Racial Hierarchy Research Articles

Scars of a Colonial History

Central to virtually any indictment of South African literature, its historiography, or otherwise culturally and politically influenced modes of representation persist themes of social, political, and racial inequality. That is not to say that all South African cultural productions revolve around a centrifuge of racially focused social commentary; rather, that when historicizing a work of South African aesthetics such themes inevitably arise because of the nation’s colonial history and the Eurocentrism that have pervaded its modern socio-political foundations. When examining South African aesthetic/cultural representations (in this case, a literary text) it is thus crucial to properly locate the work in as full a historical context as possible. My research therefore aims to link South Africa’s history of colonization with the damaged race relations that ensued in the twentieth century as represented in a prominent work of South African theater: Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold” … And the Boys. My essay traverses the history of British and Dutch colonization in South Africa and seeks therein to register foundations for the Eurocentric, whitewashed ideologies which would eventually translate into official state policy in 1948 and which precipitated the broken race relations that Fugard’s semi-autobiographical play interrogates. I discuss Fugard’s depiction of white privilege while systematically linking such representations back to their colonial foundations, and ultimately assess Fugard’s play as a condemnation of white supremacy and as a plea for the recalibration of prejudiced racial hierarchies.

Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Changing Colonial Racial Hierarchies in International Development

This research examines a shift in international development discourse away from more overtly colonial and abject depictions of people from the Global South toward foregrounding positive portrayals of people from the Global South who are self-reliant and empowered through entrepreneurship and market labor. Through interviews, observations, and content analysis of university-based development programs and development organizations, we examine the racial meaning and consequences of this shift. We argue that this discourse reformulates colonial racial hierarchies in development by suturing racial value to adherence to free market ideals, such as freedom and fulfillment through markets, while legitimizing these changes through affirmations of multiculturalism. This shift in development aligns with a broader context of neoliberal multiculturalism, which has reconfigured racial hierarchies based on adherence to multicultural global citizenship and free market principles. This research illustrates the changing intersections of race, colonialism, neoliberalism, and development and speaks to the importance of universities and development organizations in shaping racial meaning and inequalities in a global context.

Seeing Black America in Iran

Abstract From the 1960s onwards, many Iranians closely followed Black American protests during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the United States. This period proved pivotal for Iranian understandings of race, where intellectuals, revolutionaries, and those in media would use US-centric histories of enslavement, racism, and Black Americans to erase nineteenth-century histories of enslavement and racism in Iran, tacitly displacing the existence of Black Iranians across the national landscape. Black American Muslims, particularly Malcolm X, emerged as the ideal form of Blackness. After the 1979 revolution, non-Black Iranians and the Iranian government would continue this focus on US-based racism through an official narrative that repeatedly defined racism as a US-only problem, ultimately cementing the erasures around histories of enslavement and Black Iranians that began with abolition in 1929. Through an analysis of speeches, memoirs, poetry, newspaper articles, photography, and other illustrated media, this article weaves together vignettes to demonstrate how the pervasiveness of racial hierarchies fashioned around US histories came to shift an Iranian vocabulary and conceptualization of race. This article traces the changes in racial discourse during the 1960s and 1970s, the 1979 revolution, and the Iran-Iraq War from an Iranian perspective.

"redolent of the soil": New Zealand Interior and Landscape Architecture of the 1890s

The 1890s was a period when Pākehā began to strongly identify with New Zealand. There were several reasons for this. By the 1890s a majority of Pākehā had been born in New Zealand, the first generation of Pākehā settlers was passing, the Māori population had dropped, in 1891, to 44,177, and there was a perception by many Pākehā that Māori were a dying race. It was thus considered by many Pākehā that Māori "no longer posed the same threat" as they did during the civil wars, reframing Māori "as a brave and noble race." Smith also writes that "elevating Māori to honorary whites was a further way to render Pākehā superior to white Australians, as well as affirming the long-held belief in a hierarchy of races in which Māori were superior to Aboriginal Australians.

