Racial Divisions Research Articles

Race, Class, Religion and the Southern Party System: A Field Report from Dixie

AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to provide a contemporary examination of the political party system in the Southern US. In doing so, an assessment is undertaken to determine which cleavage line – race, class, or religion – does the best job of explaining the division between Republicans and Democrats in the region. Using survey research data from the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study three multivariate models are employed to study partisan affiliation, presidential voting, and voting in US Senate elections. The results indicate that race, especially the Black-White dichotomy, is the largest dividing line between the Republican and Democratic Parties in the region. In fact, in terms of party identification race dwarfs the effects of religion and class. As related to presidential and Senate voting behavior race continues to exert a significant influence, even after controlling for partisan identification. Conversely, class and religion produced minimal or no effects in models of vote choice. In conclusion, it would appear that the contemporary Southern political landscape, like its predecessor, continues to be defined by racial divisions.

Divided Landscape: The Visual Culture of Urban Segregation

Segregation remains a feature of life in American cities, despite legislative efforts to end discrimination in housing. The political and economic causes of segregation have been the topic of rigorous scholarship, but segregation is embedded in urban space, as well as in socioeconomic and political systems. This paper discusses the spatial production of segregation in Baltimore by identifying the markers of division that are produced by formal and informal urban design practices. It proposes that a visual culture of segregation reinforces racial division in the urban environment. Focusing specifically on urban form, land use, and iconography, the paper explores how symbols, signs, and ornamentation produced by public and private actors create informal borders that denote distinct racial places in the city. The principle findings are: that urban design elements can maintain and reinforce politically significant sociological divisions, and that visual culture is a significant place-maker in cities.

Knowing Obama: How High School Students of Color Learn About the 44th President

Drawing from a theory of racial literacy and literature on phenomenon after 2008 election, this case study examines how high school students of color have learned about Barack as a racial and political figure. Findings suggest that schools can be unfriendly spaces for learning about these topics, with history and social studies courses failing to address Barack or election in a meaningful way. However, students pick up rich, though scattered, information through out-of-school sources such as family, community, and media. These findings suggest a need for greater consideration of Obama-related content in formal curriculum. The findings also imply that teachers must provide opportunities for students to contextualize, extend, and make sense of their out-of-school learning about race and in academic safety of school environment. Keywords: Race, Barack Obama, Social Studies, Racial Literacy ********** Educators need to know what happens in world of children with whom they work. They need to know universe of their dreams, language with which they skillfully defend themselves from aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of school, and how they know it. (Freire, 2005, p.130, italics added) Few single events in recent decades could match sociopolitical and racial significance of Barack Obama's election in 2008. Obama's resounding victory over Senator John McCain signaled a milestone with national and global import (Smith & King, 2012). In his inaugural speech, himself acknowledged historic significance of his election: This is meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath. (President Obama's Inaugural Address, 2009, January 21) As and others have suggested, 2008 election represented a crucial step toward increased rights and prosperity for people of color in U.S., a step many civil rights leaders feared they might not see in their lifetimes (Bell, 2009; Bobo, 2011). The Post-Racial Era With historic 2008 election came public conversations about extent to which a new era had been inaugurated alongside Obama, a time and place broadly referred to as post-racial America. Bobo (2011) described ethos as one in which American society has genuinely moved beyond race, so much so that we as a nation are now ready to transcend disabling racial divisions of past (p. 14). To cite a few examples of presence of this narrative in popular media, The New York Times ran its November 4th headline, Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls (Nagoumey, 2008), Thomas Friedman (2008) declared that Nov. 4, 2008 officially ended American Civil War, and Time's Joe Klein noted that older forms of racial identity had now been replaced by the celebration of pluralism and cross-racial synergy (cited in Giroux, 2010). And as MSNBC's Chris Mathews infamously reflected after watching Obama's second State of Union address: I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It's interesting: he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and passed so much history, in just a year or two. I mean, it's something we don't even think about. (Calderone, 2010, January 27) Mathews' fraught sentiments, as well as aforementioned headlines and commentary, suggest that nation need not consider Obama's background again. The country has put scar of race behind itself. Despite euphoria in wake of Obama's election, critics sought to counter or temper narrative of post-racialism. …

