Author: TheConversation

By Kevin A. Young, Associate Professor of History, UMass Amherst Signed into law 60 years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in the U.S. based on “race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.” Yet, as a historian who studies social movements and political change, I think the law’s most important lesson for today’s movements is not its content but rather how it was achieved. As firsthand accounts from the era make clear, the movement won because it directly hurt the interests of white business owners. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1963 boycott of Birmingham businesses,...

By Oludolapo Makinde, Doctoral Candidate, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia While White women may speak of breaking through the “glass ceiling,” for many Black women, it is more like a “concrete ceiling.” Black women experience unique and formidable barriers in the workforce that are not only difficult to break, but also obscure their view of career advancement opportunities. A comprehensive study in 2020 exposed the harsh reality of Black representation on Canadian corporate boards: Out of 1,639 board positions across eight major Canadian cities, only 0.8 per cent were occupied by Black directors. According...

By Amanda McMillan Lequieu, Assistant Professor of Environmental Sociology, Drexel University It was midday on a Saturday, and Simonetta led me from the open front door of her home in southeast Chicago to her sitting room and settled next to her husband, Christopher, on the couch. In the 1980s, Christopher had worked a few blocks away at U.S. Steel South Works, earning three times the minimum wage with a high school diploma – more than enough to buy a house near Simonetta’s parents before their first baby arrived. Like their neighbors in southeast Chicago, Simonetta and Christopher’s expectations for...

By Jay L. Zagorsky, Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University Should the U.S. get rid of pennies, nickels and dimes? The debate has gone on for years. Many people argue for keeping coins on the grounds of economic fairness. Others call for eliminating them because the government loses money minting low-value coins. One way to resolve the debate is to check whether people are still using small-value coins. And there’s an unlikely source of information showing how much people are using pocket change: the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA. Yes, the same people who screen...

By Rachael Sharman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of the Sunshine Coast Over recent months, a number of politicians have supported calls to ban social media for children under 16. Currently, kids under 13 are not allowed to use social media. There is some research that suggests social media can be helpful for certain young people by, for example, connecting them with like-minded peers. That said, there are a raft of reasons for this proposed change. The most compelling is evidence showing inappropriate screen time and social media use are linked to poor mental health in children and young...

By Gavin Naylor, Director of Florida Program for Shark Research, University of Florida Human fear of sharks has deep roots. Written works and art from the ancient world contain references to sharks preying on sailors as early as the eighth century B.C.E. Relayed back to land, stories about shark encounters have been embellished and amplified. Together with the fact that from time to time – very rarely – sharks bite humans, people have been primed for centuries to imagine terrifying situations at sea. In 1974, Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel “Jaws” fanned this fear into a wildfire that spread around...