Racist Rhetoric Research Articles

Yellow Techno-Peril: The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and anti-Chinese racial rhetoric in the US–China AI arms race

The rhetoric of an ‘AI arms race’ between the United States and China has become increasingly prominent over the past 5 years, despite warnings that it is unnecessarily polarising and undermines safe and ethical artificial intelligence (AI) development. However, existing critiques of the AI arms race narrative engage only sparingly with the racialised dimensions of this discourse. In this article, I draw on the rich theoretical insights of Asian American and Asian diaspora studies to show how the AI arms race narrative is deeply racialised in two key ways. First, I show how the rhetoric of an AI arms race builds upon the myth of a ‘Clash of Civilizations’ between the West and the East. This civilisational rhetoric constitutes China and the United States as distinct and mutually opposed cultural entities, thus foreclosing the possibility of more peaceful and cooperative alternatives to the AI arms race. Second, I demonstrate how the US–China AI arms race specifically draws on previous racialised configurations of anti-Asian sentiment, such as techno-Orientalism and the Yellow Peril. I coin the term Yellow Techno-Peril to connote how older European and Americans fears of being overrun or controlled by China are reproduced in the AI arms race. I close by offering recommendations to key stakeholders such as policymakers, decisionmakers, journalists and media organisations as to how they can mitigate and avoid the racialised rhetoric of an AI arms race between the United States and China.

Public perceptions of justification in the deadly police shootings of black men: a content analysis of social media posts in 2016 and 2020

The proliferation of information technologies has revolutionized how people around the world consume news. By 2021, an estimated 8.6 billion mobile subscriptions existed worldwide. In the United States, a majority (84%) of Americans access their news digitally. On social media platforms, Facebook is the most used network for obtaining news. The three major news sources in the United States, CNN, Fox News, and MSNC, have a strong presence on Facebook. The current study analyzes public comments posted on Facebook involving the deadly police shootings of four Black men (i.e., Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Jonathan Price, Rayshard Brooks) to identify reactions at two points in time. Our work centers on public comments to these posts, not the posts themselves. Using a summative qualitative analysis, we analyzed the first 20 Facebook comments from CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC that are listed as most relevant (e.g., highest number of likes, reactions, replies) to the most recently posted news story regarding the incident. This resulted in a sample size of 223 posts. Public comments were categorized as justifying the killing, perceiving the killing as not justified, or expressing neutrality as to whether the killing was justified or not. We found that most comments, regardless of time period, did not engage in victim-blaming. Overall, the majority (N = 139 or 62%) of all comments perceived these deadly police shootings as not justified. Most (54%) posts on Fox News justified this violence, while the majority of posts on CNN or MSNBC felt the police had used excessive violence. There were more negative comments of Black men and victim-blaming after the Trump presidency (in 2020) than in 2016 (before Trump took office), which may be related to the racial rhetoric of the times.

The New Black Right: A Paranoid Turn in Black Conservatism?

Abstract Is there a uniquely Black paranoid style of conservatism, and, if so, how is that style articulated, and what are the potential impacts on conservatism, U.S. politics, and Black people in the coming decades? Despite our theoretical understanding that Black people can support white supremacy, the literature of far-right racism assumes that all white nationalists are white, and all Black nationalists are pro-Black. To address these issues, I use qualitative content analysis of 100 YouTube videos from ten Black conservative influencers. I find there are Black conservatives who express a uniquely nationalist form of paranoid reactionaryism. This style of political rhetoric is characterized by influencers’ claims that: 1) they have experienced status loss, not as Black people, but as moral, patriotic, and Christian Americans; 2) this status loss is the result of a coordinated campaign to weaken the country, traditional values, and Chrisitan hegemony; and 3) the campaigns are carried out by ungodly and un-American people within the country and that acting against them in self-defense is a moral and patriotic necessity. These findings force us to reconsider our approach to studying racism and recognize the agency of Black people who actively promote far right and racist rhetoric.

