Separating the Sheep from the Goats among Africa's Separatist Movements

Currently at least 12 separatist/secessionist movements are engaged in negotiations or campaigns of violence (guerrilla and regular armed conflict) in Africa. But though they are agreed on the need for radical constitutional change, they are not agreed on the solutions. More than that, they rarely maintain a unity of aim within their ranks at any given moment of time, or a consistency of aim over time. It is these shifting political objectives and the nature of the calculations behind them that this article intends to examine. At every stage of the conflict the movements' leaders have to assess the advantages of a secessionist policy as opposed to a separatist (or re-negotiated unitary state) policy. This article finds that among the most crucial factors to be weighed are popular support, state response, international recognition, and personal opportunities. There are important consequences of this shifting of political objectives. It makes typologies based on their political objectives and/or methods of limited value; political support problematic; attempts by governments to induce separatist leaders to defect or compromise worthwhile; and certain elements in the population of the homeland more vulnerable. This is the biggest hindrance to successful separatist movements.     

美国监狱的行政隔离

监狱的行政隔离措施 ,一方面具有预防性作用 ,另一方面又具有保护性作用。因而 ,行政隔离的囚犯可分为二类 ,对于捣乱性囚犯 ,发挥预防性作用 ;对于受威胁的囚犯 ,则发挥保护性作用。始于 2 0世纪 6 0年代后期的囚犯权利运动影响了矫正系统管理捣乱性囚犯的方式 ,实践证明 ,行政隔离是处遇那些需要高度警戒囚犯的一项非常有价值的措施 ,不论他们对其他囚犯有威胁 ,还是自己处于其他囚犯的威胁之下。     

Intergroup Prejudice in Multiethnic Settings

This article examines how out-group perceptions among Asian Americans, blacks, Latinos, and whites vary with the racial composition of their surroundings. Previous research on the contextual determinants of racial attitudes offers mixed expectations: some studies indicate that larger percentages of proximate out-groups generate intergroup conflict and hostility while others suggest that such environments promote interracial contact and understanding. As most of this research has been directed at black-white relations, the applicability of these theories to a multiethnic context remains unclear. Using data that merge the 1992–1994 Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality and 1990 Census, we find that in neighborhood contexts, interethnic propinquity corresponds with lower levels of out-group prejudice and competition, although intergroup hostility is higher in metropolitan areas with greater minority populations. Further tests suggest that these results do not occur from individual self-selection; rather ethnic spatial and social isolation bolster negative out-group perceptions. These findings suggest the value of residential integration for alleviating ethnic antagonism .     

Racial Dynamics of Subprime Mortgage Lending at the Peak

Subprime mortgage lending in the early 2000s was a leading cause of the Great Recession. From 2003 to 2006, subprime loans jumped from 7.6% of the mortgage market to 20.1%, with black and Latino borrowers receiving a disproportionate share. This article leveraged the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data and multinomial regression to model home-purchase mortgage lending in 2006, the peak of the housing boom. The findings expose a complicated story of race and income. Consistent with previous research, blacks and Latinos were more likely and Asians less likely to receive subprime loans than whites were. Income was positively associated with receipt of subprime loans for minorities, whereas the opposite was true for whites. When expensive (jumbo) loans were excluded from the sample, regressions found an even stronger, positive association between income and subprime likelihood for minorities, supporting the theory that wealthier minorities were targeted for subprime loans when they could have qualified for prime loans. This finding also provides another example of an aspect of American life in which minorities are unable to leverage higher class position in the same way as whites are. Contrary to previous research, model estimates did not find that borrowers paid a penalty (in increased likelihood of subprime outcome) for buying homes in minority communities.     

The Image of the Loyal African During World War II and its Postwar Use by the French Communist Party

In 1926, the United States (US) company Firestone Rubber in Akron, Ohio initiated a second practice of segregation in Liberia. The first practice began with the minority regime of the Afro-American settlers over 17 ethnic groups in the Republic of Liberia in 1847. Civil rights were unheard of in Liberia during either of these two periods. This changed when Liberian students travelled to the US on government scholarships, primarily to study in historical black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the 1940s and 1950s. When the Liberian students were exposed to the Civil Rights Movement, they fully understood the injustice of the situation in Liberia. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and others travelled to the Gold Coast for its transition into becoming the nation of Ghana on 6 March 1957. Meetings between King and Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah led to collaborative efforts towards ending colonial racism in Africa and segregation in the US. During the Cold War, segregation in the US and Liberia was a source of shame for both nations. Liberian students returning from the US began “sit-ins” in protest against segregated Firestone facilities. The Liberian government responded by enacting its first Civil Rights Act against Firestone in 1958 and ending discrimination, except in segregated schools. This article shows, however, that it took more than another 30 years for the first decolonisation process to end the minority regime after the Civil Rights Acts of 1958, and to end the original form of ethnic segregation, which began in 1847 and ended as a result of the violent civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s.