scholarly journals Doing Racial Projects in Requests for Police Service: The reproduction of racial common sense in emergency calls

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Miriam Jensen Hill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Emergency Service ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Police Service ◽  
Racial Categorization ◽  
Emergency Calls ◽  
Racial Projects

Patterns of racial inequality are well-documented in domains like criminal justice, but the interactional mechanisms that produce these inequalities and constitute race remain underspecified. In this paper, I use conversation analytic research methods to examine police service calls as one site of such mechanisms. Drawing on analysis of 64 police-relevant emergency service calls placed in the United States 2005-2015, I show how the institution of emergency calls relies upon the racial categorization practices of callers and call-takers. I further show that this routine reliance on race opens the door for participants to use racist inferences to make sense of reported complaints. In this way, I illustrate how racial projects are enacted through situated social practices.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Color Blind ◽  
American Society ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

The persistence of racial inequality in the United States raises deep and complex questions of racial justice. Some observers argue that public policy must be “color-blind,” while others argue that policies that take race into account should be defended on grounds of diversity or integration. This chapter begins to sketch an alternative to both of these, one that supports strong efforts to address racial inequality but that focuses on the conditions necessary for the liberty and equality of all. It argues that while race is a social construction, it remains deeply embedded in American society. A conception of racial justice is needed, one that is grounded on the premises provided by liberal political theory.

Amidst pandemic and racial upheaval: Where Asian Americans Fit

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Whitney Hua ◽  
Jane Junn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of

Abstract As racial tensions flare amidst a global pandemic and national social justice upheaval, the centrality of structural racism has renewed old questions and raised new ones about where Asian Americans fit in U.S. politics. This paper provides an overview of the unique racial history of Asians in the United States and analyzes the implications of dynamic racialization and status for Asian Americans. In particular, we examine the dynamism of Asian Americans' racial positionality relative to historical shifts in economic-based conceptions of their desirability as workers in American capitalism. Taking history, power, and institutions of white supremacy into account, we analyze where Asian Americans fit in contemporary U.S. politics, presenting a better understanding of the persistent structures underlying racial inequality and developing a foundation from which Asian Americans can work to enhance equality.

The Myth of the Latin American Race Monolith: Notes for Future Comparative Research on Racial Inequality in the Americas

2021 ◽  
pp. 003464462199600
Author(s):  
Diego Ayala-McCormick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Census Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unemployment Rates ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Racial Lines

It has become common to compare racial inequality in the United States with a “Latin American” pattern of racial inequality in which egalitarian racial ideologies mask stark socioeconomic inequalities along racial lines. However, relatively few comparative studies exist attempting to analyze variations in degrees of racial inequality in the Americas. To stimulate further research in this area, the following study analyzes census data on racial inequality in unemployment rates, educational attainment, homeownership rates, and income in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States. The results suggest that while Brazil is similar to the United States in displaying large levels of racial inequality in the areas measured, Cuba and Puerto Rico display significantly lower levels of racial inequality and Colombia falls in between, undermining conceptions of a monolithic Latin American racial system.

scholarly journals Color Crit: Critical Race Theory and the History and Future of Colorism in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Reece
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
American Society

Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society that stand outside of the prejudices of individuals. It argues that structures and institutions are primarily responsible for the maintenance of racial inequality. However, critical race theorists have neglected to formally examine and theorize colorism, a primary offshoot of racial domination. Although studies of colorism have become increasingly common, they lack a unifying theoretical framework, opting to lean on ideas about prejudice and preference to explain the advantages lighter skinned, Black Americans are afforded relative to darker skinned Black Americans. In this study, I deploy a critical race framework to push back against preference as the only, or primary, mechanism facilitating skin tone stratification. Instead, I use historical Census data and regression analysis to explore the historical role of color-based marriage selection on concentrating economic advantage among lighter skinned Black Americans. I then discuss the policy and legal implications of developing a structural view of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States and the broader implications for how we conceptualize race in this country.

The making of an uneven shore: How coastal management and housing policies shaped racial inequality in asbury park NJ

2022 ◽  
pp. 251484862110698
Author(s):  
David C. Eisenhauer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Coastal Management ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Coastal Development ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
Housing Segregation

Recent work in urban geography and political ecology has explored the roots of housing segregation in the United States within governmental polices and racial prejudice within the real estate sector. Additional research has demonstrated how coastal management practices has largely benefited wealthy, white communities. In this paper, I bring together insights from these two strands of research to demonstrate how both coastal management and governmental housing policies combined to shape racial inequalities within and around Asbury Park, New Jersey. By focusing on the period between 1945 and 1970, I show how local, state, and federal actors repeatedly prioritized improving and protecting the beachfront areas of the northern New Jersey shore while promising to eventually address the housing and economic needs of the predominately Black ‘West Side’ neighbourhood of Asbury Park. This paper demonstrates that not only did governmental spending on coastal management largely benefit white suburban homeowners but also came at the expense of promised spending within Black neighbourhoods. The case study has implications for other coastal regions in the United States in which housing segregation persists. As climate change and sea level rise unfold, the history of racial discrimination in coastal development raises important considerations for efforts to address emerging hazards and risks.

