Representation, Incorporation, and Corrections Spending: The Counterbalancing Effect of Black Political Incorporation

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-603
Author(s):  
Anna Gunderson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
State Level ◽  
Political Incorporation ◽  
Social Control Theory ◽  
Racial Threat ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Residents

AbstractTheories concerning the adoption of punitive policies at the state level often cite two dynamics: conservative ideology and racial threat, that punitive policies are more likely in states with Republican politicians and a higher proportion of Black residents. I argue these theories lose their explanatory power in the post-Civil Rights era, and suggest Black political incorporation acts as a powerful antidote to the punitive impulses of government officials. I test my hypotheses on a dataset of state corrections spending from 1983 to 2011 and find evidence for the counterbalancing argument. States with increasing percentages of Black state legislators spend .36 fewer dollars per capita on corrections, suggesting Black political incorporation is an important mediator in the relationship between racial threat and corrections budgets. This paper has implications for the application of the social control theory as descriptive representation grows, but also for the study of the effect of minority politicians on budgets and policy more broadly. The adoption of policies deleterious to certain communities can be mitigated by the presence of representatives who legislate on behalf of those communities.

“Katrina is the Mother We Will Remember Until the Next Mother”

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-90
Author(s):  
Cameron Leader-Picone
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Division

This chapter analyzes representations of Hurricane Katrina in African American literature to argue that the storm served to illustrate the entrenchment of structural racism and the importance of a specifically racialized tradition in African American literature. Adopting the theoretical framework of “slow violence,” the chapter analyzes two novels which depict both the storm and its aftermath: Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011) and Kiese Laymon’sLong Division (2013). In the context of the early twenty-first century, these representations of Katrina do not displace the social advancements of African Americans but instead force recognition of the incompleteness not only of specific political battles but also of ongoing race, gender, and class-based narratives, thereby questioning the optimism of a rhetoric of post-Blackness. In particular, the novels establish continuity between Civil Rights Era traumas and struggles and Hurricane Katrina to push against a rhetoric focused on the transcendence of the past.

Afterword

Neo-Passing ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Elam
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post Civil Rights

The afterword argues that so-called neo-passing narratives distinctively highlight the performative dimension to racial formation and are, moreover, particularly attentive to the social and political consequences of race. This essay argues that the desire for passing to be a phenomenon of the past can be problematic in that it wills away the social insights afforded by cultural and literary narratives of passing in the post–Civil Rights era.

scholarly journals Before they were Diamonds: The Intergenerational Migration of Kentucky's Coal Camp Blacks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karida L. Brown
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Questions

My dissertation project is an empirical examination of the ways in which social transformations of the 20th century—read along the grain of the Great Migration—impacted the collective identity of African Americans over space and time. In this work, I will analyze the racialized subjectivity and identity (trans)formation of a diaspora of African Americans who partook in an intergenerational migration from the plantations of central Alabama to the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky in the first half of the 20th century, and then moved on to urban cities throughout the United States throughout the Civil Rights-era. The latter generation of migrants collectively experienced major shifts in the social structures of their community of origin, such as transitioning from “colored schools” to a State mandated integrated school system, retrenchment in the labor economy of a single-industry community, and the subsequent mass out-migration from their community of origin. These jolts to the social structures of their society not only altered their horizon of opportunity, but also resulted in major dislocations in the cultural systems that informed their collective identity. Particular to the case, I am concerned with the ways in which these cultural traumas—memories of events that collectivities believe rended the social fabric of their society—impacted the collective identity of this diaspora. In spite of their geographic dispersion, this generation of migrants has managed to stay connected through a set of “invented traditions” that they constituted at the tail end of their out-migration. For example, the Eastern Kentucky Social Club—an organization established by this group of migrants in 1970—has hosted a reunion in different cities across the country every year for the last forty-four years. At its height, this event drew over 3,000 African American migrants from across the country. The broader aim of the project is to reconstruct the rich history and culture of this special population of Black Appalachians to put forth a re-examination of W.E.B. Du Bois’ phenomenological analysis of racialized subjectivity and African American identity formation in 20th century America.The overarching research questions that guide this study are (1) How do we explain the emergence of their post-migration diasporic identity? (2) How has their collective identity been negotiated, transformed and reinscribed through their changing, and sometimes contested, subjectivity as racialized American citizens through the continuum of the pre and post civil rights era? I will specifically focus on three events that have been the site of transformation for the individuals in my case, (1) the school desegregation process—an event that occurred almost a decade after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in this region, (2) the mass out-migration from southeastern Kentucky—a community level event that was a precursor to the emergence of their diasporic identity, and (3) the construction of the EKAAMP archive—an event that marks the institutional transference from memory to history. These eventful temporalities provide three categories of analysis that will allow me to make important linkages to my research questions in the context of the past, present, and future.

