anesthesia (Gamble pants in the focus groups expressed fears of medical 1997). Medical experimentation on Black bodies institutions, governmental institutions, as well as continued into the years of Jim Crow and some other authority figures to explain their decision not thieves made their living robbing graves and sellto become organ donors (Williamson et al. 2019). ing the bodies of Black people to medical schools to Some gave specific and personal anecdotes, while use as anatomy cadavers (Washington 2006). This others shared generalized fears of premature death phenomenon fed into fears that medical students declarations and anxiety about genocide. themselves were killing Black patients to practice As Gamble (1997) puts it, these concerns are on. The U.S. also has a history of forced sterilization “not just paranoia” (1776). Black Americans have on poor women and women of color. Sterilizations sincere suspicions of medical institutions that were most often performed when pregnant women impact their relationship with their doctor, and went to the hospital to deliver, connecting in hostherefore the type of care they receive. In general, pital childbirth to medical abuse (Rosenthal and Black patients feel that they participate less in deLobel 2011). It is unknown how many women were cision-making with their physicians than White forcibly sterilized, over the decades of the eugenics patients do (Gardener 2005). When it comes to movement, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds obstetrics, a physician is partnering with a woman of thousands and as of 1983, Black women made during some of the most intimate and consequenup 43% of all women in the U.S. who had been tial parts of her life as she prepares to bring new subjected to forced sterilization by federally funded life and maintain both her health and her child’s. programs (Washington, 2006).

Black women cannot separate themselves from their One of the most conspicuous and damaging race when entering this relationship with a physiexamples of medical abuse is the Tuskegee Syphilis cian and, vice versa, the obstetrician cannot separate Study in which over the course of 40 years, 1932 themselves from their association from the medical to 1972, 399 Black men were deliberately denied community which carries both overt and implicit medical care and treatment for syphilis so that docties to abuse of Black bodies. The relationship, intors could document how syphilis impacted and teraction, and trust between a doctor and patient changed the body (Gamble 1997). 28 men died of is a powerful part of a doctor’s ability to effectively syphilis and 100 more died complications. Gamble do their job. The long and painful history between (1997) describes how this study has come to “symmedical institutions and Black communities conbolize racism in medicine, misconduct in human tinues to have repercussions today. research, the arrogance of physicians, and government abuse of Black people” (p.1773). The fact that DISCUSSION this study continued unchecked for so many years In recent years the rising maternal mortality ratio in and that the children of these men are still alive and the United States has been gaining awareness. The our contemporaries, is shocking to many and fuels plight of Black women and their birth outcomes in fears of medical misconduct that continues today this predicament is being featured in major publiwithout our awareness. cations and even made it to the democratic debate Although not all Black Americans can cite these stage in 2019. While it has been framed as a quanspecific historical examples of abuse, the collective dary for the medical and obstetrician communities trauma of intentional malpractice has imprinted itto solve, using an interdisciplinary perspective can self on modern Black culture and is even passed on elucidate some of the structural and sociohistorical intergenerationally (Bogart and Thorburn 2006). baggage patients bring into the examining room.

“

19

Unfortunately, these issues are never easy to solve or ameliorate, but if more physicians are cognizant of their positionality and that of their patients, they can begin to take steps to close the gap. But more work must be done to determine how to confront the daily effects of structural racism outside of the medical context and within it, as well as consider who else this disparity effects. Black women are not the only ones who experience such disproportionate adverse outcomes, Native American women are 2.3 times more likely than White women to experience pregnancy-related mortality. While Native American women have other unique stressors and contentions with the medical community, the reasons for this inequity are not much different than they are for Black women and cannot afford to be overlooked. The United States has the resources and ability to ameliorate the incidence of negative birth outcomes for all women, but it needs to begin with those who are most at risk.

20

REFERENCES Bogart, Laura M. and Sheryl Thorburn. 2006. “Relationship of African Americans’ sociodemographic characteristics to belief in conspiracies about HIV/AIDS and birth control.” Journal of the National Medical Association 98(7): 11441150.

Carpenter, Zoë. 2017. “What’s Killing America’s Black Infants?” The Nation, February 15.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2019.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities Continue in Pregnancy-Related Deaths. Retrieved April 4, 2020 (https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/p0905-racial-ethnic-disparities-pregnancy-deaths.html).

Collins, James W., Jennifer Wambach, Richard J. David, and Kristin M. Rankin. 2009. “Women’s lifelong exposure to neighborhood poverty and low birth weight: a population-based study.” Maternal Child Health Journal 13(3): 326-333.

