By Jody Armour

"Ngga Theory: Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law" by Jody Armour is a thought-provoking exploration of how language shapes perceptions within the criminal justice system. Armour delves into the complexities surrounding the use of the word "ngga" and its implications on issues of race, equality, and justice. This book challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about the ways in which language can perpetuate systemic inequalities in our society. With sharp analysis and compelling arguments, Armour prompts readers to reconsider the power dynamics at play in our legal system and broader social discourse. "N*gga Theory" is a timely and essential read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the intersection of language, race, and justice in America.

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020, 224 pages

By Melissa Serafin and Anne Li

Key findings and recommendations:  Firearm owners and national experts emphasized that firearm owners themselves are the most trusted messengers, including firearm-related groups and organizations (e.g., gun shops, hunting groups, firearm safety instructors). These messengers are best suited to provide legitimacy and ensure saliency of messaging efforts. ü National experts also described the importance of actively and authentically seeking partners within the firearm-owning community to collaborate on suicide prevention efforts Frame firearm suicide prevention messaging in a way that underscores gun rights. ü Firearm owners and national experts agreed that messaging should immediately convey the legitimacy of owning firearms. ü Additionally, messaging should avoid conveying the perception of anti-gun bias, including the idea that firearm access or ownership should be restricted. ü Firearm owners and experts also emphasized the importance of considering the heterogeneity of the firearm-owning community when crafting messaging and tailoring messages accordingly. Focus on raising mental health awareness, debunking myths, and addressing stigma. ü Firearm owners and national experts identified a need to improve understanding of mental health concerns; debunk myths about suicide, mental health, and mental health services; and address stigma. Additionally, they identified a need to help people have conversations about mental health and express concerns people may have about a loved one. ü They suggested incorporating content that could improve understanding of these topics within messaging efforts. ü However, some findings indicate that this type of information needs to be carefully crafted to ensure salience, as firearm owners may not view mental health and suicide as relevant to their personal lives. Share stories of lived experience. ü Firearm owners suggested incorporating real stories related to firearm suicide, seeking mental health support, and the potential consequences of unsafe storage. Additionally, they suggested that these stories should involve people with identities that firearm owners could identify with. ü They described how storytelling may be particularly effective in ensuring messaging resonates with firearm owners and dispelling myths about mental health, suicide, and safe storage.  

St. Paul: Wilder Foundation, 2022. 41p.

HO, BIANCA; DOYLE, KIERAN

From the document: "Pro-Palestine demonstrations involving students in the United States have nearly tripled from 1 to 26 April compared with all of March, ACLED [ [Armed Conflict Location and Event Data]] data show [...]. New York has been one of the main student protest battlegrounds since the Israel-Palestine conflict flared up in and around Gaza last October, and the arrest of more than 100 students at Columbia University in New York around 18 April heralded a new wave of campus demonstrations."

ARMED CONFLICT LOCATION & EVENT DATA PROJECT. 2 MAY, 2024. 5p.

CERVINI, ENZO MARIA LE FEVRE; CARRO, MARÍA VICTORIA

From the document: "Generative Artificial Intelligence's (GenAI) capacity to produce highly realistic images, videos, and text poses a significant challenge, as it can deceive viewers and consumers into accepting artificially generated content as authentic and genuine. This raises concerns about the dissemination of false information, disinformation, and its implications for public trust and democratic processes. Additionally, this phenomenon prompts critical ethical and legal inquiries, including issues surrounding the attribution of authority and accountability for the generated content. [...] This article delves into the impact of generative AI on recent and future political elections. We'll examine how deepfakes and other AI-generated content are used, along with their potential to sway voters. We'll also analyze the strategies various stakeholders are deploying to counter this growing phenomenon."

ITALIAN INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL STUDIES. 22 MAR, 2024. 44p.

edited by Kacper Rekawek, Thomas Renard and Bàrbara Molas

Russia’s influence over far-right/ racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (REMVE) milieus in Europe is multi-faceted and complex. It involves direct activities, such as financing or political support, as well as indirect activities, such as disinformation campaigns. In some cases, Russia was associated, albeit remotely, with some far-right violent incidents in Europe, including the alleged coup attempt by the sovereign movement Reichsburger, in Germany. Recognising the increasingly confrontational policy of Russia vis-à-vis Europe, and the growing threat from far-right extremism in Europe, this book thoroughly and systematically reviews Russia’s relationship with diverse far-right actors in ten European countries over the past decade. The countries covered in this book include Austria, The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and Sweden. The chapters are authored by some of the world’s most authoritative experts on extremism and Russian influence.

