Esteemed scholar and Professor Emeritus Leon E. Pettiway, widely recognized for his innovative integration of sociological, geographical, and criminological theories, proudly unveils his latest literary contribution, Only for the Brave at Heart: Essays Rethinking Race, Crime, and Justice. This groundbreaking book illuminates the intricate interplay of race, crime, and justice, enriched by Pettiway's vast academic expertise, rigorous research, and as one of the few African American fully ordained Tibetan Buddhist monks.
The book challenges the thoughts many Americans have about race, particularly thoughts that construct crime as primarily a minority issue where being criminal is synonymous with being African American. It demonstrates how our thoughts have created the social realities we experience, and it seeks to create a movement that champions loving-kindness and compassion as balms to heal the social ills that inflict the nation.
“Only for the Brave at Heart” is a book that considers the ways the American mind has thought about race, crime, and justice in this age of anger and incivility. These essays, informed by Buddhism and Afrocentrism, provide not only a critical analysis of the work of scholars and influencers concerning these important social issues but also offer a path or method to transform the production of knowledge surrounding race, crime, and justice. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, distinguished professor of sociology at Duke University, says, “[Pettiway] shows how the racial cartography of modernity imprisoned us all. Until we appreciate our interrelatedness and the folly of pursuing analyses and policies without compassion and love at their core, our work will always be unsatisfactory and reproduce racialism and domination.” Pettiway asks us to emancipate ourselves from our mental enslavements. Joe Feagin, a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University states that “Only for the Brave of Heart is a thought-provoking collection of essays challenging conventional thinking on race, crime, and justice. . . .With a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of the human experience, Pettiway sheds light on often-overlooked aspects of these topics, encouraging readers to question their own conventional beliefs. . . .[it] is a must-read for anyone seeking to better understand the complex world we live in and the troubling challenges faced in Western societies.
“Only for the Brave at Heart,” in the genre of cultural criticism, examines the ways sociologists, criminologists, scholars of criminal justice, and other scholars and social policymakers have thought about race, crime, and the administration of justice. The book challenges current notions of health, functionality, power, self-identity, and property as constructed by Eurocentric thinkers, and when it critiques criminal justice and criminology it creates a middle path to create a more compassionate system of justice. This is possible because it challenges the current formulation of the world and its objects as truly existent entities and considers the implications of that way of thinking on the agency of Americans and the communalism of African Americans. He rejects those scholars and policymakers who would insist that our social problems reside in the maze of individual and cultural differences because according to him “they fail to recognize that the individual, social and cultural differences they observe, and the pathologies and negativities they ascribe to those observed differences, serve to heighten our fears, enslave us to negativities and prime our addictions for intolerance.” As a social commentary, the publication of “Only for the Brave at Heart”is necessary because the current configurations of American culture and political life, filled with so much anger and incivility, have been fueled with beliefs in separateness and division. The purpose of Only for the Brave at Heart is to unite us by transforming our thoughts about race, crime, and justice.
Dr. Pettiway is a fully ordained Buddhist monk. He is one of only a handful of African-American monks in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and holds the title of the Venerable Lobzang Dorje. He has conducted research that integrates geographical and criminological theories to explain crime patterns in urban areas. Dr. Pettiway has published articles on the impact of race and ghettoization on patterns of crime participation, the role of environmental and individual factors in arson, and the relationship between an individual’s drug use and criminal participation in the formation of crime partnerships. His current intellectual work centers on the construction of knowledge and how Eastern and Western philosophical traditions might be integrated into criminological theory and the administration of justice.
For a deeper dive into Pettiway's work and additional information, please visit www.leonpettiway.com.
