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31. A Tale of Diversity, Disparity, and Discrimination: The State of Racial Justice for Asian American Chicagoans

Author:
William Scarborough, Amanda E. Lewis, and Ivan Arenas
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP), University of Illinois at Chicago
Abstract:
Relatively little attention has been directed to documenting the experiences of racial discrimination and inequities for Asian Americans in Chicago. In this report, we examine the state of racial justice for Asian Americans in Chicago. The data in this report illustrate the diverse and often divergent experiences of Asian Chicagoans who have to navigate the complexity and contradiction of model minority and forever foreigner stereotypes. Asian Americans are both imagined as hard working and high achieving, and at the same time are often treated as permanent outsiders. A central finding of this report is that while diversity is a defining characteristic of this pan-ethnic group, racial inequities affect the opportunities and life experiences of all Asian American Chicagoans.
Topic:
Race, Minorities, Discrimination, and Local
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

32. U.S. Prison Labor and the Legacy of American Slavery

Author:
Fawn Bolak
Publication Date:
02-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Human Rights Education, University of Denver
Abstract:
Last September, thousands of incarcerated individuals in the United States launched an organized protest on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising, in an effort to protest racial discrimination, excessive force, and demand an end to the current state of legalized slavery within the U.S. prison system. Across the nation, prisoners in state and federal correctional facilities are exploited for their labor in industries related to agriculture, clothing production, machinery, and technology. While prison officials who strike up deals with large corporations like AT&T and Walmart share in the profits of cheap production, the incarcerated laborers themselves make mere cents per hour for full time work. Additionally, those locked up in federal institutions, who are physically capable of full time work, are mandated to do so as prescribed by Title 29 of the Crime Control Act of 1990. Over 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the United States, making the U.S. the #1 jailer in the world, surpassing Cuba, Russia, and China. Moreover, inmates in the U.S. are disproportionately people of color. According data from the Sentencing Project, black men are incarcerated at a rate 5.1 times the rate of white men, and in 12 states, predominately in the south and east coast, more than 50% of the total state prison population is black. There is a prevailing conservative narrative that asserts that the disproportionate incarceration of black individuals in our criminal justice system is a product of a “culture of violence” centered in “inner cities” and predominately black neighborhoods, rather than a product systemic institutional racism. However, a quick glance at U.S. history indicates that the mass incarceration of black men, current use of exploitative prison labor, and our past economic system built on slavery, is not a mere coincidence.
Topic:
Human Rights, Race, Labor Issues, Prisons/Penal Systems, and Slavery
Political Geography:
United States and North America

33. A Tale of Three Cities: The State of Racial Justice in Chicago Report

Author:
Amanda E. Lewis, Ivan Arenas, Deana G. Lewis, and Kasey Henricks
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP), University of Illinois at Chicago
Abstract:
Chicago’s largest racial and ethnic groups—blacks, Latinxs, and whites—each make up roughly one-third of the city’s population. As this report reveals, these groups generally live in separate neighborhoods and have divergent experiences when it comes to housing, economics, education, justice, and health. Capturing life in Chicago today is in many ways a tale of three cities. The central finding of this report is that racial and ethnic inequities in Chicago remain pervasive, persistent, and consequential. These inequities affect the lives of Chicagoans in every neighborhood; they have not just spatial but also deep historical roots and are embedded in our social, economic, political, and cultural institutions; and they have powerful effects on the experiences and opportunities of all Chicagoans.
Topic:
Race, Minorities, Inequality, Ethnicity, and Discrimination
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

34. Cross-National Responses to Discrimination: A Q&A with Michèle Lamont

Author:
Michelle Nicholasen
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Racism and discrimination are daily realities for members of marginalized groups. But what does it look like at the ground level, and how do individuals from various groups and countries respond to such experiences? Drawing on more than 400 in-depth interviews with middle class and working class men and women residing in the multi-ethnic suburbs of New York, Rio, and Tel Aviv, and representing five different racial “groups,” a team of sociologists examine how people deal with and make sense of the various forms of exclusion that are ever present in their lives.
Topic:
Race, Women, Discrimination, and Marginalization
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Israel, Brazil, South America, and North America

35. The Ferguson Conjuncture: Why the Humanities Matter Now

Author:
George Lipsitz
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
Abstract:
The killing of Michael Brown and the callous and cruel responses to it by legally constituted authorities have rightly been perceived as evidence of failures of the criminal justice system and the political system. In addition, the events, actions and ideas emerging from the crucible of conflict in Ferguson also reveal a betrayal of the promise of the humanities to teach discernment, judgment and empathy as tools for envisioning a common and creative human existence.
Topic:
Human Rights, Race, Law Enforcement, Inequality, State Violence, and Protests
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

36. How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers

Author:
William Lazonick, Philip Moss, and Joshua Weitz
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
On June 2, 1965, under a mandate established by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. Congress created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws related to employment. The expectation was that African Americans would be prime beneficiaries of the EEOC. There was no assumption that the EEOC, on its own, could reverse deep-rooted employment discrimination against blacks. But in the late 1960s there was optimism that, in combination with equal educational opportunity and the strong demand for unionized workers in the well-paid manufacturing jobs that marked the post-World War II decades, the EEOC could help to ensure that an ever-increasing number of blacks would ascend to the American middle class. African Americans as a group are better educated than they were in the 1960s, and, as discriminatory norms and practices have lessened, large numbers of college-educated blacks have experienced upward employment mobility into professional, technical, and administrative occupations. But the promise of a large-scale ascendancy of blacks to middle-class status, characterized by secure and well-paid employment, has not been fulfilled. Our basic thesis is that, in combination with the institutions of racism which remain widespread in American society, the erosion of secure and well-paid employment opportunities is a major reason for the persistence since the 1980s of African Americans as disproportionately disadvantaged. Our contribution to the larger debate on the economics of race is to focus on the role of corporate resource allocation as the prime determinant of the quantity and quality of employment opportunities in the economy. The decline of middle-class employment opportunities has adversely affected the majority of the U.S. labor force of all races, ethnicities, and genders. African Americans, however, have been more vulnerable than other demographic groups to this decline. U.S. institutions of corporate governance vest power over major resource-allocation decisions in the hands of senior executives, supported by their hand-picked corporate boards. Given the enormous size of the major business corporations and their centrality to economic activity, the resource-allocation decisions made by senior executives of major U.S. corporations profoundly influence the operation and performance of the economy as a whole—including the availability, or not, of secure and well-paid employment opportunities. The failure to include an analysis of corporate resource allocation and how it has changed over the past half century in the policy debate on income inequality is what we call the “equal employment opportunity omission.”
Topic:
Race, Employment, Inequality, Civil Rights, Legislation, and Equality
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

