Racial Discourse Research Articles

Lose Your Father

Lose Your Father

20세기 전환기 미국 대외정책의 전환과 동아시아 — 문호개방정책(Open Door Policy)과 이중적 인종인식 —

American foreign policy at the turn of the 20^th century had been changed from traditional isolationism to internationalism or expansionism. American expansionists at that time regarded China as for economic aggression like many other European imperialistic powers. In order to share economic interests in China, America came up with so-called ‘Open Door Policy.’ Previously, scholars investigated the open door policy mainly focusing on leading figures related the policy or a complex social economic condition after the rapid industrial growth, or the connection between the policy and Progressivism. With these previous research achievements, this study tries to investigate Open Door Policy through a lens of racism, particularly the “Yellow Peril” racial discourse. In other words, it will discover how American expansionists arbitrary utilized the yellow peril to make a sound political position unlike European powers who initiatively maneuver this imaginary racial discourse against White. To begin with, it will start explaining the diverse background how and why American foreign policy had been changed at the turn of the 20^th century and what was the hidden agenda of the open door policy.

Between Antigypsyism and Human Rights Education: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representations of the Roma Holocaust in European Textbooks

This paper investigates representations of the Roma Holocaust in European textbooks on history, civics, and geography for pupils in upper primary to the end of secondary education. By applying critical discourse analysis (CDA) to a dataset of 472 passages and images referring to the Roma Holocaust from 869 textbooks, this paper reveals educational discourses of in/exclusion by focusing on narratives and linguistic tools, such as speech acts, level of detail and specificity, perspectives in semantic and grammatical forms, vocabulary and syntax. Most knowledge disseminated on the Roma Holocaust concerns numbers and technicalities of murder while Roma-specific details, survivor stories, and individual voices, as well as Romani terminology for the Holocaust (Porrajmos) are rare. Generally, the textbooks show little commitment to circulating knowledge about the Roma Holocaust, or specifically focusing on civic or human rights education. Portrayals of the Roma Holocaust are permeated by both explicitly and implicitly racist discourses, coupled with a distinct lack of critical tools withwhich to deconstruct these narratives. Overall, current textbook representations of the Roma Holocaust mirror social discourse and possibly serve to reproduce Romani exclusion and risk reinforcing antigypsyism attitudes.

Roma, Gypsies, and Travellers As a Community of Difference: Challenging Inclusivity As an Anti-racist Approach

In order to consider how white privilege functions in late modernity, this article engages with issues of identity and political economy to theorise the impact of racist discourse on Roma, Gypsies, and Travellers in the United Kingdmom (UK). The article specifically problematizes the increasing aggregation of Roma, Gypsies, and Travellers as one community of difference in the UK. The article expresses the author’s concern that contemporary discourse and associated policy developments have racialized communities, and in doing so negated them through a failure to acknowledge the breadth of experience of Roma, Gypsies, and Travellers. The article makes a theoretical argument, evidenced by a comprehensive review of literature in the social sciences and key policy documents in the UK. It also incorporates an analysis of reports produced by UKgovernment and civil society organisations over the past 15-year period. The article argues that the categorisation of Roma, Gypsies, and Travellers as one community of difference has occurred due tothe embedded racism within contemporary European society that functions through and is augmented by neoliberal capitalist norms. In conclusion the paper argues that the norms of neoliberal capitalism, that are typified by individualism, competition, and the primacy of capital over human experience, allow the perpetuation of this racist discourse that is not challenged by narratives of inclusion but rather is augmented by them.

W. E. B. Du Bois, James and Esther Cooper Jackson, and the Promise of Intergenerational Solidarity in the Black Freedom Movement

