Lens Of Race Research Articles

Race, Inequality, and Colonialism in the New World Order

In early 2004, as Americans viewed the photographs of beatings, humiliation, and abuse of the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib with horror, they were repeating the experiences of Canadians 10 years earlier. In 1994, Canadians saw photos and videotapes of cruelty and abuse by their peacekeepers toward the Somalis they had been sent to rescue. In 2004, Americans confronted the fact that U.S. soldiers were capable of the same forms of brutality and cruelty they had come to expect from other regimes. For Canadians, proud of their status as peacekeepers to the world, this experience was also deeply distressing. How did they make sense of their behavior? Reading this event through the lens of race, Sherene Razack in Dark Threats and White Knights argues that this was not an aberrant event, the product of a few “bad apples,” or a failure of oversight but an expression of the underlying dynamics of race and imperialism that shaped the peacekeeping project in the first place.

‘White Slaves’ in a Colonial Nation: the Dutch Campaign Against the Traffic in Women in the Early Twentieth Century

Between 1900 and World War I an international political campaign was conducted against ‘white slave traffic’. This campaign ultimately resulted in two international agreements to combat the procuring of women for ‘immoral purposes’ across borders. This article analyzes the politics of the Dutch campaign and argues that it gave rise to a powerful image of the white slave as a meaningful political concept. Although forced prostitution is identified as one of the realities of female migration, the ‘white slave’ is a historical construction. The first part of the article distinguishes the social meaning of the ‘white slave’ from older notions about prostitution as slavery. Using the lenses of race, gender and colonialism, the question is what the ‘whiteness’ of the white slave signified about women, sexual danger and the social order. The second part discusses the political and legal aspects of the Dutch campaign, for example, the rise of a gendered movement, the fight against the brothel and the nature of certain legal changes.

A Feminist Critique of Research on Interracial Family Identity: Implications for Family Health

The focus of this literature review is on family identity formation within a social cultural context for families, couples, and women who are in committed Black-White interracial relationships that include biracial children. This review and synthesis of interdisciplinary literature was limited to U.S. research studies completed between 1990 and 2002. The American racial lens represented the environmental context that this article seeks to capture. Health care providers lack knowledge of this complex mixed-race family identity formation and its implications for healthy interracial families. Family nurses who can assess and intervene in a culturally competent manner will be essential to promoting health and eliminating health disparities for these interracial families of color.

Southern Trauma: Revisiting Caste and Class in the Mississippi Delta

ABSTRACTTwo classic ethnographies, Hortense Powdermaker'sAfter Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep Southand John Dollard'sCaste and Class in a Southern Town, contributed to a “master narrative” of the Mississippi Delta and the South that viewed class largely through the lens of race. Their work contributed to the community studies and culture and personality traditions and became part of the public discourse of race in the United States. This article examines the institutional and theoretical frameworks within which they worked. We focus on three aspects of their work: (1) their definition of class that left race as the only salient social divide; (2) their portrayal of middle‐ and upper‐class statements as normative; and (3) their uncritical use of data from elsewhere in the South to interpret their Indianola data. We report the events at the Yale Institute of Human Relations that led Dollard to publish before Powdermaker.

Class at bat, gender on deck and race in the hole: a line-up of essays on twentieth century culture and America's game

Nineteen essays by Briley focus on major league baseball as it reflected the changing American culture from about 1945 to about 1980. He examines the era through the lens of race, gender and class - categories which have increasingly become essential analytical tools for scholars. The accounts of Roman Mejias and Cesar Cedeno offer some disturbing insights regarding the acceptance of Latinos in baseball and American society. In one essay, Briley refers to baseball as the heart of the nation's democratic spirit, noting that the son of a rural farmer could play alongside a governor's son and both would receive only the praise that their playing merited. However, in writing about the Milwaukee Braves'move to Atlanta, the lamentations of fans - that baseball had succumbed to the age of affluence - are compared to the changing patterns of demographics and economic power in American society. Even with the increased participation of women on the field with teams like the Silver Bullets, the final essay comments on organized baseball's perception of them as primarily spectators.

Left (Over) Rights

As an intellectual movement in legal scholarship, Critical Race Theory ("CRT") was formally inaugurated twelve years ago, at a 1989 critical theory conference in Madison Wisconsin. Although the movement had its own historical narrative of development (Crenshaw 1995: xvii-xxvii), it had inherited much of its direction and methodology from two immediate intellectual precursors, the civil rights and critical legal studies ("CLS") movements. (xix) From the latter, CRT had adopted the critique of modern liberal legal consciousness, and in particular, the argument that law was reflected and reinforced the exercise of power by elites. From the former, CRT had drawn a deliberately modernist commitment, both to analyze law using the lens of race as a central category of analysis, and to use law in some sort of affirmative program to advance racial emancipation. (xxvii; Harris 1994: 750-54)

