by Kilolo Kijakazi, K. Steven Brown, Donnie Charleston ,Kilolo Kijakazi ,Charmaine Runes

For most of its history, the United States excluded people of color from its main pathways of opportunity and upward mobility. This history of discriminatory policies and institutional practices created deep inequities across social and economic domains. But we envision a more equitable future in which the policies, programs, and institutional practices that produced inequitable outcomes are corrected and the effects are reversed. Achieving that vision would mean closing four yawning equity gaps between people of color and white people in the United States:  Closing the racial wealth gap would enable all people to invest in their own and their children’s futures, buy a home, obtain a quality education, and save for a secure retirement.  Eliminating racial inequities in public school quality would give all children the solid educational foundation they need to succeed in the 21st-century economy.  Closing employment and earnings gaps would provide all people with the dignity and security of a quality job, the opportunity to contribute to the nation’s prosperity, and the resources to support their and their children’s well-being and future prospects.  Ending punitive policing would make people and communities safer and increase confidence in the justice system. These gaps are wide and deeply entrenched. Racist policies and practices have been part of the nation since its inception, practiced by “founding fathers” and presidents who wrote and spoke about equality while engaging in the purchase, bondage, and sale of people of African descent. These policies were intended to subjugate people of color and afford dominance to white people. Ibram Kendi (2016) asserts that these policies led to racist ideas to justify the systemic barriers that created racial inequity and that each period of progress has been followed by a backlash of racist policies and practices. Abolition and the Civil War were followed by segregation enforced by laws, regulations, white mob violence, and lynchings. The civil rights movement and legislation were succeeded by cuts in taxes— primarily benefiting the wealthy—and federal assistance programs and the initiation of mass incarceration. The election of the first African American president has been followed by a curtailment in regulations and policies that enforce fair housing, reduce inequities in the criminal justice system, and protect consumers from racial targeting by predatory lenders. Looking ahead, major disruptive forces—technological innovation, increasingly frequent and severe climate events, and global economic change—could further widen today’s equity gaps. Moreover, demographic changes are making the nation more racially and ethnically diverse (Colby and Ortman 2015). Although many people are excited and proud about these changes, some fear the change of familiar social roles and ways of life (Danbold and Huo 2015). And this fear has resulted in a tendency to support less-inclusive policies (Craig and Richeson 2014). In the face of these profound challenges, civic leaders, advocates, elected officials, and philanthropists are confronting our country’s history of unjust and oppressive policies and taking action to promote equity and expand access to opportunity. Many approaches, like those that equip people of color with information and tools to successfully navigate existing systems, modify policies and practices to expand access and options, or enforce anti-discrimination protections, are making some progress. Other emerging strategies focus intentionally on the detrimental effects of past policies and offer bolder remedies that more directly address the roots of persistent inequities.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute 2019. 54p.

by Charles Fain Lehman

Since the 2020 “racial reckoning,” there has been increased political momentum behind reparations for slavery. Debates about reparations have moved from the halls of academia to legislatures in California and a number of cities. Americans and their leaders are increasingly asking: Are reparations justified at all? And, if so, who should get how much? This report concerns itself with a different question: Who pays for reparations? Reparations are a form of compensation for historical injustice. But many Americans did not have any ancestors present in the country at the time that injustice was committed. It is hard to argue that Americans whose ancestors arrived after 1860 should be on the hook for the costs of reparations. What fraction of nonblack Americans have ancestors who arrived after the end of the Civil War? Using demographic modeling techniques, this report pegs the figure as high as 70%, including more than half the non-Hispanic white population. These Americans are the descendants of immigrants who came to the U.S. either in the first great wave of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or in the second great wave, begun in 1965 and still ongoing today. Many of these more recent arrivals are at the top of America’s economic distribution. Indeed, the recent-arrival share of top wealth earners is likely only to grow in coming years, given the prevalence of immigrants and children of immigrants at the head of top businesses. This means that the base of people and wealth that could plausibly be taxed for reparations is shrinking and will continue to shrink for the foreseeable future. This dynamic plays out in other areas of social policy. Any transfer or subsidy proposal that is justified by historical injustice—e.g., affirmative action—will lose legitimacy as the population changes. This is an important, and often overlooked, feature not only of the reparations debate but of debates about such proposals in general. great period, beginning in 1965 and extending to the present. This second group, furthermore, is represented among the wealthiest Americans and American households, challenging the feasibility of a “soak the rich” approach to reparations. Even if we otherwise grant the arguments for reparations, this basic demographic fact—that a majority of nonblack Americans are attributable to post–Civil War immigration—throws a wrench into the reparations project. Publicly funded reparations for slavery will entail taking money from tens of millions of people who are not—even under assumptions of inherited guilt that are already wildly at odds with the American tradition—plausibly responsible for slavery. To ask the question “Who pays?” produces uncomfortable answers for those who would like to see reparations paid.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2023. 26p.

