Download or read book The Spectre of Race written by Michael G. Hanchard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How racism and discrimination have been central to democracies from the classical period to today As right-wing nationalism and authoritarian populism gain momentum across the world, liberals, and even some conservatives, worry that democratic principles are under threat. In The Spectre of Race, Michael Hanchard argues that the current rise in xenophobia and racist rhetoric is nothing new and that exclusionary policies have always been central to democratic practices since their beginnings in classical times. Contending that democracy has never been for all people, Hanchard discusses how marginalization is reinforced in modern politics, and why these contradictions need to be fully examined if the dynamics of democracy are to be truly understood. Hanchard identifies continuities of discriminatory citizenship from classical Athens to the present and looks at how democratic institutions have promoted undemocratic ideas and practices. The longest-standing modern democracies —France, Britain, and the United States—profited from slave labor, empire, and colonialism, much like their Athenian predecessor. Hanchard follows these patterns through the Enlightenment and to the states and political thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he examines how early political scientists, including Woodrow Wilson and his contemporaries, devised what Hanchard has characterized as "racial regimes" to maintain the political and economic privileges of dominant groups at the expense of subordinated ones. Exploring how democracies reconcile political inequality and equality, Hanchard debates the thorny question of the conditions under which democracies have created and maintained barriers to political membership. Showing the ways that race, gender, nationality, and other criteria have determined a person's status in political life, The Spectre ofRace offers important historical context for how democracy generates political difference and inequality.
Download or read book The New Color Line written by Paul Craig Roberts and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 1997-05-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The New Color Line, authors Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton boldly challenge the affirmative action policies that have governed America for the past thirty years. The authors show that equality under the law has given way to legal privileges based on race and gender. Liberal society is being lost along with the presumption of goodwill that is the basis of democracy. The New Color Line offers an explanation for these ironic outcomes: judicial and regulatory edicts have taken the place of statutory law accountable to the people, and coercion has replaced persuasion. This happened because elites regarded democracy as the problem, not the solution.
Download or read book When the State Speaks What Should It Say written by Corey Brettschneider and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should a liberal democracy respond to hate groups and others that oppose the ideal of free and equal citizenship? The democratic state faces the hard choice of either protecting the rights of hate groups and allowing their views to spread, or banning their views and violating citizens' rights to freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Avoiding the familiar yet problematic responses to these issues, political theorist Corey Brettschneider proposes a new approach called value democracy. The theory of value democracy argues that the state should protect the right to express illiberal beliefs, but the state should also engage in democratic persuasion when it speaks through its various expressive capacities: publicly criticizing, and giving reasons to reject, hate-based or other discriminatory viewpoints. Distinguishing between two kinds of state action--expressive and coercive--Brettschneider contends that public criticism of viewpoints advocating discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation should be pursued through the state's expressive capacities as speaker, educator, and spender. When the state uses its expressive capacities to promote the values of free and equal citizenship, it engages in democratic persuasion. By using democratic persuasion, the state can both respect rights and counter hateful or discriminatory viewpoints. Brettschneider extends this analysis from freedom of expression to the freedoms of religion and association, and he shows that value democracy can uphold the protection of these freedoms while promoting equality for all citizens.
Download or read book Politics of Democratic Inclusion written by Christina Wolbrecht and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issue of political participation has been central to American politics since the founding of the United States. The Politics of Democratic Inclusion addresses the ways traditionally underrepresented groups have and have not achieved political incorporation, representation, and influence—or "democratic inclusion"—in American politics. Each chapter provides a "state of the discipline" essay that addresses the politics of diversity from a range of perspectives and in a variety of institutional arenas. Taken together, the essays in The Politics of Democratic Inclusion evaluate and advance our understanding of the ways in which the structure, processes, rules, and context of the American political order encourage, mediate, and hamper the representation and incorporation of traditionally disadvantaged groups.