Immigrants against the state: Yiddish and Italian anarchism in America

From the 1880s through the 1940s, tens of thousands of first- and second-generation immigrants embraced the anarchist cause after arriving on American shores. Kenyon Zimmer explores why these migrants turned to anarchism, and how their adoption of its ideology shaped their identities, experiences, and actions. Zimmer focuses on Italians and Eastern European Jews in San Francisco, New York City, and Paterson, New Jersey. Tracing the movement's changing fortunes from the pre-World War I era through the Spanish Civil War, Zimmer argues that anarchists, opposed to both American and Old World nationalism, severed all attachments to their nations of origin but also resisted assimilation into their host society. Their radical cosmopolitan outlook and identity instead embraced diversity and extended solidarity across national, ethnic, and racial divides. Though ultimately unable to withstand the onslaught of Americanism and other nationalisms, the anarchist movement nonetheless provided a shining example of a transnational collective identity delinked from the nation-state and racial hierarchies.

“Accidental Racist”: Stumbling Through the Motions of Racial Reconciliation

This article examines country star Brad Paisley’s controversial musical dialogue with rapper LL Cool J about race. First, I compare “Accidental Racist” with “Ebony and Ivory” in light of McPhail’s notions of rhetorical coherence and complicity. Second, I interrogate Paisley’s problematic construction of racial division in light of Gresson’s work. Next, I consider how the inclusion of Cool J’s voice at least partly challenges Paisley’s southern White perspective. In light of Hatch’s theory of reconciliation, however, Paisley’s pseudo-apology proves self-serving and Cool J’s forgiveness is cheap. In the end, their contrived country/hip-hop dialogue dances to the tune of neoliberalism and fails to resonate with either of their core audiences, despite their well-meaning intentions.

Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order

This article examines how the racial order in the United States has evolved since the Jim Crow era. Two leading characterizations of the current situation are that we live in a postracial society and that we live in an era best described as the New Jim Crow. We probe the key differences between the Jim Crow racial order and the racial terrain of the current period and come to the conclusion that both claims are inadequate because they are tied to a sanitized and restricted understanding of Jim Crow as a set of legal and state institutions and policies. As such, both frames neglect the economic sphere. This article addresses this silence in the context of black politics. Specifically, we argue that a neoliberal racial order has emerged and that analyses of black politics must attend to the way racial divisions have become magnified in economic policies and civil society. A key claim is that a critical difference between this era and the Jim Crow era is the adoption of neoliberal ideology and support for neoliberal policies by a wide and diverse segment of black elites.

Healing the Racial Divide: A Catholic Racial Justice Framework Inspired by Dr. Arthur Falls by Lincoln Rice (review)

