Creating a “Latino” Race

Editors’ Note: The author prefers to capitalize Black and White along with other socially constructed racial categories. For much of American history, race has been a dichotomous, Black-White affair where the “one-drop rule” dictated that people with … Read More

A Social Welfare Critique of Contemporary Crime Control

Few politicians ever promise to increase crime rates, just as few constituents ever demand greater crime in their neighborhoods. But this anti-crime consensus breaks down when we map out the different policy routes to reducing crime---and the sacrifices each might … Read More

Visualizing Punishment

Four decades ago, the United States launched a grand policy experiment. The nation began locking up an unprecedented share of its citizens, increasing its rate of incarceration by more than 400% over the period. According to the Bureau of Justice … Read More

Six Social Sources of the U.S. Crime Drop

Each year, when the federal government releases new crime statistics, reporters seek out crime experts to help interpret the numbers. But following three decades of climbing crime rates, the downward trend of the past two decades has left even the … Read More

Beyond the Pop-Psychology of White Identity and Racism

Deconstructing Racial Dualities “It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil; and apparently opposed things—perhaps even … Read More

Movements + Elections = Democracy

There have been unusually high levels of movement mobilization since the last presidential election. Within a year of Obama’s landmark 2008 victory, an economic crisis and political backlash sparked a Tea Party movement that dramatically affected the 2010 midterm elections … Read More

Facebook’s Impact on American Politics

To the extent that political scientists evaluate Facebook’s impact on the American political system, the verdict is that it doesn’t matter much, particularly when compared with other factors like the condition of the economy or number of combat casualties (see … Read More

The Paradoxes of Black Republicans

Recently, in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, Stacey Dash—eternally youthful actress and star of the 90s classic “Clueless”—tweeted, “Vote for Mitt Romney. The only choice for your future.” The blowback, in true Twitter form, came quickly and not … Read More

Why Punishment is Purple

On December 15, 2010, a group of conservative politicians and activists officially launched the “Right on Crime” initiative, creating a stir among criminal justice reporters, reformers, and scholars. Luminaries of the right—including anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, notoriously “tough on … Read More

Diversity and the New CEOs

Twenty years ago, we predicted that only two or three African Americans would become CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies in the coming decades. We were wrong. Read More