Racial Lines Research Articles

Queer, Migrant Non-Parenthood in Désorientale by Négar Djavadi and Gabrielle by Agnès Vannouvong

Abstract Désorientale (2016) by Franco-Iranian author Négar Djavadi and Gabrielle (2015) by Franco-Lao-Thai author Agnès Vannouvong both emerge at a moment when queer people have some rights (marriage and adoption) but no access to assisted reproductive technology (ART). They take up the issue of what I term “political infertility,” rebuking the notion of queerness as an unproductive sexuality. These novels’ queer (migrant) characters experience compounded forms of exclusion, along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, and cultural difference. I explore how the queer (migrant) nonparent speaks to a particular precarity within a system of power, revealing the complex way in which the nonparent is entrapped by competing modes of legitimatization, visibility, and access to full and fulfilled subjecthood.

Mining, Racialisation and the Utopia of Desedimentation in Pedro Castera's Geological Writings

This article examines the close interrelation between racialisation and mining in Pedro Castera's Las minas y los mineros (1882) and Los maduros (1882). Castera's writings critically render mining as a profit‐driven extractive practice that relies on the stratification of inorganic and organic matter across racial lines. Minerals and racialised bodies are conceptualised as inert matter endowed with valued properties in the service of resource extraction. Simultaneously, Castera's ‘El Tildío’ conjures the utopian possibility of destabilising the racial stratification that upholds extractive colonialism and its legacies in the nineteenth century.

Governing poverty and migration in European nation-states – keywords revisited

This article introduces a collaborative publication exploring the intricate interplay between poverty governance, migration control, and welfare provision. Adopting a ‘keywords’ approach, we investigate the terminology and concepts around which academic discussions revolve when addressing poverty and migration. Central to this examination is the figure of the ‘poor migrant’, whose experiences of inclusion and exclusion intersect along lines of race, gender, and legal status. Using an intersectional lens, the publication dissects key terms and concepts : Welfare State, Welfare Governance, Citizenship, Solidarity and Deservingness, Suspicion and Surveillance, Discipline, and Banishment. We thus aim to conceptualise and critically discuss the constant renegotiation of state power and the nation-state induced in ex/inclusionary aspects of welfare and migration policies and law. The contribution reveals how notions of belonging shape access to rights and services, particularly along racialized and classist lines. Moreover, it explores how migration policies exacerbate scrutiny and exclusion faced by non-citizen populations within contemporary welfare systems.

Incorporating multiracial and multiethnic experiences into genetic counseling practice and research: A necessary opportunity.

The conflation of race and genetic ancestry can have harmful consequences. Biological conceptualizations of race have long been used to justify inequities and distract from social structures that afford opportunities to some that are unjustly denied to others. Despite recent efforts within the scientific community to distinguish between the sociopolitical constructs of race and ethnicity and the biological constructs of genetic ancestry and genetic similarity, their conflation continues to influence genomic research and its translation into clinical care. One overlooked aspect of this problematic conflation is the extent to which discrete monoracial and monoethnic categorization systems persist and perpetuate unequal benefit-sharing in the clinical translation of genomic technologies. In genetic service delivery, reliance on discrete racial and ethnic categories undermines the clinical translation of genomic technologies for large segments of the global population. For multiracial and multiethnic individuals, who have complex identities that defy discrete categorization systems, the potential benefits of genomic discoveries are especially elusive. Scholars have recently begun to call for the inclusion of multiracial, multiethnic, and admixed individuals in race, ethnicity, and ancestry frameworks in genetics and genomics. However, little work has been done to explore and address the unique challenges and opportunities posed by multiracial/multiethnic individuals in genetic counseling specifically. We discuss how conceptualizing diversity along discrete racial and ethnic lines perpetuates inequitable patient care and limits efforts to increase inclusion and belonging within genetic counseling. Moreover, we argue that ongoing efforts to mitigate racial inequity must actively challenge the paradigm of monoracial and monoethnic categories to accomplish their goal.

