Hate Thy Neighbor: Lessons for Neighborhood Integration for the Post‐Obama Era and Beyond

This essay explores contemporary racial harassment, hate crimes, and violence targeted at African Americans and other racial minorities who have moved to white neighborhoods in the 1990s and 2000s, as described in my book Hate Thy Neighbor: Move In Violence and the Persistence of Segregation in American Housing. The essay details the experiences of blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans who face race‐based hate crimes upon integrating white neighborhoods. This violence is not limited to a specific geographic area of the United States, and is an important factor in continuing patterns of racial segregation. Social segregation and the failure of existing law to address this violence are important factors in its survival. Analyzing the roots and causes of such violence, the essay calls for greater attention to the enforcement of legal remedies designed to address neighborhood hate crime.     

The sexual objectification of girls and aggression towards them in gang and non-gang affiliated youth

Sexual objectification is related to various negative attitudes and outcomes, including rape proclivity and reduced moral concern for the objectified, which suggests that objectification has implications for aggression. Our study examined the relationship between objectification and general aggressive behaviour in adolescents, including gang-affiliated youth. We hypothesized that (1) objectification would correlate with aggression towards girls, (2) gang affiliation would correlate with objectification and aggression towards girls, and (3) objectification and gang affiliation would interact such that strongly affiliated participants who objectified girls would be most aggressive towards them. We also hypothesized that sexual objectification would be a significant predictor of aggression above and beyond other factors, such as trait aggression. As predicted, objectification correlated with aggression towards girls and with gang affiliation, which also correlated with aggression. In addition, objectification predicted aggression towards girls, after controlling for other relevant factors. Further, we found an objectification?×?gang affiliation interaction, which differed from our original predictions. Among participants low in gang affiliation, objectification of girls predicted levels of aggression towards them. Among those high in gang affiliation, however, objectification did not predict aggression. We discussed the implications of our findings for general aggression.     

The Right to Be Racist in College: Racist Speech,White Institutional Space,and the First Amendment

Throughout the post–civil rights era, colleges and universities across the United States have periodically experienced explicitly racist incidents on their campuses. From the hurling of racial slurs at students of color, to the hanging of nooses on campus, to students donning Ku Klux Klan outfits or throwing “ghetto” parties that caricaturize communities of color, these incidents challenge the notion that modern racism has changed to a more subtle form, referred to as color‐blind racism. We place these incidents within a broader context of race and institutions, suggesting a connection between overt racist expressions and the more covert elements of neoliberal color‐blind racism. Through a critical discourse analysis of news stories about these incidents, the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the controlling legal cases involving racist expression on campuses, we suggest that explicitly racist incidents operate in tandem with neoliberal educational policies and color‐blind racism to mark and reinscribe colleges and universities as white institutional spaces.     

Mitigation Evidence and the Ethical Role of a Defense Attorney in a Capital Case

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia. This landmark case changed the death penalty in the United States. In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Supreme Court made it clear that mitigating factors were to be heard before sentencing to ensure individualized sentencing. Every defendant has a story, a family, a childhood, trauma, and celebration—a reason their life should be spared from execution. In a capital case, a defense attorney’s ethical role is to craft that story and articulate it in a way that enables the jury to have a complete picture of the defendant’s background and character as they decide his punishment. Mitigating factors are not an excuse for the defendant’s behavior, but rather an insight into who the defendant is and what has shaped his life. A defense attorney’s ethical duty in a capital case is to argue the case on all legal points and to present a thorough investigation of mitigating evidence. A thorough investigation of all such evidence is required by case law and explained by the standards set forth by the ABA guidelines.     

Adapting measures of social climate for use with individuals with intellectual developmental disability in forensic settings

The social climate of forensic settings is thought to impact on a number of important clinical and organisational outcomes and is, therefore, an important construct in relation to the successful functioning of forensic units. A variety of self-report questionnaires have been developed to objectively measure the social climate of forensic settings (e.g. the Correctional Institutions Environment Scale and the Essen Climate Evaluation Schema), however these questionnaires have not been validated for individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities (IDD). Given the prevalence of IDD in prison and forensic psychiatric settings and the potential impact of such cognitive deficits on the ability to complete a range of self-report questionnaires, it is important to consider the potential reliability and validity of existing social climate measures in IDD populations. This article will, therefore: (1) examine the cognitive, linguistic and response format difficulties that may arise when administering self-report measures of social climate in IDD populations; (2) consider potential adaptations to existing measures of social climate that might make them more suitable for use with IDD populations; and (3) identify important directions for future research in the area.     

Domestic violence,domestic dispute reporting,and police disposition patterns: A pilot study

The data supported prior research findings that, in general, the police response to domestic dispute and violence incidents does not result in criminal complaints and subsequently, no action is taken. Considered separately, urban areas produce a lower reported domestic dispute rate, but display a stronger tendency to arrest offenders under the Ohio Domestic Violence Program and disputes result in action not being taken more often than in suburban and less often than in rural areas. Surburban areas evidence the highest reported domestic dispute rate, the lowest tendency to initiate criminal complaints under the Ohio Domestic Violence Program, and tend to arrest offenders less often and make fewer referrals to other agencies than urban areas. Rural areas have a higher reported domestic dispute rate than urban areas, arrest fewer offenders, and make more referrals to other agencies than suburban areas. The data suggested that domestic dispute and violence incidents are handled differently by urban. suburban, and rural police jurisdictions.     

Book reviews

John R. Davis, Britain and the German Zollverein, 1848-66 (London: Macmillan, 1997). x + 238 pp. £45. ISBN 0-333-67828-1.

Martin Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations in the Popular Front Era (Oxford and New York: Berg. 1996). xi + 268 pp. £29.95 hb; £12.95 pb. ISBN 1-85973-192-9.

Peter Lowe, Containing the Cold War in East Asia: British Policies Towards Japan, China and Korea, 1948-53 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). xii + 288 pp. £40. ISBN 0-7190-2508-7.

David M. Barrett, Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisers (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1994). xii + 279 pp. £11.95 pb. ISBN 0-7006-0631-9.

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997). x + 275 pp. £14.50 pb. ISBN 0-8135-2449-0.

Philip M. Taylor, Global Communications, International Affairs and the Media Since 1945 (London & New York: Routledge, 1997). xx + 248 pp. £45 hb. ISBN 0-415-11678-3; £15.99 pb. ISBN 0-415-11679-1     

Protecting Medicare services: trials of a peer review scheme

The Professional Services Review Scheme, established in 1994 under Pt VAA of the Health Insurance Act 1973 (Cth), is a unique attempt to apply peer standards to review of Medicare services. This article examines the evolution of the scheme in the light of extensive litigation.