Construction Of Racial Identities Research Articles

On the Racialization of the Moroccan ‘Other’ in Orientalist Romance

On the Racialization of the Moroccan ‘Other’ in Orientalist Romance

The Spaces Between: Using Thick Intersectionality to Explain Identity Gaps Presented in Ginny & Georgia

ABSTRACT Ginny & Georgia, an original Netflix show released in 2021, showcases how racial identity construction cannot be separated from history, culture, language, and oppressive structural systems in society through the writing of the main character Ginny. In this paper, we explore how communication theory of identity (CTI) and thick intersectionality (TI) connect to examine the material consequences of the ideologies that undergird Ginny’s identity formation. Findings illuminated identity gaps formed at the personal-enacted and personal-relational locations through Ginny’s on-screen performance, which highlight the complexity of and tensions within expressing and performing multiraciality. We argue these identity gaps accentuate the interlocking systems of oppression that lead to expectations of group membership performances. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Constructed Identities and Potent Imaginaries

Abstract This paper offers a missiological reflection on the construction of Mainland Chinese ethnic and racial identity. Through a survey of scholarly literature on both the ethnic classification project in Mainland China and “yellow” as a racial designator in Western imagination, this article demonstrates their fluid, constructed, and imagined nature in the context of power, inequality, and vulnerability. While these imposed constructions are contested and negotiated, they are also, to varying extents, shared and accepted. This article also argues that such constructed identities and imaginaries can powerfully shape our understanding and encounter with others in our increasingly diverse and interconnected world. For the Christian, Jesus’ humble, self-giving, sacrificial love and service should shape our identity and relationship with others in ways that transcend our inherited ethnic and racial identity constructions. As citizens of heaven, Christians – in both their attitudes and practices – should thus model an alternative to the ethnic and racial division and brokenness already evident in the church and the world.

“The Darker Your Skin Color is, the Harder it is in Korea”: Discursive Construction of Racial Identity in Teaching Internationally

AbstractGrowing interest in international teaching programs has produced a surge of research on international language teaching (Menard‐Warwick, 2008). However, there are relatively few studies on the international teaching experiences of native English‐speaking teachers of color regarding their racial identity. To fill this gap, this longitudinal multi‐case study explores how three non‐White novice native English‐speaking teachers understood their racial and teacher identities during their international teaching in Korea. With a specific focus on their racial identity, how they make sense of their teaching and living experiences is examined in diverse contexts of their social interactions. The participants’ reflective and evaluative narratives from interviews were analyzed. The findings show that although their racial identity has a negative impact on their linguistic and professional identity that is denied by Korean society, the teachers utilized their own strategies for constructing a sense of belonging to the local and professional community. This study calls for a holistic, situated understanding of racial identity construction of non‐White native English teachers by urging further discussion of racism in the global ELT profession. This discussion encompasses the varying, pressing needs of expatriate English teachers from diverse backgrounds.

Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism, by Molly Littlewood Mckibbin

