Anti-racist Movements Research Articles

Protection of racism from the anti-racism movement: taking colorblindness racial discrimination as an example

After the emergence of many great anti-racism movements, the supporters of traditional racism have significantly decreased. However, racism, or more precisely, liberal racism, including its specific form - color-blind racism, has replaced traditional racism and still exists in large numbers in society. Racism seems to have found new ways of survival in anti-racism concepts such as liberal racism and color blindness. To analyze the new forms of racism that exist in today’s society, this article takes colorblindness racism as the analytical object. Starting from the dual role of color blindness in the anti-racism movement, it points out that a large number of new forms of racism are prevalent under the guise of anti-racism, revealing the challenges and limitations faced in current anti-racism activities in order to provide assistance for future anti-racism work.

Idealized Past, Exclusivist Present: Right-wing Appropriation of the Decolonial Rhetoric in Malaysia

ABSTRACT Scholars have often assumed that a decolonial agenda would empower emancipatory and anti-racist movements. Nevertheless, there is also increasing recognition by scholars that the language of decolonization has been co-opted to support right-wing ideologies and majoritarian agendas, most prominently in India and Turkey. Similarly, in Malaysia, right-wing actors use decolonial rhetoric to criticize ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual minorities and silence their demands for equal rights. These actors have justified their intolerance by labelling any perceived threats to heteronormative Malay Muslim identity as examples of “Western imperialism” or “Chinese colonialism.” This article illustrates how decolonial vocabulary has been transformed into Sinophobia and homophobia by a right-wing Islamist group in Malaysia. It shows how revisionist nativist historiography, racism, and conspiracy theories can be integrated with moralistic calls for decolonization. Tracing developments over the past decade, the paper demonstrates how persistent dissemination, intellectual laundering, and innovative marketing strategies have helped mainstream a nativist Islamist decolonial agenda in Malaysia.

Understanding Racism and the Role of Identity Politics in Anti-Racism Movements in America

The matter of racism is a complex issue concerning various humanities problems such as inequality in human rights, unfair treatment and unequal access to material resources. This dilemma has existed in various multicultural communities, for example America, where racial diversity is directly proportional to racist crime, which is among the highest in the world. According to The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, the number of hate crimes with racial or ethnic-related motivation accounts for 60 percent of incidents occured in 2020 in Ameria. The fight against racial injustice is a challenging battle that demands long-term involvement and systematic change, starting from both the advocates and the community. Therefore, strategic goals and methods are essential to providing effective campaigns against racial discrimination. In this case, advocates and leaders must be aware of the challenges that lead to the ineffectiveness of current anti-racism movements and increase the quality of those advocating campaigns. Using qualitative methods, this research study seeks to answer that problem through the investigation of the origin and definition of racism with the aim of further understanding the issue and defining the cause of ethnic inequality. Moreover, analysis of different types of racism and colour-blind theories is also provided, which helps determine the outcome and long-term strategy for improved campaign organization. Combating against racism is a complex process that can only be influential if campaign leaders, politicians and activists come up with a productive and sustainable strategy that can oversee the ultimate goal of promoting race equality.

Introduction

This introduction aims to frame the texts it predates, to highlight their common theoretical and thematic concerns, and to set them against what we envision as a relevant common backdrop for the issues they raise. To this end, we begin from how insufficient acknowledgement of the current genocidal violence carried out against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by Western feminism is symptomatic of its enmeshment with colonial rationales and imperialist violence. We question the extent of its liberating and emancipatory politics, reading them against the semiperipheral iterations of what Adam Tooze describes as the “polycrisis.” Focused on the gendered aspects of democratic backsliding - broadly understood as a weakening of faith in liberal democracy and the electoral invigoration of the far-right -, the articles included here trace cultural negotiations of gender justice, as it wanes or strengthens across the region. Variously located within broader networks of transnational transfers and global concerns, the articles included here complement relevant work conducted outside the bounds of academic writing. We gesture towards such feminist, anticolonial and antiracist movements which have emerged in Romania, specifically in the literary field, and to their contestation of the patriarchal and deeply unequal national cultural system.

