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This book chapter represents a case study relating to the challenges that immigrants encounter in their host countries and the approaches they adopt to acquire better life circumstances. The researcher implemented a qualitative research method by performing thematic analysis of the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ACIJ) website, social media sites, and other related websites. ACIJ is a social justice organization that assists and advocates for immigrant rights. This analysis utilized the Strategic Diversity Manifesto framework (SDM) to analyze the existent communications of immigrants who arrive in Alabama from different backgrounds to determine whether the ACIJ is applying equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and also to determine if it is allowing these immigrants full access to its’ services and resources. Applying critical race theory (CRT) to dismantle the problems of white hegemonic racism, which is socially and historically constructed and represents cultural power in the American community. This project offers a valuable contribution to Library and Information Science (LIS) by enabling these migrants to express their voices; obtain inclusion that dismantle the hierarchical structures; and fight against violence and power, leading to improved life experiences in Alabama and to a substantial change within the Alabamian community through boosting racial and social justices.

This essay engages the work of sociologist George Herbert Mead and political theorist William E. Connolly, applying a reading of their understanding of the criminal other to the development of Illinois’ and South Carolina's penal systems at the turn of the nineteenth century. Despite an influx of European immigrants, Illinois politicians and prison officials fashioned an approach to corrections that relied on rehabilitation through assimilation as the core component of disciplining its convict population. In contrast to this approach, South Carolina fashioned a penology based upon the principle of exclusion, one that enshrined retribution over rehabilitation in the paradigm of punishment. The essay concludes by comparing the importance of racial and ethno-cultural politics in shaping regional and national debates over correctional policy and by examining the primary function race plays in explaining the current backlash against the rehabilitative ideal informing so much of contemporary penology.

Purpose – This chapter frames the horizon of inquiry intended by this conference on the Hispanic Presence in the Washington region. It presents social theory related to the formation of new types of community substance in immigrant receiving countries called ethnicities, especially in American metropolitan regions.

Findings – This synthesis of approaches to intergroup relations and account of changes in the collection of data regarding urban ethnicity frame a new research agenda.

Practical implications – This chapter proposes new horizons for regional studies and ethnicities. It addresses metropolitan governance, especially relationships among persons, groups, and cultures in regions that lack representation and institutions for political development. The web-based data sets and recommended readings provide sources that quantitatively and qualitatively deepen insight into the Hispanic presence in the country and in various metropolitan regions. Along with another forthcoming collection on the history, politics, and architecture of Washington, DC, this work catalyzes research to enable teaching and service related to the metropolitan region surrounding the federal district.

Social implications – This chapter includes models of action-oriented research that engage ethnic groups in coalition building and that test the viability of Hispanicity as a social-cultural development model.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter blends social theory with community-based practices. It broaches substantive questions about appropriate scales of social analysis and ethnicity as interrelated dimensions of research and practice the government created data sets and places called metropolitan regions. It elaborates a new, fundamentally regional model that is unlike, but not opposed to, the country-wide focus of ethnic group advocacy and interest groups.

When Trump entered the presidential race in 2015, many white evangelicals turned up their noses at his candidacy. By 2020, Trump had garnered such commitment from white evangelicals that not only did 80% vote for him, but 60% also refused to accept the election results after his loss. How did this transformation occur, and with what lasting results for the evangelical vote and US politics more broadly? This chapter shows that in the “new culture wars” of the Trump era, race has played an even more central and explicit role in religion and politics than it did in the past. Christian nationalism and the intersection of religion and race help explain the strong bond between Trump and many white evangelicals. COVID-19 vaccine refusal and critical race theory bans provide examples of the continuing significance of that bond. These cases demonstrate the likelihood that Trumpian politics will maintain influence over white evangelicals in the near future.