Shannon Monnat, Penn State University, and David L. Brown, Cornell University Much has been written about the impact of the rural vote on the 2016 presidential election. To be sure, Trump received far greater shares of the rural vote than Clinton. This is not new; Republicans have typically won rural areas during past elections as…

Cecilia Ridgeway, Stanford University I’m always harping on why we need to take status seriously as a dimension of social inequality along with wealth and power. But I was not prepared for such a painful demonstration of the importance of status to people as we saw in this election. Status, in this case, is how…

Rashawn Ray, University of Maryland, @SociologistRay Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump, I decided to postpone the exam in my race course and alter the syllabus in my social psychology course after consulting with several colleagues. While some students were thrilled with the outcome (such as the one who wore a Make…

W. Bradford Wilcox, National Marriage Project,  and Jon McEwan, Brigham Young University In post-2016 election takes, one factor has largely been overlooked: the family factor. At first glance, 2016 looks no different than previous presidential elections. The Republican Party presidential nominee usually does better with married voters and in counties with more two-parent families. This…

Barbara Risman, University of Illinois-Chicago This election was hard for me, but it was even harder for my students. I was teaching a senior seminar on Sociology of the Family with a class that was majority Latino/a, a few African Americans, a few white immigrants from Eastern Europe, and a few native-born white students. My…

This post is by Leslie R. Hinkson, Outgoing Chair, Dissertation Award Committee, and Zulema Valdez, Incoming Chair, Dissertation Award Committee The deadline for nominations for the ASA Dissertation Award is fast approaching (January 31). As the outgoing and incoming Chairs of the Dissertation Award Committee, we exhort our colleagues to help us increase not just…

Bandana Purkayastha, University of Connecticut On November 10, a colleague from South Africa told me, “I faced racism when I was in the U.S, in the 1980s. After 30 years, these elections are a testimony to the gap between America’s messages to the world and the reality. Can American citizens ever dismantle their systems of…

Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania Sixty years ago, C. Wright Mills assembled a collective portrait of the elite that governs the United States. Domhoff and many follow-ups have shown that major positions in the U.S. government are almost entirely held by a small elite drawn from Wall Street financiers, big corporate businesses, upper-class universities, and…

Paula England, New York University Abortion is already hard to get for poor women—federal healthcare funds can’t be used for abortion (e.g., under Medicaid) because of the Hyde Amendment. And abortions are expensive; usually at least $500. But Trump is promising to appoint a Supreme Court justice likely to favor overturning Roe v Wade. If…