Reviewed by: Healing the Racial Divide: A Catholic Racial Justice Framework Inspired by Dr. Arthur Falls by Lincoln Rice Karen Johnson Healing the Racial Divide: A Catholic Racial Justice Framework Inspired by Dr. Arthur Falls. By Lincoln Rice. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2014. 197 pp. $27.95. If something was going on in Chicago in the mid-twentieth century related to racial justice, chances are, Dr. Arthur Falls knew about it. Arthur Falls was a black Catholic medical doctor who devoted his life to achieving racial justice. He held leadership positions in the Federated Colored Catholics and the Chicago Urban League, advised the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Congress of Racial Equality, and founded the Chicago branch of the Catholic Worker. Arthur and his wife, Lillian Proctor Falls, integrated the all-white suburb of Western [End Page 96] Springs in 1952, and in 1961, after pursuing other avenues to integrate Chicago’s hospitals, Falls and nine other doctors sued corporations owning Chicago hospitals to gain admission to the hospital staffs. Falls practiced a multifaceted approach to racial justice. He believed that interracial partnerships alone would make his beloved Catholic Church – and the nation – live up to the high calling of racial justice. Drawing strength from the church’s teaching on the mystical body of Christ, Falls argued that racism was a sin and that Christians must demonstrate their discipleship by countering the world’s wisdom of segregation and discrimination. Yet he was a member of a church that too often embodied racism, from archbishops to school children. Falls, though, did not give up hope and insisted that African Americans must be militant, partner with white people, and utilize insights from the social sciences to achieve racial justice. Although Falls was a significant figure in his time, today he is relatively unknown. Moral theologian Lincoln Rice, however, has brought Falls back to the table by laying out the chronology of Falls’s life and analyzing Falls’s thought and writing. As a historian, I wanted Rice to embed Falls more in his historical context and account, in particular, for some of Falls’s class biases. Nonetheless, Rice has made a significant contribution. Rice discovered Falls’s six-hundred page typed memoir manuscript, complete with Falls’s hand-written edits, and then filled in other aspects of Falls’s life by relentlessly tracking Falls through numerous archives. Falls’s memoir and Rice’s annotated bibliography of sources related to Falls are great windows into numerous aspects of black Catholic life and will benefit many researchers. Rice’s historical work on Falls is the basis for his theological work of developing a new understanding of Catholic racial justice. Situating himself among both Catholic as well as non-Catholic theologians who draw on African Americans’ experiences to deepen “our comprehension of the mysteries of the Christian faith” and to create effective solutions to achieve racial justice (30), Rice contends that a Catholic theory of racial justice is illegitimate if it does not employ black sources or focus on African Americans’ agency. As Rice shows, however, most Catholic resources for racial justice, including the majority of the bishops’ statements, neither listen to minorities’ voices nor suggest that the oppressed have any role to play in their own liberation. Instead, they mostly imply that white people ought to be more civil in their treatment of African Americans, a solution that depends on moral suasion and hardly accounts for the systemic nature of racism. Rice, based on Falls’s praxis and theology, offers a different answer. [End Page 97] Rice argues that Catholic racial justice ought to be “an organized struggle for the realization of the mystical body of Christ in the context of racial injustice in our society and within our Church” (148). Rice pushes Falls’s analysis of racism further, arguing that the sin of racism is a heresy because it attacks the church’s integrity and compromises the Christian faith. Rice suggests that Catholics concerned with racial justice, and especially the oppressed, ought to model themselves on Falls and remain in the church despite “frustration and constant rejection” (144). The tension can be resolved, Rice says, through active, organized struggle. Rice concludes by...

Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke: At the Roots of the Racial Divide

Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke: At the Roots of the Racial Divide

Trevor Burnard, Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650–1820

This book forum focuses on Trevor Burnard’s book, Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650–1820 (University of Chicago Press, 2015). In his book, Burnard argues that white men did not choose to develop and maintain the plantation system out of virulent racism or sadism, but rather out of economic logic. While plantations required racial divisions to exist, their successes were always measured in gold, rather than skin or blood. Burnard argues that the best example of plantations functioning as intended is not those found in the fractious and poor North American colonies, but those in their booming and integrated commercial hub, Jamaica. Ranging over nearly two centuries, from Guyana to the Chesapeake, the book provides many new insights and offers a revisionary interpretation of the connection between slavery and the American Revolution. The three reviewers in general praise the empirical research that underpins the book but challenge some of the conclusions. They also draw attention to a few points that, in their opinion, the author underemphasized or where he could have expanded his argument, for instance the role of support from the British Empire to the plantation system and the role of religion in shaping attitudes to slavery and the plantation system. In his response, Burnard argues against some of the criticism, such as the impact of the fear of slave revolts. In particular, Burnard stresses that his understanding of slavery in the colonial period of American history is that of an outsider to American politics. As such, he argues, his book does not speak to contemporary concerns about rising evidence of racial hatred.