Economies of Difference and Identity-based Content on a Digital Platform: The Case Study of “Emily in Korea” on TikTok

This study presents a conceptualization of identity-based content creation in the digital sphere, examining the cases of two TikTok content creators, Amy and Erin, who leverage their identities to establish distinctive brands. Amy, a white American English teacher in Korea, highlights the differences between her and Korean society in her content about Korea, while Erin, a Korean American, critiques Amy’s content by emphasizing the distinction between her experience as an immigrant and Amy’s experience as a white American. The study explores how the emphasis on self-branding can obscure power dynamics and historical inequalities within identity-based content creation, which inherently reflects geopolitics and racial hierarchy. The research further examines how this type of content creation can serve as a space for the negotiation of power dynamics between dominant and non-dominant identities while also functioning as a means to build a self-brand in the digital content creation field.

Caste and Black intergenerational racial trauma in the United States of America.

The United States (U.S.) racial caste system and White dominance began in slavery, culminating in Black intergenerational racial trauma. Until recently, Black intergenerational racial trauma largely was ignored by family scholars and therapists. Given that Black intergenerational racial trauma is inseparable from racial caste in the United States, it should be regarded as a wider, systemic problem, requiring intervention at the micro (e.g., family) and macro (e.g., society) levels. The U.S. dominant White society's investment in conserving racial caste furthers the ideological (e.g., political) and sentimental (e.g., democratic ideals) nullification of Black intergenerational racial trauma. Therefore, Black intergenerational racial trauma is often disenfranchised and can hamper Black people's experience of racial trauma as a collective. As passive bystanders, family scholars and therapists are co-conspirators in the long, enduring suffering of Black people. As advocates, family scholars and therapists are called upon to name the racial hierarchy in the United States as a caste system and to advance Black humanization. Specifically, Wilkerson's (Caste: The origins of our discontents. Random House, 2020) notion of the U.S. racial hierarchy as a functioning caste system frames the discussion of Black intergenerational racial trauma and includes the following topics: Black racial trauma, disenfranchised Black intergenerational racial trauma, collective Black intergenerational racial trauma, Black intergenerational racial trauma and the U.S. academy (traditionally White institutions of higher learning), history and its impact on Black intergenerational racial trauma, the Black body and racial trauma, intersectionality and the U.S. caste system, and collective hope and resilience.

An equity‐driven ecological model for internationalizing doctoral student research training

AbstractThe global academic community is increasingly connected, which has implications for the internationalization of doctoral education. In our previous work, we presented a theoretical approach to doctoral student research training using an ecological theory that provided considerations for individual and programmatic practice. Though our proposed model for doctoral research training is still relevant and valuable, we recognize there is missing a layer of criticality in that framework that would allow for more nuance in doctoral research preparation for international contexts. In this chapter, we apply an equity‐driven lens to our model that accounts for a critical global perspective that was absent in our previous writing. We argue that power and privilege are inherent in all relational aspects of ecological theories and must be included in doctoral research preparation. Thus, we offer recommendations for addressing these issues for the individual doctoral student as well as the faculty and programs that train them and guide their research endeavors.Practical Takeaways Inequities are ingrained in all aspects of higher education; thus, we must critically examine how we approach research and scholarship through each system in the ecology of doctoral education. Faculty have a responsibility to prepare students to respond to global challenges, including how racial, colonial, political, and economic hierarchies inform current international research practices. We advocate for the application of an equity‐driven lens to an ecological model for doctoral student international research training. We recommend an equity‐driven, global ecological perspective in approaches to doctoral education broadly, including discipline‐specific courses, mentoring relationships, and graduate assistantships.

The genomic footprint of social stratification in admixing American populations.

