[Review of] Evelyn Kallen. Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada

Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada is a sequel to Kallen\u27s The Anatomy of Racism: Canadian Dimensions. Whereas her earlier work sought to clarify the concepts of race and ethnicity as they applied to a neutral, if not tolerant, nation, the social context of the current work is less benign. Factors implicated in the shift to more contentious racial and ethnic relations include a struggling national economy, separatist moves in Quebec and the West, a rapidly expanding non White immigration, and advancement of natural resource claims by aboriginal groups at a time when federal pressure for energy development in the North conflicts with these rights. Although the bulk of Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada is specific to the Canadian context, several sections are more broadly applicable. The introduction provides a brief biological discussion of genetics and race, racism, and human rights. Of particular value in this section is a clear explanation of the impact of continual structural discrimination, in the self-fulfilling prophecy of White racism. The relationship of race, culture, and ethnicity is explored in chapter three, which uses the Canadian situation to illustrate points of broader significance. Contrasting cultural understandings of land ownership, for example, are problematic beyond Canada\u27s boundaries. In this chapter, Kallen introduces classification schemes, such as the typology of rights and the typology of claims, which clarify the bases for argumentation for protection or advancement of human rights

[Review of] Sipho Sepamla. A Ride on the Whirlwind: A Novel of Soweto

South African poet, playwright, and teacher Sipho Sepamla has in his second novel, produced a fictional but tensely revealing narrative of events surrounding the 1976 Soweto riots. Dedicated to the young heroes of the day, the novel chronicles daily life in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, distrust and terrorism

[Review of] Jay C. Chunn, II, Patricia J. Dunston, and Fariyal Ross-Sheriff, eds. Mental Health and People of Color: Curriculum Development and Change

American colleges, universities, and medical schools have developed elaborate structures for the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness and associated problems in living. The history of psychological training is not value free, but rather is imbedded in the general history of the culture, and reflective of its problematic issues. Whatever theoretical perspective mental health practitioners are trained in, whatever internship experiences are designed to complement the instructional program, the rates of success in identifying and resolving difficulties vary with the ethnicity of their clients. Success is shown disproportionately for a limited population-the clients of European American background. In each of the mental health fields examined in this volume, available data indicate underutilization, high non-return rates, client dissatisfaction, and generally poorer outcomes when mental health professionals turn their attention to the problems of people of color. Assuming a benign interest on the part of the practitioners, and assuming that the client would prefer health, the explanation for such unsatisfactory outcomes must lie in the training deficits of mental health professionals

[Review of] J. Eugene Grigsby, Jr. Arts and Ethnics: Background for Teaching Youth in a Pluralistic Society

Created to respond to an issue before art educators in this country since the early 1970s, this well-referenced work, complete with index and illustrations, accomplishes that task with reasonable success. Teachers of art have struggled for decades with curriculum materials that restrict the discussion of art history to the European tradition, labeling art of any other origin as folk art unworthy of academic attention

[Review of] C. Kamarae, M. Schultz, and W.M. O\u27Barr, eds. Language and Power

In recent years, educators concerned with issues of access and equity have supported a variety of bilingual educational delivery systems. Similarly, feminists seeking representation and recognition have advocated inclusive language and nonsexist job titles. From these and other arenas, the relationship of language and power has surfaced as an issue of national importance. In this timely collection of essays, Kamarae and her associates have legitimated and extended the discussion

Female Power, Ethnicity, and Aging

The standard academic presentation on the topic of power rarely alludes to the elderly, ethnic groups, or to females of any age or race. The cultural history of humankind has been one of gross inequities in the distribution of power, and much of this distributional variance has been attributable to the categories of race, gender, and age. When these categories overlap, the impact on individual access to power has been, and continues to be, the greatest

[Review of] Henry H. Pontell. A Capacity to Punish

Given the extraordinary costs of prisons, the current political climate which pushes for less government and lowered public spending, and the incapacity of the legal system to carry the entire burden of social control, Pontell argues for reexamination of the criminal justice system from a sociological perspective. Drawing upon data from the 1966-1974 period, Pontell\u27s doctoral study, the basis for the book, searched for ecological relationships among crime rates, expenditures, conviction rates, and demographic features in the California counties under review

Independent axiom systems for nearlattices

A nearlattice is a join semilattice such that every principal filter is a lattice with respect to the induced order. Hickman and later Chajda et al independently showed that nearlattices can be treated as varieties of algebras with a ternary operation satisfying certain axioms. Our main result is that the variety of nearlattices is 2-based, and we exhibit an explicit axiom system of two independent identities. We also show that the original axiom systems of Hickman and of Chajda et al are, respectively, dependent.Comment: 16 pages in 12pt; v2: minor changes suggested by referee, to appear in Czechoslovak Math.

[Review of] Jo Miles Schuman. Art from Many Hands: Multicultural Art Projects for Home and School

Jo Miles Schuman\u27s text is designed to help students develop an appreciation for one another\u27s cultural heritage and to expand their knowledge of art. Both objectives are accomplished with considerable grace in this beautifully executed and illustrated celebration of craftsmanship. The author clearly values the creativity of a wide variety of peoples and the potential of art as a language of intercultural understanding

[Review of] Robert L. Allen. Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United Stales

Allen, editor of The Black Scholar and chair of the Mills College Ethnic Studies Department, reviews in this volume the ideological impact of racism on six distinct social reform movements in United States history. Chronologically presented, the movements begin immediately after the war for independence and extend into the contemporary era