Copyright © 2015 Bert N. Langford (Images may be subject to copyright. Please send feedback)
Welcome to Our Generation USA!

This page covers
The Worst of Humanity
as those events, individuals and institutions that represent the worst in society, whether murder or other threats to limb and life including risks to health, denial of human rights including slavery, sexual harassment/assault, or other deprivation of Human Rights.

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Mass Murder in the United States, (including Massacres) and Serial Killers in The United States

YouTube Video about the Psychology of Mass Murderers: Professor Jeremy Coid is a Forensic Psychiatrist who has acted as an expert witness in cases of mass murder - in this series of interviews with Dr Raj Persaud he explains how Forensic Psychiatrists work, make a diagnosis and some of the difficult issues that they wrestle with.

​Pictured: L-R: Student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people on Virginia Tech's campus in 2007; Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a terrorist attack and hate crime inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida; Serial killer Ted Bundy confessed to 30 homicides committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978.

Mass murder (sometimes interchangeable with "mass destruction") is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. 

The FBI defines mass murder as murdering four or more persons during an event with no "cooling-off period" between the murders. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more people kill several others. Many acts of mass murder end with the perpetrator(s) dying by suicide or suicide by cop.

A mass murder may be committed by individuals or organizations whereas a spree killing is committed by one or two individuals. Mass murderers differ from spree killers, who kill at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders and are not defined by the number of victims, and serial killers (see below category), who may kill people over long periods of time.

Mass murder is also defined as the intentional and indiscriminate murder of a large number of people by government agents; for example, shooting unarmed protesters, throwing grenades into prison cells, and randomly executing civilians. 

The largest mass killings in history have been governmental attempts to exterminate entire groups or communities of people, often on the basis of ethnicity or religion because of dislike or intolerance. Some of these mass murders have been found to be genocides and others to be crimes against humanity, but often such crimes have led to few or no convictions of any type.

A Serial Killer is a person who murders three or more people, usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant break (a "cooling off period") between them. Different authorities apply different criteria when designating serial killers; while most set a threshold of three murders, others extend it to four or lessen it to two.

The FBI, for example, defines serial killing as "a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone".

Although psychological gratification is the usual motive for serial killing, and most serial killings involve sexual contact with the victim, the FBI states that the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill-seeking, financial gain, and attention seeking. The murders may be attempted or completed in a similar fashion, and the victims may have something in common: age group, appearance, gender, or race, for example.

Serial killing is not the same as mass murdering (killing numerous people in a given incident); nor is it spree killing (in which murders are committed in two or more locations, in a short time).

However, cases of extended bouts of sequential killings over periods of weeks or months with no apparent "cooling off period" or "return to normalcy" have caused some experts to suggest a hybrid category of "spree-serial killer".








9/11 Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 ("9/11")

YouTube Video of the Live Coverage - CBS 9 Washington (08:52am-11:17am) - September 11th 2001

Pictured: A montage of eight images depicting, from top to bottom, the World Trade Center towers burning, the collapsed section of the Pentagon, the impact explosion in the south tower, a rescue worker standing in front of rubble of the collapsed towers, an excavator unearthing a smashed jet engine, three frames of video depicting airplane hitting the Pentagon. (Courtesy of the following
[Your Webhost: I was living in New Jersey at the time of the 911 attacks: While travelling to my job in the morning, I could see the Twin Towers on fire. Later in the day, as I was returning home from work , the towers were gone and all you could see was smoke! It was awful!]


​The September 11 attacks (also referred to as 9/11) were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

The attacks killed 2,996 people and injured over 6,000 others and caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage and $3 trillion in total costs.

Four passenger airliners operated by two major U.S. passenger air carriers (United Airlines and American Airlines)—all of which departed from airports on the northeastern United States bound for California—were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists.

Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Center complex in New York City.

Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed, with debris and the resulting fires causing partial or complete collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower, as well as significant damage to ten other large surrounding structures.

A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, was crashed into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense) in Arlington County, Virginia, leading to a partial collapse of the building's western side.

The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, initially was steered toward Washington, D.C., but crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after its passengers tried to overcome the hijackers.

9/11 was the deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in the history of the United States, with 343 and 72 killed respectively.

Suspicion for the attack quickly fell on al-Qaeda. The United States responded to the attacks by launching the War on Terror and invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, which had harbored al-Qaeda.

Many countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent terrorist attacks. Although al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, initially denied any involvement, in 2004 he claimed responsibility for the attacks. 

Al-Qaeda and bin Laden cited U.S. support of Israel, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and sanctions against Iraq as motives. Having evaded capture for almost a decade, bin Laden was located and killed by SEAL Team Six of the U.S. military in May 2011.

The destruction of the World Trade Center and nearby infrastructure caused serious damage to the economy of Lower Manhattan and had a significant effect on global markets, closing Wall Street until September 17 and the civilian airspace in the U.S. and Canada until September 13.

Many closings, evacuations, and cancellations followed, out of respect or fear of further attacks. Cleanup of the World Trade Center site was completed in May 2002, and the Pentagon was repaired within a year.

On November 18, 2006, construction of One World Trade Center began at the World Trade Center site. The building was officially opened on November 3, 2014.

Numerous memorials have been constructed, including the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington County, Virginia, and the Flight 93 National Memorial in a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Could the 9/11 Attacks have been prevented? See New York Times 9/10/12 article: President George W. Bush had advance notice of an imminent attack as early as August 6, 2001, a full month before the 9/11 attack.


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WikiLeaks: Enemy?
(Also see Washington Post Editorial by Fareed Zakaria)
YouTube Video: WikiLeaks Top 10
Pictured: WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

[Your Website Host: As this is a highly-contentious topic, given that WikiLeak releases have compromised America's security --including possibly costing Hillary Clinton the 2016 Presidential election, it has been added to this "Infamy" web page.]

Washington Post Editorial by Fareed Zakaria (March 9, 2017 issue)
"This week, we have watched the perfect example of a country fighting the last war. The Trump administration has devoted weeks of energy and political capital to rolling out its temporary travel ban against citizens of six Muslim-majority countries, none of whom, according to the libertarian Cato Institute, have committed a single deadly terrorist attack in the United States over the past four decades. Meanwhile, the White House’s response to a devastating barrage of WikiLeaks disclosures that will compromise U.S. security for years was a general vow to prosecute leakers.

The WikiLeaks revelations are designed to uncover and cripple U.S. intelligence operations of any kind, against any foe — including Russia, China, the Islamic State or al-Qaeda. WikiLeaks claims to be devoted to exposing and undermining centralized power, yet it has never revealed anything about the intelligence — or domestic policing — operations of the Russian or Chinese governments, both highly centralized dictatorships with extensive and advanced cyber-intelligence units. Indeed, WikiLeaks has chosen as its obsessive target the United States, which probably has more democratic oversight of its intelligence agencies than any other major power does.

Since the North Korean government’s 2014 attacks on Sony Pictures Entertainment, many in the intelligence community, including Adm. Michael S. Rogers, have warned that “we’re at a tipping point.” Rogers, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, testified to Congress in 2015 that the country had no adequate deterrent against cyberattacks. He and many others have argued for an offensive capacity forceful enough to dissuade future threats."

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources. Its website, initiated in 2006 in Iceland by the organization Sunshine Press, claims a database of 10 million documents in 10 years since its launch.

Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief, and director.

The group has released a number of significant documents that have become front-page news items. Early releases included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war and a report informing a corruption investigation in Kenya.

In April 2010, WikiLeaks published gunsight footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi journalists were among those killed by an AH-64 Apache helicopter, known as the Collateral Murder video.

In July of the same year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available to the public. 

In October 2010, the group released a set of almost 400,000 documents called the "Iraq War Logs" in coordination with major commercial media organisations. This allowed the mapping of 109,032 deaths in "significant" attacks by insurgents in Iraq that had been reported to Multi-National Force – Iraq, including about 15,000 that had not been previously published.

In April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In November 2010, WikiLeaks collaborated with major global media organisations to release U.S. State Department diplomatic "cables" in redacted format.

During the 2016 US presidential election campaign, WikiLeaks released e-mails and other documents from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta alleging improper conduct against senator Bernie Sanders. These releases caused significant embarrassment to the Clinton campaign and may have contributed to the Democratic Party's loss.

The U.S. intelligence community expressed "high confidence" that the leaked e-mails had been hacked by Russia and supplied to WikiLeaks, while WikiLeaks denied their source was Russia or any other state. During the campaign, WikiLeaks was accused of promoting conspiracy theories about Clinton and the Democratic Party on Twitter.

WikiLeaks has also been criticized for inadequately curating its content and violating the personal privacy of individuals. WikiLeaks has, for instance, revealed Social Security numbers, medical information, credit card numbers, and other sensitive personal information.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about WikiLeaks:
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Alt-Right Extreme Conservative Movement including Steve Bannon, former adviser to the Trump Administration and a List of Hate Groups
YouTube Video: Alex Jones* Rants as an Indie Folk Song
​* Alex Jones
​Pictured: (L) Donald Trump and the KKK who endorsed Trump; (R) Steve Bannon and Breitbart News

Click here for a List of organizations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.

The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loose group of people with far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of white nationalism, principally in the United States, but also to a lesser degree in Canada and Europe.

Paul Gottfried is the first person to use the term "alternative right", when referring specifically to developments within American right-wing politics, in 2008. The term has since gained wide currency with the rise of the so-called "alt-right". 

​White supremacist Richard Spencer coined the term in 2010 in reference to a movement centered on white nationalism, and has been accused by some media publications of doing so to excuse overt racism, white supremacism, and neo-Nazism. The term drew considerable media attention and controversy during and after the 2016 US presidential election.
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Alt-right beliefs have been described as isolationist, protectionist, antisemitic, and white supremacist, frequently overlapping with Neo-Nazism, nativism and Islamophobia, antifeminism and homophobia, right-wing populism, and the neo-reactionary movement. 

The concept has further been associated with multiple groups from American nationalists, neo-monarchists, men's rights advocates, and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

The alt-right has its roots on Internet websites such as 4chan and 8chan, where anonymous members create and use Internet memes to express their ideologies. It is difficult to tell how much of what people write in these venues is serious and how much is intended to provoke outrage. 

Members of the alt-right use websites like Alternative Right, Twitter, Breitbart, and Reddit to convey their message. Alt-right postings generally support Donald Trump and oppose immigration, multiculturalism and political correctness.

The alt-right has also had a significant influence on conservative thought in the United States, such as the Sailer Strategy for winning political support, along with having close ties to the Trump Administration. It has been listed as a key reason for Trump's win in the 2016 election. The Trump administration includes several figures who are associated with the alt-right, such as White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. In 2016, Bannon described Breitbart as "the platform for the alt-right," with the goal of promoting the ideology.

Background:

In November 2008, self-described paleoconservative philosopher Paul Gottfried addressed the H. L. Mencken Club about what he called "the alternative right". This was republished in December of that year under the title "The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right" in the conservative Taki's Magazine, making this the earliest published usage of the phrase in its current context according to Slate. In 2009, two more posts at Taki's Magazine, by Patrick J. Ford and Jack Hunter, further discussed the alternative right. The term, however, is most commonly attributed to Richard B. Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute and founder of Alternative Right.

Beliefs:

​The Associated Press stated that the 'alt-right' or 'alternative right' is a name currently embraced by some white supremacists and white nationalists to refer to themselves and their ideology, which emphasizes preserving and protecting the white race in the United States in addition to, or over, other traditional conservative positions such as limited government, low taxes and strict law-and-order.

The movement has been described as a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism ... criticizes "multiculturalism" and more rights for non-whites, women, Jews, Muslims, gays, immigrants and other minorities. Its members reject the American democratic ideal that all should have equality under the law regardless of creed, gender, ethnic origin or race.

There is no formal organization and it is not clear if the alt-right can be considered as a movement; according to a 2016 description in the Columbia Journalism Review: "Because of the nebulous nature of anonymous online communities, nobody's entirely sure who the alt-righters are and what motivates them.

It's also unclear which among them are true believers and which are smart-ass troublemakers trying to ruffle feathers."  Many of its own proponents often claim they are joking or seeking to provoke an outraged response. Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker describes it as "a label, like 'snob' or 'hipster,' that is often disavowed by people who exemplify it".

It has been said to include elements of white nationalism, white supremacism, antisemitism, right-wing populism, nativism, and the neoreactionary movement. 

Andrew Marantz includes "neo-monarchists, masculinists, conspiracists, belligerent nihilists".

Newsday columnist Cathy Young noted the alt-right's strong opposition to both legal and illegal immigration and its hard-line stance on the European migrant crisis. Robert Tracinski of The Federalist has written that the alt-right opposes miscegenation and advocates collectivism as well as tribalism.

Nicole Hemmer stated on NPR that political correctness is seen by the alt-right as "the greatest threat to their liberty".

Milo Yiannopoulos claims that some "young rebels" are drawn to the alt-right not for deeply political reasons but "because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms".

According to The New Yorker, "testing the strength of the speech taboos that revolve around conventional politics-of what can be said, and how directly", is a major component of alt-right identity. The beliefs that make the alt-right perceptible as a movement "are in their essence not matters of substance but of style", and the alt-right's tone may just be concealing "a more familiar politics".

Ties to white nationalism:

​White supremacist Richard Spencer coined the term in 2010 in reference to a movement centered on white nationalism, and has been accused by some media publications of doing so to excuse overt racism, white supremacism, and neo-Nazism. Spencer has described the alt-right as “identity politics for white Americans and for Europeans around the world".

While the label of white nationalism is disputed by some political commentators including Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, prominent alt-right figures such as Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer and Marcus Halberstram of Fash the Nation have embraced the term as the core philosophy their movement is based on. 

​In response to a Washington Post article that portrayed the movement as "offensiveness for the sake of offensiveness", Anglin said "No it isn't. The goal is to ethnically cleanse White nations of non-Whites and establish an authoritarian government. Many people also believe that the Jews should be exterminated."

Anti-feminism:

The alt-right is often described as "misogynistic" and supporting an "anti-woman" view. Opposition to feminism and intersectionality are common. The alt-right has a significant overlap in supporters with the men's rights movement.
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Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the "Alt-Right" Movement:​ ___________________________________________________________________________

Steve Bannon, Stephen Kevin "Steve" Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political thinker, and former investment banker, who is executive chairman of Breitbart News. He served as the White House Chief Strategist (a newly created position) in the administration of US President Donald Trump during the first seven months of his term. 

In this capacity, he attended the Principals Committee of the U.S. National Security Council from January 28, 2017 to April 5, 2017. On August 17, 2016, in the later months of the campaign, Bannon joined Trump's 2016 presidential bid, taking the position of chief executive officer.

Prior to taking a leave of absence in August 2016, he had been executive chair of Breitbart News, a far-right news, opinion, and commentary website which he described in 2016 as "the platform for the alt-right". Bannon left his position in the Trump administration on August 18, 2017; he then rejoined Breitbart News.

Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy for seven years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, serving on the destroyer USS Paul F. Foster as well as at the Pentagon. After his military service, he worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers and Acquisitions department. When he left the company, Bannon held the position of vice president. In 1993, he became acting director of the Earth-science research project Biosphere 2. In the 1990s, he became an executive producer in the Hollywood film and media industry; he produced 18 films between 1991 and 2016.

Click here for more about Steve Bannon.







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​Religious Violence
YouTube Video: Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence by the Brookings Institution

Religious violence is a term that covers phenomena where religion is either the subject or the object of violent behavior. Religious violence is, specifically, violence that is motivated by or in reaction to religious precepts, texts, or doctrines. This includes violence against religious institutions, people, objects, or events when the violence is motivated to some degree by some religious aspect of the target or by the precepts of the attacker. Religious violence does not refer exclusively to acts committed by religious groups, but includes acts committed by secular groups against religious groups.

Violence is a very broad concept and it is also difficult to define since it can be used against non-human objects. Furthermore, the term can denote a wide variety of experiences such as blood shedding, physical harm, forcing against personal freedom, passionate conduct or language, or emotions such as fury and passion.

Religion is a complex and problematic concept. It is a modern western-compartmentalized concept that was not found anywhere before the 1500s and despite it being recently invented, there is no scholarly consensus over what a religion is.

In general, religion is conceived as an abstraction which entails beliefs, doctrines, and sacred places even though the ancient cultures that wrote Holy Scriptures (e.g. Bible Quran, etc) did not have such a concept in their language or in their history.

Decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research have shown that the assumption that religious beliefs and values are tightly integrated in an individual's mind or that religious practices and behaviors follow directly from religious beliefs, is actually rare.

People’s religious ideas are fragmented, loosely connected, and context-dependent just like in all other domains of culture and life.

In general, religions, ethical systems, and societies rarely promote violence as an end in itself since violence is universally undesirable. At the same time, there is a universal tension between the general desire to avoid violence and the acceptance of justifiable uses of violence to prevent a "greater evil" that permeates all cultures. Religious violence, like all violence, is a cultural process that is context-dependent and very complex.