Anti-Asian Hate's Impact on Asian American Social Workers: Implications for Professional Training and Education.

This article explores the impact of recent incidents of anti-Asian hate and violence against Asian American social workers, clients, and communities. Asian Americans represent a small but growing proportion of the U.S. population. Yet, Asians are underrepresented in the social work profession-approximately 3.6 percent of the social work workforce and 2.1 percent of licensed social workers are Asian, and data on underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the workforce continue to omit details on Asian people. Recent social and political framing of the COVID-19 pandemic as attributable to Asian people has fueled racist rhetoric and incidents of hate and bias crimes against Asian people. Through exploratory research to understand the experiences of Asian American social workers in the proliferation of anti-Asian hate, authors identified that more should be done to support and meet the needs of Asian American social workers, clients, and communities by improving social work education and training, by addressing the social work workforce and agency practices, and by expanding upon advocacy and community building.

Anti-Black Racism, British Orientalism, and the Ottoman Empire: Rereading The Turkish Embassy Letters

This essay reads Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) as an entry point for an investigation of the entwinement between the British anti-Black racial consciousness and orientalist rhetoric concerning the Ottoman Empire. Montagu’s racially marked depictions of women in Ottoman lands not only reveal the limits of her capacity to identify and sympathize with the oriental other, but also prompt a wider scrutiny of the anti-Black racial rhetoric that percolates through eighteenth-century British orientalist narratives about the Ottoman Empire.

Racial rhetoric in black and white: situational whiteness in Francoist Spanish Guinea through Misión blanca

ABSTRACT This essay analyzes through the interactions of its racially encoded characters under the lens of whiteness. The objective is to locate the representational strategies that Francoist cultural production used to convey moral superiority through racial teachings. The study specifically examines Francoist practices of racial representation to suggest how Spanish whiteness may have been traditionally situational; that is, conceived as a highly rhetorical cultural tactic to assimilate non-whites into the fringes of Spanish whiteness, which in this historical period led to the totalization and silencing of racial dissidence. As a result, the essay will demonstrate how Francoist cinema displayed rhetorical race notions and situational whiteness in Africa to build relationships of moral superiority with regard to Spain’s European counterparts.

Logics of Strategic Racism in the Anti-Hate Speech Law Era: Analyzing the Discourse Against Zainichi Koreans in Japanese Right-Wing TV Programs

Abstract: This study analyzes implicit racist rhetoric in Japan after the Hate Speech Elimination Act was enacted in 2016. While the law brought about the deradicalization and decline of hate groups, it has been ineffective in regulating covert hate speech. Zainichi Koreans, the primary victims of such speech, have struggled to have the illegality of racial discrimination recognized in litigation. By analyzing the case of Shin Sugok versus DHC TV, this article addresses the question of how racists use hateful rhetoric against Zainichi Koreans in the post-HSEA era. Shin filed a lawsuit in 2018 claiming defamation by DHC TV and won substantial compensation; however, the initial court decision in 2021 did not find racial discrimination against her, and the discrimination was only recognized by the Appeals Court in 2022. This blurring of judicial decisions was due to the expressions of racial discourse being subtle, which is referred to as strategic racism. The TV program did not use discriminatory language but stimulated the interest of racist viewers by persistently referring to the ethnic origin of the plaintiff. In this sense, Japan has entered an era in which it is necessary to analyze implicit racial codes, similarly to the situation with racist discourse in the United States.

