Racial Frame Research Articles

Forms of Dictatorship: Power, Narrative, and Authoritarianism in the Latina/o NovelHispanicism and Early US Literature: Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and the Origins of US National IdentityWhere the New World Is: Literature about the U.S. South at Global Scales

Forms of Dictatorship: Power, Narrative, and Authoritarianism in the Latina/o NovelHispanicism and Early US Literature: Spain, Mexico, Cuba, and the Origins of US National IdentityWhere the New World Is: Literature about the U.S. South at Global Scales

The Whiteness of AI

This paper focuses on the fact that AI is predominantly portrayed as white—in colour, ethnicity, or both. We first illustrate the prevalent Whiteness of real and imagined intelligent machines in four categories: humanoid robots, chatbots and virtual assistants, stock images of AI, and portrayals of AI in film and television. We then offer three interpretations of the Whiteness of AI, drawing on critical race theory, particularly the idea of the White racial frame. First, we examine the extent to which this Whiteness might simply reflect the predominantly White milieus from which these artefacts arise. Second, we argue that to imagine machines that are intelligent, professional, or powerful is to imagine White machines because the White racial frame ascribes these attributes predominantly to White people. Third, we argue that AI racialised as White allows for a full erasure of people of colour from the White utopian imaginary. Finally, we examine potential consequences of the racialisation of AI, arguing it could exacerbate bias and misdirect concern.

Institutional Racism and Black Resistance as Portrayed through Images and Narratives in American Graphic Novels

For centuries, racial discrimination and injustice have resulted in the struggle of African Americans to resist racial inequality. Nevertheless, their struggle has never been easy since racism against African Americans has long been institutionalized. In other words, any kinds of white oppression that marginalized, discriminated, and alienated African Americans have embedded in formal institutions, such as legal, educational, as well as social and political institutions. Accordingly, this study dealt with institutional racism and black resistance in the United States as portrayed through images and narratives in two American graphic novels, Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation and John Lewis’ March: Book Three, which depicted different ways African Americans were oppressed by and resisted against institutionalized racism. This study applied African American criticism to reveal the racism and black resistance portrayed in both graphic novels based on Feagin’s and Better’s theories of systemic racism and institutional racism. As this study focused on graphic novels, the analysis combined both narrative and non-narrative elements in making meaning through cues provided in the graphic novels, including stressed words and facial expressions. This study reveals that the whites have successfully oppressed African Americans for so long due to the white racial frame and its embedded racist ideology that enforced segregation system. Furthermore, the findings suggest that only by empowering themselves, African Americans are able to resist institutionalized racism in order to gain their freedom and equality of rights.

Music Theory and the White Racial Frame

For over twenty years, music theory has tried to diversify with respect to race, yet the field today remains remarkably white, not only in terms of the people who practice music theory but also in the race of the composers and theorists whose work music theory privileges. In this paper, a critical-race examination of the field of music theory, I try to come to terms with why this is so. I posit that there exists a “white racial frame” in music theory that is structural and institutionalized, and that only through a deframing and reframing of this white racial frame will we begin to see positive racial changes in music theory.

Manufacturing American Identity Among Immigrant Workers: Colorado Fuel & Iron Company at the Turn of the 20th Century

AbstractExtant research indicates that white racial framing is utilized to rationalize discrimination, but less work has examined how the white racial frame becomes filtered into institutional settings such as corporations and instilled within its programs and practices. This paper analyzes white racial framing in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company during the early twentieth century as part of its effort to Americanize and control its racially diverse workforce. The company developed a special unit headed by a physician and proponent of eugenics to promote “social betterment.” Our findings show how dominant racial ideologies were embedded within the company's conceptualization of social betterment and how these ideas influenced corporate programs aimed at mollifying the workforce and increasing productivity. We discuss the implications of our research for future analyses of historically embedded racial framing.

Directing “The Performance of Possibilities” Within Whiteness: Casting, Staging, and Interaction in Postperformance Discussions

Postperformance discussions are common, talk-driven events that follow cultural affairs (i.e., lectures, film screenings, theater) and often feature expert panelists in conversation with everyday spectators. This article examines the postperformance discussions held after The Every 28 Hours Plays, a critical performance project focused on anti-Black racism and police brutality, at the predominantly White University of Missouri. Applying discourse analysis to transcripts of the postproduction dialogues, I show how Whiteness challenged some White spectators’ understanding of the pedagogically oriented performance and, as such, I examine how critical performance pedagogues can grapple with the White racial frame of spectatorship to navigate and, potentially, resist it. One way to navigate Whiteness during postperformance discussions is to approach the discussions as performance, using directorial practices like casting, staging, and structured interaction to focus the dialogue on a production’s critical themes.