By John Jenkins

This paper seeks to consider the question of the relationship between Islamism (in all its forms) and parts of the Left, not just in France but more broadly. It proceeds from the assumption that such a relationship exists and is not simply tactical.

London: Policy Exchange, 2021. 73p.

Kumar Ramakrishna

One significant highlight of the recent Singapore Terrorism Threat Assessment Report (STTAR) 2023 was that since 2015, 11 self-radicalised Singaporean youths aged 20 or below have been detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA). In addition, three of the four cases dealt with since the previous STTAR in 2022 involved youths. STTAR 2023 noted that the youngest detainee was only 15 years old.

The three Singaporean youths referenced in STTAR 2023 were all supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and had been radicalised by Islamist extremist narratives online. The 15-year-old mentioned earlier was also a staunch supporter of the rival Al Qaeda (AQ) global terror network. An 18-year-old detainee apparently went so far as to have planned to declare Coney Island (about 133 hectares in size and lying very close to the main island of Singapore) to be an ISIS wilayat (province). He had also planned to travel to overseas conflict zones to fight alongside ISIS’s affiliates.

Such concern with youth radicalisation is not new. In 2018, Singaporean authorities had already observed that youth aged between 17 and 19 were “falling prey to extremist ideologies” through “heavy reliance” on “social media and the Internet” for information.

There are two observations that can be made in this regard.

Global and Regional Trends

First, youth radicalisation is not just a Singaporean, but a global and regional issue. Terrorism researchers J. M. Berger and Jessica Stern in their publication ISIS: The State of Terror (2015) affirmed that ISIS “actively recruits children” to engage in “combat, including suicide missions”. AQ is hardly different. US intelligence has long warned that AQ sought to radicalise western youth for the purpose of mounting terror strikes in the West – including suicide attacks.

The Malaysian government noted in 2017 that “around 80 per cent of the arrests that the Malaysian police” had made since September 2016 were of people “under the age of 40”. The same year, the Indonesian government estimated that about 101 youths had joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Analysts since 2018 have worried that the use of youth in terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia may well be a “future trend”.

Low-Tech, Lone-Actor Attacks

Second, STTAR 2023 observed that self-radicalised youth, rather than mounting complicated attacks using firearms and explosive materials that are difficult to procure in Singapore, could nevertheless “pivot towards other available means for conducting terrorist attacks, such as knives” in conducting so-called “lone actor” attacks.

This low-tech, lone-actor attack modality has been actively promoted by ISIS for years. A 2016 article in the online ISIS magazine Rumiyah enjoined supporters around the world to “stage knife attacks in public places”, as knives were easy to obtain and “effective weapons of terror”. In fact, it has been observed that the “use of knives by single jihadists is gaining popularity around the world”.

Understanding Youth Radicalisation

Youth radicalisation is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Three key explanatory factors can be outlined briefly.

First, at a psychological level, during the teenage years the executive reasoning centres of the brain develop more slowly than the emotional parts. This helps explain why teenagers between 18 and 20 years of age often appear as impulsive and rash. Additionally, such emotional immaturity frequently expresses itself as a quest for absolute, black-and-white, intellectual and moral certainty.

Hence STTAR 2023 observes that the essentially “structured and dichotomous” extremist worldview appears as “more appealing to the young”. Emotionally vulnerable youth are also relatively susceptible to false extremist promises of excitement and thrills – all for an ostensibly righteous cause. In essence, because youth are in the midst of a “tumultuous biological, cognitive, social and emotional transition to adulthood”, they are relatively ripe targets for terrorist cultivation.

Second, experts have observed that youth coming from unstable family contexts with weak or no father figures tend to possess fragile egos and identities, ill-prepared to endure life’s ordinary challenges. Such youth, as James W. Jones in Blood That Cries Out from the Earth (2012) notes, tend to seek “external objects that claim to be perfect and ideal” and that supposedly offer “that necessary sense of connection to something of value” that can “buttress” their “self-esteem”.

This is precisely where ISIS and AQ propaganda strike home. The importance of stable families cannot be overstated. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, it was found that youth who had grown up “without their parents present” were at risk, as their “personal and social problems” appeared to “contribute to radicalisation”.

Third, youths growing up in subcultures that are relatively insulated from the wider community are also at risk. In particular, subcultures that promote exclusionary attitudes that are “self-righteous, prejudicial and condemnatory toward people outside their groups” may inadvertently soften the ground for future exploitation by extremists.

Meanwhile, subcultures that even passively promote retrograde norms of masculinity, tend to also pave the way for extremist ideologues to later persuade male youth that taking up violence against one’s putative enemies – including up-close-and-personal knife attacks – is to be a “real man” and “heroic”.

Policies Needed to Counter Youth Radicalisation

The foregoing analysis suggests that a suite of integrated policy interventions are needed in three broad areas to counter youth radicalisation.

First, policies are needed to directly foster strong and stable family contexts in Singapore. Ameliorating the societal economic and competitive pressures that generate stress levels negatively affecting parenting is important. Fundamentally, fostering a healthy family unit anchored by strong father figures and role models helps encourage normal ego and intellectual development in youth. This also strengthens their emotional and intellectual resilience against false extremist promises of absolute intellectual and moral certainties.