This article examines the relationship between W. E. B. Du Bois and James and Esther Cooper Jackson over the course of their long and overlapping careers. In it, I will argue that through this relationship, Du Bois demonstrated the importance and utility of intergenerational activism by adapting to changing times, offering guidance and support to young people, and learning from up-and-coming activists. James (b. 1914) and Esther Cooper Jackson (b. 1917) grew up admiring Du Bois, and as youth activists in the 1940s began to build a relationship of mutual respect with their idol. By the time Du Bois wrote In Battle for Peace, the dynamic had blossomed into a collaborative friendship. James Jackson was among the Communist leaders indicted under the Smith Act in 1951, and Cooper Jackson was active in the National Committee to Defend Negro Leadership. Her advocacy extended to Du Bois’s indictment and trial. When Jackson stood trial, Du Bois testified in his defense. Jackson was among those engaged in conversations with Du Bois about Communism prior to his petition for membership in the CPUSA and he transmitted the announcement of his decision to join the Party via the Jacksons before his departure to Ghana. Cooper Jackson collaborated with Du Bois and his wife Shirley in the establishment of Freedomways magazine, a quarterly journal that showcased Black writers, artists, and thinkers, shaping the discourse of race in American social thought for nearly 25 years. After Du Bois’s death, the Jacksons endeavored to preserve his memory and commemorate his legacy. In addition to sponsoring a 100th birthday celebration for Du Bois through Freedomways, Cooper Jackson worked to establish Du Bois’s Great Barrington birthplace as a national landmark. For the Jacksons, Du Bois’s enduring importance over the course of nearly a century reflected the necessity of adapting one’s activism as the world changed around them. Du Bois offered a model for lifelong activism that was not only based on guiding younger generations but on learning from and growing with them as well.

Label Noir's Heimat, bittersüße Heimat : A Transgressive and Transformative Text

Label Noir's <i>Heimat, bittersüße Heimat</i> : A Transgressive and Transformative Text

A Reflection and Discussion Exercise on Racial Justice and Equity.

Residents have valuable perspectives about diversity and equity in medical training, yet many graduate medical education curricula lack dedicated activities focused on such issues. To describe and report feasibility and acceptability of an innovation that uses individual reflection and group discussion to create conversation in our residency program about equity and injustice through the lens of the Black Lives Matter movement. In July 2020, we sent a survey with reflection prompts to all postgraduate year 2 and above internal medicine residents. In the discussion session (during required academic time), we presented 10 of the residents' responses to the reflection prompts. After each response was read aloud, the residents had an open discussion. We used thematic analysis to analyze the responses to the reflection prompts. Acceptability was tracked through free-text comments in the survey. Feasibility was measured by the time and resources needed to conduct the session. We received responses from 24 out of 72 (33%) residents. We identified 10 codes that fell into 4 themes. The most commonly identified codes included anger or frustration toward events, self-reflection on privilege, increased awareness and discussion of racism in daily life, and life being minimally impacted/homeostasis. The 4 overarching themes were (1) awareness, (2) motivation for change, (3) emotional response, and (4) self-reflection. Using a format of reflection and sharing of anonymous responses was an inexpensive and effective method to begin a discussion about equity and injustice in medicine.

The Uses of Mourning

The Uses of Mourning

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries

Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries

Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of “Illegal” Immigrant

Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of “Illegal” Immigrant

Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920

Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840–1920

I Can’t Keep Calm because of Sociology!