The Academic Question of Palestine

This article provides theoretical and contextual background to The Academic Question of Palestine. Building on the work of Edward Said, we maintain that Palestine constitutes a unique question with special status in international academic spaces, particularly in the West, because of its entanglement with other imperial and settler colonial forms of dispossession. We argue that the special place that Zionism and its defence has occupied for decades in academia has rendered Palestine one of the thorniest and most divisive issues of our time. In the new millennium, the birth of the BDS movement; the emergence of new solidarities with global anti-racist movements; the scholarly and human rights consensus that Israel constitutes a regime settler colonial apartheid; the acceleration of Zionist violence, until the Gaza genocide, have generated new forms of repression and resistance in the academic space. This Special Issue offers the tools for understanding these recent transformations of the question of Palestine.

Liberating Minds: The Intellectual Legacy of Angela Davis and Its Images in Film

We propose thinking of Angela Davis's intellectual legacy from a decolonial perspective. We point out that just as the fight for civil rights and the end of racial segregation in the United States helped to consolidate the Black movement in Brazil, the circulation of anti-colonial ideas during the struggles for the decolonization of African countries in the 1950s and 60s was crucial to the circulation of abolitionist ideas and anti-racist movements in the United States and abroad. We will analyze interchanges capable of pointing out "the recognition of multiple and heterogeneous colonial differences, as well as the multiple and heterogeneous reactions of populations and subjects subordinated to the coloniality of power" (Bernardino-Costa & Grosfoguel, 2016, p. 21). Our contribution seeks to analyze Davis as a public and militant intellectual through her images in film. Beyond considering Angela Davis's image in cinema as representation, we also analyze how her intellectual and political activities were involved with the flourishing of a new Black cinema in the United States. This paper analyzes films such as Child of Resistance (1973), Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (2015), and 13th (2016).

The Comintern and the National and Colonial Question: the Roots of Soviet Anti-Imperialism and Anti-Racism Reconsidered

Abstract With Russia’s escalation in Ukraine, many long-standing positions and relationships have become much more complicated. Many nations in the Global South have elected to remain neutral to avoid damaging their long-standing relations with Russia, which they rely on for political or economic stability. The Russian government has instrumentalized this history of Russian and Soviet support for anti-imperialism to buoy its own relations with the Global South. This support has its roots in the Comintern period when the Communist International promoted anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and self-determination of nations. These efforts, in turn, helped develop the image of the Soviet Union as an anti-imperial bulwark, while also providing an alternate path in which many nations in the Global South found inspiration following the Second World War. This thought piece reconsiders the history of the Comintern to ask fresh questions about its role in anti-imperial and anti-racist movements. In doing so, it calls for a greater attention to the limitations of the Soviet regime during the interwar period, and a reconsideration of the imperial actions of the Soviet Union as relates to this history. It also explores how the history of the Comintern and the complicated history of Soviet support for global decolonization in the interwar period remains relevant to contextualizing present-day reactions to Russian aggression in Ukraine and why, despite the correctives of the post-Cold War period, historians now need to ensure further complexities in this history are not overlooked in the instrumentalization of this history promoted by Russia following February 2022.

Healing Through Activism: Transformative Solidarity in a Japanese American Anti-Racism Movement

In the eight decades since World War II, Japanese Americans have come to understand what Black, Brown, and Indigenous groups in the United States have long understood: that the harm inflicted by exclusion, imprisonment, and family separation is not temporary. Trauma still lingers in survivors of American concentration camps as well as in their descendants. Moreover, the fractures created within and between identity groups by exploitative power structures have inhibited allyship across divisions of race, ethnicity, faith, nationality, and more. This article introduces Tsuru for Solidarity, a grassroots organization at the helm of the anti-racist movement that has caught fire among Japanese Americans nationally. Bearing the scars of past racial oppression, Tsuru for Solidarity combines nonviolent direct action, cross-community organizing, and Healing Circles for Change to advocate for currently targeted immigrant, asylum-seeking, Black, and Indigenous groups. Transformative Solidarity is a concept presented through the lens of Mohanty’s Feminist Solidarity framework (2003), in reference to the healing that Tsuru for Solidarity members have experienced by way of cross-community coalition building. Tsuru for Solidarity’s healing-through-activism approach is a promising model for transformative change in the current contexts of both amplified racial hostility and unprecedented cross-racial mobilization.

