Everyday Sociology Blog

2018 Oscar Watch: Diversity in Hollywood

By Angelique Harris

The Academy Awards are one of the most revered of the award shows in Hollywood. Although the lack of diversity in who receives nominations and awards has been called into question various times in the past, there was little traction until 2015, when the #OscarsSoWhite movement was born.

The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite was created on Twitter by April Reign, the managing editor of BroadwayBlack.com, when the Oscar announcements were made and there were no contenders of color for best acting categories. In fact, adding fuel to the fire, even in films with Black leads, such as Creed and Straight Outta Compton, those nominated for Oscars (Sylvester Stallone for best supporting actor and Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff for screenwriting, respectively) were White. After this glaring lack of diversity, the same thing happened the following year, with no best actor nominees of color. As a result, many celebrities boycotted the event, such as Spike Lee, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Will Smith, who refused to attend while many others, including President Obama, spoke publically about this issue.

What Would You Do?

By Peter Kaufman

Consider the following scenario: You are in a clothing store shopping for a new outfit. As you are browsing through the selections you notice that a black female customer is being targeted unfairly by a sales clerk. Instead of allowing this customer to shop freely as you are, the sales clerk is following her around, constantly asking her what she wants, making obnoxious comments to her, and eventually telling her that she should leave the store.

What would you do? Would you say something to the sales clerk or seek out a manager to complain? Would you say something to support the customer and voice your concern over the way she is being treated? Or would you continue on with your business and pretend to ignore the interaction you just witnessed?

The Body as Social: Roxane Gay’s Hunger

By Karen Sternheimer

Our bodies are not just biological, but the way we make sense of our bodies and the bodies of others exists in both a personal and social context. While our bodies are also private, they are (mostly) visible to the public, and as such, often judged and evaluated by those around us and of course, by ourselves. In addition, the physical aspects of our bodies are shaped by events that are sometimes beyond our control, whether it be based on economics, our geographic location, or traumatic events.

Author Roxane Gay demonstrates this in her book Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. The title, and the book’s contents, reminds us that our bodies, like ourselves, have stories of how they came to be as they are. In Gay’s case, she recounts how being sexually assaulted by a group of boys at the age of twelve changed her relationship to her body from that moment forward.

The Big Rig and the Sociology of Work

By Colby King

I teach a Sociology of Work course at Bridgewater State University that meets in the evening each fall. At BSU, about half of our students come from working class backgrounds and/or are among the first generation in their family to go to college. One of the reasons I have really enjoyed teaching evening sections of this class is that many of the students typically work off campus and the class is often infused with their work experiences. These students also express a practical interest in the dynamics of labor markets, the shape of organizations, and the quality of jobs in addition to their interest in sociological concepts related to work.

This fall, I added Steve Viscelli’s book The Big Rig to the material we used in this class. I was motivated in part because it is a large and dynamic industry that illustrates many of the concepts and concerns we cover in this class. About 3 million people work as truck drivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. NPR’s Planet Money has created this interactive map showing how truck driver has been the most common job in many states since at least the 1970s. The American Trucking Associations found that in 2014 more than 7 million people were employed in jobs related to the trucking industry, even after excluding those who were self-employed. They also report that registered trucks drove 279.1 billion miles in 2014.