Reviewed by: Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism by Molly Littlewood McKibbin Wendy Braun (bio) MOLLY LITTLEWOOD MCKIBBIN, Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism. University of Nebraska Press, 2018. xi + 331 pp. ISBN 9780803296817. Mixed-race people have always existed, but are treated as an emerging phenomenon. While multicultural studies investigates the experiences and perceptions of mixed-race individuals from past to present, it has often fallen short of analyzing the role Whiteness plays in the construction of mixed-race identities, thereby leaving Whiteness unchallenged as a hegemonic racial category. Molly Littlewood McKibben fills this chasm in mixed-race studies by analyzing six texts that include an interracial protagonist with both Black and White parentage and in doing so, incorporates a more overt examination of Whiteness in the construction of racial identity and how this is depicted in contemporary multiracial literature. McKibben begins her monograph by clearly outlining her working definitions and providing a detailed primer of mixed-race history in the United States. This is important for two main reasons: it demonstrates the slipperiness of racial terms and highlights the often contradictory and ever-evolving ways these labels have been used socially, legally, and scientifically over time. In addition, McKibben notes that multicultural scholars often neglect to make clear their definitions or uncritically slip from one connotation to another, which does little to clear up misconceptions of race and inconsistencies in racial theory. The sample of texts, while analyzing mixed-race Black and White identity, also trouble the concept of Whiteness in ways previously unexamined. Whereas early mixed-race literature focused on the tragic mulatto/a character (an individual denied identity and community) or passing narratives (individuals choosing a tenuous and dangerous inclusion into White society), more contemporary iterations have focused on those same individuals forming racial identity and establishing community through Black pride and political activism. McKibben has chosen first-person coming-of-age narratives that reveal racial identity formation for mixed-race individuals, where the characters also explore their understanding of [End Page 145] both Blackness and Whiteness and what that means for their interracial identities. These texts include Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998), Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2001), Emily Raboteau’s The Professor’s Daughter (2005), Rachel Harper’s Brass Ankle Blues (2006), and Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (2010). In chapter 1, McKibben focuses on the works of Harper, Raboteau, Senna, and Walker. In these narratives, the protagonists do not want to default to the one-drop rule of Blackness and do not view Black pride as simultaneously denying the White part of their identities. However, their racial formation is often molded and even impeded by those around them, including family and friends, as well as the imposing gaze of strangers and acquaintances. These texts highlight the limitations of US racial terminology, especially for mixed-race individuals. Whereas the tragic mulatto/a figure emphasized the mental fracture of the Black-White multiracial person, these more contemporary texts expose that the problem lies with the “pathology of the country” (p. 74). Chapter 2 centers on the works of Senna and Walker, which explore ethnic Whiteness and highlight it as a constructed and performed identity. The narratives, which incorporate Latinx and Jewish identities, respectively, destabilize Whiteness as a homogenous, unracialized, and invisible category—one that is “pure” and somehow incompatible with Blackness. Building on this notion, chapter 3 focuses on the works of Harper, Raboteau, Walker, and Senna, who discuss multiethnic Blackness and colorism as Black identity is pitted against White in the lives of Black-White multiracials. These texts also demonstrate how psychologically and emotionally taxing it is for mixed-race individuals to navigate their own racial identities under daily microaggressions and cultural pathology. The protagonists learn the importance of diverse communities where they are less likely to have to defend or justify their mixed-raced identities. It is in these spaces that the characters often learn more inclusive vocabulary that encapsulates their identity, and they are less likely to feel that they have to identify monoracially. This marks a point in the multi-racial coming-of-age narrative...

Space, race and identity: An ethnographic study of the Black hair care and beauty landscape and Black women's racial identity constructions in England

AbstractCentering the identity‐related impact of spatial structures and physical environments in shaping the sense of being and belonging of people in the diaspora is a key decolonial feminist project for and within psychology. This paper presents an ethnographic study that combines observations at three Black hair salons in England with a total of 25 qualitative interviews with Black women (n = 18) and experts such as hairdressers (n = 7). The question this study seeks to answer is: ``How are Black women's racial identities constructed, structed and shaped by and through their interactions with and navigation of the Black hair care and beauty landscape in England?’’ This paper shows that participants reflected on the navigation of space as an identity‐relevant experience. Moreover, racial identity construction happens in place through encounters and socio‐spatial interactions and Black women's ways of seeing, being, and inhabiting the world. Lastly, this paper argues the centrality or marginality of Black hair salons is relative, dependent upon the location and situatedness of the person searching or visiting it. This paper thus highlights avenues for future research into the space‐ race‐identity nexus and invites an examination of the identity‐related significance that spatial arrangements carry for people in the diaspora.

‘We [mostly] carry guns for the internet’: Visibility labour, social hacking and chasing digital clout by Black male youth in Chicago’s drill rap scene