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War in the publicistics by Yevhen Onatskyi

The article analyzes the evolution of the publicist narrative about the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936) of the Ukrainian nationalist intellectual, member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its representative in fascist Italy Yevhen Onatskyi (1894–1979). This evolution is presented in the apology of Italian colonialism and the advocacy of the Ukrainian people’s right to national self-determination.The article discusses Onatskyi’s attempts to distribute his views on Italian aggression among OUN top members and other emigration circle representatives through private correspondence. Based on the analysis of these attempts, as well as considering sources of information about Onatskyi’s contacts with officials of the Mussolini regime, preliminary assumptions are made about the degree of Onatskyi’s involvement in the structure of the Italian governmental propaganda machine.Developing his argumentation, Onatskyi relayed to his readers the theses of Italian imperial propaganda, which this article examines as part of a larger network of rhetoric and themes common to Modern colonial powers. In this context are employed models that allow not only the detection of variations of transimperial themes in the Italian fascist propaganda broadcast by Onatskyi but also to detect peculiarities of its application to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.During 1935–1936, Onatskyi declared the “injustice” of the distribution of colonies between the leading empires, formulated arguments in favor of justifying anti-British sentiment, defended the civilizing mission of the Mussolini regime, appealed to the “barbarism” of Ethiopians using racist rhetoric. In the period of 1936–1937 Onatskyi formulated an interpretive structure that connected pro-fascist, pro-Ukrainian, anti-Ethiopian and anti-Soviet positions into a single authoritarian-nationalist system of views.

Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word: Reinforcing Institutional Identities through Newspaper Apologies for Racist Past

ABSTRACT Following the early twenty-first Century’s “age of apologies,” news organizations have been among the institutions apologizing for their historical role in promoting racist rhetoric by directly addressing their inherent racialized biases. Guided by literature on organizational and racial apologia bolstered by the theory of “institutional myth”, this study analyzes 13 apologies published by 12 media organizations to understand how they are performing and communicating reparative actions towards communities of color. Despite their long role in promoting harmful stereotypes and in some cases a complete erasure of narrative from communities of color, news organizations presented “surface-level” apologies that paved the initial path to reconciliation. However, these organizations vigorously defend and uphold the institutional myth of established journalism norms and practices that have been instrumental in their failures, which have led to these apologies. We argue that the reparative work of journalism needs to start by creating an inclusive journalistic paradigm that centers on the ideologies and voices of all groups within our society.

Scientific supremacy: How do genetic narratives relate to racism?

Recent research suggests that contemporary American society is marked by heightened hostile racial rhetoric, alongside increasing salience of White nationalists who justify an ideology of racial hierarchy with claims of biological superiority. Media coverage of such genetics research has often emphasized a deterministic (or causal) narrative by suggesting that specific genes directly increase negative outcomes and highlighting reported genetic differences between racial groups. Across two experimental studies, we examine the effect of the media's portrayal of scientific findings linking genes with negative health and behavioral outcomes on measures of racism. We find that deterministic genetic attributions for health and behavioral outcomes can lead to more negative racial out-group attitudes. Importantly, we also investigate potential interventions in the presentation of genetic science research. Our research has implications for understanding racial attitudes and racialized ideology in contemporary American politics, as well as for framing scientific communication in intergroup contexts.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Maintenance of a Positive Self‐Concept among Interracially Partnered Whites

This article analyzes the narratives of 40 partners in white/non‐white interracial relationships about their experiences navigating race across racially homogenous spaces. Both partners of color and white partners constructed rural areas, the South, and suburbs as racially hostile areas they avoided when possible. When discussing the white settings couples frequented socially, however, the narratives of partners of color and white partners diverged. Whereas partners of color characterized these settings as marked by more subtle racism, white partners characterized them as progressive and non‐racist. However, white partners unwittingly contradicted this as they recounted recurrent instances of interpersonal racism. Cognitive dissonance theory posits when individuals' beliefs and/or behaviors are threatening to their self‐concept, they will engage in activities to maintain a positive conception of themselves. Using cognitive dissonance theory as a guiding framework, this article suggests the inconsistencies in whites' narratives reflect a cognitive dissonance in which white partners' self‐concept as progressive and non‐racist is threatened by their association with whites who engage in racist rhetoric. Consequently, white partners dismiss, rationalize, and/or minimize the racism they encounter in order to maintain a positive conception of other whites, and thereby themselves.

