The death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the ensuing trial of Derek Chauvin for murder a year later has rubbed raw the bloodiest stain on the United States’ history and its world reputation. The nine minutes and 29 seconds during which Chauvin’s knee crushed the spark of life out of Floyd was not unusual in the history of the United States. Before the U.S. Civil War, slaves were routinely beaten to death for disobeying orders or running away, then often lynched. In roughly two centuries, Blacks have achieved nominal freedom. But, as this book’s opening chapter and expert essays that follow indicate, freedom has been conditional based on inequity of wealth, social, and legal discrimination. None of this is new in the United States; what is new is the number of people rising up in protest, a figure in the millions around the world after Floyd’s murder. This book supplies a readable, scholarly account of recent issues in race and racism in the United States that will be useful for general readers, undergraduate students, and their professors. It will be useful in many fields, including Black studies, other ethnic pursuits, United States history, law, criminal justice, intercultural communication, et al. The work contains a powerful historical narrative followed by several important, essays on subjects including George Floyd’s murder, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and many other victims of systematic racism.

About the Book Isaac Madison has been a lifelong activist who has worked on a wide variety of issues affecting diverse low and moderate-income populations. The author has written this book after decades of discussions with whites on the issue of race in almost every social setting where people interact. People of color keep getting told how much better things are today, yet we see the same things happening that occurred 50-60 years ago. While we have seen improvements, we have not seen complete equality. "Get Your Knee Off Our Necks" is a straightforward series of essays about race from the perspective of a man who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and has watched how Americans have reacted to it in the decades since.

This book provides an inside look at the discipline of Communication. In this collection of chapters, top scholars from a wide range of subfields discuss how they have experienced and how they study the crucial issues of our time. The 2020s opened with a series of events with massive implications for the ways we communicate, from the COVID-19 pandemic, a summer of protests for social justice, and climate change-related natural disasters, to one of the most contentious presidential elections in modern U.S. history. The chapters in this book provide snapshots of many of these issues as seen through the eyes of specialists in the major subfields of Communication, including interpersonal, organizational, strategic, environmental, religious, social justice, risk, sport, health, family, instructional, and political communication. Written in an informal style that blends personal narrative with accessible explanation of basic concepts, the book is ideal for introducing students to the range and practical applications of Communication discipline. This book comprises a valuable companion text for Introduction to Communication courses as well as a primary resource for Capstone and Introduction to Graduate Studies courses. Further, this collection provides meaningful insights for Communication scholars as we look ahead to the remainder of the 2020s and beyond.

Culture and religion are basic to every human society, and the history of a people always sustains her cultural and religious values. We decided to use the African culture and religion as our departing point for the mere fact that Africa is generally considered as the cradle of civilization, and it is a very historic and controversial continent. However, while examining some prominent world cultures and religions (in a comparative manner), our major focus is on the Christian-Thomistic culture/religion as illustrated by Jacques Maritain in comparison with the African culture/religion as expressed by Joseph Ki-Zerbo. Both thinkers consider that in the midst of multiculturalism and globalization, authentic humanism or personalism that is based on the sacredness of the human person should be endorsed as a new civilization or culture. Only such a culture can make the future of humankind essentially meaningful and interesting.Shifting from all mediocre standards of culture which are based on relativism, supported by postmodern thinkers, there is a need to get back to the original culture that is based on authentic and objective standards. The major difference that we noticed between the Thomistic-Christian ideas and those of the Africans is that while Jacques Maritain appeals for Thomistic humanism to grow from the formal classrooms and the books into the streets and the fields, Ki-Zerbo explains that African humanism has always existed in the streets and in the fields; it might never even have existed in the books and in the classrooms. The global reaction toward the killing of George Floyd in USA, defying all fears of the COVID-19, intensifies the argument that a culture which qualifies one race as being superior over another has to be reexamined and radically eradicated and replaced by authentic humanism.

Anyone and everyone can find an excuse to not fulfill the dreams they have for their lives. But an excuse is just a postponement of what you really can and should accomplish. Everyone has a purpose. The reason you are here on earth may differ from the reason I am here. But we can both fulfill the unique purpose God has planned for us. It's never too late to discover that and accomplish it. Through personal testimonies, It's Never Too Late will encourage and motivate you to fulfill your own dreams.

This book presents evidence of a longitudinal study in teacher preparation utilizing a threefold multicultural (TFM) model of immersion. It establishes the need for culturally responsive teachers in classrooms, and outlines a proven model that can be employed to prepare them. Through the TFM model elements, pre-service teacher candidates participated in class-based, cohort fieldwork experience, and reflective journal writings and discussions. Evidence was gathered from pre- and post-questionnaires, interviews, classroom discussions, and journal writings, along with the inclusion of student voices. Pre-service teacher attitudes, beliefs, and degree of cultural responsiveness changed post-study, and candidates became more effective in the classroom, highlighting the effectiveness of the TFM model. This book is an invaluable resource for universities, under- and postgraduate students, and teachers across the globe as it provides a teacher preparation fieldwork model that helps to prepare culturally responsive teachers for children in any classroom.

Based on religious ethnography, in-depth interviews and archival data, Indigeneity in African Religions explores the historical origins, worldviews, cosmologies, ritual symbolism and praxis of the indigenous Oza people in South West Nigeria. The author's locationality and positionality plugs the book within decolonizing knowledges and indigeneity discourses, thus unpacking the complexity of “indigeneity” and contributing to its conceptual understanding within socioreligious change in contemporary Africa. The future of Oza indigeneity in the face of modernity is illuminated against the backlash of encounters, contestations with multiple hegemonies, transmissions of Christianity and Islam and indigenous (re)appropriations. Thus, any theorizations of such encounters must be cognizant of instantiations of indigeneity politics and identity, culture, tradition and power dynamics. Through decolonizing burdens of history, memory and method, Afe Adogame demonstrates a framework of understanding Oza indigenous religious,sociocultural and political imaginaries.