Filming Hegemony: Hollywood and the Manichean Script of Geopolitics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Löfflmann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Security ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Film Productions

The chapter focuses on popular culture as key site for the production of constructs of geopolitical identity and practices of national security as common sense knowledge and conventional wisdom, examining popular Hollywood movies of the ‘national security cinema’ and the involvement of the Pentagon in the filmmaking process. Representations of geopolitical identity and national security are analyzed in some of the commercially most successful films in the United States released between 2009 and 2015. The chapter’s analysis testifies to the enduring popularity of key ideational themes and mythologies, such as American exceptionalism, military heroism, and external threats endangering the existence of the United States, its interests and values under the Obama presidency. The serial reproduction of these national security narratives, realized in multi-million dollar film productions, illustrates the cross-discursive leverage of American hegemony over alternative formulations of grand strategy under the Obama presidency and the popularity of a particular national security imagery of American geopolitical identity.

The Challenge of Limits

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrett Hardin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Waste Disposal ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Population ◽  
Human History ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Earth Day ◽  
The Mind

A funny thing happened on the way to the second nationwide Earth Day in 1990. Twenty years earlier the first Earth Day had been saluted with much talk about population problems. At that time world population stood at 3.6 billion. But when the second Earth Day rolled around, the topic of population was almost completely ignored. Was that because world population had stopped growing? Hardly: in the intervening two decades it had increased 47 percent to an estimated 5.3 billion— an increase of 1.7 billion (more than six times the present population of the United States). Common sense tells us that the per capita share of environmental riches must decrease as population numbers increase, and waste disposal necessarily becomes an ever greater problem. Of course common sense is sometimes wrong. But if that is so in this instance, the celebrants of the 1990 Earth Day should have been shouting, "We've found the secret of perpetual growth!" A few incurable optimists did defend this position, but most people lumped their claims with those of the flat earthers, ignoring both. The celebrants were generally silent about the 47 percent increase in population. Why? The answer comes in two parts, the first being historical. It is now known that the planners of Earth Day 1990 were under economic pressure to leave population out of the picture. When directors of philanthropic foundations and business concerns were solicited for financial support they let it be known that they would not look kindly on a population emphasis. Money talks, silence can be bought. (Why the bankrollers shied at population will become clear later.) The second aspect of the answer is more subtle. It has long been recognized that some of our most deeply held views are not neat, precise propositions but broadly "global" attitudes that act as the gatekeepers of the mind, letting in only those propositions that do not challenge the dominant picture of reality. Germans call such gatekeeper attitudes Weltanschauungen, an impressive mouthful that is quite adequately translated as "worldviews." For all but the last few hundred years of human history the dominant worldview was a limited view: resources were limited, human nature was fixed, and spending beyond one's income was a sin. This essentially conservative perception prevailed until about 1600.

Managing Failures

2030 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rutger van Santen ◽  
Djan Khoe ◽  
Bram Vermeer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Power Supply ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Payment Systems ◽  
Software Failure ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
High Doses

Computers are the engines that drive our society. We get paid via computer, and we use them to vote in elections; computers decide whether to deploy the airbags in our car; and doctors use them to help identify a patient’s injuries. Computers are embedded in all sorts of processes nowadays, and that can make us vulnerable. Because of a single computer glitch, large payment systems can grind to a halt. When computers malfunction, we risk losing our power supply, our railway links, and our communications. Worst of all, we habitually shift responsibility to computers and blindly follow their advice. This is why patients occasionally receive ridiculously high doses of a powerful drug or a car driver who blindly follows his satnav may end up in a ditch. Ubiquitous computer use can cause otherwise responsible people to leave their common sense at home. We’re all too familiar with poorly designed software, computer errors, or—worse still—programs that flatly refuse to function properly no matter what we do. It is hardly surprising then that computer failures cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars a year. In the United States alone, failed computer projects are believed to waste $55 billion annually. And the media only report the tip of the iceberg— the foul-ups that cost millions or result in fatalities. For instance, in the 1980s, several cancer patients were killed by a programming error that caused the Therac 25 radiotherapy unit to deliver excessive doses of radiation. In 1996, Europe’s first Ariane 5 rocket had to be blown up a mere 37 seconds after launch in what might be the costliest software failure in history. In 2007, six F-22 aircraft experienced multiple computer crashes as they crossed the date line, disabling all navigation and communication systems. The list can be extended endlessly, and there are many more failures that we never hear about. Only about a third of all computer projects can be described as successful, and even these are hardly error-free. Why can’t we prevent programming mistakes? Could we improve computers and their software to protect society from the “moods”’ of its digital machines?

Mosaic or Melting Pot? Race and Juror Decision Making in Canada and the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 088626052091751
Author(s):  
Evelyn M. Maeder ◽  
Laura A. McManus
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Juror Decision Making ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Stability And Control ◽  
Canadian Native ◽  
Trial Transcript ◽  
And Control

Although Canada and the United States both demonstrate significant overrepresentation of racialized groups in prisons, the overrepresented groups vary by country, potentially signifying results of the countries’ different (though similarly problematic) histories of racial inequality. The present study investigated this issue within a jury context by assessing the influence of defendant race on Canadian and American participants’ verdicts in an assault trial. We also examined mock jurors’ attributions of the defendant’s behavior and their perceptions of the cultural criminal stereotype for each racial group. Canadian and American participants ( N = 198) read a trial transcript in which the defendant’s race (i.e., Black, White, or Aboriginal Canadian/Native American) was manipulated, and then completed measures of attributions and stereotypes. Results demonstrated that although verdicts did not significantly differ as a function of defendant race or country, stability and control attributions did vary between Canadian and American participants, as did racial stereotypes. In addition, defendant race affected internal versus external attributions, regardless of country. These findings suggest that race may play a role in jurors’ perceptions of defendants, but that in some ways, this varies by country, potentially accounting for some of the differences found between existing Canadian and American jury studies.

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