PSA Presidential Address: The New Normal and the Redefinition of Deviance

The Political Rise of the Extreme Right

I once had the privilege of having a conversation with the late U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. He recalled his many years of service in the Senate, and in that context, we discussed the meaning of the word “compromise.” We reflected how its connotative meaning had drastically changed over time. Historically, the word compromise was defined positively; both disagreeing sides won concessions from the other while advancing the most important tenets of their own agendas. It was a solution where everyone benefited. In the U.S. Senate of McGovern’s era, after reaching a compromise, Senators from both sides of the aisle would adjourn to a local restaurant/bar to socialize and share food and drinks with one another; they were colleagues and friends. McGovern lamented that today, compromise is defined as weakness, while adherence to a rigid ideology is perceived as strength which curries favor within the political party and helps to ensure re-election. To fraternize across party lines is perceived as disloyal and has negative political consequences.

It is difficult to identify the catalyst for this development. One factor may be when President Ronald Reagan lowered the tax rate on the rich from 91 to 28 percent, against his advisors’ advice, paving the way for a class in society that is often referred to as the uber rich. Some of these individuals have an economic net worth more than entire countries. Old, established upper-class families such as the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Gettys have now been replaced by individuals such as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. Today, America’s 400 richest men and women, but mostly men, are worth a record $3.2 trillion, up $240 billion from a year ago. Jeff Bezos alone is worth $179 billion. Social classes and their perspectives and realities are more stratified than ever before.

In 2018, the United States topped the list of countries with the highest gap between CEO’s and workers’ income. For every U.S. dollar an average worker received, the average American CEO earned $265, compared with Canada at $149 and Germany at $136 (Statista 2021). In the United States, this was correlated, in part, with educational attainment. With the federal minimum wage pegged at $7.25 an hour, a vast underclass has been created with many poor people living in crowded spaces with multiple families, purchasing lottery tickets to give them hope, and at greater risk for dying of COVID. Oftentimes angry, frustrated, lacking opportunity, and, indeed, hopeless; extremist views, social rigidity, and unsuccessful navigation of a hostile world are conceived. Homelessness, suicide, and mental disorder may be spawned from these conditions, but also a need for guns for protection, religion for solace, and an unexpected identification and alliance with the rich. Disenfranchised youths and adults, especially males, are at risk for extremist groups that blame scapegoats for their plight. Frustration and fear are often the result.

Fear frequently turns to anger when it is perceived that others are getting ahead, going to the head of the line, and doing better than they are. Conservative white males, especially, may feel that their unearned privilege is slipping away from them. Thus, there is backlash. The last gasp of white, male supremacy is not going down without a fight. The resulting anger and frustration focus on those who are perceived as taking away their rightful privilege and supremacy: people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and the other-abled.

These, then, are some of the elements of the political rise of the extreme right. It is composed of a diverse group of individuals including both the privileged and the disenfranchised, buoyed by religious righteousness and fire power and weaponry, to maintain the status quo and take back that which is perceived as rightfully theirs. The new normal is in transition, and this alliance is dragging its collective feet to slow the progress.

Of course, sociologists expected some of this; the road to social change is often circuitous and rocky, but the spark and the catalyst to ignite the organized conservative political movement came from the self-proclaimed millionaire, perceived economically successful, narcissistic, full of braggadocio, Donald J. Trump. His influence set the United States back years on the international stage, divided the nation to the point that some pundits are calling the second Civil War, and led to insurrection, death, and destruction. During his 4 years in office, the United States became isolationist, withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), peace treaties, and climate accords and preyed upon its own weaker individuals and groups. This backlash, this resistance to change, was greater than anticipated. It continues to endure and threatens the progress that the United States has made on equality, equity, and sustainability.

Inequalities and Inequities

Racial, political, economic, health, legal, and social inequalities and inequities are certainly not new issues; we continue to struggle to address them because we were unable or refused to address them in the past. But the events of the past year have ignited the nation and renewed efforts to deny equal rights and achieve equal rights for all Americans. In 1971, musician, poet, and author Gil Scott-Heron recorded the song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” In 2021, the revolution has been televised, live-streamed, tweeted, and posted on a variety of social media including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

After centuries of inequality and inequity, a recent flashpoint was the brutal murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer. America watched in horror as the murder unfolded. From Emmet Till to George Floyd and for countless unnamed others, a system of injustice has existed for all people of color. The black community, in particular, has provided an inordinate number of injustice martyrs. The Black Lives Matter movement reminds us and demands that all of us say their names:

George Floyd Breonna Taylor Rayshard Brooks

Daniel Prude Atatiana Jefferson Aura Rosser

Stephon Clark Botham Jean Philando Castille

Alton Sterling Michelle Cusseaux Freddie Gray

Janisha Fonville Eric Garner Akai Gurley

Gabriella Nevarez Tamir Rice Michael Brown

Tanisha Anderson Elijah McClain Terence Crutcher

Oscar Grant Bettie Jones LaQuan McDonald

Dominique White and many more. . ..