Tsigane voices in the 1960s: The first decade of Romani activism in France (1960–1971)

This article investigates the emergence and development of Romani activism in France during the 1960s. Its purpose is to analyse the way in which its leaders set themselves up as representatives of an ethnic community and helped to define its profiles and aspirations. Although the Romani movement clearly aimed at becoming international, this article argues that its growth during its first decade of activity was closely linked to trends and developments concerning other national phenomena, such as French anti-racism organizations and tsiganologie, a form of expert knowledge on the Tsiganes. Furthermore, this paper maintains that despite being united around common objectives, the movement’s leaders had different sensibilities and pursued different strategies within this frame of reference. They did so both to confront the experts and their paternalistic policies and to seize the opportunities provided by the anti-racist movement. These strategies are analysed through a wide range of sources, which include the publications of Romani organisations, tsiganologue circles, anti-racist organisations, as well as police reports on Tsigane leaders.

From field of dreams to back to the future? Exploring barriers to participating in continuing professional development (CPD) programs

BackgroundIn 2009, Yvonne Steinert et al., at McGill University, published a study exploring barriers to faculty development (FD) participation among urban faculty. Over a decade later, we set out to replicate and expand on that study to learn what has changed in continued professional development (CPD) and what the current barriers are to participation in CPD for specialists and family physicians in rural and urban locations.MethodsInformed by a collaborative inquiry research framework, we invited faculty across rural and urban Saskatchewan to focus groups and interview sessions. The results were analyzed for themes.ResultsThirty-four faculty members from both rural and urban areas participated in this study. Of these, 50% were female, 74% practiced in urban areas, and 56% had over 20 years of experience. Frequently cited reasons for nonparticipation included time constraints, organizational and logistical challenges, poor resonance with material and presenters, and lack of recognition for teaching provided. Racism contributed to feelings of disconnectedness among physician faculty members.ConclusionEven after more than a decade, our research uncovered consistent reasons for nonparticipation in locally organized CPD events. New findings highlighted feelings of disconnectedness, notably stemming from racism and workplace discrimination. However, with recent societal developments brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, can we ride these major waves of change to a new future of engagement? The pandemic led to a shift to virtual and hybrid professional development programs, presenting both benefits and challenges. Additionally, the peri-COVID anti-racism movement may positively address previously unidentified reasons for nonattendance. Harnessing these major changes could lead to a new future of engagement for continued professional development.

The Case for Rage in Transitional Justice: Lessons from the Anti-Racist Struggle

ABSTRACT Transitional justice theorizing has the tendency to smuggle in an over-reliance on dualities: one’s resentment can give rise to either vengeance or forgiveness, but not both; one can either be fueled by anger or by the hope of progress, but not both; and so on. This dualistic way of thinking replicates the kinds of false dichotomies that hamstring other societal movements, among them the struggle against racism. Drawing on Myisha Cherry’s case for so-called ‘Lordean rage’ within the context of the anti-racist movement, I make the case that transitional justice in general would be well-served by centering the transformative power of emotion (even and especially when that emotion defies oversimplified and strict categorization).

The Origin, Current Situation and Trends of Racism in the West

ABSTRACT After World War II, and especially following the Civil Rights Movement, racism was generally rejected in the West, but the root of racism—capitalist private ownership—still exists. Since the Great Recession of 2008, racial problems have become increasingly serious. The living conditions of blacks and other minority groups have not improved, while ethnic and migrant conflicts are widening. At the same time, white supremacism has gone on the offensive, “neo-racism” has emerged, and far-right parties and organizations are on the rise. The anti-racist movement faces bleak prospects in the “post-ideological” era. The initiative of “building a community with a shared future for mankind” proposed by China advocates that all civilizations should draw on each other’s strong points, make common progress, and promote a higher level of liberation for the masses, including colored people. In this way, we can create better conditions for a transition to a more advanced social system.

