scholarly journals Through a Glass, Darkly: Systemic Racism, Affirmative Action, and Disproportionate Minority Contact

2021 ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
Robin Walker Sterling
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Black People ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
White People ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Disproportionate Minority Contact ◽  
Criminal Legal System ◽  
Two Sides

This Article is the first to describe how systemic racism persists in a society that openly denounces racism and racist behaviors, using affirmative action and disproportionate minority contact as contrasting examples. Affirmative action and disproportionate minority contact are two sides of the same coin. Far from being distinct, these two social institutions function as two sides of the same ideology, sharing a common historical nucleus rooted in the mythologies that sustained chattel slavery in the United States. The effects of these narratives continue to operate in race-related jurisprudence and in the criminal legal system, sending normative messages about race and potential using the same jurisprudential trick: denial of our country’s race-bound legacy. By juxtaposing the rhetoric and jurisprudence concerning the underrepresentation of white people in the criminal legal system with the rhetoric and jurisprudence concerning the underrepresentation of Black people in higher education, this Article illuminates a key feature of how systemic racism persists. Obscuring the history of how both affirmative action and disproportionate minority contact came to be, the racially contorted narratives that we have adopted about affirmative action in both guises described here—affirmative action that benefits people of color by accepting them into institutions of higher learning and that which benefits white people by diverting them from the criminal legal system—allow systems to thrive under a guise of presumed racial innocence. Unmoored from the force of history, we rudderlessly reinforce well-worn social norms, no matter how discriminatory they might be.

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.

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 Introduction: African Americans: Official and Unofficial Violence in America

2020 ◽  
pp. 002193472097008
Author(s):  
Molefi Kete Asante
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Active Imagination ◽  
White People ◽  
Control Forces

In this essay the author introduces the emergence of the paddy rollers as control forces to contain the black population during the enslavement of Africans in the United States. Soon after the end of the Civil War the police forces took over the activities that had been the purvey of the paddy rollers: keeping black people in place and out of the way of white people. However, the resistance to abuse, torture, and murder was never far from the active imagination and reality of African Americans who maintained their own humanity. Tracing, in a limited fashion, how the biologically unscientific race became the premise for racism and the attacks on black people by police officers who often took their perceptions of blacks, especially black men, as negative and inferior from the systemic and institutional character of the society’s understanding of superior and inferior humans. This, according to the author, is at the base of hatred, discrimination, and lynching of African Americans in current and previous occasions. He illustrates this by discussing the case of Mary Turner who was killed in the early part of the 20th century for objecting to white mob attacks on her husband.

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.

It's Still Slavery by Another Name

2020 ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Michael D. Yates
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Black People ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
White People ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Black And White

As the long history, right to the present day, of police and vigilante violence against black people has shown with great clarity, the racial chasm between black and white people in the United States lives on. A few black men and women have climbed into the 1 percent, and a sizable African-American middle class now exists. But by every measure of social well-being, black Americans fare much worse than their white counterparts. Just as for the economic, political, and social distance between capitalists and workers, so too is there a differential between black and white people, for these same interconnected components of daily life continue because of the way our system is structured.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onoso Imoagene
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Collar ◽  
The United States ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Prep School

Idowu Damola grew up in a poor family in a very bad neighborhood in a large New Jersey city.1 He recalls walking along the glass-strewn block where he lived, “with people yelling and screaming and fighting. It was a pretty run-down place.” His big break came when he won a full scholarship to an elite all-boys prep school in Connecticut. After he graduated, Idowu went on to study business and finance at Yale University, one of the top ten universities in the United States. At the time I spoke with him, Idowu had just started working as an investment broker on Wall Street. To get there, he had taken advantage of affirmative action opportunities available to black people in the United States. His progression from a “run-down” street in urban New Jersey to a coveted white-collar job on Wall Street is an American success story, a story that exemplifies the promise many immigrants see in America....

