Steeped in a Culture of Violence

Steeped in a Culture of Violence PDF Author: Brandon T. Jett
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1648431348
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The Texas shooting at Santa Fe High School on May 18, 2018, which killed ten and injured thirteen, prompted public debate over the causes and potential solutions to this type of violent episode. On May 21, 2018, National Rifle Association president Oliver North declared that a culture of violence is largely responsible for these killings. “The problem that we’ve got is we’re trying like the dickens to treat the symptom without treating the disease. . . . The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence.” This debate has captivated the American media and general public for decades. Texas history is steeped in brutality and bloodshed, creating a narrative that these conditions are still a vital part of the state’s culture in the twenty-first century. But perceptions of violence are often at odds with realities on the ground. Over several centuries, violence has decreased with the development of modern society, but popular perception seems to be that a culture of violence has emerged, and perhaps persisted despite demographic, economic, cultural, and political shifts in Texas. Starting from the notion that a culture of violence existed historically in the state and asking if such a culture still persists in modern Texas, this collection of essays examines trends associated with various types of violence within the state as well as social and political responses from 1965 to 2020. This important and timely work provides valuable context for discussions on violence in the past and for the future.

Steeped in a Culture of Violence

Steeped in a Culture of Violence PDF Author: Brandon T. Jett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781648431333
Category : Gangs
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This collection of essays examines whether or not a culture of violence exists in modern Texas by examining trends associated with various types of violence within the state as well as the social and political responses to violent behaviors and events from 1965 to the present. Texas history is steeped in brutality and bloodshed, including conflicts between Native American tribes (such as the Comanche and Apache), confrontations between European settlers and indigenous peoples, warfare, violence against slaves, personal feuds, extralegal activities commonly practiced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, labor strikes and riots, battles between segregationists and civil rights activists, and myriad other incidents. While scholars have argued that industrialization and economic changes coupled with the expansion of state institutions in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have worked to reduce the frequency and acceptance of violence, recent evidence indicates that the general public does not agree, suggesting instead that a culture of violence has emerged, or perhaps persisted. Beginning with a broad introductory essay, the work proceeds in twelve chapters, each dealing with a specific form of violence. This important and timely collection provides valuable context to discussions on violence in general while providing a close examination of whether or not a culture of violence exists in Texas in the modern era"--

Savage Pastimes

Savage Pastimes PDF Author: Harold Schechter
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312282769
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
In this cogent and well-researched book, Harold Schechter argues that, unlike the popular conception of the media inciting violence through displaying it, without these outlets of violence in the media a basic human need would not be met and would have to be acted out in much more destructive ways. Schechter demonstrates how violent images saturated the earliest newspaper, how art and disturbing images are not incompatible and how the demoaisation of comic books in the 1950s det up a pattern of equating testosterone fuelled entertainment with aggression.

Steeped in the Blood of Racism

Steeped in the Blood of Racism PDF Author: Professor Nancy K. Bristow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190092106
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Minutes after midnight on May 15, 1970, white members of the Jackson city police and the Mississippi Highway Patrol opened fire on young people in front of a women's dormitory at Jackson State College, a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi, discharging "buckshot, rifle slugs, a submachine gun, carbines with military ammunition, and two 30.06 rifles loaded with armor-piercing bullets." Twenty-eight seconds later two young people lay dead, another 12 injured. Taking place just ten days after the killings at Kent State, the attack at Jackson State never garnered the same level of national attention and was chronically misunderstood as similar in cause. This book reclaims this story and situates it in the broader history of the struggle for African American freedom in the civil rights and black power eras. The book explores the essential role of white supremacy in causing the shootings and shaping the aftermath. By 1970, even historically conservative campuses such as Jackson State, where an all-white Board of Trustees of Institutions of Higher Learning had long exercised its power to control student behavior, were beginning to feel the impact of the movements for African American freedom. Though most of the students at Jackson State remained focused not on activism but their educations, racial consciousness was taking hold. It was this campus police attacked. Acting on racial animus and with impunity, the shootings reflected both traditional patterns of repression and the new logic and rhetoric of "law and order," with its thinly veiled racial coding. In the aftermath, the victims and their survivors struggled unsuccessfully to find justice. Despite multiple investigative commissions, two grand juries and a civil suit brought by students and the families of the dead, the law and order narrative proved too powerful. No officers were charged, no restitution was paid, and no apologies were offered. The shootings were soon largely forgotten except among the local African American community, the injured victimized once more by historical amnesia born of the unwillingness to acknowledge the essential role of race in causing the violence.

