Person:

Hochschild, Jennifer

Three uncontroversial points sum to a paradox: 1) Almost every democratic theorist or democratic political actor sees an informed electorate as essential to good democratic practice. Citizens need to know who or what they are choosing and why – hence urgent calls for expansive and publicly funded education, and rights to free speech, assembly, press, and movement. 2) In most if not all democratic polities, the proportion of the population granted the suffrage has consistently expanded, and seldom contracted, over the past two centuries. Most observers, and I, agree that expanding enfranchisement makes a state more democratic. 3) Most expansions of the suffrage bring in, on average, people who are less politically informed or less broadly educated than those already eligible to vote. Putting these three uncontroversial points together leads to the conclusion that as democracies become more democratic, their decision-making processes become of lower quality in terms of cognitive processing of issues and candidate choice. The paradox is both historical – why have democracies expanded the franchise to include relatively ignorant voters? – and normative – why should democracies expand the franchise to include relatively ignorant voters? The article addresses both questions. First, I review the historical trajectory of democratization in the United States (although the argument is not specific to that country). I then describe plausible empirical explanations for the paradox: voters are not really that ignorant; the United States is not and never has been really a democracy; and institutions or electoral rules have been developed to substitute for voters’ knowledge. I also analyze plausible normative explanations for the paradox: democracy does not, or does not primarily, need cognitively sophisticated citizens; and democracy offers benefits that outweigh the deficits of citizens’ lack of knowledge. I offer a few reflections on both sets of explanations, but cannot genuinely dissolve the paradox.

Are racial disparities in the United States just as deep-rooted as they were before the 2008 presidential election, largely eliminated, or persistent but on the decline? One can easily find all of these pronouncements; rather than trying to adjudicate among them, this essay seeks to identify what is changing in the American racial order, what persists or is becoming even more entrenched, and what is likely to affect the balance between change and continuity. The authors focus on young American adults, who were raised in a distinctive racial context and who think about and practice race differently than their older counterparts. For many young Americans, racial attitudes are converging across groups and social networks are becoming more intertwined. Most important, although group-based hierarchy has not disappeared, race or ethnicity does less to predict a young adult's life chances than ever before in American history.

For the first time in American history, the 2000 United States census allowed individuals to choose more than one race. That new policy sets up our exploration of whether and how multiracialism is entering Americans' understanding and practice of race. By analyzing briefly earlier cases of racial construction, we uncover three factors important to understanding if and how intensely a feedback effect for racial classification will be generated. Using this framework, we find that multiracialism has been institutionalized in the federal government, and is moving toward institutionalization in the private sector and other governmental units. In addition, the small proportion of Americans who now define themselves as multiracial is growing absolutely and relatively, and evidence suggests a continued rise. Increasing multiracial identification is made more likely by racial mixture's growing prominence in American society—demographically, culturally, economically, and psychologically. However, the politics side of the feedback loop is complicated by the fact that identification is not identity. Traditional racial or ethnic loyalties and understandings remain strong, including among potential multiracial identifiers. Therefore, if mixed-race identification is to evolve into a multiracial identity, it may not be at the expense of existing group consciousness. Instead, we expect mixed-race identity to be contextual, fluid, and additive, so that it can be layered onto rather than substituted for traditional monoracial commitments. If the multiracial movement successfully challenges the longstanding understanding and practice of “one drop of blood” racial groups, it has the potential to change much of the politics and policy of American race relations.

Judith Resnik’s “Bordering by Law” has three major themes. First, the United States is strongly and increasingly criminalizing immigration and stigmatizing immigrants, to the detriment of everyone. Second, the United States is engaging in more and more harmful surveillance of migrants as well as citizens. Third, the history of the Universal Postal Union provides a model for how to overcome nationalist solipsism, as well as a warning that the virtues of public governance are threatened by privatized services. This commentary focuses mostly on the first theme, disagreeing to some extent with Resnik’s characterization of the trajectory of policies surrounding immigration and immigrants, and aiming to substitute a more complicated and multifaceted characterization. Her final theme provokes several larger questions, which are explored but not answered. The overall message is that we need more political analysis to fully understand the United States’ ambivalent treatment of migration and migrants.

DNA ancestry testing may seem frivolous, but it points to two crucial questions: First, what is the relationship, if any, between biology and race? Second, how much and why do people prefer clear, singular racial identities over blurred, mixed racial self-understandings, or the reverse? We posit that individuals of different racial or ethnic backgrounds will have different levels of support for this new technology. In particular, despite the history of harm caused by the biologization of race, we theorize that African Americans will be receptive to the use of DNA ancestry testing because conventional genealogical searches for ancestral roots are mostly unavailable to them. This “broken chain” theory leads to two hypotheses, of disproportionately high Black interest in DNA ancestry testing—thus an implicit acceptance of a link between biology and race-----and high acceptance among Blacks of multiple heritages despite a preference for evidence of roots in Africa. To test these hypotheses, we analyze two databases of U.S. newspaper articles, one with almost 6,000 items and a second with 700. We also analyze two new public opinion surveys of nationally representative samples of adult Americans. Most of the evidence comes from the second survey, which uses vignettes to obtain views about varied results of DNA ancestry testing. We find that the media increasingly report on the links between genetic inheritance and race, and emphasize singular racial ancestry more than multiple heritages. The surveys show, consistent with our theory, that Blacks (and Hispanics, to some degree) are especially receptive to DNA ancestry testing, and are pleased with not only a finding of group singularity but also a finding of multiple points of origin. Qualitative readings of media reports illuminate some of the reasons behind these survey findings. We conclude with a brief discussion of the broader importance of DNA ancestry testing.

Political efforts to desegregate public schools do not fail solely because of political opposition. They fail when political opposition joins and interacts with an institutional structure that ambiguously divides educational authority between state and local actors. Both factors-a high level of political controversy and a shared system of educational authority-were present in Yonkers, New York during the 1960s and 1970s, and jointly explain the district's failure to desegregate its schools. Using a "regression by hand," the authors show that neither factor taken alone necessarily undermines a policy's success in the political arena. The political success of New York's policy to fund nonpublic schools demonstrates that controversial policies can be realized when the institutional structure that creates them does not divide authority between state and local actors. Conversely, the political success of efforts to reform Yonkers' programs in special education shows that shared responsibility can promote educational reform if the policy is not controversial. The authors conclude by cautioning against abandoning efforts to desegregate public schools and calling for changes in the structure of shared state and local responsibility for educational policy.

Alexis de Tocqueville believed that “democratic peoples’... passion for equality is ardent, insatiable, eternal, and invincible.” This article examines whether and under what conditions residents of the United States demonstrate such a commitment to equality. I show that at many points in history, Americans have indeed chosen to move toward greater justice and less oppression; however, there are clear limits to their passion for equality. White Americans endorse less social, political, and economic equality than do African Americans, but even the latter often resist equality for groups that they perceive to be threats, or for behaviors that threaten strong social or moral norms. The article discusses implications for political activists of these patterns of support for and resistance to greater equality, and suggests strategies for overcoming oppression and promoting justice.

This article shows the pattern of socioeconomic class differences in schooling outcomes and indicates some of the causes for those differences that lie within the public realm. Those causes include "nested inequalities" across boundaries of states, school districts, schools within a district, classes within a school, and sometimes separation within a class. In addition, urban public schools demonstrate a particular set of problems that generate differential schooling outcomes by economic class. The article also demonstrates ways in which class biases are closely entwined with racial and ethnic inequities. It concludes with the broad outlines of what would be necessary to reduce class (and racial) disparities in American public schools.