Overall, this edited volume is the first such comprehensive attempt at mapping the scope and depth of Russian influence over far-right extremism in Europe, resulting in the identification of key patterns of influence and offering some possible recommendations to counter it. This book is both a leading scholarly work, as well as a wake-up call and guide for action for European policy-makers.

by Jennifer Tilton

How do you tell the difference between a “good kid” and a “potential thug”? In Dangerous or Endangered?, Jennifer Tilton considers the ways in which children are increasingly viewed as dangerous and yet, simultaneously, as endangered and in need of protection by the state.
Tilton draws on three years of ethnographic research in Oakland, California, one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities, to examine how debates over the nature and needs of young people have fundamentally reshaped politics, transforming ideas of citizenship and the state in contemporary America. As parents and neighborhood activists have worked to save and discipline young people, they have often inadvertently reinforced privatized models of childhood and urban space, clearing the streets of children, who are encouraged to stay at home or in supervised after-school programs. Youth activists protest these attempts, demanding a right to the city and expanded rights of citizenship.
Dangerous or Endangered? pays careful attention to the intricate connections between fears of other people’s kids and fears for our own kids in order to explore the complex racial, class, and gender divides in contemporary American cities.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2010; 203p.

By Carl Gutierrez-Jones

The beating of Rodney King, the killing of Amadou Diallo, and the LAPD Rampart Scandal: these events have been interpreted by the courts, the media and the public in dramatically conflicting ways. Critical Race Narratives examines what is at stake in these conflicts and, in so doing, rethinks racial strife in the United States as a highly-charged struggle over different methods of reading and writing. Focusing in particular on the practice and theorization of narrative strategies, Gutiérrez-Jones engages many of the most influential texts in the recent race debates including The Bell Curve, America in Black and White, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, and The Mismeasure of Man. In the process, Critical Race Narratives pursues key questions posed by the texts as they work within, or against, disciplinary expectations: can critical engagements with narrative enable a more democratic dialogue regarding race? what promise does such experimentation hold for working through the traumatic legacy of racism in the United States? Throughout, Critical Race Narratives initiates a timely dialogue between race-focused narrative experiment in scholarly writing and similar work in literary texts and popular culture.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2001.

By Paul Harris

In 1971, Paul Harris pioneered the modern version of the black rage defense when he successfully defended a young black man charged with armed bank robbery. Dubbed one of the most novel criminal defenses in American history by Vanity Fair, the black rage defense is enormously controversial, frequently dismissed as irresponsible, nothing less than a harbinger of anarchy. Consider the firestorm of protest that resulted when the defense for Colin Ferguson, the gunman who murdered numerous passengers on a New York commuter train, claimed it was considering a black rage defense.

In this thought-provoking book, Harris traces the origins of the black rage defense back through American history, recreating numerous dramatic trials along the way. For example, he recounts in vivid detail how Clarence Darrow, defense attorney in the famous Scopes Monkey trial, first introduced the notion of an environmental hardship defense in 1925 while defending a black family who shot into a drunken white mob that had encircled their home.

Emphasizing that the black rage defense must be enlisted responsibly and selectively, Harris skillfully distinguishes between applying an environmental defense and simply blaming society, in the abstract, for individual crimes. If Ferguson had invoked such a defense, in Harris's words, it would have sent a superficial, wrong-headed, blame-everything-on-racism message. Careful not to succumb to easy generalizations, Harris also addresses the possibilities of a white rage defense and the more recent phenomenon of cultural defenses. He illustrates how a person's environment can, and does, affect his or her life and actions, how even the most rational person can become criminally deranged, when bludgeoned into hopelessness by exploitation, racism, and relentless poverty.

New York; London: NYU Press, 1996. 306p.

By John Tehranian

Middle Easterners: Sometimes White, Sometimes Not - an article by John Tehranian
The Middle Eastern question lies at the heart of the most pressing issues of our time: the war in Iraq and on terrorism, the growing tension between preservation of our national security and protection of our civil rights, and the debate over immigration, assimilation, and our national identity. Yet paradoxically, little attention is focused on our domestic Middle Eastern population and its place in American society. Unlike many other racial minorities in our country, Middle Eastern Americans have faced rising, rather than diminishing, degrees of discrimination over time; a fact highlighted by recent targeted immigration policies, racial profiling, a war on terrorism with a decided racialist bent, and growing rates of job discrimination and hate crime. Oddly enough, however, Middle Eastern Americans are not even considered a minority in official government data. Instead, they are deemed white by law.
In Whitewashed, John Tehranian combines his own personal experiences as an Iranian American with an expert’s analysis of current events, legal trends, and critical theory to analyze this bizarre Catch-22 of Middle Eastern racial classification. He explains how American constructions of Middle Eastern racial identity have changed over the last two centuries, paying particular attention to the shift in perceptions of the Middle Easterner from friendly foreigner to enemy alien, a trend accelerated by the tragic events of 9/11. Focusing on the contemporary immigration debate, the war on terrorism, media portrayals of Middle Easterners, and the processes of creating racial stereotypes, Tehranian argues that, despite its many successes, the modern civil rights movement has not done enough to protect the liberties of Middle Eastern Americans.
By following how concepts of whiteness have transformed over time, Whitewashed forces readers to rethink and question some of their most deeply held assumptions about race in American society.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2008. 250p.

