Too often, when America speaks of race, it is in black and white terms. Dialogue surrounding race seems always to position whiteness as the center around which all other colors revolve. Meanwhile relations between minorities are largely ignored, surfacing in our consciousness only when tensions flare, as in the case of Black-Korean violence in Los Angeles.

In our life times, Whites will no longer constitute a majority in America. As a result, Black/Brown relations--and the need for this relationship to be fruitful and mutually supportive--take on an even greater urgency. Yet, this...

Next to the nuclear industry, the largest producer of contaminants in the air, land, and water is the electronics industry. Silicon Valley hosts the highest density of Superfund sites anywhere in the nation and leads the country in the number of temporary workers per capita and in workforce gender inequities. Silicon Valley offers a sobering illustration of environmental inequality and other problems that are increasingly linked to the globalization of the world's economies.

In The Silicon Valley of Dreams, the authors take a hard look at the high-tech region of...

Destructive Messages argues that hate speech is dangerous not only when it poses an immediate threat of harm. It is also dangerous when it is systematically developed over time, becoming part of a culturally acceptable dialogue which can foster the persecution of minorities.

Tsesis traces a causal link between racist and biased rhetoric and injustices like genocide and slavery. He shows that hate speech and propaganda, when left unregulated, can weave animosity into the social fabric to such a great extent that it can cultivate an environment supportive of the commission of...

Consider the horror we feel when we learn of a crime such as that committed by Robert Alton Harris, who commandeered a car, killed the two teenage boys in it, and then finished what was left of their lunch. What we don't consider in our reaction to the depravity of this act is that, whether we morally blame him or not, Robert Alton Harris has led a life almost unimaginably different from our own in crucial respects.

In Does Law Morally Bind the Poor? or What Good's the Constitution When You Can't Buy a Loaf of Bread?, author R. George Wright argues that while the poor live in...

All of us grumble, from time to time, about the ever-increasing commercialization of American life. Whether in the form of overt corporate sponsorship--as evidenced by the -branding- of every major sporting event--or the less conspicuous role of commercial interests in the funding of the arts, America's corporations are a ubiquitous presence.

While debates rage over the televising of liquor ads and the degree to which Joe Camel encourages adolescent smoking, of far greater concern, R. George Wright argues, should be the passivity with which we accept excessive commercialization. For...

Global Critical Race Feminism is the first anthology to focus explicitly on the legal rights of women of color around the world. Containing nearly thirty essays, the book addresses such topical themes as responses to white feminism; the flashpoint issue of female genital mutilation; the intersections of international law with U.S. law; -Third World- women in the -First World;- violence against women; and the global workplace.

Broadly representative, the reader addresses the role and status-legal and otherwise-of women in such countries as Cuba, New Zealand, France,...

The United States in the twenty-first century will be a nation of so-called minorities. Shifts in the composition of the American populace necessitate a radical change in the ways we as a nation think about race relations, identity, and racial justice.

Once dominated by black-white relations, discussions of race are increasingly informed by an awareness of strife among nonwhite racial groups. While white influence remains important in nonwhite racial conflict, the time has come for acknowledgment of ways communities of color sometimes clash, and their struggles to heal the resulting...

Questions of religious freedom continue to excite passionate public debate. Proposals involving school prayer and the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools and courtrooms perennially spur controversy. But there is also a sense that the prevailing discourse is exhausted, that no one seems to know how to think about religious freedom in a way that moves beyond our stale, counterproductive thinking on this issue.

In Getting over Equality, Steven D. Smith, one of the most important voices now writing about religious liberty, provocatively contends that we must get over our...

The First Amendment is vital to our political system, our cultural institutions, and our routine social interactions with others. In this provocative book, Kevin Saunders asserts that freedom of expression can be very harmful to our children, making it more likely that they will be the perpetrators or victims of violence, will grow up as racists, or will use alcohol or tobacco.

Saving Our Children from the First Amendment examines both the value and cost of free expression in America, demonstrating how an unregulated flow of information can be detrimental to youth....

Although the origin of the term -greaser- is debated, its derogatory meaning never has been. From silent movies like The Greaser's Revenge (1914) and The Girl and the Greaser (1913) with villainous title characters, to John Steinbeck's portrayals of Latinos as lazy, drunken, and shiftless in his 1935 novel Tortilla Flat, to the image of violent, criminal, drug-using gang members of East LA, negative stereotypes of Latinos/as have been plentiful in American popular culture far before Latinos/as became the most populous minority group in the U.S.

In...