Eurocentric Features Research Articles

Face Off: Exploring College Students’ Perceptions Regarding Face Filters on TikTok

This study analysed college students’ perceptions of body image on TikTok, specifically regarding face filters. Undergraduate college students ( N = 508) completed an online survey focused on their perceptions of face filters, cultural beauty standards and the role of social media in reinforcing beauty industry pressures on users. This cross-sectional data set was analysed to explore which face filter features were most frequently reported by respondents and what cultural beauty standards college students perceive as most salient. Findings suggest that emerging adults are susceptible to cultural beauty standards and may utilise face filters to cope with the pressure to have an idealised look rooted in Eurocentric features. Theoretical implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Phenotypic mismatch between suspects and fillers but not phenotypic bias increases eyewitness identifications of Black suspects.

Despite converging evidence that people more closely associate the construct of criminality with Black people who exhibit a more African facial phenotype than Black people who express a more European phenotype, eyewitness researchers have largely ignored phenotypic bias as a potential contributor to the racial disparities in the criminal legal system. If this form of phenotypic bias extends to eyewitness identification tasks, eyewitnesses may be more likely to identify Black suspects with an African rather than European phenotype, regardless of their guilt status. Further, in cases where the witness's description of the perpetrator does not contain phenotypic information, phenotypic mismatch between the suspect and the other lineup members may bias identification decisions toward or against the suspect. If witnesses can use elements of the lineup construction to guide their identification decisions rather than relying on their recognition memory, then the lineup should be deemed unfair due to suspect bias. The current study also investigated lineup presentation method as a procedural safeguard, predicting that that when lineups were presented simultaneously, there would be a significant two-way interaction of phenotypic bias and lineup composition, with a larger simple main effect of phenotypic bias when lineups were suspect-biased (i.e., the fillers were a phenotypic mismatch to the suspect) than when all lineup members shared the same phenotype. We expected that this interaction would be significantly smaller or non-significant for sequential lineups. Participants watched a mock crime video that contained a Black culprit with either a more African phenotype or a less African phenotype before attempting identifications from a photo array that contained a suspect whose phenotype always matched the culprit viewed in the video, but varied in culprit-presence, phenotypic match of the suspect and fillers, and presentation method. Participants did not identify Black suspects with Afrocentric features more often than Black suspects with Eurocentric features. However, witnesses made more identifications of suspects when the fillers did not match the suspect's phenotype compared to when all lineup members possessed similar phenotypic features. In sum, phenotypic bias did not influence our participant-witnesses' identification decisions, nor interact with lineup composition and lineup presentation type to affect identifications of suspects, suggesting that phenotypic bias may be less influential in match-to-memory tasks than other types of legal decision-making (e.g., determining guilt and sentencing). However, the suggestiveness created by failing to match fillers' phenotypes to the suspect's phenotype can be avoided with proper attention to fair lineup construction.

A Scoping Review of Colorism in Schools: Academic, Social, and Emotional Experiences of Students of Color

Students of color experience academic, social, and emotional challenges due to colorism in schools. The purpose of this scoping review is to compare the experiences with colorism of students from varying racial backgrounds (African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, and Latin) in U.S. public schools. It is predicted that the understudied group of Latinx and indigenous students of color will uniquely experience colorism in academic settings when compared to African American and Asian students. A 30 article literature review utilizing search dates from 1990 to 2020 was conducted employing a scoping review framework. Themes emerged that include: the privileging of lighter skin and more Eurocentric features in academic outcomes, the complicated social status created for students of color experiencing colorism in schools, and the increased potential for emotional challenges as a result of colorism. This review highlights possible school reform efforts to affirm all skin tones, reduce colorist biases, and offer mediation to mitigate colorist experiences in the school environment.

Melanated Millennials and the Politics of Black Hair

ObjectiveThis research employs the phenotypic prototypicality framework to makes a connection between African‐American voters' perceptions of African‐American women candidates' appearances and candidate evaluations in contests with limited information. The primary focus is on the candidates' skin tone and hair texture.MethodsThe data consist of a convenience sample of 672 African‐American students from a Historically Black University in the Deep South. An experimental research design was employed to test whether African‐American candidates who possessed phenotypes that mirrored the prototypical African American were perceived differently when compared to those with more Eurocentric features. Each subject was randomly exposed to a stimulus that consisted of a brief campaign platform and an image of a light or dark woman donning either straight hair, twist outs or dreadlocks. Those subjects in the control group were exposed to an image of a dark male with short hair.ResultsAfrican‐American students found the dark candidates to be more attractive when compared to their lighter counterparts, regardless of hairstyles. Candidates who possessed the prototypical Afrocentric appearance (i.e., dark skin and/or textured hair) were found to be more supportive of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, progressive policies and were perceived to be more hardworking, when compared to their lighter counterparts. Light‐skinned women, regardless of hairstyles, were perceived to be less supportive of Black Nationalist views.ConclusionThe findings here run counter to the conventional wisdom associated with colorism, whereby African Americans have been deemed to possess self‐hatred by possessing a more positive bias toward women with a lighter hue and straight hair. In recent years, due to such events as police shootings of unarmed African‐Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement, Black Millennials have become more aware of the oppression and discrimination faced by many African Americans. This heightened level of consciousness, in tandem with the fact that they were born during an era when natural hairstyles were being popularized, has led them to embrace the aesthetic revolution that includes appreciating their melanated skin and kinky hair.