Second, cultural and other community institutions have a role in actively promoting inclusiveness. Such institutions could assist parents and communities in socialising their young into appropriate prosocial behaviour as they grow up in a secular, diverse and globalised multicultural society like Singapore. The community-building elements of the ongoing SG Secure campaign in Singapore have much relevance in the socialisation process.

Third, a central piece of the policy puzzle must be education. Ideally, whether secular or religious, the education of our youth should aim to broaden intellectual horizons. The core idea is to develop in youth intellectual resilience against the “simplified monocausal interpretation of the world” offered by ISIS and AQ – and other extremists – “where you are either with them or against them”.

Another key aspect of the educational space – religious and secular – is to promote healthy and balanced societal norms about masculinity. The aim is to create mental firewalls against attempts by online extremists to encourage more toxic and violent expressions of what it means to be male. In this context, as STTAR 2023 states, rather than travelling to conflict zones to fight, Singaporean youth should know that there are peaceful, legitimate and more effective ways to support good causes around the world, such as “the cause of helping Palestine”.

Conclusion

The United Nations Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism urges that in the struggle against violent extremism, the world simply must “harness the idealism, creativity and energy of young people”. In this regard, the hearts and minds of Singaporean youth is absolutely one strategic battlespace that we must not ignore.

Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU Singapore, 2023. 4p.

By Megan Squire

Deplatforming websites—removing infrastructure services they need to operate, such as website hosting—can reduce the spread and reach of extremism and hate online, but when does deplatforming succeed? This report shows that deplatforming can decrease the popularity of extremist websites, especially when done without warning. We present four case studies of English-language, U.S.-based extremist websites that were deplatformed: the Daily Stormer, 8chan/8kun, TheDonald.win/Patriots.win, and Nicholas Fuentes/America First. In all of these cases, the infrastructure service providers considered deplatforming only after highly publicized or violent events, indicating that at the infrastructure level, the bar to deplatforming is high. All of the site administrators in these four cases also elected to take measures to remain online after they were deplatformed. To understand how deplatforming affected these sites, we collected and analyzed publicly available data that measures website-popularity rankings over time.

We learned four important lessons about how deplatforming affects extremist websites:

• It can cause popularity rankings to decrease immediately.

• It may take users a long time to return to the website. Sometimes, the website never regains its previous popularity.

• Unexpected deplatforming makes it take longer for the website to regain its previous popularity levels.

• Replicating deplatformed services such as discussion forums or live-streaming video products on a stand-alone website presents significant challenges, including higher costs and smaller audiences.

  Our findings show that fighting extremism online requires not only better content moderation and more transparency from social media companies but also cooperation from infrastructure providers like Cloudflare, GoDaddy, and Google, which have avoided attention and critique.

New York: Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society, 2023. 37p.

By Sarah J Jackson

It is clear in news coverage of recent uprisings for Black life that journalists and media organizations struggle to reconcile the fact of ongoing racism with narratives of U.S. progress. Bound up in this struggle is how collective memory-or rather whose collective memory-shapes the practices of news-making. Here I interrogate how television news shapes collective memory of Black activism through analysis of a unique moment when protests over police abuse of Black people became newsworthy simultaneous with widespread commemorations of the civil rights movement. I detail the complex terrain of nostalgia and misremembering that provides cover for moderate and conservative dele-gitimization of contemporary Black activism. At the same time, counter-memories, introduced most often by members of the Black public sphere, offer alternative, actionable, and comprehensive interpretations of Black protest.

Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2021, Pages 385–404,

By The Anti-Defamation League, Center on Extremism

Since the start of 2021, Texas has experienced a significant amount of extremist activity. One driver of this phenomenon is Patriot Front, a white supremacist group that has distributed propaganda across Texas – and the rest of the U.S. – with alarming frequency, using the state as a base of operations. Two other factors are extremists who continue to target the LGBTQ+ community and QAnon supporters who have gathered for conferences and rallies across the state.

Texas has also seen a significant increase in antisemitic incidents over the last two years. It recorded the country’s fifth-highest number of antisemitic incidents in 2022, at a time when ADL has tracked the highest-ever number of antisemitic incidents nationwide.

This report will explore a range of extremist groups and movements operating in Texas and highlights the key extremist and antisemitic trends and incidents in the state in 2021 and 2022. It also includes noteworthy events and incidents from the first half of 2023.

Key Statistics

• Antisemitic Incidents: According to the ADL’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, Texas has seen a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years. In 2022, the number of incidents increased by 89% from 2021 levels, rising from 112 to 212 incidents. Since 2021, ADL has tracked a total of 365 incidents in the state.

• Extremist Plots and Murders: In 2021 and 2022, ADL documented two extremist murders in Texas and six terrorist plots. In 2023, a gunman who embraced antisemitism, misogyny and white supremacy opened fire in a mall parking lot in Allen, killing eight people and wounding seven more before police shot and killed him.

