Issues Summary
Do We Need a Common Identity? (pp 19-37)
YES: Patrick J. Buchanan, from “Nation or Notion?” The American Conservative (October 4, 2006)
NO: Michael Walzer, from “What Does It Mean to Be an ‘American’?” Social Research (Fall 1990)
ISSUE SUMMARY
YES: Patrick J. Buchanan, a syndicated conservative columnist and author of The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilizations (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), argues that America needs one common identity. He views attempts to change America’s historic identity as fraudulent.
NO: Michael Walzer, professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, makes the pluralist argument that America cannot avoid its multicultural identity. He explores the ways in which citizenship and nationality are compatible with the preservation of one’s ethnic identity, culture, and community.
Is Racial Profiling Defensible Public Policy? (pp 117-126)
YES: Scott Johnson, from “Better Unsafe Than (Occasionally) Sorry?” The American Enterprise (2003)
NO: Wade J. Henderson and Karen McGill Lawson, from “Restoring a National Consensus: The Need to End Racial Profiling in America,” The Leadership Conference (2011)
ISSUE SUMMARY
YES: Scott Johnson, conservative journalist and an attorney and fellow at the Clermont Institute, argues in favor of racial profiling. He claims that racial profiling does not exist “on the nation’s highways and streets.”
NO: In the report, “Restoring a National Consensus,” Wade Henderson and Karen McGill Lawson argue that racial profiling is an unjust and ineffective method of law enforcement that makes us less, not more, safe and secure. However, profiling is pervasive and used by law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels.
Is the Mass Incarceration of Blacks and Latinos the New Jim Crow? (pp 222-235)
YES: James Kilgore, from “Racism and Mass Incarceration in the US Heartland: Historical Roots of the New Jim Crow,” Truthout (2015)
NO: James Forman, Jr., from “Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow,” Racial Critiques (2012)
ISSUE SUMMARY
YES: James Kilgore, through a study of the Midwestern criminal legal system, argues that anti-black racism, especially in the Midwest, resulting in high rates of incarceration, is determined by a number of factors. Decades of segregation and deindustrialization have contributed to mass incarceration. He argues that mass incarceration will not end unless there is a restructuring of the regional economy along with an attack on white supremacy.
NO: James Forman, Jr., a clinical professor of law at Yale Law School and a noted constitutional law scholar, affirms the utility of the new Jim Crow paradigm but argues that it has significant limitations. It obscures significant facts regarding the history of mass incarceration as well as black support for punitive criminal justice policy among other deficiencies.
Is Gentrification Another Form of Segregation? (pp 236-246)
YES: Jeremiah Moss, “On Spike Lee and Hyper-Gentrification,” Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York (March 5, 2014)
NO: Justin Davidson, “Is Gentrification All Bad?” New York Magazine (February 2, 2014)
ISSUE SUMMARY
YES: Jeremiah Moss, an urban-based writer, views gentrification as a destructive process through which African Americans and others are displaced by affluent whites. He is concerned that communities with a rich culture and stability are experiencing a significant uprooting of their homes and communities due to gentrification.
NO: Justin Davidson, a writer for New York Magazine, sees many positive outcomes that result from gentrification. Among these are economic development, neighborhood revitalization, and improvements in standards of living.
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