Collins, Patricia Hill 1990. Black FeministThought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman.

Cohen, Philip N. 2016. “Maternal Age and Infant Mortality for White, Black, and Mexican Mothers in the United States.” Sociological Science 3: 32-38.

Gardner, Janelle. 2005. “Barriers Influencing the Success of Racial and Ethnic Minority Students in Nursing Programs.” Journal of Transcultural Nursing 16(2): 155-162.

Grumbach, Kevein and Rosalia Mendoza. 2008.

“Disparities in Human Resources: Addressing the Lack of Diversity in the Health Professions.” Health Affairs 27(2): 413-422.

Howell, Elizabeth A. 2019. “How to Reduce Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States.” JN Learning JAMA Network. Audio Podcast. Retrieved August 1, 2020 (https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/audio-player/17455228).

Hoyert, Donna L. and Arialdi M. Miniño. 2018.

“Maternal Mortality in the United States: Changes in Coding, Publication, and Data Release.” National Vital Statistics Reports 69(2): 1-18.

MacDorman, Marian F., Eugene Declercq, Howard Cabral, and Christine Morton. 2016. “Recent Increases in the U.S. Maternal Mortality Rate Disentangling Trends From Measurement Issues.” Obstetrics & Gynecology 128(3): 447-455.

McFayden, Elgie. 2009. “Key Factors Influencing Health Disparities Among African Americans.”

Race, Gender & Class 16(3): 120-132.

MDG Monitor. 2019. “MDG 5: Improve maternal health.” Retrieved April 4, 2020 (https://www. mdgmonitor.org/mdg-5-improve-maternalhealth/).

Office of Minority Health. 2018. “Immunizations and African Americans.” Retrieved April 5, 2020 (https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=22).

Rosenthal, Lisa and Marci Lobel. 2011. :Explaining racial disparities in adverse birth outcomes: Unique sources of stress for black American women.” Social Science & Medicine 72(6): 977983.

Washington, Harriet A. 2006. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New York, NY: Harlem Moon.

Weeks, William B. and Amy E. Wallace. 2006. “The Influence of Physician Race and Gender on Obstetrician Gynecologists’ Annual Incomes.”

Obstetrics & Gynecology 108(3): 603-611.

Williams, David R. and Pamela B. Jackson. 2005.

“Social Sources of Racial Disparities in Health.”

Health Affairs 24(2): 325-34.

Williamson, Lillie. D., Cabral A. Bigman, and Brian L. Quick. 2019. “A qualitative examination of African Americans’ organ donation-related medical mistrust beliefs.” The Howard Journal of Communications 30(5): 430-445.

World Health Organization. 2018. “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).” Retrieved April 4, 2020 (https://www.who.int/topics/millennium_development_goals/about/en/).

World Population Review. 2020. “Gini Coefficient

By Country Population.” Accessed June 6, 2020 (http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/ gini-coefficient-by-country/).

Youngtae Cho, W. Parker Frisbie, Robert A. Hummer, and Richard G. Rogers. 2004. “Nativity, Duration of Residence, and the Health of Hispanic Adults in the United States.” The International Migration Review 38(1): 184-211.

Stability and Social Trajectory: Change in the Metaphysics of Gender Jake Beardsley We need a theory to describe the subjection of women. This theory should be both descriptive and useful, shedding light on the mechanisms which sustain sexist oppression so that we can eradicate them.

I will start by explaining Sally Haslanger’s (2012) social position account, according to which social structures situate people as (privileged) men and (subordinated) women. I will argue that, although this account is useful for a number of purposes, it is not directly equipped to explain movement across social positions, this experience being especially common among trans people. By introducing the concepts of stability and social trajectory, I mean to improve the model’s power to explain how trans people are subordinated, and occasionally privileged, because of their movement across positions. Finally, I will argue that Asta’s conferralist account of gender, when paired with Haslanger’s, helps to explain the experiences of people with “unstable” genders.

On Sally Haslanger’s account of gendered oppression, a person is a “woman” if they are for the most part subordinated on the basis of presumed female sex characteristics, and they are a “man” if they are for the most part privileged on the basis of presumed male sex characteristics (2012:234).1 This view is highly flexible in that it includes many forms of subordination and privilege, which are themselves compatible with countless others (female subordination with white privilege, for example). It also implies that similar positions could exist at different times and places, such as the modern United States and China during the Han Dynasty. Haslanger’s account reveals what is similar across these cases without falsely equating them, and thus provides a conceptual resource to explain historical male supremacy.