• Extremist Events: Since 2021, ADL has documented 28 extremist events in Texas, including banner drops, flash demonstrations, training events, fight nights, protests, rallies and meetings.

• White Supremacist Propaganda: In 2022, ADL documented 526 instances of white supremacist propaganda distributions across Texas, a 60% increase from 2021 (329). There have been 1,073 propaganda incidents since 2021. The groups responsible for the majority of the incidents were Patriot Front and the Goyim Defense League (GDL).

• Hate Crimes Statistics: According to the latest FBI hate crimes statistics from 2021, there were 542 reported hate crimes in Texas in that year, an increase of 33% from the 406 incidents recorded in 2020. Hate and bias crime data in Texas and nationally highlights how hate crimes disproportionately impact the Black community.

• Insurrection Statistics: Seventy-four of the 968 individuals logged by the George Washington University Program on Extremism who have been charged in relation to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol are Texas residents, the second most in the nation.

• ADL and Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative Threats and Harassment Dataset: The Threats and Harassment Dataset (THD) tracks unique incidents of threats and harassment against local U.S. officials between January 1, 2020, and September 23, 2022 in three policy areas (election, education and health). Texas recorded seven incidents of threats and harassment against local officials.

New York: ADL, Center on Extremism, 2023. 23p.

By The Anti-Defamation League

In May 2023, a man outraged over abortion rights set his sights on a building in Danville, Illinois, that was slated to become a clinic offering women’s health services, including abortions. The man, Philip Buyno of Prophetstown, allegedly filled containers with gasoline and loaded them into his car. His alleged efforts to destroy the clinic – by ramming his car into the building and throwing a gas can into the space – failed, and he was arrested. He later told the FBI he’d “finish the job” if given the chance.

Buyno was an extremist, intent on attacking his perceived enemy no matter the cost. Over the past several years, Americans have witnessed a barrage of extremist activity: attacks on our democratic institutions, antisemitic incidents, white supremacist propaganda efforts, vicious, racially motivated attacks, bias crimes against the LGBTQ+ community and violent threats to women’s healthcare providers.

Illinoisians have watched these same hatreds – and more – manifest in their own state.

This report explores a range of extremist groups and movements operating in Illinois and highlights the key extremist and antisemitic trends and incidents in the state in 2021 and 2022. It also includes noteworthy events and incidents from the first half of 2023.

There is no single narrative that tells the story of extremism and hate in Illinois. Instead, the impact is widespread and touches many communities. As in the rest of the country, both white supremacist and antisemitic activity have increased significantly over the last two years, but that’s not the whole story.

The Prairie State is also home to a sizeable number of current and former law enforcement officers who have at one point belonged to or associated with extremist organizations or movements. Our research additionally shows a continued threat to Illinois’s women’s health facilities, which have been targeted with arson and other violent plots by anti-abortion extremists. This reflects the broader, national threat to reproductive rights.

Key Statistics

Antisemitic Incidents: According to ADL’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, Illinois has seen a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years. In 2022, the number of incidents increased by 128% from 2021 levels, rising from 53 to 121. The state’s total was the seventh-highest number of incidents in the country in a year when ADL tracked the highest-ever number of antisemitic incidents nationwide. This is a dramatic increase from 2016, when there were 10 incidents. Preliminary numbers through June 2023 indicate that there have been at least 33 additional antisemitic incidents in the state.

Extremist Plots and Murders: In 2021 and 2022, ADL documented one extremist murder in Illinois. In November 2022, a man allegedly intentionally drove the wrong way on an interstate highway and crashed into another car, killing the driver. The man said he wanted to kill himself after being convicted for crimes committed while participating in the January 6 insurrection, and he has been charged with additional crimes, including first-degree murder.

Extremist Events: Since 2021, ADL has documented four white supremacist extremist events in Illinois, predominately marches and protests.

White Supremacist Propaganda: In 2022, ADL documented 198 instances of white supremacist propaganda distributions across Illinois, an increase of 111% from 2021 (94). Through May 2023, there have been an additional 64 white supremacist propaganda incidents. Patriot Front was responsible for a large majority of white supremacist propaganda throughout Illinois.

Hate Crimes Statistics: According to the latest FBI hate crimes statistics available, there were 101 reported hate crimes in Illinois that targeted a variety of communities, including Jewish, Black and Asian American and Pacific Islander. This total was an increase of 80% from the 56 incidents recorded in 2020.

Insurrection Statistics: Thirty-six of the 968 individuals logged by the George Washington University Program on Extremism who have been charged in relation to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol are Illinois residents.

ADL and Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative Threats and Harassment Dataset: The Threats and Harassment Dataset (THD) tracks unique incidents of threats and harassment against local U.S. officials between January 1, 2020, and September 23, 2022, in three policy areas (election, education and health). Illinois recorded six incidents of threats and harassment against local officials.

New York, ADL, Center on Extremism, 2023. 24p.