Oversimplifications of religion and violence often lead to misguided understandings and exaggerations of causes for why some people commit violence and why most do not commit violence.

Religious violence is primarily the domain of the violent "actor", which may be distinguished between individual and collective forms of violence. Overall, religious violence is perpetrated for a wide variety of ideological reasons and is generally only one of the contributing social and political factors that leads to unrest.

Studies of supposed cases of religious violence often conclude that violence is strongly driven by ethnic animosities rather than by religious worldviews. Recently, scholars have questioned the very concept of "religious violence" and the extent to which religious, political, economic, or ethnic aspects of a conflict are even meaningful.

Some observe that the very concept of "religion" is a modern invention and not something that is universal across cultures or historical and thereby makes "religious violence" a myth. Since all cases of violence and war include social, political, and economic dimensions and since there is no consensus on definitions of "religion" among scholars and no way to isolate "religion" from the rest of the more likely motivational dimensions, it is incorrect to label any violent event as "religious".

Numerous cases of supposed acts of religious violence such as the Thirty Years War, the French Wars of Religion, the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Ireland, the Sri Lankan Civil War, 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, the Bosnian War, and the Rwandan Civil War were all primarily motivated by social, political, and economic issues rather than religion.

For more about Religious Violence, click on any of the following blue hyperlinks:






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​Racism in the United States  including Racial Profiling
YouTube Video: 7 of the Worst KKK Attacks in History
Pictured: Members of The Ku Klux Klan

Racism in the United States against non-whites is widespread and has been since the colonial era. Socially sanctioned privileges and rights continue to be given to white Americans but denied to all other races, while explicit legal discrimination endured into the 1960s.

In the view of the United Nations and the U.S. Human Rights Network, "discrimination in the United States permeates all aspects of life and extends to all communities of color."

European Americans (particularly the affluent white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) were granted exclusive privileges in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure over periods of time extending from the 17th century to the 1960s.

In addition, Middle Eastern American groups like Jews and Arabs have faced continuous discrimination in the United States, and as a result, some people belonging to these groups do not identify as white. East and South Asians have similarly faced racism in America. Non-Protestant immigrants from Europe; particularly Irish people, Poles, and Italians, often suffered xenophobic exclusion and other forms of ethnicity-based discrimination in American society until the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Major racially and ethnically structured institutions include slavery, segregation, the American Indian Wars, Native American reservations, Native American boarding schools, immigration and naturalization law, and internment camps. Formal racial discrimination was largely banned in the mid-20th century and came to be perceived by some Americans as socially and morally unacceptable.

Racism remains a widespread and major phenomenon, continuing to be reflected in socioeconomic inequality. Racial stratification continues to occur in employment, housing, education, lending, and government.

​Some Americans saw the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, and his election in 2008 as the first black president of the United States, as a sign that the nation had, in fact, become post-racial. The populist radio host Lou Dobbs claimed in November 2009, "We are now in a 21st-century post-partisan, post-racial society." Two months later, Chris Matthews, an MSNBC host, said of President Obama, "He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."

The election of President Donald Trump is seen as a racist backlash against the election of Barack Obama.

While the nature of the views held by average Americans have changed much over the past several decades, surveys by organizations such as ABC News have found that, even in modern America, large sections of Americans self-admit to holding discriminatory viewpoints.

For example, a 2007 article by ABC stated that about one in ten admitted to holding prejudices against Hispanic and Latino Americans and about one in four did so regarding Arab-Americans. A 2018 YouGov/Economist poll found that 17% of Americans oppose interracial marriage; with 19% of "other" ethnic groups, 18% of blacks, 17% of whites, and 15% of Hispanics opposing.
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During the 2010s, the country has seen continued high levels of racism and bigotry. America has seen the rise of the "alt-right" movement: a white nationalist coalition that seeks the explusion and/or subjection of sexual and racial minorities from the United States.

In August 2017, these groups attended a rally that meant to unify various white nationalist factions. During the rally, a white supremacist killed a demonstrator ramming a car into Heather Heyer, a protester against the rally. 

Since the mid-2010s, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation now consider white supremacist violence the leading threat of domestic terrorism in the United States.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Racism in the United States: ___________________________________________________________________________

Racial profiling is the act of suspecting or targeting a person of a certain race based on a stereotype about their race, rather than on individual suspicion. 
More commonly in the United States., racial profiling is thought of in the sense of the law enforcement at the local, state, and federal levels and the racial discrimination of people in the Black, Arab, Latino, Asian, and American Indian communities.

Racial Profiling in the United States:

​See also: Airport racial profiling in the United States

​According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):

'Racial profiling' refers to the practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Criminal profiling, generally, as practiced by police, is the reliance on a group of characteristics they believe to be associated with crime.

Examples of racial profiling are the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations (commonly referred to as 'driving while black or brown'), or the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for illegal contraband.

Besides such disproportionate searching of African Americans, and members of other minority groups, other examples of racial profiling by law enforcement in the U.S. include the targeting of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the investigation of illegal immigration; and the focus on Middle Eastern and South Asians present in the country in screenings for ties to Islamic terrorism. 

These suspicions are typically on the basis of racist, and/or derogatory beliefs about the group of target, and assumes the criminal ideologies of one individual from a specific racial group is a trait held by all members of that racial group.

According to Minnesota House of Representatives analyst Jim Cleary, "there appear to be at least two clearly distinguishable definitions of the term 'racial profiling': a narrow definition and a broad definition... Under the narrow definition, racial profiling occurs when a police officer stops and/or searches someone solely on the basis of the person's race or ethnicity... Under the broader definition, racial profiling occurs whenever police routinely use race as a factor that, along with an accumulation of other factors, causes an officer to react with suspicion and take action."

A study conducted by Domestic Human Rights Program of Amnesty International USA found that racial profiling has increased since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and that state laws cannot provide sufficient and consistent protections against racial profiling.

History:

Sociologist Robert Staples emphasizes that racial profiling in the U.S. is "not merely a collection of individual offenses" but, rather, a systemic phenomenon across American society, dating back to the era of slavery, and, until the 1950s, was, in some instances, "codified into law". Enshrinement of racial profiling ideals in United States law can be exemplified by several major periods in U.S. history.

In 1693, Philadelphia's court officials gave police legal authority to stop and detain any Negro (freed or enslaved) seen wandering about. Starting around the mid 18th century, slave patrols were used to stop slaves at any location in order to ensure they were being lawful.

In the mid 19th century, the Black Codes (United States), a set of statutes, laws and rules, were enacted in the South in order to regain control over freed and former slaves and relegate

African Americans to a lower social status. Similar discriminatory practices continued through the Jim Crow era.

Prior to the U.S. immigration restriction following September 11, 2001, Japanese immigrants were rejected U.S. citizenship during WWII, for fear of disloyalty following the attacks on Pearl Harbor. What resulted was the government's preemptive internment of more than 100,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens during the Second World War, as a measure against potential Japanese espionage, also constituted a form of racial profiling.

In the late 1990s racial profiling became politicized, when police and other law enforcement fell under scrutiny for the disproportionate traffic stops of minority motorists. Researchers from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) provided evidence of widespread racial profiling, one study showed that while blacks only made up 42 percent of New Jersey's driving population they accounted for 79 percent of motorists stopped in the state.

Supreme Court cases Terry v. Ohio was the first challenge to racial profiling in the United States in 1968. This case was about African American people who were thought to be stealing. The police officer arrested the three men and searched them and found a gun on two of the three men, and Terry (one of the three men searched) was convicted and sentenced to jail. 

Terry challenged the arrest on the grounds that it violated the search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment, however, in an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court decided that the police officer acted in a reasonable manner, and with reasonable suspicion, under the Fourth Amendment. The decision in this case allowed for greater police discretion in identifying suspicious or illegal activities.

In 1973, U.S. v. Brignoni- Ponce was decided. Felix Humberto Brignoni-Ponce was traveling in his vehicle and was stopped by border patrol agents because he appeared to be Mexican. The agents questioned Ponce and the other passengers in the car and discovered that the passengers were illegal immigrants, and the border agents subsequently arrested all occupants of the vehicle. 

​The Court determined that the testimonies that led to the arrests in this case were not valid, as they were obtained in the absence of reasonable suspicion and the vehicle was stopped without probable cause, as required under the Fourth Amendment.

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Armstrong that disparity in conviction rates is not unconstitutional in the absence of data that "similarly situated" defendants of another race were disparately prosecuted, overturning a 9th Circuit Court ruling that was based on "the presumption that people of all races commit all types of crimes – not with the premise that any type of crime is the exclusive province of any particular racial or ethnic group", waving away challenges based on the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees the right to be safe from search and seizure without a warrant (which is to be issued "upon probable cause"), and the Fourteenth Amendment which requires that all citizens be treated equally under the law.

To date there have been no known cases in which any U.S. court dismissed a criminal prosecution because the defendant was targeted based on race. This Supreme Court decision doesn't prohibit government agencies from enacting policies prohibiting it in the field by agents and employees.

The Court also decided the case of Whren v. United States in 1996. Whren was arrested on felony drug charges after officers observed his truck sitting at an intersection for a long period of time before it failed to use its turn signal to drive away, and the police officers stopped his vehicle for the traffic violation.

Upon approaching the vehicle the officers observed that Whren was in possession of crack-cocaine. The Court determined the officers did not violate the Fourth Amendment through an unreasonable search and seizure and that the officers were permitted to stop the vehicle after it committed a traffic violation and the subsequent search of the vehicle was permitted regardless of the pretext of the officers.

In June 2001 the Bureau of Justice Assistance, a component of the Office of Justice Programs of the United States Department of Justice, awarded a Northeastern research team a grant to create the web-based Racial Profiling Data Collection Resource Center.

It now maintains a website designed to be a central clearinghouse for police agencies, legislators, community leaders, social scientists, legal researchers, and journalists to access information about current data collection efforts, legislation and model policies, police-community initiatives, and methodological tools that can be used to collect and analyze racial profiling data.

The website contains information on the background of data collection, jurisdictions currently collecting data, community groups, legislation that is pending and enacted in states across the country, and has information on planning and implementing data collection procedures, training officers in to implement these systems, and analyzing and reporting the data and results.

Statutory law:

In April 2010, Arizona enacted SB 1070, a law that would require law-enforcement officers to verify the citizenship of individuals they stop if they have reasonable suspicion that they may be in the United States illegally.

The law states that "Any person who is arrested shall have the person's immigration status determined before the person is released". United States federal law requires that all illegal immigrants who remain in the United States for more than 30 days are to register with the U.S. government and to have all registration documents with them at all times. Arizona made it a misdemeanor crime for an illegal immigrant 14 years of age and older to be found without carrying these documents at all times.

According to SB 1070, law-enforcement officials may not consider "race, color, or national origin" in the enforcement of the law, except under the circumstances allowed under the United States and Arizona constitutions. In June 2012, the majority of SB 1070 was struck down by the United States Supreme Court, while the provision allowing for an immigration check on detained persons was upheld.

Some states contain "stop and identify" laws that allow officers to detain suspected persons and ask for identification, and if there is failure to provide identification punitive measures can be taken by the officer. There are currently 24 states that have "stop and identify" statues, however, the criminal punishments and need to produce identification vary from state-to-state.

Utah HB 497 requires residents to carry relevant identification at all times in order to prove resident status or immigration status, even so, police may still dismiss provided documents under suspicion of falsification and arrest or detain suspects.
​
In early 2001, a bill was introduced to Congress named "End Racial Profiling Act of 2001" but lost support in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The bill was re-introduced to Congress in 2010 but also failed to gain the support it needed.

Several U.S. states now have reporting requirements for incidents of racial profiling. Texas, for example requires all agencies to provide annual reports to its Law Enforcement Commission. The requirement began on September 1, 2001, when the State of Texas passed a law to require all law enforcement agencies in the State to begin collecting certain data in connection to traffic or pedestrian stops beginning on January 1, 2002.

Based on that data, the law mandated law enforcement agencies to submit a report to the law enforcement agencies' governing body beginning March 1, 2003 and each year thereafter no later than March 1. The law is found in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure beginning with Article 2.131.

Additionally, on January 1, 2011, all law enforcement agencies began submitting annual reports to the Texas State Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Education Commission.

The submitted reports can be accessed on the Commission's website for public review. In June 2003 the Department of Justice issued its Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies forbidding racial profiling by federal law enforcement officials.

Support:
​
Supporters defend the practice of racial profiling by emphasizing the crime control model. They claim that the practice is both efficient and ideal due to utilizing the laws of probability in order to determine one's criminality. 

This system focuses on controlling crime with swift judgment, bestowing full discretion on police to handle what they perceive as a threat to society. The use and support of racial profiling has surged in recent years, namely in North America due to heightened tension and awareness following the events of 9/11. As a result, the issue of profiling has created a debate that centers on the values of equality and self-defense. Supporters uphold the stance that sacrifices must be made in order to maintain national safety, even if it warrants differential treatment.

According to a 2011 survey by Rasmussen Reports, a majority of Americans support profiling as necessary "in today's society".

In December 2010, Fernando Mateo, then president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, made some pro-racial profiling remarks in the case of gun-shot taxi-cab driver: "You know sometimes it's good that we are racially profiled because the God's-honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics." "Clearly everyone knows I'm not racist. I'm Hispanic and my father is black. ... My father is blacker than Al Sharpton."

When confronted with accusations of racial profiling the police claim that they do not participate in it. They emphasize that numerous factors (such as race, interactions, and dress) are used to determine if a person is involved in criminal activity and that race is not a sole factor in the decision to detain or question an individual. They further claim that the job of policing is far more imperative than to concerns of minorities or interest groups claiming unfair targeting.

Proponents of racial profiling believe that inner city residents of Hispanic communities are subjected to racial profiling because of theories such as the "gang suppression model". The "gang suppression model" is believed by some to be the basis for increased policing, the theory being based on the idea that Latinos are violent and out of control and are therefore "in need of suppression". Based on research, the criminalization of people can lead to abuses of power on behalf of law enforcement.

Criticism:

Critics of racial profiling argue that the individual rights of a suspect are violated if race is used as a factor in that suspicion. Notably, civil liberties organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have labeled racial profiling as a form of discrimination, stating, "Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality or on any other particular identity undermines the basic human rights and freedoms to which every person is entitled."

Conversely, those in opposition of the police tactic employ the teachings of the due process model, arguing that minorities are not granted equal rights and are thus subject to unjust treatment. 

In addition, some argue that the singling out of individuals based on their ethnicity comes in violation of the Rule of Law, having voided all instance of neutrality. Those in opposition also make note of the role that the news media plays within the conflict.

The general public internalizes much of its knowledge from the media, relying on sources to convey information of events that transpire outside of their immediate domain. In conjunction with this power, media outlets are aware of the public's intrigue with controversy and have been known to construct headlines that entail moral panic and negativity.

In the case of racial profiling drivers, the ethnic backgrounds of drivers stopped by traffic police in the US suggests the possibility of biased policing against non-white drivers. Black drivers felt that they were being pulled over by law enforcement officers simply because of their skin color.

However, some argue in favor of the "veil of darkness" hypothesis, which states that police are less likely to know the race of a driver before they make a stop at nighttime as opposed to in the daytime. Referring to the veil of darkness hypothesis, it is suggested that if the race distribution of drivers stopped during the day differs from that of drivers stopped at night, officers are engaging in racial profiling.

For example, in one study done by Jeffrey Grogger and Greg Ridgeway, the veil of darkness hypothesis was used to determine whether or not racial profiling in traffic stops occurs in Oakland, California. The conductors found that there was little evidence of racial profiling in traffic stops made in Oakland.

Research through random sampling in the South Tucson, Arizona area has established that immigration authorities sometimes target the residents of barrios with the use of possibly discriminatory policing based on racial profiling. 

Author Mary Romero writes that immigration raids are often carried out at places of gathering and cultural expression such as grocery stores based on the fluency of language of a person (e.g. being bilingual especially in Spanish) and skin color of a person. She goes on to state that immigration raids are often conducted with a disregard for due process, and that these raids lead people from these communities to distrust law enforcement.

In a recent journal comparing the 1990s to the present, studies have established that when the community criticized police for targeting the black community during traffic stops it received more media coverage and toned down racial profiling.

However, whenever there was a significant lack of media coverage or concern with racial profiling, the amount of arrests and traffic stops for the African-American community would significantly rise again.

NYPD Demographics Unit:

Between 2003 and 2014, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) operated the Demographics Unit (later renamed Zone Assessment Unit) which mapped communities of 28 "ancestries of interest", including those of Muslims, Arabs, and Albanians. Plain-clothed detectives were sent to public places such as coffee shops, mosques and parks to observe and record the public sentiment, as well as map locations where potential terrorists could "blend in".