Download or read book Working Together written by Cynthia Estlund and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Structure and rules are, in fact, central to the answer. Workplace interactions are constrained by economic power and necessity, and often by legal regulation. They exist far from the civic ideal of free and equal citizens voluntarily associating for shared ends. Yet it is the very involuntariness of these interactions that helps to make the often-troubled project of racial integration comparatively successful at work. People can be forced to get along - not without friction, but often with surprising success.".
Download or read book The Great Experiment written by Yascha Mounk and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-02-07 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Barack Obama's Recommended Reads for Summer “[A] brave and necessary book . . . Anyone interested in the future of liberal democracy, in the US or anywhere else, should read this book.” —Anne Applebaum “A convincing, humane, and hopeful guide to the present and future by one of our foremost democratic thinkers.” —George Packer “A rare thing: [an] academic treatise . . . that may actually have influence in the arena of practical politics. . . . Passionate and personal.” —Joe Klein, New York Times Book Review From one of our sharpest and most important political thinkers, a brilliant big-picture vision of the greatest challenge of our time—how to bridge the bitter divides within diverse democracies enough for them to remain stable and functional Some democracies are highly homogeneous. Others have long maintained a brutal racial or religious hierarchy, with some groups dominating and exploiting others. Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment of our time. Drawing on history, social psychology, and comparative politics, Mounk examines how diverse societies have long suffered from the ills of domination, fragmentation, or structured anarchy. So it is hardly surprising that most people are now deeply pessimistic that different groups might be able to integrate in harmony, celebrating their differences without essentializing them. But Mounk shows us that the past can offer crucial insights for how to do better in the future. There is real reason for hope. It is up to us and the institutions we build whether different groups will come to see each other as enemies or friends, as strangers or compatriots. To make diverse democracies endure, and even thrive, we need to create a world in which our ascriptive identities come to matter less—not because we ignore the injustices that still characterize the United States and so many other countries around the world, but because we have succeeded in addressing them. The Great Experiment is that rare book that offers both a profound understanding of an urgent problem and genuine hope for our human capacity to solve it. As Mounk contends, giving up on the prospects of building fair and thriving diverse democracies is simply not an option—and that is why we must strive to realize a more ambitious vision for the future of our societies.
Download or read book Displacing Democracy written by Amy Widestrom and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, economically disadvantaged Americans have become more residentially segregated from other communities: they are increasingly likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods that are spatially isolated with few civic resources. Low-income citizens are also less likely to be politically engaged, a trend that is most glaring in terms of voter turnout. Examining neighborhoods in Atlanta, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Rochester, Amy Widestrom challenges the assumption that the "class gap" in political participation is largely the result of individual choices and dispositions. Displacing Democracy demonstrates that neighborhoods segregated along economic lines create conditions that encourage high levels of political activity, including political and civic mobilization and voting, among wealthier citizens while discouraging and impeding the poor from similar forms of civic engagement. Drawing on quantitative research, case studies, and interviews, Widestrom shows that neighborhood-level resources and characteristics affect political engagement in distinct ways that are not sufficiently appreciated in the current understanding of American politics and political behavior. In addition to the roles played by individual traits and assets, increasing economic segregation in the United States denies low-income citizens the civic and social resources vital for political mobilization and participation. People living in poverty lack the time, money, and skills for active civic engagement, and this is compounded by the fact that residential segregation creates a barren civic environment incapable of supporting a vibrant civic community. Over time, this creates a balance of political power that is dramatically skewed not only toward individuals with greater incomes but toward entire neighborhoods with more economic resources.
