Anti-racist Activism Research Articles

‘Open Fascism Has Appeared on this Continent’: South Africa’s Independent Press and Anti-Fascism, 1937–1947

ABSTRACT When Moses Kotane founded The African Defender in 1937, he did so with the intention to encourage African self-sufficiency through teaching and publishing in indigenous languages and through sharing information on how to survive in segregated South Africa. In doing so, he entered into public conversation with writers and editors of other independent publications such as The Anti-Fascist or occasional series by groups such as the South African Jewish Deputies Board. In the decade after Kotane and his peers began their own discussions, conversations about fascism and anti-fascism in South Africa moved from the margins among those deemed alarmist into spaces where anti-racist activists increasingly saw red flags connecting European oppression with the growing populist nationalism in their own country. This article examines this decade through the language and conversations of independent publications such as Kotane’s, in the face of the proliferation of groups such as the Greyshirts, The People’s Movement, the South African National Democratic Party (‘Blackshirts’), The South African Fascists, and the Gentile Protection League. It argues that anti-fascist philosophies not only informed but served as cornerstones to a nascent anti-apartheid movement.

‘The Problems of the White Ethnic Majority' revisited: a personal, theological and political review

ABSTRACT Just over three and a half decades ago, as a young, white, Christian anti-racist activist challenged by Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s (1981), ‘White Man Listen!' and Salman Rushdie’s (1982) ‘The New Empire Within Britain' the author of this article wrote a booklet with the deliberately ‘inverted’ title of ‘The Problems of the White Ethnic Majority’. In the light of the summer 2020 ‘I Can’t Breathe’ death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter uprisings, I was challenged to return to what I had previously written to interrogate how far since then, as a white Christian individual; the Christian tradition to which I belong; and/or also the UK ethnic majority of which I am a part, have or have not changed. Out of that reflection, this article argues that, despite many important developments, in relation to the stark realities of racism, much that was the case in the mid-1980s remains today. It continues to affirm that the route to liberation for members of the UK white ethnic majority still needs to go through a serious reckoning with the differential impact of the histories and continuing legacies of colonialism and imperialism upon ourselves and those who are of the African and Global Majority.

The Vibrancy of Civil War Era Studies

The feature essays and books reviewed in this issue cover a range of topics: engagement with unpublished historical documents; the relationship between humans and animals and contagions in the Civil War era; war finance; Native American policies; crony capitalism and “immunocapitalism”; free people of color and their antiracist activism in regional, national, and transnational contexts; nationalism(s) and religion; devotees to democracy; public mourning; and stubbornly committed educators. In short, this issue, like so many previous ones, reflects the vibrancy and dynamism of Civil War-era studies.

Antiracism Education Activism: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding and Promoting Racial Equity

Although antiracism activism has contributed to substantive progress under certain circumstances and in certain contexts, little research attempts to theorize how antiracism activism is manifest across contexts. In this article, we explore individual and collective antiracist actions within and outside schools. We introduce a theoretical framework that identifies four domains of activism—policy, community, leadership, and teaching and learning—in which activists operate to make a positive difference in promoting racial equity and antiracism in education. The framework offers a systemic way of thinking about antiracist activism in education and the importance of recognizing that several aspects of antiracist activism usually conceived as distinct are interrelated within and across domains. Indeed, antiracist education activism must be understood holistically and systemically if we seek to dismantle the racism that is woven into every piece of the education system.

Continuous Action toward Justice

AbstractConservative activists and politicians have condemned critical race theory and have supported measures to prohibit teaching the subject in public schools. The anti-critical race theory movement is part of broader social movement activity inspired by the 2020 presidential election. Many conservatives view Donald Trump's defeat as a victory for antiracism. In response, they have portrayed the election as a product of fraud, enacted laws that will make it more difficult for people of color to vote, endorsed measures that would chill antiracist political activism, and banned instruction related to contemporary antiracist theory. These practices have been employed historically in response to antiracism. This history should guide social justice advocates as they analyze the meaning of countermovement activity and build strategies of resistance.

