Sociology Ruins Bullying

It's been called the "slap herd around the world." At the 2022 Oscars, an exchange occurred between comedian Chris Rock and actor Will Smith. Chris Rock, working the crowd before announcing the best documentary, made a mention of how he was looking forward to Gijane 2 with Jada Pinkett Smith in reference to her shaved head. That were laughs from the crowd until Will Smith marched up on stage and slapped Chris Rock. The crowd nervously laughed expecting it to be a bit, but then Will Smith shouts twice, "Keep my wife's name out of your mouth." And quote, "It's not a surprise that the exchange generated a lot of media attention and some good, but mostly exceedingly bad, takes on social media. There was one take however that drew my attention. When Chris Rock hosted the 2016 Oscars, he joked about Jada Pinkett Smith. In the clip going around, Rock explained the decision by Black actors to boycott the event that year because the Academy failed to nominate a single Black actor for two years in a row. When he gets to Jada Pinkett Smith, he says, "Jada boycottting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rianna's. I wasn't invited." And quote, "Okay, I know that last word I believed isn't technically an obscenity, but it's pretty gross. I just don't like saying it." In this episode, I'm not talking about masculinity or chivalry or whatever reaction Will Smith had. I'm most definitely not encouraging people to understand that comedians. Rather, I want to know how do we identify bullying and how do sociologists in particular study this phenomenon? To do this, we have to talk about bullying from the perspective of kids. But we also have to look at bullying among adults because one, it most definitely happens and two, children modeled their behavior after adults. In today's episode, sociology is going to run bullying. Before we begin, it's important that we define bullying, which not surprisingly is a difficult thing to do. Psychologists, Daniel Weiss, considered a pioneer in research on the topic, defines bullying as quote, "When someone repeatedly and on purpose says or does mean or hurtful things to another person who has a hard time defending himself or herself." There's another component, however, that's important. The individual or group doing the bullying has a higher status or greater strength than the victim. This is the academic definition. But how do children define bullying? I ask my seven-year-old who I consider an expert on being a kid. What do you think the word "bullying" means? "Bullying" means that you do mean stuff like call, people, nerds and stuff. Just once? Well, also twice, and like all the time, but sometimes the bullies like change. They like turn kind. Oh, sometimes they're nice to you? Sometimes. Of course, that's just one child's definition, with a little bit of optimism thrown in. But it's actually not far off from what researchers have found while interviewing children on the topic. So now you're probably thinking, "I understand why psychology would be interested in the topic, but how does sociology study bullying?" Well, I asked a sociologist. I had a chance recently to sit down with Chris Donahue, associate professor of sociology at Montclair State University and editor of the upcoming book, The Sociology of Bullying, Power, Status and Aggression among adolescents. When I think of studies on bullying, I think of personality characteristics of the bully or effects on the victim, such as depression, even suicide. Essentially, the psychology of bullying, right? But when you look at sociology of bullying, is it more about the function structures play in either creating or preventing bullying, or basically what is the sociology of bullying? Well, it's a great question. Most of the research that's done on bullying does come from psychology, and also education, and there's a lot of health research, too. In psychology, there is a greater emphasis on the individual characteristics of the children, but not just the children, of course, the adults as well, that are in bullying situations. So technically, the definition used in psychology is one that goes back to the 1970s from Daniel Vais. It basically defines bullying as multiple acts of aggression that are carried out intentionally by one individual over another, or one group over another, in a situation where the individual who's the aggressor has more power. Now, there is no formal definition in sociology for what bullying is. And in fact, the interesting thing I found in my research is that sociologists have tended to avoid the term. So you'll find many classic works in sociology that deal with aggression among adolescents without ever using the term bullying. And there have been a couple of cases where, like for example, CJ Pasco, Judeo-Refag, later described that work as sort of missing the term bullying. It's one of many, though, where the term just has not been used, and we look at aggression more generalized. In sociology, more typical. Yeah, and that's exactly the definition I lay out. This repeated acts carried out by someone against a victim or set of victims where a power differential exists. So I like to think of in comedy, they call this punching down, right? It's where you're repeatedly picking on someone, whether there's a class difference, there's a some kind of