In its 11 years of operation, however, the unit did not generate any information leading to a criminal charge. A series of publications by the Associated Press during 2011–12 gave rise to public pressure to close the unit, and it was finally disbanded in 2014.

Racial profiling not only occurs on the streets but also in many institutions. Much like the book Famous all over Town where the author Danny Santiago mentions this type of racism throughout the novel. According to Jesper Ryberg's 2011 article "Racial Profiling And Criminal Justice" in the Journal of Ethics, "It is argued that, given the assumption that criminals are currently being punished too severely in Western countries, the apprehension of more criminals may not constitute a reason in favor of racial profiling at all."

It has been stated in a scholarly journal that for over 30 years the use of racial and/or demographic profiling by local authorities and higher level law enforcement's continue to proceed. NYPD Street cops use racial profiling more often, due to the widespread patterns.

They first frisk them to check whether they have enough evidence to be even arrested for the relevant crime. "As a practical matter, the stops display a measurable racial disparity: black and Hispanic people generally represent more than 85 percent of those stopped by the police, though their combined populations make up a small share of the city's racial composition." 

The New York Police Department has been subject to much criticism for its "stop and frisk" tactics. According to statistics on the NYPD's stop and frisk policies, collected by the Center for Constitutional Rights, 51% of the people stopped by the police were Black, 33% were Latino, and 9% were White, and only 2% of all stops resulted in contraband findings.

Starting in 2013, use of racial profiling by the New York Police Department was drastically curtailed, as New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was campaigning for the office, and this policy has continued into his term.

​Dealing with terrorism:
See also: Islamophobia

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have led to targeting of some Muslims and Middle Easterners as potential terrorists and, according to some, are targeted by the national government through preventive measures similar to those practiced by local law enforcement. 

The national government has passed laws, such as the Patriot Act of 2001, to increase surveillance of potential threats to national threat as a result of the events that occurred during 9/11.

It is argued that the passage of these laws and provisions by the national government leads to justification of preventative methods, such as racial profiling, that has been controversial for racial profiling and leads to further minority distrust in the national government. 

One of the techniques used by the FBI to target Muslims was monitoring 100 mosques and business in Washington DC and threatened to deport Muslims who did not agree to serve as informers. The FBI denied to be taking part in blanket profiling and argued that they were trying to build trust within the Muslim community.

On September 14, 2001 three days after the September 11th attacks, an Indian American motorist and three family members were pulled over and ticketed by a Maryland state trooper because their car had broken taillights.

The trooper interrogated the family, questioned them about their nationality, and asked for proof of citizenship. When the motorist said that their passports were at home, the officer allegedly stated, "You are lying. You are Arabs involved in terrorism." He ordered them out of the car, had them put their hands on the hood, and searched the car. When he discovered a knife in a toolbox, the officer handcuffed the driver and later reported that the driver "wore and carried a butcher knife, a dangerous, deadly weapon, concealed upon and about his person." The driver was detained for several hours but eventually released.
​
In December 2001, an American citizen of Middle Eastern descent named Assem Bayaa cleared all the security checks at Los Angeles airport and attempted to board a flight to New York City. Upon boarding, he was told that he made the passengers uncomfortable by being on board the plane and was asked to leave.

Once off the plane, he wasn't searched or questioned any further and the only consolation he was given was a boarding pass for the next flight. He filed a lawsuit on the basis of discrimination against United Airlines. United Airlines filed a counter motion which was dismissed by a district judge on October 11, 2002. In June 2005, the ACLU announced a settlement between Bayaa and United Airlines who still disputed Bayaa's allegations, but noted that the settlement "was in the best interest of all".

The events of 9/11 also led to restrictions in immigration laws. The U.S. government imposed stricter immigration quotas to maintain national security at their national borders.

In 2002, men over sixteen years old who entered the country from twenty-five Middle Eastern countries and North Korea were required to be photographed, fingerprinted, interviewed and have their financial information copied, and had to register again before leaving the country under the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. No charges of terrorism resulted from the program, and it was deactivated in April 2011.

In 2006, 18 young men from the GTA were charged with conspiring to carry out a series of bombings and beheadings, resulting in a swell of media coverage. Two media narratives stood out with the former claiming that a militant subculture was forming within the Islamic community while the latter attributed the case to a bunch of deviant youth who had too much testosterone brewing.

Eventually, it was shown that government officials had been tracking the group for some time, having supplied the youth with the necessary compounds to create explosives, prompting critics to discern whether the whole situation was a set-up.

Throughout the case, many factors were put into question but none more than the Muslim community who faced much scrutiny and vitriol due to the build-up of negative headlines stemming from the media.

Studies:

Statistical data demonstrates that although policing practices and policies vary widely across the United States, a large disparity between racial groups in regards to traffic stops and searches exists. However, whether this is due to racial profiling or the fact that different races are involved in crime in different rates, is still highly debated. Based on academic search, various studies have been conducted regarding the existence of racial profiling in traffic and pedestrian stops.

For motor vehicle searches academic research showed that the probability of a successful search is very similar across races. This suggests that police officers are not motivated by racial preferences but by the desire to maximize the probability of a successful search.

Similar evidence has been found for pedestrian stops, with identical ratios of stops to arrests for different races.

The studies have been published in various Academic Journals aimed towards Academic professionals as well practitioners such as law enforcers. Some of these journals include, Police Quarterly and the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, so that both sides of the argument are present and evaluated. Of those gathered the most noted study refuting racial profiling was the conducted using the veil of darkness hypothesis stating that it will be difficult, if not impossible, for officers to discern race in the twilight hours. The results of this study concluded that the ratio of different races stopped by New York cops is about the same for all races tested.

Some of the most referenced organizations, who offer evidence on the existence of racial profiling, are The American Civil Liberties Union, which conducted studies in various major U.S. cities, and RAND. In a study conducted in Cincinnati, Ohio, it was concluded that "Blacks were between three and five times more likely to (a) be asked if they were carrying drugs or weapons, (b) be asked to leave the vehicle, (c) be searched, (d) have a passenger searched, and (e) have the vehicle physically searched in a study conducted. This conclusion was based on the analysis of 313, randomly selected, traffic stop police tapes gathered from 2003 to 2004."

A 2001 study analyzing data from the Richmond, Virginia Police Department found that African Americans were disproportionately stopped compared to their proportion in the general population, but that they were not searched more often than Whites. The same study found that Whites were more likely than African Americans to be "the subjects of consent searches", and that Whites were more likely to be ticketed or arrested than minorities, while minorities were more likely to be warned.

A 2002 study found that African Americans were more likely to be watched and stopped by police when driving through white areas, despite the fact that African Americans' "hit rates" were lower in such areas.

A 2004 study analyzing traffic stop data from suburban police department found that although minorities were disproportionately stopped, there is only a "very weak" relationship between race and police decisions to stop. 

Another 2004 study found that young black and Hispanic men were more likely to be issued citations, arrested, and to have force used against them by police, even after controlling for numerous other factors.

A 2005 study found that the percent of speeding drivers who were black (as identified by other drivers) on the New Jersey Turnpike was very similar to the percent of people pulled over for speeding who were black.

A 2004 study looking at motor vehicle searches in Missouri found that unbiased policing did not explain the racial disparity in such searches.

In contrast, a 2006 study examining data from Kansas concluded that its results were "consistent with the notion that police in Wichita choose their search strategies to maximize successful searches," and a 2009 study found that racial disparities in people being searched by the Washington state patrol was "likely not the result of intentional or purposeful discrimination." 

Another 2009 study found that police in Boston were more likely to search if their race was different from that of the suspect, in contrast to what would be expected if discrimination was occurring (which would be that police search decisions are independent of officer race).[64]

A 2010 study found that black drivers were more likely to be searched at traffic stops in white neighborhoods, whereas white drivers were more likely to be searched by white officers at stops in black neighborhoods.

A 2013 study found that police were more likely to issue warnings and citations, but not arrests, to young black men.

A 2014 study analyzing data from Rhode Island found that blacks were more likely than whites to be frisked and, to a lesser extent, searched while driving; the study concluded that "Biased policing is largely the product of implicit stereotypes that are activated in contexts in which Black drivers appear out of place and in police actions that require quick decisions providing little time to monitor cognitions."

As a response to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014, the Department of Justice recruited in September a team of criminal justice researchers to study racial bias in law enforcement in five cities and to subsequently devise strategic recommendations. In its March 2015 report on the Ferguson Police Department, the Department of Justice found that although only 67% of the population of Ferguson was black, 85% of people pulled over by police in Ferguson were black, as were 93 percent of those arrested and 90 percent of those given citations by the police.

Public opinion:

Perceptions of race and safety:

In a particular study, Higgins, Gabbidon, and Vito studied the relationship between public opinion on racial profiling in conjunction with their viewpoint of race relations and their perceived awareness of safety. It was found that race relations had a statistical correlation with the legitimacy of racial profiling.

Specifically, results showed that those who believed that racial profiling was widespread and that racial tension would never be fixed were more likely to be opposed to racial profiling than those who did not believe racial profiling was as widespread or that racial tensions would be fixed eventually.

On the other hand, in reference to perception of safety, the research concluded that one's perception of safety had no influence on public opinion of racial profiling. Higgins, Gabbidon, and Vito acknowledge that this may not have been the case immediately after 9/11, but state that any support of racial profiling based on safety was "short-lived".

Influence of religious affiliation:

One particular study focused on individuals who self-identified as religiously affiliated and their relationship with racial profiling. By using national survey data from October 2001, researcher Phillip H. Kim studied which individuals were more likely to support racial profiling.

The research concludes that individuals that identified themselves as either Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant showed higher statistical numbers that illustrated support for racial profiling in comparison to individuals who identified themselves as non-religious.

Contexts of terrorism and crime:

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, according to Johnson, a new debate concerning the appropriateness of racial profiling in the context of terrorism took place. According to Johnson, prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks the debate on racial profiling within the public targeted primarily African-Americans and Latino Americans with enforced policing on crime and drugs.

​The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon changed the focus of the racial profiling debate from street crime to terrorism. According to a June 4–5, 2002 FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 54% of Americans approved of using "racial profiling to screen Arab male airline passengers."

A 2002 survey by Public Agenda tracked the attitudes toward the racial profiling of Blacks and people of Middle Eastern descent. In this survey, 52% of Americans said there was "no excuse" for law enforcement to look at African Americans with greater suspicion and scrutiny because they believe they are more likely to commit crimes, but only 21% said there was "no excuse" for extra scrutiny of Middle Eastern people.

However, using data from an internet survey based experiment performed in 2006 on a random sample of 574 adult university students, a study was conducted that examined public approval for the use of racial profiling to prevent crime and terrorism.

It was found that approximately one third of students approved the use of racial profiling in general. Furthermore, it was found that students were equally likely to approve of the use of racial profiling to prevent crime as to prevent terrorism-33% and 35.8% respectively.

The survey also asked respondents whether they would approve of racial profiling across different investigative contexts. It was found that 23.8% of people approved of law enforcement using racial profiling as a means to stop and question someone in a terrorism context while 29.9% of people approved of racial profiling in a crime context for the same situation.

It was found that 25.3% of people approved of law enforcement using racial profiling as a means to search someone's bags or packages in a terrorism context while 33.5% of people approved of racial profiling in a crime context for the same situation. It was also found that 16.3% of people approved of law enforcement wire tapping a person's phone based upon racial profiling in the context of terrorism while 21.4% of people approved of racial profiling in a crime context for the same situation.

It was also found that 14.6% of people approved of law enforcement searching someone's home based upon racial profiling in a terrorism context while 18.2% of people approved of racial profiling in a crime context for the same situation.

The study also found that white students were more likely to approve of racial profiling to prevent terrorism than nonwhite students. However, it was found that white students and nonwhite students held the same views about racial profiling in the context of crime. It was also found that foreign born students were less likely to approve of racial profiling to prevent terrorism than non-foreign born students while both groups shared similar views on racial profiling in the context of crime.

See Also: ​






​

​Institutional Racism
YouTube Video Understanding Systematic Oppression and Institutional Racism
By Kyol Blakeney | TEDxYouth@Sydney
Pictured: Institutional Racism: the Continued War on Black America

Institutional racism (also known as institutionalized racism) is a form of racism expressed in the practice of social and political institutions. Institutional racism is also racism by individuals or informal social groups, governed by behavioral norms that support racist thinking and foment active racism.

It is reflected in disparities, among other things, regarding: 
Whether implicitly or explicitly expressed, institutional racism occurs when a certain group is targeted and discriminated against based upon race. Institutional racism is mostly implicit in our ideas and attitudes, so it is often unnoticed by the individual expressing it (see implicit bias).

Institutional racism was explained in 1967 by Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, stating that while individual racism is often identifiable because of its overt nature, institutional racism is less perceptible because of its "less overt, far more subtle" nature.

Institutional racism "originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than [individual racism]". They go on to give examples:
"When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city--Birmingham, Alabama—five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of power, food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism.

When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which most people will condemn. But it is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it."

Institutional racism was defined by Sir William Macpherson in the 1999 Lawrence report (UK) as: "The collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behavior which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people."

The concept of institutional racism re-emerged in political discourse in the late 1990s after a long hiatus, but has remained a contested concept that has been critiqued by multiple constituencies. 

Institutional racism is the differential access to the goods, services, and opportunities of society. When the differential access becomes integral to institutions, it becomes common practice, making it difficult to rectify. Eventually, this racism dominates public bodies, private corporations, public and private universities, and is reinforced by the actions of conformists and newcomers.

Another difficulty in reducing institutionalized racism is that there is no sole, true identifiable perpetrator. When racism is built into the institution, it emerges as the collective action of the population.
Professor James M. Jones postulates three major types of racism: (i) Personally mediated, (ii) internalized, and (iii) institutionalized. 

Personally mediated racism includes the specific social attitudes inherent to racially prejudiced action (bigoted differential assumptions about abilities, motives, and the intentions of others according to), discrimination (the differential actions and behaviors towards others according to their race), stereotyping, commission, and omission (disrespect, suspicion, devaluation, and dehumanization). 

Internalized racism is the acceptance, by members of the racially stigmatized people, of negative perceptions about their own abilities and intrinsic worth, characterized by low self-esteem, and low esteem of others like them.

This racism can be manifested through embracing "whiteness" (e.g. stratification by skin color in non-white communities), self-devaluation (e.g., racial slurs, nicknames, rejection of ancestral culture, etc.), and resignation, helplessness, and hopelessness (e.g., dropping out of school, failing to vote, engaging in health-risk practices, etc.).

Persistent negative stereotypes fuel institutional racism, and influence interpersonal relations. Racial stereotyping contributes to patterns of racial residential segregation and redlining, and shape views about crime, crime policy, and welfare policy, especially if the contextual information is stereotype-consistent.

Institutional racism is distinguished from racial bigotry by the existence of institutional systemic policies, practices and economic and political structures which place minority racial and ethnic groups at a disadvantage in relation to an institution's racial or ethnic majority.

One example is public school budgets in the U.S. (including local levies and bonds) and the quality of teachers, which are often correlated with property values: rich neighborhoods are more likely to be more 'white' and to have better teachers and more money for education, even in public schools. 

Restrictive housing contracts and bank lending policies have also been listed as forms of institutional racism. Other examples sometimes described as institutional racism are racial profiling by security guards and police, use of stereotyped racial caricatures, the under- and mis-representation of certain racial groups in the mass media, and race-based barriers to gainful employment and professional advancement.

Additionally, differential access to goods, services, and opportunities of society can be included within the term institutional racism, such as unpaved streets and roads, inherited socio-economic disadvantage, and "standardized" tests (each ethnic group prepared for it differently; many are poorly prepared).

Some sociological investigators distinguish between institutional racism and "structural racism" (sometimes called structured racialization). The former focuses upon the norms and practices within an institution, the latter upon the interactions among institutions, interactions that produce racialized outcomes against non-white people. An important feature of structural racism is that it cannot be reduced to individual prejudice or to the single function of an institution.

The United States:

Click on any of the following for more about Institutionalized Racism: ​







​Race and Crime in the United States
YouTube Video: Ferguson, MO: Michael Brown Shooting: Surveillance Video Shows Ferguson Officer After Shooting by ABC News 11/15/2014
Pictured: Stats for Blacks and Police in America (July 10, 2016)

Webhost Note: I live in the St. Louis Metro area, which includes Ferguson, MO, where Police Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, sparking the Ferguson riots. From the statistics above, you see that Afro-American males cause a disproportional number of crimes in the United States than white males. Below, we will amplify on the circumstances that cause such a disparity.

The relationship between race and crime in the United States has been a topic of public controversy and scholarly debate for more than a century. The incarceration rate of blacks (African Americans) is more than three times higher than their representation in the general population. Research suggests that the over-representation of some minorities in the criminal justice system is due to disproportionate crime rates, socioeconomic factors and racial discrimination by the criminal justice system.