By The Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society

Executive Summary Do social media and search companies exacerbate antisemitism and hate through their own design and system functions? In this joint study by the ADL Center for Technology and Society (CTS) and Tech Transparency Project (TTP), we investigated search functions on both social media platforms and Google. Our results show how these companies’ own tools–such as autocomplete and auto-generation of content–made finding and engaging with antisemitism easier and faster.1 In some cases, the companies even helped create the content themselves. KEY FINDINGS: • Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are each hosting dozens of hate groups and movements on their platforms, many of which violate the companies’ own policies but were easy to find via search. Facebook and Instagram, in fact, continue hosting some hate groups that parent company Meta has previously banned as “dangerous organizations.” • All of the platforms made it easier to find hate groups by predicting searches for the groups as researchers began typing them in the search bar. • Facebook automatically generated business Pages for some hate groups and movements, including neo-Nazis. Facebook does this when a user lists an employer, school, or location in their profile that does not have an existing Page–regardless of whether it promotes hate. Our researchers compiled a list of 130 hate groups and movements from ADL’s Glossary of Extremism, picking terms that were tagged in the glossary with all three of the following categories: “groups/ movements,” “white supremacist,” and “antisemitism.”2 The researchers then typed each term into the respective search bars of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and recorded the results. The study also found that YouTube auto-generated channels and videos for neo-Nazi and white supremacist bands, including one with a song called “Zyklon Army,” referring to the poisonous gas used by Nazis for mass murder in concentration camps. • In a final test, researchers examined the “knowledge panels” that Google displays on search results for hate groups–and found that Google in some cases provides a direct link to official hate group websites and social media accounts, increasing their visibility and ability to recruit new members.

New York: Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society, 2023. 18p.

By The Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society

The question of who is accountable for the proliferation of antisemitism, hate, and extremism online has been hotly debated for years. Are our digital feeds really a reflection of society, or do social media platforms and tech companies actually exacerbate virulent content themselves? The companies argue that users are primarily responsible for the corrosive content soaring to the top of news feeds and reverberating between platforms. This argument serves to absolve these multi-billion-dollar companies from responsibility for any role their own products play in exacerbating hate. A new pair of studies from ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) and TTP (Tech Transparency Project) show how some of the biggest social media platforms and search engines at times directly contribute to the proliferation of online antisemitism, hate, and extremism through their own tools and, in some cases, by creating content themselves. While there are many variables contributing to online hate, including individual users’ own behavior, our research demonstrates how these companies are taking things from bad to worse. For these studies, we created male, female, and teen personas (without a specified gender) who searched for a basket of terms related to conspiracy theories as well as popular internet personalities, commentators, and video games across four of the biggest social media platforms, to test how these companies’ algorithms would work. In the first study, three of four platforms recommended even more extreme, contemptuously antisemitic, and hateful content. One platform, YouTube, did not take the bait. It was responsive to the persona but resisted recommending antisemitic and extremist content, proving that it is not just a problem of scale or capability. In our second study, we tested search functions at three companies, all of which made finding hateful content and groups a frictionless experience, by autocompleting terms and, in some cases, even auto-generating content to fill in hate data voids. Notably, the companies didn’t autocomplete terms or auto-generate content for other forms of offensive content, such as pornography, proving, again, that this is not just a problem of scale or capability. What these investigations ultimately revealed is that tech companies’ hands aren’t tied. Companies have a choice in what to prioritize, including when it comes to tuning algorithms and refining design features to either exacerbate or help curb antisemitism and extremism. As debates rage between legislators, regulators, and judges on AI, platform transparency, and intermediary liability, these investigations underscore the urgency for both platforms and governments to do more.

New York: The Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society, 2023. 36p.

By Daniela Sime, Naomi Tyrrell, Emmaleena Käkelä, Marta Moskal

The state-induced anti-immigration environment and the normalisation of xenophobia in political and media discourses have led to the increased othering of European migrants in the UK through new forms of social stratification, especially since the Brexit Referendum of 2016. For young people who migrated to the UK as children from Central and Eastern Europe, Brexit has represented a major rupture in the process of their identity formation, adding new insecurities in the context of increasingly uncertain rights. Based on a survey with 1,120 young people aged 12–18 who identified as Central or Eastern European migrants, followed by focus groups and case studies, we report on young migrants’ everyday experiences of xenophobia and racialisation. We explore the coping and resistance strategies young people used to integrate themselves in these racialized hierarchies. Drawing on insights from emergent theories of racialisation and whiteness, we add new evidence on the direct consequences of these experiences of marginalisation on young people’s sense of belonging and their own attitudes towards other ethnic groups.

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES2022, VOL. 48, NO. 19, 4527–4546

By Chandra Childers

Summary: Southern politicians claim that “business-friendly” policies lead to an abundance of jobs and economic prosperity for all Southerners. The data actually show a grim economic reality.

Key findings

The share of prime-age workers (ages 25–54) who have a job is lower than the national average in most Southern states.

