Angel Adams Parham’s book American Routes: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation of Race (Oxford, 2017, available in hardcover and as an ebook from many vendors) is an exciting work that makes a novel and important contribution to our understanding of race in the US. The “racial palimpsest” idea is that
Read moreThe Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Brooklyn College’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science Jeanne Theoharis is a readable and fascinating account of the life of Rosa Parks that won many awards when it was punished in 2013. Here’s my “take” on the story, based on the book. I
Read moreWhen Republicans Opposed the Free Speech of David Duke
In 1996, the College Republicans thought it was an unfair attack on their opposition to affirmative action to associate it with a known White racist.
Read moreThe Top Social Justice Stories of 2017 that will Define 2018
2017 was a tumultuous year. In many ways, the country moved backwards on some issues of social justice that many believed had begun to move forward. The Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, which President Obama had previously put the kibosh on due to environmental concerns and the protests of
Read moreNew working paper on White and Black urban and rural imprisonment rates
I’ve just posted my working paper to SocArXiv that shows that high White rural imprisonment rates and rises in imprisonment rates in county groups are linked to poverty and low education in rural areas. The paper gathers up the graphs and analysis from my previous post and also provides regression
Read moreDrug Homicide Prosecutions Make Overdose Problems Worse
Wisconsin leads the nation in filing homicide charges when someone dies from an overdose of an illegal drug, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, whose researchers found 882 news mentions of drug homicide prosecutions in Wisconsin 2011-16. (Second highest was Ohio with 577; Illinois had 486 and Minnesota 433.) Although
Read moreRacial Disparities in Plea Bargaining in Dane County 2000-2006
A forthcoming research article, (and now published) by Carlos Berdejó a professor of Law at Loyola of Los Angeles who also has a PhD in economics, has documented racial disparities in the plea bargaining process in Dane County, Wisconsin (home of the University of Wisconsin – Madison) in the years 2000-2006.
Read moreFor Closing the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility
Activists in Wisconsin’s Close MSDF coalition are focusing attention on the inhumane conditions in the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF) and the problem of crimeless revocations that send people there. The MSDF was built in 2001 to house people temporarily who had been accused of violating the terms of their
Read moreBlack Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panthers
NOTE: See Josh Bloom’s comments. Other comments are welcome. They are moderated to avoid spam and trolls, but serious engagement with the issues is welcomed. Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panthers, by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., has received wide praise for its
Read moreStudent backgrounds
In a pre-class survey, I asked my students questions about their own racial/ethnic backgrounds and the types of places they have lived in. Race first, where I grouped the “mixed” race answers for people who combined White with Latinx or Black into the minority group for this table. This course
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