​Methodology

In the United States, crime data are collected from three major sources: law enforcement agency crime reports, collected monthly by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and processed annually as Uniform Crime Reports (UCR); victimization surveys, collected biannually by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and processed annually in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS); and self-report surveys.

The Uniform Crime Reports represent the primary source of data used in the calculation of official statistics regarding serious crimes such as murder and homicide, which is supplemented by the information provided through the NCVS and self-report studies, the latter being the best indicator of actual crime rates for minor offenses such as illegal substance abuse and petty theft. These crime data collection programs provide most of the statistical information utilized by criminologists and sociologists in their analysis of crime and the extent of its relationship to race. Another form of data is that regarding the prison population.

Uniform Crime Reports (UCR):
Further information: Uniform Crime Reports

Established in 1927, the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) program iis a summary-based reporting system that collects data on crime reported to local and state law enforcement agencies across the United States. The UCR system indexes crimes under two headings: Part I and Part II offenses.

Part I offenses include: murder and non-negligent homicide; non-lethal violent crimes comprising robbery, forcible rape and aggravated assault; and property crimes comprising burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.

Part II offenses include fraud, forgery/counterfeiting, embezzlement, simple assault, sex offenses, offenses against the family, drug and liquor offenses, weapons offenses and other non-violent offenses excluding traffic violations.

There are fundamental limitations of the UCR system, including:
  • Inaccuracy: UCR statistics do not represent the actual amount of criminal activity occurring in the United States. As it relies upon local law enforcement agency crime reports, the UCR program can only measure crime known to police and cannot provide an accurate representation of actual crime rates.
  • Misrepresentation: The UCR program is focused upon street crime, and does not record information on many other types of crime, such as organized crime, corporate crime or federal crime. Further, law enforcement agencies can provide inadvertently misleading data as a result of local policing practices. These factors can lead to misrepresentations regarding the nature and extent of criminal activity in the United States.
  • Manipulation: UCR data are capable of being manipulated by local law enforcement agencies. Information is supplied voluntarily to the UCR program, and manipulation of data can occur at the local level.
  • Race and Ethnicity: The UCR tracks crime for the racial category of "White" to include both Hispanic and non-Hispanic ethnicities. According to the ACLU, with over 50 million Latinos residing in the United States, this hides the incarceration rates for Latinos vis-à-vis marijuana-related offenses, as they are considered "White" with respect to the UCR.

As a response to these and other limitations, a new system of crime data collection was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of the UCR system.

The National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is an incident-based reporting system that will collect more comprehensive and detailed data on crime from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. As it is still under development, NIBRS coverage is not yet nationwide.

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS):
Further information: National Crime Victimization Survey

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) program, established in 1972, is a national survey of a representative sample of households in the United States which covers the frequency of crime victimization and the characteristics and consequences of victimization.

The primary purpose behind the NCVS program is to gather information on crimes that were not reported to police, though information is also collected on reported crimes. The survey collects data on rape, assault, robbery, burglary, personal and household larceny and motor vehicle theft. The NCVS also includes supplemental questions which allow information to be gathered on tangentially relevant issues such as school violence, attitudes towards law enforcement or perceptions regarding crime.

There are fundamental limitations to the NCVS program, including:
  • Reliability: NCVS statistics do not represent verified or evidenced instances of victimization. As it depends upon the recollection of the individuals surveyed, the NCVS cannot distinguish between true and fabricated claims of victimization, nor can it verify the truth of the severity of the reported incidents. Further, the NCVS cannot detect cases of victimization where the victim is too traumatized to report. These factors can contribute to deficits in the reliability of NCVS statistics.
  • Misrepresentation: The NCVS program is focused upon metropolitan and urban areas, and does not adequately cover suburban and rural regions. This can lead to misrepresentations regarding the nature and extent of victimization in the United States.

Comparison of UCR and NCVS data:

According to the NCVS for 1992–2000, 43% of violent criminal acts, and 53% of serious violent crime (not verbal threats, or cuts and bruises) were reported to the police. Overall, black (49%) and Native Americans (48%) victims reported most often, higher than whites (42%) and Asians (40%). Serious violent crime and aggravated assault against blacks (58% and 61%) and Native Americans (55% and 59%) was reported more often than against whites (51% and 54%) or Asians (50% and 51%). Native Americans were unusually unlikely to report a robbery (45%), as with Asians and a simple assault (31%).

Despite the differences in the amount of crime reported, comparisons of the UCR and NCVS data sets show there to be a high degree of correspondence between the two systems. This correspondence extends to the racial demography of both perpetrators and victims of violent crime reported in both systems.

Classification of Hispanics:

The UCR classifies most Hispanics into the "white" category. The NCVS classifies some Hispanic criminals as "white" and some as "other race". The victim categories for the NCVS are more distinct.

According to a report by the National Council of La Raza, research obstacles undermine the census of Latinos in prison, and “Latinos in the criminal justice system are seriously under-counted. The true extent of the over-representation of Latinos in the system probably is significantly greater than researchers have been able to document.

Lack of empirical data on Latinos is partially due to prisons’ failures to document race at intake, or recording practices that historically have classified Latinos as white.

Overall the FBI didn't include a 'Latino' or 'Hispanic' category until recently and 93% of Hispanics are classified as "white" by law enforcement officers (irrespective of their ancestry) often inflating actual white criminal statistics.

Crime Rate Statistics:
Further information: Crime statistics

There is general agreement in the literature that blacks are more likely to commit violent crimes than are whites in the United States. Whether this is the case for less serious crimes is less clear.

Prison data:
Further information: Incarceration in the United States § Ethnicity

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks accounted for 39.4% of the prison and jail population in 2009, while non-Hispanic whites were 34.2%, and Hispanics (of any race) 20.6%. The incarceration rate of black males was over six times higher than that of white males, with a rate of 4,749 per 100,000 US residents.

According to the 2010 US Census, Hispanics constituted 16.3% of the US population. According to the BJS, the black incarceration rate in state and federal prisons declined to 3,161 per 100,000 and the white incarceration rate slightly increased to 487 per 100,000. In 2009, Native Americans and Alaskan Natives were jailed, paroled, or on probation at 932 per 100,000, 25% higher than for non-Natives (747), up 5.6% that year and 12% higher than 2007.

However, crime in general declined during this time down to near 1970 levels, an 18% decrease from the previous decade.

According to a 2013 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, black men were six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated in 2010. The incarceration rates of each race varied from state to state. Oklahoma was shown to have the highest incarceration rates of black people with 2,625 black inmates per 100,000 residents. New Jersey also had high rates with 12.2 black people for every white person in its prison system. Hawaii had the lowest incarceration rates.

​Arrests and sentencing:

A 2011 study which examined violent crime trends between 1980 and 2008 found that racial imbalances between arrest and incarceration levels were both small and comparably sized across the study period. The authors argued that the prior studies had been confounded by not separating Hispanics from Whites.

Another recent study in 2012 raises a different concern, showing that Hispanics and blacks receive considerably longer sentences for the same or lesser offenses on average than white offenders with equal or greater criminal records.

A 2012 University of Michigan Law School study found that African Americans are given longer federal sentences even when factoring prior criminal records, and that African American jail sentences tend to be roughly 10% longer than white jail sentences for the same crimes.

The study found that federal prosecutors of African American and Hispanic defendants are almost twice as likely to push for mandatory minimum sentences, leading to longer sentences and disparities in incarceration rates for federal offenses.

According to the US Census Bureau as of the year 2000, there were 2,224,181 blacks enrolled in college. In that same year, there were 610,300 black inmates in prison according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The results are highly correlated with education. 30 percent of those without college education and nearly 60 percent of high school dropouts had prison records.

The probability of arrest given the commission of a crime is higher for whites than it is for blacks for robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault, whereas for rape the probability of arrest is approximately equal across offender race.

The disparity in arrest rate between criminals who are white and black (and presumably other races) is an interesting fact. On the one hand, it suggests that the over-representation of blacks in the criminal justice system is not consistent with the interpretation that black criminals are more likely to be targeted for arrest.

But, the differential arrest rate may indicate disparities in allocation of police resources, with fewer resources being devoted to solving crimes in predominantly black neighborhoods. In other words, statistics on race and crime may be difficult to interpret without controlling for correlations between poverty and race, and poverty and crime.

​Incarceration by race and ethnicity:
Further information: Incarceration in the United States

Crime trends:

Some studies have argued for smaller racial disparities in violent crime in recent times. However, a study of government data from 1980–2008 found that the reduction in Black violent crime relative to White violent crime was an artifact of those previous studies, which was due to Hispanic offenders being counted as White in the comparison.

The Hispanic population has been increasing rapidly and Hispanics have violence rates higher than that of Whites but lower than that of Blacks.

Homicide:

According to the US Department of Justice, African Americans accounted for 52.5% of all homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and "Other" 2.2%. The offending rate for African Americans was almost 8 times higher than whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher.

Most homicides were intraracial, with 84% of white victims killed by whites, and 93% of African Americans victims were killed by African Americans.

In 2013, number and percentage of murder arrests by race were:
  • Black or African Americans 4,379 = 52.2%
  • White Americans (including Hispanic Americans) 3,799 = 45.3%
  • American Indians or Alaska Natives 98 = 1.06%
  • Asian Americans 101 = 1.2%

Inversely, the percentage of individuals in each racial demographic arrested for murder in 2013 was:
  • 0.01% of Black or African American population (4,379/38,929,319)
  • 0.0017% of White American and Hispanic American population (3,799/223,553,265)
  • 0.0033% of American Indian or Alaska Native population (98/2,932,248)
  • 0.0007% of Asian American population (101/14,674,252)
  • 0.001% of Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander population (6/540,013).

Youth crime:

The "National Youth Gang Survey Analysis" (2011) state that of gang members:
  • 46% are Hispanic/Latino,
  • 35% are black,
  • 11.5% are white,
  • and 7% are other race/ethnicity.

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in the year 2008 black youths, who make up 16% of the youth population, accounted for 52% of juvenile violent crime arrests, including 58.5% of youth arrests for homicide and 67% for robbery. Black youths were over-represented in all offense categories except DUI, liquor laws and drunkenness.

Robbery:

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey in 2002, the black arrest rate for robbery was 8.55 times higher than whites, and blacks were 16 times more likely to be incarcerated for robbery than non-Hispanic whites. Robberies with white victims and black offenders were more than 12 times more common than the reverse.

Victim surveys:

In 1978, Michael Hindelang compared data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (then known as the National Crime Survey, or NCS) to data from the Uniform Crime Reports, both from 1974. He found that NCS data generally agreed with UCR data in regards to the percent of perpetrators of rape, robbery, and assault who were black.

For instance, Hindelang's analysis found that both the NCS and UCR estimated that 62% of robbery offenders were black in the United States in 1974. A 2004 National Crime Victimization Survey report which analyzed carjacking over 10 years found that carjacking victims identified 56% of offenders as black, 21% as white, and 16% as Native American or Asian.

Hispanics:

According to a 2009 report by the Pew Hispanic Center, in 2007 Latinos "accounted for 40% of all sentenced federal offenders-more than triple their share (13%) of the total U.S. adult population". This was an increase from 24% in 1991. 72% of the Latino offenders were not U.S. citizens.

For Hispanic offenders sentenced in federal courts, 48% were immigration offenses and 37% drug offenses. One reason for the large increase in immigration offenses is that they exclusively fall under federal jurisdiction.

Racially-motivated hate crime:

The federal government publishes a list annually of Hate Crime Statistics, 2009. Also published by the federal government is the Known Offender's Race by Bias Motivation, 2009.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report database, in 2010 58.6% of reported hate crime offenders were white, 18.4% of offenders were black, 8.9% were of individuals of multiple races and 1% of offenders were Native Americans. The report also reveals that 48% of all hate crime offenders were motivated by the victim's race, while 18% were based on the victim's religion, and another 18% were based on the victim's sexual orientation. 

The report states that among hate crime offenses motivated by race, 70% were composed of anti-black bias, while 17.7% were of anti-white bias, and 5% were of anti-Asian or Pacific Islander bias.

Racial composition of geographic areas:

Studies have examined if ethnic/racially heterogeneous areas, most often neighborhoods in large cities, have higher crime rates than more homogeneous areas. Most studies find that the more ethnically/racially heterogeneous an area is, the higher its crime rates tend to be.

Studies examining the relationship between percentages of different races in an area and crime rates have generally either found similar relationships as for nationwide crime rates or no significant relationships. Most often studied are correlations between black and Hispanic populations in a given area and crime. Such data may reveal a possible connection, but is functionally inconclusive due to a variety of other correlating factors which overlap with race and ethnicity.

Race and socioeconomic status

While there is a correlation between blacks and Hispanics and crime, the data imply a much stronger tie between poverty and crime than crime and any racial group, when gender is taken into consideration. 

The direct correlation between crime and class, when factoring for race alone, is relatively weak. When gender, and familial history are factored, class correlates more strongly with crime than race or ethnicity.

Studies indicate that areas with low socioeconomic status may have the greatest correlation of crime with young and adult males, regardless of racial composition, though its effect on females is negligible. 

A 1996 study looking at data from Columbus, Ohio found that differences in disadvantage in city neighborhoods explained the vast majority of the difference in crime rates between blacks and whites, and two 2003 studies looking at violent offending among juveniles reached similar conclusions.

Theories of Causes:

Historically, crime statistics have played a central role in the discussion of the relationship between race and crime in the United States.

As they have been designed to record information not only on the kinds of crimes committed, but also on the individuals involved in crime, criminologists and sociologists have and continue to use crime rate statistics to make general statements regarding the racial demographics of crime-related phenomena such as victimization, arrests, prosecutions, convictions, and incarceration.

Regardless of their views regarding causation, scholars acknowledge that some racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the arrest and victimization reports which are used to compile crime rate statistics. There is, however, a great deal of debate regarding the causes of that disproportionality.

As noted above, scholars acknowledge that some racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, are disproportionately represented in the arrest and victimization reports which are used to compile crime rate statistics in the United States.

The data from 2008 reveals that Black Americans are over-represented in terms of arrests made in virtually all types of crime, with the exceptions of "Driving under the influence", "Liquor laws" and hate crime. Overall, Black Americans are arrested at 2.6 times the per-capita rate of all other Americans, and this ratio is even higher for murder (6.3 times) and robbery (8.1 times).

Schools of thought:
Main article: Criminology

​The relationship between race and crime has been an area of study for criminologists since the emergence of anthropological criminology in the late 19th century. 

Cesare Lombroso, founder of the Italian school of criminology, argued that criminal behavior was the product of biological factors, including race. He was among the first criminologists to claim a direct link between race and crime. 

This biological perspective, sometimes seen as racist and increasingly unpopular, was criticized by early 20th century scholars, including Frances Kellor, Johan Thorsten Sellin and William Du Bois, who argued that other circumstances, such as social and economic conditions, were the central factors which led to criminal behavior, regardless of race.

Du Bois traced the causes of the disproportional representation of Blacks in the criminal justice system back to the improperly handled emancipation of Black slaves in general and the convict leasing program in particular. In 1901, he wrote:

"There are no reliable statistics to which one can safely appeal to measure exactly the growth of crime among the emancipated slaves. About seventy per cent of all prisoners in the South are black; this, however, is in part explained by the fact that accused Negroes are still easily convicted and get long sentences, while whites still continue to escape the penalty of many crimes even among themselves. And yet allowing for all this, there can be no reasonable doubt but that there has arisen in the South since the [civil] war a class of black criminals, loafers, and ne'er-do-wells who are a menace to their fellows, both black and white."

The debate that ensued remained largely academic until the late 20th century, when the relationship between race and crime became a recognized field of specialized study in criminology. Helen T. Greene, professor of justice administration at Texas Southern University, and Shaun L. Gabbidon, professor of criminal justice at Pennsylvania State University, note that many criminology and criminal justice programs now either require or offer elective courses on the topic of the relationship between race and crime.

Sociologist Orlando Patterson has explained these controversies as disputes between liberal and conservative criminologists in which each camp focuses on mutually exclusive aspects of the causal net, with liberals focusing on factors external to the groups in question and conservatives focusing on internal cultural and behavioral factors.

​Modern theories of causation: Conflict theory:
Further information: Conflict theory, Conflict criminology, and Marxist criminology

​Conflict theory is considered "one of the most popular theoretical frameworks among race and crime scholars". Rather than one monolithic theory, conflict theory represents a group of closely related theories which operate on a common set of fundamental assumptions.

As a general theory of criminal behavior, conflict theory proposes that crime is an inevitable consequence of the conflict which arises between competing groups within society. Such groups can be defined through a number of factors, including class, economic status, religion, language, ethnicity, race or any combination thereof. Further, conflict theory proposes that crime could be largely eliminated if the structure of society were to be changed.