Cultural and socioeconomic differences stratify human societies and shape their genetic structure beyond the sole effect of geography. Despite mating being limited by sociocultural stratification, most demographic models in population genetics often assume random mating. Taking advantage of the correlation between sociocultural stratification and the proportion of genetic ancestry in admixed populations, we sought to infer the former process in the Americas. To this aim, we define a mating model where the individual proportions of the genome inherited from Native American, European, and sub-Saharan African ancestral populations constrain the mating probabilities through ancestry-related assortative mating and sex bias parameters. We simulate a wide range of admixture scenarios under this model. Then, we train a deep neural network and retrieve good performance in predicting mating parameters from genomic data. Our results show how population stratification, shaped by socially constructed racial and gender hierarchies, has constrained the admixture processes in the Americas since the European colonization and the subsequent Atlantic slave trade.

Embodiment, Plasticity, and the Re/Production of Gender, Sex, and Race in Human Biology

abstract: This article historically situates human biology research by engaging with feminist science and technology scholars to show plasticity, how a key mechanism of embodiment, is used to re/produce sex and gender binaries in anthropological research and beyond. It first defines embodiment and demonstrates its reliance on plasticity and then reviews how and why plasticity has been taken up in human biology research. The article then engages with the works of feminist, trans, and queer scholars who have examined the connections among embodiment, plasticity, and the creation of Western binarized sex and gender. Further, the article presents how the re/production of a sex and gender binary is entwined with the justification of racial hierarchies through plasticity. While deterministic frameworks are often the most criticized in biology for harmful racist and sexist understandings of race and gender, plasticity and gene × environment interaction frameworks are not without fault. Even with large shifts in scientific understanding—in this case, from determinism to plasticity—science, in particular human biology, can still be a tool to create and maintain racist, patriarchal, cis- and heteronormative systems. The author concludes with recommendations and possible pathways forward for embodiment and plasticity research in human biology, suggesting that human biology research should engage with feminist science and technology critiques to be mindful of how our concepts might be re/producing harm.

The Association between State-Level Structural Racism and Alcohol and Tobacco Use Behaviors among a National Probability Sample of Black Americans.

Structural racism is how society maintains and promotes racial hierarchy and discrimination through established and interconnected systems. Structural racism is theorized to promote alcohol and tobacco use, which are risk factors for adverse health and cancer-health outcomes. The current study assesses the association between measures of state-level structural racism and alcohol and tobacco use among a national sample of 1,946 Black Americans. An existing composite index of state-level structural racism including five dimensions (subscales; i.e., residential segregation and employment, economic, incarceration, and educational inequities) was merged with individual-level data from a national sample dataset. Hierarchical linear and logistic regression models, accounting for participant clustering at the state level, assessed associations between structural racism and frequency of alcohol use, frequency of binge drinking, smoking status, and smoking frequency. Two models were estimated for each behavioral outcome, one using the composite structural racism index and one modeling dimensions of structural racism in lieu of the composite measure, each controlling for individual-level covariates. Results indicated positive associations between the incarceration dimension of the structural racism index and binge drinking frequency, smoking status, and smoking frequency. An inverse association was detected between the education dimension and smoking status. Results suggest that state-level structural racism expressed in incarceration disparities, is positively associated with alcohol and tobacco use among Black Americans. Addressing structural racism, particularly in incarceration practices, through multilevel policy and intervention may help to reduce population-wide alcohol and tobacco use behaviors and improve the health outcomes of Black populations.

From “Chinese Colonist” to “Yellow Peril”: Capitalist Racialization in the British Empire

The literature on “racial capitalism” exhibits a tension between the term’s evocative power and its conceptual imprecision. This article navigates this tension by developing the mid-level concept of “capitalist racialization,” which specifies the role of capitalist abstractions in the construction of racial hierarchies. I elaborate this notion around the racialization of Chinese migration in nineteenth-century Southeast Asia. I focalize the figure of the “Chinese colonist” as an index of the capitalist standards by which British observers ordered colonial populations in their reflections on imperial political economy. I argue that the racial stereotype of “the Chinese” as commercial, industrious, and “colonizing” people emerged from the subsumption of colonial land and labor under capital. Their “colonizing” capacity rendered Chinese migrants simultaneously an economic asset to the British Empire and a potential threat to the white world order. “Capitalist racialization” therefore highlights new inroads into the entwined histories of capitalism, racism, and empire.

