Today is the start of International Open Access Week, and so today’s research brief will feature only research that’s freely available on the web to anyone regardless of institutional affiliation.  (What’s open access you may be wondering and why should academics care about it? More about open access over here.)  Onward, to the latest open access research about race and racism.

• Coleman, Robin R. Means. “Training Day and The Shield: Evil Cops and the Taint of Blackness” (book chapter from) The Changing Face of Evil in Film and Television (2007): 101. Abstract: “The police detectives of Hollywood’s Training Day (2001) and cable televisions The Shield (2002-) Alonzo Harris and Vic Mackey, represent the newest face of evil in entertainment media. Harris and Mackey are menacing, rough cops who rule their urban beats like the  street gangs and criminals who co-exist in the same cement terrain. Training Day and The Shield utilise a discourse that emphasises racial signifiers and class positioning to portray a social environment that justifies the presence of such troublesome policing. Through a critical, cultural analysis of these figures, we explore these sociopolitical themes while expounding upon definitions of evil that begin with describing a war between light and dark, black and white. Our analysis is informed by James McDaniel,
  St. Augustine, and Nietzsche’s definitions of evil. We argue that, by definition, only the Alonzo Harris characterisation, portrayed by a black body, in contrast with that of a white Vic Mackey, can be considered truly evil in nature by virtue of his undivided emersion in the ‘dark’ — morally and racially.” (OA)
• Dreisinger, Baz, et al. “Prisons, Pipelines and Pedagogy: Diary of the Birth of a Behind-Bars College Program.”  Journal of Prison Education & Reentry, Vol. 1 No. 1, (2014), pp. 55-66. (A “practitioner paper” – no abstract available.) (OA)
• Lavoie, Carmen. “Institutional Racism and Individual Agency: A Case Study using Foucault’s Disciplinary Power.”  Critical Social Work, (2014) Vol. 15, No. 1. Abstract: “Institutional racism is a principal factor in the exclusion and oppression of racialized groups. Social work scholars have examined the organizational indicators, attitudes, and actions of staff that contribute to institutional racism in order to elucidate its function. However, an understanding of the interplay between institutions and individuals within institutional racism has remained largely elusive. This paper aims to address this gap. Using the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault and his theorization of disciplinary power, this paper presents a case study of one social worker’s efforts to address racism in her organization. The result is a unique understanding of institutional racism that considers the dynamic interactions between institutional constraints and individual agency. Such an analysis enables those in direct practice as well as in leadership roles who are committed to anti-oppression social work to understand the barriers and routes to anti-racist institutional change.” (OA)

Happy open access reading!

Want to see your research featured here? Send us your latest research and please consider using an open access, peer-reviewed journal as the outlet for your next publication on race and racism.