Examining diversity and privilege with the Jewish Israeli population

Posted on January 15, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Hannah Ridge, author of Contours of Israeli Politics, writes about Israeli ethnic hierarchy.

I started thinking about this book during the Covid-19 lockdown. I attended dozens of online workshops and speaker series to stay connected, including a tremendous series on minority politics, MPOSS. A presentation of Mara Ostfeld and Nicole Yadon’s research on skin color and American politics memorably used color spectrophotometers (light-reflectance measurements) to demonstrate that Americans’ experiences were defined not only by race but also by appearance. As apparent race boundaries blur with skin tone, ethno-racial identity and hierarchy become more salient. Putting pigment gradation against America’s racial privilege hierarchy meant different groups had different incentives when it came to racialized policies and perpetuating or dismantling privilege. The implications for within group difference really struck me.

On a regular Zoom call with two co-authors I had met through my late advisor, our discussion wandered into Israeli politics. I mentioned Ashkenormativity – that cultural conceptions of Jewishness are based on European Jewishness (aka Ashkenazim) at the expanse of Asian and African Jewishness (aka Mizrahim/Sephardim). The latter communities have lower social and cultural status in Israel. The Mizrahim/Sephardim are often poorer and less educated than Ashkenazim. It reminded me of a comment my father made when we were in Jerusalem. Stepping out of a taxi, he has asked why all the cab drivers were Sephardi or Palestinian. He had not known the term Ashkenormativity, but he was able to perceive its effects. On the Zoom, I mentioned Ostfeld and Yadon’s book and wondered if similar patterns existed in the Israeli ethnic hierarchy (Ashkenazim, Mizrahim/Sephardim, Arabs). That question was written on a digital sticky note, a puzzle for another time.

The project grew from there. A fortuitous funding opportunity at my graduate department, followed by research funds from my postdoc, allowed me to run surveys of my own, and I found other Israel surveys that included ethnic variables. My conference papers grew longer, and a discussant suggested turning the project into a book.

The Israeli ethnic hierarchy is sociologically interesting. People often think of ethnic and racial hierarchies as bequeathed by our forebears from time immemorial and for which we retroactively invent causal narratives. Israel is a constructed society made in living memory. As such, it is possible to trace the decisions that were made to create the new country as a “European” state and the knock-on effects that this would have. It privileged European immigrants and those who spoke European languages and penalized Asian and African immigrants. These tacit or not-so-tacit biases were strengthened in subsequent generations, as for years the government promoted culturally “improving” the Mizrahim by trying to make them more European, more Ashkenazi, in the name of making them more Israeli. Scholars like Aziza Khazzoom and Ella Shohat have documented these processes. Along the way, though, all Jewish groups were positioned above the local Arab population, the Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

Even though the effects have been documented by these historical and sociological researchers and in the public opinion surveys featured in my book, people deny Ashkenormativity exists. At one conference, an audience member told me, “The Mizrahim shouldn’t feel this way. They outnumber us.” It should be noted that researchers do not agree on which group is larger, and some Mizrahim think that the government is trying to conceal a Mizrahi majority because it would not fit the image. In fact, for some Mizrahim, the power imbalance despite the demographics adds to the problems; it does not soften the experience of discrimination. His comment reminded me of white Americans who deny white privilege exists. Many socio-political patterns cross borders.

Research on Israeli politics is timely but highly sensitive. In writing the book, I had originally hoped not to field my surveys during any “tense” moments in the Israel-Palestine conflict. After delaying one round of the survey due to violence in Jerusalem, I realized this was not something I could predict or control long-term. I had to put the survey in the field and know that was part of the environment. In this case, the surveys were done during “regular” times in Israel, which is not to say nothing was going on, but it was no more than usual.

After the book was accepted, the 10/7 attack occurred and Israel invaded Gaza again. I revised the book to add this conflict and updated public opinion, especially in the discussions of the treatment of Palestinians and support for war over peace. Mimicking prior iterations, I called it the 2023 Gaza War. When the book was in page proofs, I noted it was now the 2023-2024 Gaza war. My next book project is also on Israel, and I have been writing “2023-2025 Gaza War.” I am already asking myself if that is too optimistic.

At present, research on race and ethnic politics is heavily concentrated in the US, but it is diversifying. We should not assume the US is a representative case. Other regions of the world have their own ethno-racial experiences. We can learn more about the politics of race and ethnicity by considering these cases and how they manifest. In so doing, I hope we can continue to make political science a more comparative and international endeavor.