Zimbabwe: Relational Peacebuilding Amidst Protracted Social Conflict. Strategies and Significance of Endogenous Approaches

Independent Zimbabwe has experienced continual episodes of mostly violent intra-state conflict that have left the country polarised and divided along mostly ethnic, racial, and class lines. In the aftermath of each conflictual episode, peacemaking attempts have been implemented to se cede hostilities, however, these attempts have only built peace at the superstructure while neglect ing the grassroots, which has been the microcosm of conflict wherein most of the actors are, be they perpetrators, victims and survivors. State-led attempts at reconciliation have failed to address the after-effects of conflict, and it is the argument of this paper that endogenous approaches to relational peacebuilding cannot continue to be ignored as they can potentially address some of the fault lines. Respondents to the study were purposively selected from three provinces in the coun try. Findings indicate the relevance and efficacy of these approaches in building peace at the family and community levels. Keywords: Relational peace, conflict, endoge nous, tradition, Zimbabwe.

Re/Thinking Bioethics: Reproduction and Non-Reproduction in an Intersectional Bioethics’ Perspective

The article begins by reconstructing the main feminist bioethics perspective as a “new discourse” within the official bioethical discussion. It illustrates how the moral discussion and juridification have contributed to remove reproduction and non-reproduction from the personal and intimate context, reinventing them as a “states business”. This process framed these issues in terms of “duties”, “rights”, “family planning”, “demography”, and “population policy”. In this manner, law and morality have helped to reinforce a specific construct of fertility, motherhood, and family. By comparing two interrelated forms of Cross Border Reproductive Care (CBRC), concerning abortion and surrogacy, the article analyses how bioethical and legal frameworks – through their polarized and dichotomic discussion between law and morality – confirm and strengthen gender injustice in reproductive life. That comparison of cross-border travels highlights that surrogacy and abortion restrictions stem from a shared social and legal paradigm that relies on traditional gender roles and reveals how the stratification of reproduction is based on multiple discrimination along the lines of gender, race, and class. Finally, the article introduces an intersectional bioethics point of view on reproductive health to re-read the phenomena of non-reproductive and reproductive tourism and to propose a critique of the main global Northern feminist bioethical discourses and ethical-philosophical paradigms.

Disparities in Rates of Multitarget Stool DNA Test Completion for Colorectal Cancer Screening.

The aim was to assess patient adherence to multitarget stool DNA testing as well as factors associated with adherence. In the United States, disparities in colorectal cancer screening exist along racial and socioeconomic lines. While some studies suggest that stool-based screening tests may help reduce the screening gap, the data for multitarget stool DNA testing is unclear. We conducted a single-center retrospective cohort study on multitarget stool DNA testing ordered between April 2020 and July 2021. We calculated the proportion of patients who completed testing and used multivariate logistic regression to identify covariates associated with test adherence. Among 797 patients ordered for multitarget stool DNA testing, 481 patients (60.4%) completed testing. Adherence rates by patient subgroups ranged from 35.8% to 78.1%. Higher test adherence was found in Asian patients (odds ratio 2.65, 95% CI 1.36-5.18) and those who previously completed colorectal cancer screening (OR 1.45, 95% CI 1.01-2.09), while Black patients (OR 0.58, 95% CI 0.39-0.87), patients with resident primary care physicians (OR 0.34, 95% CI 0.21-0.56), and patients contacted through an outreach program (OR 0.47, 95% CI 0.25-0.87) had lower adherence. A significant proportion of patients ordered for multitarget stool DNA testing did not complete testing. Differences in adherence rates among patient subgroups may be reflective of underlying disparities in health care access.

Pitchfork, Race, Collaboration, and the Making of “Indie Rap”

