Library Home: Social Justice Resources: Journals &amp; Articles

Journals

The Black Scholar-Journal of Black Studies and Research Founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1969, THE BLACK SCHOLAR (TBS) is the first journal of Black studies and research. TBS is the first modern Black studies and research journal. Founded on the premise that Black writers, scholars, activists and artists could participate in dialogue within its pages, TBS‘s primary mission has been to chronicle, analyze, and debate the conditions and the emancipatory efforts of Black people, across class, nationality, gender, generation, sexuality, and ideology.
Education, Citizenship and Social Justice "Education, Citizenship and Social Justice provides a strategic forum for international and multi-disciplinary dialogue for all academic educators and educational policy-makers concerned with the meanings and form of citizenship and social justice as these are realised throughout the time spent in educational institutions."
Ethnic and Racial Studies "Ethnic and Racial Studies aims to be the leading journal for the analysis of the role of race, racism, ethnicity, migration and forms of ethno-nationalism. These social phenomena are at the heart of many of the major social and political issues in the modern world."
The Journal of African American History "Founded in 1916 as The Journal of Negro History by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, The Journal of African American History (JAAH) is the leading scholarly publication in the field of African American history."
Journal of African American Studies Journal of African American Studies examines topics concerning social transformations that impact the life chances of continental Africans and the African diaspora. It publishes original research on issues of professional and disciplinary concern for the social progress of people of African descent.
Journal of Black Studies Journal of Black Studies (JBS), peer-reviewed and published bi-monthly, for the last third of a century has been the leading source for dynamic, innovative, and creative research on the Black experience. Poised to remain at the forefront of the recent explosive growth in quality scholarship in the field of Black studies, JBS offers important and intellectually provocative articles exploring key issues facing African Americans.
Journal of Prison Discipline, and Philanthropy Published by the Pennsylvania Prison Society in Philadelphia [also called the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons], this magazine explored prison conditions and promoted prison reform [throughout the United States and often other countries as well]. Its articles and reports dealt with conditions and discipline in prisons, and with the best methods of conducting prisons and treating prisoners. It included descriptions, many accompanied by pictures and diagrams, of penitentiaries and other institutions, as well as surveys of the prisons in various states and foreign countries. Other social problems-- juvenile delinquency, pauperism, insanity, and drunkenness-- were also given coverage.
Sexuality & Culture Published by the Pennsylvania Prison Society in Philadelphia [also called the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons], this magazine explored prison conditions and promoted prison reform [throughout the United States and often other countries as well]. Its articles and reports dealt with conditions and discipline in prisons, and with the best methods of conducting prisons and treating prisoners. It included descriptions, many accompanied by pictures and diagrams, of penitentiaries and other institutions, as well as surveys of the prisons in various states and foreign countries. Other social problems-- juvenile delinquency, pauperism, insanity, and drunkenness-- were also given coverage.
Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict, & World Order "Social Justice is a quarterly peer-reviewed educational journal that seeks to inform theory and praxis on issues of equality and justice. SJ was founded in 1974 and has been proudly independent since."
Social Justice Research "Social Justice Research publishes original papers that have broad implications for social scientists investigating the origins, structures, and consequences of justice in human affairs. The journal encompasses justice-related research work using traditional and novel approaches, and spanning the social sciences and beyond: psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, social policy research, political science, law, management science, and others."
Social Sciences "Social Sciences is an international, open access journal with rapid peer-review, which publishes works from a wide range of fields, including anthropology, criminology, economics, education, geography, history, law, linguistics, political science, psychology, social policy, social work, sociology and so on."
The Western Journal of Black Studies