By Amos N. Guiora, Anna M. Hall and Zev Gorfinkle

When incarcerated for crimes for which they have been convicted, prisoners do not expect to be raped by those entrusted with their care, nor to be abandoned by those who have the power and authority to help. But that is what is happening in jails and prisons across the United States. Sexual assault in female correctional institutions in the U.S. costs an estimated $1 billion per year. The sexual abuse of female inmates at Federal Correctional Institute (FCI) Dublin has been extensive, pervasive, and well-known and documented since the mid-1990’s. This article, based on extensive interactions with former inmates, psychologists, guards, and Bureau of Prison officials will take the reader into FCI Dublin. A “content warning” applies as the article contains accounts of sexual assault and sexual abuse. Through the voices of survivors, prison officials and psychologists the reader will understand how the system failed some of the most vulnerable members of our society. On their behalf, and those that suffer a similar fate, we present the argument for Congress to pass federal legislation criminalizing enablers whose role in these terrible crimes demands holding them accountable.

60 Crim. L. Bull. (forthcoming 2024)

University of Utah College of Law Research Paper Forthcoming

By  Rachel M. Kleinman and Sandhya Kajeepeta

In the United States, any arrest or conviction may come with a life sentence. While this sentence may not be served in prison, it is served in exile from the rights and opportunities afforded to other individuals, including the opportunity to be employed. And, due to the racially discriminatory underpinnings of our criminal legal system, those sentenced to a life of collateral consequences are disproportionately Black. Facing barriers to entering the workforce is but one of many collateral consequences of this country’s system of incarceration, all of which work in tandem to rob Black people of fair opportunity and full citizenship. Formerly incarcerated people and their families are forced into a “second-class citizenship” where they face lifelong racial stigmatization and legalized discrimination. These second-class citizens face barriers to voting and full participation in our electoral system. They are also often excluded from access to public benefits, housing, and credit, including student loans, and may be barred from adopting a child or running for public office. This second-class citizenship is strikingly evident in the employment space, where people with records are stigmatized, legally excluded from multiple professions due to state and local licensing schemes, and excluded from hiring opportunities by both public and private employers because of overly broad policies banning applicants with criminal records.

New York: NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2023. 20p.

By Cara McClellan with data analysis by Megan Gall

Across the country, large numbers of Black students are pushed out of the classroom and into the juvenile or criminal justice system through the school-to-prison pipeline. National data on school-based arrests and referrals to law enforcement reveals that Black and Latinx students are disproportionately targeted for harsh punishment. Moreover, national data shows that Black girls are the fastest-growing demographic affected by school discipline, arrests, and referrals to the juvenile justice system. For Black girls, the pathways to the juvenile justice system disproportionately involve unaddressed social-emotional needs at school. Despite this reality, students’ educational experiences are often left out of conversations about juvenile or criminal justice reform—in particular, the experiences of Black girls in schools. Baltimore is beginning a substantial effort to reform policing and its criminal justice system. Still, the experiences of Black girls in Baltimore City Public School System (“BCPSS”)—and the pathways that lead to their involvement with the justice systems—have been largely overlooked in this process.

New York: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2024. 48p.

By Kesha Moore

Under the Constitution, people are granted the presumption of innocence and the right to liberty if they have not been convicted of a crime. Pretrial incarceration runs directly against these bedrock constitutional principles. While money bail and pretrial detention are intended to ensure court appearances and protect public safety, the evidence shows that this system is an ineffective and discriminatory approach to accomplishing these goals. Money bail creates a two-tiered justice system: those with money can buy their way to freedom, while those without money are made to languish in jail. The U.S. incarcerates close to half a million individuals who have not been convicted of a crime but are denied freedom because they cannot afford to pay bail. The racial biases embedded in our criminal legal system, and by extension the money bail regime, cause pretrial incarceration to disproportionately harm Black and Latinx people. “Pretrial Justice Without Money Bail or Risk Assessments, Principles for Racially Just Bail Reform” details the issues with the current U.S. money bail system through a racial justice lens and provides principles for comprehensive bail reform that both lowers the number of individuals in jail and diminishes the racial disparities in pretrial incarceration.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2024. 21p.