Listening to the third voices of Pangasinan students: designing and enacting culturally sensitive curriculum

This response builds upon Marie Paz Morales’ “Influence of culture and language sensitive physics on science attitude achievement” by exploring how an expanded understanding of the ubiquitous nature of adolescent literacy practices and identities challenge traditional notions of “in school” and “out of school” cultural spaces. Listening to the “third voices” of adolescents can promote a deeper understanding of the complex literate lives of Pangasinan students and inform both the official and the enacted culturally sensitive curriculum. To hear the literate lives of adolescents is to push back against politically dehumanizing and “de-literacizing” neo-liberal educational policies and practices which privilege a singular, whitewashed view of literacy in order to standardize curriculum and instruction, preserve power in the hands of the powerful, and exacerbate socio-economic, racial, ethnic, and linguistic divisions.

Settler colonialism in Canada and the Métis

Although the literature on settler colonialism intends to identify what is specific about the settler colonial experience, it can also homogenize diverse settler colonial narratives and contexts. In particular, in Canada, discussion of the ‘logic of elimination’ must contend with the discrete experiences of multiple Indigenous groups, including the Métis. This article examines relationships between Métis people and settler colonialism in Canada to distinguish how Métis histories contribute to a broader narrative of settler colonial genocide in Canada. Cast as ‘halfbreeds’ and considered rebels by the newly forming Canadian nation-state, Métis peoples were discouraged from ‘illegitimate breeding’. Moreover, their unique experiences of the residential school system and forced sterilization have heretofore been underexplored in historiographies of genocide and settler colonial elimination in Canada. These social, political and racial divisions in Canada are magnified through genocidal structures and they reach a critical juncture between colonialism and mixed ethnicities. At that juncture, groups like the Métis in Canada are within a metaphorical gap or, more accurately, a jurisdictional gap. Colonial treatment of the Métis demonstrates, in part, the broad reach of colonial control and how uneven it is, often to the detriment of the Métis and Indigenous groups in Canada.

Three Strategies to Foster Diversity in the Food Movement

This commentary explores strategies for coalition-building and reallocating resources across racial divides within alternative food systems. Following analysis of a set of public conversations held in Atlanta, Georgia, in spring 2015, I identify three strategies that may promote greater diversity: (1) the allocation of institutional and academic resources beyond historically privileged spaces; (2) the development of a shared historical context for framing and shaping collaborative, antiracist work; and (3) the commitment of policy-makers to execute the ideas of food producers. These strategies, pursued in conjunction, may aid in addressing regional and neighborhood discrepancies in representation in food system leadership and also foster a stronger, antiracist alternative food system. See the press release for this article.

The Dynamics of Race and Ethnicity in the US Coal Industry

AbstractBy the turn of the twenty-first century, scholars had transformed our understanding of class, race, and ethnicity in the rise and demise of the US coal industry. Under the twin impact of the modern Black Freedom Movement and the rise of the New Labor History, studies of American labor and race relations fragmented during the late twentieth century. Following the lead of pioneering labor historian Herbert Gutman, one influential body of scholarship resuscitated the early history of the United Mine Workers of America and accented the emergence of remarkable forms of labor solidarity across the color line during the industrial era. Before this scholarship could gain a firm footing in the historiography of labor and working-class history, however, social activist and labor scholar Herbert Hill forcefully argued that emerging emphases on interracial working-class cooperation downplayed the persistence of racial divisions even during the most promising episodes of labor unity. In significant ways, the Hill−Gutman debate fueled the florescence of whiteness studies and the myriad ways that both capital and labor benefitted from a racially stratified workforce. Based upon this rapidly expanding historiography of coalminers in America, this essay explores how the overlapping experiences of black and white miners established the foundation for modes of cooperation as well as conflict, but the persistence of white supremacist ideology and social practices repeatedly undermined sometimes heroic movements to bridge the chasm between black and white workers.

