Republished from The Conversation

American suburbs radically changed over the decades – and so have their politics

Jan Nijman, Georgia State University

Editor’s note: Suburban voters in a number of areas are considered critical swing voters. The growing political stakes reflect the dramatic changes that have happened in American suburbia in recent years, says Dr. Jan Nijman, director and distinguished university professor at the Urban Studies Institute, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. He edited the book, “The Life of North American Suburbs,” which examines how the once homogeneous suburbs have become far more diverse and varied from one other.

Three major trends converge in suburbs

The United States was the birthplace of the 20th-century suburb. After World War II, the archetypal “sitcom” suburb of the 1950s – white, middle-class households with male breadwinners and traditional gender roles, in single-family homes – assumed near-mythical proportions. They were seen as a settled, stable place where middle-class families had “arrived.” Change was not a part of that dreamy constellation.

But suburbia proved far from stable, because of three major trends: the rapid growth of suburban populations, growing diversity due in part to immigration and economic changes that brought increasing inequalities. If you add up these trends, the result is the increased sorting of populations into highly diverse suburban patterns.

By the year 2000, the suburban U.S. population exceeded that of central cities and rural areas combined. Today, there are many more types of suburbs than, say, 30 years ago. While cities are said to be diverse, they are really sorted into various types of suburbs where different types of people live in a sort of suburban bubble. If today somebody tells you they live in the suburbs, it does not tell you a lot. Rather, it raises the question “What suburb?”

Enormous contrasts and inequalities

Suburbs now are definitely not all white, middle-class or dominated by families with traditional gender roles. They vary a great deal in terms of well-being, race and ethnicity. The distinction between central cities and suburbs has blurred. This is due to the suburbanization of previously excluded lower-income groups and ethnic minorities, and to the gentrification of large parts of central cities – more wealthy people (often whites) moving back in. Suburbia continued to grow, but increasingly because many lower income people didn’t have anywhere else to go. For some of the less expensive, far-out suburbs, it was reflected in the phrase “Drive till you qualify.”

Since 2000, poverty in the suburbs has grown much faster than in central cities. By 2010, well over a third of the suburban population in the U.S. was nonwhite. The majority of African Americans now live in suburbs, and certain suburbs have also become the first and primary destination for foreign immigrants.

What really stands out are the enormous contrasts and inequalities between suburbs. For example, in metro Atlanta, where I am based, one of the suburban areas to the north has a life expectancy of 84 years – as high as Switzerland’s – and household incomes twice Atlanta’s average, and the residents are mostly white. Compare this to an inner suburban area west of downtown, where life expectancy is only 71 – comparable to Bangladesh – incomes are less than half the Atlanta average, and most residents are Black Americans. You could drive from one world to the other in 15 minutes.

‘Swing suburbs’

The 2020 elections are sometimes referred to as a battle for the suburbs, for good reason. In recent elections, while urban areas have generally been strongly Democratic and small towns and rural areas have been predominantly Republican, it is in the suburbs where things are more dynamic. Especially in the all-important swing states, the outcomes tend to revolve around “swing suburbs.”

For instance, if the state of Georgia turns Democratic in 2020 (which may be a stretch), I think it will be decided in suburbia. Fayette County, an Atlanta suburb with about 60,000 voters, could be especially interesting. In past times, Fayette was overwhelmingly Republican (and white). In 2012, Romney beat Obama by a landslide, with 31.4 points. In 2016, however, Fayette showed the narrowest win for Trump of all 29 counties in Greater Atlanta, though still a considerable margin of 19.1 points (57.0–37.9).

In the 2018 gubernatorial vote, Fayette again had the narrowest Republican win of all similar-size counties in the state – but the margin was down to 13.2 points (56.0–42.8). It would require a large shift for Fayette to turn Democratic in 2020, but the changing demographics suggest a possibility: The estimated share of nonwhites since 2016 has increased from 36.6% to 40%, and the share of population whose first language is not English went up from 10.3% to 15%. If it happens, Fayette will follow the example of another Atlanta suburb: Cobb County in 2012 was won by Mitt Romney with a 12.6 margin, but in 2016 it went to Clinton by 2.1 points; and in the 2018 gubernatorial elections the Democrats extended their lead in Cobb County to 9.6 points.

A more likely large swing suburb in a more critical state is Seminole County (about 200,000 voters) in Florida, which covers a good part of the northern suburbs of Orlando. In Seminole County, the 2016 electoral margin in favor of Trump was the tightest of all major suburban counties in Florida, at just 1.5 points (48.1% to 46.6%). And in the gubernatorial elections of 2018, the county flipped Democratic, with a slender lead of 1.8 points (48.5% to 50.3%). In the last four years, Seminole’s estimated nonwhite population has increased from 38% to 42%; the foreign-born population went up from 12.6% to 15.2%; and the population whose first language is not English increased from 21% to 25.8%.