• Median earnings in nine Southern states are among the lowest in the nation, even after adjusting for lower cost of living in the South.

• Poverty rates in most Southern states are above the national average. In Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly 1 in 5 residents live in poverty.

• The child poverty rate in the South is 20.9%—higher than in any other region.

These statistics reflect an anti-worker economic model whose signature policies are low wages, low taxes, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak safety net, and vicious opposition to unions.

Why this matters

A long history of anti-worker policies in the South—rooted in a racist agenda—has had devastating consequences for its residents. Business interests and the wealthy have stoked racial divisions to maintain power and ensure access to cheap labor—at the expense of working people.

How to fix it

We must begin to reverse 150 years of anti-worker policymaking in the South—starting with raising minimum wages and protecting workers’ right to organize. We also need to enforce appropriate regulations on business practices, reform a broken tax structure, and strengthen the safety net for Southerners.

The Impacts of Implicit Bias Awareness Training in the NYPD

By Robert E. Worden, Sarah J. McLean, Robin S. Engel, Hannah Cochran, Nicholas Corsaro, Danielle Reynolds ,Cynthia J. Najdowski, Gabrielle T. Isaza

In February of 2018, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) began inservice training on implicit bias for its 36,000 sworn personnel, using the Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP) curriculum. A team of researchers from the John Finn Institute for Public Safety and the IACP/UC Center for Police Research and Policy partnered with the NYPD to conduct evaluation research on the impacts of the training. The evaluation concentrated on the effects of the training among patrol officers assigned to commands in the Patrol Services Bureau, Transit Bureau, and Housing Bureau, whose training commenced in May, 2018 and concluded in April, 2019. We assessed the immediate effects of the training on officers’ beliefs and attitudes: their knowledge about the science of implicit bias and the potential implications for policing, and their attitudes about the salience of bias and discrimination as a social problem, and the importance of policing without prejudice. A survey was administered on the day of FIP training, either prior to or following the training on alternating days. We drew inferences about immediate training effects from the differences in pre- and post-training survey responses. The effect of the training on officers’ knowledge about implicit bias was of moderate magnitude, though many officers’ comprehension of the science of bias was limited. The effects of the training on officers’ attitudes toward discrimination, and their motivation to act without prejudice, were fairly small, though prior to the training, most officers considered discrimination a social problem and felt individually motivated to act without bias. Officers regarded the training as beneficial: 70 percent reportedly gained a better understanding of implicit bias and more than two-thirds reportedly learned new strategies and skills that they expected to apply to their work. Nearly half rated the likelihood of using all five biasmanagement strategies as either a 6 or 7 on a 7-point scale anchored at 7 as ‘very likely.’ We conducted a follow-up survey about officers’ beliefs and attitudes and their actual utilization of FIP strategies, which was administered from June through August of 2019, ranging from 2 to 13 months following the training. Asked whether they attempted “to apply the FIP training in your duties over the last month,” 42 percent said they had not, 31 percent said they attempted to use the bias-management strategies sometimes, and 27 percent said they attempted using them frequently. Comparing the follow-up survey responses to those on the days of training, we also detected some decay in the immediate effects of the training on officers’ comprehension of the science of implicit bias. The impact of police training is likely to be greater when it is supported by other organizational forces, of which immediate supervisors may be the most important. We surveyed sergeants post-training. We found that most sergeants view monitoring for bias as one of their responsibilities, and that they are willing to intervene as needed with individual officers. One-quarter reported that they had intervened with an officer whose performance warranted intervention. Slightly more than half of the sergeants reportedly address issues of implicit bias during roll calls, thereby reinforcing the training. Insofar as officers’ unconscious biases may influence their enforcement decisions, and to the extent that officers apply their training in FIP strategies to manage their unconscious biases, we hypothesized that the training would lead to reductions in racial/ethnic disparities in enforcement actions, including stops, frisks, searches, arrests, summonses, and uses of force. We examined enforcement disparities at multiple levels of analysis – at the aggregate level of commands and the level of individual enforcement events. To isolate the effect of the training from other factors, the NYPD adhered to a protocol for a randomized controlled trial that provided for grouping commands into clusters scheduled for training by random assignment. This experimental control was supplemented by statistical controls in the analytical models. Overall, we found insufficient evidence to conclude that racial and ethnic disparities in police enforcement actions were reduced as a result of the training. It is very difficult to isolate the effects of the training from other forces that produce disparate enforcement outcomes. Training impacts might be a signal that is easily lost in the noise of everyday police work. Estimating the effect of a single training curriculum on officers’ decisions to invoke the law or otherwise exercise police authority may well be akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Furthermore, it has been presumed but not demonstrated that enforcement disparities stem, at least in part, from officers’ implicit biases. Though research has shown that police officers, like the general public, hold unconscious biases, no scientific evidence directly links officers’ implicit bias with enforcement disparities. To the contrary, the evidence – which is thin, to be sure – suggests that officers practice controlled responses even without implicit bias training. If disparities stem from forces other than implicit bias, then even a welldesigned training that is flawlessly delivered cannot be expected to alter patterns of police enforcement behavior.

