scholarly journals Fighting for America’s Paradise—the Struggle against Structural Racism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel R. Hardeman ◽  
Simone L. Hardeman-Jones ◽  
Eduardo M. Medina
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
Policy Suggestions ◽  
Fundamental Cause ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Many

Abstract Structural racism is a fundamental cause of racial inequities in health in the United States. Structural racism is manifested in inequality in the criminal justice system; de facto segregation in education, health care, and housing; and ineffective and disproportionately violent policing and economic disenfranchisement in communities of color. The inequality that Black people and communities of color face is the direct result of centuries of public policy that made Black and Brown skin a liability. We are now in an unprecedented moment in our history as we usher in a new administration which explicitly states: “The moment has come for our nation to deal with systemic racism. . .And to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation—to so many.” The opportunities to create innovative and bold policy must reflect the urgency of the moment and seek to dismantle the systems of oppression that have for far too long left the American promise unfulfilled. The policy suggestions we make in this commentary speak to the structural targets needed to dismantle some of the many manifestations of structural racism to achieve health equity.

End-of-Life Care behind Bars

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis B. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chronic Illnesses ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Prison Health ◽  
The Many ◽  
Changing Demographics

More people than ever before are being incarcerated in the United States. Many inmates are infected with HIV and hepatitis C. Sentences are increasing in length. Prison health care is now having to cope with the many chronic illnesses associated with an ill and aging population. The growth of end-of-life care programs in corrections in the United States is a direct result of the changing demographics of inmates. This article examines the need for end-of-life care behind bars and discusses selected hospice programs.

Disaster racism: using Black sociology, critical race theory and history to understand racial disparity to disaster in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Breen
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sociology Of Disaster ◽  
Black Sociology

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a call to action to use a new theoretical framework for disaster researchers that focuses on using a critical approach to understanding differential disaster impacts due to systemic racism.Design/methodology/approachUsing critical race theory (CRT) and Black Sociology, theoretical and disciplinary frameworks that center Black people and NBPOC as well as a focus in dismantling systemic racism and other oppressive systems, this article calls for a new approach – “disaster racism” – that builds on past discussions for a more nuanced theoretical approach to disaster studies.FindingsAlongside CRT and Black Sociology, this study identifies two examples of the oppressive systems that create disparate impacts to disaster including slavery and the legacy of slavery and mass incarceration.Originality/value“Disaster racism” – a critically focused approach – should be used in the future rather than social vulnerability to further dismantle oppressive systems and institutions, which not only provides strong theoretical backing to research but also creates an actively anti-racist research agenda in the discipline of sociology of disaster.

scholarly journals Climate Politics and Race in the Pacific Northwest

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Slocum
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
The United States ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Global North

The collective politics of climate justice makes the important claim that lowering emissions is not enough; society must also undertake radical transformation to address both the climate and inequality crises. Owing to its roots in the environmental justice movement, addressing systemic racism is central to climate justice praxis in the United States, which is a necessary intervention in typically technocratic climate politics. What emerges from US climate justice is a moral appeal to ‘relationship’ as politics, the procedural demand that communities of color (the ‘frontline’) lead the movement, and a distributive claim on carbon pricing revenue. However, this praxis precludes a critique of racial capitalism, the process that relies on structural racism to enhance accumulation, alienating, exploiting, and immiserating black, brown, and white, while carrying out ecocide. The lack of an analysis of how class and race produce the crises climate justice confronts prevents the movement from demanding that global north fossil fuel abolition occur in tandem with the reassertion of the public over the private and de-growth. Drawing on research conducted primarily in Oregon and Washington, I argue that race works to both create and limit the transformative possibilities of climate politics.

scholarly journals Building the Digitally Gated Community: The Case of Nextdoor

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 111-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahim Kurwa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gated Communities ◽  
Gated Community ◽  
White People ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Residential Space

The neighborhood is a historic and contemporary site of the assertion of white racial and economic domination, particularly over Black people. Although there is strong evidence that whites continue to prefer racially segregated neighborhoods, fifty years of fair housing jurisprudence has made it more difficult to openly bar non-white residents. Among the many strategies used to protect white domination of residential space is the coordinated surveillance and policing of non-white people. In this paper, I show how Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social network, has become an important platform for the surveillance and policing of race in residential space, enabling the creation of what I call digitally gated communities. First, I describe the history of the platform and the forms of segregation and surveillance it has supplemented or replaced. Second, I situate the platform in a broader analysis of carcerality as a mode and logic of regulating race in the United States. Third, using examples drawn from public reports about the site, I illustrate how race is surveilled and policed in the context of gentrification and integration. Finally, I discuss implications, questions, and future issues that might arise on the platform.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 250-252
Author(s):  
Jim Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The People ◽  
Immigrant Policies

This chapter cites the statement of rebellion drafted by a group of revolutionaries in the late eighteenth century. It highlights the need to address the Declaration of Interdependence following the severe challenges that the United States face today. The chapter asserts that we are far more interdependent than we are independent, and our lives are all deeply interconnected within a web of both obvious and not-so-obvious threads. It evaluates how education inequities, mass criminalization, anti-immigrant policies, and other racial justice issues do not just harm those who attend the underresourced schools, suffer the effects of overpolicing, and face the prospect of being deported. The chapter recognizes that addressing those issues does not just help the people of color who have the burden of systemic racism lifted off them, but also everyone is in a position to benefit when communities of color are able to live higher-quality lives and the rot of injustice is purged from the public systems.

