Author Archives: Oer Project Participants

“Race and Criminalization: Black Americans and the Punishment Industry” by Angela Y. Davis, 1997

August 16, 2019 5:09 pm /

Submitted by: Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Professor, Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Dept of Africana Studies at John Jay College

The citation for where this reading is found: Davis, Angela Y. 1997. “Race and Criminalization: Black Americans and the Punishment Industry.” In The House that Race Built, edited by Wahneema Lubiano, pp. 264-279. New York: Pantheon Books. This book is not available digitally. To check out the book, go to the John Jay Library at Stacks E 185.615 .H68 1997 

“The House That Race Built is the response by some of this country’s most admired intellectuals to the crisis of democracy represented by the recent, ominous shift toward a renewed white racial nationalism. It is unified by a central argument that deserves to be at the heart of the national debate: that “race” and “racism” must be understood not just as referring to the relations between black and white Americans, but as constituting the central American dynamic by which a pervasive, antidemocratic social inequality is re-created, maintained, and justified to the detriment of all. In a post-civil rights era of rapidly increasing economic and social apartheid, The House That Race Built makes us see how Americans’ continuing delusory investments in the privileges of whiteness and the pathology of blackness uphold a social hierarchy that is destructive of democratic possibility. This book’s analysis of race and racism extends to the complexities of within-the-group dynamics of black Americans. How race is defined, and who gets to talk about it, determine how race and American whiteness will be understood and used: either to reconsolidate racial domination or to establish racial democracy.”
This is a library resource available with John Jay credentials.
Posted in: 1990-1999, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL), US / Tagged: , , , , , ,

“Where Do We Go from Here? Chaos or Community”, Essay by Martin Luther King, Jr., 1986

August 16, 2019 3:51 pm /

Submitted by: Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Professor, Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Dept of Africana Studies at John Jay College

King, Jr., Martin Luther. 1986. “Where Do We Go from Here? Chaos or Community” [essay not speech] (1967), In A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. edited by James M. Washington, pp. 555-633. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

The above suggested resource is not available online at John Jay, but is available to be checked out of the library at “Stacks E 185.97 .K5 A25 1991″
Martin Luther King’s 1967 essay “Where Do We Go from Here?” refers to the turmoil in the late 1960s around intense poverty, racism, the War in Vietnam, inflation, violence, and urban decay. The urban rebellions in Black communities forced the nation to confront the problems of racism and poverty, and attempt to resolve them.  Dr. King was optimistic about the future, if we were willing to make changes.  A sharing of power was required, but mostly we need a “transformation of values” and economic justice. MLK’s essay is extremely persuasive about the kinds of transformation we need to become a caring society and develop a beloved community. He also gave a speech with the same title that is not as focused on economic justice.  He based his book “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community”: on that essay.
This is a library resource.
Posted in: 1970-1989, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL), US / Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

“Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”, Speech by Audre Lorde, 1984

August 15, 2019 7:17 pm /

Submitted by: Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Professor, Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Dept of Africana Studies at John Jay College

To read online: “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.

Author says: “Much of western european history conditions us to see human differences in simplistic opposition to each other: dominant/subordinate, good/bad, up/down, superior/inferior. In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior. Within this society, that group is made up of Black and Third World people, working-class people, older people, and women. As a forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself a part of some group defined as other, deviant, inferior, or just plain wrong. Traditionally, in american society, it is the members of oppressed, objectified groups who are expected to stretch out and bridge the gap between the actualities of our lives and the consciousness of our oppressor. For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as american as apple pie have always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection. Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes.”

This is a library resource, accessed using the John Jay login. It is from the database Black Thought and Culture and was published in the “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, Trumansburg, NY, pp 114-123, 1984,

Posted in: 1970-1989, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL), US / Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

“The Impact of Neoliberalism on the Psychological Development of Low-Income Black Youth” by C. Jama Adams, 2014

August 15, 2019 3:48 pm /

Submitted by: Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Professor, Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Dept of Africana Studies at John Jay College

Read online at: “The Impact of Neoliberalism on the Psychological Development of Low-Income Black Youth”

“This paper is a brief, psychoanalytically informed exploration of youth development, with a focus on the often-negative psychosocial impact of neoliberal ideologies on low-income Black youth. Neoliberal policies have influenced the psychological development of low-income Black youths, who are embedded in psychosocial contexts that are often under-resourced and negatively racialized. This substantially constrains their attempts to love and work. There is often a paucity of safe places, identity capital and caring tutors of the imagination that might facilitate good outcomes for these young people. As a consequence of being embedded in such emotionally austere and unsafe places, they often adopt postures that lead to their under-development and, too often, their early demise. The paper also discusses some strategies of resistance to neoliberal ideology and policy.”

Article published in Culture & Society (2014) 19, 39–46.  The library does not have access to this article. However, the author, C. Jama Adams, is faculty at John Jay and posted the article (author copy) at Research Gate. Free to use for educational purposes under the Fair Use provision of the Copyright Act.

Posted in: 2011 - Present, Chronology, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL), US / Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

I Am Your Sister : Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde, 2011

August 13, 2019 6:15 pm /

Submitted by:  Crystal Endsley, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Africana Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

To view online:  I Am Your Sister : Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde.

“Audre Lorde was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life.  Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, and the exploration of black female identity.

In relation to non-intersectional feminism in the United States, Lorde famously said, “those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”

Not available in the Library. It is unpublished. Found on Internet at the MWASI website. MWASI is an afro-feminist collective that falls within the revolutionary liberation struggle movement. From site: “Our group is open only to black women and people assigned female at birth.”