Assilation and Resistance in Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album

In the present study, Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album was analyzed in the view of Bhabha’s concepts of ambivalence, assimilation, hybridity, double-consciousness, and homeliness. Shahid, a Pakistani student, constructs a hybrid identity and symbolically marries a widow lecturer who teaches postcolonial literature. On the contrary to Shahid’s views, Riaz’s group is a fundamental Islamic aggregation in 1980s London devoted to anti-racist activities while take part in book-burning and violent actions. As Bhabha theories about hybrid identity, it seems that Shahid’s assimilation into the host mainstream culture and developing a hybrid identity enfeebles colonial and imperial power more than Riaz’s group and their violent resistance against imperial power.

Translating Race on the French Stage

Translating Race on the French Stage

Islamophobia, anti-racism and the British left: Muslim activists as ‘racialised outsiders’

ABSTRACT Against a backdrop of racialised nationalism and widespread securitisation of Muslim communities, how are those on the British political left responding to the issue of Islamophobia? This paper draws together empirical accounts from anti-racist activists with a series of theoretical contributions from scholars in the field of ‘race’ and racism studies. I point towards an ambivalence in talking about and challenging Islamophobia amongst non-Muslim activists, and highlight accounts by Muslim activists of marginalisation and Islamophobia on the British left. I argue that these trends are best understood – and critically addressed – by drawing on understandings of racialisation and nationalism. Finally, I consider how we might think about the role of Muslim activists on the left, drawing on the concept of the ‘racialised outsider’ (Virdee [2014. Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]) to argue that their experiences and analyses place them in a unique position from which to challenge Islamophobia in the current moment.

“Intensely white”: psychology curricula and the (re)production of racism

ABSTRACT Psychology has witnessed an upsurge in discussions around institutional racism as a response to global anti-racist activism following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 by a police officer in Minneapolis, USA. Within academic institutions, students have been challenging institutional racism for years, highlighting how the whiteness of curricula serves to uphold systems of racial injustice. Such calls are often met with denial and sometimes active backlash. Nevertheless, further reflection is crucial if universities and accrediting bodies endorsing educational and professional courses seek meaningful systemic change. Informed by Critical Race Theory, this study uses original empirical data to uncover how students of colour experience psychology curricula by conducting six face-to-face focus groups with 22 undergraduate and postgraduate students of colour on psychology courses at a UK university. Results from reflexive thematic analysis reveal, first, how the psychology curricula are marked by knowledges that (re)produce racism; second, how students are calling for change; and finally, confusion over where responsibility for change lies. We argue that this analysis has important implications for the perpetuation of institutional racism within psychology, academia in general, and subsequent professional psychological practice.

A pedagogy of critical consciousness and anti-racist activism: possibilities and limitations of a community-based whiteness workshop series

ABSTRACT This article reports on a critical qualitative study of a whiteness workshop series to understand the past experiences, contexts, and relationships that motivate White people and people of colour to participate in an in-depth anti-racism workshop, and what participants learn through engaging in this workshop series. First, most participants, White and of colour, are motivated to do racial justice work due to a marginalisation experience based on race, ethnicity, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and/or religion in childhood. Second, the series introduces a self-reflexive communication process that is new to many participants. Third, participating in the workshop series prompts some towards activism, while others limit themselves to self-reflection. I argue that two factors create this divergence in post-workshop activism: (1) the level of experience with anti-racism work with which participants entered the workshop; and (2) the focus of the workshop on individual attitudes and skills over systemic racism.

Linking arms across districts: Accountability and support in cross-district teacher collaboration

ABSTRACT The violent police response to uprisings in response to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor unveiled who America is for our students. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic increased the politicization of schools and exacerbated inequality in schools already segregated by class and race. Throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, students navigated our nation’s deepest divides. Teachers engaged in antiracist and equity activism in schools experience teacher burnout, isolation, and ultimately heartbreak when not supported by their school community. In this article, we look at critical connections teachers made across districts in the same geographic area, across segregated schools to collaborate to investigate white supremacy culture in themselves, their schools, and the education system. We wonder, “How can educators, schools, and organizations leverage this moment of opportunity for change and critical mass of support without losing momentum as seen in the past?” We focus on the actions and practices of 2 teachers in central Ohio schools to answer this question with respect to their classrooms, schools, and communities.