difference, right? But researchers have found that this definition is slightly different than how kids interpret bullying. To the point where children, when they're given this standard definition, they're less likely to describe being a victim. Can you talk a little bit about this disconnect about how children see bullying versus how academic researchers see it? Yes. In both quantitative and qualitative studies with kids, you often find that kids don't identify with some of the key terms that are in the bullying definition and psychology. Namely, they often don't relate as well to what it means to for the power differential to be present. And sometimes, you know, adults have the same issue in that we're often thinking about physical prowess. And oftentimes that's not the type of power that's triggering a bullying situation. Oftentimes it's power that comes from friends, from peer groups. It's quite different than the traditional views we have. I've actually done some focus group research with kids where they describe what bullying means to them. And sometimes they just say, and I've seen this another work too, it's really mean. You know it when it's happening, it's unneeded, it's unnecessary, it's extra. And we actually have one chapter in the book by Bob Faris and John Faris where they actually engage with that idea that maybe we need a definition for bullying that doesn't have to have these type parameters around a specific power differential being there. Maybe we can think of cool behavior as a form of bullying. I feel as sociologists, we have to define power, right? Because within sociology, there are many different definitions of power. And obviously, adults tend to think of power differently than children. You mentioned physical prowess. But do you think that children interpret power sometimes to be more physical than relational? Like as sociologists, like I mentioned earlier, we think of class differences. We think of ethnicity and we think of the intersectionality and how that has a different effect on people. Whereas children, like you said, they just think it's mean. Well, this is another thing that comes out in the book as well. There's some concern that adults by using our definitions for bullying, we grow increasingly out of touch with kids and kids know a lot better than we do who really has the power. Oftentimes, we think we know or we use a lot of stereotypes in schools in our anti-bullying programs and our efforts. Kids often know the answers. And are they just using physical prowess? I would argue no. And I think in many cases, they're not always willing to be forthcoming about the things they fear about their peers. And I think sometimes that's why we fall back on our default stereotypes that it's the most popular kids. It's the strongest kids in the school and oftentimes that's not the case. In fact, they're frequently victims of bullying too and that's something else that's found in research. And there are a lot of things that defy the stereotypes that we have about bullying. There's also work that suggests that kids bully their friends quite often as part of trying to acquire status in schools. So it's not always dominant individual over a weaker individual. So much like psychology looks for the mechanisms behind bullying, the individual mechanisms. Are there social structures at work here that are supporting bullying? I'm glad you asked that question. I'm very interested in the way that there are different forms of systemic bias in schools on categories that we don't always talk about that can lead to power differentials in schools, namely heteronormativity and cisnormativity. Those forms of bias in a school can lead those that don't fit the norm to be out of place and the complaints they have or the cries they have for help. They often go unheard because they're not recognized within a system that doesn't support them as well as it does for those that fit the normal characteristics. So I would argue that that's structural, the different biases we have in schools. And also, anti-bullying programs have to conform to state laws. And oftentimes, they may be overly punitive on some situations of aggression that really fit the bullying definition and not quite as punitive as they could be or should be on cases that are equally valid. And they can also create a situation of fear about reporting as well if they're using what we call zero tolerance policies or very strict punishments that will make the victim fear that the bully will get into so much trouble that they will retaliate again. - There's something that one of your reports, there's something there about also social deviants. What kids are really, I know this because I'm a seven year old, they're really good at spotting differences. And there is that aspect of groupthink and when one kid stands out from the other, that tends to be a source of bullying, not always intentionally, but sometimes it is very intentional. So obviously because deviants is established by norms, is there any research into the norms that create this kind of behavior? - Well, we teach kids to identify differences, don't we? In so many aspects of life, I mean, that's part of the educational process. It's part of socialization. So we, in some ways, I think we can't be surprised when they identify differences and they respond to them. And