Racial Formation Research Articles

Hindu Nationalism and the Converging, Diverging and Intersecting Identities of Caste and Race in India: Dialogue, Dilemma and Discourse

This essay unpacks how Hindu nationalism has understood the concepts of caste and race through its ideologues’ textual strategies. It is divided into three sections. The initial section uncovers how Hindu nationalism’s dialogue with the colonial framework of knowledge produced several conceptual dilemmas inconsistent with its core objectives. The second part demonstrates how to counter such dilemmas proponents Hindu nationalists indulged in myriad intellectual manoeuvres to arrive at such notions of the interrelationship between caste and race, which are complimentary to its principal agenda. The final section unravels how their intellectual strategies produced a largely conservative outlook of passive reformism.

Settler Homesteading, Hawaiian Homesteading, and the Failed Mission of Americanization in Early Territorial Hawai'i

Abstract: In the early twentieth century, the US federal government created homesteading programs to "Americanize" Hawai'i by encouraging the mass settlement of white families "of good character" to Hawai'i, but to little avail. This essay analyzes a 1912 hearing about the failure of white homesteading in the Territory of Hawai'i, focusing on discourses of race and land use by settler and 'Ōiwi testifiers. Federal leaders and Territory proponents of homesteading mapped the familiar racial formations of vanishing Natives, alien Asians, and white pioneers onto Kānaka 'Ōiwi, Asian plantation workers, and white American homesteaders to further their cause. 'Ōiwi political leaders Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole and Charles Kahiliaulani Notley intervened; although they approached the question of "Americanization" differently from one another, both manipulated and rejected elements of that racial framework according to a shared goal: to get their people back on the land.

The Relationships Among Neighborhood Disadvantage, Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Diagnoses, and Race/Ethnicity in a U.S. Urban Location.

Childhood health disparities by race have been found. Neighborhood disadvantage, which may result from racism, may impact outcomes. The aim of the study is to describe the distribution of mental health (MH) and developmental disabilities (DD) diagnosis across Child Opportunity Index (COI) levels by race/ethnicity. A cross-sectional study using 2022 outpatient visit data for children < 18years living in the Louisville Metropolitan Area (n = 115,738) was conducted. Multivariable logistic regression analyses examined the association between diagnoses and COI levels, controlling for sex and age. Almost 18,000 children (15.5%) had a MH or DD (7,905 [6.8%]) diagnosis. In each COI level, the prevalence of MH diagnosis was lower for non-Hispanic (N-H) Black than for N-H White children. In adjusted analyses, there were no significant associations between diagnoses and COI for non-White children for MH or DD diagnoses. The odds of receiving a MH [OR: 1.74 (95% CI: 1.62, 1.87)] and DD [OR: 1.69 (95% CI: 1.51, 1.88)] diagnosis were higher among N-H White children living in Very Low compared to Very High COI areas. Current findings suggest that COI does not explain disparities in diagnosis for non-White children. More research is needed to identify potential multi-level drivers such as other forms of racism. Identifying programs, policies, and interventions to reduce childhood poverty and link children and families to affordable, family-centered, quality community mental and physical health resources is needed to ensure that families can build trusting relationships with the providers while minimizing stigma.

All God’s Chillun Got Wings: Whiteness as Property

ABSTRACT This article examines All God’s Chillun Got Wings in the context of renowned law professor Cheryl I. Harris’s analysis of American society’s construct of whiteness as property. Harris contends that property rights in the United States were founded on white supremacy and the protection of those rights by law results in many forms of racial discrimination. The attitudes and actions of the characters in All God’s Chillun reflect the destructive application of white property rights, which dooms the marriage of white Ella Downey and her Black husband Jim Harris. Analyzing this play through the lens of whiteness as property illustrates that the entrenched societal expectations rooted in racist property rights cannot be surmounted by the two protagonists; the unwitting but persistent assertion of same by the characters results in severe dysfunction in Ella’s and Jim’s relationship, tragically culminating in Jim’s self-sabotage and Ella’s insanity.