The Influence of Race in School Finance Reform

There is some evidence, from past social science studies, that school finance reform is seen by citizens--and especially white parents--through a racial lens. This Article picks up that point--which is nothing more than a hint, really--and tries to explore the role of race in school finance reform by surveying the history and success of minority districts in school finance reform litigation. The Article examines how predominantly minority districts have fared in school finance litigation (and subsequent legislative reforms) as compared to predominantly white districts, and concludes that minority districts fare worse than their white counterparts both in court and before the legislature. Based on this and other evidence, this Article contends that there are strong reasons to believe that the racial composition of the school district plays an influential role in determining success or failure in school finance litigation and legislative reform. As the Article explains, this evidence has important academic, historical, and practical implications. Indeed, if the Article is correct in asserting that race plays an influential role in school finance reform, school finance scholars and practitioners should begin paying closer attention than they have to the dynamics of race relations and school desegregation; historians and legal scholars should recognize with added confidence the wisdom of the NAACP's desegregation strategy; and civil rights attorneys, courts, critical race theorists, and conservative critcs of desegregation should hesitate before abandoning the goal of desegregation.

The Influence of Race in School Finance Reform

There is some evidence, from past social science studies, that school finance reform is seen by citizens--and especially white parents--through a racial lens. This Article picks up that point--which is nothing more than a hint, really--and tries to explore the role of race in school finance reform by surveying the history and success of minority districts in school finance reform litigation. The Article examines how predominantly minority districts have fared in school finance litigation (and subsequent legislative reforms) as compared to predominantly white districts, and concludes that minority districts fare worse than their white counterparts both in court and before the legislature. Based on this and other evidence, this Article contends that there are strong reasons to believe that the racial composition of the school district plays an influential role in determining success or failure in school finance litigation and legislative reform. As the Article explains, this evidence has important academic, historical, and practical implications. Indeed, if the Article is correct in asserting that race plays an influential role in school finance reform, school finance scholars and practitioners should begin paying closer attention than they have to the dynamics of race relations and school desegregation; historians and legal scholars should recognize with added confidence the wisdom of the NAACP's desegregation strategy; and civil rights attorneys, courts, critical race theorists, and conservative critcs of desegregation should hesitate before abandoning the goal of desegregation.

America's Communal Utopias.

From the Shakers to the Branch Davidians, America's communal utopians have captured the popular imagination. Seventeen original essays here demonstrate the relevance of such groups to the mainstream of American social, religious, and economic life. The contributors examine the beliefs and practices of the most prominent utopian communities founded before 1965, including the long-overlooked Catholic monastic communities and Jewish agricultural colonies. Also featured are the Ephrata Baptists, Moravians, Shakers, Harmonists, Hutterites, Inspirationists of Amana, Mormons, Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians, Janssonists, Theosophists, Cyrus Teed's Koreshans, and Father Divine's Peace Mission. Based on a new conceptual framework known as developmental communalism, the book examines these utopian movements throughout the course of their development--before, during, and after their communal period. Each chapter includes a brief chronology, giving basic information about the group discussed. An appendix presents the most complete list of American utopian communities ever published. The contributors are Jonathan G. Andelson, Karl J. R. Arndt, Pearl W. Bartelt, Priscilla J. Brewer, Donald F. Durnbaugh, Lawrence Foster, Carl J. Guarneri, Robert V. Hine, Gertrude E. Huntington, James E. Landing, Dean L. May, Lawrence J. McCrank, J. Gordon Melton, Donald E. Pitzer, Robert P. Sutton, Jon Wagner, and Robert S. Weisbrot. |Offering the first comprehensive history of Atlanta race relations, Ronald Bayor discusses the impact of racial bias on physical and institutional development of the city from the end of the Civil War through the mayorship of Andrew Young in the 1980s. Bayor explores frequently ignored policy issues through the lens of race--including hospital care, highway placement and development, police and fire services, schools, and park use, as well as housing patterns and employment.

Race and the shaping of twentieth-century Atlanta

Atlanta is often cited as prime example of progressive New South metropolis in which blacks and whites have forged a city too busy to hate. But Ronald Bayor argues that the city continues to bear the indelible mark of racial bias. Offering the first comprehensive history of Atlanta race relations, he discusses the impact of race on the physical and institutional development of the city from the end of the Civil War through the mayorship of Andrew Young in the 1980s. Bayor shows the extent of inequality, investigates the gap between rhetoric and reality, and presents fresh analysis of the legacy of segregation and race relations for the American urban environment. Bayor explores frequently ignored public policy issues through the lens of race--including hospital care, highway placement and development, police and fire services, schools, and park use, as well as housing patterns and employment. He finds that racial concerns profoundly shaped Atlanta, as they did other American cities. Drawing on oral interviews and written records, Bayor traces how Atlanta's black leaders and their community have responded to the impact of race on local urban development. By bringing long-term urban development into discussion of race, Bayor provides an element missing in usual analyses of cities and race relations. |Offering the first comprehensive history of Atlanta race relations, Ronald Bayor discusses the impact of racial bias on physical and institutional development of the city from the end of the Civil War through the mayorship of Andrew Young in the 1980s. Bayor explores frequently ignored policy issues through the lens of race--including hospital care, highway placement and development, police and fire services, schools, and park use, as well as housing patterns and employment.

Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (review)

Reviews99 Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. Edited by Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon. Louisiana State University Press, 1992. 334 pp. Cloth, $42.50; paper, $16.95. Reviewed by Karen Trahan Leathern, who recently received a Ph.D. in American history from the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation is titled " ? Carnival According to Their Own Desires': Gender and Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 1870-1941." Through the lens of race, Creole New Orleans explores a city that is in many ways unlike the rest of the South, yet inextricably embedded in it. In a remarkably cohesive collection of essays, the authors advance from the colonial period to the present with broad strokes, illuminating odd twists and turns. Borrowing from C. Vann Woodward's notion of historical counterpoint, they juxtapose "the Franco-African protest tradition of New Orleans and the tragic racial mind-set of Anglo-America." The essays by Jerah Johnson and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall in part 1, "The French and African Founders," redefine the history of colonial New Orleans. In place of well-worn stories of French explorers and Spanish rulers, the authors present engaging revisions that emphasize racial and ethnic intermingling. Johnson shows that the French initially encouraged Indian assimilation and French and Indian intermarriage. Although it clearly envisioned a French rather than a multicultural society, the colonial administration's attitudes in fact fostered a pluralistic assemblage. The attempt to blend Indians into the dominant society also brought Indians into close contact with African slaves, with whom they intermarried. Hall further expands on this notion of a permeable society by focusing on the development of Afro-Creole culture, which included both slaves and free blacks. Part 2, "The American Challenge," traces the decline of French influence and the evolution of American dominance. These essays are most valuable as contributions to a current dialogue in American history as scholars begin to explore the social construction of whiteness—how people came to understand what it meant to be white in the South. Paul F. Lachance shows how white and black refugees from the 1791 Haitian revolution and immigrants from France propped up a French-speaking white majority in the city until the 1830s. Next, Joseph G. Tregle Jr. compellingly dissects the creation of the Creole myth. In the antebellum years, all Louisiana natives, black and white, fell under the rubric of Creole. But after the Civil War, partly in reaction to George Washington Cable's fictional depiction of white Creoles as uncouth, hypocritical miscegenists, eminent historian Charles Gayarré and others promoted the image of Creoles as aristocratic, educated, refined, racially pure whites of French or Spanish descent. According to this scheme, only an unfortunate confusion led outsiders and racially mixed New Orleanians to consider persons of mixed blood as Creoles. Ironically, this new myth undermined white Creoles' identification with French culture because it emphasized their whiteness over their Frenchness. Part 3 addresses the Americanization of black New Orleans. Both essays explain how the permeable racial world presented in part 1 became enmeshed first in the racial dualism of Jim Crow and then in the racial politics of the civil rights era and afterward. Joseph Logsdon and Caryn Cosse Bell present a dynamic portrait of the French-speaking, free, black Creole community from the antebellum period to the end of the century. This privileged group saw its world slip away in the 1850s, when sectional conflict and changes in local government brought repression. Meanwhile, they absorbed revolutionary ideas from the French emancipation of 1848, which granted "full political rights" to former slaves in the French West Indies. These experiences molded a new generation that 100Southern Cultures formed the vanguard of a movement for racial equality. But the Civil War and its aftermath altered the demographic composition of New Orleans, which came to include an increasing number of English-speaking, Protestant blacks. Moreover, the two communities possessed different racial ideals. Opposed to caste divisions, black Creoles drew upon their antebellum heritage to seek an integrated society, while Anglo-Protestant blacks sought refuge and resistance in all-black institutions. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Rodolphe Desdunes, editor of the daily newspaper the Crusader, and others in the...