Suburbia is not what it used to be.

Jan Nijman, Distinguished Professor of Urban Studies and Geosciences, Georgia State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Republished from The Conversation

How to be a good digital citizen during the election – and its aftermath

Kolina Koltai, University of Washington

In the runup to the U.S. presidential election there has been an unprecedented amount of misinformation about the voting process and mail-in ballots. It’s almost certain that misinformation and disinformation will increase, including, importantly, in the aftermath of the election. Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information, and disinformation is misinformation that is knowingly and deliberately propagated.

While every presidential election is critical, the stakes feel particularly high given the challenges of 2020.

I study misinformation online, and I can caution you about the kind of misinformation you may see on Tuesday and the days after, and I can offer you advice about what you can do to help prevent its spread. A fast-moving 24/7 news cycle and social media make it incredibly easy to share content. Here are steps you can take to be a good digital citizen and avoid inadvertently contributing to the problem.

Election misinformation

Recent reports by disinformation researchers highlight the potential for an enormous amount of misleading information and disinformation to spread rapidly on Election Day and the days following. People spreading disinformation may be trying to sway the election one way or the other or simply undermine confidence in the election and American democracy in general.

This report by the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) details narratives meant to delegitimize the election and show how uncertainty creates opportunities for misinformation to flourish.

In particular, you may end up seeing misleading information shared about voting in person, mail-in ballots, the day-of voting experience and the results of the election. You may see stories online circulating about coronavirus outbreaks or infections at polling locations, violence or threats of intimidation at polling locations, misinformation about when, where and how to vote, and stories of voting suppression through long lines at polling stations and people being turned away.

We likely won’t know the results on Election Day, and this delay is both anticipated and legitimate. There may be misinformation about the winner of the presidential election and the final counting of ballots, especially with the increase in mail-in ballots in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It will be important to know that not every state finalizes their official ballot count on Nov. 3, and there may be narratives that threaten the legitimacy of the election results, like people claiming their vote did not get counted or saying they found discarded completed ballots.

What if the source of misinformation is … you?

There is a lot you can do to help reduce the spread of election misinformation online. This can happen both accidentally and intentionally, and there are both foreign and domestic actors who create disinformation campaigns. But ultimately, you have the power to not share content.

Sharing mis/disinformation gives it power. Regardless of your demographic, you can be susceptible to misinformation, and sometimes specifically targeted by disinformation. One of the biggest steps you can take to be a good digital citizen this election season is not to contribute to the sharing of misinformation. This can be surprisingly difficult, even with the best of intentions.

One type of misinformation that has been popular leading up to the election – and is likely to remain popular – is “friend of a friend” claims. These claims are often unverified stories without attribution that are quickly spread by people copy and pasting the same story across their networks.

You may see these claims as social media statuses like a Facebook post or an Instagram Story, or even as a bit of text forwarded to you in a group chat. They are often text-based, with no name attached to the story, but instead forwarded along by a “friend of a friend.”

This type of misinformation is popular to share because the stories can center around the good intentions of wanting to inform others, and they often provide a social context, for example my friend’s doctor or my brother’s co-worker, that can make the stories seem legitimate. However, these often provide no actual evidence or proof of the claim and should not be shared, even if you believe the information is useful. It could be misleading.

How to avoid spreading misinformation

Many useful resources are available about how to identify misinformation, which can guide you on what to share and not to share. You can improve your ability to spot misinformation and learn to avoid being duped by disinformation campaigns.

A key approach is the Stop, Investigate, Find and Trace (SIFT) technique, a fact-checking process developed by digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield of Washington State University Vancouver.

Following this technique, when you encounter something you want to share online, you can stop and check to see if you know the website or source of the information. Then investigate the source and find out where the story is coming from. Then find trusted coverage to see if there is a consensus among media sources about the claim. Finally, trace claims, quotes and media back to their original contexts to see if things were taken out of context or manipulated.

Finally, you may want to share your own experience with voting this year on social media. Following the recommendation of Election Integrity Project, it is a good idea to share positive experiences about voting. Go ahead and share your “I voted” sticker selfie. Sharing stories about how people socially distanced and wore masks at polling locations can highlight the positive experiences of voting in-person.