What to Do after the Emancipation Proclamation? A Princeton Seminary Alumnus’s Views on Racial Issues and Slavery in Brazil and the United States (1852–1867)

Abstract This article reflects on how the concept of race and views on African Americans and Afro-Brazilians permeated the American Presbyterian missions that operated in the Brazilian empire in the nineteenth century. This analysis considers the writing and reading of Ashbel Green Simonton (1833–1867), a Princeton Seminary alum sent to Brazil as a missionary by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA). In his missionary activity, Simonton founded the first Presbyterian Church and the first evangelical periodical in Brazil. Considering the intercessions between the racial theories stemming from natural history and nineteenth-century theological anthropologies, as well as the missionary’s interactions with the racial and slavery issues that permeated the American Civil War (1861–1865), this article analyzes Simonton’s journal (1852–1867), the books requested by Simonton at Princeton Theological Seminary (1856–1858), and the periodical Imprensa Evangélica (Evangelical Press, 1864–1867).

On Blackness, images and anti-racist work

ABSTRACT In this article, I explore the use, production, and readings of images in antiracist work as processes in constant tension with racist logics. Racist logics are deceptive and entrapping, and the visible world is a particularly dynamic arena in which to analyse this. Images, specifically photographs, incorporate a nuanced and productive contradiction between their ability to illustrate, explain and evoke, on the one hand, while also ensnaring, on the other, partly through alluring and providing pleasure. This contradiction means that anti-racist projects may include the possibility of re-inscribing racist discourse and practice. Drawing on empirical examples from Mexico, this article interrogates how photographic representations of Blackness have been entangled with the racist logics and racial projects that feed them. Racialised images that emphasise the physical body of Black people raise questions about how mestizaje, Latin America’s main racial formation, has coded the visual space of representation in confusing ways.

Márquez, C. (2023) Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation. University of North Carolina Press

Márquez, C. (2023) Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation. University of North Carolina Press

Racism without ‘race’: colorblindness, blackness and everyday racism in contemporary Germany

ABSTRACT Germany does not officially use or recognize racial categories. Despite this absence, everyday racism is a common experience for Black Germans and others viewed as non-European. Drawing on interviews with Black Germans, this article reveals the multiple ways in which Black Germans are racialized in everyday life. The most common form is ‘foreignization’ or the presumption that Black Germans are immigrants. This particular form of racialization can be seen as a consequence of the refusal to acknowledge race as a concept, and substituting the language of citizenship and migration for it. Interviews also illustrate how Black Germans’ self-identifications are both shaped by and challenge this absence of race as a term. The absence of racial categories maintains the notion of Germanness as white, and Blackness as non-German. Examining race in the German context offers unique insights into the comparative study of race in the contemporary colorblind era.

Holy Infrastructures: Catholicism, Detroit Borderlands, and the Elements

AbstractThrough an ethnographic rendering of the Catholic Church at the Detroit-Windsor borderland, this article foregrounds the ways elemental forces, including water, earth/soil, and air, form an interconnected entity that constitutes part of the theopolitical and religious scaffolding of Holy Infrastructures. We argue that the repetitive inscription of social and affective flows within an urban terrain generates infrastructure projects that contract forces of variable intensity into alliance or disjuncture. The interrelation of these forces as Holy Infrastructure, offers vital information on (dis/en)abling racialized forms of hosting and being hosted by the divine within urban settings, specifically as it pertains to theological labor at multiple scales. Indeed, we understand holiness in Catholic Detroit as a performative sovereignty of partition that mediates a desire for unbrokenness and spatiotemporal rapture. The topologies of Holy Infrastructure thus give rise to overlapping but divergent “wholes” within the racialized urban terrain, offering insight into the Church as a loose network of horizontal alliances that may enforce or subvert hierarchy. Our focus on elemental forces allows us to move beyond abstractions and focus on how theological projects take shape in physical space within an urban ecology. Indeed, Holy Infrastructures come into focus most clearly in relation to the intersection of theology with environmental, climatic, and territorial projects. By approaching Church and State as co-constitutive, we show how Holy Infrastructures offer insight into the racialized and gendered terrain of contemporary Detroit.