The Anthropocene as colonial discourse

Research on the Anthropocene has emerged fast and furiously across academic disciplines in recent years. While some have suggested that this concept signifies a rupture with the philosophical foundations of Western modernity, this paper stresses the continuities between the Anthropocene and its antecedents. I trace the development of the concept from the late 18th century through to the mid-20th century, identifying several colonial and Eurocentric features of these earlier accounts of the Anthropocene. I then proceed to question whether contemporary debates about the Anthropocene and its periodization evoke similar problematic narratives about progress, modernity, and civilization. In the closing section of this article, I discuss whether or not the Anthropocene can be salvaged as an analytical category without reproducing these colonial logics. Here, I conclude that regardless of whether the term is discarded or redeemed, critical scholars can help to problematize and destabilize the concept’s investment in the dominant onto-epistemological categories of Western modernity, thereby opening up possibilities for the plurality of ways of thinking and knowing to shape this conversation about the social and ecological predicaments of the colonial present.

The Backyard Politics of Attitudes Toward Immigration

Using two survey experiments, I reconsider the role that the racialized physical traits and level of assimilation of salient immigrants play in shaping attitudes toward immigration. In the first experiment, a nationwide sample of 767 White, non‐Latino adults was exposed to a story about a family of undocumented immigrants living in the Unites States who were at risk of deportation. Subjects were randomly assigned to view a version of the story in which the immigrants were depicted with light skin and stereotypically Eurocentric features, or dark skin and stereotypically Afrocentric features, and their level of assimilation to mainstream American culture was suggested to be high or low. Similar to previous research, the study's results show that assimilation has a direct effect on attitudes toward immigration. Yet in contrast to previous studies, the racialized physical traits proved to be a much more important factor in shaping attitudes toward immigration than previously demonstrated. The role of an immigrant's racialized physical traits was replicated in a second survey experiment of 902 White, non‐Latino adults. Overall, the findings shed new light on how media depictions of immigrants are affecting immigration attitudes, as well as the nuanced ways that race continues to shape public opinion in the United States today.

Avatars of Eurocentrism in the critique of the liberal peace

Recent scholarly critiques of the so-called liberal peace raise important political and ethical challenges to practices of postwar intervention in the global South. However, their conceptual and analytic approaches have tended to reproduce rather than challenge the intellectual Eurocentrism underpinning the liberal peace. Eurocentric features of the critiques include the methodological bypassing of target subjects in research, the analytic bypassing of subjects through frameworks of governmentality, the assumed ontological split between the ‘liberal’ and the ‘local’, and a nostalgia for the liberal subject and the liberal social contract as alternative bases for politics. These collectively produce a ‘paradox of liberalism’ that sees the liberal peace as oppressive but also the only true source of emancipation. However, the article suggests that a repoliticization of colonial difference offers an alternative ‘decolonizing’ approach to critical analysis through repositioning the analytic gaze. Three alternative research strategies for critical analysis are briefly developed.

La música popular tradicional en el curriculum escolar

This paper refers to minorities’ musical expressions and their treatment and articulation in the school curriculum, this being considered as part of social discourse and therefore embedded in power relations. We deal with two main aspects: the first one refers to the way in which traditional popular music is included at school; specifically, the way minority groups’ musical expressions are treated in everyday school practices and the meaning that is built about these artistic practices considered as ‘alterity’. The second aspect refers to the diverse arguments that justify the presence of popular traditional music in the curriculum from two different perspectives: the ‘nationalist’ discourse in contrast with the one of ‘education for democracy’. The Critical Pedagogy perspective revels the positivist treatment of folk music as an ‘artifact’ in schools. The analysis of institutions and educational practices in the Argentinean context show an attitude about Art oriented towards the construction of a national being blended with Eurocentric features, in wich education for democracy is still in process.