"The Working People of Richmond: Life and Labor in an Industrial City, 1865-1920" at the Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia

the past ten or fifteen years museums have begun to change their focus. Social and cultural concerns now temper technological wonderment. History is increasingly seen through the lenses of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. New concerns for multiculturism, diversity, and contextualism have forced museums to broaden their interpretation of and reassess their collections. the field of industrial these changes have resulted in exhibits such as Perfect in Her Place (National Museum of American History), Workers' World (Hagley Museum), and Homestead (Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania). The Valentine Museum has been in the forefront of presenting the new social history. Under the directorship of Frank Jewell, the Valentine has been transformed from a sleepy city museum to an exciting institution leading the exploration of new exhibit topics. Recent exhibits include such diverse and controversial subjects as Jim Crow: Racism and Reaction in the New South, Smoke Signals: Cigarettes, Advertising, and the American Way of Life, Dressed for Work: Women in the Workforce, and In Bondage and Freedom: Antebellum Black Life in Richmond, Virginia. The Valentine's latest exhibit, Working People of Richmond: Life and Labor in an Industrial City, 1865-1920, continues this trend. By no means a simple chronology of the industrial development of Richmond, this exhibit explores the relationships of immigration, race relations, unionism, technological change, and work. Its two major elements are objects with text and a series of living history performances (see fig. 1). While the object portion is a bit text heavy and visually intimidating, the performances are exciting and engaging. The exhibit begins with a section on the transformation of work. It includes material on artisans, agriculture, and republicanism. Al-

“The Working People of Richmond: Life and Labor in an Industrial City, 1865–1920” at the Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia

“THE WORKING PEOPLE OF RICHMOND: LIFE AND LABOR IN AN INDUSTRIAL CITY, 1865-1920” AT THE VALENTINE MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA PETER LIEBHOLD In the past ten or fifteen years museums have begun to change their focus. Social and cultural concerns now temper technological won­ derment. History is increasingly seen through the lenses of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. New concerns for multiculturism, diver­ sity, and contextualism have forced museums to broaden their inter­ pretation of history and reassess their collections. In the field of industrial history these changes have resulted in exhibits such as “Perfect in Her Place” (National Museum of American History), “The Workers’ World” (Hagley Museum), and “Homestead” (Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania). The Valentine Museum has been in the forefront of presenting the new social history. Under the directorship of Frank Jewell, the Valentine has been transformed from a sleepy city museum to an exciting institution leading the exploration of new exhibit topics. Recent exhibits include such diverse and controversial subjects as “Jim Crow: Racism and Reaction in the New South,” “Smoke Signals: Cigarettes, Advertising, and the American Way of Life,” “Dressed for Work: Women in the Workforce,” and “In Bondage and Freedom: Antebellum Black Life in Richmond, Virginia.” The Valentine’s latest exhibit, “The Working People of Richmond: Life and Labor in an Industrial City, 1865—1920,” continues this trend. By no means a simple chronology of the industrial develop­ ment of Richmond, this exhibit explores the relationships of immi­ gration, race relations, unionism, technological change, and work. Its two major elements are objects with text and a series of “living history” performances (see fig. 1). While the object portion is a bit text heavy and visually intimidating, the performances are exciting and engaging. The exhibit begins with a section on the transformation of work. It includes material on artisans, agriculture, and republicanism. AlMr . Liebhold is a specialist in the Division of Engineering and Industry at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.© 1992 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/92/3303-0007$01.00 564 “The Working People of Richmond” at the Valentine Museum 565 Fig. 1.—The highlight of “The Working People of Richmond” is the living-history performances. Here Harry Kollatz, Jr., plays the role of a 19th-century iron roller. (Photos courtesy of the Valentine Museum.) though this is interesting, there is too much space dedicated to antebellum activities, and good sections on the rise of factories and the regimentation of time are lost in a mass of pre-1860 background information. The next section explores the urban working class. Different neighborhoods are highlighted and the racial or ethnic makeup of each noted. This is a good topic, but the information is neither cohesive nor conclusive. Why does Richmond remain demographically heterogeneous? What is the relationship between where people work and where they live? The third section chronicles the rise of labor activism in Richmond through a study of the Knights of Labor. The problems of racism are well discussed but little is said of the other complex issues that led to the rise and fall of the Knights of Labor. There is a nice subsection on the development of a new technology, the Brinkop lumper, intro­ duced by manufactures of plug tobacco largely to combat activism by skilled workers. The final section examines the so-called Progressivism of the early 20th century; it is good but somewhat limited, as it does not address the ways in which this reform movement was co-opted by powerful business interests. The differences between scientific management, welfare work, and the personnel movement are often lost, and there 566 Peter Liebhold is no discussion of the rise of the managerial class. The star of this section is a video copy of an interesting Women’s Bureau film, Behind the Scenes in the Machine Age. The best part of “The Working People of Richmond” is the living-history performance. Working with the Studio Theatre of Richmond, curator Gregg Kimball has crafted three vignettes that push the bounds of traditional exhibitry. They tell the story of work in industrial Richmond in a way that objects cannot. The first performance features...

Relating to Privilege: Seduction and Rejection in the Subordination of White Women and Women of Color

Dans le cadre de la hierarchie sociale aux Etats-Unis, prenant en compte les facteurs de classe, d'ethnicite, de race, et de sexe, etude des relations entre femmes blanches ou de couleur et homme blancs, et de l'impact de ces relations sur le mouvement feministe blanc et de couleur