Albany, NY: John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, Inc , 2020. 188p.

Edited by Håkan Hydén Roger Cotterrell David Nelken and Ulrike Schultz

This open access book pays homage to Reza Banakar, who passed away in August 2020, exploring the many different areas of socio-legal research that he worked on and influenced. It begins with a summary of his career and explains how he sparked a debate on the identity and aims of legal sociology. The book is then split into 5 sections: - Theory, including chapters on normativity and the stepchild controversy; - Methods and interdisciplinarity, illustrating how Banakar encouraged socio-legal scholars to push the boundaries of existing socio-legal knowledge through interdisciplinary imagination and methodological flexibility; - Legal culture, with particular focus on Iran - 2 areas of special interest for Banakar; - Law and science, covering topics such as human rights, the right to life, and the COVID-19 pandemic; and - Applied sociology of law, inspired by Banakar’s engagement with empirical research and case studies. As well as honouring Reza Banakar's memory and unique thinking, the book aims to advance the sociology of law by demonstrating the interconnectedness of the legal and the social from a broad range of perspectives.

Oxford; New York: Hart/Bloomsbury 2023. 495p.

Edited by Edward Aspinall and Gerry van Klinken

The popular 1998 reformasi movement that brought down President Suharto’s regime demanded an end to illegal practices by state officials, from human rights abuse to nepotistic investments. Yet today, such practices have proven more resistant to reform than people had hoped. Many have said corruption in Indonesia is “entrenched”. We argue it is precisely this entrenched character that requires attention. What is state illegality entrenched in and how does it become entrenched? This involves The state and illegality in Indonesia studying actual cases. Our observations led us to rethink fundamental ideas about the nature of the state in Indonesia, especially regarding its socially embedded character. We conclude that illegal practices by state officials are not just aberrations to the state, they are the state. Almost invariably, illegality occurs as part of collective, patterned, organized and collaborative acts, linked to the competition for political power and access to state resources. While obviously excluding many without connections, corrupt behaviour also plays integrative and stabilizing functions. Especially at the lower end of the social ladder, it gets a lot of things done and is often considered legitimate. This book may be read as a defence of area studies approaches. Without the insights that grew from applying our area studies skills, we would still be constrained by highly stylised notions of the state, which bear little resemblance to the state’s actual workings. The struggle against corruption is a long-term political process. Instead of trying to depoliticize it, we believe the key to progress is greater popular participation

Leiden: KLTIV Press, 2011. 341p.

By The International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR)

The ten country papers in this volume are part of a project which has investigated policies and approaches towards extremist prisoners across Europe. They formed the empirical basis for our report, Prisons and Terrorism: Extremist Offender Management in 10 European Countries (London: ICSR, 2020), which was published in July 2020 and is available from www.icsr.info. Our aim was to identify trade-offs and dilemmas but also principles and best practices that may help governments and policymakers spot new ideas and avoid costly and counterproductive mistakes. In doing so, we commissioned local experts to write papers on the situation in their respective countries. To make sure that findings from the different case studies could be compared, each author was asked to address the same topics and questions (Appendix I), drawing on government statistics, reports, interviews with various stakeholders, and their own, previously published research. The resulting data is inevitably imperfect. For example, there is a large ‘known unknown’ that relates to the post-release situation. It is possible that many inmates who adopt extremist ideas or associate with extremist networks in prison simply abandon and disassociate from them upon release. Likewise, some cases that are often portrayed as instances of prison radicalisation are difficult to verify. Anis Amri, the perpetrator of the 2016 Christmas market attack in Berlin, reportedly radicalised in Sicilian prisons between 2011 and 2015. Yet there are few details on his prison stay, and in any case, it is apparent that his subsequent involvement in the extremist milieus of Düsseldorf and Berlin were just as important as his time in prison. Nevertheless, our contributors’ collective insight – often based on years of study of the countries in question – into this subject is our project’s unique strength. The picture they paint is one of European countries trying to grapple with a challenging – and rapidly changing – situation, as many European countries had to deal with an increase and diversification of their extremist offender populations, raising systemic questions about prison regimes, risk assessments, probation schemes, and opportunities for rehabilitation and reintegration that had previously often been dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Many of the questions raised in this volume will undoubtedly keep policymakers and societies busy for years. The papers – together with our report – are a first, systematic contribution towards tackling them

London: ICSR King’s College London , 2020. 104p.

By Anti-Defamation League, Center on Extremism

ince the start of 2021, Texas has experienced a significant amount of extremist activity. One driver of this phenomenon is Patriot Front, a white supremacist group that has distributed propaganda across Texas – and the rest of the U.S. – with alarming frequency, using the state as a base of operations. Two other factors are extremists who continue to target the LGBTQ+ community and QAnon supporters who have gathered for conferences and rallies across the state. Texas has also seen a significant increase in antisemitic incidents over the last two years. It recorded the country’s fifth-highest number of antisemitic incidents in 2022, at a time when ADL has tracked the highest-ever number of antisemitic incidents nationwide. This report will explore a range of extremist groups and movements operating in Texas and highlights the key extremist and antisemitic trends and incidents in the state in 2021 and 2022. It also includes noteworthy events and incidents from the first half of 2023.