Controversial Rap Themes, Gender Portrayals and Skin Tone Distortion: A Content Analysis of Rap Music Videos

A content analysis of rap music videos aired on BET, MTV, and VH1 examined the occurrence of controversial themes, gender differences, and skin tone distortion. The results of this study found that current rap music videos have placed an emphasis on themes of materialism and misogyny. Additionally, men and women in the videos differ in their portrayal of these themes. Specifically, female characters are significantly more likely to appear as objects of sexuality. Men and women also differ in their appearance with more African American females appearing to have Eurocentric features. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Skin Tones in Magazine Advertising

Although African Americans enjoy greater quantitative representation in American advertising than ever before, it is questionable if this representation is a true picture of African Americans. Because of the “what is beautiful is good” syndrome in advertising, advertisers have been criticized by some groups for using models who may present body images and facial features considered too idealistic. These unrealistic portrayals of attractiveness and beauty “likely reflect involuntary responses to subconscious cultural constraints” (Strutton and Lumpkin, 1993, p. 509). Thus a “myth of beauty” that generally favors Eurocentric features such as light-colored skin, narrow noses and thin lips is perpetuated. The exception to this rule, however, may be found in the use of Black athletes as spokespersons and models. To determine if there is a difference in the skin tones of models used in sports magazines and fashion magazines, this study is a content analysis of the models used in Sports Illustrated and Vogue. The results indicate that there were significant differences in the skin tones of the models used in these magazines.

Manipulating subcategory salience: exploring the link between skin tone and social perception of Blacks

AbstractGuided by the model of social category salience proposed by M. Blanz (1999), the present paper explores factors affecting the salience of skin tone‐based subcategories among Blacks in the United States. Adapting the group discussion paradigm developed by S.E. Taylor and colleagues (1978), Experiment 1 demonstrated that a manipulation of issue relevance enhanced the category salience of skin tone. Participants made more within‐ than between‐category errors when the topic of conversation was related to perceiver's skin tone‐based beliefs. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the influence of the issue relevance manipulation was independent of the presence of structural and/or normative fit. Merely discussing the topic of race relations was sufficient to increase encoding and use of skin tone. These studies provide evidence linking skin tone and social beliefs in memory. In addition, they demonstrate support for a category‐based perspective in the study of skin tone bias. Additional factors affecting the salience of skin tone are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Face of Crime: Viewers' Memory of Race-Related Facial Features of Individuals Pictured in the News

This study examined news readers’ memories of race-related facial features of an individual pictured in the news. Participants were presented with a series of news stories, including one of four different versions of the news story of interest: nonstereotyped, stereotyped/noncrime, nonviolent crime, violent crime. Each of the four versions contained a photograph of an individual who was the focus of the story, with the same photograph appearing across news story conditions. Subsequently, participants reconstructed the photograph of the individual by selecting from a series of facial features (i.e., noses, mouths, skin tones) presented on a computer screen. Although selected features did not differ from the actual photograph in the nonstereotyped and stereotyped/noncrime conditions, selected facial features for the crime stories featured more Afrocentric than Eurocentric features, particularly for the story concerning violent crime. If asked to imagine a “prototypical” criminal, what characteristics would most people bring to mind? Perhaps they would picture characteristics reflecting actual arrest statistics, with images reflecting a larger proportion of males than females, for example. Undoubtedly, many characteristics would also reflect stereotypes of criminality and common depictions, including media portrayals of criminals. Given the considerable amount of research that reports that news stories associate criminality with African Americans, coupled with research reporting people’s greater fear of and assumed guilt of Blacks compared to Whites, it follows that many people would likely envision a Black rather than a White criminal (Bodenhausen, 1990; Chiricos, Hogan, & Gertz, 1997; Gordon, Michels, & Nelson, 1996; Hurwitz & Peffley, 1997; St. John & Heald-Moore, 1995).

Mati-ism and Black Lesbianism.

Abstract There are different ways in which black women in the Diaspora have given expression to their erotic fascination with other women. In this article two idealtypical expressions of black female homosexuality and the outlines of their underlying cosmologies are sketched: mati-ism and black lesbianism. Mati (or matisma) is the Sranan Tongo word for women who have sexual relations with other women, but who typically also will have had or still have relationships with men, simultaneously. More often than not they will also have children. While both types can only be understood via a constructionist view of homosexuality, the institution of mati-ism will be shown to have retained more Afrocentric, working class elements, while black lesbianism has more middle class, Eurocentric features.

Mati-ism and black lesbianism: two idealtypical expressions of female homosexuality in black communities of the Diaspora.

There are different ways in which black women in the Diaspora have given expression to their erotic fascination with other women. In this article two idealtypical expressions of black female homosexuality and the outlines of their underlying cosmologies are sketched: mati-ism and black lesbianism. Mati (or matisma) is the Sranan Tongo word for women who have sexual relations with other women, but who typically also will have had or still have relationships with men, simultaneously. More often than not they will also have children. While both types can only be understood via a constructionist view of homosexuality, the institution of mati-ism will be shown to have retained more Afrocentric, working class elements, while black lesbianism has more middle class, Eurocentric features.