Browsing by Author "Emerson, Michael O."
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Item Does Height Matter? An Examination of Height Preferences in Romantic Coupling(Sage, 2014) Yancey, George; Emerson, Michael O.Amidst increasingly equality in belief and in practice between the sexes, we ask if height preferences still matter, and if so, why people say they matter. First, we collected data from Yahoo! dating personal advertisements. Second, we used answers to open-ended questions in an online survey. The Yahoo! data document that height is still important in decisions to date but that it is more important to females than to males. Results from the online survey indicate that women wanted tall men for a variety of reasons, but most of the explanations of our respondents were connected to societal expectations or gender stereotypes. Gender-based legitimation of height preferences seem to be more central than evolutionary-based legitimation, but future work may discover a more nuanced interpretation.Item Exceptional Political Participation among African Americans: Countering the Overall Decline(Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2013) Emerson, Michael O.; Peifer, Jared L.Americans, in general, have become less political active from 2006 to 2012. However, blacks have countered this trend with increased political participation. This black exceptionalism remains when narrowing the sample to respondents that voted for Obama in 2008. This suggests Obama’s status as the first black President is responsible for this increased political participation among blacks.Item Houston Region Grows More Ethnically Diverse, With Small Declines in Segregation. A Joint Report Analyzing Census Data from 1990, 2000, and 2010(Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2012) Emerson, Michael O.; Bratter, Jenifer; Howell, Junia; Jeanty, WilnerHouston’s population grew substantially between 1990 and 2010. Between 2000 and 2010, the Houston metropolitan area added more people (over 1.2 million) than any other metropolitan area in the United States. That growth has brought important changes to the region. This report focuses on two such changes—the changes in racial/ethnic diversity and in residential segregation between the four major racial/ethnic groups.Item Investigating the United States’ Racial Structure through the Evaluation of Residential Distribution(2013-04-22) Howell, Junia; Emerson, Michael O.; Lopez Turley, Ruth N.; Denney, Justin T.Diversification of the United States population over the past 45 years has sparked a debate about the contemporary racial structure. Some theorize Latino and Asian immigrants will eventually integrate into the White community, like the European immigrants before them. Others suggest their classification as “people of color” means they will integrate into the Black community. Still others theorize the United States is moving towards a three-tiered racial hierarchy. Racial residential segregation has been demonstrated to be an influential factor in reproducing racial classifications. Yet the use of residential distribution data to test hypotheses of racial structure has been limited because, I argue, segregation indexes are based on particular racial structures, none of which effectively capture multiple tiered hierarchies. Thus, this paper investigates the contemporary racial structure manifested through residential distribution by comparing computer simulations of hypothesized distributions to the observed distributions of Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and Whites in all census tracts in the United States in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010. Finding that residential segregation contributes to the mounting support for Bonilla-Silva’s theory of a three-tiered racial hierarchy, this paper argues that future research on residential segregation needs to utilize an index that effectively measures segregation in multigroup populations. Through an evaluation of the most widely utilized indexes and conceptions of segregation, this paper introduces the Summary Index of Multigroup Segregation (SIMS), which builds off the Segregation Index to give an overall measure of segregation similar to Theil’s Information Index but that can be compared across populations with different group compositions. The SIMS calculates the proportion of the total population that would need to move for the area to be completely integrated. If commonly adopted, the SIMS can enable researchers to compile studies to further investigate the factors contributing to multigroup segregation and the implications of multigroup segregation.Item Latino Descriptive Representation in Municipal Government: An Analysis of Latino Mayors(2013-06-05) Cuellar, Carlos; Marschall, Melissa J.; Hamm, Keith E.; Stein, Robert M.; Emerson, Michael O.Various questions regarding Latinos’ descriptive representation in the mayoralty are examined in this dissertation including: Where and why are Latino mayors elected? Why do Latino mayoral candidates emerge and win? And, is there is a link between Latino ethnicity and electoral outcomes in municipal elections? The empirical results of a cross-sectional analysis of U.S. cities from 1981-2006 suggest that institutions such as term limits and mayor-council governments influence the representation of Latinos in the mayoralty. These effects, however, are conditioned by Latinos’ numerical strength in a city – which suggests that Latino descriptive representation in the mayoralty is largely a function of population size. Despite the prominence of this factor, the results further reveal that Latinos need to swell the ranks of the city council to provide a steady supply of qualified Latino candidates to ultimately win the