Black Students’ College Preferences: The Role of the White Racial Frame in Perpetuating Integration

Much research has found support for the perpetuation hypothesis, which predicts that the racial contexts that youth grow up in direct them into analogous situations and institutions in their futures. However, there is a lack of qualitative research that examines how Black students make meaning of their high school racial context when making their college application decisions. Drawing upon interviews and observational data with 48 Black students at two racially diverse high schools, I examine Black students’ college preferences to understand the mechanisms behind integration perpetuation. My data show that Black students vary in how they make meaning of their high school contexts. In contrast to the predictions of the perpetuation hypothesis, some embrace the idea of attending historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs); however, others want to attend diverse colleges like their high schools. I highlight how the white racial frame, embedded within the context of racially diverse high schools, may influence college racial composition preference.

Race and Politics: Predicting Support for 2016 Presidential Primary Candidates among White Americans

Using a sample of up to 859 white Americans in the United States, we examine how racial resentment, perceptions of discrimination toward majority and minority populations, white identity salience, and American identity salience influence support for five candidates running for President in 2016. Using data from the American National Election Studies 2016 Pilot Study, we find that racial resentment influences support for both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, and white identity salience increases support for Trump and Clinton. Although policy issues, including the economy, health care, immigration, and terrorism, also shape attitudes toward political candidates, the effects of racial resentment and white identity salience persist. We conclude by arguing that America continues to be shaped by a white racial frame which views minorities as inferior and that this view is perpetuated through support for candidates who support white supremacy.

What Did the Ghosts Whisper? The Fact of Blackness in Dixa Ramírez’s Colonial Phantoms

In Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the 19th Century to the Present (2018), Dixa Ramírez astutely and compellingly displays the opacity of the Dominican Republic’s history in the context of the Americas. She complicates trite representations of the Dominican Republic as a space that is racially unconscious and reminds us of the overlooked history of free black experience in the eastern side of the island, pressing the reader to face the ghosted racialized realities that these facts highlight. This review considers the epistemological racial contestations formulated in Colonial Phantoms and probes the work’s own silences. Effectively casting doubts on caricaturist representations of Dominican racial negotiations, Colonial Phantoms circumvents structural dimensions of blackness. A cultural framing of racial representation, thus, walks the line of an essentializing biological racial miscegenation frame and collapses the distance between racial positions of nonwhiteness and blackness. This critical review centers the socially constructed experience of black subjects and what Frantz Fanon refers to as the “fact of blackness.” It asks what the ghosts whisper about the racialized structures that distinctly shape the experience of black (not nonwhite) subjects.

The Long Life of US Institutionalized White Supremacist Terror

Emerging as a racial formation under specific socio-historical conditions, white supremacy enacted racial projects that institutionalized terror as a function of its hegemonic rule. From the war capitalism of the settler colonialist period in North America to the racial capitalism of that same time frame, extermination of Native Americans and enslavement of people of African descent became instruments of institutionalized white supremacist terror. From colonial to contemporary times white supremacist savage war and white racial framing of policing reinforced institutionalized white supremacist terror. Nonetheless, resistance to and deconstructions of white supremacy contested and continues to contest those racial projects and that white racial frame.

Media Gatekeeping and Portrayal of Black Men in America

Black men continue to face many challenges in the United States, but their negative portrayal in the media seems to be one of the pervasive challenges facing them. While “occupying” a huge space in the media landscape, one wonders why such a space has not been adequately used to draw public interest/attention to the problems facing Black men. This dilemma with implications for policy outcomes (action/inaction) deserves further theoretical insight. To explore this, the article draws on the critical race theory and white racial frame with the literature on the social construction of Blackness, Black men, and media gatekeeping to advance the argument that the intersections of race, social structures, and media gatekeepers create incentives for the negative portrayal of Black men.

Making a Difference for Whom?

