Author: TheConversation

By Anna Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rice University; and Max Besbris, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison Friendswood, Texas, is the type of community that one might think of as a “best case scenario” when it comes to recovering from a disaster. It is a small tight-knit town with well-resourced residents and a strong social infrastructure of local institutions that provided a huge outpouring of support in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. It is also the type of community that typically receives a disproportionately high amount of aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency...

By Andrea Joseph-McCatty, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Tennessee Andrea Joseph-McCatty is an assistant professor at the College of Social Work at the University of Tennessee. Her research examines disproportional school suspensions and, in particular, the ways in which inequity impacts the experiences of students of color. Why is equity so hard to attain in American schools? Most recently my work has focused on understanding and addressing racially disproportional school suspensions and the ways in which those are also gender disproportionate. For example, we know nationally that in the 2017-2018 academic year, over 2.5 million children received one...

By Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, Adjunct Lecturer in Urban Studies, The New School A nationally representative survey of 8,027 Americans shows that across all racial demographics, overall interest in purchasing electric vehicles is high. Among those surveyed, 33% of white respondents, 38% of Black respondents, 43% of Latinos and 52% of Asian Americans say they would “definitely” or “seriously consider” purchasing or leasing an EV as their next vehicle. The survey was conducted by Consumer Reports, with input from the nonprofit advocacy groups GreenLatinos, the Union of Concerned Scientists and EVNoire and administered between January 27 and February 18, 2022, by...

By Melissa K. Ochoa, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Saint Louis University Most of the debates on the usage of “Latinx,” pronounced “la-teen-ex,” have taken place in the United States. But the word has begun to spread into Spanish-speaking countries, where it has not exactly been embraced. In July 2022, Argentina and Spain released public statements banning the use of Latinx, or any gender-neutral variant. Both governments reasoned that these new terms are violations of the rules of the Spanish language. Latinx is used as an individual identity for those who are gender-nonconforming, and it can also...