Racial Discourse Research Articles

Täusch-Verhältnisse. Der „Große Austausch“ als rhetorisches Manöver der Neuen Rechten

Abstract This article focusses on the Great Replacement as that narrative of the New Right that currently constitutes the centerpiece of many inter-related and implicitly or explicitly racist discourses about migrants and refugees. As a discourse, the narrative of a Great Replacement encapsulates and reflects the desire for an „ethnocultural identity“ that is antagonistically realized it in such a way that uncountable others are declared to be (non-identical) „foreign bodies“, so that their violent removal appears justified. The main aim of this article is to assess and criticize the rhetorical and stylistic strategies of the New Right, which repeatedly refer to aspects of an alleged naturalness (the „ethno-plural nature“ of Europe) while attempting to conceal how artificial their argumentation is. In contrast to a dissimulazione onesta, as formulated as a concept by Torquato Accetto, in the case of the Great Replacement one could thus speak of a dissimulazione dis-onesta, i. e. of a constitutive dishonesty or strategic deception.

Marketing a culture of achievement to Black and Brown students: TNTP and neoliberal multiculturalism

ABSTRACT Neoliberal multiculturalism is a global racialization process that works as a unifying discourse for the rationalization of neoliberal policies within U.S. global ascendancy and capitalist development. Invoking state multiculturalism, e.g. ‘diversity’ or ‘equity’, neoliberal multiculturalism is officially antiracist. Official antiracism portrays multiculturalism as being at its core while limiting discussions of race and racism to sanctioned racial discourses. Using neoliberal multiculturalism as a framework, this paper presents a critical analysis of the racial ideology presented in TNTP’s founding teacher training curriculum designed specifically for its Teaching Fellows. The analysis demonstrates how official antiracism can function in curriculum designed to train fast-tracked selective alternative route program teachers to teach predominantly Black, Latino, and immigrant students in lower-income neighborhood public schools.

"Showing up to the conversation": Qualitative reflections from a diversity, equity, and inclusion book club with emergency medicine leadership.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in health care fosters many positive outcomes including improved patient care. DEI initiatives are often created by or require buy-in from departmental leaders with low DEI literacy. Book clubs are one way to develop DEI literacy. The purpose of this paper is to describe how leaders in the department of emergency medicine (DEM) process the information gained from reading a DEI book through discussion in a book club setting and explore how participation enhances their DEI literacy and fosters self-reflection. This was a qualitative exploratory study based on a constructivist approach. Data were analyzed by four researchers using inductive thematic analysis techniques. Sixty-eight leaders within the DEM participated in 11 book clubs. Nine themes were identified (examination of privilege, initial reaction to discussion about racism, discomfort, worry, self-reflection, release, role recognition, readiness, and education). After prompted examination of their own privilege participants moved through a model of perceived readiness to act. Participants started with feeling paralyzed by the work's enormity or becoming defensive. They then moved toward discomfort with discussions of racism and systemic racism and progressed to discussions around worrying that they were contributing to noninclusive environments. After a period of self-reflection, participants tended to release their paralysis, push aside their defensiveness, accept the role of discomfort, and express the importance of education on these issues. Participants then recognized their role in creating inclusive environments and started discussing what they can do about it, which, for many, was to show up to the conversation. An underlying driver of movement through this model was the education that was provided through the book. By addressing privilege and systemic inequities through the reflective practice and dialogue of a book club, participants demonstrated a growing commitment and perceived readiness to advancing inclusive practices within medicine.

Chinese American College Students’ Self-Meaning Making Through the Lens of Critical Whiteness Studies

Chinese Americans are historically perceived as perpetual foreigners and honorary whites in American political, cultural, and racial discourses. Utilizing Critical Whiteness Studies as a theoretical framework and Critical Race Hermeneutics as an analytic tool, this article examines how Chinese American young adults construct who they are against whiteness as the norm, the epistemology of ignorance, and white emotionality. Instead of passive victims, Chinese American college students actively challenge this hegemony, privilege, and oppression in unique ways.