In my own academic work, I have written about deviance, crime, and juvenile delinquency. In a recent paper, presented at a previous PSA conference, I compared members of law enforcement to juvenile gang members. I have not yet published it because of political concerns, but it is relevant here, so I shall summarize some of the key findings. While law enforcement and the public focus on the two groups as being on opposite sides of the law: in short, their differences, the paper focuses on their similarities. In the study, I identified and discussed the similarities, 30 total, between the police and juvenile and adult gang members. Here is a sampling of 10 comparison items that law enforcement and juvenile gangs have in common.

It has been said that those things we find greatest fault with in others, are precisely the things we find fault with in ourselves. Perhaps, we are more alike our perceived enemies, opponents, and/or nemeses than we care to acknowledge. This similarity should also be included in our changing definitions of deviance and deviants.

Additionally, the black community continues to be affected by voter suppression, economic inequalities, sub-standard education, and over-policing, over-representation in courts, jails, prisons, and on death rows. A renewed, overt prejudice and discrimination, encouraged and modeled by the recent political administration, has emboldened racists and haters to identify themselves publicly and openly participate in both new and established groups whose sole purpose is to declare and enforce white supremacy.

While the black community has been a primary target of these groups, others have suffered as well. The Latinx community has endured many travesties, including the recent mass separation of immigrant children from their parents and families. Living in cages, thousands of Latinx children were alone and frightened in a foreign country—the United States. Currently, there still remain children who have not been reunited with their families. Unaccompanied minors crossing the border alone are also adding to the problem of family separation and reunification. And portions of the border wall, Trump’s folly, remain as mute monuments and testaments to xenophobia and human cruelty.

In this climate of fear and white American exceptionalism, the Asian-American community also has encountered prejudice and discrimination. Once dubbed the “model minority” by sociologists, a term that Asians are loathe to accept, with the advent of the Coronavirus, or COVID-19, American leadership sought a scapegoat for the pandemic. Since the virus reputedly originated in a laboratory in Shanghai (a belief which has now been debunked), leadership continued to refer to it as the “China virus” and insisted that China pay reparations for having sent it to the United States. Conservative extremists followed their leader. Physical attacks on Asian Americans, unprovoked and unexpected instances of assault and battery, skyrocketed. Elderly Asian-American men and women were frequently the victims of these street crimes. While the American government was doing nothing to stop the spread of COVID, it took the time to demonize and scapegoat the Asian-American community, with devastating results including injury and death.

COVID and Its Effects

From March 2020 to March 2021, more than 525,000 Americans died of COVID. Worldwide, that number soared to 2,675,200 deaths from COVID. Let us pause for a moment to remember and honor those lost to this deadly virus. COVID is not just a medical emergency, it is also a social and psychological emergency. The new normal for most Americans has included extreme social isolation; we were unable to see or interact with family, friends, colleagues, and students. If we were not laid off, furloughed, or lost our jobs, we worked remotely and alone. We were locked out of our offices and could not be on campus without administrative and campus police approval. Families with children struggled with distance learning, Zoom, computer hardware, software, and keeping children safe, engaged, and occupied. We worried about finances, mortgages, rents, utilities, and food security. We were unable safely to come together physically to celebrate holidays, birthdays, marriages, or mourn deaths. Indoor dining, movies, live theater, and concerts were shuttered and deemed too dangerous to remain open. Even a trip to the supermarket was a health risk for many. One of the few institutional survivors was professional sports, which was only briefly affected; certainly a reflection of our most important American values.

Fear, anxiety, and uncertainty are some of the dominant emotions we have experienced. All of us have viewed and reacted to images of COVID patients on ventilators, refrigerated trucks holding the dead bodies of COVID victims too numerous to be housed in mortuaries, and tearful stories of families that defied the rules and physically came together for an event, only to lose multiple family members to COVID as a result.