Articles

Introduction: African Americans, Police Brutality, and the U.S. Criminal Justice System By Clarence Taylor, Professor and Chair of the Department of Black and Latino Studies at Bernard Baruch College, CUNY, New York, NY.
A randomized control trial evaluating the effects of police body-worn cameras Abstract: Police body-worn cameras (BWCs) have been widely promoted as a technological mechanism to improve policing and the perceived legitimacy of police and legal institutions, yet evidence of their effectiveness is limited. To estimate the effects of BWCs, we conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 2,224 Metropolitan Police Department officers in Washington, DC. Here we show that BWCs have very small and statistically insignificant effects on police use of force and civilian complaints, as well as other policing activities and judicial outcomes. These results suggest we should recalibrate our expectations of BWCs’ ability to induce large-scale behavioral changes in policing, particularly in contexts similar to Washington, DC.
Race and Social Justice in Baltimore: The Youth Perspective Abstract: This paper reflects on the social work process that we undertook to provide youth with a voice following the ongoing social unrest against police brutality seen nationally with cases such as Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, Tamir Rice and more recently Freddie Gray in Baltimore. While the larger context of race and social justice in America continues to be discussed by many main stream and social media outlets, experts, and other adults, this paper is unique in that it provides a voice to black youth who were directly involved in the social justice responses of both peaceful and civil unrest within Baltimore City following the death of Mr. Freddie Gray. Using a phenomenological approach, we held focus groups with youth offering them an avenue to open up and discuss candidly their understanding of the Baltimore riot and social justice within the context of their city. Additionally, this paper provides the context for and importance of including the voice of black youth within the larger research arena.
Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health The recent nonindictments of police officers who killed unarmed Black men have incited popular and scholarly discussions on racial injustices in our legal system, racialized police violence, and police (mis)conduct. What is glaringly absent is a public health perspective in response to these events. We aim to fill this gap and expand the current dialogue beyond these isolated incidents to a broader discussion of racism in America and how it affects the health and well-being of people of color. Our goal is not only to reiterate how salient structural racism is in our society, but how critical antiracist work is to the core goals and values of public health.
After Trayvon: Voices From the Academy Respond to a Tragedy This discussion among a community at the University of Oklahoma came from work presented at an event called “After Trayvon.” Several issues about social justice, African-American bodies, the experience of microagressions, the role and responsibility of local police, and the critical roles of history and the media were discussed in a forum with the public.
Who Polices the Police? This article examines discriminatory, aggressive, and violent policing within the framework of structural and cultural violence and offers some observations about the class character of policing in America. It also provides recommendations for improved police practice, including community policing, deescalation.
Healing Inside and Out: Promoting Social Justice and Peace in a Racially Divided U.S. Community We describe how racial identity theory is being applied in a U.S. community through the Heritage Project (HP), a multi-leveled intervention aimed at promoting peace and social justice among schoolchildren, pre-service and in-service teachers, and parents and community members. The HP targets its attention on racial disparities in the school achievement and experiences of children in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. However, all levels of intervention maintain a steady focus on how intersecting structures of disadvantage (e.g., sexism, xenophobia) inform identities and contribute to hatred and divisions among people. This feature of making parallels between the “particular” (racism) and general processes of oppression is typically overlooked in descriptions of the theory. We describe how this feature is essential to an understanding of the theory's relevance to erecting structures that promote peace-building.
A call to healing: Black Lives Matter movement as a framework for addressing the health and wellness of Black women
Three Universities in Charlotte Team Up to Promote Racial Justice The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, historically Black Johnson C. Smith University, and Queens University of Charlotte have formed the Charlotte Racial Justice Consortium to support racial healing and transformation in the community.
Militarization and police violence: The case of the 1033 program Abstract Does increased militarization of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) lead to an increase in violent behavior among officers? We theorize that the receipt of military equipment increases multiple dimensions of LEA militarization (material, cultural, organizational, and operational) and that such increases lead to more violent behavior. The US Department of Defense 1033 program makes excess military equipment, including weapons and vehicles, available to local LEAs. The variation in the amount of transferred equipment allows us to probe the relationship between military transfers and police violence. We estimate a series of regressions that test the effect of 1033 transfers on three dependent variables meant to capture police violence: the number of civilian casualties; the change in the number of civilian casualties; and the number of dogs killed by police. We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 transfers and fatalities from officer-involved shootings across all models.
Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime Abstract Largely overlooked in the theoretical and empirical literature on the crime decline is a long tradition of research in criminology and urban sociology that considers how violence is regulated through informal sources of social control arising from residents and organizations internal to communities. In this article, we incorporate the “systemic” model of community life into debates on the U.S. crime drop, and we focus on the role that local nonprofit organizations played in the national decline of violence from the 1990s to the 2010s. Using longitudinal data and a strategy to account for the endogeneity of nonprofit formation, we estimate the causal effect on violent crime of nonprofits focused on reducing violence and building stronger communities. Drawing on a panel of 264 cities spanning more than 20 years, we estimate that every 10 additional organizations focusing on crime and community life in a city with 100,000 residents leads to a 9 percent reduction in the murder rate, a 6 percent reduction in the violent crime rate, and a 4 percent reduction in the property crime rate.

Historical

Exclusion in Arcadia: How Suburban Developers Circulated Ideas about Discrimination, 1890–1950 Suburban developers changed the policy landscape of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. Prior to the advent of oft-studied federal agencies during the Great Depression, developers shared ideas—first through informal correspondence in the 1890s and, later, through the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB). Among the most frequently discussed subjects was the exclusion of undesirable residents from planned communities. Using the case study of a Baltimore company, this article explores how ideas about residential segregation circulated into federal policy as well as their enduring legacy. After the local experiments of the 1890s, developers often spearheaded a growing movement to professionalize real estate. As NAREB leaders, they tied a vision of discrimination to the institution’s ethical and scientific aspirations. Once the association gained legitimacy and cultural capital, it supplied the government with the ideas that became standards...
White Cities, Linguistic Turns, and Disneylands: The New Paradigms of Urban History