How do UK archivists perceive ‘white supremacy’ in the UK archives sector?

ABSTRACT Structural racism and white supremacy are hot topics that spark debate amongst UK archivists. This paper makes use of a survey created as part of a Masters in Archives and Records Management at the University of Liverpool in 2020, to examine archivists’ perceptions of white supremacy in UK archives. It demonstrates that although there is a strong appetite for change within the sector, white supremacy can be seen to influence some archivists’ judgment, and decisive action is needed to prevent this from impeding the positive progress of anti-racist activities towards countering the negative impact of white supremacy.

Transformative dissonant encounters: Opportunities for cultivating antiracism in White nursing students.

Sharply in focus in the United States right now is the disproportionate COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates of Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and Pacific Islanders living in the United States in contrast to White people. These COVID-19 disparities are but one example of how systemic racism filters into health outcomes for many Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). With these issues front and center, more attention is being given to the ways that White medical professionals contribute to these disparities, including their socialization to ignore or deny inequities. As such, the present study sought to understand how educating White health-care pre-professionals about systemic racism might influence their understanding of and responsibility for disrupting White supremacy. Data were drawn from 49 White-identified nursing students who participated in a mapping project that uncovered instantiations of systemic racism in the United States. Participant written reflections were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings revealed that mapping projects can develop White people's knowledge and understanding of systemic racism. We introduce the construct, transformative dissonant encounters, to describe how this project precipitated shifts in world view necessary for White people to confront systemic racism. Implications for nursing educators, psychological researchers, and antiracist activists are discussed.

The subject, the other, and black political identities among Afro-Brazilians

ABSTRACT This study combines anthropology and psychoanalysis to explore the formation of black identities in Afro-Brazilians’ antiracist struggles. Using data from long-term ethnographic fieldwork among black activists in Salvador and current observations of social media, we explore how various antiracist struggles have become discursive microsystems that organize individual identities into collective processes. Beyond analyzing Afro-Brazilian activism as a collective force, it is important to account for the differences between individual black subjects. Since it is through the other that the subject continually experiences itself, we listen to the individual that is embedded in the social field to demonstrate that the struggle between sameness and difference is at the heart of antiracist activism among Afro-Brazilians. As Afro-Brazilians embrace antiracist activism, their black political identities become dialogized, or defined by their position in relation to the other and recognition of how others perceive them in a country where skin color, not ancestry, determines racial difference.

Fatness, friendship, and “corpu-allyhood” stratagems

ABSTRACT The practice, theory, and critique of allyship have been central to feminist scholarship and activism. Identities once not regarded as identities at all but as neutral givens, such as maleness, whiteness, cisnormativity, heterosexuality, abledness, and settlerhood, have all become politicized planes of analysis and action. Yet little scholarship, praxis, and activism has held people with thin privilege accountable for the role they play in fueling the fires of fatphobia in the day to day. Even while fat studies and fat activisms have worked to dismantle fatphobia, thin people have rarely been asked to play pivotal roles in dismantling fatphobic worldviews. In this piece, we draw on anti-racist feminism, disability studies, and fat activism to think about what it might take to become a fat ally. Grounded in our collaborative corporeality as a (very) fat and (very) thin person, we hone the method of research-practice in this part theoretical essay and part action zine. Specifically, we argue that for fat allyhood to be possible, allies need to hone anti- rather than non-fatphobic commitments and practices grounded in what Mia Mingus frames as “access intimacy.”