(Un)Settling the Black-White Binary: Korean American and Immigrant Youth Navigating Racial Discourse in School Curriculum

ABSTRACT Objective: The study examines how Korean American and immigrant youth interpret the Black-White binary in U.S. history and social studies curricula. Method: Task-based interviews were conducted with 23 Korean-heritage students from two Midwestern cities. The study used Asian Critical Theory (AsianCrit) and sociocultural theory as frameworks for analyzing students’ responses. Results: This research highlights that Korean American and immigrant youth interpret the Black-White binary in school curricula in diverse ways, despite sharing an ethnic background. Conclusion: By presenting a nuanced understanding of individual community experiences, this study challenges the dominant narrative that tends to homogenize not only Korean American/immigrant students but also APIDA/A students.

Race and caste in the making of US sociology

In this article, we take a look at the influence of 20th-century provenance of caste as a category of academic importance meriting a debate in American sociology and beyond. Two actors participated in the animating discourse of caste and race in the annals of American sociology. Oliver Cromwell Cox took a class position to define caste, unmaking the hierarchies set in social structures. Instead, he advocated for a racialized system to understand the post-slavery capitalist America. Gerald Berreman represented a different camp that found social hierarchies to be co-determinant of relations and division arranged into a caste society. The debate over caste, nevertheless, admitted to the plausibility of castes contrasted with India’s caste system. However, caste categorization was found to be an appropriate application to the conditions of social inequalities. Gunnar Myrdal and other scholars of repute contributed to the debate. What remained limited in their theoretical contributions to the discussion was an inadequate focus on the lived reality and politics of the caste formulations in the postcolonial, socialist mode of production. A serious examination of untouchability, sub-castes and sub-sub-castes that regulate the kernel of the caste system as well as the racialized castes in India were not studied or referenced in detail. This article adds to that void a theoretical understanding of the discussion on caste, race and colour in sociological and anthropological disciplines.

Us and them: colonialism and racism in remote Aboriginal healthcare discourse

ABSTRACT Background The origins of modern Australia are settler colonialist, the logic of which initiated theft of land and attempted erasure of First Nations peoples. This study explores the role of non-Aboriginal Health Care Workers (HCWs) in the ongoing settler colonial project and the formation of mental models that lead to dualistic discourse embodying structural and interpersonal racism. Methods Using van Dijk’s sociocognitive model of Critical Discourse Analysis, colonial ideology, HCW mental models and discourse about Aboriginal people were explored. Results The dualistic categorisation of Us and Them underlies racist discourse around responsibility, dependence, health, illness and the role of culture in health. HCWs had poorly conceived ideas about cultural safety and demonstrated hierarchical thinking, exclusion and collusion in racism. Conclusions Remote HCWs will continue to propagate the ideology of settler colonialism unless cultural safety, critical reflexivity and anti-racism training are prioritised in cultural training.

Geographies of race in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT This article is a discipline-defining agenda. It addresses the oversight of Geographies of race in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and explores geography’s potential contributions to the unfolding debates around race, decolonisation, and whiteness. Geographies of race remain unmarked and therefore unchallenged within the field of geography in CEE. Consequently, geographers typically consider CEE as peripheral to the global racial discourses and possibly post-racial. By drawing on sociological, migration, historical, and anthropological approaches, particularly in Poland, the article emphasises the importance of geography in discussions around race, decolonisation, and whiteness. It considers the appeal of geographies of race to this “peripheral location” to demonstrate a shift in racial and colonial discourses. By bridging interdisciplinary approaches and challenging prevailing discourses, the article aims to broaden the scope of the geographies of race and foster a more inclusive and global understanding of race and colonisation.

Racial discourses and colonial education policy: The discursive construction of education development at a historically white South African university

Motivated by critiques from black students during the protests (2015-2016), I trace continuities between the racialised discourses and knowledge regimes that justified colonial education policies and that of Education Development at a historically white South African university. First, I show how the University of Cape Town’s Humanities Education Development Programme racialised and misrecognised black students, despite attempted reforms. Secondly, I trace the discursive formation of the ED project - from the assimilationist discourse of missionary education; the adapted model of trusteeship; the production of race science during apartheid; to a return to assimilationist discourse via the Cape Liberal tradition during apartheid’s demise. However, after a generation of inferior Banu Education, the attempt to assimilate black students into historically white universities’ curricula was not feasible. Instead, an adapted, remedial model was proposed that became entrenched post-apartheid by a state and HE system that failed to transform its inherited Eurocentric curriculum.