The Deportation of the Poles to Kazakhstan: Ethnic Cleansing, Collective Suffering, and Cultural Assimilation

The paper explores and analyzes one of the darkest pages of the history of the Polish people linked to the deportation of the Poles from Ukraine in 1936 and from Ukraine and Belarus in 1940-1941 to Kazakhstan. The central argument of the study is that the deportation of Poles from their historical homeland was carried out based exclusively on their ethnicity. We argue that the real intention of the Soviet regime’s genocidal policy was not confined only to the collective punishment and extermination of Poles as a distinct ethnic group, but the regime also sought to subject the deported Poles to slave labor exploitation for profit and to forced Russification. The assumption here is that Poles were uprooted from their homeland not only for extermination, but also the Soviet regime considered Poles to be an important component of its nation building project and their assimilation into Russian-dominated society was on the totalitarian regime’s agenda. The theoretical basis of this study constitutes the concept of ethnification of Stalinism, yet we add another dimension to our research, namely we employ the concept of racialization as a theoretical underpinning of the study to further deepen our analysis and indicate how ethnic identity of Poles was racialized. The study draws upon archival sources and the extant literature on the history of deportation in the Soviet Union, specifically we increasingly focus on Polish deportees’ collective and individual experiences who went through horrendous dehumanization and brutalization in exile in various parts of Kazakhstan between 1936 and 1956.

Analysis of the 72-h ultramarathon using a predictive XG Boost model

Abstract Background Ultramarathon running enjoys unwavering popularity. This includes the 72-h run, the longest time-limited ultramarathon based on hours and not days, yet this specific race format remains understudied. In particular, we are still determining where the fastest 72-h ultra-marathoners originate or where the fastest races are held. The aim of the present study was to investigate the origins of the best performers and the locations of the fastest races. Methods A machine learning model based on the XG Boost algorithm was built to predict running speed based on the athlete´s gender, age group, country of origin, the country where the race was held, the kind of race course (road, trail, track), and the elevation (flat, hilly). Model explainability tools were then used to investigate how each independent variable would influence the predicted running speed. Results A total of 2,857 race records from 1,870 unique runners from 36 different countries participating in 55 races held in 22 countries between 1989 and 2022 were analyzed. Athletes from the USA account for more than 2/3 of the sample size. Also, more than 3/4 of the participants competed in USA-based races. Athletes from Ireland, Japan, and Ukraine were the fastest. In respect of the fastest races, they were held in Ukraine, The Netherlands, and Japan. The model rated the country of event as the most important predictor followed by the race characteristics of elevation and race course, athlete country of origin, age group, and gender. On average, men were 0.33 km/h faster than women. The fastest running speeds were achieved by runners in age group 45–49 years. Conclusions The country of the event was found to be the most important predictor in the 72-h run. Despite the dominance of runners from USA and the predominance of courses in the USA in terms of participation, athletes from Ireland, Japan, and Ukraine achieved the fastest times, while Ukraine, The Netherlands, and Japan were found to host the fastest courses.

Incorporating Anti-racist Principles Throughout the Research Lifecycle: A Position Statement from the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM).

Biomedical research has advanced medicine but also contributed to widening racial and ethnic health inequities. Despite a growing acknowledgment of the need to incorporate anti-racist objectives into research, there remains a need for practical guidance for recognizing and addressing the influence of ingrained practices perpetuating racial harms, particularly for general internists. Through a review of the literature, and informed by the Research Lifecycle Framework, this position statement from the Society of General Internal Medicine presents a conceptual framework suggesting multi-level systemic changes and strategies for researchers to incorporate an anti-racist perspective throughout the research lifecycle. It begins with a clear assertion that race and ethnicity are socio-political constructs that have important consequences on health and health disparities through various forms of racism. Recommendations include leveraging a comprehensive approach to integrate anti-racist principles and acknowledging that racism, not race, drives health inequities. Individual researchers must acknowledge systemic racism's impact on health, engage in self-education to mitigate biases, hire diverse teams, and include historically excluded communities in research. Institutions must provide clear guidelines on the use of race and ethnicity in research, reject stigmatizing language, and invest in systemic commitments to diversity, equity, and anti-racism. National organizations must call for race-conscious research standards and training, and create measures to ensure accountability, establishing standards for race-conscious research for research funding. This position statement emphasizes our collective responsibility to combat systemic racism in research, and urges a transformative shift toward anti-racist practices throughout the research cycle.