mayoralty. An analysis of 648 mayoral elections in 113 cities in the Southwest further tests theories of Latino candidate emergence and success based on city-level factors – that supply elections with Latino candidates – as well as strategic factors in elections – that influence Latino candidates’ cost-benefit decision calculus. The results reveal a combined effect of supply and strategy on candidate emergence and success. For example, in cities where Latinos are sizeable (+40 percent) and the electoral context is more competitive (i.e., where turnout is high, more candidates are on the ballot, and when incumbents are not vying for reelection), Latino candidates are more likely to emerge. A similar pattern occurs with regard to the success of Latino candidates except that the individual candidate’s previous political experience is particularly influential in improving their chances of winning. Given the theoretical expectation regarding the impact of ethnicity on electoral outcomes in municipal elections, I also examine whether Latino ethnicity shapes turnout rates and the margin of victory. Latino ethnicity is not statistically associated with these outcomes. However, other factors such as the election timing and the type of election (i.e., runoff election, open seat) seem to be more influential. In sum, the research here examines various aspects of Latino representation in the mayoralty that is the most comprehensive to date.Item ‘Making Babies': Religion and Moral Diversity in Views on Abortion and Human Genetic Engineering(Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2013) Laws, Terri; Emerson, Michael O.; Wadsworth, W. DuncanThis white paper using PALS data discusses how race, gender, and frequency of attendance at worship services can impact attitudes about the morality of abortion, the use of genetic engineering to guide child characteristics as well as the basis for moral views. The majority of whites and Hispanics say they base their moral views on their personal conscience. The majority of African Americans, however, say that they base their moral views on God’s law. Attitudes about the morality of abortion are influenced by frequency of religious worship. Respondents who said they attend worship services two or more times per month are most likely to believe that abortion ought to be restricted. Women were more likely than men to say that using human engineering to make a smarter baby is “always wrong.” This paper suggests that moral diversity and diverse moral messaging remain important aspects of American life. Furthermore, for some communities, religious messaging has a clear impact on their attitudes about the use of medical technologies. These influences are important to take into account in public policy debates such as accessibility to and funding for medical research.Item Making the Bible Belt: Preachers, Prohibition, and the Politicization of Southern Religion, 1877-1918(2012-09-05) Locke, Joe; Boles, John B.; Matusow, Allen J.; Emerson, Michael O.; McDaniel, W. CalebH.L. Mencken coined “the Bible Belt” in the 1920s to capture the peculiar alliance of religion and regional life in the American South. But the reality Mencken described was only the closing chapter of a long historical process. Like the label itself, the Bible Belt was something new, and everything new must be made. This dissertation is the history of its making. Over the course of several decades, and in the face of bitter resistance, a complex but shared commitment to expanding religious authority transformed southern evangelicals’ inward-looking restraints into an aggressive, self-assertive, and unapologetic political activism. Late-nineteenth-century religious leaders overcame crippling spiritual anxieties and tamed a freewheeling religious world by capturing denominations, expanding memberships, constructing hierarchies, and purging rivals. Clerics then confronted a popular anticlericalism through the politics of prohibition. To sustain their public efforts, they cultivated a broad movement organized around the assumption that religion should influence public life. Religious leaders fostered a new religious brand of history, discovered new public dimensions for their faith, and redefined religion’s proper role in the world. Clerics churned notions of history, race, gender, and religion into a popular political movement and, with prohibition as their weapon, defeated a powerful anticlerical tradition and injected themselves into the political life of the early-twentieth-century South. By exploring the controversies surrounding religious support for prohibition in Texas, this dissertation recasts the politicization of southern religion, reveals the limits of nineteenth-century southern religious authority, hints at the historical origins of the religious right, and explores a compelling and transformative moment in American history.Item Multiple Mobilities: Race, Capital, and South Asian Migrations to and Through Houston(2013-09-16) Quraishi, Uzma; Boles, John B.; Emerson, Michael O.; Ward, Kerry R.; Jung, Moon-HoThe Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 proved to be a watershed that altered the demographic composition of the United States in unexpected and unprecedented ways. Immigrants from India and Pakistan (part of South Asia) represented a highly educated elite migration in the 1960s and 1970s and filled a gap in the American economy for technical and science-based labor. This advantage aided their emerging communities in achieving socio-economic success with unanticipated speed. This dissertation addresses the central question of this nexus of power—the social and economic systems of privilege—that enabled immigrant mobility after 1965. I argue that due to the significant achievements