Much negative attention has been given to the ‘drill’ music genre, a subgenre of gangsta rap that was born in Chicago’s underground hip hop scene in early 2010s. Previous scholarship has highlighted how social media has shifted how gang-affiliated youth in Chicago carefully manage their street reputations, communicate with peers and fuel gang rivalries through platformed creation. Yet still, in the context of drill, I argue that social media self-branding practices also provide these youth a way out of containment and sequestration to gain visibility in the music industry and empower their neighbourhoods. Based on interviews with drill recording artists and their support workers, I explore the content and character of their work, the centrality of work ethic to their racial identity construction and the way they use social media work to build and maintain status, authenticity and cultivate connections with fans, friends and other cultural producers. Bridging traditional theories of urban sociology with emerging new media scholarship, I suggest this group of artists is a representative case of how the digital practices of disadvantaged Black youth have typically gone mischaracterized in the literature. This study offers new insights into ‘capping’ as an important tenet to hip hop’s visibility labour on social media and how the ‘always on’ nature of digital labour adds another dimension to the typical utilization of street authenticity in narratives of hip hop music. This article concludes by illuminating the many deep contradictions and misconceptions about technological ingenuity, Black youth agency, hip hop culture and street credibility in urban communities.

Rap negro na cidade planejada

A construção de Brasília se baseou em um projeto orquestrado antes mesmo da década de 1950 e que também fora construído na perspectiva do mito de democracia racial à moda brasileira. Os espaços destinados aos negros e brancos no Distrito Federal também são marcados pelo racismo. O RAP negro na cidade planejada é uma fresta aberta por meio da música para resistir ao projeto de exclusão social e racial de Brasília e a música promoveu não somente resistência, mas também ajudou na construção da identidade racial.

“Voice Might Discover Him”: Representations and Failures of Voice in Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends

AbstractThis article takes up the representation of voice in Frank J. Webb's 1857 novel The Garies and Their Friends to examine the relationship between Blackness, aurality, and text. Doing so requires an approach tuned to the novel's aural-linguistic dimensions that acknowledges that a character's speaking produces a diegetic sound and that the way characters interact with one another relies, in part, on how each perceives another's voice. It also means looking for how a text conveys a sense of sound both through techniques such as italics and capitalization and through instances of overt narration. Specifically, moments of mistaken identity pivot on the disruption of one character's accumulated presumptions concerning the sound of another character's voice and highlight how sound and listening reinforce processes of racialization, a dynamic Jennifer Lynn Stoever identifies through her work on the sonic color line. Instances of vocalization—moments when characters are depicted speaking and when the text itself performs vocality—defamiliarize social formations along the sonic color line long enough for the novel to scrutinize their underlying premises. Scenes in which characters' voices escape their assumed meaning trouble constructions of racial identity, particularly whiteness and its assumed control over speech. The Garies and Their Friends thus generates an alternative mode through which to critique the safeguarding of whiteness. Ultimately, the novel brings together overlapping meanings of voice, such as physiologically produced acoustic sounds and distinctive literary or authorial decisions, as a meditation on the interplay between voice and writing.

Colonising the Play World

In German children’s literature around 1900, the representation of childhood in pseudo-colonial realms participates in a construction of racial identities based on transcultural play. Acts of reading and scenes of instruction intersect with material objects to convey a pedagogy of race dominated by learned whiteness. This article asks: How does German children’s fiction around 1900 reconfigure national identity as imperialexperience? An analysis of a noncanonical though exemplary fictional text about a jungle adventure demonstrates strategies used to include the child in the colonial experience. Imagining this ›play world‹ replicates for the child reader a sense of agency and citizenship through encounters with an indigenous mediator, an impish primate and imaginary landscapes – each represented through the lens of European epistemologies. These tropes produce tension between historical fact and imaginative fiction, working together to map a colonial geography of German identity on to a model transatlantic German childhood. Framed by theories of material objects and toys, and supported by the work of literary scholars and cultural historians, I examine the brief story »Die kleine Urwälderin« [The Little Jungle Girl] from Auerbachs Deutscher Kinder-Kalender auf das Jahr 1902 [Auerbach’s Almanac for German Children, 1902]. In it, the Amazonian setting aspires to historically factual representation, which, however, cedes considerable territory to the realm of fantasy. The projection of a German forest adventure on to a Brazilian geography elides historical truths, such as centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, and instead inserts imperial signifiers into an established syntax of the European child at play. The resulting national ideology of childhood identity in this German language story imposes colonial order on a reimagined play world.

The Endurance and Contestations of Colonial Constructions of Race Among Malaysians and Singaporeans.

