Race and the Death Penalty, IV: Resources

• • criminal justice, death penalty, links, race, racism

In this last post of our four-part blog series on race and the death penalty, we* would like to provide you with some additional links.  As our series this week illustrated, the death penalty today looks very much the same as in the past. If you would like to learn more about race and the death penalty, please visit:

While the death penalty has undergone what some would call a legitimacy crisis in recent years with issues of innocence and cost becoming prominent, we argue that we should still pay attention to issues of racial bias.

~ *We are a group of four sociology students studying the death penalty in Danielle Dirks’ “Capital Punishment in America” undergraduate course at University of Texas-Austin.  This is the first post of our four-part blog series on race and the death penalty. Please read and feel free to comment or ask questions. Thank you for your time!

Racism Link Roundup

• • links, racism

Time for another roundup of links about racism from around the web.  Here’s what we’ve been reading on the web:

Blogging Against Racism

  • Last week was “International Blog Against Racism Week,” wherein people that blog about things other than racism dedicate a blog post or two to racism.   We didn’t mention here because, well you know, that’s what we do here every day.   Shakespeare’s Sister has a good post up for this event, noting that they blog about racism frequently.
  • Angry Black Woman does an excellent job taking on the issue of intersectionality and the fact that it’s so rarely addressed.
  • And, Tempest Bedford provides an illustrative example from the world of Science Fiction (SF) genre writing, about the epic failure of not taking multiple perspectives into account.
  • If you haven’t followed the SF controversy, do a search for “Race Fail 2009” to see what it’s about, or check this summary from Prometheus 6.



Police Violence

  • Latino Grandfather, Pregnant Woman Tasered at Baptism – It’s hard to know what to say about this except that this is another shocking example of the kind of police violence targeting people of color that we’ve been talking about on this blog for some time now.
  • Bob Herbert, New York Times columnist, has a couple of recent columns in which he highlights the problem of police conduct toward POC, writing in one that “Anger Has Its Place.”



Media



Global Issues



Anti-Racism

Race, Racism & White Supremacy: Link Roundup

• • links, racism

Here are some interesting links on race, racism and white supremacy. The blogosphere seems to be heating up on some of these issues. There is no shortage of racism material to write on!

The Holocaust Museum Attack and Cyberhate

  • Rinku Sen writes about The White Supremacist in All of Us at the Huffington Post.  Sen criticizes the discussion of the Holocaust Museum shooting has boiled down to the idea that racism is an intentional, violent act of a lone crazy white man.  She writes “Collectively, we bemoan the backwardness of ‘some’ people before we move on, thinking of racism as isolated extremism.”
  • David Niewert writes at Crooks and Liars about the infiltration of the army by neo-nazis, first reported by Salon this week.  Jim Burroway at Box Turtle points out the irony of a military that is happy to include white supremacists but not openly LGBT members.
  • Jesse Walker thinks the threat of right-wing terror has been blown out of proportion.
  • Joshua Holland at Alternet has some probing thoughts on the Eliminationist (that is, killing) Mindset of many on the racist right.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor

  • Transgriot calls out Pat Buchanan – and others of the “vanilla privileged” class –  for their treatment of Sotomayor.

Education

  • Over at DailyKos, Tristero 312 has a good analysis of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) charges at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that argue the educational policies of school “turnarounds,” one of the “Renaissance 2010” policies, is discriminatory, especially for black teachers.

Demography

  • Over at Asian-Nation, there is an interesting analysis of some U.S. demographic data showing that among Asian-Indian, Chinese, and Korean Americans, there is a significant gender imbalance among children, boys being more common than girls, as in some Asian countries—apparently mainly for Asian immigrant couples in which both spouses are foreign-born.

Pop Culture

Idiocy in America

  • And, though not online and not exactly on racism issues, there is the new book Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce. The book is uneven, full of ranting on conservatives like Limbaugh (who deserve it), but the general points are quite accurate about stupidity becoming a virtue. Here is his response to a question in an interview: “With the election of President Obama, is Idiot America coming to an end? Or, will there always be a place for idiocy in America?” [Pierce answers]: Look at the political opposition to President Obama. “Socialist!” “Fascist!” “Coming to get your guns.” Hysteria from the hucksters of Idiot America is still at high-tide. People are killing other people and specifically attributing their action to imaginary oppression stoked by radio talk-show stars and television pundits.

Black Masculinity