Jul 5, 2023 Naomi R. CahnFamily Law
In 1997, New Line Cinema released the romantic drama Love Jones. The film was about two young professionals, their friends, and their lives in Chicago: Nia Long starred as Nina Mosley, a talented photographer, and Larenz Tate as Darius Lovehall, a newly-emerging poet. The writer/director (Theodore Witcher) wanted to “tell a love story . . . [t]here is a political agenda as well – to present young African American characters on screen that weren’t involved in some kind of social pathology.”
Sociologist Kris Marsh describes these characters as “young, educated Black professionals who have never been married, are child-free, and live alone or with unmarried non-romantic friends.” (P. 1.) The movie, Marsh observes, presented a “new face” for those who are Black and middle class (P. 7.), one that exists outside of the nuclear family paradigm. The movie title provides the demographic term for the group that Marsh studies in The Love Jones Cohort. They are Black, middle class, and SALA (single and living alone). While Marsh notes that “SALA” describes a type of household that is not limited to those in the middle class, and the Black middle class includes other family formations, the Love Jones Cohort brings the two concepts together. (P. 8.) Continue reading "Black, Single & Middle Class"
Jul 4, 2023 Andrea FreemanEquality
How did fast food become Black – and at what cost? Naa Oyo A. Kwate’s fascinating first book, Burgers in Blackface, introduced readers to the racist restaurants that dot the American landscape. Richard’s Restaurant and Slave Market, Mammy’s Cupboard, Coon Chicken Inn, and Sambo’s profited by providing safe spaces for white people to wax nostalgic about their ancestors’ history as enslavers. Some of these businesses continue to thrive after changes to their names and business models–or no changes at all. In her powerful second book, White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation, Kwate takes a deep dive into the intersection of racism and consumption, incorporating analyses of civil rights, corporate culture, health, marketing, law, and politics.
Kwate’s starting point is fast food’s origin story. As the most American of foods, fast food began as an institution created by and for white people. Modern associations between fast food and Blackness, symbolized by rappers and food swamps, where unhealthy food is plentiful but nutritious food is scarce, have overshadowed the industry’s racial history. The first fast food restaurants featured all-white serving staff catering to an exclusively white consumer base at “white utopias.” When fast food restaurants followed their white patrons to suburbs and sundown towns, which imposed curfews on Black people, their whiteness solidified. Yet, eventually, societal and market pressure to expand into Black neighborhoods forced an about-face on the industry. Now, most people think of fast food as the epitome of poor choice, not the apex of clean, wholesome food. Continue reading "Fast Food for Thought"
Jul 3, 2023 Christopher SloboginCriminal Law
One of my favorite article titles is The Deterrence Hypothesis and Picking Pockets at the Pickpocket’s Hanging, written by David A. Anderson. It has long been my intuition that, unless eyewitnesses or the police are nearby, most people actively contemplating crime are rarely deterred by the prospect of being caught and are virtually never deterred by marginal differences in the sentence they would receive if convicted. Anderson’s article reinforces that view. As Anderson’s title suggests, in merry old England, pickpockets thought they were so good at their trade they plied it even at the execution of one of their own. Anderson argues that the same dynamic applies today. Based on interviews with prisoners and a review of the literature, Anderson concludes that most violent criminals and the majority of all criminals “are impervious to harsher punishments because no feasible detection rate or punishment scheme would arrest the impelling forces behind their behaviors, which might include drugs, fight-or-flight responses, or irrational thought.” (P. 308.)
But that suggestion has not deterred(!) economists from continuing to focus on the optimal means of preventing crime. In The Economics of Crime: An Introduction to Rational Crime Analysis, Harold Winter, a Professor of Economics at Ohio University, provides a primer of the relevant literature. The opening chapter begins with a question that brings home the importance of economic analysis even if one is predisposed to discount the influence of premeditated cost-benefit calculations on putative criminals. Winter asks, Would you want to live in a society where murders never happen? Winter’s own answer is a strong no: he would “much prefer” (emphasis his) to live in a society in which murders occur. The benefits of a murder-free society would be far outweighed by two costs: the cost—in terms of infringements on freedom and privacy—of an all-out effort to stop homicides and the cost—in terms of diverted resources—to other important societal goals if such an effort were made. Echoing famed economics scholar Gary Becker, Winter suggests that a full cost-benefit calculation may even require factoring in the benefit of crime to the criminal. Overdeterrence can be just as costly as underdeterrence. Continue reading "The Rationality of Criminality"
