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What, if any, changes have occurred in the nation' s police departments 21 years after the Rodney King beating? To answer this question, this study examined findings provided by the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP). An additional goal of this study was to examine how the public generally perceive police and how race and racism shape this discourse. To answer this secondary question, we examined narratives provided by 36 contributors to the NPMSRP site. The following two questions were foundational to this study: (1) What do findings from the NPMSRP suggest about the rate of police brutality in America? (2) How do individuals perceive the police department, and what implications do these perceptions hold for Black men in America? In general, fatalities at the hands of police are higher than they are for the general public.Grounded theory analysis of the data revealed that individuals perceive members of law enforcement in the following ways: (a) contempt for law enforcement, (b) suspicion of law enforcement, (c) law enforcement as agents of brutality, and (d) respect for law enforcement. Supporting qualitative data are presented in connection with each of the aforementioned themes.

This article examines how the conservative legal movement's successful countermobilization of the politics of rights enables U.S. Supreme Court outcomes that exacerbate racial and ethnic inequities while solidifying the privileged position of others in the name of equality. A comparison of two pivotal Supreme Court cases involving native entitlements-Morton v. Mancari (1974) and Rice v. Cayetano (2000)-illustrates how appeals to formal, as opposed to substantive, equality work in effect to support existing hierarchies. At the same time, the conservative legal movement's success provides progressive social actors with opportunities to reframe the discourse. We suggest that a critical questioning of strategies predicated on appeals for equal rights may be necessary to advance the interests of native populations in the current environment, and we identify an alternative way of working for native interests, one that escapes the constraints of equality doctrine by appealing to broader claims of social justice.

I critically examine the eliminativist theories of race or racism, and the behavioral theory of racism, which provide the theoretical foundation, respectively, for the nominalist and substantive conceptualizations of the idea of a post-racial era. The eliminativist theories seek to eliminate the concepts of "race" or "racism" from our discourse. Such elimination indicates a nominalist sense of the idea of a post-racial era. The behavioral theory of racism argues that racism must be manifested in obviously harmful actions. And because such harmful actions are not prevalent today, this implies that we are in a post-racial era in a substantive sense. I conceptualize some subtle forms of racism that are prevalent today, which cannot be captured by the behavioral theory, but can best be captured by doxastic theories of racism. I conceptualize a substantive idea of a post-racial era, and then argue based on such conceptualization, that we are not in a post-racial era because subtle forms of racism are still prevalent today.

political participation;clicktivism;heuristic;online engagement;slacktivism;e-activism;online activism

political participation;clicktivism;heuristic;online engagement;slacktivism;e-activism;online activism