On April, 19, 2020, Peter Philippson posted Umair Haque’s (2020) article, “Dead and Free: The New American Dream,” on the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (AAGT) listserv. I followed this heavily discussed thread, which has inspired this reflection. I argue that AAGT membership and the Gestalt community generally could learn much from this extended discussion. For over a week, AAGT membership debated a sociocultural phenomenon of “America under Trumpism.” Their comments and responses say much about individual and collective process.In this reflection, I offer my perspectives as both an individual and a sociologist regarding this issue. I cannot separate my humanity from my sociology training; they are unavoidably intertwined, especially on this topic. Here are excerpts from the listserve thread:At first, I got “caught up” in the content of the discussion rather than in Haque’s article itself. Then I did what I usually do: I easily turned on my sociological eye so as to withdraw and not to be in the process I intended to critique. I remembered the highly emotional book, The Rage and the Pride, written by Oriana Fallaci (2002) after September 11th; and what I had then considered a counterbalance to it, Orientalism, which Edward Said (1979) had written two decades earlier. Speaking from two different voices, these books represent a discourse of racism (The Rage and the Pride) and anti-racism (Orientalism). However different they may seem at first blush, both books have racist undertones. That which is explicit in Fallaci is implicit in Said. The process of deconstruction and demystification in Orientalism bears the same trace as racist language in The Rage and the Pride. These books make clear-cut distinctions between people: in the former, they consider themselves those who enlighten others about how the world really operates; they literally exclude the mad and ignorant, as they call the racists. There is no tolerance for diversity here either; the dictates of truth and reason rule. Overall, the bifurcation at the discursive level of argumentation of the racist and anti-racist persists (Taguieff 2001).Having built upon that, I was aware as a sociologist that there are conversation mechanisms that play a role in public discourse (Czyżewski, Kowalski, and Piotrowski 1997). Different sides may aim at dialogue, but what is present is either ceremony (a fake agreement) or ritual chaos (a fake conflict). And such “ceremony” or “ritual chaos” is disguised through rhetoric and style.I was, for the above reasons, angry that people were too focused on content (defending the country) as opposed to process (evaluating and understanding the discourse/argument/rhetoric); I was angry that they did not engage in what constitutes a sociocultural argument. I began slowly understanding that I myself fell prey to the described mechanisms.Within the next days my approach changed, and I actually started to respect the discomfort some people felt, honoring their resistance. Here in Europe in the leftist academic circles, we do nothing but deconstruct and tend to see things from a wider perspective—up to the point where it becomes exhaustive and unproductive. No one would risk making it personal by expressing one's own emotions, as such emotionality might contradict intellectual reflection.I can’t keep calm because of sociology; at the same time though, I realize how important is to balance between critical thinking (from a Gestalt perspective: withdrawing) and responding to a situation (Parlett 2016). There needs to be room for both, analytic and emotional response, and the idea that this process of creative adjustment never ends.

Populism and racism on social networks: An analysis of the Vox discourse on Twitter during the Ceuta ‘migrant crisis’

On 17 and 18 May 2021 almost 8000 migrants arrived in Ceuta, crossing over from the Moroccan side of the border. The humanitarian emergency was evident, but the Spanish extreme right defined the situation as something quite different. This article analyses Vox’s activity on Twitter during the two weeks following the arrival of the migrants, with the aim of identifying the logics of racism in its discourse. The methodology used is content analysis, focusing on topics frequency and discursive strategies used. A total of 762 publications from the official Vox account are analysed. The results indicate that the party constructs the aforementioned crisis as a warlike situation of threat, by way of populist discursive strategies. The logics of racist discourse are specifically xenophobic and cultural. Vox demands anti-immigrant institutional racism that does not respect human rights. This article concludes with some reflections on the worrying normalization of racist discourse today.

Resisting Racist Discourses with Research Methods, Active Learning, and Storytelling

This article contributes to building anti-racist teaching resources in the scholarship of teaching and learning in sociology. We developed an active learning-based project in which students conduct and analyze an interview with someone they are close to on how their family discussed racial discourses during their childhoods. Using Latinx Critical Race Theory as a framework and through qualitative analyses of student assignments, we found that the course project developed students’ critical consciousness by helping them evaluate how biographies are shaped by race, racism, and racial discourses and identify how racism and resistance manifest in family life through storytelling.

Double Blackness in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This paper examines the idea of double blackness and its role in constructing the Sudanese social hierarchy in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1969). The article draws on several core concepts in postcolonial and anthropological studies, including race, culture, ethnicity, and Otherness. Instead of tackling the novel from the traditional postcolonial perspective, the paper adds an anthropological lens to the novel’s social dynamics to shed light on some neglected aspects like the multiplicity of Sudanese racial identity and its subsequent self-awareness. The discussion we present in this paper poses some problematic questions about the meaning of blackness and the presence of multiple layers of the Black Self in Sudanese society. Away from the postcolonial implications of the novel, we argue that Salih makes use of the traditional colonial discourse of self vs other and holds a mirror up to the Sudanese society itself. The novel shows that even among African communities where blackness is a norm, blackness and race remain major triggers of polemics and controversies in a very similar manner to what occurs in Western contexts. The new reading of the novel we propose is one that considers the ways in which characters from an “African” origin endure what we call “double Blackness” — the degradation experienced through both discourses of racism and social stratification.

