Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This empirical paper looks at the onset and intensity of civil wars with respect to ethnicity, using the Fearon and Laitin (2003) data that the author improved and updated. A great deal has been mentioned about ethnic violence but there does not seem to be an acceptable solution in sight. Civil war has taken a crucial place in the conflict literature, however, the literature addresses civil war as belonging to two types: ethno-religious and non-ethno-religious. Further, the literature lumps all ethno-religious wars together lacking differentiating the separate ethno-religious wars based separately on religion, ethnic, linguistics, cultural, etc. _x000d_The paper improves upon current literature by differentiating the onset and intensity of three different types of ethno-religious internal conflicts based on the author’s classification, with purely ethnic conflicts, as the focus of the paper. A unique feature of this paper is the use of a new dataset prepared by the author. _x000d__x000d_Policy implications- the paper allows predicting which ethnic groups will turn out to be insurgents and which will not, and which ones, more intense, and in which regions. It allows policy-makers to make different policies for different regions of the world.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Long-standing debates within critical race theory about the efficacy of the concept of �race� have posited the mixed race experience as an illustration of the flexible and multiple nature of this socially constructed concept (Gans 2005). However, mixed race studies (Root 1996; DuBose and Winter 2002) themselves have shown that mixed race does not mean �no-race�. There persists, even in mixed race research, the notion of race as a concept where racial meaning is congealed and tied through its supposed association with the body to biology. Using ethnographic fieldwork in Japanese American beauty pageants, this paper illustrates that the mixed race body invites us to examine more carefully race work � a concept that I introduce to explain how people exert effort to try to keep their own biological notions of race (typically references to looks or physical appearance) in line with their thinking about culture (i.e. full blooded people of color have culture, whites don�t). I look at multiple levels of social interaction in order to shed light on how race is socially and politically constructed in a world where race has gone underground and is more difficult to detect and trace � a world where there can be �racial intent without race�(Ignatiev 2004).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores how police officials, both past and present, perceive race and departmental diversity to matter to law enforcement. Despite formal law that prohibits the use of race as a consideration, the unique nature of police work raises questions of how race may legitimately be used, if at all, in police personnel decisions. I examine this tension between formal EEO law and police ideology and practice both over time (1964 to the present) and within a contemporary police department. The historical analysis focuses on broad shifts over time in how race matters in policing, while the contemporary analysis focuses on variation among police officers by rank, job tenure, and ethnicity.

My focus is on the justifications used by police commissioners, police chiefs, and higher-level officers for taking race into account in making personnel decisions, e.g., recruiting, hiring, promoting, and making assignments. Relying on Ewick and Silbey�s definition of ideology as �a form of sense making that embeds power,� I argue that these justifications exemplify ideologies of race and racism. I explore whether these justifications for using race have shifted, and if so, how changes in ideologies of race affect both formal police policies and informal practices on the beat.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Although race is largely defined by visual cues, how much does the salience of racial categories and race meanings depend upon what is visually perceived? Focusing on a series of interviews with people who have been totally blind since birth, I find that blind people have as significant an understanding of race as anyone else and that they understand race visually, i.e. in terms of group based physical differences. Given their inability to see yet exposure to the same social forces as sighted individuals, this research empirically critiques the presumption that race reflects visually obvious boundaries of difference. It also highlights the extent to which social practices constitute the salience given to visual cues that have come to be seen as obvious. This research also has important legal implications. For example, Equal Protection jurisprudence offers stronger Constitutional protections to racial minorities because, in part, the basis of their discriminations is presumed to be fixed, visible, and obvious. Reserving the highest scrutiny of Equal Protection for visually distinguishable groups (where racial minorities are the archetype) may not only prematurely exclude other groups from protection, but may itself function as a form of racial subordination by focusing Equal Protection inquiries on what individuals look like rather than the social practices that make such visual distinctions meaningful. This project provides an empirical basis from which to rethink how we know what race and racism are and exposes the social and doctrinal practices that reproduce these categories and their significance.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper focuses on young men's participation in the illegal and organized car racing scenes in Northern California. �Tuning� cars has re-emerged as a wildly popular activity for a teeming crop of young men across various ethnic and income groups in recent years. This paper explores the complex racial and class organization this contemporary youth car culture. Drawing from in-depth and focus group interviews, electronic bulletin boards maintained by young car enthusiasts and observations of an auto shop class, I analyze the ways cars are encoded racially and ethnically as young men struggle to find their place in a complex and hierarchical order of masculinities. I analyze the ways in which young men as they struggle to assert themselves as men, in relation to other men use the car to construct and define their ethnic-racial self in and against racial-ethnic �others.� Zeroing in on the emergent rivalry between the import racing scene and reigning American Muscle, I examine the ways race-car talk provides a means for young men to work through and make sense of their place in the racial realities of the ethnically diverse and increasingly global community, Silicon Valley, California.