Steadfast Democrats

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismail K. White ◽  
Chryl N. Laird
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Social Expectation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Norms

Black Americans are by far the most unified racial group in American electoral politics, with 80 to 90 percent identifying as Democrats—a surprising figure given that nearly a third now also identify as ideologically conservative, up from less than 10 percent in the 1970s. Why has ideological change failed to push more black Americans into the Republican Party? This book answers this question with a pathbreaking new theory that foregrounds the specificity of the black American experience and illuminates social pressure as the key element of black Americans' unwavering support for the Democratic Party. The book argues that the roots of black political unity were established through the adversities of slavery and segregation, when black Americans forged uniquely strong social bonds for survival and resistance. It explains how these tight communities have continued to produce and enforce political norms—including Democratic Party identification in the post-Civil Rights era. The social experience of race for black Americans is thus fundamental to their political choices. Black voters are uniquely influenced by the social expectations of other black Americans to prioritize the group's ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. When navigating the choice of supporting a political party, this social expectation translates into affiliation with the Democratic Party. The book explores where and how black political norms are enforced, what this means for the future of black politics, and how this framework can be used to understand the electoral behavior of other communities.

scholarly journals Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences

2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 656-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Jacobs ◽  
Jason T. Carmichael ◽  
Stephanie L. Kent
Keyword(s):  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Conflict Theory ◽  
Racial Threat ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Count Models ◽  
The Social ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Severe Punishment

Capital punishment is the most severe punishment, yet little is known about the social conditions that lead to death sentences. Racial threat explanations imply that this sanction will be imposed more often in jurisdictions with larger minority populations, but some scholars suggest that a tradition of vigilante violence leads to increased death sentences. This study tests the combined explanatory power of both accounts by assessing statistical interactions between past lynchings and the recent percentage of African Americans after political conditions and other plausible effects are held constant. Findings from count models based on different samples, data, and estimators suggest that racial threat and lynchings combine to produce increased death sentences, but the presence of liberal political values explains the absence of death sentences. These findings both confirm and refine the political version of conflict theory because they suggest that the effects of current racial threat and past vigilantism largely directed against newly freed slaves jointly contribute to current lethal but legal reactions to racial threat.

A Series on the Edge: Social Tension inStar Trek's Title Cue

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSICA L. GETMAN
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Conservative Power

AbstractThe original series ofStar Trek(1966–69) documents the social tensions of the late 1960s, responding positively, on the one hand, to the progressive political and social movements of the Civil Rights era by supporting racial and gender equality, but resisting its own efforts on the other, remaining faithful to conservative power structures. As the representative musical statement of the series,Star Trek'stitle cue embodies and expresses this paradox. Using audio-visual analysis, as well as sketch scores, interviews, and correspondence from the archives of the series’ composers and producers, this article analyzes the cue's compositional history, its musical codes, its narrative structure, and its use as framing, referential, and leitmotivic material within the series’ underscore in order to demonstrate the ways in which it communicatesStar Trek'sconflicting ideologies.

scholarly journals Black Churches and Their Attitudes to the Social Protest in the Civil Rights Era: Obedience, Civil Disobedience and Black Liberation Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2 (176)) ◽  
pp. 247-279
Author(s):  
Paulina Napierała
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethnic Churches

The article focuses on the diversity of attitudes that Black churches presented toward the social protest of the civil rights era. Although their activity has been often perceived only through the prism of Martin Luther King’s involvement, in fact they presented many different attitudes to the civil rights campaigns. They were never unanimous about social and political engagement and their to various responses to the Civil Rights Movement were partly connected to theological divisions among them and the diversity of Black Christianity (a topic not well-researched in Poland). For years African American churches served as centers of the Black community and fulfilled many functions of ethnic churches (as well as of other ethnic institutions), but the scope of these functions varied greatly – also during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Therefore, the main aim of this article is to analyze the whole spectrum of Black churches’ attitudes to the civil rights protests, paying special attention to the approaches and strategies that are generally less known. * Funding for the research leading to the results of this study was received from the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) on the basis of the Decision No. 2018/02/X/HS5/02381 for MINIATURA 2 project: “Polityczno-społeczna rola Kościołów afroamerykańskich na Południu USA.” I gratefully acknowledge this support.

The Social Movement Turn in Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (02) ◽  
pp. 360-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott L. Cummings
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Current Response ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Progressive Reform ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Current

The rise of social movements in US legal scholarship is a current response to an age-old problem in progressive legal thought: harnessing law for social change while maintaining a distinction between law and politics. This problem erupted in controversy around the civil rights–era concept of legal liberalism defined by activist courts and lawyers pursuing political reform through law. Contemporary legal scholars have responded by building on social science to develop a new concept—movement liberalism—that assigns leadership of transformative change to social movements to preserve conventional roles for courts and lawyers. Movement liberalism aims to achieve the lost promise of progressive reform, while avoiding critiques of legal activism that have divided scholars for a half-century. Yet rather than resolving the law-politics problem, movement liberalism reproduces long-standing debates, carrying forward critical visions of law that it seeks to transcend.

Between Remembrance and Repair

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Whitlinger
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Impacts ◽  
Human Rights Education ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Comprehensive Account ◽  
The Social ◽  
Insight Into

Few places are more notorious for civil rights–era violence than Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” murders. Yet in a striking turn of events, Philadelphia has become a beacon in Mississippi’s racial reckoning in the decades since. Claire Whitlinger investigates how this community came to acknowledge its past, offering significant insight into the social impacts of commemoration. Examining two commemorations around key anniversaries of the murders held in 1989 and 2004, Whitlinger shows the differences in how those events unfolded. She also charts how the 2004 commemoration offered a springboard for the trial of former Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen for his role in the 1964 murders, the 2006 passage of Mississippi’s Civil Rights/Human Rights education bill, and the initiation of the Mississippi Truth Project. In doing so, Whitlinger provides the first comprehensive account of these high profile events and expands our understanding of how commemorations both emerge out of and catalyze associated memory movements. Threading a compelling story with theoretical insights, Whitlinger delivers a study that will help scholars, students, and activists alike better understand the dynamics of commemorating difficult pasts, commemorative practices in general, and the links between memory, race, and social change.

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