Temple University Press Journals
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Prevention of Opioid Addiction
Get PDFAmeliorating the factors that cause and sustain opioid addiction is essential for effective prevention. Accordingly, this discussion begins with a brief review of the etiological components, developmental pathways, and phases of addiction across the lifespan. Next, assessment of risk for addiction is discussed as to the basis of objective determination of prevention tactics. The main prevention tactics are succinctly noted. Lastly, the challenges that need to be surmounted to increase access to and success of prevention interventions are considered. Recommendations that may improve effectiveness of prevention of opioid addiction conclude this article. In particular, it is argued that successful prevention is contingent on shifting resources from the criminal justice system to the health care system
Ennobling the Neanderthal: Racialized Texts and Genomic Admixture
No full textI am interested in the ways that new discoveries and subsequent claims about Neanderthal genetic inheritance invert previous evolutionary narratives. Whereas Neanderthals were once viewed as a brutish and maladaptive discontinuity from the human story, today’s genomic research confirms that at least 5 percent of Neanderthal DNA survives in contemporary human populations. In fact, scientists are now asking whether any Neanderthal retentions might favor human populations. On the heels of this research, new findings from the Slim Initiative for Genomic Medicine in the Americas (SIGMA) seek to link Neanderthal retentions to an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D). As human populations migrated out of and away from sub-Saharan Africa, they became more similar to one another as well as to their “sister” Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestors. Because of the decrease in genetic mutations arising from the resultant loss of heterozygosity, these relatively more homogeneous groups of “archaic humans” became less related to sub-Saharan Africans. My concern centers on how the absence of Neanderthal ancestry in sub-Saharan populations and the claims of the SIGMA group offer new narrative texts for reading racial difference and T2D risk in Indigenous, Black, and Mexican populations. I argue that these novel texts form the latest in a line of historical schemata for reckoning racial difference, specifically in Mexico
Women on the Frontlines: Grassroots Movements against Environmental Violence in Indigenous and Black Communities in Canada
No full textIndigenous and Black women in Canada are disproportionately impacted by racial and gendered forms of environmental violence that are rooted in a legacy of colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Gender, race, class, and other social identities render Indigenous and Black women more susceptible and vulnerable to a web of inequalities that inflict violence on their bodies, lands, and communities. In response, Indigenous and Black women have been building grassroots social and environmental justice movements for decades to challenge the legal, political, and corporate agendas that sanction and enable environmental violence in their communities. This article examines the disproportionate social, economic, and health impacts of multiple forms of environmental violence in the lives of Indigenous and Black women in Canada, including low income and poverty, systemic racism in employment and law enforcement, and environmental racism and climate change. The article also calls attention to the transformative human agency of these women by illuminating their legacy of grassroots mobilizing and activism against the various forms of environmental violence in their communities
Dismantling White Privilege: The Black Lives Matter Movement and Environmental Justice in Canada
No full textOn August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, alt-right/White supremacy groups and Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters came face-to-face regarding what to do about public monuments that celebrate key figures from slavery and the Jim Crow era. White supremacists and White nationalists did not hide their racist ideologies as they demanded that their privileged place in history not be erased. The BLM movement, which challenges state-sanctioned anti-Black racism, was ready to confront themes of White discontent and reverse racism, critiques of political correctness, and the assumption that racialized people should know their place and be content to be the subordinate other.It is easy to frame the events in Charlottesville as indicative of US-specific race problems. However, a sense that White spaces should prevail and an ongoing history of anti-Black racism are not unique to the United States. The rise of Canadian activism under the BLM banner also signals a movement to change Canadian forms of institutional racism in policing, education, and the labor market. This article responds to perceptions that the BLM movement has given insufficient attention to environmental concerns (Pellow 2016; Halpern 2017). Drawing on critical race theory as a conceptual tool, this article focuses on the Canadian context as part of the author’s argument in favor of greater collaboration between BLM and the environmental justice (EJ) movement in Canada. This article also engages with the common stereotype that Blacks in Canada have it better than Blacks in the United States
COMMONWEALTH Forum: Addressing Pennsylvania’s Structural Budget Deficit
Get PDFIn November 2016 Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office released a five-year projection of the health of the Commonwealth’s economy and budget. The long-term estimates were not promising as increasing expenditures outstripped existing sources of revenues. Left unchanged, the status quo would result in a deficit of almost $3 billion in fiscal year 2021–22. Tackling this “structural deficit” is one of the most difficult issues facing the state of Pennsylvania. Given the current political climate it should come as no surprise that there is no consensus on resolving this problem. COMMONWEALTH invited representatives from two very different policy perspectives to provide their solutions to the structural deficit. We would like to thank Bob Dick of the Commonwealth Foundation and Marc Stier of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center for addressing this important issue in the COMMONWEALTH Forum
Race on Both Sides of the Razor
No full textThe proliferation of studies declaring that there is a genetic basis to health disparities and behavioral differences across the so-called races has encouraged the opponents of social constructionism to assert a victory for scientific progress over political correctness. I am not concerned in this essay with providing a response to critics who believe races are expressions of innate genetic or biological differences. Instead, I am interested in how genetic research on human differences has divided social constructionists over whether the race concept in science can be used for social justice and redressing embodied forms of discrimination. On one side, there is the position that race is an inherently flawed concept and that its continued use by scientists, medical professionals, and even social activists keeps alive the notion that it has a biological basis. On the other side of this debate are those who maintain a social constructionist position yet argue that not all instances of race in science stem from discriminatory politics or the desire to prove that humans belong to discrete biological units that can then be classified as superior or inferior. I would like to shift this debate away from the question of whether race is real and move instead toward thinking about the intellectual commitments necessary for science to expose past legacies of discrimination
A UK–US “Black Lexicon of Liberation”: A Bibliography of African American and Black British Artists, Artworks, and Art-Making Traditions
No full textThe Western canon of art history exerts a stranglehold that generates almost insurmountable problems for artists and audiences of Black art. It is shaped by gatekeepers who are committed not only to deciding which art is studied and which artists are worthy of inclusion but also to controlling the images and image-making traditions in ways that are structured in dominance. African diasporic artists have mobilized art-making traditions in an individual and collective fight for “a new visual language” that destabilizes and demythologizes any and all such prescription in definitions, theories, and ways of seeing. But at the heart of any and all difficulties in doing justice to them and their struggle is the very real problem of accessing their artworks, artist statements, exhibition histories, and biographical materials. Working with artists, artists’ estates, and galleries over the past few years, I have put together a bibliography for the benefit of researchers, consisting of artists’ archives, websites, repositories, exhibition histories, statements, interviews, and criticism. Conceiving of this compilation as a weapon in the arsenal of social justice, I have assembled this bibliography as a tool for artists and audiences who are dedicated to heeding the rallying cry of African American painter Winfred Rembert as he insists that we all must go “back into the battleground.