This essay historicizes the moment in popular music when rap music and indie rock began conversing with one another. It shows how Pitchfork received, what is referred to as, “indie rap” by drawing a particular line of influence: from indie rock to rap music. Pitchfork is thereby shown to have contributed to the historical whitening of Black music. Drawing on the work of Fred Moten, this essay argues that Pitchfork established the “white avant-gardism” of indie rock through the construction of a series of binary oppositions that associated Black rap music with pastness and the commercial and “white” indie rock with futurity and the experimental. Such a critical bifurcation is revealed through a close reading of Pitchfork’s reception of the artist most representative of “indie rap:” Kanye West. This essay shows how Pitchfork understood West as needing to appropriate “European” music to move from the past into the future and become experimental. It counters this antagonistic racialization by situating West’s use of Auto-Tune within a lineage of Black radical aesthetics that includes the experimental vocal manipulations of artists ranging from Stevie Wonder to Drake. This essay seeks to recover the collaborative spirit that defined “indie rap.” It focuses on West’s collaborations with Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver), showing how they labored together to produce an “indie rap” that crossed the musical and racial lines established by Pitchfork. This essay concludes that, if West epitomized an ethos of collaboration before his reactionary turn, it is Vernon who now carries forward this collaborative spirit.

Public comment and public policy

AbstractIs public policy responsive to demographically and ideologically unrepresentative comments given at public meetings? I investigate this possibility using a novel data set of over 40,000 comments made at the San Francisco Planning Commission between 1998 and 2021, matched to information about proposed developments discussed in hearings and administrative data on commenters. I document four stylized facts: First, commenters at public meetings are unrepresentative of the public along racial, gender, age, and homeownership lines; second, distance to the proposed development predicts commenting behavior, but only among those in opposition; third, commission votes are correlated with commenters’ preferences; finally, the alignment of White commenters (vs. other racial groups) and neighborhood group representatives and the general public (vs. other interest groups) better predict project approvals.

The Politics of the Excluded: The Political Thought of Wong Chin Foo

This article examines the concepts of citizenship and exclusion in the writings of the nineteenth-century Chinese American figure Wong Chin Foo (1847–1898) and situates his works within the context of Chinese Exclusion in the United States. Against a backdrop of intensifying racial violence and legal and social exclusion, Wong repudiated racial stereotypes that were used to justify Chinese exclusion. He argued that the Chinese were culturally and morally distinctive but assimilable to American society. Central to his argumentative strategy was his critical reappropriation of the idea of the Chinese as unassimilable “heathens.” However, his conception of citizenship as conditional on “character and fitness” exposed the exclusionary nature of American citizenship and reinscribed its boundaries along racial and class lines. In treating Wong as a political thinker in his own right, this essay makes three contributions. First, it offers a historical elucidation of what Gordon Chang has called “the politics of the excluded.” Wong’s works show how central categories of politics and political thinking—like citizenship—are reconfigured by the very people those categories were designed to exclude. Second, this essay offers an alternative interpretive framework for reading texts within Asian American political thought and intellectual history. Finally, this essay forms a theoretical intervention by showing how Wong discloses the peculiarities of Asian American positionality in debates about racial citizenship in America.

Crime-First Labels and Public Attitudes Toward Adolescent Girls in the Juvenile Legal System

Purpose: This study delves into the effects of labels, specifically crime-first language, on public attitudes toward adolescent girls within the juvenile legal system. Examining fictional vignettes depicting family conflict, the research explores whether the use of language influences the endorsement of punitive responses and if this effect varies across racial and ethnic lines. Method: A large online, statewide sample of adults ( n = 1,791) was randomized to one of six vignettes. Results: Findings reveal that crime-first language, “accused of domestic battery,” is significantly associated with more punitive attitudes. We found no interaction effects between race and label. Although effect sizes were small, the study emphasizes the need to reconsider language choices to avoid perpetuating negative stereotypes and stigmatization. Discussion: Identifying and disseminating person-first language may be an important form of social work practice that can enhance current efforts on the Social Work Grand Challenge of promoting smart decarceration.

Partnering with community-based organizations to provide contextualized approaches to WaSH inequities in the United States

ABSTRACT While comprehensive data are lacking, estimates suggest at least two million Americans do not have access to basic water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) services. These WaSH challenges are not uniformly distributed throughout the country, but rather, occur in pockets along lines of race and class, mirroring historical and current patterns of marginalization and disenfranchisement. Given the highly context-specific challenges and the geographic, cultural, and policy environments in which they have been produced, the CDC Foundation set out to support community-based organizations (CBOs) in responding to WaSH challenges within their respective communities (n = 7). The mixed-methods evaluation of the application of this CBO model to address WaSH challenges in the United States, suggests that this approach shows promise to bolster CBO capacity to address WaSH gaps within their communities, addressing immediate physical and informational needs. However, additional work is needed to understand the sustainability of these changes and how programs can be designed to support longer-term, systems change.