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.

Improving the Lives of People with Sickle Cell Disease: Community Organizations and Epidemiologists Working Together

Abstract: Background: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Sickle Cell Data Collection (SCDC) program comprises multidisciplinary teams, which include community-based organizations. Partnering with community-based organizations (CBOs) is a novel approach to ensure that SCDC data are actionable. Objective: To better understand areas for mutual capacity building, we explored the relationships and dynamics between CBO and data teams within the SCDC program in 10 states. Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with CBO ( n = 13) and SCDC ( n = 10) participants and then categorized and compared text from each interview and across states. Six themes emerged. Lessons Learned: Transparency and trust are essential. Early CBO engagement and leadership are needed for trust and agreed upon priorities. Conclusions: Participants contextualized trust, the most prominent theme, within discussions of racism and health inequities. Relationships between the CBO and data teams bring hard data and human experience together for advocacy, education, improved care, and a platform for the SCD voice.

Visions of degeneracy

Previous research on discourses of gender, sexuality and race in role-playing games (RPGs) finds that they favour a white, heterosexual, cis-male perspective, (re)producing stereotypes that are misogynist, homophobic and racist. This article uses feminist critical discourse analysis to examine a game with a reputation for challenging conventions of the genre and the medium, the fantasy RPG Exalted (2001– ). An analysis of 31 sourcebooks shows how many of the harmful discourses present in wider geek culture are interwoven with progressive ideas in the second edition of Exalted. Specifically, women’s roles are limited to those of virgin, (monstrous) mother or ‘prostitute’; sexual ‘deviance’ is pathologised; and a colonial geopolitics of race, sex and gender is reproduced. Given the importance of gaming culture to contemporary popular culture and politics, the study advocates for ethnographic engagement with actual gameplay to supplement feminist analysis of RPG sourcebooks.

Habermas und Fanon über koloniale Herrschaft

Abstract From a decolonial perspective, Habermas’ theory is seen by many as Eurocentric and in philosophical alliance with colonial rule. In particular, his theory of progress is seen as offensive because it devalues non-Western ways of understanding in comparison to their modern Western counterparts. On the one hand, this is true. On the other hand, Habermas’ actual concept of progress can also be used to formulate a critique of colonialist development imperatives. Moreover, his concept of “systematically distorted communication” can make an interesting contribution to understanding colonial rule: even colonial rule is communicatively mediated, with the constant risk of dissent precariously held in check by racist discourse barriers. Fanon already provides strong starting points for this communication-theoretical view of colonial rule. With him, the decolonial struggles against racist discourse barriers also come into view.

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.

(Un)critical geographies of race: A critical race discourse analysis of an online local history resource

ABSTRACT Websites that provide accounts of local history represent powerful curricular possibilities for K-12 history teachers and those of all ages who engage with historical narratives centered on place. The extent to which, however, such resources furnish explicitly racialized interpretations of place often determines how educators and learners can use them in social studies contexts. In this critical race discourse analysis, we examined the function of race in Wacohistory.org, a local history website comprised of 200 entries. Drawing on critical geographies of race as our theoretical lens, we found that the website de-racialized Waco’s geography and ultimately overlooked how racial power has shaped the history of this city, and we consider specifically what this oversight meant for Black Wacoans. Thus, we argue that Wacohistory.org discounted how race has historically determined placed-based access and experiences for Wacoans. This study offers implications and recommendations that speak to what was lost in failing to racialize a particular online history curriculum, contributing to the literature concerned with race-evasive spatial histories that ultimately thwart meaningful local historical inquiry and the theoretical prospects that critical geographies of race offer social studies.