By Corine Tachtiris

Translation and Race brings together translation studies with critical race studies for a long-overdue reckoning with race and racism in translation theory and practice. This book explores the "unbearable whiteness of translation" in the West that excludes scholars and translators of color from the field and also upholds racial inequities more broadly. Outlining relevant concepts from critical race studies, Translation and Race demonstrates how norms of translation theory and practice in the West actually derive from ideas rooted in white supremacy and other forms of racism. Chapters explore translation’s role in historical processes of racialization, racial capitalism and intellectual property, identity politics and Black translation praxis, the globalization of critical race studies, and ethical strategies for translating racist discourse. Beyond attempts to diversify the field of translation studies and the literary translation profession, this book ultimately calls for a radical transformation of translation theory and practice. This book is crucial reading for advanced students and scholars in translation studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and related areas, as well as for practicing translators.

London: Routledge. 2024, 188pg

Edited by  Lia Kent, Joanne Wallis and Claire Cronin

"Over the last two decades, civil society has helped catalyse responses to the legacies of violent conflicts and oppressive political regimes in Asia and the Pacific. Civil society has advocated for the establishment of criminal trials and truth commissions, monitored their operations and pushed for take-up of their recommendations. It has also initiated community-based transitional justice responses. Yet, there has been little in-depth examination of the breadth and diversity of these roles. This book addresses this gap by analysing the heterogeneity of civil society transitional justice activity in Asia and the Pacific. Based upon empirically grounded case studies of Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bougainville, Solomon Islands and Fiji, this book illustrates that civil society actors can have different – and sometimes competing – priorities, resources and approaches to transitional justice. Their work is also underpinned by diverse understandings of ‘justice’. By reflecting on the richness of this activity, this book advances contemporary debates about transitional justice and civil society. It will also be a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners working on Asia and the Pacific."

Canberra: ANU Press The Australian National University. 2019, 258pg

By Bennett Clifford

Abstract:

After a five-year period between 2014 and 2019 in which the frequency and lethality of domestic terrorism incidents in the United States substantially increased, federal counterterrorism authorities now view domestic violent extremism (DVE) as the foremost terrorist threat facing the country. In March 2021, the Office for the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment that the “most lethal domestic violent extremist threat[s]” to the United States were racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVE).1 This assessment mirrored similar findings by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) during the past half-decade, all of which point to RMVE as the principal domestic terrorism threat to the United States. Responding to RMVE-inspired terrorists will require a close, data-driven assessment of the nature and scope of the threat. To this end, this report evaluates 40 cases of individuals charged in United States federal courts between 2014 and 2019, who are alleged to have planned or conducted violent attacks in the United States in furtherance of RMVE causes or ideologies. By evaluating the demographic, ideological, and organizational backgrounds of the perpetrators, as well as their attack-planning methods and processes, this report evaluates the successes and failures of federal law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting RMVE attack planners. The report finds:

• RMVE attack planners in the U.S. had a wide range of demographic backgrounds, but tended to be older than other categories of violent extremist attack planners, and were predominantly male.

• Attack planners’ ideologies were situated across the RMVE spectrum, from affiliates of well-established white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups to members of relatively newer organizations. However, the most lethal RMVE attack planners were organizationally unaffiliated, and despite drawing from a variety of RMVE ideologies, did not have membership in any RMVE organization or group.

• RMVE attack planners tended to target religious institutions, particularly Jewish, Black, and Muslim places of worship. The most common attack-planning method involved the use of firearms; RMVEs also experimented with a range of other methods from bombings to arson and vehicular assault.

• Due in part to the lack of a federal domestic terrorism statute, the FBI and DOJ utilized a range of charges to investigate and prosecute RMVEs. This study finds that the patchwork of offenses used to investigate RMVE sometimes led to failures in interdicting attack planners

Based on these findings, the study recommends a data-driven reevaluation and reallocation of FBI and DOJ resources and staff dedicated to investigating and prosecuting RMVE. It also proposes broader information-sharing between federal, state, and local partners on RMVE threats, particularly between the FBI and local religious communities. Finally, the report argues that a federal statute that criminalizes acts of domestic terrorism, similar to 18 U.S. Code § 2332b, would be most applicable to prosecutions of attack planning cases involving RMVEs.

Washington, DC: Program on Extremism, George Washington University; and National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center, 2021. 37p.