Download or read book Race and Democracy in the Americas written by Georgia A. Persons and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race and Democracy in the Americas examines dimensions of the comparative dynamics of race and ethnicity, with a directed focus on the Americas, most particularly Brazil and the United States. Brazil and the United States are two countries in the Americas that have been major hosts for the African diaspora. Both countries experienced prolonged enslavement of Africans and both now claim to be beacons of democracy for much of the developing world. Both Afro-Brazilians and African Americans have fielded major liberation movements against racism and oppression yet both groups continue to experience considerable residual racial discrimination and displacement. Brazil and the U.S. remain racialized societies though both officially purport to be otherwise.The chapters of this volume illuminate a common search for understanding how race operates in societies generally, and how shapes life opportunities for African Americans and Afro-Brazilians, both oppressed by this most detrimental social construction. The project that fueled this volume represented a rare opportunity for collaboration between Afro-Brazilian scholars and their African American counterparts.This volume offers a passionate conversation between colleagues who have endured common sociopolitical and cultural struggles, but who have only belatedly been able to meet and connect as individuals. Both groups share identities as scholars and activists, for neither identity alone is sufficient to nourish the longings of their hearts nor of their consciences. This volume also represents an all too rare opportunity to give voice and expression to the work of Afro-Brazilian scholars.Volume 9 of the National Political Science Review also carries a special tribute to Mack Henry Jones, a senior black political scientist retiring from Atlanta University and honors Jones's legacy and continues his quest for understanding the nature and intricacies of oppression and possible paths to liberatio
Download or read book Discrimination Jobs and Politics written by Paul Burstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-02-28 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout this impressive and controversial account of the fight against job discrimination in the United States, Paul Burstein poses searching questions. Why did Congress adopt EEO legislation in the sixties and seventies? Has that legislation made a difference to the people it was intended to help? And what can the struggle for equal employment opportunity tell us about democracy in the United States? "This is an important, well-researched book. . . . Burstein has had the courage to break through narrow specializations within sociology . . . and even to address the types of acceptable questions usually associated with three different disciplines (political science, sociology, and economics). . . . This book should be read by all professionals interested in political sociology and social movements."—Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Social Forces "Discrimination, Jobs and Politics [is] satisfying because it tells a more complete story . . . than does most sociological research. . . . I find myself returning to it when I'm studying the U.S. women's movement and recommending it to students struggling to do coherent research."—Rachel Rosenfeld, Contemporary Sociology
Download or read book Challenging the Status Quo written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the Status Quo offers the latest cutting-edge scholarship in the subfield of sociology of diversity and inclusion.
Download or read book The Abolition of White Democracy written by Joel Olson and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Racial discrimination embodies inequality, exclusion, and injustice and as such has no place in a democratic society. And yet racial matters pervade nearly every aspect of American life, influencing where we live, what schools we attend, the friends we make, the votes we cast, the opportunities we enjoy, and even the television shows we watch. Joel Olson contends that, given the history of slavery and segregation in the United States, American citizenship is a form of racial privilege in which whites are equal to each other but superior to everyone else. In Olson's analysis we see how the tension in this equation produces a passive form of democracy that discourages extensive participation in politics because it treats citizenship as an identity to possess rather than as a source of empowerment. Olson traces this tension and its disenfranchising effects from the colonial era to our own, demonstrating how, after the civil rights movement, whiteness has become less a form of standing and more a norm that cements while advantages in the ordinary operations of modern society. To break this pattern, Olson suggests an "abolitionist-democratic" political theory that makes the fight against racial discrimination a prerequisite for expanding democratic participation.
Download or read book Discriminating Data written by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How big data and machine learning encode discrimination and create agitated clusters of comforting rage. In Discriminating Data, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun reveals how polarization is a goal—not an error—within big data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Correlation, which grounds big data’s predictive potential, stems from twentieth-century eugenic attempts to “breed” a better future. Recommender systems foster angry clusters of sameness through homophily. Users are “trained” to become authentically predictable via a politics and technology of recognition. Machine learning and data analytics thus seek to disrupt the future by making disruption impossible. Chun, who has a background in systems design engineering as well as media studies and cultural theory, explains that although machine learning algorithms may not officially include race as a category, they embed whiteness as a default. Facial recognition technology, for example, relies on the faces of Hollywood celebrities and university undergraduates—groups not famous for their diversity. Homophily emerged as a concept to describe white U.S. resident attitudes to living in biracial yet segregated public housing. Predictive policing technology deploys models trained on studies of predominantly underserved neighborhoods. Trained on selected and often discriminatory or dirty data, these algorithms are only validated if they mirror this data. How can we release ourselves from the vice-like grip of discriminatory data? Chun calls for alternative algorithms, defaults, and interdisciplinary coalitions in order to desegregate networks and foster a more democratic big data.