The credit they deserve: contesting predictive practices and the afterlives of red-lining

Racial capitalism depends on the reproduction of an existing racialized economic order. In this article, I argue that the disavowal of past injustice is a central way in which this reproduction is ensured and that market-based forms of knowledge production, such as for-profit predictive practices, play a crucial role in facilitating this disavowal. Recent debates about the fairness of algorithms, data justice, and predictive policing have intensified long-standing controversies, both popular and academic, about the way in which statistical and financial modes of accounting and predicting articulate, represent and produce ascriptive categories of hierarchically ordered social difference, and reproduce unjust social hierarchies and inequalities. These debates have productively problematized the racial lives of seemingly apolitical predictive technologies and demanded the re-politicization of predictive practices. What has been missing from these debates so far, however, is a more explicit engagement with ways in which anti-racist movements and activists themselves have contested the entanglements of prediction and race making. I turn to a recent prominent example, namely the contestation over racial discrepancies in subprime lending to examine how fair lending activists have conceptualized and troubled the reproduction of a racialized economic order through for-profit predictive practices in the decade before the Great Financial Crisis. I situate this particular example in the broader historical and political context of politicizing prediction that first emerged with the ascendancy of a liberal, individualist-proprietary conception of risk, and the political problem space to which this has given rise. My analysis shows that actuarial conceptions of fairness continue to reverberate in anti-racist contestations of for-profit predictive practices, and that they tend to marginalize and undercut more radical strands of critique of the racialization of financial markets. Insofar as these modalities of contestation implicitly reproduce a liberal, proprietary-individualist conception of risk, I argue, they fail to effectively challenge the quasi-alchemical transformation of injustice into personal responsibility, and thus contribute to the disavowal of past injustice.

Visualizing conviviality in the fortress of the Italian far-right: the case of Veronetta

ABSTRACT In Italy, the city of Verona is known not merely for its stunning historical scenery, but also for its reactionary environment foreshadowing the nativist turn in the wider society. Against this backdrop, the racialized neighborhood of Veronetta offers much needed insights into convivial practices with pluralist interconnections. Part of a three-year fieldwork, this research investigates possibilities of everyday conviviality and intercultural sociability in urban spaces, tracing those dynamics that allow a racialized neighborhood to strive in a hostile city. Alongside participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research, the visual method of photo-elicitation is utilized to draw out multidimensional aspects of conviviality, where migrant and non-migrant residents photographically narrate their everyday practices. The article argues that the juxtaposition of intentional urban encounters and accessible public spaces, alongside everyday community-building practices of grassroots actors complement each other in transforming a “no-go zone” into an anti-racist movement space that challenges exclusionary territorial identities.

The Parable of the Sower: Rooting out White Supremacy and Institutionalized Racism in the church

This article highlights the parallels between Camara Jones’ Gardener's Tale allegory and Jesus’ Parable of the Sower to invite reflection regarding White Evangelical Christians’ approach to addressing institutionalized racism faced by African Americans and Blacks in the US and the church. Using an interdisciplinary lens that engages sociology, politics, history, theology and biblical exegesis, this article presents a compelling case for the church to cease the practice of compartmentalizing anti-racist movements as “political” and lead the charge through a missional goal to root out institutionalized racism both within the church and American society.

Acting Alone Together: Reconfiguration of the Pro-Migrant and Refugee Activists’ Arena in Poland

The sphere of grassroots and civil activism became highly politicized before the 2015 elections. The introduction of the new policies has resulted in higher levels of mobilizations, both supporting and resisting the new policies of the PiS government. For instance, Poland has switched from a country with the highest acceptance rate for refugees in the EU to the one with the lowest rate within around a year sparking a number of anti-migrant and anti-refugee mobilizations and at the same time fueled the growth of initiatives opposing the trend. The narrative about masses of refugees in Poland and at its borders threatening various aspects of Polish culture, civilization, and identity started to keep heat in the bed and have provoked numerous intended and unintended consequences, political and social, so as further campaigns against LGBT community. In this paper I reflect on the development of the anti-fascist and anti-racist movements in Poland in the face of structural changes that are a result of the political shift initiated in 2015.