Race, Place, and Religion: African American Missionaries in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

This paper attempts to provide a more complete analysis of the various conceptions of race and identity held by African American missionaries working in Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While some attention has been paid to African American missionaries working in Africa at this time, little has been written about how their different theological beliefs impacted their conceptions of race and identity as it relates to the local African populations they encountered. It can be determined that there were distinct links between the different theological beliefs held by African American missionaries working in Africa at this time and their conceptions of race. For example, evangelical African American missionaries more often associated themselves with a Pan-African identity than non-evangelical ones. Alongside this, their theological understandings of the Back-to-Africa Movement were quite different depending on where they worked in Africa and it impacted how they viewed themselves in association with the local African populations they encountered. Finally, different conceptions of race and identity manifested themselves along eschatological lines. Although these missionaries’ conceptions of race have already been analyzed, the connection to their theological beliefs and how it influenced their conceptions of race is relatively unexplored.

Colonial soundscapes in Otto Friedrich von der Gröben’s Guinean Travelogue (1694)

ABSTRACT In 1683, the Prussian nobleman and explorer Otto Friedrich von der Gröben (1657–1728) founded on the coast of present-day Ghana the trading post of Großfriedrichsburg, which was to become Brandenburg-Prussia’s main administrative hub for the trafficking of enslaved Africans to the Caribbean. While the existing historical scholarship on Gröben has to date mostly centered on his role in the foundation of Großfriedrichsburg, I focus on Gröben’s rich account of African and European sound, music, and dance in the published narration of his journey, his Guinean Travelogue (1694), and contemplate on the ways how he attempts to construct African Otherness and European superiority through the lens of sonic and performative media. Ultimately, I contend that Gröben’s narrative, far from being neutral and objective, needs to be located and read in the context of the dehumanizing logic of the slave economy and the related emerging history of racial formation.

Johann Daniel Metzger and Kant's So‐Called Human Races

AbstractAround 1788, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach compiled a list of notable contributions to the discussion on Kant's concept of race. This list included references to Kant's second and third essays on race, Georg Forster's 1786 response, and two essays by Johann Daniel Metzger. Blumenbach's compilation stands in stark contrast to contemporary discussions of Kant's racial theories. Despite the increasing interest in this subject, Metzger's critiques are still largely unnoticed. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of eighteenth‐century discussions on race, it is crucial to broaden our perspective beyond the viewpoints of Johann Gottfried Herder and Forster and include Metzger's contributions. In this article, I aim to elucidate (the context surrounding) Metzger's endeavours to engage with Kant's concept of race.

Examining the "White Health Advantage" Effect among Latinos in the United States.

There is consensus regarding the socio-political roots of the concept of race (and ethnicity) in the United States (US). However arbitrary, the US societal constructions of race have meant racial/ethnic minorities experience disproportionate health burdens. The present study examined the so-called "white health advantage" effect in a large sample of US respondents, comparing Latinos (non-White and White) with non-Latino Whites. This cross-sectional study used deidentified data from the Dynata Global COVID Symptoms map project, collected between July 7-14, 2020 (n = 135,075). A dichotomous health status variable was created with respondents answering yes/no to any COVID-19 symptoms (difficulty breathing, coughing, fatigue, fever, and loss of taste or smell). We included relevant predisposing (age, gender, number of children, race, ethnicity, marital status, and education) and enabling factors (housing conditions, income, employment status, business ownership, and number of cars owned - a proxy measure for wealth). Multivariate logistic regression models showed significant differences in health status (as measured by COVID-19 symptoms) when comparing Latinos (non-White, White) and non-Latino Whites. For instance, higher socioeconomic status had a protective effect only among non-Latino Whites. In turn, being married/living with a partner was only associated with COVID-19 symptoms among White Latinos, indicating that the apparent benefits of this "improving" socio-political location are somewhat limited. Our study found significant differences in COVID-19 symptoms when comparing Latinos (non-White, White) and non-Latino Whites. Our findings underscore the importance of further examining health outcomes by racial identities of US Latinos, which can help inform future health equity efforts.