The form of conflict theory which emphasizes the role of economics, being heavily influenced by the work of Karl Marx and sometimes referred to as Marxist criminology, views crime as a natural response to the inequality arising from the competition inherent in capitalist society.

Sociologists and criminologists emphasizing this aspect of social conflict argue that, in a competitive society in which there is an inequality in the distribution of goods, those groups with limited or restricted access to goods will be more likely to turn to crime.

Dutch criminologist Willem Adriaan Bonger, one of the first scholars to apply the principles of economic determinism to the issue of crime, argued that such inequality as found in capitalism was ultimately responsible for the manifestation of crime at all levels of society, particularly among the poor.

Though this line of thinking has been criticized for requiring the establishment of a utopian socialist society, the notion that the disproportionality observed in minority representation in crime rate statistics could be understood as the result of systematic economic disadvantage found its way into many of the theories developed in subsequent generations.

Culture conflict theory, derived from the pioneering work of sociologist Thorsten Sellin, emphasizes the role of culturally accepted norms of conduct in the formation of cultural groups and the conflicts which arise through their interaction.

Culture conflict theory argues that the group with the most power in any society ensures that their values, traditions and behaviors, which Sellin referred to as "conduct norms", are those to which all other members of society are forced to conform, and any actions which conflict with the interests of the dominant group are identified as deviant and/or criminal in nature.

Sellin's original ideas continued to be developed throughout the 20th century, most notably by George Vold in the 1950s and Austin Turk in the 1960s, and continue to influence the contemporary debate. 

The recent work of Gregory J. Howard, Joshua D. Freilich and Graeme R. Newman applies culture conflict theory to the issue of immigrant and minority crime around the world.

According to their research, while culturally homogeneous groups experience little to no cultural conflict, as all the members share the same set of "conduct norms", culturally heterogeneous groups, such as modern industrial nations with large immigrant populations, display heightened competition between sets of cultural norms which, in turn, leads to an increase in violence and crime. Societies which have high levels of cultural diversity in their population, it is claimed, are more likely to have higher rates of violent crime.

According to conflict theorists such as Marvin Wolfgang, Hubert Blalock and William Chambliss, the disproportionate representation of racial minorities in crime statistics and in the prison population is the result of race- and class-motivated disparities in arrests, prosecutions and sentencing rather than differences in actual participation in criminal activity, an approach which has also been taken by proponents of critical race theory. 

This line of argumentation is generally seen as part of a wider approach to race-related issues referred to as the Discrimination Thesis, which assumes that differences in the treatment received by people of minority racial background in a number of public institutions, including the criminal justice, education and health care systems, is the result of overt racial discrimination.

Opposed to this view is the Non-Discrimination Thesis, which seeks to defend these institutions from such accusations.

At the time it was first proposed, conflict theory was considered outside the mainstream of more established criminological theories, such as strain theory, social disorganization theory and differential association theory.

Barbara D. Warner, associate professor of criminal justice and police studies at Eastern Kentucky University, notes that conflict theory has been the subject of increasing criticism in recent years. Recent studies claim that, while there may have been real sentencing differences related to non-legal characteristics such as race in the 1960s, sentencing discrimination as described by the conflict theorists at that time no longer exists.

Criticism has also pointed to the lack of testability of the general theory. While much research has been done to correlate race, income level and crime frequency, typically of less serious criminal behavior such as theft or larceny, research has shown there to be no significant correlation between race, income level and crime seriousness.

Thus, conflict theory encounters difficulties in attempting to account for the high levels of violent crime such as murder, homicide and rape, in minority populations.

Strain (anomie) theory:
Further information: Strain theory (sociology) and Anomie 

Strain theory, which is largely derived from the work of Robert K. Merton in the 1930s and 1940s, argues that social structures within society which lead to inequality and deprivation in segments of its population indirectly encourage those segments to commit crime. According to strain theory, differences in crime rates between races are the result of real differences in behavior, but to be understood as an attempt to alleviate either absolute or relative deprivation and adapt to the existing opportunity structure.

A more recent approach to strain theory was proposed by Steven F. Messner and Richard Rosenfeld in the 1990s. In their version of the theory, which they refer to as institutional anomie theory, Messner and Rosenfeld argue that the dominance of materialistic concerns and measurements of success manifested in the American Dream weakens the effectiveness of informal social control mechanisms and support processes, which encourages economic gain by any means, legal or illegal.

In those segments of the population which experience the greatest relative deprivation, therefore, there is readiness to turn to crime to overcome inequality and eliminate relative deprivation.

Critics of strain theory point to its weaknesses when compared with actual criminal behavior patterns. Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi argue that strain theory "misconstrue(s) the nature of the criminal act, supplying it with virtues it does not possess." They further point out that, while strain theory suggests that criminals should tend to target people in a more advantageous economic situation than themselves, they more often victimize individuals who live in the same economic circumstances.

General strain theory:
Main article: General strain theory

Multiple studies have found evidence that Agnew's general strain theory explains much of the difference in crime between blacks and whites.

Racial segregation:

A 1996 study found a strong association between black-white spatial isolation and rates of black violence, consistent with the hypothesis that segregation is responsible for higher rates of black crime. Multiple other studies have reached similar conclusions.

Social disorganization theory:
Further information: Social disorganization theory

Social disorganization theory proposes that high rates of crime are largely the result of a heterogeneous and impoverished social ecology. 

Proponents of the theory point to the process of urban decay as a major contributing factor to the breakdown of healthy urban communities which would normally curb the spread of many forms of criminal behavior.

The diversity of minority cultures present in poverty-stricken neighborhoods prevents the formation of strong social bonds and leaves inhabitants uninterested in maintaining positive community relationships. This has been observed to increase the likelihood of crime in certain urban areas, which can lead to increased policing and a further breakdown of familial structures as a result of arrests, which, in turn, precipitates more crime.

Social disorganization theory has been instrumental in establishing the notion that stable, culturally homogeneous communities have lower rates of delinquency and crime regardless of race.

Macrostructural opportunity theory:

Phillippia Simmons reports that many of the studies which have investigated intra- and interracial crime seek to explain this through a theory of macrostructural opportunity which states that interracial violence is primarily a function of opportunity and access.

According to this theory, intraracial crime rates remain relatively high due to the fact that much of the US remains residentially segregated. She notes that this theory predicts that, if residential areas were more racially integrated, intraracial crime would decrease and interracial crime would increase correspondingly. However, she also notes that not all researchers on the topic of intraracial crime agree with this result, with some pointing to other macrostructural factors, such as income and education, which may negate the effect of race on inter- and intraracial crime.

​Anthony Walsh criticizes the attempt to use the macrostructural opportunity model to explain interracial rape as has been done in studies conducted in the past few decades, pointing out that such a defense is directly contradicted by the data related to homicide.

Walsh argues that the macrostructural opportunity model helps explain why black murderers almost always choose black victims. 

There are disparities in rates of reporting rape where victims of some races are statistically less likely or more likely to report their rape, especially depending on the race of the offender. Black women in America are more likely to report sexual assault that has been perpetrated by a stranger. Black women are more likely to under-report rapes overall as they are more likely to blame themselves, feel they will be blamed or feel they won't be believed.

Structural factors:

Evidence supporting the role of structural factors in high black crime rates comes from multiple studies. For example, Robert J. Sampson has reported that most of the reason violent crime rates are so high among blacks originates mainly from unemployment, economic deprivation, and family disorganization. Specifically, he found that "the scarcity of employed black men increases the prevalence of families headed by females in black communities" and that the increased prevalence of such families in turn results in family disruption that significantly increases black murder and robbery rates.

Sampson et al. and Phillips have reported that at least half of the black-white homicide offending differential is attributable to structural neighborhood factors like parents' marital status and social context. Multiple other studies have found a link between black crime rates and structural factors, such as single-parent families and structural inequality.

Social control theory:
Further information: Social control theory

Social control theory, which is among the most popular theories in criminology, proposes that crime is most commonly perpetrated by individuals who lack strong bonds or connections with their social environment.

​Based upon Travis Hirschi's Causes of Delinquency (1969), social bonding theory pioneered the notion that criminologists can gain useful insight into the motives behind criminal behavior by examining what normally motivates individuals to refrain from crime.

From this it is argued that, in those segments of the population where such motivation is lacking, crime will be more prevalent. Hirschi was explicit in mentioning that he believed his theory held true across all racial boundaries, and subsequent research - both in the US and abroad - seems to confirm this belief. The core idea of social control theory is elaborated upon in several other theories of causation, particularly social disorganization theory.

Subculture of violence theory:
Further information: Subcultural theory

As a theory of criminal behavior, subculture of violence theory claims that certain groups or subcultures exist in society in which violence is viewed as an appropriate response to what, in the context of that subculture, are perceived as threatening situations.

​Building upon the work of cultural anthropologist Walter B. Miller's focal concerns theory, which focused on the social mechanisms behind delinquency in adolescents, sociologists Marvin Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti proposed that the disproportionally high rate of crime among African Americans could be explained by their possessing a unique racial subculture in which violence is experienced and perceived in a manner different from that commonly observed in mainstream American culture.
​
As to the origins of this subculture of violence among African Americans, sociologists promoting the theory have pointed towards their Southern heritage. As noted in several studies conducted throughout the 1960s and 1970s, there is a traditional North-South discrepancy in the distribution of homicide in the US, regardless of race, and this, it was argued, indicates that lower-class Southern Blacks and Whites share the same subculture of violence.

The empirical basis for the subculture of violence theory, however, has been described as "extremely limited and unpersuasive". Very little has been done to attempt an adequate assessment of supposedly criminogenic subcultural values, and several studies conducted in the late 1970s claimed to falsify the assumptions upon which the subculture of violence theory depends.

More recently, scholars have criticized the theory as potentially racist in nature in its implication of one given ethnicity or culture supposedly being less fit for or less worthy of being qualified as "civilized," the built-in implication of which in turn would denote stereotypically "white" behavior as an objective norm for all societies to follow.

Prosecutorial and police discrimination theory:
Further information: Racial inequality in the American criminal justice system

Research suggests that police practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing in areas populated by minorities and in-group bias may result in disproportionately high numbers of racial minorities among crime suspects.

Research also suggests that there may be possible discrimination by the judicial system, which contributes to a higher number of convictions for racial minorities.

A 2012 study found that "(i) juries formed from all-white jury pools convict black defendants significantly (16 percentage points) more often than white defendants, and (ii) this gap in conviction rates is entirely eliminated when the jury pool includes at least one black member."

Research has found evidence of in-group bias, where "black (white) juveniles who are randomly assigned to black (white) judges are more likely to get incarcerated (as opposed to being placed on probation), and they receive longer sentences."

In-group bias has also been observed when it comes to traffic citations, as black and white cops are more likely to cite out-groups. A 2016 paper by Roland G. Fryer, Jr, found that while there are no racial differences in lethal use of police force, blacks and Hispanics are significantly more likely to experience non-lethal use of force.

Reports by the Department of Justice have also found that police officers in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ferguson, Missouri, systemically stop, search (in some cases strip-searching) and harass black residents.

A January 2017 report by the DOJ also found that the Chicago Police Department had "unconstitutionally engaged in a pattern of excessive and deadly force" and that police "have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color".

​In criminal sentencing, medium to dark-skinned African Americans are likely to receive sentences 2.6 years longer than those of whites or light-skinned African Americans. When a white victim is involved, those with more "black" features are likely to receive a much more severe punishment.

A 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that blacks were "3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession", even though "blacks and whites use drugs, including marijuana, at similar rates."

A 2016 analysis by the New York Times "of tens of thousands of disciplinary cases against inmates in 2015, hundreds of pages of internal reports and three years of parole decisions found that racial disparities were embedded in the prison experience in New York." Blacks and Latinos were sent more frequently to solitary and held there for longer durations than whites. The New York Times analysis found that the disparities were the greatest for violations where the prison guards had lots of discretion, such as disobeying orders, but smaller for violations that required physical evidence, such as possessing contraband.

A 2016 report by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune found that Florida judges sentence black defendants to far longer prison sentences than whites with the same background. For the same drug possession crimes, blacks were sentenced to double the time of whites.

Blacks were given longer sentences in 60 percent of felony cases, 68 percent of the most serious first-degree crimes, 45 percent of burglary cases and 30 percent of battery cases. For third-degree felonies (the least serious types of felonies in Florida), white judges sentenced blacks to twenty percent more time than whites, whereas black judges gave more balanced sentences.

One judge responded by noting that about ninety-eight percent of sentences are the result of plea bargaining and that sentencing is a complicated issue given the various facts involved, thus no two cases can be compared. Some attorneys note that poorer defendants often rely on public defenders who often receive less favorable plea offers than defendants with private counsel because private attorneys have lighter case loads, are less likely to go to trial with prosecutors, and defendants with means are more likely to present mitigating factors.
​
Another theory proposes that racial inequality in the American criminal justice system is mostly caused by a racial imbalance in decisions to charge criminal defendants with crimes requiring a mandatory minimum prison sentence, leading to large racial disparities in incarceration.

In a 2008 self-published paper Paul Heaton from the RAND Corporation and Charles Loeffler wrote, that some scholars and studies have argued that police discrimination is not an important explanation for racial differences in crime, others state that it is the main cause and some argue that both discrimination and different real crime rates contribute.

They claim that the varying results can be explained to a large degree by the methods being uncertain with many possible confounding factors. As such Heaton and Loeffler proposed a method that they argue would remove all such observable and unobservable problems.

They looked at the arrest rates for assault, robbery, and rape cases where the victims reported a black and white co-offending pair and argue that differences in arrest rates should only reflect police bias. They found that the black offenders were 3% more likely to be arrested.

This suggests some bias, but is insufficient to explain the large racial crime disparities.

Childhood exposure to violence:

Research shows that childhood exposure to violence significantly increases the likelihood to engage in violent behavior. When studies control for childhood exposure to violence, black and white males are equally likely to engage in violent behavior.

Incarceration:
See also: Incarceration in the United States

The United States incarceration rate has increased dramatically in recent times. The deterrent and incapacitating effects of imprisonment, in particular regarding recidivism and the production of career criminals, continue to be debated.

See also:







Rape including Types of Rape Pictured below:
TOP: UNODC : Reported rape by Country per 100,000 population (2011)
BOTTOM: Incidents based on relationship of victim to perpetrator.
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability or is below the legal age of consent. The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.

The rate of reporting, prosecuting and convicting for rape varies between jurisdictions.

Internationally, the incidence of rapes recorded by the police during 2008 ranged, per 100,000 people, from 0.2 in Azerbaijan to 92.9 in Botswana with 6.3 in Lithuania as the median. 

Worldwide, rape is primarily committed by males. Rape by strangers is usually less common than rape by persons the victim knows, and male-on-male and female-on-female prison rapes are common and may be the least reported forms of rape.

Widespread and systematic rape (e.g., war rape) and sexual slavery can occur during international conflict. These practices are crimes against humanity and war crimes. Rape is also recognized as an element of the crime of genocide when committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted ethnic group.

People who have been raped can be traumatized and develop posttraumatic stress disorder. Serious injuries can result along with the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. A person may face violence or threats from the rapist, and, in some cultures, from the victim's family and relatives.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Rape:
​ ___________________________________________________________________________

Types of Rape:

Rape can be categorized in different ways: for example, by reference to the situation in which it occurs, by the identity or characteristics of the victim, and by the identity or characteristics of the perpetrator.

These categories are referred to as types of rape. The types of rape described below are not mutually exclusive: a given rape can fit into multiple categories, by for example by being both a prison rape and a gang rape, or both a custodial rape and the rape of a child.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for further information about each Type of Rape: 
See also:







​Sexual Harassment featuring  the NY Times 11/11/17 Article
"After Weinstein: A List of Men Accused of Sexual Misconduct and the Fallout for Each​"
YouTube Video: Harvey Weinstein accused of sexual harassment by ABC News (10/6/17)

New York Times, November 11, 2017: "After Weinstein: A List of Men Accused of
Sexual Misconduct and the Fallout for Each"

After multiple women came forward to accuse Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer, of sexual misconduct, at least 20 high-profile men in a variety of industries have also been accused. Since then, a number have resigned, been fired or experienced other fallout after claims ranging from inappropriate text messages to rape.
​
Here is a list of such cases that have been brought to public attention since the Weinstein scandal broke on Oct. 5. We’ll update this list periodically as we get new information.

​Click here to see List

___________________________________________________________________________

Sexual harassment is bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In most modern legal contexts, sexual harassment is illegal.

As defined by the United States' Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), "It is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person's sex."

Harassment can include "sexual harassment" or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. The legal definition of sexual harassment varies by jurisdiction. Sexual harassment is subject to a directive in the European Union.

Although laws surrounding sexual harassment exist, they generally do not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or minor isolated incidents—that is, they do not impose a "general civility code". In the workplace, harassment may be considered illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted, or the victim quitting the job). The legal and social understanding of sexual harassment, however, varies by culture.

