Liberation Movements and Robbery: A Comparative Analysis of Uganda and the United States

Both Uganda and the United States experienced precipitous increases in robbery in the middle and late 60's. In Uganda the change came within two years after formal independence from Britain and for the United States the rise came in the period after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In both cases, the offenders were poor, young black males. A major analysis of the phenomenon in the United States suggested relative economic deprivation as the principal explanatory factor. This paper contends that such an analysis both limits the meaning freedom movements may have for their participants and cannot account adequately for the similar trend in Uganda. Data suggest that violence receives a general legitimization in post-war periods and similar dynamics may apply to the participants in independence struggles. Further, studies suggest that the urban robber is characterized by a high degree of alienation that includes in Seeman's terminology—isolation, meaninglessness, and powerlessness. The movements may have mitigated somewhat this aspect of the lives of the urban poor and helped to account for the lack of change in robbery during the struggles. Their termination through symbolic success may have left a vacuum devoid of meaning and purpose, especially for unskilled, poor blacks, which generated new heights of anger and alienation and which, in turn, led to rapid increases in rebellious behavior such as armed robbery. Such a reality would pose a serious problem for leaders who successfully directed a popular revolution and must now stabilize an economy.     

LYNCHINGS,RACIAL THREAT,AND WHITES’ PUNITIVE VIEWS TOWARD BLACKS

Disparities in historical and contemporary punishment of Blacks have been well documented. Racial threat has been proffered as a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon. In an effort to understand the factors that influence punishment and racial divides in America, we draw on racial threat theory and prior scholarship to test three hypotheses. First, Black punitive sentiment among Whites will be greater among those who reside in areas where lynching was more common. Second, heightened Black punitive sentiment among Whites in areas with more pronounced legacies of lynching will be partially mediated by Whites’ perceptions of Blacks’ criminality and of Black‐on‐White violence in these areas. Third, the impact of lynching on Black punitive sentiment will be amplified by Whites’ perceptions of Blacks as criminals and as threatening more generally. We find partial support for these hypotheses. The results indicate that lynchings are associated with punitive sentiment toward Black offenders, and these relationships are partially mediated by perceptions of Blacks as criminals and as threats to Whites. In addition, the effects of lynchings on Black punitiveness are amplified among White respondents who view Blacks as a threat to Whites. These results highlight the salience of historical context for understanding contemporary views about punishment.     

The Century of Biology

If the 20th Century was the century of physics, the 21st Century is the century of cybernetics, biology and ecology. Technological advance has both crossed new frontiers and discovered old limits. Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine broke new ground with his understanding that nature, including its human component, seeks to establish order out of chaos by “self‐organizing,” not only according to pre‐determined laws, but through random creative choices as well that are responsible for the endless novelty and potentiality of being. The technologically‐armed purposive role of humans in the Anthropocentric Age thus takes on a new significance: “What we do today depends on our image of the future rather than the future depending on what we do today” as Prigogine puts it. “The equations of the future are written in our actions as well as in nature. Time becomes construction.” Nowhere is this truer than in the new science of genomics, which touches the soul, and in the effort to preserve the ecological balance that has enabled humanity to flourish within the narrow band of earth's livable climate. In this section we bring together leading thinkers, scientists and technologists of our age to address these issues of mankind's fate.