High School Students’ Attitudes towards Migrant Youth

The appearance of unaccompanied migrant minors in our communities and the impact they have had on Spanish society, and vice-versa, is a phenomenon of outstanding educational importance, as it has brought into public awareness issues such as child vulnerability and focused our attention on the legal, social and educational policies and resources that are meant to materialise an inclusive, democratic and just society. Around these young people, mainly from the Maghreb and therefore identified with Islam, society has created an image that serves to bolster many Islamophobic, xenophobic and racist discourses emanating from the media and the ideologies of Spanish far-right political parties. This is achieved by generalising the criminal conduct of some migrant youths, by depersonalising them as human beings and by linking news about them to vicarious emotions such as mistrust and the feeling of menace. Recognising the importance of this phenomenon, in this article we present the results of a study aiming to identify and analyse the main stereotypes, attitudes and prejudices that Barcelona secondary-school students have towards unaccompanied migrant minors (MENA in their Spanish initials). To this end a questionnaire based on the Overcoming Prejudice Scale (Etxeberria, Murua, Arrieta, Garmendia &amp; Etxeberria, 2012) was administered. Our findings showed that high-school students hold certain prejudices and stereotypes that should be tackled in order to promote the integration and inclusion of unaccompanied migrant minors and to ensure a culture of peace among young people.

Dudes, Decadence, and Degeneracy: Criminalisation of Absinthe in the United States

ABSTRACT Aside from the experiment of Prohibition, absinthe constitutes a rare example of an intoxicant which has been prohibited and then decriminalised at the federal level in the United States. Narrative fiction, newspapers, and medical literature from the decades before its ban serve to locate absinthe's reputation as a dangerous hallucinogen in popular stereotypes of absinthe-drinkers. The association of absinthe with dandyism and the alleged threat of racial and cultural degeneracy is a useful window onto late-nineteenth-century discourses of sex and race in the United States, and reflects a broader process by which stereotypes influence policy outcomes.

Comforting and Sustaining Whiteness in the ‘Post-Racial’ Era: The Help, Collective Nostalgia, and White Ignorance

ABSTRACT By the spring of 2022 there were nearly 200 bills making their way through 40 state legislatures that explicitly prevented public schools from teaching “divisive subjects” that could make some students feel “discomfort.” Nearly all included language that banned supposed concepts of critical race theory (CRT) or the 1619 Project. The attacks on and misrepresentations of CRT illustrate whiteness’s preferred memory of U.S. history as a rhetorical vehicle for sustaining political, economic, and social power. I offer here an argument for what a preferred memory looks like, how it is constructed, and why. I suggest that popular American movies have overwhelmingly created discourses of race that comfort and sustain whiteness. I use the 2011 film, The Help to show how narratives comfort whiteness and define racism through collective nostalgia and intentional ignorance. I then identify several key strategies whiteness employs to “insulate itself against refutation” while reaffirming racism as strictly an interpersonal phenomenon.

#BLM Insurgent Discourse, White Structures of Feeling and the Fate of the 2020 "Racial Awakening"

Working with Twitter data, this paper offers new findings on the #BlackLivesMatter movement and "racial awakening" of summer 2020. Framing methods to address this important moment, this paper contends that cultural studies and critical race studies can be enriched through an engagement with new computational approaches. We analyze how white and racial minority voices talked about race and track their fraught contestation for leadership of racial discourse over the summer of 2020. We uncover a surprising story of white colorblindness even in the midst of a "racial awakening," a story that questions claims that the Trump presidency and the summer of 2020 ushered in a new era of US racial consciousness. And we show how a Black and minority discourse with transformative potential surged and receded. For cultural studies, our data and analysis revise Raymond Williams's influential model of cultural evolution by introducing a new concept: the insurgent, a long-building minority cultural strain that surges to contest the dominant culture in a moment of crisis. For critical race studies, our findings revise prominent theorizations of colorblindness, racial ideology, and hegemony. By revealing the messy and unconscious feelings characterizing colorblindness, our data contest theorizations of colorblindness as an ideology and counter the focus on articulate beliefs in theories of racial hegemony. Ultimately, this paper shows that bringing data methods focused on moments of cultural contestation and mass communication into dialogue with field-specific theory and qualitative analyses can expand our models of how race, discourse, and culture operate.

Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of the “Illegal” Immigrant

Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of the “Illegal” Immigrant