In the context of US employment, the harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer, and harassers or victims can be of any gender.

It includes a range of actions from mild transgressions to sexual abuse or sexual assault. Sexual harassment is a form of illegal​ employment discrimination in many countries, and is a form of abuse (sexual and psychological) and bullying. For many businesses or organizations, preventing sexual harassment, and defending employees from sexual harassment charges, have become key goals of legal decision-making.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Sexual Harassment:







​James O'Keefe including the Washington Post 11/27/17 Article "A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation"
YouTube Video: James O’Keefe Tried To Scam The Washington Post
Pictured: The James O’Keefe (Center Photo) - Donald Trump - Breitbart News Nexus

The Washington Post Article:
A woman who falsely claimed to The Washington Post that Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama, impregnated her as a teenager appears to work with an organization that uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversations in an effort to embarrass its targets.

In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15.

During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.

The Post did not publish an article based on her unsubstantiated account. When Post reporters confronted her with inconsistencies in her story and an Internet posting that raised doubts about her motivations, she insisted that she was not working with any organization that targets journalists.

But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an organization that targets the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. The organization sets up undercover “stings” that involve using false cover stories and covert video recordings meant to expose what the group says is media bias.

James O’Keefe, the Project Veritas founder who was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2010 for using a fake identity to enter a federal building during a previous sting, declined to answer questions about the woman outside the organization’s offices on Monday morning shortly after the woman walked inside.
“I am not doing an interview right now, so I’m not going to say a word,” O’Keefe said.

In a follow-up interview, O’Keefe declined to answer repeated questions about whether the woman was employed at Project Veritas. He also did not respond when asked if he was working with Moore, former White House adviser and Moore supporter Stephen K. Bannon, or Republican strategists.
​
The group’s efforts illustrate the lengths to which activists have gone to try to discredit media outlets for reporting on allegations from multiple women that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. Moore has denied that he did anything improper. 
A spokesman for Moore’s campaign did not respond to a message seeking comment.

The woman who approached Post reporters, Jaime T. Phillips, did not respond to calls to her cellphone later Monday. Her car remained in the Project Veritas parking lot for more than an hour.

The Post positioned video reporters outside the group’s office in Mamaroneck, N.Y, after determining that Phillips lives in Stamford, Conn., and realizing that the two locations were just 16 miles apart. Two reporters followed her from her home as she drove to the office.

After Phillips was observed entering the Project Veritas office, The Post made the unusual decision to report her previous off-the-record comments.

“We always honor ‘off-the-record’ agreements when they’re entered into in good faith,” said Martin Baron, The Post’s executive editor. “But this so-called off-the-record conversation was the essence of a scheme to deceive and embarrass us.

The intent by Project Veritas clearly was to publicize the conversation if we fell for the trap. Because of our customary journalistic rigor, we weren’t fooled, and we can’t honor an ‘off-the-record’ agreement that was solicited in maliciously bad faith.”

​Phillips’s arrival at the Project Veritas office capped a weeks-long effort that began only hours after The Post published an article on Nov. 9 that included allegations that Moore once initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old named Leigh Corfman. 

Post reporter Beth Reinhard, who co-wrote the article about Corfman, received a cryptic email early the next morning.

“Roy Moore in Alabama . . . I might know something but I need to keep myself safe. How do we do this?” the apparent tipster wrote under an account with the name “Lindsay James.”
 
The email’s subject line was “Roy Moore in AL.” The sender’s email address included “rolltide,” the rallying cry of the University of Alabama’s sports teams, which are nicknamed the Crimson Tide. 

Reinhard sent an email asking if the person was willing to talk off the record.
“Not sure if I trust the phone,” came the reply. “Can we just stick to email?” 

“I need to be confident that you can protect me before I will tell all,” the person wrote in a subsequent email. “I have stuff I’ve been hiding for a long time but maybe it should stay that way.”

The tipster’s email came amid counterattacks by Moore supporters aimed at The Post and its reporters.

That same day, Gateway Pundit, a conservative site, spread a false story from a Twitter account, @umpire43, that said, “A family friend in Alabama just told my wife that a WAPO reporter named Beth offer her 1000$ to accuse Roy Moore.” The Twitter account, which has a history of spreading misinformation, has since been deleted.

The Post, like many other news organizations, has a strict policy against paying people for information and did not do so in its coverage of Moore.

On Nov. 14, a pastor in Alabama said he received a voice mail from a man falsely claiming to be a Post reporter and seeking women “willing to make damaging remarks” about Moore for money. No one associated with The Post made any such call.

In the days that followed the purported tipster’s initial emails, Reinhard communicated with the woman through an encrypted text messaging service and spoke by phone with the person to set up a meeting. When the woman suggested a meeting in New York, Reinhard told her she would have to know more about her story and her background. The woman offered that her real name was Jaime Phillips. 

Phillips said she lived in New York but would be in the Washington area during Thanksgiving week and suggested meeting Tuesday at a shopping mall in Tysons Corner, Va. “I’m planning to do some shopping there so I’ll find a good place to meet before you get there,” Phillips wrote in a message sent via Signal, the encrypted messaging service. 

When Reinhard suggested bringing another reporter, Phillips wrote, “I’m not really comfortable with anyone else being there this time.”

Reinhard arrived to find Phillips, wearing a brown leather jacket and with long red hair, already seated in a booth in the restaurant. 

The 41-year-old said she had been abused as a child, Reinhard said. Her family had moved often. She said she moved in with an aunt in the Talladega area of Alabama and started attending a church youth group when she met Moore in 1992, the year he became a county judge. She said she was 15. She said they started a “secret” sexual relationship.

“I knew it wasn’t right, but I didn’t care,” she said.

She said that she got pregnant, that Moore talked her into an abortion and that he drove her to Mississippi to get it.

In the interview, she told Reinhard that she was so upset she couldn’t finish her salad.
Phillips said she had started thinking about coming forward after the allegations about Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein surfaced. Then she said she saw the news about Moore flashing across the television screen while in a break room at her job at a company called NFM Lending in Westchester County, N.Y., Reinhard said.

Phillips also repeatedly asked the reporter to guarantee her that Moore would lose the election if she came forward. Reinhard told her in a subsequent text message that she could not predict what the impact would be. Reinhard said she also explained to Phillips that her claims would have to be fact-checked. Additionally, Reinhard asked her for documents that would corroborate or support her story.

Later that day, Phillips told Reinhard that she felt “anxiety & negative energy after our meeting,” text messages show. “You just didn’t convince me that I should come forward,” she wrote. 

Reinhard replied, “I’m so sorry but I want to be straight with you about the fact-checking process and the fact that we can’t guarantee what will happen as a result of another story.”
Phillips was not satisfied. On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, she suggested meeting with another Post reporter, Stephanie McCrummen, who co-wrote the initial article about Corfman. “I’d rather go to another paper than talk to you again,” Phillips told Reinhard. 

Back at the newsroom, Reinhard became concerned about elements of Phillips’s story. Phillips had said she lived in Alabama only for a summer while a teenager, but the cellphone number Phillips provided had an Alabama area code. Reinhard called NFM Lending in Westchester County, but the company said a person named Jaime Phillips did not work there. 

Alice Crites, a Post researcher who was looking into Phillips’s background, found a document that strongly reinforced the reporters’ suspicions: a Web page for a fundraising campaign by someone with the same name. It was on the website GoFundMe.com under the name Jaime Phillips.

“I’m moving to New York!” the May 29 appeal said. “I’ve accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I’ll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement. I was laid off from my mortgage job a few months ago and came across the opportunity to change my career path.”

In a March posting on its Facebook page, Project Veritas said it was seeking 12 new “undercover reporters,” though the organization’s operatives use methods that are eschewed by mainstream journalists, such as misrepresenting themselves. 

A posting for the “journalist” job on the Project Veritas website that month warned that the job “is not a role for the faint of heart.”

The job’s listed goal: “To adopt an alias persona, gain access to an identified person of interest and persuade that person to reveal information.”

It also listed tasks that the job applicant should be able to master, including: “Learning a script,” “Preparing a background story to support your role,” “Gaining an appointment or access to the target of the investigation,” and “Operating concealed recording equipment.”

Project Veritas, founded in 2010, is a tax-exempt charity that says its mission is to “investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct.” It raised $4.8 million and employed 38 people in 2016, according to its public tax filing. It also had 92 volunteers.

O’Keefe’s criminal record has caused the charity problems in some states. Mississippi and Utah stripped the group of a license to raise money in those states because it failed to disclose O’Keefe’s conviction on state applications, records show.

Also working at Veritas is former television producer Robert J. Halderman, who was sentenced to six months in jail in 2010 after he was accused of trying to blackmail late-night host David Letterman. Halderman was with O’Keefe outside the Project Veritas offices Monday as a reporter tried to ask about Phillips’s role with the organization.

Because Jaime Phillips is a relatively common name, it wasn’t a certainty that the GoFundMe page that Crites found was created by the same woman who approached The Post. But there was another telling detail, in addition to the name. One of two donations listed on the page was from a person whose name matched her daughter’s, according to public records.

McCrummen agreed to meet Phillips that afternoon. Phillips suggested meeting somewhere in Alexandria, Va., saying she was shopping in the area. Post video reporters accompanied McCrummen, who brought a printout of the fundraising page to the interview.

Again, Phillips had arrived early and was waiting for McCrummen, her purse resting on the table. When McCrummen put her purse near Phillips’s purse to block a possible camera, Phillips moved hers.

The Post video reporters sat separately, unnoticed, at an adjacent table. 
Phillips said she didn’t want to get into the details of what she had said happened between her and Moore. 

She said she wanted McCrummen to assure her that the article would result in Moore’s defeat, according to a recording. McCrummen instead asked her about her story regarding Moore.

Phillips complained that President Trump had endorsed Moore. 

“So my whole thing is, like, I want him to be completely taken out of the race,” she said. “And I really expected that was going to happen, and now it’s not. So, I don’t know what you think about that.” 

McCrummen asked Phillips to verify her identity with a photo identification. Phillips provided a Georgia driver’s license. 

McCrummen then asked her about the GoFundMe page.

“We have a process of doing background, checking backgrounds and this kind of thing, so I wanted to ask you about one thing,” McCrummen said, pulling out a copy of the page and reading from it. “So I just wanted to ask you if you could explain this, and I also wanted to let you know, Jaime, that this is being recorded and video recorded.” 

“Okay,” Phillips said. “Um, yeah, I was looking to take a job last summer in New York, but it fell through,” Phillips said. “Yeah, it was going to be with the Daily Caller, but it ended up falling through, so I wasn’t able to do it.”

When asked who at the Daily Caller interviewed her, Phillips said, “Kathy,” pausing before adding the last name, “Johnson.”

Paul Conner, executive editor of the Daily Caller, said Monday that no one with the name Kathy Johnson works for the publication and that he has no record of having personally interviewed Phillips. Conner later said in an email that he had asked other top editors at the Daily Caller and the affiliated Daily Caller News Foundation about Phillips.

“None of us has interviewed a woman by the name Jaime Phillips,” Conner wrote.
At the Alexandria restaurant on Wednesday, Phillips also told The Post that she had not been in contact with the Moore campaign. As the interview ended, Phillips told McCrummen she was not recording the conversation.

“I think I probably just want to cancel and not go through with it at this point,” Phillips said at Souvlaki Bar shortly before ending the interview. 

“I’m not going to answer any more questions,” she said. “I think I’m just going to go.”
She picked up her coat and bag, returned her drink to the front counter and left the restaurant.

By 7 p.m. the message on the GoFundMe page was gone, replaced by a new one.
“Campaign is complete and no longer active,” it read.
___________________________________________________________________________
​
James Edward O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is an American conservative political activist. He produces secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters with figures and workers in academic, governmental and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or allegedly illegal behavior by employees and/or representatives of those organizations. 

​O'Keefe has been criticized for selectively editing videos to misrepresent the context of conversations and the subjects' responses, creating the false impression that people said or did things they did not.

He gained national attention for his video recordings of workers at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offices in 2009, his arrest and guilty plea in 2010 for entering the federal office of then-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) under false pretenses, and the release of videos of conversations with two high-ranking, now former, NPR executives in 2011.

When his videos portraying ACORN workers seemingly aiding a couple in criminal planning hit the 24-hour cable news cycle, the U.S. Congress quickly voted to freeze funds for the non-profit. The national controversy resulted in the non-profit also losing most of its private funding before investigations of the videos concluded no illegal activity occurred.

In March 2010, ACORN was close to bankruptcy and had to close or rename most of its offices. Shortly after, the California State Attorney General's Office and the US Government Accountability Office released their related investigative reports.

The Attorney General's Office found that O'Keefe had misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers in California and that the workers had not broken any laws. A preliminary probe by the GAO found that ACORN had managed its federal funds appropriately. One of the fired ACORN workers sued O'Keefe for invasion of privacy; O'Keefe issued an apology and agreed to pay $100,000 in a settlement.

O'Keefe gained support from conservative media and interest groups. In 2009, Andrew Breitbart commissioned him for the option to publish new videos exclusively on BigGovernment.com.

​In June 2010, O'Keefe formed a 501(c)(3) organization, Project Veritas, with the stated mission to "investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct."

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about James O'Keefe:
​







Larry Nassar
YouTube Video: Victims' Father lunges at Larry Nassar in court by CNN
Pictured: Larry Nassar Sentenced to 40 to 175 Years In Prison For Sexual Abuse of More Than 150 Women (by Sports Illustrated January 24, 2018)

​Lawrence Gerard Nassar (born August 16, 1963) is an American convicted serial child molester who was the USA Gymnastics national team doctor and an osteopathic physician at Michigan State University.

Nassar's cumulative criminal acts of assault composed the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal, in which he was accused of molesting at least 250 underage girls, including a number of well-known Olympic gymnasts, dating as far back as 1992. He has admitted to at least ten of the accusations.

In July 2017, Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to child pornography charges. On January 24, 2018, Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in a state prison in Michigan after pleading guilty to the sexual assault of minors. He will serve the federal and state sentences consecutively.

For more about Larry Nassar, click on any of the following:







Assassination of John F. Kennedy
YouTube Video Who killed JFK? Behind the scenes of Warren Commission
Pictured below: President Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and Texas Governor John Connally with his wife, Nellie, in the presidential limousine, minutes before the assassination

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie when he was fatally shot. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where President Kennedy was pronounced dead about thirty minutes after the shooting; Connally recovered from his injuries.

Former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department 70 minutes after the initial shooting. Oswald was charged under Texas state law with the murder of Kennedy as well as that of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, who had been fatally shot a short time after the assassination.

At 11:21 a.m. Sunday, November 24, 1963, as live television cameras covered his transfer to the Dallas County Jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital where he soon died.

Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, though it was later overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial.

After a ten-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, that Oswald had acted entirely alone, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. Kennedy was the eighth US President to die in office and the fourth (following those of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and most recent to be assassinated.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson automatically became President upon Kennedy's death.

In contrast to the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded in 1979 that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". The HSCA agreed with the Warren Commission that the injuries that Kennedy and Connally sustained were caused by Oswald's three rifle shots, but they also determined the existence of an additional gunshot based on the analysis of a dictabelt audio recording and therefore "... a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President."

The Committee was not able to identify any individuals or groups involved with the possible conspiracy. In addition, the HSCA found that the original federal investigations were "seriously flawed" with respect to information-sharing and the possibility of conspiracy. As recommended by the HSCA, the acoustic evidence indicating conspiracy was subsequently re-examined and rejected.

In light of the investigative reports determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman," the U.S. Justice Department concluded active investigations and stated "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy."

However, Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios. Nonetheless, polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that up to 80 percent of Americans have suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Assassination of John F. Kennedy:







Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
YouTube Video about the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Pictured below: Robert F. Kennedy lies mortally wounded on the floor immediately after the shooting. Kneeling beside him is 17-year-old busboy, Juan Romero, who was shaking Kennedy's hand when Sirhan Sirhan fired the shots.

On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight PDT at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Earlier that evening, the 42 year-old junior Senator from New York was declared the winner in the South Dakota and California presidential primaries in the 1968 election. He was pronounced dead at 1:44 AM on June 6, about 26 hours after he had been shot.

Following dual victories in the California and South Dakota primary elections for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, Senator Kennedy spoke to journalists and campaign workers at a live televised celebration from the stage of his headquarters at the Ambassador Hotel.

Shortly after leaving the podium and exiting through a kitchen hallway, he was mortally wounded by multiple shots fired from a handgun. Kennedy died in the Good Samaritan Hospital 26 hours later.

The shooter was 24 year-old Palestinian/Jordanian immigrant, Sirhan Sirhan. In 1969, Sirhan was convicted of murdering the senator and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972. A freelance newspaper reporter recorded the shooting on audio tape, and the aftermath was captured on film.

