Professor Pamela Oliver Department of Sociology

Example Issues

These are examples of issues you could use for your sociology 220 paper. Other issues are possible, you need to receive approval from Prof. Oliver. Include example sources if you are interested in an issue.

1. "Racial harassment" as a problem and the rules and laws addressing it including speech codes, hate crime laws etc. ("Free speech" may be a dimension of this but is not the whole issue.)
2. Should greater efforts be made to make the UW a comfortable campus for racial minorities?
3. Multi-cultural education vs. "common culture"
4. Black English (Ebonics) for & against (note that there are people of all races on all sides of this issue, and that there issues about teaching child)
5. Welfare "reform" and issues about support and services for low income people (fundamentally an economic debate, but with a racial component.)
6. Zoning laws: are they a means to economic (or racial) segregation?
7. Should affluent suburbs be required to provide low income housing units and services for low income people?
8. Racial disparities in imprisonment
9. Racial profiling in policing
10. Drug laws: penalties, enforcement and the drug war (e.g. cocaine vs. crack, is the drug war working, disproportionate enforcement)
11. Employment discrimination & issues of affirmative action in employment
12. American Indian treaty rights: hunting, fishing, etc.
13. American Indian casinos and gambling laws
14. Should American Indians be encouraged to retain/learn their tribal language?
15. Lawsuit about Indian Trusts (this has been settled but there are remaining underlying conflicts one could investigate)
16. American Indian land claims (there are many of these that can be investigated)
17. Use of American Indian names and logos as sports and school mascots
18. "Respectful" uses of American Indian culture by whites, such as Boy Scouts' use of "Indian lore" in their Order of the Arrow ceremonies, whites' adoption of "American Indian" religious rituals and prayers, camp songs and skits.
19. Whether American Indians (or others) should be allowed to use illegal drugs such as peyote or hallucinogenic mushrooms in religious rituals. NOTE: It is very hard to find "anti" sources on this topic, which makes it difficult to do it.
20. Should religious displays be permitted on public property or at public events (requires being able to see the "ethnic" dimensions of this, not just a narrow First Amendment debate)
21. What are desirable immigration policies? (What principles should be used to decide to whom to give priority, and what total amount of immigration is good?). Best to get a narrower angle on this like the policies about work visas or family visas.
22. Should the border with Mexico be open to transient workers? Should the US and Mexico jointly agree to admit more Mexicans into the US to work?
23. Should illegal immigrants who were brought to the US as children and raised in the US be granted legal resident status and the right to become citizens?
24. Should policies be enacted to increase income equality? (Such as minimum wage laws, reverse income tax or earned income credits, caps on high salaries, redistributive taxes, anti-discrimination legislation)
25. Is housing segregation a problem? What should be done about it?
26. Bilingual education (in larger context of question of education of children and youths whose native language is not English).
27. Toleration or support for persons who cannot speak English: translators or translations of documents in public facilities, commercial establishments, etc.
28. Is it desirable to actively seek to establish or maintain bilingualism?
29. White racist movements
30. Separatist movements among racial/ethnic minorities
31. Gender or sexual preference issues among racial/ethnic minorities or issues about racial conflict/discrimination among gays and lesbians.
32. Remedies for educational disadvantage. (Should extra resources be provided to children whose parents are less educated?)
33. Are SAT's, GRE's, ACT's, and other standardized tests valid and fair tools for ranking people in college admission?
34. Financing of public schools
35. Debates about bi-racialism (or multi-racialism) and racial classifications.
36. Should social resources be spend to increase the educational level of the disadvantaged? Should this expenditure of resources include college?
37. Should resources be devoted to studying the consequences of slavery and assessing what appropriate "reparations" might be?
38. Should Hawaii become independent?
39. Should Puerto Rico become independent? Should it become a state?
40. Is it really meaningful to talk about "Asian Americans" as a group? (Most people in the category would not use the phrase to describe themselves, instead referring to themselves as Chinese or Chinese Americans, Koreans or Korean Americans, etc.) Should Asian Americans have a greater since of "group" identificatoin? NOTE: This is a real debate, but it may be hard to find people addressing it directly.
41. Are Asian Americans discriminated against in college admissions? (Note: There is one branch of this that "blames" Affirmative Action and claims Asians are discriminated against versus African Americans and Latinos. But there is another branch that claims that Asian Americans are discriminated against versus whites; there are also claims that disadvantaged Asian Americans are especially discriminated against.)
42. Other discrimination/prejudice issues: in employment, treatment in public, "accent" issues.
43. A variety of issues around the integration/separation dimension. Are "ethnic enclaves" (relatively segregated areas where people of the same ethnicity live together) good or bad?
44. Arranged marriage. (There is a big debate among Indian Americans about whether to have arranged marriages, but there is also a more social debate about the consequences of arranged marriage for integration/separation.)
45. Interracial adoption. (There are specific movements against the adoption of African American children by whites, and against the adoption of American Indians by anyone not a member of the tribe; some Asian American adoptees have also expressed opposition to the adoption of Asians by people not of the same ethnicity as the child.)
46. Controversial people or groups: e.g. Black Panthers, Leonard Peltier, Nation of Islam. Note that you need to pose a controversial issue about them.
47. Is/was race a factor in the debate about health care reform?
48. Issues around race and the Obama administration. Examples: Is racism a factor in opposition to Obama? Is Obama doing less for Black Americans than a White Democrat would? Is Obama favoring Blacks over Whites in his social policies?
49. Do children from ethnic/racial minority backgrounds learn more when taught by teachers of the same background? (Do White teachers do a good job of teaching ethnic/racial minority children?)
50. Various debates about school curricula around ethnic/racial/religious minorities. Specific topics include the Arizona law banning the teaching of Mexican-American history, the Hindu challenge to the teaching about Hinduism in California textbooks.
51. Accommodations for religious/ethnic minorities in schools or workplaces. Things like dress codes, prayer rooms, dietary adaptations, holidays or absence policies. Note that if you do a "religious" topic be sure to pick up the dimensions of it that are relevant to racial/ethnic minorities, not just the "First Amendment" debates.
52. Debates about "proper" English and accommodation to different English accents.

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Questions or Comments? Email Oliver -at- ssc -dot- wisc -dot- edu. Last updated February 1, 2012 © University of Wisconsin.