Jenkins, M. "Gullah Island dispute resolution: An example of Afrocentric restorative justice." Journal of Black Studies, 37, 299-319. 2006.
Restorative justice has been suggested as a means to deal with disproportionate minority confinement and other social problems within communities of color, specifically the Black community. However, scholars and practitioners have pointed out cultural concerns that must be addressed in the restorative justice process. Afrocentric theory and its principles have been suggested as a way to deal with the cultural concerns within the restorative justice process. This article examines the contemporary and historical means of informal dispute resolution in the Gullah Islands of South Carolina. These strategies of dispute or conflict resolution were used to deal with crime, delinquency, civil matters, community grievances, and other social wrongs outside the traditional common and civil legal systems. Through on-site in-depth interviews, focus groups, and an analysis of archival documents, the research determined that the strategies used on the Gullah Islands fell within the Afrocentric restorative justice model.
(Reading Time: 50mins)
Michael Whine, “Cooperation Between Criminal Justice Agencies and Civil Society in Combating Hate Crime.” Crime, Law, and Social Change, 2019-04-01, Vol.71 (3), p.275-289
(Reading Time: 34mins)
Annette Lareau. “Cultural Knowledge and Social Inequality.” American Sociological Review 80, no. 1 February 2015.
Using both qualitative longitudinal data collected 20 years after the original Unequal Childhoods study and interview data from a study of upwardly mobile adults, this address demonstrates how cultural knowledge matters when white and African American young adults of differing class backgrounds navigate key institutions. I find that middle-class young adults had more knowledge than their working-class or poor counterparts of the “rules of the game” regarding how institutions worked. They also displayed more of a sense of entitlement to ask for help. When faced with a problem related to an institution, middle-class young adults frequently succeeded in getting their needs accommodated by the institution; working-class and poor young adults were less knowledgeable about and more frustrated by bureaucracies. This address also shows the crucial role of “cultural guides” who help upwardly mobile adults navigate institutions. While many studies of class reproduction have looked at key turning points, this address argues that “small moments” may be critical in setting the direction of life paths.
(Paper Length: 55mins)
Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Broadway Books. 2016
Big Data and algorithms play ever-growing roles in our lives. They decide who can be insured, who can get loans, who can be accepted to a university, whether and how their communities will be policed, and the penalties they will pay for their mistakes. This book provides several examples of how increased dependence on algorithms has perpetrated racism and discrimination and harmed many people. It suggests a new code of ethics for data scientists those who use the work of data scientists to make critical decisions.
Nausheen Husain, Darcel Rockett, Christen A. Johnson, Et. Al. “Disinvestment in Black and Latino Chicago neighborhoods is rooted in policy. Here’s how these communities continue to be held back.” Chicago Tribune. July 27, 2020.
It’s an oft-quoted statistic: White families have significantly more wealth than nonwhite families in America — nearly 10 times that of Black families. The racial wealth gap continues to greatly impact the differences in opportunity and access, from long-term health outcomes of a global pandemic, to education and income levels, to what happens when a business doesn’t make enough money.
(Reading Time: 12mins)
Tressie McMillian Cottom, "I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman,” Time Magazine. January, 8th, 2019.
Sociologist and public intellectual McMillian Cottom details her experiences with medical racism and infuses them with sociological insight.
(Reading Time: 9mins)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations”, The Atlantic, June 2014
Coates makes an argument for the moral justification for reparations. Combining a rich sociological and historical view of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, Coates encourages us to situate contemporary America within parameters that have been set by that history. As relevant now as when it was written, this piece is a masterclass in how changing disciplinary lenses refracts different and essential aspects of an argument.
(Reading Time: 1hr 15mins)
Carla Shedd, "Role of Law Enforcement in Schools," CSPAN November 7, 2015
Carla Shedd talked by video from New York City about the debate over the role of school resource officers, as well as the line between routine classroom discipline and law enforcement. She is the author of Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice. Professor Shedd responded to viewer calls on telephone lines divided between parents, educators, and law enforcement.