Filed under: ethics, History, immigration, Jewish, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, Religion, sociology, transnational politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Designing a comprehensive resource for community-engagement professionals

Posted on November 29, 2023 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Elizabeth Tryon, coauthor (with Haley Madden and Cory Sprinkel) of Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships, writes about the challenges and rewards of integrating community engagement into higher education.

Looking in the rear-view mirror, it’s overwhelming to try to process the impact of events of the last four years. A global pandemic disproportionately affected minoritized communities in a climate of vitriolic hatred and intolerance encouraged by the former president. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, national protests created overdue heightened awareness of systemic racism. In a short time span, so much of the country’s dialogue shifted that it is mind-boggling to catalog the ramifications, good and bad. The learning curve was steep, especially for community engagement (CE) under lockdown, but universities pivoted more quickly in response to the COVID-19 closure than thought possible for such behemoth institutions. It was gratifying, in our campus Zoom world in the late summer and fall of 2020, to see conversations about equity take center stage. Some academics seemed to have been living a cloistered existence, unaware that inequity and systemic racism persist in the neoliberal construct of academia. Now folks were gamely attempting to wake up and contribute to rectifying some inequities. The gates of the ivory tower seemed to crack open and we heard a new willingness to listen and try new things.

These issues were not new in the context of academic CE. For many, many years we had been hearing from off-campus partners that our institutions didn’t do enough to prepare students in CE coursework (some of it required to graduate) before unleashing them on the unsuspecting populace. And that even with the best intentions, students sometimes interacted with community members in ways that caused harm. At our university a large community-based study, overseen by Professor Randy Stoecker in 2006, categorized those issues using a grounded-theory method. These findings were so extensive that our team published a book with Temple in 2009 called The Unheard Voices. This work led us to plead with administrators to institute policies to improve CE. These calls had largely gone unheeded, and 10 years after the Voices study, a community follow-up showed that not much had changed except that partners were becoming choosier about agreeing to projects and they still needed us to shoulder the burden of student training. (One told us, “Tell your students to stop bringing their white nonsense!”) Higher ed has a moral responsibility to behave better both inside the campus boundaries and especially beyond if universities continue to send students into the community under their auspices.

While the issues chronicled in Voices included everything from students not showing up at their sites to the vagaries of the academic calendar, over the next decade packed rooms for every workshop or conference presentation our team led with words like “cultural humility” in the title pointed to the overarching problem. Once all the available extra chairs were dragged in, people sat on floors or windowsills or hovered in doorways. Instructors kept saying, “I’m not equipped to teach these topics. I need the tools to do a better job of not only ensuring my students do no harm, but also ensuring the CE project is more than a break-even exercise for my community partners.”

During those years we were lucky to have some very skilled student interns who had extensive training in intergroup/intercultural dialogue as well as lived experience and wisdom. They knew how to meet students at their level as they worked toward more equitable partnerships and helped us develop workshop curriculum. This led to the creation of a CE Preparation staff role in 2019, filled by Cory Sprinkel, also a skilled dialogue facilitator, and we embarked on formalizing our student trainings for wider dissemination.

Our new handbook, Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships, is designed to be a comprehensive resource for use by community-engaged professionals to prepare students for more equitable relationships with community members as they conduct course projects or research. It is structured into three broad sections that loosely mirror a companion set of open-access online modules that instructors can assign: an introductory overview and literature review; essential concepts, including student motivations, identity, privilege, power and oppression, and cultural humility; and additional contexts and considerations that drill down even deeper. We used a developmental approach so instructors can go from simpler to more complex understandings. Every chapter starts with discussion and theory and then moves to specific strategies and classroom activities. The book ends with appendices of activities and resources we have collected over the years.

We could only write from the perspective of a predominantly white institution in a medium-sized city, and our BIPOC faculty/staff colleagues, while very supportive, were too committed to join us as coauthors. So, we solicited short vignettes from small private and large urban campuses, community colleges, HBCUs, and minority-serving institutions. We received contributions from a diverse group of 22 colleagues about a plethora of related issues, including valuable contributions from students. It was a real pleasure to work with all of these contributors and my co-authors and I are excited to see this handbook reach CE professionals that have been looking for resources to help them prepare students for equitable partnership building.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, Anthropology, asian american studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Disability Studies, Education, ethics, gender studies, History, Labor Studies, Latin American studies, LGBT studies, Mass Media and Communications, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

A deep dive into the value of diversity for students

Posted on April 19, 2023 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Elizabeth Aries, author of The Impact of College Diversity, writes about the results of her findings about race and class issues at an elite college, the subject of three books and 12 years of study.