The fiction of colorblind Italy and Orio Vergani's Io, povero negro (1929)

Taking aim at the myth that il razzismo non esiste in Italy, this article explores the rhetorical mechanisms that underpin anti-black racism vis-à-vis Italian colonial fiction—fictions that give life to the deceit that Italy is colorblind. It focuses attention on the work of Orio Vergani (1898-1960) who was one of the most prolific documentarians of Italian East Africa. His reportage established a vast image repository of exoticized, black bodies that reinforced prevailing colonial stereotypes about Africa in the Italian cultural imagination during the early-20th century. Yet his novel, Io, povero negro (1929)—claimed to be Italy's first with a black protagonist—was written before Vergani ever set foot in Africa. The text presents a formulation of blackness conceived of obliquely, in the absence of Italy, and belonging to an elsewhere, that is, between an unnamed colony in Africa, France, and the United States. In so doing, it advances a rhetoric of race defined by absence, blockage, and deflection that was conceived transnationally, which, in turn, helps to set the conditions for both the denial and naturalization of racism in Italy today.

Canadian public perceptions and experiences with information during the COVID-19 pandemic: strategies to optimize future risk communications

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the spread of misinformation worldwide. The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions of misinformation and preferred sources of obtaining COVID-19 information from those living in Canada. In particular, we sought to explore the perceptions of East Asian individuals in Canada, who experienced stigma related to COVID-19 messaging.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative thematic analysis study. Interviews were offered in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Interviewers probed for domains related to knowledge about COVID-19, preferred sources of information, perceived barriers and facilitators of misinformation, and preferences for communication during a health emergency. Interviews were recorded, translated, transcribed verbatim and analyzed using a framework approach. Transcripts were independently double-coded until > 60% agreement was reached. This study received research ethics approval.ResultsFifty-five interviews were conducted. The majority of participants were women (67%); median age was 52 years. 55% of participants were of East-Asian descent. Participants obtained information about COVID-19 from diverse English and non-English sources including news media, government agencies or representatives, social media, and personal networks. Challenges to seeking and understanding information included: encountering misinformation, making sense of evolving or conflicting public health guidance, and limited information on topics of interest. 65% of participants reported encountering COVID-19 misinformation. East Asian participants called on government officials to champion messaging to reduce stigmatizing and racist rhetoric and highlighted the importance of having accessible, non-English language information sources. Participants provided recommendations for future public health communications guidance during health emergencies, including preferences for message content, information messengers, dissemination platforms and format of messages. Almost all participants preferred receiving information from the Canadian government and found it helpful to utilize various mediums and platforms such as social media and news media for future risk communication, urging for consistency across all platforms.ConclusionsWe provide insights on Canadian experiences navigating COVID-19 information, where more than half perceived encountering misinformation on platforms when seeking COVID-19 information . We provide recommendations to inform public health communications during future health emergencies.

:Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature

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Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin By Eugene M.Avrutin. Russian Shorts. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, 160 pp. $16.15 (paper). ISBN 978‐1‐350‐09728‐5