Vampire Nation

Vampire Nation PDF Author: Toma Longinović
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822350394
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Analyzes how the rhetoric of Yugoslav intellectuals and politicians and the U.S.-led Western media and political leadership framed the serbs as metaphorical vampires in the last decades of the twentieth century.

Roots of Violence in the U.S. Culture

Roots of Violence in the U.S. Culture PDF Author: Alain J. Richard
Publisher: Blue Dolphin Publishing
ISBN: 9781577330431
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Why is there an epidemic of violence in this country? In this book, Alain J. Richard, who has spent the last 25 years reflecting upon the violent tendencies of the U.S., offers a theory: Ever since colonists first set foot upon these shores, this culture has been an invasive one. Working from this fact, "Roots of Violence" exposes the origins and current causes of the underlying explosive rage pervasive in American culture.

Portraits of Literacy Across Families, Communities, and Schools

Portraits of Literacy Across Families, Communities, and Schools PDF Author: Jim Anderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135615535
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
This book crosses traditional boundaries between the study of family, community; and school literacies to offer a global perspective on multiple literacies, from theory to case studies of various settings. The examples suggest ways that literacy practices should be created.

Responding to School Violence

Responding to School Violence PDF Author: Glenn W. Muschert
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub
ISBN: 9781588269072
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Why do so many school antiviolence programs backfire? And why do policymakers keep making the same mistakes? The authors of Responding to School Violence examine the pervasive rise of school security measures since the Columbine shootings, highlighting the unintended consequences of policymaking too often shaped by fear and sensationalism. Probing an array of now ubiquitous tactics and programs¿metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, and more¿the authors show how increasingly punitive schoolhouse dynamics negatively affect student safety and even educational experiences. They also share lessons from past mistakes and identify workable, comprehensive approaches for addressing a recurrent social problem.

If I Had a Hammer

If I Had a Hammer PDF Author: Margaret Little
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774841265
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This book is about poor women, many of them single mothers, Aboriginal, or both, who have defied the odds to become apprenticing carpenters. To do so they have juggled child-care schedules, left abusive partners, and kicked drug habits to participate in a unique intensive retraining program. Through the voices of the women participants and their instructors, Margaret Little analyzes the program to reveal the struggles and triumphs of low-income women. She demonstrates that there is a desperate need for retraining programs that provide real opportunities for economic independence. She also argues that, in an era of workfare and time-limited welfare, such programs are an effective strategy for welfare reform.

Real Gangstas

Real Gangstas PDF Author: Timothy R. Lauger
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 081355375X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Street gangs are a major concern for residents in many inner-city communities. However, gangs’ secretive and, at times, delinquent tendencies limit most people’s exposure to the realities of gang life. Based on eighteen months of qualitative research on the streets of Indianapolis, Real Gangstas provides a unique and intimate look at the lives of street gang members as they negotiate a dangerous peer environment in a major midwestern city. Timothy R. Lauger interviewed and observed a mix of fifty-five gang members, former gang members, and non-gang street offenders. He spent much of his fieldwork time in the company of a particular gang, the “Down for Whatever Boyz,” who allowed him to watch and record many of their day-to-day activities and conversations. Through this extensive research, Lauger is able to understand and explain the reasons for gang membership, including a chaotic family life, poverty, and the need for violent self-assertion in order to foster the creation of a personal identity. Although the book exposes many troubling aspects of gang life, it is not a simple descriptive or a sensationalistic account of urban despair and violence. Steeped in the tradition of analytical ethnography, the study develops a central theoretical argument: combinations of street gangs within cities shape individual gang member behavior within those urban settings. Within Indianapolis, members of rival gangs interact on a routine basis within an ambiguous and unstable environment. Participants believe that many of their contemporaries claiming gang affiliations are not actually “real” gang members, but instead are imposters who gain access to the advantages of gang membership through fraud and pretense. Consequently, the ability to discern “real” gang members—or to present oneself successfully as a real gang member—is a critical part of gangland Indianapolis. Real Gangstas offers an objective and fair characterization of active gang members, successfully balancing the seemingly conflicting idea that they generally seem like normal teenagers, yet are abnormally concerned with—and too often involved in—violence. Lauger takes readers to the edge of an actual gang conflict, providing a rare and up-close look at the troubling processes that facilitate hostility and violence.