37. The American Dual Economy: Race, Globalization, and the Politics of Exclusion

Author:
Peter Temin
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
I describe the American economy in the twenty-first century as a dual economy in the spirit of W. Arthur Lewis. Similar to the subsistence and capitalist economies characterized by Lewis, I distinguish a low-wage sector and a FTE (Finance, Technology, and Electronics) sector. The transition from the low-wage to the FTE sector is through education, which is becoming increasingly difficult for members of the low-wage sector because the FTE sector has largely abandoned the American tradition of quality public schools and universities. Policy debates about public education and other policies that serve the low-wage sector often characterize members of the low-wage sector as black even though the low-wage sector is largely white. This model of a modern dual economy explains difficulties in many current policy debates, including education, healthcare, criminal justice, infrastructure and household debts.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Globalization, Race, Capitalism, Exclusion, and Public Service
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

38. The New York Times and American Tax Policy: Representing Citizens or Echoing Elites?

Author:
Daniel Chomsky
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
A recent New York Times article observed that Americans want action to address inequality. 2016 presidential candidates from both parties also acknowledge that inequality is a pressing concern. But not one of the candidates has proposed to do anything meaningful about it, sharing wealthy Americans’ (understandable) opposition to any solution (Scheiber 2015). Perhaps nothing has been done because there is nothing to do about it. Some treat inequality as an inevitable or intractable feature of the global economy, or at least impossible to alter at acceptable cost (Cowen 2013). But inequality may be subject to political circumstances, and public policies including progressive taxes might reduce it without adversely affecting economic growth (Diamond and Saez 2011, Piketty 2014). It may be that Americans are just unwilling to support policies that would reduce inequality. Progressive taxation and other policies may reduce inequality. But policy reflects public preferences (Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson 2002), and the American people just hate taxes. Martin Gilens (2012) effectively demonstrated that policy makers favor the wealthy over the majority when opinions diverge. Yet he accepted that the Bush tax cuts in the early 2000s reflected broad consensus opinion. Public opposition to taxes is seen as so powerful that even observers seeking programs to promote economic equality often abandon progressive taxes as a remedy (Kenworthy 2013).
Topic:
Race, Science and Technology, History, Culture, Ethics, Philosophy, Tax Systems, and Innovation
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

39. Calypso's Cosmopolitan Strategy: Race, Nation, and Global Culture in Postwar Canada

Author:
Michael Eldridge
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
What I mean to do in this essay, then, is trace calypso’s trajectory across the historically porous U.S-Canada border, in order to take fuller measure of its international ambitions in the mid- twentieth century. In the process, I hope to shine a light on West Indian influence over the layout of the Canadian mosaic and the logic of Canadian multiculturalism, well before that word became a catchphrase of government policy and part of the mythology of Canadian identity. But I also want to puzzle out what Canadians’ embrace of calypso during this same period signified. That, more than anything, will help us understand what sort of symbolic work calypso was doing in the True North. Canadians, of course, are famously, chronically anxious to distinguish themselves from Americans, and so I’ll concede from the start that calypso per se may have played a less direct role in calming nerves about race and national identity north of Niagara than it did in the U.S. I want to argue nevertheless that the full story of calypso in Canada still involves considerable tension over those fraught topics. And so the more significant distinction to draw, I think, is that the Canadian jitters sprang from a very different set of demographics, as well as from a rather different relationship to the history of British Empire and Commonwealth, than their American counterparts. Before we evaluate Caresser’s job performance as Canada’s hired projectionist, then, we would do well to review some of the salient facts.
Topic:
Nationalism, Race, Culture, and Multiculturalism
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

40. Uniting a City: Facilitating Interracial Interactions and Cultural Exchange in Urban Public Spaces, with Applications to Washington D.C.

Author:
Ginger M. Moored
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA)
Institution:
School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
Abstract:
Racial segregation in American cities exacerbates racial tensions and spatially concentrates poverty. While government entities and other organizations use a number of techniques to mollify these problems such as mixed-income housing and school busing programs, these techniques often do not overcome everyday geographic separation, and, in turn, fail to promote physical interracial interactions or cultural exchange. One way to foster interracial interactions that lead to cultural exchange is to hold organized events in public spaces that are natural meeting-areas for cities’ residents. Studies about interracial interactions, though, suggest that to be successful these events should: (1) produce high levels of interaction, (2) provide opportunities for cultural exchange, (3) use engaging programming with broad appeal, (4) maximize accessibility of events, (5) minimize cultural intimidation, and (6) equally value all cultures. This paper devises strategies for creating events that have these six characteristics and illustrates these strategies using examples from U.S. cities. The latter part of this paper describes how these strategies can be specifi cally applied to Washington, D.C., a city sharply divided by race.
Topic:
Race, Culture, Urban, Cities, and Public Space
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America