Psychological literature on race has discussed in depth how racial identities are dialogically constructed and context dependent. However, racial identity construction is often not compared across different socio-political contexts. By researching racial identity construction in three different multicultural countries, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, we examined how three racial identities, Chinese, Malay, and Indian, are constructed among Malaysians and Singaporeans in this qualitative study comprised of 10 focus group discussions (N = 39). We applied Dialogical Analysis to the data. This paper shows that both racial ingroups and outgroups constructed all three racial identities, with ingroups constructing their identities more heterogeneously compared to outgroups. Participants also engaged with colonial constructions of the three racial identities. The geographical locations, and therefore their perceptual contexts, of the participants differed. Yet, colonial constructions of race endured in contemporary identity construction and were contested in the group settings. We conclude that the socio-political context as understood by the context of colonialism and post-coloniality influenced their racial identity constructions. Participants, regardless of differences in geographical location, used similar colonial constructions of Malay, Chinese, and Indian identities to position themselves as well as Others in their group interactions. These findings show that there is value in conceptualising the context beyond that which individuals are immediately presented with, and that psychologists should consider the inclusion of cultural legacies of colonialism in their conceptualisation of the present context.

Intersections between Race and Class: A Postcolonial Analysis and Implications for Organizational Leaders

Abstract This article seeks to understand the construction of racial identity in the Brazilian social context and its intersections with social class, aiming to analyze the occurrence of race resignification in this intersectional process, a process called the classification of race herein. Considering that business students will be leaders involved with the elaboration of organizational policies, this article seeks to contribute to the development of racial diversity policies in the field. Interviews were thus held with undergraduate students of management in a Brazilian university. The interviews occurred in focus groups, and data analysis was performed by means of discourse analysis from a postcolonial identity perspective, which allowed us to conclude that the boundaries between race and class are quite tenuous, to the point that racial aspects are reduced to merely involving social class. At the same time, social class acts as a form of whitening. The reduction of race to social class is a strategy of denying race as a social marker that produces inequalities and denying the existence of structural racism in the Brazilian society, thus bearing the myth that Brazil is a racial democracy.

The Construction of Race in Brazil: Uncovering Structural Inequalities

This article seeks to understand the construction of racial identity in the Brazilian social context and its intersections with social class, aiming to analyse the occurrence of race resignification in this intersectional process, a process called the classification of race herein. Focus groups were held with undergraduate management students from a Brazilian university. The data were analysed from a postcolonial perspective, which allowed us to conclude that the boundaries between race and class are quite tenuous, to the point that racial aspects are reduced to merely being questions of social class. At the same time, social class acts as a form of whitening. The reduction of race to social class is a strategy of denying race as a social marker that produces inequalities and denying the existence of structural racism in Brazilian society. However, despite this strategy of denial, it was found that work is highly structurally racialized in Brazil.

Fluidity amidst structure: multi-racial identity constructions across the life course of Malaysians and Singaporeans

ABSTRACTMulti-racial identity construction is understood to be fluid, contextual and dynamic. Yet the dynamics of multi-racial identity construction when racial identities are ascribed and formulated as static by governments is less explored in psychological studies of race. This paper examines the dynamics of racial identity construction among multi-racial Malaysians and Singaporeans in a qualitative study of 31 semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was used to identify the different private racial identity constructions of participants who were officially ascribed with single racial identities at birth. Participants reflected on the overwhelming influence of the state and significant Others in limiting their ability to express their multiple racial identities when they were in school, and highlighted their capacity to be agentic in their private racial identity constructions when they were older. This paper shows that across the life course multi-racial individuals possess (1) the ability to adopt different racial identity positions at different times, (2) the ability to hold multiple racial identity constructions at the same time when encounters with Others are dialogical, (3) the reflexivity of past identity positions in the present construction of identities.

Race and Reconciliation in the Work of Lourdes Casal

This essay explores constructions of racial identity in Lourdes Casal's work leading up to, and with, Grupo Areíto and the Brigada Antonio Maceo. Casal's conceptualizations of race were deeply informed by national and historical notions of identity and belonging. Evidenced in the texts examined here, Casal draws from her African and Chinese ancestry while also identifying with Cuba's indigenous heritage. By considering the composition of her own racial identity at a moment in which Lourdes Casal labored for a reconciliation between herself, her diasporic community, and her island homeland, this essay also proposes a historical comparison to the current moment of possible rapprochement between two countries still struggling with racism.