Only in the last decade or so has racism undergone serious inquiry by scholars of Russia. Western academics had long taken at face value the words of Russian ethnographers and anthropologists that Russians themselves, as a people on the margins, had an innate understanding of the non-White societies they encountered and, in many cases, conquered. The Soviet Union, of course, portrayed itself as a bastion of anti-racism. Eugene Avrutin's slim volume attempts to synthesize new scholarship that finds race in important places in Russian politics and culture from the tsarist period to the present. Racial thinking, and racialization, developed in uneven ways in the multiethnic tsarist empire and Soviet Union. Even at the height of racist attacks in the Russian Federation a decade ago, the state, as well as its predecessors, never openly embraced racist rhetoric, unlike so many governments in the West. But racism lurked behind encounters that ended in mass violence as well as those that produced feelings of isolation among non-Slavic subjects or citizens. The book's opening chapter is its strongest, as Avrutin offers a nuanced and concise discussion of the appearance and development of racial theories in Russia, and how the color line in the region was “inherently messy” (p. 6). Racialization—the process of turning peoples into fixed others, culturally or biologically—underwent continual shifts within modern Russia, depending on the nature of encounters, the ideology of the regime and many other factors. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given the author's previous publications and expertise, much of the focus of this volume is on anti-Semitism. Racial theories and practices had a particular resonance for Jewish peoples of the tsarist empire. Racial theorists worked to attribute them with all types of unfavorable attributes. Whereas racial categorizations appeared more complicated given long interactions between peoples who mixed, for example, on Slavic and Turkic frontiers, Jews were seen as a people apart. As part of Bloomsbury's “Russian Shorts” series, this volume has to be extremely selective in its examples. It was unfortunate, however, that the largest minorities in tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, or the Russian Federation are barely mentioned. We do not hear anything of substance on the Turkic peoples, from Tatars to those of Central Asia, or peoples of the Caucasus or Siberia. In addition to his focus on Jewish populations, the author spends a significant amount of space on the tiny number of African-Americans in the USSR. Black activist W.E.B. Dubois's observations are highlighted, even if it could be argued his thoughts on Russia are mainly used to underscore his views on racial relations in the United States. African-Americans had a particular status in the Soviet Union, due to their place in Cold War maneuvers. Avrutin does discuss the more central issue of substantial numbers of African students who passed through Soviet universities and faced significant racial prejudice even as the USSR was working to portray racism as a phenomenon linked to capitalism and the United States. The last chapter, which focuses on the Russian Federation, details the sharp rise in violent racism in the 2000s. Extremist groups felt a degree of impunity in attacking non-Whites. Putin's regime proved complicit in foregrounding Slavic superiority even as it made no overtly racist appeals. Avrutin sees Russianness and Whiteness as mutually reinforcing each other over this period, though it is hard to talk about a single “white power movement” in Russia (p. 92). What is missing in this chapter is a discussion of the sharp decrease in racially motivated attacks since the mid-2010s. The book does briefly mention that most ethnic Russians were neither active nor complicit in racist behavior, but the question of broader attitudes and context still lingers, and how and why things change over time. This volume offers a succinct portrayal of how racialization worked at different times and places from the late tsarist period to the mid-2010s. Its selective nature and focus on Jewish and African-Americans as on, supposedly, opposing poles of racist treatment means that we miss much about how racism worked in the vast majority of interethnic encounters in modern Russia.

Dancing between model minorityhood and yellow peril: accusations of needing “personality”

AbstractThis article traces one manifestation of the unique process of Asian-American abjection (Shimakawa, K. [2002]. “I should be—American!” Abjection and the Asian (American) Body. In National Abjection (pp. 23–56). Duke University Press.), produced from a dialectic of an aspirational model minority myth and the targeted status of an ever-evolving yellow peril. I highlight the nuances of such abjection through a “lacking personality” metanarrative imposed on Asian-American finalists on the reality television show, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). I forward an Asian-American rhetorical approach informed by critical rhetorics of race by Lacy and Ono (2011. Critical Rhetorics of Race. New York University Press) and Ono and Pham (2009. Asian Americans and the media, Vol. 2. Polity) to problematize rhetoric that abjects Asian-Americans. I suggest that depictions of Asian-Americans as lacking personality in popular media are part of the same continuum of racialized yellow peril abjection, upholding a conditional belonging that allows anti-Asian racial violence to flourish, particularly in moments of crisis and public moral panic.