Scholarship on victim advocacy—working with victims of violence—has received little attention outside issues of burnout and vicarious trauma. Conceptually, few studies examine the complex relationship between social identities of workers and clients even though these identities frame all interactions, both consciously and unconsciously. Methodologically, the majority of studies rely upon quantitative data collection. My research breaks new conceptual and methodological ground by using autoethnography to examine the subtle ways racial privilege and oppression frame the relationships workers and clients hold with one another. This work blends the experiential with the critical through problematizing the author's complicity in replicating structures of racial power while working with a client in crisis. The study concludes by calling for a critical examination of social identities in advocacy work.

(En)Countering a White Racial Frame at a Predominantly White Institution: The Case of The African American Student Network

The White racial frame (WRF) is a set of cultural narratives and symbols based in White supremacy and anti-blackness that shape perceptions, ideologies, and emotions in U.S. society. The WRF also shapes individual experiences. Our research team explored how the WRF shaped experiences of Black college students. Adapting consensual qualitative research methods, we analyzed notes from discussions including 752 students participating in the African American Student Network (AFAM) over a twelve-year period. AFAM students encountered the WRF via inferior treatment and internalized racism including colorism, self-hate, and low expectations by educators and others. Colorism seemed especially relevant for women; encountering stereotypes of criminality seemed more prevalent for men. Students countered the WRF by finding safe/communal spaces, re-defining Blackness, re-examining Whiteness, and challenging stereotypes and racist epithets. (En)countering the WRF involved significant cognitive and emotional labor, and counterspaces that affirmed students’ racial and cultural identities were essential for engaging in this work.

Reflections on Teaching The Wire: Developing a Radical Pedagogy

This essay applies the concept of the white racial frame (Feagin 2010) in a critical reflection of the authors use of the popular HBO series The Wire. By positioning the authors subjectivity and experiences teaching the series as a pedagogical tool, the author argues that issues of race, gender, and agency are problematic for classroom use. Despite its popularity in academia students are generally ill-prepared to understand a long history of housing policy and residential segregation to their understanding of The Wire. By default, the white spatial imaginary undermines the critical nature of the show because it only depicts the ghetto where the critical task is to explain the structures that created the modern American ghetto.

"I think that's all a lie…I think It's genocide": Applying a Critical Race Praxis to Youth Perceptions of Flint Water Contamination.

In April 2014, the emergency manager of Flint, Michigan switched the city's water supplier from Detroit's water department to the Flint River. The change in water source resulted in the Flint Water Crisis (FWC) in which lead (Pb) from the city's network of old pipes leached into residents' tap water. Residents of Flint reported concerns about the water to officials; however, the concerns were ignored for more than a year. This study sought to understand how Black youth in Flint conceptualize, interpret, and respond to racism they perceive as part of the normal bureaucracy contributing to the FWC. In 2016, we conducted four community forums with Flint youth aged 13 to 17 years. Sixty-eight youth participated with 93% self-identifying as Black. Participants completed a brief survey. We audio-recorded the forums and transcribed them verbatim. Critical Race Theory (CRT) guided the development of the interview protocol and Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP) served as an interpretive framework during qualitative data analysis. Content analyses were completed using software. Many youth viewed the FWC through a racially conscious frame. They described Flint as a Black city where historical and contemporary forms of racial stratification persist. Some described the contamination of the city's water as a form of genocide targeting Blacks. The findings from this exploratory study suggest some Black youth in Flint have difficulty coping with the FWC. Those who perceive it through a racial frame attribute the crisis to racism. They feel distressed about this and other traumas (eg, failure to address high rates of crime) they perceived as racism-related. Future research should examine the implications for specific mental health outcomes among youth.

Stereotypes, Images, and Inclination to Discriminatory Action: The White Racial Frame in the Practice of School Leadership