Download or read book Discriminating Democracy written by Emmanuelle Sandrine Chapin and published by Stanford University. This book was released on 2011 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dissertation analyzes the projects of popular theater devised by the republican governments and assemblies, 1878 to 1893, in order to understand the conflicted point of view of republicans with regard to the democratization of art. In the 1880s, the four state-subsidized theaters (the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, the Comédie-Française, and the Odéon) had a very select audience. Yet, republicans were divided on the issue of its diversification. On the one hand, the purportedly inferior moral capacities of the popular public made dramatic performances hazardous without a prior education of its will. On the other hand, it was fair to let people who paid for the upkeep of state-subsidized theaters access these institutions and to fulfill the wish of a significant part of the population to acquaint themselves with high-brow culture. The successive projects of popular theater represent the various solutions imagined by republican governments to reconcile two contradictory impulses, democratization and discrimination. They show how a culture of prejudices, inherited from previous regimes, progressively came to terms with a new conception of justice, more respectful of individuals' autonomy and sovereignty. At the end of the 1870s, the minister of public instruction and fine arts Agénor Bardoux denied that the state had any responsibility to democratize art. He variously argued that democratization happened spontaneously or that the artistic mission of the state did not include the dissemination of works. Jules Ferry believed that the state owed a theater to the lower classes, but, convinced that lower classes were inferior in their aptitudes, he imagined a popular lyric theater that would be the pale copy of the Opéra. Finally, Léon Bourgeois accepted the director of the Opéra's proposition that the institution should organize reduced-price performances. Bourgeois thought it more conducive to social peace to promote a common culture than to cultivate separate class identities. In his mind, the difference between the people and the elite should consist in their respective degrees of exposure to high-brow culture. The study of theatrical democratization in the 1880s shows that French republicans abided by two principles of government. One, which reflected the republicans' universalist credo, advocated the equal treatment of individuals by virtue of their equal rights. The other, inspired by utilitarian tenets, defended the differentiated treatment of individuals on the grounds of their unequal aptitudes. This dissertation argues that the ambiguity of the notion of merit in the republicans' discourse (did it lie in the essence of a social group or was it the result of individuals' actions?) informed a tension between the desire to extend liberties and democratize elite practices, on the one hand, and the perceived necessity to control activities and discriminate against the people, on the other.
Download or read book Democracy in Black written by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. and published by Crown. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful polemic on the state of black America that savages the idea of a post-racial society. America’s great promise of equality has always rung hollow in the ears of African Americans. But today the situation has grown even more dire. From the murders of black youth by the police, to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, to the disaster visited upon poor and middle-class black families by the Great Recession, it is clear that black America faces an emergency—at the very moment the election of the first black president has prompted many to believe we’ve solved America’s race problem. Democracy in Black is Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s impassioned response. Part manifesto, part history, part memoir, it argues that we live in a country founded on a “value gap”—with white lives valued more than others—that still distorts our politics today. Whether discussing why all Americans have racial habits that reinforce inequality, why black politics based on the civil-rights era have reached a dead end, or why only remaking democracy from the ground up can bring real change, Glaude crystallizes the untenable position of black America--and offers thoughts on a better way forward. Forceful in ideas and unsettling in its candor, Democracy In Black is a landmark book on race in America, one that promises to spark wide discussion as we move toward the end of our first black presidency.