While we are reminded by talking heads on television that “we are all in this together,” for many of us, it does not seem so. Physically, socially, and mentally, we have been isolated and connected to others primarily through technology.

And we are reminded that COVID has not been an equal opportunity virus. It disproportionately infected, affected, and resulted in loss for ethnic minorities, the poor, and the elderly. Initially devastating populations of the elderly living in community-care facilities, it moved through groups of first responders, eventually settling in impoverished and ethnic communities in which social distancing, crowded living conditions, multi-generational households, and large family gatherings are more likely to occur. The greatest rates of exposure, diagnosis, hospitalization, and death have been found among these groups.

When vaccines were finally developed and began to be distributed, the first two groups—the aged and first responders appropriately were the first to receive the life-saving vaccine, but the second two groups—the poor and ethnic communities were not. These communities continued to have less access to and lower rates of having received the vaccine. While the issue of healthcare equity has been newsworthy, and efforts to address it have been made, life expectancies for these groups continue to be lower than for other groups. In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) revised life expectancy rates downward for all Americans. Even in that revision, inequities exist, with White life expectancy rates decreasing one year, Latinx life expectancy rates decreasing two years, and Black life expectancy rates decreasing three years.

Decreasing rates of transmission, infection, hospitalization, and death have been attributed to widespread wearing of face coverings and the creation and increasing availability of at least three vaccines and now boosters. An ever-evolving new normal continues and hope is high and spirits are buoyed; the future again holds great promise and spring 2021 represented a national emergence from the country’s one-year cocoon, or as some have called it, national nightmare. But as sociologists, social experts, and students of society, what have we learned from the current state of affairs, and what is our next step?

We have learned that democracy is fragile . We almost lost it. If it is a core value of our society, we must protect it. Reputation is also fragile. Having visited 79 countries myself, we have years of repair work to do on our world reputation to reestablish partnerships and regain world trust. This points to the importance of informed citizens to choose their leaders wisely.

Paralleling this, we have also learned that our planet is fragile . We are in the process of losing it. If we wish to save it, we must agree that climate change is occurring and must be addressed. Fifteen-year-old Swedish Greta Thunberg got it right, calling out world leaders at the United Nations Climate Change COP24 Conference, and demanding climate justice for all. She asked, how dare you? We will not allow you to steal our dreams and sacrifice our future for short-term economic gain. The United States must acknowledge and address climate change.

We have learned that there is much repair work to be done regarding equality and equity in this country and we must do better. For anyone who thought that the work had been done, we have been witness to events from micro-aggressions to police use of deadly force on ethnic minorities, on immigrants, on the trans-gendered, on women, and on the mentally challenged that tell us otherwise. We must stand for equality, equity, and justice for all, especially others, and not just for ourselves and our own families.

We have also learned that it is not wise to flirt with a deadly virus. We cannot deny its existence, disregard science, and delay an informed societal response. We cannot, as individuals, refuse to comply with lifesaving directives, such as wearing a face covering or getting vaccines and boosters. The deadly result has cost more than a half-million people their lives in the United States alone. The over-representation of ethnic communities and the poor in infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates (and as first responders in at-risk jobs) and the under-representation of these communities in having access to and receiving vaccines points to the continuing inequities in our society at many levels that must be addressed.

Sociologists must be key contributors to the solution of these issues. Each of us has a role to play and some of us may play multiple roles. We must trust our strengths and/or determine our fortes. Some of us may take to the streets, march against injustice, and join groups toward that aim. Some of us may become community activists and/or contribute toward community organization and self-governance. Some may speak truth to power to community groups and broader audiences. Some may find their strength in the classroom educating the next generation of leaders. And some may engage in research to study, identify, document, and disseminate their findings so that future policies may be built on science and revisionist history does not occur.

Change is inevitable and the definition of deviance is changing. Sociologists may be passive observers electing to study and chronicle that change. We may be active participants engaging as architects and creators of that change. And some of us may elect to do both at different stages of our careers. While we continue our involvement in our assorted professional endeavors, we must continue to lead with our science, our knowledge, and our intellect. The stakes are high: what we do impacts our quality of life and the future of our planet, our country, our communities, and our families. After all, we are all in this together and well-positioned to assume the mantle of architects, influencers, chroniclers, and observers of the new normal.