My 12-year interview study of affluent Black, affluent white, lower-income Black, and lower-income white students from Amherst College focuses on what students learned from engagement with racially and socio-economically diverse classmates during college. I interviewed students as entering first years, as graduating seniors, and for a final time at age 30. The age 30 interviews, described in The impact of College Diversity, reveal that 81% of Black and white Amherst graduates reported learning about race and racial inequality through peer interactions during college. The interviews also revealed how a racially diverse college provided a successful pathway to upward social mobility for lower-income Black and white students.

The data provide strong evidence of the educational benefits students derived from daily interactions with classmates whose racial and class backgrounds, experiences, and views differ greatly from their own. At a time when the Supreme Court is soon to decide whether to ban the use of race in college admission decisions, and diversity is very much the subject of heated national conversation, my research found huge financial and social benefits to affluent and low-income Black and white students interacting on our small, residential, racially diverse campus.

I began my study in 2005 at a time when Amherst College began recruiting and enrolling a more socio-economically and racially diverse of the student body. This change was motivated by the desire to promote equity and social mobility, and by a belief in the educational benefits for students of interacting daily with classmates whose experiences and views are different from their own.

As a professor of psychology, the presence of more racially and socioeconomically diverse students was enriching classroom discussions in my courses. Due to the differing backgrounds and life experiences students brought to the table, they offered more varied perspectives and insights on course readings. Their comments enabled me and their classmates to understand the texts we read in new ways. My best teachers have been my students. I could clearly see the benefits of learning from diversity that were occurring in my classroom, but wondered about the extent to which such learning from diversity was taking place through peer interactions outside the classroom as well.

Originally I set out to chronicle the nature and extent of what students had learned about race and class during the college years from engagement with racially and socioeconomically diverse classmates. I then grew interested in what the longer-term impact of being part of a diverse student body had been on them. For most college graduates the period of their twenties is marked by continued identity and job exploration; changes in intimate relationships, possible graduate school attendance, and a focus on self-development. So I waited to do a final set of follow-up interviews until my participants reached age 30.

The focus of The Impact of College Diversity is on the voices of the graduates as they report on their lived experiences and subjective understandings of race and class. The findings trace how hearing the lived experiences of their Black peers during college opened white graduates’ eyes to the harm of racism their classmates endured throughout their lives, deepened their understanding of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination, and of their own racial privilege. Interviews with Black graduates revealed how being part of a diverse student body prepared them to become bi-cultural, gave them the skills to succeed in predominantly white settings and helped them cope with the challenges of a white-dominated work world. Lower-income graduates acquired new forms of cultural and social capital and higher aspirations during college, which led to greater upward social mobility in the future. Upward mobility did come at a cost, as lower-income graduates had changed in many ways while family and friends left behind had not. They faced the challenge of bridging two different worlds.

Several findings surprised me. When questioned as graduating seniors. just over half the participants reported learning from the racial diversity at the college. Yet looking back at age 30, this percentage rose to 81%. Thirty percent of the white graduates aspired to raise their potential children in a racially diverse environment because they believed in the importance of intergroup contact. And almost all the graduates, Black and white, strongly agreed that a diverse student body is essential to teaching skills to succeed and lead in the work environment.

I was also surprised by the extent of upward mobility of the lower-income graduates because many of them had struggled at Amherst both academically and socially. At the time they were at Amherst, many fewer resources existed than do today to help create an inclusive community and to provide the supports they needed to foster their success. Yet 65% percent of lower-income graduates had gone on to attain graduate degrees, the majority reporting being inspired by the ambitions of their classmates and having their own ambitions raised. Most had attained degrees that led to the highest earnings – an MBA, Ph.D. MD, or JD – and had attended top graduate schools in the country, or had gone into finance and worked for a prestigious investment bank.

The bottom line: A college experience at a diverse school is better for our society, and that can only happen by using race-conscious admission practices.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, asian american studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Education, ethics, gender studies, Mass Media and Communications, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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