Situating Mental Disorders in Cultural Frames

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.E. Jarvis ◽  
Laurence J. Kirmayer
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Black People ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Diagnostic Error ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Psychotic Symptoms ◽  
Attitudes And Practices ◽  
Cultural Frames

Culture and society shape the symptoms, course, and outcome of mental disorders. Cultural frames—including conceptual models, values, norms, attitudes, and practices—influence the experience and expression of psychological distress. These frames reflect community history, ethnicity, religion, gender, politics, and the identity of individuals in specific social contexts. While some aspects of cultural frames are conveyed through explicit norms, values, ideologies, and practices, much remains implicit in a way of life and social environment that shape beliefs and practices through cultural affordances. Over time, cultural frames evolve, such that the expression of psychological disorders changes as new narratives and categories gain credibility and dominance. Understanding the dynamic impact of these frames on behavior and experience in illness and health requires a systemic or ecosocial approach. Category fallacies may occur when the observer interprets symptoms exclusively through categories derived from one cultural frame that preclude discovering local ways of characterizing distress. By failing to consider local meanings and modes of expression, category fallacies can result in diagnostic error. Looping effects result from the tendency for social categories to reshape human experience and behavior, as well as social institutions and practices, so that they conform to the category. In this way, cultural categories and constructs become self-vindicating social realities and contribute to the creation and maintenance of cultural frames. Cultural frames may be understood at multiple levels: (a) individual cognitive models or schemas that shape illness experience, (b) professional models and modes of practices that shape clinical interactions, and (c) broader societal paradigms, derived from cultural-historical institutions, that influence general attitudes to illness and suffering. Cultural frames invoke particular ontologies to explain illness, ascribing causal efficacy or agency to material (biological or social), psychological, or spiritual entities or forces . Cultural frames may focus on historical, political, or economic structures to explain the causes and forms of mental disorders (e.g., colonial ideologies). Cultural framings of concepts of mental disorder are readily identified in historical and contemporary settings. At the individual level, Joseph Smith, the American Prophet (1805–1844), exemplifies how intense religious experiences could be interpreted as revelation or as psychotic symptoms, depending on the cultural frame. At the professional level, the rise and fall of American psychoanalysis from 1909 to 2000 represents a paradigm, or cultural frame, shift such that the way that mental health professionals understand distress has changed from a focus on the inner theatre of the mind, accessed through intimate personal inquiry and talking therapy, to a focus on disordered machinery of the brain, in which the pathology requires treatment with medication. At the societal level, research on rates of psychosis among Black people in the United States and United Kingdom has been approached differently owing to differences in history, demography, and cultural frames, with U.K. studies emphasizing elevated rates among Black immigrants and U.S. studies focusing on diagnostic bias. These three levels influence each other through looping effects that give rise to new, hybrid forms of disorder that challenge standard psychological theories.

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.

Where the Blame Lies: Unpacking Groups Into Their Constituent Subgroups Shifts Judgments of Blame in Intergroup Conflict

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110269
Author(s):  
Nir Halevy ◽  
Ifat Maoz ◽  
Preeti Vani ◽  
Emily S. Reit
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Perceived Support ◽  
Intergroup Conflict ◽  
White People ◽  
Intergroup Conflicts

Whom do individuals blame for intergroup conflict? Do people attribute responsibility for intergroup conflict to the in-group or the out-group? Theoretically integrating the literatures on intergroup relations, moral psychology, and judgment and decision-making, we propose that unpacking a group by explicitly describing it in terms of its constituent subgroups increases perceived support for the view that the unpacked group shoulders more of the blame for intergroup conflict. Five preregistered experiments ( N = 3,335 adults) found support for this novel hypothesis across three distinct intergroup conflicts: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, current racial tensions between White people and Black people in the United States, and the gender gap in wages in the United States. Our findings (a) highlight the independent roles that entrenched social identities and cognitive, presentation-based processes play in shaping blame judgments, (b) demonstrate that the effect of unpacking groups generalizes across partisans and nonpartisans, and (c) illustrate how constructing packed versus unpacked sets of potential perpetrators can critically shape where the blame lies.

Bargaining in the Dark

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 434-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Kupfer Schneider ◽  
Cynthia Alkon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Defense Counsel ◽  
Negotiation Theory ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
Criminal Legal System

Plea bargaining is the primary, and unavoidable, method for resolving the vast majority of criminal cases in the United States. As more attention is paid to reform and changes in the criminal legal system, plea bargaining has also come into the spotlight. Yet we actually know very little about what happens during that process—a potentially complex negotiation with multiple parties that can, at different times, include prosecutors, defense counsel, judges, defendants, and victims. Using negotiation theory as a framework, we analyze why more information about the process itself can improve this crucial component of the system. More information—more data—would permit informed judicial oversight of pleas, improve lawyers’ capacities to negotiate on behalf of clients and the state, and increase the legitimacy of the bargaining between parties where one side tends to have far more resources and power. Without increased transparency, many of the players in the criminal legal system are just bargaining in the dark.

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