Living my Latin American influencer dream: How racism and nationality shape Latin American influencers within the US

This paper investigates the intersection of racism, nationality, and the global Latin American influencer dream. It examines the experiences of Latin American influencers in the United States, where pursuing commercial success intersects with cultural and economic aspirations. Additionally, it explores the role of content service organizations in shaping creator culture and the working experiences of Latin American influencers. Despite the global imagination, influencer economies largely remain national, constrained by socio-cultural, linguistic, and regional norms. Drawing from literature on influencer cultures, platform economies, and imaginaries, the study analyzes data from interviews with content service organization executives and influencers, alongside platform analytics and advertising campaigns. The findings elucidate how racial discourses shape and challenge creator cultures, highlighting barriers for Latin American influencers in the US. This research contributes to understanding the social dimensions of creator culture, revealing impediments faced by diasporic influencers.

How Can We Criticize Racism in Japan? Racist Discourse of "Zainichi Special Privileges" as Our Clue

How Can We Criticize Racism in Japan? Racist Discourse of "Zainichi Special Privileges" as Our Clue

The moral accounting of debts: productivity, deservingness and the consensual creation of Chapter XIII bankruptcy

Abstract Chapter XIII’s wage-earner payment plans are now the default form of personal bankruptcy in the USA. During the Great Depression, it was created as a voluntary choice and enacted with unanimous legislative support. Absent conflict between creditors and labor and social reformers, legislators agreed that Chapter XIII was for the benefit of both honorable insolvents and their fair creditors. How did wage-earner payment plans emerge out of a consensual legislative process? Employing a computational abductive approach on a wide range of legislative, media and bankruptcy records, I show that Chapter XIII’s creation was facilitated by a ‘moral accounting’ that, based on their race and gender identities, positively evaluated most White men bankruptcy petitioners as ‘deserving’, even as it recognized occupational variations in their economic ‘productivity’. This study highlights how racial discourses of ‘deservingness’ are central to the construction of credit markets as part of America’s submerged welfare state.

Pecos Bill and the campaign against children’s Comics in Postwar Italy

ABSTRACT This essay studies the case of Pecos Bill: The Legendary Hero of Texas, a western comic published in Italy by Mondadori from 1949 to 1954. I analyze the series in the context of the widespread national campaign against comics and in relation to the cultural politics of Mondadori’s corporate partner Walt Disney. Both Catholic and Leftist critics condemned western fictions because of their violent and sexual content. Debates about children’s magazines and their educational purposes, on the other hand, were minimally concerned with how western narratives represented race, ethnicity, or gender. Pecos Bill was blacklisted,even though Mondadori’s cowboy is a wholesome hero who never fires a gun. Starting from this discrepancy, my analysis sheds light on the contradictions within the campaign against comics and explores issues of identity politics in Italian children’s readings. I demonstrate that representations of Mexican and African characters, as well as of whiteness and of American history, promoted the same anti-leftist and racist discourses of Disney’s western fictions at the time of the Cold War.

People Don’t Give Up!

In 2017 images of demonstrations, riot police, and tanks filled social media worldwide. Most of the videos and media coverage reported on the first wave of #BlackLivesMatter uprisings were catalyzed by police brutality in Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore. In June of that year, similar footage came from Buenaventura, on the Pacific coast of Colombia. This predominantly Afro-descendantpo rt city is responsible for the transit of about 60 percent of the country’s commerce, while unemployment and inequality are rampant, and the infrastructure is on the brink of collapse. The affected local communities responded to these conditions of structural racism with a direct action named Paro Civico: a general strike planned for years by a coalition of grass-rootsAfro-Colombi an organizations demanding clean drinking water, health care, education, and policies to combat drug trafficking-related violence. Resisting police attacks while negotiating with a high-ranked delegation from the Colombian government, the months-long general strike achieved the majority of its goals and, most importantly, galvanized the momentum into the election of one of the movement’s leaders as mayor of Buenaventura. However, the leaders of the Paro Cívico’s Executive Committee have been emphatic in naming this a multiethnic movement and rejecting any specific racial discourses as organizing guiding principles for the direct action. In addition to contextualizing Paro Cívico, this article uses Tianna Paschel’s concept of “organizing while black,” to explain this omission in a racial context determined by the politics of mestizaje in Colombia. It also explains how Paro Cívico strategically exhibited the political power of the communities of the African diaspora without verbalizing it, becoming one of multiple factors that ushered in a new chapter of racial politics in the nation.