Truth

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-118
Author(s):  
Dan P. McAdams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
United States Today ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Many

“Truth” aims to explain why Donald Trump lies more than any other public official in the United States today, and why his supporters, nonetheless, put up with his lies. The chapter combs the biographical record to highlight some of the most egregious examples of Trump’s untruths and then considers reasons behind Trump’s remarkable penchant for lying. For Trump, truth is effectively whatever it takes to win the moment, moment by moment, battle by battle—as the episodic man, shorn of any long-term story to make sense of his life, struggles to win the moment. Among the many reasons that Trump’s supporters excuse his lying is that they, like Trump himself, do not really hold him to the standards that human persons are held to. And that is because many of his supporters, like Trump himself, do not consider him to be a person—he is more like a primal force or superhero, more than a person, but less than a person, too.

The Many Lines of Defense: The Political Economy of US Defense Acquisition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Gholz ◽  
Harvey M Sapolsky
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Dynamic Balance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Defense Acquisition ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Military

Abstract Political economy infuses the process that generates military power, notably including weapons acquisition. In the United States, defense acquisition follows a dynamic balance of interests among the private companies that design and build weapons, the military services that use weapons, and the legislators that appropriate money to pay for weapons. That process belies the simplistic conventional wisdoms that explain acquisition as a direct result of strategic need or as dictated by a unified military-industrial complex. A political economy approach that recognizes the complexity of interests—public and private, expert and political—best explains what weapons get built, by whom, where, and when.

scholarly journals Call to Action: Structural Racism as a Fundamental Driver of Health Disparities: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association

Circulation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (24) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Churchwell ◽  
Mitchell S.V. Elkind ◽  
Regina M. Benjamin ◽  
April P. Carson ◽  
Edward K. Chang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
American Heart Association ◽  
American Heart ◽  
Heart Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Fundamental Cause

Structural racism has been and remains a fundamental cause of persistent health disparities in the United States. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and multiple others have been reminders that structural racism persists and restricts the opportunities for long, healthy lives of Black Americans and other historically disenfranchised groups. The American Heart Association has previously published statements addressing cardiovascular and cerebrovascular risk and disparities among racial and ethnic groups in the United States, but these statements have not adequately recognized structural racism as a fundamental cause of poor health and disparities in cardiovascular disease. This presidential advisory reviews the historical context, current state, and potential solutions to address structural racism in our country. Several principles emerge from our review: racism persists; racism is experienced; and the task of dismantling racism must belong to all of society. It cannot be accomplished by affected individuals alone. The path forward requires our commitment to transforming the conditions of historically marginalized communities, improving the quality of housing and neighborhood environments of these populations, advocating for policies that eliminate inequities in access to economic opportunities, quality education, and health care, and enhancing allyship among racial and ethnic groups. Future research on racism must be accelerated and should investigate the joint effects of multiple domains of racism (structural, interpersonal, cultural, anti-Black). The American Heart Association must look internally to correct its own shortcomings and advance antiracist policies and practices regarding science, public and professional education, and advocacy. With this advisory, the American Heart Association declares its unequivocal support of antiracist principles.

Land Reform in South Africa: An Overview

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Rugege
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Black People ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Land Dispossession ◽  
Fundamental Cause ◽  
History Of ◽  
Racial Domination ◽  
The Many

South Africa suffered a long history of colonization, racial domination and land dispossession that resulted in the bulk of the agricultural land being owned by a white minority. Black people resisted being dispossessed but were defeated by the superior arms of the newcomers. As Lewin has written, “whatever minor causes there may have been for the many Bantu-European wars, the desire for land was the fundamental cause.” Despite the claims that South Africa was largely uninhabited at the time of the arrival of Europeans, documentary evidence shows that in fact the land was inhabited. Thus the journal of the first European to settle at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck records incidents of confrontation with the indigenous Khoi-khoi (or Hottentots) in 1655.

scholarly journals Becoming a Yam: Healing Narratives as Political Resistance in the Time of COVID-19

Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Latoya B. Brooks ◽  
Kareema J. Gray
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Healing Narratives

COVID-19 created a crisis that forced people to deal with the social, emotional, personal, and interpersonal impact of the virus in the United States. Simultaneously, Black people continued to be murdered and victimized by systemic racism and social injustice. Choosing wellness, self-recovery, and self-care during the global pandemonium surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic serves as an act of political resistance in the face of oppression and violence. The purpose of this essay is to explore the authors’ embodied uses of personal narratives centering the work sisters of the yam: black women and self-recovery, feminist theory, and African-centered social work paradigms as coping strategies and healing work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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