Ready-to-wear sexual politics: The semiotics of visibility on Wits Pride T-shirts

The aim of this article is to investigate T-shirts as semiotic tools of the politics of visibility, showing which role these sartorial artefacts may play in competing struggles for recognition in which gender and sexuality intersect with other axes of social categorisations. Drawing on a queer multimodal approach, the article offers an analysis of the four promotional T-shirts that were distributed each year between 2011 and 2014 by the Transformation and Employment Equity Office at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, in the context of the annual Pride parade on campus. Our main argument is that changes over time in the design of Wits Pride T-shirts represent a shift both in what is claimed to be the main goal of campus sexual politics and in the proposed means to achieve such a goal. If one were to imagine that each T-shirt is a corporeal embodiment of Wits Pride, then this body has changed considerably in four years: from a gay man who is (supposedly) ashamed of voicing his sexual identity; into a camp though masculine figure that loudly urges to counter racial division within same-sex desire; into a more multifaceted individual who proudly carries their gender and sexual uniqueness; and finally, into an activist who, in tension with the complex intersections that underpin discrimination, is perhaps a little reluctant to foreground gender and sexuality at all.

Building Suburban Dreams: School District Secession and Mayoral Control in Suburban Utah

Background/ContextMayoral control of large city school districts has become the newest form of school district reorganization. Researchers have documented how real and perceived crises have propelled mayors in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington DC, amongst others, to redefine the role of board governance by situating the operations of districts within mayoral governance portfolios. There is little research examining the role of suburban mayors in suburban school district secession movements. Demographic changes as well as tensions around funding and programs have prompted splits in suburban school districts within metropolitan regions that warrant study.PurposeThis article examines the educational, demographic, and political dynamics that fueled the contest between suburban city mayors and school district leadership leading to the secession and fragmentation of the largest suburban school district in Utah. The authors sought to understand how this mayoral led secession activity interfaced with mayoral control activities in big cities. We also aimed to identify the parallels and departures that existed in the sources of tension in this case of suburban school district division and historic patterns of suburban political fragmentation, particularly, suburban cities’ creation of autonomous jurisdictions separating them legally and institutionally from urban school districts as a means of assuring clear racial divisions.Population/ParticipantsThe research participants included four mayors, two assistant mayors, four school district transition team members, six teachers as well as two school district administrators. Six focus groups comprised of four to six parents also participated.Research DesignThis study employed qualitative research methods as well as descriptive statistical data analysis. The researchers interviewed mayors as well as parent and community focus groups. Newspaper media pertaining to the events were collected and analyzed as triangulating data. The researchers also analyzed census data using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software.Findings/ResultsThe authors found that rapid demographic and financial shifts in school districts shared by multiple suburban cities can catalyze mayors to organize and act aggressively to split existing school districts. Strong city mayors were a key force propelling the modification of district governance structures through heightening the prominence of city borders and local control, even when the threats were neighboring middle-class cities composed of white residents. Mayors moved the region's political and educational dynamics one step closer to a mayoral control governance structure. The political, demographic, and economic relationships underlying these scenarios positioned suburban school district administration with few options in which to respond.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe authors conclude that these practices of division and appropriation by cities and their leadership will only diminish democratic processes of school governance and exacerbate social-class and racial segregation across suburban school districts over time. The authors recommend that regionally based governance bodies be formed that help maintain a regional perspective to educational policy.

Faith-Based Organizations: A Vehicle for Cross-Cultural Relationship Building

Faith-based organizations are making great strides addressing racial, ethnic, and religious divides in the United States through generating bridging social capital, or relationships between people who differ on a social dimension. Although we know these organizations are successful at making these connections, we know little about the context and process in which these cross-cultural relationships develop. In a case study of a faith-based, social action organization in Detroit, I find four practices that facilitate cross-cultural relationships. I suggest that these practices can be used as a “toolkit” for social workers to use in multicultural organizations to facilitate positive relationship building.

Congregational Size and Attitudes towards Racial Inequality among Church Attendees in America.

Research suggests that congregational characteristics are associated with the racial attitudes of American churchgoers. This study examines the relationship between congregational size and beliefs about the Black/White socioeconomic gap among religious adherents.MethodDrawing upon data from the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study, we fit binary logistic regression models to estimate the association between congregational size and Americans’ explanations of Black/White economic inequality.ResultsFindings reveal that attendees of larger congregations are less likely than attendees of smaller congregations to explain racial inequality as the result of the racial discrimination. The likelihood of explaining racial inequality in terms of personal motivation does not vary by congregation size.ConclusionDespite the growing diversity in larger congregations in America, such congregations may steer attendees’ views about racial inequality away from systemic/structural factors, which may attenuate the ability of such congregations to bridge racial divisions.