oftentimes they're mimicking adult behavior. So kids are not the only ones that see differences in people and act differently, but I think oftentimes you'll see that kids have a harder time or a lack of awareness about the way that adults will hide their impressions of other people or hide their opinions or if they say something about another, they might be a little bit more open about it than an adult would be. Oftentimes I would bet if you find yourself in texting conversations, you might find yourself typing something and you look back and you say, if a kid wrote that, we probably would think of it as a situation of bullying. So I don't think it's uncommon for kids to identify differences. I do think we train it in them. And in some ways, bullying behaviors are a little bit like socialization. Sometimes they're socializing one another to conform to gender norms, to conform to other norms in the school about what's considered acceptable behavior in a school. This doesn't justify it by any means. But sometimes kids may think that things taught to them or appropriately taught to others and they build a culture around that type of behavior. And I've learned about having a child that they are brutally honest. About everything. And they don't hide it in their emotions either. Sometimes you see the most genuine basis on them, right? And sometimes their reactions, which we consider aggression, they're guttural reactions. There are things that they do quickly because they haven't learned yet to hold them back in certain situations. Moving on to adults, basically, bullying sadly isn't restricted to adolescents. Some adults might describe interactions with a coworker, bosses bullying, but we also tend to apply it at a much broader scale. For example, the actions of politicians such as Trump or Vladimir Putin are described as bullying in the mainstream media. I don't know if it's an attempt to shame the actions of whoever we're applying the name to or we're waiting for the adults to step in and do something. But we just talked about these definitions. And do you think that applying a label at a broader scale kind of muddies the waters a bit? I mean, really, we can apply many other labels to Putin, for example, that are far more accurate at the beginning of the war with Ukraine, the media. Talked a lot about bullying. Now we're talking about genocide. So I don't know. When we use this term bullying, because we're not always using it correctly, are we making things much more difficult at, like, say, a micro level where we're applying legislation and policies to bullying? Basically, are we just creating this mess because we haven't properly defined the word? Well, this debate goes on in the book as well. There's a chapter written by Derber and Magrass based on their book called Bullying Nation, where they make the argument that this is a book in sociology, where they make your argument that we do this on such a broad scale. And there's so many ways that you could use the term bullying. So their book was written several years ago, but they point out ways in which all presidents, not just our most recent ones. I won't mention any by name, but they do in the book and they describe ways in which the United States is a bully to other nations. They also look at ways in which we bully the environment and we bully animals, which is an interesting aspect of the book. They argue that it's all part of America's form of militarized capitalism that we train young people to be competitive and trying to get ahead and manipulating the environment to their advantage. And when they don't do that well, they fail. And that's sort of the culture they argue we have in America. Now to answer your other question, are we inflating the term bullying with this? Randall Collins argues in the book that, yes, we are. We've created this term that's given us all the sense that bullying is such a bigger problem now than it was before. When the reality is really maybe that it hasn't changed at all, we might have created something of a moral panic around the term bullying when really we're looking at things that have been happening for quite some time. And again, that doesn't minimize the harms of it, but it puts things in perspective a bit. It's kind of like the term neoliberalism where a lot of people use it, but they're not always using it correctly. And so it becomes the standard argument of, well, neoliberalism, well bullying. And it kind of loses its meaning because if we're applying it as such a broad scale and we're not using the correct definitions for some of these things, then what does it mean at the micro level? Well, I'll say, I argue in the book that we may be making a mistake in sociology by avoiding the term or thinking that we have to meet a certain definition. The reality is for children and for adults, the term bullying is real. It means something to them. If nothing else, it means something that's cruel and unnecessary as I mentioned earlier. And they need an outlet to express that. They need to be able to describe when something is happening to them. So in one of the debates about the definition of the term in the book, one of the authors Robert Ferrisaukius, we're not going to develop a campaign against gossiping and scapegoating, but bullying is a different type of word. We know it. When we see it, it's painful. It's cruel. And it's worthy of our attention, not just in other fields, but in sociology, where we bring a particular perspective that's helpful to anti-bullying programs and to workplaces as well. Well, great. Is there anything else you want to mention about the book? It's a combination of a lot of work of bringing together a lot of perspectives on bullying in sociology that have not been brought together quite this way before. So there are a number of authors that study adolescent aggression. And in the book, they deal with some of their prior work and some new work in the language of bullying. And it's done in a way that can inform policy as well. Great. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. Thank you. I appreciate it. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] So now I'll pose the question was Chris Rock bullying Jada Pinkett. Even though I just spent 15 minutes talking about how we defined bullying with an expert on the topic, I'm still not sure if this is a case where I'm applying the term too broadly. If Chris Rock is a bully, does that mean all insult comedy is considered bullying? I'm a little out of my depth. There are also plenty of different takes out there on this, like Bill Marr lashing out at critics for being quote, idiots, when it comes to understanding how jokes work. Listen, I'm not a comedian, but as a regular source of dad jokes in my household, I know this much. If you have to explain the joke, it's not funny. Also, let's be honest, do you really want to hear more white guys talk about this? The Black Girl Nerds podcast has a great episode on the 2022 Oscars, and they address this very topic. So absolutely go listen to that episode. I'll put the link in the show notes. But in the meantime, the host, Ryan and Jamie, gave me permission to use this clip. So yeah, Chris Rock is presenting this award. So before we even get to like, him presenting award and what award he was even getting to, you know, Chris Rock is comedian. And by the way, I kind of miss like the Chris Rock from like, if you think about what he did, like he did a documentary about here. And that kind of Chris Rock, like back in the day, was to me was cool. This Chris Rock, I don't know what's happening to me. And I don't know like Rick Smith, I'm wrong, Jamie. If you think of something, to me, this Chris Rock feels different. Like something doesn't feel quiet. It's like something feels different. And I'm like, worry that he's going to like, similar to this incident that he's going borderline too far sometimes that he didn't used to do. Like to me, he used to have like, he used to be funny, but to me, he used to have a cat. Like, there's real line. And I'm worried that he's getting jujure on into like, you know, the gossip or, you know, whatever's going to sell something because he had to know what he was doing because if you go even further back. before I like really break down this moment. 2016, I forgot when he was hosting, he kind of made a dig at Jada Pinkasmith when she was boycotting 'cause you guys remember, it wasn't, they didn't have barely any, or probably no black nominees when he was hosting. So he took a dig back at her in 2016 about this. So I think this was like a history going on between them that maybe nobody really paid attention to at the time 'cause they're like, okay, he's a comedian, he's making a joke, you know, she's boycotting everybody knows and knew she's boycotting Oscars for a good reason, right? Not like it was a bad reason, but something is still going on with them, you know, apparently from this moment. Yeah, so here's my whole take on the situation. I mean, number one, there's no excuse, and there's no reason that anyone should put their hands on another person, period. - Very point of think. - Yeah. I get the fact that he was insulted, that he insulted his wife, and that that is a very sensitive thing for Will Smith given Jada Pinkett's Smith's condition. But you don't physically assault another person because that leads to consequences. I mean, lucky for Will Smith, Chris Rock chose not to press charges, but he is very well within his rights to do that. So that's number one. Now, I do empathize with Will Smith's outrage. I think that Chris Rock was out of line by making another joke, another dig at Jada Pinkett's Smith, given that this is a history. I didn't know that until someone had tweeted at me that he had done this before during the Oscars. So apparently that this is a thing where he likes to use the Oscars as his stage to do digs over at Jada Pinkett's Smith. But I don't think that's cool. - Again, that was just a slightly edited clip for life. Go listen to the full episode for more. I wanna thank my guest, Kristana Hugh, and Ryan and Jamie from the Black Girl Nerds podcast for letting me use a clip. Also, apologies to my listeners for the late episode this month. Spring break means no kids in school, which equals no work being done. Don't worry though, I'm gonna make it up to you next month with an incredibly ambitious episode. It's gonna be fun, promise. This episode was written mixed and edited by me, Matt Sedlar, you can find me on Twitter @MattSedlar or the podcast @SociologyRoons. The music you've been listening to is by Camicu. Join me next month as SociologyRoon something completely different. (gentle music)