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[Introduction To] Rap On Trial: Race, Lyrics, And Guilt In America, Erik Nielson, Andrea L. Dennis, Killer Mike

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A groundbreaking exposé about the alarming use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence to convict and incarcerate young men of color

“If you believe that I’m a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.” —Rapper Ice-T, on the persona he adopted in the song “Cop Killer”

Should Johnny Cash have been charged with murder after he sang, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”? Few would seriously subscribe to this notion of justice. Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted …

[Introduction To] Documents Of Native American Political Development: 1933 To Present, David E. Wilkins (Editor)

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Before Europeans arrived in what is now known as the United States, over 600 diverse Native nations lived on the same land. This encroachment and subsequent settlement by Americans forcibly disrupted the lives of all indigenous peoples and brought about staggering depopulation, loss of land, and cultural, religious, and economic changes. These developments also wrought profound changes in indigenous politics and longstanding governing institutions. David E. Wilkins' two-volume work Documents of Native American Political Development traces how indigenous peoples have maintained and continued to exercise a significant measure of self-determination contrary to presumptions that such powers had been lost, surrendered, …