New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World, 1649–1849 by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon (review)

Elizabeth Maddock Dillon. New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the World, 1649-1849. New Americanists Series. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 354. $26.95. From London's teeming playhouses to Kingston's sugar cane plantations, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon's New World Drama takes readers on circumatlantic journey through the long eighteenth century in search of new publics. She locates these emergent communities in lively sites of representation and embodiment where identities (both indigenous and non-native) were staged, negotiated, and revised. As Dillon writes, performative provided space for exercising popular sovereignty within a new world system--one in which colonialism and capitalism structured new relations of belonging and nonbelonging across disparate and distal sites around the Atlantic (15). At once both people and material place, Dillons notion of replaces the traditional public sphere, which she argues remains doubly limited by the geographical boundaries of nation-states and the varied literacies of language-bound print cultures. The performative commons, in contrast, acknowledges in its relative fluidity and porousness the diversity of peoples, ideologies, and systems inherent in formations, though it is also capable of disenfranchising or erasing undesirable groups and ideas. Commons often developed in outdoor spaces where publics assembled (to participate in Jamaican Jonkonnu revelries in Kingston or witness Charles II's execution in front of Whitehall's Banqueting House, to cite two examples); however, New World Drama continuously returns to the theater, where actors and audiences alike tested wealth of identities. Central to Dillon's process of commoning are her affiliated notions of colonial and Colonial relation describes the various networked connections between the territories and locations of European political and economic dominance, particularly metropolitan London. Rather than flowing in single direction from Europe to the colonies, the relation refers to assemblage of connections that shapes peoples and polities around the littoral (including the metropole) in the form of modernity (31). According to Dillon, relations between the metropole and the colonies depended on the establishing of intimate distance. Colonials endeavored to maintain and express their intimate ties to European culture, politics, and society, despite being separated from them by an ocean's distance. This claim of intimacy operated concurrently with collective and repeated assertion that vast cultural (if not biological) distance separated [European colonials] from the individuals with whom they shared the intimacies of daily life and physical habitation in the colony, particularly Native Americans and New World Africans (16). Moreover, the creation of performative and popular sovereignty within the world, Dillon argues, necessitated paradoxical process of perceiving and erasing racialized bodies. The health of British enterprises could be measured in the quantities of laborers needed to build infrastructures, harvest and transport goods, and support the lives of colonialists. A swelling population of slaves, then, signaled prosperity. However, in order to sustain the fledgling notion of English liberty, people of color also had to be expunged from the public landscape; indigenous populations in particular were physically displaced or hidden from view. Dillon suggests throughout the book that efforts to distance, erase, or negate the presence of people of color in were rarely complete; indeed, she details the creole operating in Charleston and the existence of an impossible commons in Kingston (a location that encouraged un-commoning through its manifold economic, social, and racial divisions and yet provided singular site of dissensus for its inhabitants). …

Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide

Journal Article Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide Get access Joe T. Darden and Richard W. Thomas. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. xvi, 346 pp. Paper, $29.95.) Journal of American History, Volume 102, Issue 1, June 2015, Pages 305–306, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav256 Published: 01 June 2015

Exploring the Racial Divide in Education and the Labor Market through Evidence from Interracial Families.

We examine gaps between minorities and whites in education and labor market outcomes, controlling for many covariates including maternal race. Identification comes from different reported races within the family. Estimates show two distinct patterns. First, there are no significant differences in outcomes between black and white males with white mothers. Second, large differences persist between these groups and black males with black mothers. The patterns are insensitive to alternative measures of own race and school fixed effects. Our results suggest that discrimination is not occurring on the basis of child skin color but through mother-child channels such as dialect or parenting practices.