The social position account is an externalist view of gender, which describes how members of a society perceive and treat any person. It is not an account of gender identity, which describes what people mean when they say things like, “I identify as a woman.”2 It is my view that no single concept can describe all of the relevant data about gender, and that we should thus employ several related concepts for different purposes.3 Since there are several legitimate meanings of “woman” and “man,” it can be true of the same person that they are a “woman” in one sense and a “man” in another. In this article, I follow other authors in using “man” and “woman” to describe social positions, since I think this is more conceptually helpful than substituting other terms.4 In non-technical contexts, however, we should always use language which reflects a person’s gender identity rather than their position.5

Haslanger’s account already implicitly allows for the possibility of gender change. On this view, we can easily explain how a person who was a “woman” in 2015 could be a “man” in 2020, if people have imagined this person as having different sex features and afforded him new privileges on this basis. On a lightly modified version of this account, we could also describe transgender people who are not presumed to have cisnormative sex features, but who nevertheless function as members of their social kinds.6 In Haslanger’s language, transgender people literally change genders when they move across social positions--when a transgender woman moves from a male position to a female position, for example.7 Superficially, this seems to contradict the way many trans people understand themselves, since most trans people believe that they have always been the genders with which they ultimately identify. Since gender terms have multiple meanings, however, there is no real conflict. When a trans woman says that she has always been a woman, she does not mean, “I have always occupied a female social position,” which would be false. In all probability, she is actually saying something true about her own psychological features. We can understand and believe this woman’s claims about her identity while also using Haslanger’s account to describe how she is subordinated or privileged at different times in her life.8 Haslanger also says it is possible that a person’s gender could “not be entirely stable” (234). Even if someone is generally privileged on the basis of imagined male sex features, they might be denied this privilege in some contexts (likewise for women who are exempt from subordination in some contexts). Haslanger gives the example of a Black man who is sometimes more vulnerable to subjugation because of his perceived male features--for example, because racist stereotypes cause White people to perceive him as dangerous (234). In Haslanger’s language, this person is a man because he functions as a man “regularly and for the most part,” meaning that he benefits from male privilege in most contexts. Despite this, he does not “function as a man” when the social perception of his sex contributes to his subordination. We can think of other examples where a person’s position as a “man” is undercut by factors such as race, class, disability, or sexual orientation, or where there is a risk of such undercutting.

I propose a new way of understanding stability in Haslanger’s account. Among those who occupy the same social position, people whose placement in that position is more stable will tend to be more privileged.9 This takes different forms for men and women (and is quite different for people who are

21

“

“

22

sition as subordinated, this position in fact confers not reliably categorized as either). To continue a modicum of privilege in that it protects “women” Haslanger’s example, it is not as though Black men from being marked as uncategorizable. “When a are typically secure in their privilege, and only octrans woman doesn’t pass, it’s not like society simply casionally thrust out of it. Rather, White supremacy treats her like a man. No, you get treated as monposes a continuous threat to Black men’s status as ster gender, pronouns it and spit, and male privilege “men,” which negatively affects the privilege of any is not a good description of that experience at all” particular Black man. Likewise, even if a transgen(Wynn 2019). One cannot “fail upward” into male der man functions as a man practically all of the privilege; rather, people who are disqualified from time, his position as a man will be more precarious recognition as women are likely to suffer even more than that of a cisgender man in otherwise similar severe oppression. This explains why women who conditions. If his position depends on others perstably occupy the female role tend to be more privceiving him as cisgender, then he could lose this ileged than those who don’t—for example, because privilege and become subordinated if he is “outed” their gender expression, sexual orientation, or race as trans. If his position depends on his receiving is taken as a reason to reject that they are women. acceptance from members of his community, then While stability describes the potential for fuhe will be at risk if social attitudes change, or if he ture changes of position, social trajectory describes enters into a community which denies his genthe path one took to reach their current position. der. By contrast, cisgender men’s privilege is nevSuppose a transgender man transitions in his forer threatened precisely because they are cis, nor is ties, and thereafter stably occupies the male social anyone made less of a “man” because he is white, position. Compared to cisgender men, he is likely nondisabled, or financially secure. As always, the to be less privileged in various ways as a result of people at the greatest risk will tend to be those having occupied the female role for several decades. who are oppressed in multiple ways simultaneously.

