8/18/2023 0 Comments Happenstance social![]() ![]() For example, who is stopped by police? Is that person detained? Once in the criminal justice system, was he/she given incarceration or diversion? Using data from the state of Virginia, McCarter set out to determine how different groups move within the justice system. She was pursuing her doctorate at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond while working as a social worker and probation officer. McCarter's academic work expanded from social work to social justice almost by happenstance. When you ask 'does this jibe with your experience?', they will speak at length about their experiences." "You give them the findings and the numbers because people can talk about numbers without being defensive. "You don't walk in the door and ask questions about race," she said. Through trial and error, McCarter has learned the right and wrong way to reel in and keep an audience with her. The recent deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Michael Brown in Ferguson, MI, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Jonathan Ferrell in Charlotte, NC, at the hands of white police officers have made McCarter the go-to person on the issue and put her leadership role with Race Matters for Juvenile Justice (RMJJ), a consortium of community and systems experts who use institutional organizing and workplace development to reduce disproportionality and disparate outcomes for children and families of color, in the spotlight. However, when she's referring to disparate treatment and outcomes as it relates to race and ethnicity, many people find the topic too difficult to discuss. She uses the analogy of baking chocolate chip cookie: If the baker puts in more of an ingredient than the recipe calls for, the cookies will be out-of-balance. "It simply means when a phenomenon doesn't reflect the population at the time." "The word 'disproportionality' has taken on a bad connotation, but it only means that things are out of whack mathematically," McCarter explains. She readily acknowledges that even the official name for her work tends to make people defensive. Susan McCarter has spent the last 20 years researching and talking about disproportionate minority contacts (DMC), or the over-representation of minority youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice system. The combination of craft and spirit cuts a fine place for this debut work, expanding our literary view.Social Work Professor's Research Shows Implicit Bias by Institutions ![]() Oloruntoba’s language travels through history and myth to speak to today and engage with a future transformed by new understanding. Tolu Oloruntoba’s voice in The Junta of Happenstance is at once thoughtful and authoritative, metaphorically rich and lyrically surprising. ‘If the timeline ahead is/ infinitely longer than the/ knives behind, perhaps/ as we set to mending/ we can heal more/ than we ever undid./ But we, too,/ would like a piece of the plunder.’ These exquisite poems leave an imprint both violent and terrifyingly beautiful.-Judges’ Citation, 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize Like the vicissitudes of war, Oloruntoba’s poems make peace with accident and fate. They emerge out of a life intimate with death’s randomness. These poems go beyond the desire to ward off death. The Junta of Happenstance, Tolu Oloruntoba’s dazzling debut collection, collides the language of revolution with the landscapes of the body. Tolu Oloruntoba uses a “safecracker ear” (“Child at Sleep”) to perceive both the subtle and overt mechanics of human interactions and to explore the interlocking parts of past and present, individual and community, and the here and there.-Samantha Jones, ARC Poetry magazine The Junta of Happenstance is an important and assured debut. In the face of struggles against social injustice, Oloruntoba navigates the contemporary moment with empathy and intelligence, finding beauty in chaos, and strength in suffering. This includes disease in the traditional sense, as informed by the poet’s time as a physician, and dis-ease as a primer for family dysfunction, the (im)migrant experience, and urban / corporate anxiety. Personal, primordial, and pulsing with syncopated language, Tolu Oloruntoba’s poetic debut, The Junta of Happenstance, is a compendium of dis-ease. ![]() Winner 2021 Governor General Literary Award for Poetry ![]()
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