New York: ADL, 2023. 23p.

By Sara Bundtzen

This paper reviews online gender-based violence (OGBV) as existing within a continuum of (on- and offline) violence, emphasising the connections with different extremist ideologies, including the dissemination of terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC). It aims to prioritise a gender perspective in responding to TVEC so that social media platforms can better intervene in and mitigate misogynistic pathways to radicalisation that can begin (or be reinforced) online. The discussion recognises that the mitigation of OGBV and online pathways to radicalisation requires a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach. Whilst there are steps that governments and civil society can and should take, such as overseeing and enforcing emerging regulatory frameworks and voluntary commitments, this paper and its recommendations emphasise the role and actions of platforms.

Outlining the impact of OGBV at micro (individual) and macro (societal) levels, the paper considers the role platforms can play in exacerbating the risks of OGBV, evaluating platform policies, content moderation practices, user interface design and algorithmic recommender systems. In this context, the paper asserts that researching and mitigating the risks of OGBV can enable earlier warning of and intervention in misogynistic pathways to different forms of violent extremism. Reiterating that any mitigation of risks must come in support of users’ fundamental rights, including their right to privacy and freedom of expression, the paper proposes and elaborates on the following key recommendations:

• Enable API access to publicly available data for public interest research;

• Develop gender-disaggregated and standardised transparency reporting;

• Apply a victim-survivor-centred Safety and Privacy by Design approach;

• Enhance cross-platform cooperation and information sharing of OGBV incidents (including actors and tactics);

• Review content moderation policies, processes, and systems to acknowledge the continuum of violence and misogyny as a vector for violent extremism;

• Apply intersectional feminist knowledge in risk assessments of AI-based systems;

• Strengthen and encourage multi-stakeholder dialogue and collaboration.

Berlin: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 31p....2023.

By Peter d’Abbs and Nicole Hewlett

This open access book deals with community-based attempts on the part of Aboriginal communities and groups in Australia to address harms arising from alcohol misuse. Alcohol-related harms are viewed as both a product of colonisation and dispossession and a contributor to ongoing social, economic and health-related disadvantage, both in Australia and in other countries with colonised Indigenous populations, such as Canada, the US and New Zealand. This book contributes to an evidence-base by bringing together a selection of existing Australian documents considered by the editors to have continuing relevance to all those concerned with dealing with alcohol-related harms among Aboriginal peoples, These are contextualised in original chapters that recount key events, ideas, and programs. The book is a practical resource for all people and groups concerned with addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander alcohol-related harms, both at the community level and at the level of policy-making and administration.

London; New York: Routledge, 2023. 346p.

By Megan E. Patrick, Richard A. Miech, Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O’Malley

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is an ongoing research program conducted at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research under a series of investigator-initiated, competing research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse beginning in 1975. The integrated MTF study includes annual surveys of nationally representative samples of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students, as well as a subset of 12th grade students followed into adulthood from each graduating class. Repeating these annual cross sectional surveys over time provides data to examine behavior change across history in consistent age segments of the adult population, as well as among key subgroups. The panel study now has over 110,000 individuals, with approximately 28,500 surveyed each year including young adults ages 19 to 30 and midlife adults ages 35 to 60. These data, gathered on national samples over such a large portion of the lifespan, are extremely rare and can provide needed insight into the epidemiology, etiology, and life course history of substance use and relevant behaviors, attitudes, and other factors. The current report is the latest in a series of publications dating back to 1986 and updated annually since then, all available at monitoringthefuture.org.

Washington DC: National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Institutes of Health; 2023. 192p.

Edited by Eva Harrison and Meredith L. Weiss

The Routledge Handbook of Civil and Uncivil Society in Southeast Asia explores the nature and implications of civil society across the region, engaging systematically with both theoretical approaches and empirical nuance for a systematic, comparative, and informative approach. The handbook actively analyses the varying definitions of civil society, critiquing the inconsistent scrutiny of this sphere over time. It brings forth the need to reconsider civil society development in today’s Southeast Asia, including activist organisations' and platforms' composition, claims, resources, and potential to effect sociopolitical change. Structured in five parts, the volume includes chapters written by an international set of experts analysing topics relating to civil society: Spaces and platforms Place within politics Resources and tactics Identity formation and claims Advocacy The handbook highlights the importance of civil society as a domain for political engagement outside the state and parties, across Southeast Asia, as well as the prevalence and weight of 'uncivil' dimensions. It offers a well-informed and comprehensive analysis of the topic and is an indispensable reference work for students and researchers in the fields of Asian Studies, Asian Politics, Southeast Asian Politics and Comparative Politics.

London; New York: Routledge, 2023. 422p.