Racialized Horizontal Stratification in US Higher Education: Politics, Process, and Consequences

In this review, we integrate three bodies of scholarship—education stratification research, political-historical sociology of higher education, and sociological theories of race and racism—to understand the production of “separate and unequal” postsecondary experiences for racially marginalized college students in the United States. We argue that the US postsecondary system is plural, heterogeneous, and stratified partly as a result of hundreds of years of contested efforts to deploy higher education in the service of white supremacy and capital accumulation. Organizational stratification of higher education along racial lines leads to horizontal stratification in individual experiences within the same level of schooling, and even within the same university. We review literature on racialized sorting between schools, which channels racially marginalized students to different parts of the postsecondary system relative to their racially advantaged peers. We also describe stratification within schools, as students are tracked, often by race, into divergent academic and social pathways internal to a single university. Both types of sorting have racial consequences for students’ career trajectories, economic security, and well-being. Finally, we detail recent efforts to challenge horizontal stratification, responses to those efforts, and avenues for future research.

Rationing by Inconvenience: How Insurance Denials Induce Administrative Burdens

Context: How do health coverage denials keep care out of reach for American patients by imposing unevenly distributed administrative burdens? This article argues that the process of appealing insurers’ denials imposes administrative burdens on patients inequitably, deepening the divide between those with meaningful access to health coverage and those for whom benefits are out of reach. Methods: The author conducted a nationwide survey of 1,340 US adults on their experiences with coverage denials; this was supplemented with 110 semistructured interviews with patients, physicians, and former health insurance executives. Findings: Those who were less affluent were significantly less likely than their wealthier counterparts to appeal denials of coverage. Patients who underestimated the rate at which patients prevail in insurance appeals were less likely to appeal their own denials. Black Medicaid patients and those who were in worse health were significantly less likely to prevail in the appeals they pursued. Many unappealed denials were attributable to the significant administrative burdens associated with appeal, including learning and psychological costs. Conclusions: Administrative burdens associated with appealing denials of coverage can deepen health inequities along class and race lines, suggesting a need for policy interventions to make it easier to navigate the health insurance bureaucracy.

Transgressing Racial Lines in the Name of Love: An Afro-Chinese Family Story in China

Transgressing Racial Lines in the Name of Love: An Afro-Chinese Family Story in China

Witnessing transgenerational trauma in teacher education: decoloniality of time, rupture of developmentalism, and settler resistance

ABSTRACT How can educators and students from settler backgrounds engage with and acknowledge the experiences and representation of transgenerational trauma among Indigenous peoples in educational environments, while remaining cognisant of the ethical and political implications? This challenge arises within the context of societal structures still influenced by colonial legacies, where systems of power are ingrained along lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, disability, and sexuality. What would be some of the necessary conditions that educational environments would need to meet in order to ethically and politically respond to transgenerational traumatic encounters? This paper addresses these questions and suggests three conditions that educational environments would need to meet, when educators and students are invited to become witnesses of transgenerational trauma: decoloniality of time, rupture of developmentalism, and an ethic of non-innocence. Both these conditions and their pedagogical implications are discussed and analysed through the lens of a decolonial ethic.

A Desert Mirage, Myth of Detroit’s Food Desert

This piece challenges the contemporary view of the city of Detroit as a “food desert”. Despite a low number of traditional supermarkets, the city of Detroit has developed a unique web of food networks. Only 10% of Detroit qualifies as a food desert, considering these alternative modes of food viability. However, these initiatives often go unnoticed, perpetuating misconceptions and biases against the city and its residents. Detroit’s relationship with food access is much more nuanced, as the city faces food insecurity along more racial lines. Although alternative food networks contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Detroit's food access, the issue of food security persists in various pockets of the city. Communities that experience food insecurity within the city are most often occupied by minority groups. The piece highlights the unresolved issues of Detroit's issue of food security, as many of the city’s minority communities struggle with food insecurity related to a turbulent past of racism and xenophobia. This paper will examine the disparity in the city’s food security as well as the resulting health burden incurred by the city. Additionally, this paper will examine potential mitigation strategies in addressing this issues. Ultimately, this paper will determine the history and current status of Detroit's food insecurity, how it affects the city's residents, and potential strategies to mitigate any disparities in food security.

