Everyday Sociology Blog

Far from “Post-Racial”: Color-Blind Racism, Group Threat, and Anti-Asian Prejudice

By Jenny Enos

Since the election of President Obama in 2008, many Americans have claimed that we live in a “post-racial society” in which race no longer matters. After all, if we elected a Black man to be president – the ultimate position of power in the country – how can people still claim that racism exists?

Some telling societal metrics also speak to an increasingly leveled playing field between the races; for example, the difference in college enrollment rates for White and Black 18-to 24-year-olds has decreased from 8 percentage points in 2000 to 5 percentage points in 2018. At the very least, might these numbers suggest that we are headed in the right direction?

Travel as Ethnography: Being a Temporary Local (with a Kitchen)

By Karen Sternheimer

When planning a trip to northern Italy last year, I stumbled upon a class of lodging I wasn’t familiar with: the condo hotel. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic meant limiting contact with others, so a traditional hotel was less desirable this trip. A refrigerator, and at the very least a microwave, was a must.

Because we happened to be searching for a weeklong place to stay, starting on a Saturday, all sorts of options appeared that hadn’t during previous trips we’d booked, where we stayed places for just a few nights rather than a whole week. We had looked for lodging in the same town previously and found very little available. That was because we didn’t do a Saturday-Saturday search, which we later learned was essential for this type of lodging.

Greetings

By Cornelia Mayr

Department of Sociology, University of Klagenfurt, Austria

Human connection starts with a friendly smile and a warm hello. How does it feel to greet someone and not have the greeting returned?

I regularly visit the local ladies’ gym, and often have contact with mothers and grandmothers. One granny occasionally brings her five-year-old grandchild with her, a young girl who does not greet nor react to warm greetings. You might presume that the child is too shy to greet a stranger. Can you really be too shy to greet? Is it a must to greet people when we do not feel that we want to do so? The social greeting etiquette made me think of the meaning of this common ritual in everyday interactions.