Coloniality and racialization of informality

This article is inspired by Finn's work which historizes the structure of formal–informal dialectic in Africa, arguing that the origin dates to the colonial era. I extend Finn's argument through the prism of formal–informal as a racialized binary embedded in the coloniality of Africa's socio-spatial policies. Drawing insights from African cities generally and Lagos in particular, I argue that the formal–informal binary has always been a tool of colonial domination, which (re)produces and maintains racial hierarchies and racialized displacement in contemporary times. This provides a useful frame to understand and challenge the hierarchical positioning of informality relative to formality.

Who Is a Refugee in Jordan? Hierarchies and Exclusions in the Refugee Recognition Regime

Abstract This article dissects the refugee recognition regime in Jordan. It argues that refugee recognition, despite being conducted by UNHCR, is a heavily politicized process shaped by intersecting racial and national hierarchies, restrictive government regulations, and UNHCR policies. Despite Jordan hosting the ‘second highest share of refugees per capita in the world’, relatively few protection seekers gain refugee status, and when they do, it is almost always as part of the resettlement process. Many remain asylum seekers for years or decades, while others cannot even register their claim for international protection with UNHCR. This article contributes to refugee studies by demonstrating how UNHCR policies are changing RSD in non-signatory states, the importance of asylum/refugee registration, how state and humanitarian policies lead to some protection seekers being missed in academic analyses, and highlighting the ever-growing gap between the legal and ‘everyday’ uses of the term ‘refugee’.

Unpacking colonialist and racist ideologies in historical German lexicons: A critical analysis of the Afrika Hand-Lexikon (1885) and similar reference books

Abstract This article This article has been adapted from the author’s master’s thesis as part of completion of the European Master in Lexicography (EMLex). delves into the impact of colonialist and racist ideologies as manifested in lexicons, with a special focus on the Afrika Hand-Lexikon (1885) and other lexicons from the German colonialist period (1884–1914). By examining the front matter and selected entries from these lexicons, the article uncovers the origins of racial hierarchies and scrutinizes dehumanization tactics, including the use of animal metaphors. Moreover, the article provides historical context to understand the language and rhetorical devices employed by lexicographers such as Paul Heichen in the Afrika Hand-Lexikon. Additionally, it emphasizes the pivotal role that colonialist ideologies played in influencing the ideologies embraced by the Nazi regime in its war of extermination. Through this analysis, the article sheds light on the historical significance of lexicons in perpetuating and legitimizing derogatory language, while also underscoring their relevance in comprehending the broader socio-political impact of colonialism and racism.

Intersectional highlighting in queer immigrants’ English learning through dating: Dominant ideologies, individual agency, and implications for second language education

Drawing on a combined framework of raciolinguistics, imagined community, and language learner agency, this article presents an ethnographic case study exploring two Chinese queer immigrants’ English learning experiences embedded in dating relationships in Canada. Applying the theoretical construct of “intersectional highlighting”, I scrutinize critical events in which racial hierarchy intersects with gendered sexual values in key participants’ dating stories and further investigate how language leaner agency plays a key role in overcoming ideological constraints in English learning processes. Findings reflect performativity in language learning, highlighting the interplay between micro-level semiotic practices of learners’ doing and talking of identities and macro-level social structures of racial, gender, and sexual ideologies circulated in Canadian society. Further, I argue for a race-centered decolonial approach in the study of racialized queer immigrants’ English learning and propose pedagogical strategies to stimulate language learner agency assisting marginalized learners navigate disadvantageous discourses in and beyond second language classrooms.

Analysing Racial Theories and Hierarchies Existing at the Time of the Asia-Pacific War: Japan’s View of the “South-Sea Islands”

This paper provides an analysis of the racial theories and conceptions prevailing in Japan during the Asia-Pacific War, a period spanning approximately 15 years from the Mukden Incident of 1931 until 1945, highlighting Japan’s imperialism in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. The central theme explores how the Japanese Empire positioned itself in comparison to Western nations and other Asian peoples, leading to the creation of a racial hierarchy with the “Yamato race” at the pinnacle, while categorizing all other Asian ethnicities into different levels below. Particular emphasis is placed on the racial theories and hierarchies constructed around the region back then referred to as “South Sea Islands”, Nan’yō guntō.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, by Heather McGhee.