of the Civil Rights and ethnic empowerment projects of the late 1960s, South Asian immigrants were able use their material wealth to position themselves strategically through residential patterns and school selection in order to gain the maximum privileges associated with whiteness; they simultaneously sought to create social distance between themselves and other racialized, marginalized groups. This research examines linkages and networks between geographically remote regions but ones that have been heavily invested in the expansion of capitalist systems. South Asians inserted themselves into a racially defined society, thereby consolidating both their social position and their economic and eventual political power. The struggles of all minority groups are central to the nation’s conceptual formation of itself—they delimit the boundaries of identities and of a national ethos. In addition, the immigrant generation of Indians and Pakistanis in the U.S. continues to play a crucial role in ethnic community development by providing leadership, cultural schooling, and entrepreneurial enclaves through which young co-ethnics construct ethnic identities and consume ethnic culture. Finally, as these particular immigrant groups have accumulated wealth —Indian and Pakistani Americans are among the highest-earning ethnic groups in the United States—they and their descendants are increasingly politically visible; my work seeks to explain this rapid rise to power.Item Religious Change and Continuity in the United States: 2006-2012(Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2013) Emerson, Michael O.; Essenburg, Laura J.Examining the same adult Americans from 2006 to 2012, this report explores how Americans have changed and stayed the same in their religious beliefs and practices. We find that 15% of adult Americans switched religious traditions during this period, with nearly 40% of those switchers exiting religious traditions altogether. The next most common move was to Evangelical Protestantism from other faith traditions, including some who in 2006 were not in a religious tradition. We also find substantial volatility in worship attendance and congregational switching. Only 45% of adult Americans attend worship with the same frequency in 2012 as they did in 2006, and over one-third switched congregations. Other changes identified in this report are a declining confidence in clergy, an increased confidence in faith and God’s care, and a substantial jump in the proportion of Americans who view all religions with equal respect.Item The Moorish Science Temple of America: A Study Exploring the Foundations of African American Islamic Thought and Culture(2013-09-16) Easterling, Paul; Pinn, Anthony B.; Bongmba, Elias K.; Emerson, Michael O.One of the reasons religious studies is important to the academic process is because it seeks to understand the intricacies of well known human systems of meaning. Also important is research on those religious systems not well known. Herein lies the purpose of this dissertation, to exam a religious movement within the African American community, which has not received the academic attention it deserves, the Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc. (MSTA). Therefore, the primary thesis for this dissertation: to expand the current study of African American Islam to include the intricacies of the movement and organization of the MSTA through attention to primary materials and secondary literature.Item What is Marriage? Americans Dividing(Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2013) Emerson, Michael O.; Essenburg, Laura J.Debates have swirled around the legal definition of marriage, as U.S. states and indeed national governments consider the issue. This report draws on the longitudinal Portraits of American Life Study (PALS) to examine how the adult American public defines legal marriage, and whether that definition is changing over time. Interviewing the same 1294 Americans in 2006 and 2012, we track responses to the statement, “the only legal marriage should be between one man and one woman.” The findings include that in both years, the slight majority of adult Americans agree with the statement, and there was no significant overall change between 2006 and 2012. Yet, many Americans changed their minds over the period (some changing from agreeing to disagreeing, others from disagreeing to agreeing). The patterned manner in who changed their minds resulted in more division in 2012 than in 2006 in how Americans define marriage. Specifically, divisions have grown along educational, religious, and age lines. The patterns suggest a growing cultural divide across the nation.Item What should be done with Illegal Immigrants? The Views of Americans(Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2013) Miller, Renita; Emerson, Michael O.Examining the same adult Americans from 2006 to 2012, this report explores how Americans have changed and stayed the same in their religious beliefs and practices. We find that 15% of adult Americans switched religious traditions during this period, with nearly 40% of those switchers exiting religious traditions altogether. The next most common move was to Evangelical Protestantism from other faith traditions, including some who in 2006 were not in a religious tradition. We also find substantial volatility in worship attendance and congregational switching. Only 45% of adult Americans attend worship with the same frequency in 2012 as they did in 2006, and over one‐third switched congregations. Other changes identified in this report are a declining confidence in clergy, an increased confidence in faith and God’s care, and a substantial jump in the proportion of Americans who view all religions with equal respect.