Emotional labor in decision making: Gender, race, and relational practices in the White House

AbstractRelational and emotional practices intensive in emotional labor play an essential role for high‐level decision making, even though this labor is often devalued or unseen. United States presidents can often present themselves as rational and emotionally detached because they delegate emotional work to other members of their team. The burden of such work is unequally distributed along gender and racial lines. It involves expressing empathic concern, repairing relations, anticipating others' emotional responses, protecting marginalized colleagues, speaking hard truths, and providing emotional support to help others regulate their emotions. This article contributes to research on emotions in decision making, public administration, and presidency studies. Case studies of Nancy Reagan and Valerie Jarrett—who played important roles in the Reagan and Obama administrations, respectively—illustrate the article's main argument.

Racial and Socioeconomic Differences Correlate with Healthcare Disparities in Patients with Diabetic Retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy (DR), an ocular complication of diabetes mellitus, is the leading cause of permanent blindness in the United States for young adults. Due to biological and environmental factors, diabetes mellitus is well known to disproportionally affect people of color and those of lower socioeconomic status; however, the racial and socioeconomic disparities of DR are less researched. The purpose of this research is to elucidate any differences in DR presentation that arise across racial and socioeconomic lines and to determine if diabetic control can be a predicting factor for DR severity. For this study, a retrospective patient chart analysis was performed on 511 consecutive newly referred patients with diabetes at New England Retina Associates, a vitreo-retinal ophthalmology practice with four locations throughout Connecticut. Our analysis shows that, when compared to their White and Asian counterparts, Black/African American and Hispanic patients present with DR at younger ages, had the higher HbA1c, were uninsured at higher rates, and presented with severe forms of DR in higher rates when compared to their counterparts. Many of these patterns are mirrored in patients that are uninsured or on Medicaid, indicators of lower socioeconomic status. Additionally, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, patients with higher HbA1c tended to present with more severe forms of DR. These findings indicate that DR disproportionately affects racial minority populations and those in socioeconomically disadvantageous positions, but effective glycemic control and routine eye exam screening can improve the outcomes of these patients. It is important for medical providers to recognize the disparities in these vulnerable populations in order to facilitate the timely referrals and the proper care for their long-term ocular health.

Addressing Child Maltreatment by Infusing Multicultural, Feminist Tenets to Standard Clinical Approaches: The Cases of “Bashiir” and “Jaquann”

Multicultural psychology emphasizes the role of social, cultural, and gender forces in creating an individual’s identity; the social and cultural world in which they live; and the psychological strengths that different cultures have to offer. In a complementary way, feminist psychology highlights the importance of collectivist alternatives to mainstream, individualistic thinking in the U.S.; and the identification and dismantling of patriarchal power structures that oppress women. Combining these two in a multicultural, feminist approach to psychotherapy highlights the importance of relating to clients with an understanding of, sensitivity to, respect for, and responsiveness to their cultural identities and life situations. This also involves the therapist building on strengths that come from some cultures bringing a collectivist rather than an individualist orientation to life’s challenges, such as combating child maltreatment. To illustrate the potential of a multicultural, feminist approach to psychotherapy in cases of child maltreatment among minority individuals, the present article offers two highly successful case studies. The first involves “Bashiir,” a 16-year-old African, first-generation immigrant young man from Somalia; and the second involves “Jaquaan,” a 15-year-old African American young man. Both clients were referred to therapy because of poor school attendance and academic difficulties, and associated symptoms consistent with a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. These symptoms derived from the clients having lived in poor, dangerous, high crime communities. A crucial component in both cases was the process by which the therapist employed the multicultural feminist approach to cross age, racial, gender, and socioeconomic-class lines to establish a very strong, trusting relationship between the therapist and the client; and between the therapist and the clients’ families.