However, EIP cautions about posting about negative experiences. While negative experiences warrant attention, a heavy focus on them can stoke feelings of disenfranchisement, which could suppress voter turnout. Further, once you post something on social media, it can be taken out of context and used to advanced narratives that you may not support.

Most people care about the upcoming election and informing people in their networks. It is only natural to want to share important and critical information about the election. However, I urge you to practice caution in these next few weeks when sharing information online. While it’s probably not possible to stop all disinformation at its source, we the people can do our part to stop its spread.

Kolina Koltai, Postdoctoral Researcher of Information Studies, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Republished from The Conversation

Philosophy and psychology agree – yelling at people who aren’t wearing masks won’t work

Nicole Hassoun, Binghamton University, State University of New York

There is strong scientific evidence that wearing a mask reduces the risk of transmitting the coronavirus. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization recommend wearing them.

Indeed, many people believe it is important to take precautions to reduce the risks we pose to others and wear masks. They conclude that wearing a mask is the right thing to do.

As a professor of philosophy working on global health ethics, I believe the conflict between mask wearers and non-wearers raises some important ethical questions:

Is it acceptable to comment on others’ apparent irresponsibility when they choose not to wear a mask or try to shame them into wearing one? Is this approach effective?

Moral outrage

There is psychological evidence to show that people express moral righteousness – act from an outraged sense of justice – when they are uncertain and afraid.

When people are anxious, they often try to regain composure by clinging strongly to their moral norms. Some studies also show that such moral outrage may be “self-serving” – a way to bolster one’s own moral status.

But there is also reason to believe that moral outrage, whatever its psychological source, can be an important lever for bringing about positive change – such outrage was, for instance, essential for ending slavery.

The righteous outrage of abolitionists who tried to end slavery in the mid-1800s was justified even if they would not have been so outraged in different circumstances – say, where the country had not been on the brink of civil war.

Martin Luther King’s struggle for civil rights was motivated as much by anger at injustice as by love. For King, anger was part of a process that included forgiveness and led to constructive action.

Refusal to wear masks

To decide whether outrage is an appropriate response to even the most selfishly motivated refusal to wear a mask, consider the consequences of such outrage.

Those who follow 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill believe people should act so as to maximize the positive and minimize the negative consequences of their actions, for the benefit of the greatest number of people.

But even those who reject Mill’s views and follow another philosopher, Immanuel Kant, believe that consequences matter. On Kant’s view we need to understand how to help people adhere to the moral law because he thought that what matters most is one’s goodwill or motive.

But in these times, masks have become politicized in the U.S. Therefore, some might well argue that the gains made through the number of lives saved may not outweigh the consequences of further polarizing our political system.

On the other hand, there might be those who argue that this polarization is well worth the risk. Recent studies have found that masks cut down the risk of infection to the wearer by as much as 65%.

Listening carefully

But this need not be a choice between further polarization and risk reduction.

Epidemiologist Julia Marcus argues that shaming people who do not wear masks will not work to anyone’s advantage. People can better convince others to wear masks if they share the fear, loss and uncertainty that motivates their concern rather than use their outrage to shame others.

As Kant argued, everyone should treat other people with respect. This applies no matter what side of the political fence people occupy. We all share needs for safety, economic security and health. Evidence suggests that shame can undermine, rather than promote, moral motivation.

On the other hand, if people share their feelings and candidly explain their fears and aspirations to others, they might better motivate positive change.

Show empathy

Trying to understand why people might be resistant to wearing a mask might be a good place to start. For example, some people may be worried that a mask may not allow for a free flow of oxygen into their lungs, even though such concerns may not be valid. Some people also find it hard to breathe with a mask on if they are running or exercising in another way. All these concerns can be acknowledged and discussed.

Similarly, everyone should remember that some people have good reasons not to wear a mask. People may have underlying health conditions like autism or anxiety disorders that make wearing a mask difficult.

Even when someone refuses to wear a mask only to make a political statement, it is important to hear why it matters so much to them. As Kant argues, it is important to understand different perspectives.

It is possible that people who have lost jobs might see masks as a threat that would further delay the reopening of the economy.

Everyone should also remember that in our daily lives, each of us undertakes activities that pose at least a little risk to others. Day-to-day activities such as grocery shopping or even having conversations with friends or neigbors carry a small risk of virus transmission.

Focusing on facts – rules that states, cities or private employers put in place to protect people – rather than blaming others might be a more effective way to convince them.

People on both sides of the mask debate have found reasons to turn this into a most contentious issue. Perhaps listening carefully and with empathy might help everyone understand that we all really are in this together.

Nicole Hassoun, Professor of Philosophy, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.