“Red Taffeta Under Tweed”: The Color of Post-War Clothes

In the years following the end of the Second World War and the passing of the 1948 British Nationality Act, the language of color was gradually and steadily harnessed to ideologies of race and nation, as chromatic hue and skin color became utterly imbricated. The relationship between the colors of clothing and skin are explored first through discussion of the naming and standardization of colors from the 1930s to the 1950s by the British Colour Council before turning to an analysis of the 1959 British Film, Sapphire, and its construction of racial identities through the semantics of hue, dress and appearance. These ideas were disseminated not only through visual culture, but also through the expertise of social scientists and in journalism, popular psychology, and many forms of visual media. Choice of clothing styles and colors was believed to expose innate racial traits and preferences, defining both the restrained, neutral look of the white nation and the sexualized and dangerous excesses of the new black African and Caribbean immigrants.

A “Suspiciously Swarthy” Boxer

On September 14, 1923, Jack Dempsey and Luis Firpo of Argentina fought for boxing's heavyweight championship of the world. This article argues that descriptions of Firpo generated in the buildup to the title match reveal the ambiguous racial positioning of Latin Americans and Southern Europeans in the United States during the transitional decade of the 1920s. The prefight coverage provides a unique window into the complex relationships between the construction of racial identities and mass sporting culture. Representations of Firpo hewed closely to established racial stereotypes and yet challenged and confounded these caricatures by presenting him both as an exotic and strange foreigner from a racially suspect region and as a familiar, white American whose hard work and intelligence would have made him a worthy champion.

The Construction of Racial Identity among Same Gender Loving Black Male Characters in Contemporary Film and Television

The mainstream media has historically characterized Black male sexuality with hypersexual images of violence, promiscuity, and insecurity. While traditional representations of Black male sexuality contains elements of dehumanization and objectification, the recent introduction of Black same gender loving ( sgl ) male characters to film and television has been branded by stereotypical notions on Black masculinity. The modern American Gay Rights Movement’s lack of influential Black male leaders has catalyzed the production of one-dimensional Black sgl male characters without extensive racial identities. The foregoing study examines the link between Black sgl men and their racial identities through analyzing the representation of homophobia and the downlow, the portrayal of interracial homosexual relationships involving Black men, and the depiction of intraracial Black sgl male relationships and their expressions of cultural norms.

“We Stick Out Like a Sore Thumb . . .”

Employing the concept of racial evasion—a derivation of Bonilla-Silva’s colorblind ideology theory—the author analyzes 237 songs of underground white and nonwhite rappers from 2006 to 2010. Performing a content analysis on their lyrics, the author finds that white artists make fewer references to racially political and social themes (e.g., racial profiling, police brutality, racist policies) than nonwhite artists—what the author terms racial evasion. The author speculates that white rappers, understanding that they operate in a specifically racialized black and brown cultural art form, deemphasize or mask their racial identity in their lyrics. This tactic is achieved through lyrically referencing hypermasculine tropes such as violence, misogyny, and homophobia to a greater degree than nonwhite artists. This work demonstrates the strategic use of hypermasculine discourse as a rhetorical strategy to achieve “hip hop authenticity” by minimizing or evading racial discourse within this popular cultural form. Furthermore, the author illustrates how the maintenance and manifestation of white male privilege operates via the process of deracialization as a form of meaning making. Ultimately, this work elaborates on the debate of “authenticity” within hip hop studies, providing a window into white racial identity construction within popular culture.

Redefining Intersectionality Theory Through the Lens of African American Young Adolescent Girls’ Racialized Experiences

The research presented uses intersectionality theory as a lens to study the racial identity construction of four African American young adolescent girls. The findings suggest that race was largely situated in a Black–White discourse for the girls in the study. When limited information was provided in home, school, and community settings, the participants made meaning from dominant discourses about race and identity, although glimpses of critical thinking about race did occur. In conclusion, the potential of including youth identity within intersectionality theory to broaden the utility of the theory itself and also for making meaning of and advocating for marginalized adolescents is discussed.