If he lost professional opportunities, suffered miTransgender women who have not yet transisogynistic violence, or internalized harmful norms tioned will typically occupy the man’s social posiwhich apply to women, then these things may tion, but they are likely to have beliefs and expericontinue to afflict him even after transition. The ences which threaten their stability within that role. concept of social trajectory allows us to explain Cisgender men can plan the course of their lives why this person is more disadvantaged than ciswith the (probably implicit) awareness that they gender men who are otherwise similarly situated. will always be men, but transgender women in simIn other cases, a person’s social trajectory may ilar material circumstances must plan for the possibe a source of privilege. Lilly and Lana Wachowsbility that they will become targets of transphobic ki had not yet transitioned when they directed and misogynistic abuse. For example, a transgender The Matrix in the late 1990s, and they were able woman might decline to apply for a job because she to prove themselves as filmmakers at a time when knows that their working environment is sexist, and extremely few women she is afraid of expewere given control of riencing sexism if she expensive film projtransitions while she There are some people who function ects. It seems unlikely works at that company. She might also be as men and women at different times, that they would have been able to make the psychologically vulbut who do neither of these “regu- film if others had pernerable in ways that them as women cisgender men are not, larly and for the most part” . . . These ceived at that time, and yet such that when she involvement with hears about various people are likely to be subordinated their that project conferred forms of misogyny she is deeply frightened for in ways that are not reducible to their professional benefits which have endured her own safety. Even when she “regularly sometimes occupying a “female” posi- long after their tranand for the most part” tion, and they are unlikely to become sitions. Between 2007 and 2018, only 4% functions as a man, these anxieties may substantially privileged even if others of the 1,200 highest-grossing movies affect her attitudes sometimes perceive them as male. had female directors, toward her current and the Wachowski privileges. Perhaps she sisters directed several walks alone at night, successful high-budget films during this time. If not at all concerned for her safety, and thinks, “I we wanted to explain the Wachowskis’ place withhad better enjoy this while I can.” All of this is in systems of subordination and privilege, then it compatible with the claims that she occupies a would be a mistake to overlook the material benmale social position, and that she “functions as a efits they received while they passed as men.11 man” in various ways. Still, by incorporating perI think that my arguments largely carry over to Asta’s sistent insecurity into the social position account, (2018) conferralist framework, according to which we can explain why she is likely to be less privi10 people “confer” gender onto others by treating them leged than cisgender men in similar conditions. in certain ways. Like Haslanger, Asta describes genWhat is more surprising is that, by and large, ders by their relationship to subordination and privthe same trend holds within the female social poilege—“constraints and enablements” in Asta’s lansition. Although Haslanger defines the female po-

guage. The most important difference between these views is that, for Haslanger, constraints and enablements can ultimately place someone within a stable social position, whereas on Asta’s view these properties are entirely contextual and can change rapidly.

With the modifications I’ve proposed, Haslanger’s theory can account for long-term changes in a person’s social position, but it cannot directly describe people who fail to count as “men” or “women” at any particular time. There are some people who function as men and women at different times, but who do neither of these “regularly and for the most part.” This includes many gender non-conforming people, and especially trans people who don’t “pass.” It also includes genderqueer and genderfluid people who prefer to adopt a mixture of masculine and feminine presentation, or to be androgynous. These people are likely to be subordinated in ways that are not reducible to their sometimes occupying a “female” position, and they are unlikely to become substantially privileged even if others sometimes perceive them as male. What role do these people play in the social structure?

An augmented version of Asta’s account helps to fill this lacuna. Asta describes a person who is “one of the guys” at work, a woman at home, a butch among femmes, and an “other” in heteronormative spaces (2018:74). If Asta is right, then this person gains and loses genders several times over the course of a single day. I think it is fruitful to describe the social trajectory of this person as they contextually move between genders. Even when social forces position this person as a woman or a man, their experience is at all times defined by the fact of their regularly transgressing categories.

We could say that they possess the metaproperty such as “tending to move between male and female categories.” By contrast, some of their coworkers might have a metaproperty like “generally tending to be a man.” These metaproperties, which describe trajectory, allow Asta’s theory to describe people who fall outside of Haslanger’s social positions.

To create a totalizing account of gendered oppression will require difficult and innovative work, and I don’t at all claim to have completed this task.