By Jonathan Collins

Major social media platforms have recently taken a more proactive stand against harmful far-right content and pandemic-related disinformation on their sites. However, these actions have catalysed the growth of fringe online social networks for participants seeking right-wing content, safe havens, and unhindered communication channels. To better understand these isolated systems of online activity and their success, the study on Gab Social examines the mechanisms used by the far right to form an alternative collective on fringe social media. My analysis showcases how these online communities are built by perpetuating meso-level identity-building narratives. By examining Gab’s emphasis on creating its lasting community base, the work offers an experiential examination of the different communication devices and multimedia within the platform through a netnographic and qualitative content analysis lens. The emergent findings and discussion detail the far right’s virtual community-building model, revolving around its sense of in-group superiority and the self-reinforcing mechanisms of collective. Not only does this have implications for understanding Gab’s communicative dynamics as an essential socialisation space and promoter of a unique meso-level character, but it also reflects the need for researchers to (re)emphasise identity, community, and collectives in far-right fringe spaces.

United States, Terrorism and Political Violence. 2024

Marcellino, William M.; Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Nathan; Kerrigan, Amanda; Chao, Lev Navarre; Smith, Jackson

From the webpage: "In this Perspective, the authors argue that the emergence of ubiquitous, powerful generative AI poses a potential national security threat in terms of the risk of misuse by U.S. adversaries (in particular, for social media manipulation) that the U.S. government and broader technology and policy community should proactively address now. Although the authors focus on China and its People's Liberation Army as an illustrative example of the potential threat, a variety of actors could use generative AI for social media manipulation, including technically sophisticated nonstate actors (domestic as well as foreign). The capabilities and threats discussed in this Perspective are likely also relevant to other actors, such as Russia and Iran, that have already engaged in social media manipulation."

Rand Corporation . 2003. 42p.

By Jackson, Dean; Adler, William T.; Dougall, Danielle; Jain, Samir

From the document: "In March 2023, internet scholar Kate Klonick wrote a counterintuitive essay entitled 'The End of the Golden Age of Tech Accountability' in which she argues that '2021 was a heyday for trust and safety,' a time when tech companies felt public pressure to take a number of positive (if insufficient) self-regulatory steps. She laments that platforms are now backtracking as a result of economic headwinds and the failure of many governments to pass meaningful regulation while public outrage was at its peak. A few months later, in June 2023, the prominent technology journalist Casey Newton cited Klonick's argument in a newsletter, asking, 'Have we reached peak trust and safety?' The trends detailed in this report will probably tempt most readers to answer 'yes.' There are many reasons to be pessimistic about prospects for improvement. But improvement is possible if the field accepts that election disinformation is an environmental hazard to be managed, not a disease to be cured. Few signs in the near term point to huge gains in the health of the U.S. media ecosystem. Steps can be taken to protect and better support researchers, diminish the prevalence and severity of harm, achieve incremental improvements in tech accountability and transparency, and set up the trust and safety field for long-term success."

Center For Democracy And Technology. 2023. 108p.

By David H. Chae dchae@tulane.edu, Tiffany Yip, and Thomas A. LaVeist

Objectives

Experiences of vicarious racism—hearing about racism directed toward one’s racial group or racist acts committed against other racial group members—and vigilance about racial discrimination have been salient during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examined vicarious racism and vigilance in relation to symptoms of depression and anxiety among Asian and Black Americans.

Methods

We used data from a cross-sectional study of 604 Asian American and 844 Black American adults aged ≥18 in the United States recruited from 5 US cities from May 21 through July 15, 2020. Multivariable linear regression models examined levels of depression and anxiety by self-reported vicarious racism and vigilance.

Results

Controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, among both Asian and Black Americans, greater self-reported vicarious racism was associated with more symptoms of depression (Asian: β = 1.92 [95% CI, 0.97-2.87]; Black: β = 1.72 [95% CI, 0.95-2.49]) and anxiety (Asian: β = 2.40 [95% CI, 1.48-3.32]; Black: β = 1.98 [95% CI, 1.17-2.78]). Vigilance was also positively related to symptoms of depression (Asian: β = 1.54 [95% CI, 0.58-2.50]; Black: β = 0.90 [95% CI, 0.12-1.67]) and anxiety (Asian: β = 1.98 [95% CI, 1.05-2.91]; Black: β = 1.64 [95% CI, 0.82-2.45]).

Conclusions

Mental health problems are a pressing concern during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from our study suggest that heightened racist sentiment, harassment, and violence against Asian and Black Americans contribute to increased risk of depression and anxiety via vicarious racism and vigilance. Public health efforts during this period should address endemic racism as well as COVID-19.

Public Health Reports Volume 136, Issue 4, July/August 2021, Pages 508-517