Kennedy's remains were taken to St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York for two days of public viewing before a funeral Mass was held on June 8. His funeral train traveled from New York City to Washington, DC, and throngs of spectators lined the route to view the journey. His body was interred at night in Arlington National Cemetery near his brother John.

His death prompted the United States Secret Service to protect presidential candidates. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was also a presidential candidate; he went on to win the Democratic nomination but ultimately lost the election to Republican Richard Nixon.

The assassination of Robert Kennedy and the circumstances surrounding it have spawned a variety of conspiracy theories. Kennedy and Huey Long of Louisiana (in 1935) are the only two sitting United States Senators to be assassinated.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy:







Donald Trump Administration's Family Separation Policy 
vs. President Trump's use of undocumented immigrant labor: Is anyone surprised?​ (by the Washington Post, 12/6/2018) Pictured below: 
LEFT: A protester compares child detention by the government to the Nazi concentration camps (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
RIGHT: ​Detained children sitting within a wire mesh compartment in the Ursula detention facility in McAllen, Texas
Click here to read the article by the Washington Post about Donald Trump's hiring of illegal Immigrants.


The Trump administration family separation policy, described by the Trump administration as part of its "zero tolerance" policy, was an aspect of U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policy.

The new guidelines were implemented in April 2018, and, following immense public opposition and political pressure, were suspended for an indefinite period of time on June 20, 2018, through an executive order.

Under the zero tolerance protocol, federal authorities separated children from their parents, relatives, or other adults who accompanied them in crossing the border.

Despite documented cases of children being separated when lawfully presenting at ports of entry, the Trump administration said this only happened in cases of protecting children or human trafficking.

The policy involved prosecuting all adults who were detained at the U.S.–Mexico border, sending the parents to federal jails, and placing children and infants under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. According to government officials, the policy led to the separation of almost 3,000 children from their parents.

The Trump administration sought to justify the new policy while also blaming Congress for it, with President Trump referring to "the Democrats’ law" and calling for a change to existing immigration laws. Democrats, and many Republicans, spoke out forcefully against the policy.

No law forced the government to separate families. Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the policy, citing a passage from the Bible. Other administration officials argued that the policy was intended to deter immigration or be used as political leverage to force Democrats and moderate Republicans to accept hard-line immigration legislation.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association condemned the policy, with the American Academy of Pediatrics saying that the policy has caused "irreparable harm" to the children. On June 30, a national protest was held which drew hundreds of thousands of protesters from all 50 states to demonstrate in more than 600 towns and cities.

Authorities made the decision to take children from their parents without a plan to reunite families, resulting in numerous cases of parents and children having no contact since being forcefully separated.

Following national and international criticism, on June 20 President Trump signed an executive order ending family separations at the border. Following the suspension of the policy, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar  testified that the Department would only reunite children with their detained parents if Congress passed legislation lifting the 20-day limit on family detention required under the Flores settlement.

On June 26, responding to an ACLU class action lawsuit, a federal judge ordered all separated children, except where not appropriate, be reunited with their parent within 30 days.

On July 26, the Trump administration said that 1,442 children had been reunited with their parents while 711 remained in government shelters. Officials said they will work with the court to return the remaining children, including 431 parents of those children who have already been deported without their children. As of August 20, 528 of the children — about a fifth — have still not been reunited with their parents.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Trump Administration's 







Human Trafficking in the United StatesPictured below: Asia Is the Largest Source of Human Trafficking in the U.S.
Human trafficking is the modern form of slavery, with illegal smuggling and trading of people, for forced labor or sexual exploitation.

Trafficking is officially defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by means of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, or abuse of power of a position of vulnerability for the purpose of exploitation. Human trafficking is not synonymous with forced migration or smuggling.

In the United States, human trafficking tends to occur around international travel-hubs with large immigrant populations, notably California, Texas and Georgia. The U.S. Justice Department estimates that 35,500–170,500 people are trafficked into the country every year.

The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that including U.S. citizens and immigrants 57,700 people are victims of human trafficking. Those being trafficked include young children, teenagers, men and women and can be domestic citizens or foreign nationals.

Under federal law (18 USC § 1589), it is a crime to make people work by use of force, coercion or fear. U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 1" in 2017.

On April 11, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act into law, which is aimed at closing websites that enable the crime to occur, and prosecuting their owners and users.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Human Sex Trafficking in the United States:







Jeffrey EpsteinPictured Below: A prison worker on duty at the time of Jeffrey Epstein's death was offered a plea deal, sources say
​Jeffrey Edward Epstein (January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American financier and convicted sex offender. Epstein began his professional life as a teacher but then switched to the banking and finance sector in various roles, working at Bear Stearns before forming his own firm. He developed an elite social circle and procured women and many underage girls who were then sexually abused by Epstein and some of these contacts.

​In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida began investigating Epstein after a parent complained that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring an underage girl for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He served almost 13 months in custody, but with extensive work release. He was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a plea deal; federal officials had in fact identified 36 girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had sexually abused.

Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019 on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He died in his jail cell on August 10, 2019. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide, although Epstein's lawyers have disputed the ruling. Because his death eliminates the possibility of pursuing criminal charges, a judge dismissed all criminal charges on August 29, 2019.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Jeffrey Epstein:
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Harvey Weinstein and the Weinstein Effect Pictured below: Harvey Weinstein Sexual Misconduct Cases Appear To Be Settling For $44 Million (Forbes 5/24/2019)
​Harvey Weinstein CBE (born March 19, 1952) is an American former film producer.
He and his brother Bob Weinstein co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced several successful independent films, including: 
Weinstein won an Academy Award for producing Shakespeare in Love, and garnered seven Tony Awards for a variety of plays and musicals, including The Producers, Billy Elliot the Musical, and August: Osage County.

After leaving Miramax, Weinstein and his brother Bob founded The Weinstein Company, a mini-major film studio. He was co-chairman, alongside Bob, from 2005 to 2017.

In October 2017, following sexual abuse allegations against Weinstein, he was dismissed from his company and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

By October 31, over 80 women had made allegations against Weinstein. The allegations sparked the #MeToo social media campaign and many similar sexual abuse allegations against and dismissals of powerful men around the world, now called the "Weinstein effect" (see below).

On May 25, 2018, Weinstein was arrested in New York, charged with rape and other offenses, and released on bail.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Harvey Weinstein: ___________________________________________________________________________

Weinstein Effect:

The Weinstein effect is a global trend in which people come forward to accuse famous or powerful men of sexual misconduct. A worldwide wave of allegations began in the United States in October 2017, when media outlets reported on sexual abuse allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein (above). The allegations were described as a "tipping point" or "watershed moment" and precipitated a "national reckoning" against sexual harassment.
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The effect gave rise to the Me Too movement, which encourages people to share their experiences of sexual harassment and assault, and the two events triggered a cascade of allegations that brought about the swift removal of many men in positions of power in the United States, while tarnishing and ending political careers of additional men as it spread around the world. In the entertainment industry, allegations led to the dismissal of actors and directors alike.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the "Weinstein Effect":







Bayer AG and the Pesticide  Roundup, including Bayer's product Neonicotinoid and its impact on the Bee population. Pictured below:
TOP Row:
(L): Roundup weed killer may play role in widespread bee deaths, study finds (CBS News)
(R): Third US jury finds Roundup weed killer likely caused cancer, awarding couple $2 billion
BOTTOM Row: Chart: Bayer AG proposed takeover of Monsanto could create three crop-chemicals giants
[Your WebHost: while Bayer offers a wide variety of safe pharmaceutical and other products to its customers, nonetheless the company has also been responsible for products that have killed people and even bees!]

Bayer AG is a German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include human and veterinary pharmaceuticals; consumer healthcare products; agricultural chemicals, seeds and biotechnology products.

The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. Werner Baumann has been CEO since 2016.

Founded in Barmen in 1863 as a dyestuffs factory, Bayer's first and best-known product was aspirin. In 1898 Bayer trademarked the name heroin for the drug diacetylmorphine and marketed it as a cough suppressant and non-addictive substitute for morphine until 1910.

Bayer also introduced phenobarbital; prontosil, the first widely used antibiotic and the subject of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Medicine; the antibiotic Cipro (ciprofloxacin); and Yaz (drospirenone) birth control pills.

In 1925 Bayer was one of six chemical companies that merged to form IG Farben, the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical company. The Allied Control Council seized IG Farben after World War II, because of its role in the Nazi war effort and involvement in the Holocaust, which included using slave labour from concentration camps and the purchase of humans for dangerous medical testing. It was split into its six constituent companies in 1951, then split again into three: BASF, Bayer and Hoechst.

Bayer played a key role in the Wirtschaftswunder in post-war West Germany, quickly regaining its position as one of the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical corporations.

In 2006 the company acquired Schering, in 2014 it acquired Merck & Co.'s consumer business, with brands such as Claritin, Coppertone and Dr. Scholl's, and in 2018 it acquired Monsanto, a leading producer of genetically engineered crops, for $63 billion. Bayer CropScience develops genetically modified crops and pesticides.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Bayer AG: ___________________________________________________________________________

​Glyphosate-based herbicides (trade name Roundup)

Glyphosate-based herbicides are usually made of a glyphosate salt that is combined with other ingredients that are needed to stabilize the herbicide formula and allow penetration into plants.

The glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup was first developed by Monsanto in the 1970s. It is used most heavily on corn, soy, and cotton crops that have been genetically modified to be resistant to the herbicide. Some products include two active ingredients, such as Enlist Duo which includes 2,4-D as well as glyphosate.

As of 2010, more than 750 glyphosate products were on the market. The names of inert ingredients used in glyphosate formulations are usually not listed on the product labels.

Glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides have low acute toxicity in mammals. They likewise have not been shown to pose a significant risk to human health during normal use, although human deaths have been reported from deliberate ingestion of concentrated RoundUp.

It is difficult to determine how much surfactants contribute to the overall toxicity of each formulation. Glyphosate formulations containing the surfactant polyethoxylated tallow amine (POEA) are sometimes used terrestrially, but are not approved for aquatic use in the US due to their toxicity to aquatic organisms.

There have been multiple lawsuits against Monsanto asserting that exposure to glyphosate herbicides is carcinogenic and that the company did not adequately disclose the risk to consumers.

In 2018 a California jury awarded $289 million in damages (later cut to $78 million on appeal) to a groundskeeper who argued that Monsanto failed to adequately warn consumers of cancer risks posed by the herbicides.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Glyphosate-based herbicides: ___________________________________________________________________________

Neonicotinoid:

​Neonicotinoids (sometimes shortened to neonics) are a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically similar to nicotine.

In the 1980s Shell and in the 1990s Bayer started work on their development.

The neonicotinoid family includes: 
Imidacloprid is the most widely used insecticide in the world. Compared to organophosphate and carbamate insecticides, neonicotinoids cause less toxicity in birds and mammals than insects. Some breakdown products are also toxic to insects.

Neonicotinoid use has been linked in a range of studies to adverse ecological effects, including honey-bee colony collapse disorder (CCD) and loss of birds due to a reduction in insect populations.

Some scientific findings regarding the harm caused to bees by neonics have been conflicting and controversial. This is partly because bees exposed to normal levels of neonicotinoids do not immediately die.

Some sources have proposed that neonicotinoids reduce a bee colony's ability to survive the winter. Most academic and governmental bodies agree that neonicotinoids have had a negative influence on bee populations.

In 2013, the European Union and a few neighboring countries restricted the use of certain neonicotinoids; in 2018, the EU banned the three main neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam) for all outdoor uses.

​Several states in the United States have also restricted usage of neonicotinoids out of concern for pollinators and bees.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Neonicotinoid:






​
Teflon’s River of Fear (Fortune 5/24/18) 
(Polytetrafluoroethylene) Pictured below: The Teflon Deception: It Releases Toxic Fumes When Heated
​Teflon’s River of Fear

Chemical giant Chemours is facing off against residents of North Carolina in a battle over a potentially harmful compound used to make nonstick pans. (Fortune 5/24/2018)

"Teflon is the quintessential American product. It was discovered by accident and like many such discoveries was at first simply a creation in search of a purpose. Versions of it are in our frying pans and popcorn bags, our medical devices and electronic gadgets, our pruning shears and our cars. It is ubiquitous and essential. It is part of our vocabulary, uttered with both envy and exasperation to describe politicians and Mafia dons. It even helped win World War II: Teflon was needed to properly seal the pipes in the gaseous diffusion plant where uranium was enriched to make the first atomic bombs.

Teflon is made by Chemours, a chemical manufacturer that was spun out of DuPont in 2015. At that time, many investors thought Chemours was destined—even designed—to fail. It was weighted down with both DuPont’s environmental liabilities and billions in debt. But the company proved critics wrong and has become a stock market darling by selling businesses, cutting costs, and reaping a windfall from widespread adoption of its Opteon line of environmentally friendly refrigerants.

With $6.2 billion in sales, Chemours ranks No. 451 on this year’s Fortune 500, up 31 spots from last year. Its erstwhile parent DuPont, meanwhile, fell off the list this year after completing its merger with Dow Chemical. (The combined ­DowDuPont ranks No. 47 on this year’s 500.) Shares of Chemours have soared more than 400% over the past two years vs. a 33% gain for the S&P 500.

In February 2017, Chemours took a big step toward resolving its environmental problems when it and DuPont were able to settle—without admitting fault or liability—a sprawling class-action litigation with plaintiffs involving a chemical known as C8, a once-vital ingredient for making Teflon that has been linked to certain kinds of cancer and other diseases. The agreement appeared to signal stability and certainty for the young company.

But Chemours (and by extension, DuPont) now finds itself again in legal and regulatory trouble with Teflon. This time it’s over the chemical developed to replace C8—and how it came to be that the companies were for decades discharging this substance from a factory in rural North Carolina into the air and the Cape Fear River, the water supply for more than 250,000 people in and around Wilmington, N.C.

The chemical is called GenX. (Not to be confused with Generation X, the demographic cohort that came after the baby boomers.) GenX is everywhere in and around the Chemours North Carolina factory, known as the Fayetteville Works. It’s in the dirt, falling to the earth with the rain. It is in the wells of nearby residents, say state officials, sparking fear and anger.

“People ask me why I don’t just walk away,” said Mike Watters, who lives near the factory on five acres with a well and property contaminated by Chemours’s discharges and has joined a lawsuit against the company. He has a simple answer: “I didn’t cause this. They did.”

GenX has been linked to cancer in laboratory animals. A 2016 report from the Dutch government—Chemours has a Teflon factory in the Netherlands—said it was less toxic than C8 but still a “suspected human carcinogen.” Other research suggests GenX is safe at low doses. There have been no human epidemiology studies.

The uncertainty has made GenX a symbol of so-called emerging contaminants, or chemicals for which the health risks are not known. It is fueling a national debate over how to regulate an industry in which innovation is often driven by developing replacement chemicals that are said to be safer—if not always actually safe.

This is all taking place as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is under scrutiny, with Administrator Scott Pruitt facing multiple investigations into his spending, travel, and ties to lobbyists while also pursuing policies that could make it harder to control what gets pumped into our air and water. The GenX controversy may show the limits of that strategy:

The Trump administration’s appointee for the EPA section overseeing chemical pollution was forced to withdraw, in part, because he faced stiff resistance for defending GenX in the past.

North Carolina officials, meanwhile, are trying to rein in Chemours through tighter regulation and litigation. In a pending lawsuit, the state claims the company systematically misled its regulators on its emissions. “In fact, information provided by DuPont and Chemours led Division of Water Resources staff to reasonably believe that GenX was not being discharged into the Cape Fear,” the state’s filing says. ­Chemours has not yet responded to or made public comments about the allegations.

Chemours also faces a slew of lawsuits from property owners with allegedly contaminated wells, from residents who rely on public drinking water, and from the local governments that draw their water from the Cape Fear.

“We want an assurance that the things that are going into the river that we can’t filter are safe for our drinking water, and that’s not something that our rate payers should pay for,” says Jim Flechtner, the executive director of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which is a plaintiff and is considering whether to build a $46 million treatment plant to filter out GenX and related contaminants.

Chemours declined repeated requests from Fortune for interviews. In court papers, the company has said it followed proper procedures on its discharges and that GenX is not toxic at the amounts released. But the company is now capturing its GenX-contaminated wastewater and sending it off-site for disposal. Chemours has been ordered to provide bottled water to many residents who live near the factory, and it has told the state it will spend $100 million to eliminate virtually all of its tainted-air emissions.

The CEO of Chemours, Mark Vergnano, said on an earnings call in February that there is no cause for concern and that Chemours has purposefully kept a low profile out of respect for the process of finding a long-term solution. “I really want to be clear that we continue to believe that none of the discharges either before we became an independent company in mid-2015 or after have adversely impacted anyone’s health,” he said.