Political Identity In The Perspective Of The Christian Faith: Welcome To The Future

Identity politics is a political tactic in which people or groups organize themselves based on certain traits such as religion, culture, race, gender, sexual orientation, or even hobbies. This can happen due to discrimination or injustice in society that makes the person or group feel the need to form a similar group for support and protection. In the context of society, identity politics can appear in various forms such as feminist movements, anti-racism movements, or LGBT movements. However, we must also beware of the dangers of identity politics that can divide society and create conflicts between different groups. The basis of Christian belief also teaches us to live in peace and harmony with fellow human beings. We are taught to forgive and give others a second chance. In the context of identity politics, these values and principles can help us build inclusive and peaceful societies where every individual feels valued and accepted.

Apartheid’s ‘rape crisis’: understanding and addressing sexual violence in South Africa, 1970s–1990s

ABSTRACT Although rape in South Africa today is commonly framed as a post-apartheid ‘crisis’, neither sexual violence nor public concern about it in the country is new. This article explores an earlier period of ‘rape crisis’ from the 1970s to early 1990s, when sexual violence became a key topic of discussion amongst apartheid politicians, Black community leaders, feminist activists, and ordinary men and women. Focusing on the township of Soweto, it examines why public concern about sexual violence emerged during this period and how rape was conceptualised and responded to. It demonstrates how multiple and often competing social and political agendas constrained attempts to understand and address sexual violence in the country’s townships: the growth of feminist activism; the intensification of the liberation struggle and attempts to repress it; public panic about crime; and shifting gender power dynamics. These divergent responses to rape reveal the challenges of addressing sexual violence within the contexts of anti-racist movements and competing political struggles. Exploring these longer histories not only addresses a gap in South African historiography, but also helps to develop a more global and comparative understanding of how gender, race, and class intersect in producing conceptualisations of rape and responses to it.

CIVIL WAR MEMORY, ANTI-RACISM, AND THE AMERICAN NATION: LATE 2010s — EARLY 2020s

This article is based on materials collected by the author over many years in 28 cities and towns in 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. He aims to show how the historical (aka cultural or social) memory of the Civil War (War of the North and the South) from 1861 through 1865, and the corresponding abolition of slavery become a factor in the anti-racist movement that has swept the country again in recent years. Attention is drawn to transformations in the Civil War memory associated with changing perceptions of the history, essence, and sociocultural boundaries of the American nation. Th e essence of these changes is the affi rmation of a view of the U.S. nation as the entity that includes both whites and blacks on an equal footing. It has also changed the perception of the Civil War as a key moment in the formation of the American nation: whereas previously the War of the North and the South was seen as a war between Northern whites and Southern whites, it has increasingly emphasized the active role of black Americans. At the same time, the differences in the historical memory of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery that persist in the North and the South allow the author to argue that the sociocultural division of U.S. society into Northerners and Southerners has not disappeared to this day. Th e article also highlights that not just racial dichotomies, but racial inequalities were embedded in the very foundation of the American nation at the time of its formation. Th is fact raises the question of whether so-called systemic (otherwise structural, institutional, or social) racism is in principle eradicable in the United States, despite the obvious change for the better in the black community since the victory of the black civil rights movement of 1954–1968.

Looted artifacts and museums'perpetuation of imperialism and racism: Implications for the importance of preserving cultural heritage.

In the midst of recent protests and antiracism movements following the death of George Floyd in May of 2020 and other Black, Indigenous, and people of Color (BIPOC) murdered in the United States by police violence, protestors and advocates around the world recognized the need for Western governments and other institutions to reckon with their own imperial history-to acknowledge the linkage between the slave trade, colonialism, and racism in their countries. This recognition led to the tearing down of statues depicting racist colonial leaders and calling for museums who have perpetuated imperialism and racism through their acceptance and display of looted artifacts to return them. This article sought to answer the question posed in the call for papers, can the many manifestations of racism be effectively dealt with in our society if the status quo is unwilling to engage with the issues, address them, and relinquish power. Further the author argues that cultural looting has its roots in colonialism and racism and discusses implications of the linkage between one's stolen cultural heritage and individual and community well-being. Answers to the question include both yes, manifestations of racism can be addressed, and no, they cannot be addressed when institutions and governments refuse to engage, address the issue and do not relinquish power. The article also includes the author's thoughts on using a living heritage approach to preserve cultural heritage and offers suggestions that community psychologists, advocates and activists can help to decolonize museums as part of the broader social and racial justice movement.