Download or read book The Alternative Right s Attempt at Autocratic Democracy in Twenty First Century America written by Chuck A. Baker and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Alternative Right’s Attempt at Autocratic Democracy in Twenty-First Century America analyzes the several significant factors that influenced the cultural environment to move American democracy toward authoritarianism. Chuck A. Baker hypothesizes that growing xenophobia, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 2008 recession, and neoliberal economic philosophy were the shocks that made possible a lurch toward autocratic democracy. Several of the central tenets embedded in fascism like conventionalism, acquiescence to coercion, and hostility toward the less powerful would manifest as autocratic-democratic rule gained traction. As minority communities were made vulnerable, the lethality of police practices against unarmed minorities and the government’s response to such coercive oppression motivated protests throughout America. The January 6, 2021 Capital riots made clear that the far-right was willing to utilize violence to meet their goal. Statements that situated ‘Making America Great Again’ reminded right-wing extremists of an epoch in which racism and sexism were part of the American society’s structure. This book examines, in a sociological manner, the factors that made autocratic democracy palatable to a large plurality of Americans. The text discusses the reason for social change in the middle twentieth century and then utilizes quantitative methodology to elucidate the events in the twenty-first century that threaten democracy through authoritarian practices.
Download or read book The Color of Gender written by Zillah R. Eisenstein and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative volume, Zillah Eisenstein uncovers the hidden sexual and racial politics of the past decade. Beginning where she left off in her award-winning book The Female Body and the Law, Eisenstein takes the reader on a feminist-inspired road trip, traveling from the thicket of recent abortion decisions to the revolutions of 1989 to the murky chambers of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings. Along the way, she enunciates a wholly original conception of individual privacy and sexual rights. Eisenstein brings a range of topics to her discussion: the L.A. riots, crack babies, Murphy Brown, political correctness, the 1992 presidential election, the Gulf War. She seeks to redirect our thinking about democracy away from universal conceptions that mask racial and gender oppression to the specific realities of women and people of color. A respect for multiple differences—as represented in the needs of women of color and their bodies—is, she says, essential to inclusive universal rights. Reproductive freedoms and sexual equality, not abstract notions of civil liberties, provide the wellsprings of a meaningful democratic life. Using this perspective to evaluate the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, Eisenstein finds that the separation between their ideals and the reality of the market system illustrates the failings of democratic theory, especially for women. Eisenstein's controversial arguments will provoke a rethinking of what race and gender mean today.
Download or read book Democracy and Distrust written by John Hart Ely and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1981-08-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerfully argued appraisal of judicial review may change the face of American law. Written for layman and scholar alike, the book addresses one of the most important issues facing Americans today: within what guidelines shall the Supreme Court apply the strictures of the Constitution to the complexities of modern life? Until now legal experts have proposed two basic approaches to the Constitution. The first, “interpretivism,” maintains that we should stick as closely as possible to what is explicit in the document itself. The second, predominant in recent academic theorizing, argues that the courts should be guided by what they see as the fundamental values of American society. John Hart Ely demonstrates that both of these approaches are inherently incomplete and inadequate. Democracy and Distrust sets forth a new and persuasive basis for determining the role of the Supreme Court today. Ely’s proposal is centered on the view that the Court should devote itself to assuring majority governance while protecting minority rights. “The Constitution,” he writes, “has proceeded from the sensible assumption that an effective majority will not unreasonably threaten its own rights, and has sought to assure that such a majority not systematically treat others less well than it treats itself. It has done so by structuring decision processes at all levels in an attempt to ensure, first, that everyone’s interests will be represented when decisions are made, and second, that the application of those decisions will not be manipulated so as to reintroduce in practice the sort of discrimination that is impermissible in theory.” Thus, Ely’s emphasis is on the procedural side of due process, on the preservation of governmental structure rather than on the recognition of elusive social values. At the same time, his approach is free of interpretivism’s rigidity because it is fully responsive to the changing wishes of a popular majority. Consequently, his book will have a profound impact on legal opinion at all levels—from experts in constitutional law, to lawyers with general practices, to concerned citizens watching the bewildering changes in American law.