While Vergnano is well-respected in the industry for his discipline and execution skills, good timing has played a part in the company’s recovery. Prices for titanium dioxide—the company’s largest product line—stabilized just as Opteon took off, giving Chemours some needed momentum. “Opteon turned the company around,” says James Butkiewicz, a professor of economics at the University of Delaware who has watched Chemours closely since its spinoff.

But Teflon and GenX are casting a shadow over Chemours’s future prospects. Moody’s said recently that it would be unlikely to consider an upgrade for Chemours debt, now at Ba2, “until the litigation risk has better clarity, or until there are clearer settlement parameters with one or more of the complainants.” For both the company and the residents of Wilmington, resolution might not come anytime soon."

If there’s one thing that sticks to Teflon, it seems, it’s controversy.

[End of Article]
___________________________________________________________________________

Polytetrafluoroethylene

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene that has numerous applications. The well-known brand name of PTFE-based formulas is Teflon by Chemours. Chemours was a spin-off from DuPont, which originally discovered the compound in 1938. Another popular brand name of PTFE is Syncolon by Synco Chemical Corporation.

PTFE is a fluorocarbon solid, as it is a high molecular weight compound consisting wholly of carbon and fluorine. PTFE is hydrophobic: neither water nor water-containing substances wet PTFE, as fluorocarbons demonstrate mitigated London dispersion forces due to the high electronegativity of fluorine. PTFE has one of the lowest coefficients of friction of any solid.

PTFE is used as a non-stick coating for pans and other cookware. It is nonreactive, partly because of the strength of carbon–fluorine bonds, and so it is often used in containers and pipework for reactive and corrosive chemicals.

Where used as a lubricant, PTFE reduces friction, wear, and energy consumption of machinery. It is commonly used as a graft material in surgical interventions. It is also frequently employed as coating on catheters; this interferes with the ability of bacteria and other infectious agents to adhere to catheters and cause hospital-acquired infections.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Polytetrafluoroethylene:







The War on Drugs: Pictured below:
(L) The Drug War, Mass Incarceration and Race (English/Spanish);
(R) Drug trafficking by the numbers
[Your WebHost: this topic was included under the "Worst of Humanity" web page due to the overall injustice that the United States' War on Drugs perpetuated against innocent Americans whose only crime was to be trapped by the addictive nature of certain drugs: treatment, NOT incarceration, is the only solution!]

The war on drugs is a campaign, led by the U.S. federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade in the United States. 

The initiative includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of psychoactive drugs that the participating governments and the UN have made illegal. The term was popularized by the media shortly after a press conference given on June 18, 1971, by President Richard Nixon—the day after publication of a special message from President Nixon to the Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control—during which he declared drug abuse "public enemy number one".

That message to the Congress included text about devoting more federal resources to the "prevention of new addicts, and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted", but that part did not receive the same public attention as the term "war on drugs". However, two years prior to this, Nixon had formally declared a "war on drugs" that would be directed toward eradication, interdiction, and incarceration. Today, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the War on Drugs, estimates that the United States spends $51 billion annually on these initiatives.

On May 13, 2009, Gil Kerlikowske—the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)—signaled that the Obama administration did not plan to significantly alter drug enforcement policy, but also that the administration would not use the term "War on Drugs", because Kerlikowske considers the term to be "counter-productive". 

ONDCP's view is that "drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated... making drugs more available will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe".

In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report on the War on Drugs, declaring: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.

Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and years after President Nixon launched the US government's war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed." The report was criticized by organizations that oppose a general legalization of drugs.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the "War on Drugs":






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Assault Weapons in the United States, including Semi-automatic Firearms, Bump Stocks, as well as Assault Weapons Legislation and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Pictured below:
TOP: With AR-15s, Mass Shooters Attack With the Rifle Firepower Typically Used by Infantry Troops
BOTTOM: Banning assault weapons won't solve America's gun problem
[Your WebHost:​ Below along with the next topic (the NRA) we cover the weapons mostly used domestically to kill innocent Americans, many our school children like the Stoneland Douglas High School Shooting]

Assault weapon is a term used in the United States to define some types of firearms.

The definition varies among regulating jurisdictions but usually includes semi-automatic rifles with a detachable magazine, a pistol grip and sometimes other features such as a vertical forward grip, flash suppressor or barrel shroud. 

Some firearms are specified by name. At the time that the now-defunct Federal Assault Weapons Ban passed in 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice said, "In general, assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use." The origin of the term has been attributed to legislators, gun control groups, the media and the firearms industry.

​It is sometimes conflated with the term "assault rifle", which refers to selective-fire military rifles that can fire in automatic or burst mode.

After the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, many news organizations ran stories about assault weapons, explaining their varying definitions and presenting varying opinions about whether they should be banned again at the federal level.

For more about Assault Weapons, click on any of the following blue hyperlinks: ___________________________________________________________________________

A semi-automatic firearm, also called self-loading firearm or autoloading firearm (though fully automatic and selective fire firearms technically are also self-loading), is one that not only fires a bullet each time the trigger is pulled, but also performs all steps necessary to prepare it to discharge again—assuming cartridges remain in the firearm's feed device.

Typically, this includes extracting and ejecting the spent cartridge case from the firing chamber, re-cocking the firing mechanism, and loading a new cartridge into the firing chamber. To fire again, the trigger is released and re-pressed.

Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher produced the first successful design for a semi-automatic rifle in 1885, and by the early 20th century, many manufacturers had introduced semi-automatic shotguns, rifles and pistols.

In military use, self-loading rifles were barely used in World War I, and most armies in World War II also still relied upon bolt-action rifles, with the exception of the Americans, who in 1937 had adopted the M1 Garand as the standard-issue infantry weapon.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Semi-automatic Firearms: ___________________________________________________________________________

Bump stocks or bump fire stocks are gun stocks that can be used to assist in bump firing. Bump firing is the act of using the recoil of a semi-automatic firearm or double-action revolver to fire ammunition cartridges in rapid succession, but with a loss of accuracy.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Bump Stocks: ___________________________________________________________________________

Assault weapons legislation in the United States
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Assault weapons legislation in the United States refers to bills and laws (active, expired, proposed or failed) that define and restrict or make illegal the manufacture, transfer, and possession of assault weapons. How these firearms are defined and regulated varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

The Federal Assault Weapons Ban enacted in 1994 expired in 2004. Attempts to renew this ban have failed, as have attempts to pass a new ban, such as the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 (AWB 2013). Seven U.S. states have assault weapons bans: three were enacted before the 1994 federal ban and four more passed before the federal ban expired.

The majority of states, forty-three, have no assault weapons ban, although two, Minnesota and Virginia, have training and background check requirements for purchasers of assault weapons that are more stringent than those for ordinary firearms. While there are no statewide assault weapon bans in Colorado and Illinois, local bans exist in certain cities or counties in each of these states.

In 2018, some Americans supported a ban on assault weapons, according to polls. These 3 polls, polled a total of 4246 people (4246 of 325,000,000) with a maximum time window of 5 days. (1) 1992 people, 5 days. (2) 1005 people, 2 days. (3) 1249 people, 4 days.

The 1994 federal and 1989 state ban in California were prompted by the 1989 Cleveland Elementary School shooting in Stockton, California. Existing and proposed weapon bans come under renewed interest in the wake of mass shootings, most recently after the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. In addition to state bans, Washington, D.C. and some U.S. counties and municipalities have assault weapons laws.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Assault Weapons Legislation in the United States: ___________________________________________________________________________

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) and the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence (EFSGV or Ed Fund), its sister organization, are two parts of a national, non-profit gun control advocacy organization that is opposed to gun violence. Since 1974, it has supported reduction in American gun violence via education and legislation.

​Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:







Mass Shootings in the United States, the 2nd Amendment and National Rifle Association Pictured below: How the NRA Has Responded to Mass Shootings Over the Years
[Your Webhost: This topic added due to the fact that assault weapons are most frequently used for committing mass murder, including children!]

Mass shootings in the United States:

Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm-related violence. The precise inclusion criteria are disputed, and there is no broadly accepted definition.

One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a shooter kills at least four victims.

Using this definition, one study found that nearly one-third of the world's public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 (90 of 292 incidents) occurred in the United States.

Using a similar definition, The Washington Post records 163 mass shootings in the United States between 1967 and June 2019.

Gun Violence Archive, frequently cited by the press, defines a mass shooting as firearm violence resulting in at least four people being shot at roughly the same time and location, excluding the perpetrator. Using this definition, there have been 2,128 mass shootings since 2013, roughly one per day.

According to some studies, the United States has had more mass shootings than any other country. Shooters generally either die by suicide afterwards or are restrained or killed by law enforcement officers or civilians. However, mass shootings accounted for less than two-tenths of 1% (0.2%) of all homicides in the United States between 2000 and 2016.

Definitions:

There is no fixed definition of a mass shooting in the United States. The Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, signed into law in January 2013, defines a "mass killing" as one resulting in at least 3 victims, excluding the perpetrator.

In 2015, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) does not define a mass shooting but does define a public mass shooting — for the purposes of its report entitled “Mass Murder with Firearms” — as "a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, and in one or more locations in close proximity".

The CRS further states that its report "attempts to refine the relatively broad concept of mass shooting [...] into a narrower formulation: public mass shootings."  A broader definition, as used by the Gun Violence Archive, is that of "4 or more shot or killed, not including the shooter". This definition, of four people shot regardless of whether or not that results in injury or death, is often used by the media, press, and non-profit organizations.

Frequency:
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Some studies indicate that the rate at which public mass shootings occur has tripled since 2011. Between 1982 and 2011, a mass shooting occurred roughly once every 200 days.

However, between 2011 and 2014, that rate has accelerated greatly with at least one mass shooting occurring every 64 days in the United States.

In recent years, the number of public mass shootings has increased substantially, although there has been an approximately 50% decrease in firearm homicides in the nation overall since 1993. The decrease in firearm homicides has been attributed to better policing, a better economy and environmental factors such as the removal of lead from gasoline.

Differing sources:

A comprehensive report by USA Today tracked all mass killings from 2006 through 2017 in which the perpetrator willfully killed 4 or more people. For mass killings by firearm for instance, it found 271 incidents with a total of 1,358 victims.

Mother Jones listed seven mass shootings, defined as indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed, in the U.S. for 2015.

An analysis by Michael Bloomberg's gun violence prevention group, Everytown for Gun Safety, identified 110 mass shootings, defined as shootings in which at least four people were murdered with a firearm, between January 2009 and July 2014; at least 57% were related to domestic or family violence.

Other media outlets have reported that hundreds of mass shootings take place in the United States in a single calendar year, citing a crowd-funded website known as Shooting Tracker which defines a mass shooting as having four or more people injured or killed.

In December 2015, The Washington Post reported that there had been 355 mass shootings in the United States so far that year. In August 2015, The Washington Post reported that the United States was averaging one mass shooting per day. An earlier report had indicated that in 2015 alone, there had been 294 mass shootings that killed or injured 1,464 people.

Shooting Tracker and Mass Shooting Tracker, the two sites that the media have been citing, have been criticized for using a broader criteria – counting four victims injured as a mass shooting – thus producing much higher figures.

​Demographics:

According to The New York Times, the majority of perpetrators they have published stories about are white males who act alone. According to most analyses and studies, the proportion of mass shooters in the United States who are white is slightly less than the proportion of white people in the general population of the US, however the proportion of male mass shooters is considerably greater than the proportion of males.

Contributing factors:

Several possible factors may work together to create a fertile environment for mass murder in the United States. Most commonly suggested include:
  1. Higher accessibility and ownership of guns. The US has the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world with 120.5 firearms per 100 people; the second highest is Yemen with 52.8 firearms per 100 people.
  2. Mental illness and its treatment (or the lack thereof) with psychiatric drugs. This is controversial. Many of the mass shooters in the U.S. suffered from mental illness, but the estimated number of mental illness cases has not increased as significantly as the number of mass shootings. Under 5% of violent behaviors in the U.S. are committed by persons with mental health diagnoses.
  3. The desire to seek revenge for a long history of being bullied at school. In recent years, citizens calling themselves "targeted individual" have cited adult bullying campaigns as a reason for their deadly violence.
  4. The widespread chronic gap between people's expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, and individualistic culture. Some analysts and commentators place the blame on contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism.
  5. Desire for fame and notoriety. Also, mass shooters learn from one another through "media contagion," that is, "the mass media coverage of them and the proliferation of social media sites that tend to glorify the shooters and downplay the victims."
  6. The copycat phenomenon.
  7. Failure of government background checks due to incomplete databases and/or staff shortages.

A panel of mental health and law enforcement experts has estimated that roughly one-third of acts of mass violence — defined as crimes in which four or more people were killed — since the 1990s were committed by people with a serious mental illness. However, the study emphasized that people with serious mental illness are responsible for less than 4% of all the violent acts committed in the United States.

Weapons used:

Several types of guns have been used in mass shootings in the United States. A 2014 study conducted by Dr. James Fox of 142 shootings found that 88 (62%) were committed with handguns of all types; 68 (48%) with semi-automatic handguns, 20 (14%) with revolvers, 35 (25%) with semi-automatic rifles, and 19 (13%) with shotguns.

The study was conducted using the Mother Jones database of mass shootings from 1982 to 2018. High capacity magazines were used in approximately half of mass shootings. Semi-automatic rifles have been used in six of the ten deadliest mass shooting events.

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​Second Amendment to the United States Constitution:

[Your WebHost: this topic was only added for a clearer understanding that assault weapon are the primary means of mass murders, and the National Rifle Association cites that ownership of assault weapons are therefore protected by this Second Amendment, even though the only use of assault weapons is to kill other people!]

​The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the individual right to keep and bear arms. It was ratified on December 15, 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court affirmed for the first time that the right belongs to individuals, for self-defense in the home, while also including, as dicta, that the right is not unlimited and does not preclude the existence of certain long-standing prohibitions such as those forbidding "the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill" or restrictions on "the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons." State and local governments are limited to the same extent as the federal government from infringing upon this right.

The Second Amendment was based partially on the right to keep and bear arms in English common law and was influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Sir William Blackstone described this right as an auxiliary right, supporting the natural rights of self-defense and resistance to oppression, and the civic duty to act in concert in defense of the state.

Any labels of rights as auxiliary must be viewed in the context of the inherent purpose of a Bill of Rights, which is to empower a group with the ability to achieve a mutually desired outcome, and not to necessarily enumerate or rank the importance of rights.

Thus all rights enumerated in a Constitution are thus auxiliary in the eyes of Sir William Blackstone because all rights are only as good as the extent they are exercised in fact.

While both James Monroe and John Adams supported the Constitution being ratified, its most influential framer was James Madison. In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by state militias, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] a militia."

Madison argued that state militias "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as "afraid to trust the people with arms," and assured that "the existence of subordinate governments ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition".

By January 1788, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut ratified the Constitution without insisting upon amendments. Several amendments were proposed, but were not adopted at the time the Constitution was ratified. For example, the Pennsylvania convention debated fifteen amendments, one of which concerned the right of the people to be armed, another with the militia.

The Massachusetts convention also ratified the Constitution with an attached list of proposed amendments. In the end, the ratification convention was so evenly divided between those for and against the Constitution that the federalists agreed to the Bill of Rights to assure ratification.

In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendments [sic] means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government."

In United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment did not protect weapon types not having a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."

In the twenty-first century, the amendment has been subjected to renewed academic inquiry and judicial interest. In Heller, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision that held the amendment protects an individual's right to keep a gun for self-defense. 

This was the first time the Court had ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual's right to own a gun. In McDonald v. Chicago (2010), the Court clarified that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Second Amendment against state and local governments.

In Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016), the Supreme Court reiterated its earlier rulings that "the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding" and that its protection is not limited to "only those weapons useful in warfare."

The debate between various organizations regarding gun control and gun rights continues.

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​National Rifle Association (NRA):

[Your WebHost added this topic due to the intransigence of the NRA in outlawing the use of assault weapons (whose only purpose is for killing other humans)]

The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871, the group has informed its members about firearm-related legislation since 1934, and it has directly lobbied for and against firearms legislation since 1975.

Founded to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA continues to teach firearm safety and competency. The organization also publishes several magazines and sponsors competitive marksmanship events.

According to the NRA, it has nearly 5 million members as of December 2018, although that figure has not been independently confirmed.
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Observers and lawmakers see the NRA as one of the three most influential lobbying groups in Washington, D.C. The NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) is its lobbying division, which manages its political action committee (PAC), the Political Victory Fund (PVF).

Over its history the organization has influenced legislation, participated in or initiated lawsuits, blocked research on gun control, and endorsed or opposed various candidates at local, state and federal levels.

The NRA has been criticized by gun control and gun rights advocacy groups, political commentators, and politicians.

The organization has been the focus of intense criticism in the aftermath of high-profile shootings, such as the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, after which they suggested adding armed security guards to schools.

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