Racial Terrorism

In December 2018, the United States Senate unanimously passed the nation’s first antilynching act, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act. For the first time in US history, legislators, representing the American people, classified lynching as a federal hate crime. While lynching histories and memories have received attention among communication scholars and some interdisciplinary studies of traditional civil rights memorials exist, contemporary studies often fail to examine the politicized nature of the spaces. This volume represents the first investigation of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum, both of which strategically make clear the various links between America’s history of racial terror and contemporary mass incarceration conditions, the mistreatment of juveniles, and capital punishment. Racial Terrorism: A Rhetorical Investigation of Lynching focuses on several key social agents and organizations that played vital roles in the public and legal consciousness raising that finally led to the passage of the act. Marouf A. Hasian Jr. and Nicholas S. Paliewicz argue that the advocacy of attorney Bryan Stevenson, the work of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), and the efforts of curators at Montgomery’s new Legacy Museum all contributed to the formation of a rhetorical culture that set the stage at last for this hallmark lynching legislation. The authors examine how the EJI uses spaces of remembrance to confront audiences with race-conscious messages and measure to what extent those messages are successful.

How the Equal Justice Initiative, the Legacy Museum, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice confront racial violence in America.

The Oklahoma City bombing, intentional crashing of airliners on September 11, 2001, and anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 have made Americans acutely aware of the impacts of terrorism. These events and continued threats of terrorism have raised questions about the impact on the psychological health of the nation and how well the public health infrastructure is able to meet the psychological needs that will likely result. Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism highlights some of the critical issues in responding to the psychological needs that result from terrorism and provides possible options for intervention. The committee offers an example for a public health strategy that may serve as a base from which plans to prevent and respond to the psychological consequences of a variety of terrorism events can be formulated. The report includes recommendations for the training and education of service providers, ensuring appropriate guidelines for the protection of service providers, and developing public health surveillance for preevent, event, and postevent factors related to psychological consequences.

Tenth Anniversary Expanded Edition Ten years on, Jasbir K. Puar’s pathbreaking Terrorist Assemblages remains one of the most influential queer theory texts and continues to reverberate across multiple political landscapes, activist projects, and scholarly pursuits. Puar argues that configurations of sexuality, race, gender, nation, class, and ethnicity are realigning in relation to contemporary forces of securitization, counterterrorism, and nationalism. She examines how liberal politics incorporate certain queer subjects into the fold of the nation-state, shifting queers from their construction as figures of death to subjects tied to ideas of life and productivity. This tenuous inclusion of some queer subjects depends, however, on the production of populations of Orientalized terrorist bodies. Heteronormative ideologies that the U.S. nation-state has long relied on are now accompanied by what Puar calls homonationalism—a fusing of homosexuality to U.S. pro-war, pro-imperialist agendas. As a concept and tool of biopolitical management, homonationalism is here to stay. Puar’s incisive analyses of feminist and queer responses to the Abu Ghraib photographs, the decriminalization of sodomy in the wake of the Patriot Act, and the profiling of Sikh Americans and South Asian diasporic queers are not instances of a particular historical moment; rather, they are reflective of the dynamics saturating power, sexuality, race, and politics today. This Tenth Anniversary Expanded Edition features a new foreword by Tavia Nyong’o and a postscript by Puar entitled “Homonationalism in Trump Times.” Nyong’o and Puar recontextualize the book in light of the current political moment while reposing its original questions to illuminate how Puar’s interventions are even more vital and necessary than ever.

The last six words in the Pledge of Allegiance, “With liberty and justice for all,” continue to ring hollow for many Americans and will continue to do so until it becomes clear to all Americans that it is as difficult for the African American community to see justice in the continued murders of unarmed black men at the hands of men and women in blue as it was for white America to see justice in the acquittal of O. J. Simpson in the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson twenty-plus years ago. Silent Terrorism, A Look at American Racism and Hypocrisy was written in hopes of opening dialogue and stimulating conversation about race in America. I have been blessed to travel to many countries outside the United States of America, giving me a very good understanding and appreciation of the benefits of being born a citizen of the greatest country in the world. As great as this nation is as a whole, as honorable as its ideals are, the founding fathers left huge holes in its foundation related to race and racism which continue to divide our nation today. The tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by racist men in our society today differ from those of their forefathers. Their TTPs continue to evolve, change and are embedded in every facet of our lives, our justice system and our government which, from its inception, has been a state sponsor of terrorism (racism) within its borders. One can argue that many of the atrocities committed by the founding fathers and other immigrants from Great Britain were necessary to establish and build this nation; that excuse cannot be used to explain the continued racism, voter disenfranchisement, repealing of the Voting Rights Act, many of today's laws, and a grand jury system that continues to allow for the murders of unarmed black Americans. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, said “most of the black scientists in this country do not come from the most advanced schools” and black students do better at “slower tracked schools.” Scalia continued to express his racist views from the bench when he said students of color are being “pushed into schools that are too advanced for them” due to race-conscious affirmative action policies.

The first major qualitative study of “countering violent extremism” in key U.S. cities Suspect Communities is a powerful reassessment of the U.S. government’s “countering violent extremism” (CVE) program that has arisen in major cities across the United States since 2011. Drawing on an interpretive qualitative study, it examines how the concept behind CVEaimed at combating homegrown terrorism by engaging Muslim community members, teachers, and religious leaders in monitoring and reporting on young peoplehas been operationalized through the everyday work of CVE actors, from high-level national security workers to local community members, with significant penalties for the communities themselves. Nicole Nguyen argues that studying CVE provides insight into how the drive to bring liberal reforms to contemporary security regimes through “community-driven” and “ideologically ecumenical” programming has in fact further institutionalized anti-Muslim racism in the United States. She forcefully contends that the U.S. security state has designed CVE to legitimize and shore up support for the very institutions that historically have criminalized, demonized, and dehumanized communities of color, while appearing to learn from and attenuate past practices of coercive policing, racial profiling, and political exclusion. By undertaking this analysis, Suspect Communities offers a vital window into the inner workings of the U.S. security state and the devastating impact of CVE on local communities.

Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South

Discusses lynching, which is most often associated with race relations after the Civil War and the end of slavery, provided by K. Austin Kerr. Details a lynching in Urbana, Ohio, in 1897. Includes news articles from different newspapers around 1897 concerning lynchings.