Background/ContextMost educators have had little if any preparation in racial literacy, the understanding of social identity related to race and the ability to recognize and negotiate racism. In fact, they may view race as irrelevant. Yet teachers and school leaders hold deep-seated racial ideologies that shape their day-to-day practice and have implications for their students’ learning and success This study presents an analysis of school leadership in three, predominantly African-American schools, and the constructions of race, learning, and leadership.PurposeThe authors draw from Feagin's (2010) conceptual framework, the White racial frame (WRF), to analyze school leadership practice and ways in which racial ideologies emerge and shape leaders’ work with teachers. The WRF consists of five dimensions including racial stereotypes, racial narratives and interpretations, racial images and language accents, racialized emotions, and inclinations to discriminatory action.Context and ParticipantsThis study took place in three schools in two urban districts in western Pennsylvania. Participants included three White school principals, instructional leaders, and several focal teachers.Research Design, Data Collection, and AnalysisThis ethnographic case study is part of a larger study that took place in three predominantly African-American elementary schools. More than 80 hours of school-based observations took place, by shadowing each principal weekly and observing her in various capacities as she supervised teachers, led walkthroughs and faculty meetings, and attended or provided professional development. Additionally, multiple interviews of the school leaders and focal teachers were conducted to surface beliefs about race, knowledge of culture and learning, and knowledge of teachers’ cultural competence. We developed a coding scheme based upon Feagin's (2010) paradigm of the WRF to surface leadership beliefs and practice and used a qualitative data analysis software package to analyze our data.FindingsThe school leaders in this study were deeply rooted within the WRF in their daily leadership routines, perpetuating stereotypes and justifying discriminatory actions in the school, ultimately limiting learning opportunities for children of color and for teachers.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe findings underscore the need for critical knowledge of race and racism to be included in teacher and leadership preparation and professional development. The WRF serves as a fine-grained analytic tool for understanding how racial ideologies surface in leadership. The authors recommend that future research explore the role of school leaders in deframing and reframing the White racial frame and develop the concept of racial literacy in educational contexts.

Performing Race, Speaking the Body

Performing Race, Speaking the Body

#WakeUpAmerica, #IllegalsAreCriminals: the role of the cyber public sphere in the perpetuation of the Latino cyber-moral panic in the US

ABSTRACTThis project explores the influence of discursive interactions on driving moral panics by drawing on the theoretical strands of the public sphere and the white racial frame. We apply the framework of the Latino cyber-moral panic to understand online public discourse surrounding the criminalization of undocumented immigrants in the United States. With an ethnographic approach, we find the Internet becomes a cyber public sphere where user’s interactions reinforce and are reinforced by a white racial frame; this then contributes to the spread of a moral panic, and ultimately reinforces systemic racism. We argue that social media sites and their discursive tools, such as hashtags, comments, and ‘likes,’ help to efficiently and continuously target Latino and undocumented immigrants. By weaving communication literature and critical race scholarship, we conceptualize the Internet as a powerful mechanism for the spread of white supremacy and systemic racism.

Savages and saviours in Icíar Bollaín’s También la lluvia/Even the Rain

Abstract Acclaimed Spanish director Icíar Bollaín’s También la lluvia/Even the Rain (2010) is a fictionalized account of the Cochabamba Water Wars of 2000, whose title alludes to local protestors’ claim that the US-based corporation Bechtel sought to control and tax even the rain water that peasants collected. While También la lluvia may be a thoughtful attempt to denounce the oppression of native peoples, it in fact epitomizes the white saviour trope that has been prevalent in American and British cinema for years. In this study, I argue that the film adheres to what sociologist Joe Feagin calls a ‘white racial frame’ that perpetuates the perceived universality of the white European gaze by depicting fictional filmmakers Costa and Sebastián as ‘white saviour’ figures and indigenous community leader Daniel as a ‘noble savage’. The result is a film made by and for white westerners that replicates traditional western ways of portraying racial and cultural difference.

Health Care Discrimination Experiences of Middle Eastern Women

This study examined the types of discriminatory behaviors that Middle Eastern American (MEA) women experience in health care settings. The framework of systemic racism and more specifically, the white racial frame was used to interpret the data. In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 MEA women to gather insight into their discrimination-related experiences in the U.S. health care system. Participants reported numerous examples of both covert and overt discrimination and anti-Middle Eastern racial framing among physicians. Several themes related to the possible triggers of the discrimination emerged, specifically names, language, and accent; national origin; lack of cultural awareness; and appearance. Findings suggest that discrimination in health care settings greatly affects health outcomes; for instance, in this study, reported lack of compliance with follow-up appointments or medication was a major result of perceived discriminatory attitudes and behaviors of physicians. Culturally sensitive care recommendations and a reframing of health care providers attitudes toward minority patients are needed to address the discriminatory attitudes and behaviors reported in this study. Keywords: Middle Eastern American women, discrimination, health care, systemic racism, white racial frame