In her book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, historian Heather McGhee tallies the cost of racism and identifies a zero-sum thinking for everyone who engages in the us-versus-them ideology. Chronicling racial hierarchy dating back to colonial America, McGhee uncovers the impact of racism in almost every societal sector including politics, the economy, education, housing, criminal justice, and climate change. McGhee challenges the fallacy that racial equity is only for people of color, demonstrating that political, socioeconomic, and financial equity for Black and Brown people is equity for all people.

Perforating colour lines: Japan and the problem of race in the ‘non-West’

Abstract Why do racialised states subscribe to the racial international hierarchy? While the critical scholarship in International Relations (IR) has meaningfully unsettled the discipline’s silence on race, it remains bound to the white versus non-white binary, neglecting the transmission and persistence of racism in international politics outside that divide. This article proposes a Lacanian reading of race as constitutive of state subjectivity in the modern world order to address this gap. Focusing on Lacan’s notion of the ‘lack in the Other’, I suggest that non-West/non-white racism is a fantasy that racialised states construct upon encountering the void of ‘Whiteness’ as a master signifier. I argue that racialised states appropriate racism in response to the anxiety induced by the collapse of the Other’s authority. Using the case of Japan’s transition to a modern nation-state, I mobilise the framework to examine Japan’s flirtation with Western racial theories and subsequent attempts to depart from the white racial order by creating its own racial hierarchy.

‘We thought we would be welcomed with open arms’: Holocaust refugees in Dutch Caribbean internment

ABSTRACT The trajectories and experiences of more than a hundred Jewish refugees, who arrived in the Dutch colony of Suriname in December 1942, shed light on the complex connections and tensions between colonial hierarchies, Jewish heritage and antisemitism. Furthermore, De Jong's article highlights the often-overlooked role of the Dutch Caribbean during the Second World War, particularly in providing refuge to Holocaust survivors. The article first delves into the broader colonial context and the sociopolitical dynamics of wartime Suriname. The refugees, initially interned and subjected to restrictive regulations, struggled with their diminished status and the obligatory domestic chores, especially in this colonial setting. De Jong also touches on the complex interplay of racial hierarchies in the colony and antisemitism, shedding light on the refugees’ position within this new environment. Second, De Jong examines intra-Jewish tensions in Suriname through two case studies of conflict: the first surrounding a Purim celebration and the second concerning a request for a separate Ashkenazi service during the High Holidays. These conflicts reveal the challenges faced by the refugees and the established Jewish community in negotiating cultural and religious identities. The disputes were significant but eventually resolved, demonstrating the resilience and flexibility of both groups. The study provides a multifaceted understanding of the refugees’ experiences in Suriname by integrating traditional archival documents with personal narratives and oral histories. It underscores the Dutch Caribbean as a significant site of refuge and Jewish interaction during the Second World War, contributing to broader discussions on colonial spaces in Holocaust Studies

The good, the bad, and the pretty

South Korea has experienced a stark increase in its population’s diversity since the late 1980s. Though South Korean media adopts a superficially positive stance towards migrants, it perpetuates assimilative expectations and emphasises a racial hierarchy. This study critically examines its constructions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ migrants through a thematic analysis of three popular, unscripted South Korean television shows (Abnormal Summit, Love of 7.7 Billion and Hello Counselor). A little over eight hours of content was examined. The episodes indicate a preference for the migrant perceived as intelligent, high-status, likeable, cosmopolitan and ‘deserving’. Notably, migrants also face paradoxical expectations to assimilate, but not to do so ‘too much’ to avoid disrupting ideals of Koreanness, particularly in terms of language proficiency. Linguistic standards for ethnically Korean immigrants indicate even more ambivalent standards, as they are expected to speak as natively as possible while retaining their ‘outsider’ status.