Use for educational purposes under the Fair Use provision. 

Posted in: 2011 - Present, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL), US / Tagged: , , , , , ,

The Life and Times of Sara Baartman (1810) “The Hottentot Venus”, Streaming Video, 1998

August 13, 2019 5:52 pm /

Submitted by: Crystal Endsley, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Africana Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

To view online: The Life and Times of Sara Baartman “The Hottentot Venus”

“A documentary film of the life a Khoikhoi woman who was taken from South Africa in 1810 and exhibited as a freak across Britain. The image and ideas for “The Hottentot Venus” (particularly the interest in her sexual anatomy) swept through British popular culture. A court battle waged by abolitionists to free her from her exhibitors failed. In 1814, a year before her death, she was taken to France and became the object of scientific research that formed the bedrock of European ideas about black female sexuality.”

This streaming video is a library resource, available to staff, faculty and students with a John Jay login.
Posted in: 1700-1899, Africa, Europe, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL) / Tagged: , , , ,

“The United Fruit Company” by Pablo Neruda, 1950

August 12, 2019 9:49 pm /

Submitted by: Suzanne Oboler, Professor, Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

To read online:  “The United Fruit Company“

This poem by Neruda describes the neo-imperialist intervention of the United States, specifically noting the dictators it has supported and the destructive behavior of the Boston-based ‘United Fruit Company’ from which the poem derives its name. The poem uses mock-biblical language to describe a series of tragic events, and the continued exploitation of Central America by the region’s richer neighbour(s) to the North. Pablo Neruda points out to the oppression brought upon by the ruling nations over the colonies in the poem United Fruit Company, the title of which is the name of a real company that used to operate in middle America and basically traded in the bananas. Owned by the US of A, the company was oppressing the local workers and manipulating the government to get the tenders and all, and was making the lives of the natives miserable. With not so good work conditions and insufficient pay, they angered the locals so much that the newspapers of Middle America began calling the company, the octopus.

This poem was obtained from the Internet and is open access.

Posted in: 1950-1969, Latin America & the Caribbean, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL) / Tagged: , , , ,

“Our America” by Jose Marti, 1891

August 12, 2019 9:22 pm /

Submitted by: Suzanne Oboler, Professor, Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Read online at: “Our America”

“This essay was written in New York City in January 1891; published (as “Nuestra América”) in the newspapers La Revista iIlustrada (New York City) on January 10, 1981, and El Partido Liberal (Mexico City) on January 30, 1891.  This is a seminal work of Latin American nationalism, “Our America” argues for the rejection of European and United States cultural values in the forging of racially harmonious and politically stable Latin American nations. José Martí was born January 28, 1853, in Havana, Cuba, to lower-middle-class Spanish parents. The man who would become known as the “Apostle,” and adored by Cubans of all political persuasions was only 17 when he was convicted of treason and sentenced to six years’ hard labor for agitating for Cuba’s independence from Spain. Marti spent his adult life in exile, most of it in New York City, a situation that he grew to think of as his “cup of poison”. While in exile, Marti wrote prolifically for Spanish-language Latin American newspapers, mostly about the United States and the necessity of defending and nurturing Latin American culture, and he organized what he hoped would be the revolutionary army that would at last free Cuba. His essay “Our America” speaks not just to Cuba but to the whole region now known as Latin America. The essay strives to create a new commonality among the people of Latin America, to encourage a sense of unity and self-determination in the face of growing U.S. expansionism. (It should be noted that Marti did not use the term “Latin America,” which would become common only in the twentieth century; rather he spoke of the “Americas” and “Our America.” For clarity, this entry employs the twentieth-century term.)”

Accessed from the Internet. Written before copyright law. In the public domain.

Posted in: 1700-1899, Latin America & the Caribbean, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL) / Tagged: , , , ,

“The Jamaica Letter” by Simon Bolivar, 1815

August 12, 2019 6:58 pm /

Submitted by: Suzanne Oboler, Professor, Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

To read online: “The Jamaica Letter”

“This document was written to an English gentleman, most likely the Governor of Jamaica at the time. It is in response to a request that Simon Bolivar expound his views on the independence movement in Venezuela and the form of government under which the country should operate. It is interesting, largely because Bolivar would soon be attempting to implement these ideas in actuality. In 1815, the fight for the independence of the Spanish colonies in Latin America was on the defensive. Simón Bolívar, a member of the Venezuelan planter class and a leading figure in the movement, was in exile. From the island of Jamaica, he issued a letter analyzing the current and future perspectives of the independence struggle. An admirer of the British parliamentary system, Bolívar argued for a balance of power in the different branches of government, although later he asserted strong executive rule while in power.”

This document was written well before copyright and is in the public domain. It was obtained from the Internet.

Posted in: 1700-1899, Latin America & the Caribbean, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL) / Tagged: , ,

“Why the Indians are Dying” by Alonso de Zorita, 1500s

August 12, 2019 6:24 pm /

Submitted by: Suzanne Oboler, Professor, Latin American and Latinx Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

To read online: Why the Indians Are Dying

“Spaniard Alonso de Zorita began serving on the Mexico City audiencia in 1556. He returned to Spain in 1566 and began work on his Brief and Summary Relation of the Lords of New Spain, from which the above text is excerpted. Although he was writing well before the development of the germ theory of disease, he did observe how Spanish mistreatment of Indians predisposed them to disease and an early death.”

This document was written well before copyright law and is in the public domain. It was obtained from the Internet.

Posted in: 1500-1699, Latin America & the Caribbean, Part 2: Subjects and Topics in Justice (ALL) / Tagged: , , , ,
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