Rather, my goal has been to identify some crucial elements which have been missing from the metaphysical literature about gender, and to make some progress toward introducing these elements. I think it is clear that an account which includes stability, instability, and social trajectory is superior to one which lacks these concepts, but these ideas doubtless require more refinement. Just as I have centered transgender experiences in this paper, other inquiries might center gendered intersections with race, class, (dis)ability, or some combination of these, and so reveal other aspects of the social structure which I have overlooked. As we modify our theories to account for a wider breadth of data, we should expect them to become increasingly intricate and robust. I hope we’re working up to something grand.

ENDNOTES 1 Haslanger judiciously uses the phrase “bodily features presumed to be evidence of a [male’s/female’s] biological role in reproduction.” Since it would be cumbersome to use this phrase consistently, I reluctantly use the terms “male/ female sex characteristics.”

2 See McKitrick (2015) and Jenkins (2018) for theories of gender identity.

3 This view is called gender pluralism. See Bettcher (2013) and especially Dembroff (2018).

4 Barnes (2020) argues that we should substitute different terms to avoid the implication that some trans women are “men,” and vice versa. Although I take misgendering seriously as a moral issue, I don’t think this is a genuine problem for Haslanger. Trans women are women in the ways that matter for practically all social and ethical purposes, and I don’t think that using this language to describe social positions delegitimates their identity claims. At the same time, I think it would be counterproductive for feminists to replace “man” and “woman” with ahistorical terms like “masculinized/ feminized person.” We want to know why men have oppressed women in so many places and at so many different times, and in my view, our emotional associations with those terms is an important part of that inquiry.

5 For arguments against misgendering, see Dembroff and Wodak (2018) and Kapusta (2016).

6 On the revised account, we would substitute a person’s perceived sex characteristics with their perceived association with gender stereotypes: A person is a man if he is privileged on the basis of his perceived masculinity, and a woman if she is subordinated on the basis of her perceived femininity. For example, a transgender man might benefit from unconscious sexism in his workplace even if his coworkers know that he is transgender, and so do not imagine that he has male sex characteristics.

7 I use phrases like “the male social position” only because it is grammatically convenient. I don’t mean to imply that this position is defined by biology, and I certainly don’t believe it is a natural kind.

8 This is not only useful for theoretical purposes, but also important for describing some aspects of trans people’s experiences. In my own experience, I reject that I am male, but it seems obviously true that I am “positioned as a man.”

Trans people sometimes say that a person is in “boy mode” or “girl mode” when they reluctantly present as their assigned sex, which suggests that there is a widespread need for this concept.

9 These observations might carry over to positions of race, but I won’t argue that fully here. It seems likely to me that some people positioned as White are less privileged because their position is unstable (for example, because they have Black ancestry; see Johnson (2015) and Piper (1991)). However, there are enough dissimilarities between gender and race that we must tread carefully. Thanks to a reviewer who asked me to elaborate on this.

23

10

11

24

One might speculate that the opposite would hold for pre-transition trans men, such that they would be privileged in some ways because they anticipate adopting a male role. This doesn’t seem to be true, though. It is generally much harder to acquire male privilege than to lose it.

I do not claim that the Wachowskis are more privileged on the whole for having occupied the male position, but rather that they in some way continue to benefit from having occupied the male social position.

REFERENCES Ásta. 2018. Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Barnes, Elizabeth. 2019. “Gender and Gender Terms.” Noûs 54(3): 704-30.

Bettcher, Talia. 2013. “Trans Women and the Meaning of Woman.” Pp. 233-250 in The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, edited by N. Power, R. Halwani, and Alan Soble. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Dembroff, Robin. 2018. “Real Talk on the Metaphysics of Gender.” Philosophical Topics 46(2): 21-50.

Haslanger, Sally. 2012. “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?” Pp. 221-247 in Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, by S. Haslanger.

New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, Katharine. 2016. “Amelioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman.” Ethics 126(2): 394-421.

Jenkins, Katharine. 2018. “Toward an Account of Gender Identity.” Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5(27): 713-744.

Johnson, James W. 2015. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

McKitrick, Jennifer. 2014. “A Dispositional Account of Gender.” Philosophical Studies 172(10): 25752589.

Piper, Adrian. 1992. “Passing for White, Passing for Black.” Transition 58: 4-32.

Wynn, Natalie. 2019. “Gender Critical.” YouTube video. Retrieved September 1, 2020 (https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pTPuoG jQsI&t=929s).

Visit The Collective Online www.facebook.com/thecollectivewm thecollective@email.wm.edu issuu.com/thecollectivewm