(Video Length: 43:42)
Rachel Cargle. “Coming to Terms with Racism's Inertia: Ancestral Accountability” TEDxBend September 2019
(From TEDxTalks) "When it comes to race relations there is often the argument "Well I didnt own slaves" as a dismissive attempt to seperate ones self from the effects and realities of the racial divide in the United States. In this talk Rachel Cargle addresses the modern manifestations of the racism the US was built on and calls for more intentional accountability, allyship and antiracist action. Rachel Elizabeth Cargle is an Ohio born writer and lecturer. Her activist and academic work are rooted in providing intellectual discourse, tools, and resources that explore the intersection of race and womanhood. She is currently a student at Columbia University studying anthropology and a research fellow at the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University."
(Video Length: 13:05)
Nadine Burke Harris, “How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime”, TED September 2014
This video helps us understand how early adversity can impact later health, social, and personal wellness as they grow up.
(Video Length: 16mins)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie "The Danger of a Single Story" TEDGlobal 2009
(From TED Talk) "Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding"
(Video Length: 18:49)
Kimberlé Crenshaw, "The Urgency of Intersectionality" TED Talk. October 2016
(From TED Talk) "Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias -- and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both. In this moving talk, she calls on us to bear witness to this reality and speak up for victims of prejudice."
(Video Length: 18:41)
Beverly Daniel Tatum (Interview). Why Are All of the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Chicago Humanities Festival. November 11, 2017
(From the Chicago Humanities Festival) "Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is self-segregation a coping strategy or a problem? Twenty years ago, in Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, brought a complicated argument to the table: an appreciation of racial identity formation as essential to any potential communication across racial and ethnic differences. With a completely revised edition, Tatum joins us to discuss why we're apart when we're together."
(Video Length: 58:13)
Brené Brown with Ibram X. Kendi. “How to Be an Antiracist” Unlocking Us (Podcast). June 3, 2020
Interview with professor Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist and the Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. Interview includes conversations about racial disparities, policy, and equality, but we really focus on How to Be an Antiracist, which is a groundbreaking approach to understanding uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves.
(Interview Length: 1hr)
Terry Gross, (Host) A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America, Fresh Air Podcast, May 3, 2017.
This interview summarizes the main points of Rothstein's book "The Color Of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America." The text makes visible how conditions many students think are natural--e.g. segregated neighborhoods/suburbs, underfunded schools--is the result instead of policy, whether intentional or unintentional. The interview can serve as a starting point for class projects in the social sciences, education, and even the sciences (if faculty want to explore some of the root causes of public health issues).
(Podcast Length: 1hr)
Auburn Seminary & Side with Love. Past: Rooting in Histories, We Have Been Here Before Fortification Podcast. April 30, 2020.
This conversation is one of three and features co-hosts Cara Page and Caitlin Breedlove in conversation with Talila Lewis and Anjali Taneja. The conversation began with these questions: How do historical harms and abuses of the state and the medical industrial complex elevate the ways in which communities are criminalized? What are the historical roots and wounds of disease-based capitalism in the U.S.? What has community dreamed and manifest based on these pasts? What do we need to know or pay attention to as this disease- and disaster-based economy uses this pandemic to fuel policing, surveillance, and eugenic ideas? To what end will COVID19 be used by the state against marginalized communities?" The podcast defines and illustrates the intersectionality of race, class, and dis/ability. The guests, one a disability justice lawyer and the other an Executive Director of a non-profit medical clinic working to decolonize medicine, then bring that intersectionality into current institutional and structural practices such as mass incarceration, policing, funding/economic inequity, and healthcare. The participants situate these practices not only in current events but also in historic practices, such as the Spanish Flu, Tuskegee experiments, and the situating of toxic mines on First Nations lands.
(Podcast Length: 1hr 12min)