Author: TheConversation

By Philip H. Howard, Associate Professor of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University; and Mary Hendrickson, Associate Professor of Rural Sociology, University of Missouri-Columbia Agribusiness executives and government policymakers often praise the U.S. food system for producing abundant and affordable food. The fact is, however, food costs are rising, and shoppers in many parts of the U.S. have limited access to fresh, healthy products. This is not just an academic argument. Even before the current pandemic, millions of people in the U.S. went hungry. In 2019 the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that over 35 million people were “food insecure,”...

By Pawan Dhingra, Professor of Sociology and American Studies, Amherst College Over the past year, attacks on Asian Americans have increased more than 150% over the previous year, including the March 16 murders of eight people, including six Asian American women, in Atlanta. Some of these attacks may be classified as hate crimes. But whether they meet that legal definition or not, they all fit a long history of viewing Asian Americans in particular ways that make discrimination and violence against them more likely. I have researched and taught on Asian America for 20 years, including on the pernicious...

By Ursula Moffitt, Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, Northwestern University “Stop pretending your racism is patriotism.” – Internet Meme Among the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were members of right-wing groups, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters. The increasing violence and visibility of these groups have turned them into symbols of White Supremacy and racism. They were involved in the deadly Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and street clashes with racial justice protesters in Portland, Oregon, last year. At a Trump rally in Washington DC, in December, Black...

Claire L. Adida, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of California San Diego Adeline Lo, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison Lauren Prather, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of California San Diego Melina Platas, Assistant Professor of Political Science, New York University Abu Dhabi Scott Williamson, Postdoctoral Associate, Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi Which was the first generation in your family to arrive in America? Do you know why your family came to the United States? Members of President Joe Biden’s administration, and key nominees, have answered these questions in their first days...

By Austin Kocher, Research Associate Professor, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University The last residents of Mexico’s Matamoros refugee camp crossed the border into the United States on March 5 to request asylum. The migrants – many of them Central Americans fleeing endemic violence, poverty and corruption – will be allowed to stay in the U.S. as their cases move through the immigration court system. The exodus from the Matamoros camp, which once sheltered more than 2,500 asylum-seekers, marks the end of a Trump-era policy called the Migrant Protection Protocols. Commonly known as “Remain in Mexico,” the January 2019...

By Kate Cantrell, Lecturer in Writing, Editing, and Publishing, University of Southern Queensland; and Sharon Bickle, Lecturer in English Literature, QLD rep for Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association, University of Southern Queensland “No one is ‘cancelling’ Dr. Seuss. The author, himself, is dead for one thing, which is about as cancelled as a person can get.” – Philip Bump Laying aside a multimillion-dollar publishing business, tattered copies of Dr. Seuss books clutter children’s bedrooms around the globe. Parents still grapple nightly with the tongue-twisters of Fox in Socks, Horton Hears a Who! or Hop on Pop, and try...