Race &amp; Prejudice: Constructing Race Identity in “The Help” Movie (2011)

This study aims to describe and analyse the representation of racism in the film "The Help." The research method used are descriptive qualitative and content analysis to identify how the concepts of racism, stereotypes, and power are displayed in the film's narrative. The theory used in this study is the "Theory of Prejudice" proposed by Gordon Allport, which helps in understanding how negative perceptions of certain groups can develop into discriminatory attitudes and actions. The results of this study provide deep insight into how racism is presented in entertainment media and its impact on social consciousness.

‘Humility, Concern, Respect’: A Qualitative Study Exploring Parent Perspectives on a Pediatrician's Role in Addressing Racism

To explore racially minoritized families' perceptions on how, and if, physicians should address children's racial identity and concepts of racism within clinical settings. Parents of racially minoritized children, ages 5 through 18, were interviewed to explore experiences with racial identity formation, discrimination, and the extent to which they wanted pediatricians to address these topics. Children were included at the discretion of their parents. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed through a critical race theory lens based in constructivist grounded theory. Parents encouraged their children to embrace their racial identities but also wanted to shield them from negative experiences of racism to preserve identity safety. Parents felt pediatricians should address racial issues in a manner specific to their child's situation. Thoughtful inclusion of race-related questions, whether in discussion or on questionnaires, is essential to prevent tension in a therapeutic relationship. There was no consensus on the use of preclinical screening. Instead, families highlighted the importance of embracing humility, trust, and respect. Participant families have preferences for approaches to address the effects of racism on their children's health. Pediatricians should understand the importance of identity safety and approach their discussions with cultural humility, which includes self-reflection, empathy, active listening, and flexible negotiation. Above all, pediatricians need to create a safe environment for appropriate discussion of these issues.

Introduction to the Special Issue

Seeking critical and sound examination, analysis, and evaluation of complex ideas and theories of established past directions in the interdisciplinary fields of diaspora, postcolonial, and culture studies, this collection aims to chart intellectually meaningful pathways for future planetary survival and thriving, while throwing needed light on intricacies and nuances of established research and existing systems. Pondering the problems but also pursuing the possibilities of “diaspora connections” is a necessary and urgent endeavor today. While academics, activists, and cultural practitioners are creating numerous portals out of the human-conflict epidemic, and some see in the metaphoric and real “disease” the very artifacts and materials for hope of transformative power, the collection is driven by the realization, articulation, and intention of seeking inclusive paradigms and building enduring diaspora connections. In this spirit, I invited research papers that address, illuminate, analyze, and/or critique specific manifestations, dynamisms, or stagnancies of “diaspora connections,” as well as explore its multiple understandings and contexts. Whether focusing on recognized or emerging contours of diaspora communities shaped by and beyond concepts of race, ethnicity, colonization, and developmental logics, researched works on alignments and disjunctions, as well as new formations along postcolonial ecologies and narratives of culture, social formations and experiences were encouraged.

The Defense of the Adoption of Critical Social Theory as a Framework for African Universities

With coloniality, thought itself became discriminatory and was categorized into racial forms. That discrimination and categorization of thought gave rise to the idea that philosophy itself must be differentially categorized as either Western, Eastern, or African as if thought has a race and geographic location. The issue at this age is that those categorizations get serious to the extent that it is unthinkable that African scholars can benefit from any thought system except from African philosophy. This paper argued that those vices dent human enlightenment and developmental progress. Within that purpose, this paper used an analytic theoretical framework to argue that it is an unguided racist view that there is no benefit for African scholars in Western philosophy. The adoption of Critical Social Theory was selected as one case whereby an African rural university received a plethora of criticisms as being hypocritical in the decolonization mission. Among the findings of this study one important aspect came out more clearly, that humans love unity rather than division according to race, class and so on. This study recommends that decolonization should be embraced willingly with a clear realization that humanity is one race rather than a divided existence. This study posits that having a proper perspective of decolonization will eliminate hypocrisy among scholars and create that realization of human knowledge as one racial epistemology. Keywords: Coloniality, Philosophy, Academic Discrimination, Decolonization, Theoretic Operandi.