‘History takes its time…’: anti-racist temporalities and historical memory cultures in France, c. 1980–1998

ABSTRACT Historical memory cultures have played a crucial role in French anti-racist activism. Anti-racist movements such as the Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme (LICRA) and the Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples (MRAP) invoked historical memories of interwar antisemitism, the Holocaust and colonial violence in their fight against racism in the 1980s and 1990s. The content and meaning of these memory cultures underpinned late twentieth-century anti-racism, furnishing activism with a profoundly didactic dimension which explicitly connected the racisms of the past to the racisms of the present. Anti-racist print media – from the LICRA’s monthly newspaper, Le Droit de Vivre, and the MRAP’s publications, Droit et Liberté and Différences – provided important discursive spaces within which these diverse historical memory cultures could be identified, articulated and contested. This in turn created a space for the construction of anti-racist temporalities. The legacies of past antisemitism and Islamophobia ensured that the anti-racist activism of the LICRA and MRAP, in different ways, possessed an intensely temporal dimension. This article considers how anti-racist historical memory cultures were articulated in print media in response to events such as the rue Copernic bombing of October 1980 and the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots of August 1992. Furthermore, the article will explore how divergent Holocaust and colonial memory cultures began to encounter each other on a more frequent basis in the pages of anti-racist publications during the mid-1990s, reflecting national developments in the memorialization of the Holocaust and (albeit to a lesser extent) France’s colonial past. The relationship between time and anti-racist activism was an intimate one and historical memory played a key mediating role in anti-racist responses to contemporary racism. By focusing primarily on the print media of the LICRA and the MRAP, this article demonstrates how both organizations and key figures such as Jean Pierre-Bloch and Mouloud Aounit viewed contemporary racism through the lens of historical memory, thus demonstrating an intimate relationship between late twentieth-century anti-racist activism in France and historical time.

Leith Mullings, Our Compañera en Lucha

The recent passing of the renowned anthropologist and anti-racist activist Leith Mullings is a tremendous loss. The three of us became close to Leith through our shared participation in the Antirac...

Antiracist Activism in Clinical Ethics: What's Stopping Us?

Although justice is a central principle in clinical ethics, work that centers social justice is often marginalized in clinical ethics. In addition to institutional barriers that may be preventing clinical ethicists from becoming the activists that Meyers argues we should be, we must also recognize the barriers embedded in the field of clinical ethics itself. As clinical ethicists, we have an opportunity to support anti-racism work in particular by altering our own organizational structures to be more inclusive and reflective of the Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color we serve, enhancing clinical ethics education and training by making critical theories foundational, and decolonizing our clinical ethics consultation tools and practices.

PUBLIC OPINIONS ABOUT PAYING COLLEGE ATHLETES AND ATHLETES PROTESTING DURING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

AbstractDrawing on insights from Critical Race Theory and framing theory, as well as previous research, this study ties together and analyzes public opinions about two racialized and politicized sports-related issues: (1) the financial compensation of college athletes, and (2) athlete protests during the national anthem. Consequently, we highlight racial/ethnic identities, racial attitudes, and political identities as predictors of these public opinions. Data for our analyses come from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults who were surveyed just prior to the 2016 presidential election. Descriptive results suggest that well over half of U.S. adults opposed having the NCAA pay college athletes; also, about two-thirds of adults viewed athlete protests during the national anthem as unacceptable. Regression results reveal that Black and Latinx adults were more supportive of paying college athletes and athlete protests during the national anthem than White adults. Other people of color were also more likely than White adults to support paying college athletes. Racial attitudes such as a lack of recognition of racial/ethnic inequalities in education and support for Black Lives Matter also shaped public opinions about these issues in expected ways. Finally, we find that political identities were linked to public opinions about these issues even after accounting for racial/ethnic identities and racial attitudes. Overall, this study documents public opinions about these prominent sports-related issues just prior to the 2016 election of a President who particularly racialized and politicized sports issues. Even then, these sports-related issues had been similarly filtered through both a White racial frame that encourages colorblind racism and a counter frame that promotes antiracist activism. Altogether, the present study offers further evidence of how sports provide cultural terrain for individuals to enact and negotiate racialized and politicized views of sports and society and illustrates how these processes were reflected in public opinions in 2016.

Zoom-ing in on White Supremacy

Zoom-ing in on White Supremacy