Paradoxical Politics? Partisan Politics, Ethnoracial Ideologies, and the Assimilated Consciousnesses of Latinx Republicans

Because of the Republican Party’s racist rhetoric, Latinx Republicans are considered paradoxes as their partisanship contradict perceptions of Latinxs’ sociopolitical interests. Methodologically departing from prior Latinx politics research, this study employs qualitative methods to understand how Latinx Republicans interpretively link ethnoracial and partisan identities. Drawing on original interviews with Latinx Republicans, I argue that respondents are not paradoxes but strategic actors engaging in politics that align with respondents’ interpretations of their social identities. Specifically, I develop the concept of “assimilated consciousness”—how Latinx Republicans politicize ethnoracial identity by disaggregating Latinx groupness and positioning themselves in opposition to other racialized people. I show how most respondents reject seeing racism as systemic, perceive themselves as assimilated, and subsequently use interpretive tools to distance themselves from other Latinxs and Black Americans; minimize racist Republican rhetoric; and maximize problematic Democratic rhetoric. In doing so, respondents reconcile the relationship between their ethnoracial and partisan identifications. I further employ the concept of assimilated consciousness to show how a minority of respondents rejected the Republican Party due to Trump’s and Trump supporters’ racist rhetoric. Overall, I contend my findings provide a better understanding of how racialized immigration processes shape ethnoracial and political identities.

Animal Colonialism in North America: Milk Colonialism, Environmental Racism, and Indigenous Veganism

Combining insights from postcolonialism, ecofeminism, and critical animal studies, this article focuses on the colonial experience of nonhuman animals in North America whose exploitation has been integral to the colonial expansionist project. By tracing the history of displacement of Indigenous populations due to animal agriculture, animal colonialism is also linked to mass killing of free-living animals and to environmental degradation. Furthermore, the article delineates the entangled oppression of Indigenous women’s and nonhuman animals’ bodies that can be theorized as colonized territories, exploited for profit via the control of their reproductive cycles. To protest the violent industrial animal farming practices that involve torture, slaughter, and mass dairying and are built on racist rhetoric, some Indigenous people adopt contextual Indigenous veganism as an act of political resistance.

Ukrainian Refugees, Race, and International Law's Choice Between Order and Justice

AbstractThe resurgence of racist rhetoric and policies concerning people fleeing the war in Ukraine serves as a reminder that the ostensible goals of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and 1967 Protocol are regularly eschewed by states making decisions about how to allocate grants of asylum. This Essay makes the claim that racial tiering of protection-seekers demonstrates that states use international refugee law to negotiate their national whiteness contracts and to secure racially hegemonic geopolitical ordering.

Racial Rhetoric or Reality? Cautious Optimism on the Link Between Corporate #BLM Speech and Behavior

The summer of 2022 marks the two-year anniversary of the dramatic rekindling of the #BlackLivesMatter movement because of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed Black people at the hands of police. The summer of 2020 saw cities in the United States and around the world erupt in protest, with calls to dismantle racist policies and practices both in the criminal system and within the broader society, with a particular emphasis on policies and practices impacting Black people. The summer of 2022 also marks the two-year anniversary of the visible and somewhat surprising avalanche of corporate statements proclaiming solidarity with the Black community, condemning racism and bigotry, and pledging to help eradicate racist policies and practices within their own institutions. Corporations and their brands inundated the public with black squares, #BlackLivesMatter signs, and emphatic insistence that corporate leaders would “not be silent about our fight against racism and discrimination,” and that they would “do more . . . and do it now.” Most commentators viewed these corporate statements with severe skepticism, characterizing them as “cheap talk,” a “marketing ploy,” or “an outright lie.” Relying on original empirical research, this Article refutes that skepticism and demonstrates that, just one year later, many corporations followed through on their talk with actions aimed at promoting diversity and eroding racist and discriminatory practices. This Article makes three critical assertions with respect to these corporate statements. First, this Article uses original empirical research to reveal that the vast majority of the corporate statements made in the summer of 2020 embodied a commitment to actively work against racism and discrimination and actively promote diversity and inclusion. Second, this Article draws upon original empirical research to refute critics and demonstrate that, on the one-year anniversary of these commitments, many corporations followed through on their speech with concrete actions, at least with respect to their boards. Third, after examining the impact of structural limitations and other roadblocks, this Article sounds a note of caution about whether and to what extent we can expect long-term changes in corporate behavior that meaningfully moves the needle on improving racial diversity and equity in the corporate sphere.