Racial Labeling Research Articles

Second-generation African college students and the American ethnoracial pentagon: self-identification, racial labeling and the contouring of group boundaries

ABSTRACTIn the United States, the ‘ethnoracial pentagon’ has become a major tool to define identity. Its normative aspect contributes to the process of categorizing the social sphere into a fixed number of categories notwithstanding the tensions it triggers. Based on a qualitative study and in-depth interviews, this article focuses on how second-generation African college students interpret their racial and ethnic identities and navigate the American ethnoracial pentagon on campus. This article suggests that the norms and ambivalence of the ethnoracial pentagon incite the New African Diaspora to develop identification strategies as a way to distance themselves from stigmatized racial identities.

Note from the Editors

OHQ vol. 120, no. 4 356 © 2019 Oregon Historical Society Note from the Editors THE PRIMARY GOAL of this issue is to help readers understand White supremacy — what it means, what it has meant, and how it has presented itself in Oregon history. White supremacy is not just the Klu Klux Klan donning robes or burning crosses, but it can be. It is not just an individual act of racial discrimination, although it can be that, too. White supremacy is a collective set of codes, spoken and unspoken, explicit and implied, that society enforces through its institutions, governments, and legal structures in order to keep those deemed as White on top and every other racial group below them — with specific emphasis, in the United States, on keeping Black people at the bottom. White supremacy is a system by which American society was initially, and continues to be, organized. Social organizing systems are imperceptible . They make a certain way of doing things seem fundamental, thereby normalizing that practice. Historical methodologies that trace change, continuities , turning points, and flash points are important tools that historians use to make sense of historical phenomena that otherwise are difficult to articulate. The authors of the articles and essays in this special issue make use of these methods to understand Oregon’s history of White supremacy, its manifestation in everyday life, and the ways people have resisted it. This historical investigation was prompted by current events. On May 26, 2017, a White man verbally attacked two young women, one wearing a hijab, on the light-rail system in Portland, Oregon. Three men intervened, and the attacker killed Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai-Meche, while severely injuring Micah Fletcher.1 Shortly thereafter, the Oregon Historical Quarterly’s (OHQ) Editorial Advisory Board gathered for its semiannual meeting, where board member Dr. Carmen Thompson suggested that, as a scholarly publication housed in the state’s historical society, OHQ could offer a complex, contextualized investigation of the history of White supremacy in our state. All agreed that the effort would be worthwhile. The ensuing work engaged dozens of scholars and community leaders and resulted from collaborative decision-making among the journal’s editorial staff and guest editors, Thompson and Dr. Darrell Millner. Over a dozen authors drew on lifetimes by Carmen P. Thompson Thompson, Note from the Editors 357 of scholarship and spent over a year writing, revising, and responding to editorial suggestions, fact-checking questions, and layout drafts. This special issue is not neutral on the subject of White supremacy. It does not put blame onto readers who are labeled as “White,” but it is meant as a call to self-reflection. Millner, in one of our editorial meetings, put it best when he said: “We are not responsible for the past, but we are responsible for our relationship to the past.” We challenge all readers to look both inward and outward at the legacies and vestiges of what racial labeling has meant, and continues to mean, for people who are not White and for those who are. History, as revealed in this issue, demonstrates that White supremacy is subtle. It is historical, it is organic, and it is alive and well in the twenty-first century. In America, being White has long been the standard, the norm, the universal image and framework through which the nation’s institutions have been conceptualized. Conversely, those who are not White know and sense that the perspectives of Whites are the standard. In the same way, someone with a disability knows that the world is designed around people with a certain ability, or women know that our society offers greater opportunity for people who are labeled as male, or someone who is not heterosexual knows that heterosexuality is assumed. It is the same way with White skin and supremacy in America. With this in mind, the editors and staff of this special issue of OHQ ask you, as you partake of this scholarship on Oregon’s White supremacist history, to keep an open mind. 1. See Jim Ryan, “2 killed in stabbing on MAX train in Northeast Portland as man directs slurs at Muslim women, police say,” Oregonian, May 26, 2017, updated...

Resolving racial ambiguity in social interactions

People take longer to categorize racially ambiguous individuals, but does this perceptual complexity also affect social interactions? In Study 1, White participants interacted with a racially ambiguous confederate who was either labeled as biracial Black/White, monoracial Black, or given no racial label. White participants in the biracial condition were significantly less cognitively depleted, less essentialist in their thoughts about race, and exhibited more accurate face memory for their partners than when partner race remained unspecified or was labeled as monoracial Black. Confederate reports and nonverbal behavior in the biracial condition were also more positive. In Study 2, White participants perceived more similarity with a biracial Black/White labeled interaction partner compared to a Black-specified or race-unspecified partner, highlighting for the first time how racial ambiguity and racial labeling affect behavioral outcomes in social interactions.

“So What's the Difference?” Talking About Race With Refugee Children in the English Language Learner Classroom

This study examines how an English language learner (ELL) educator negotiated conversations about the intersectional nature of race in an elementaryELLclassroom using a critical literacy framework. Few studies examine the ways in which teachers of young children negotiate conversations about the complexities of race with their students. Even fewer address the way in which African refugee children can explore the contested nature of racial labeling as a part of language instruction in the classroom. The students in this study experienced a history of persecution and displacement in Somalia in the 1990s. Their experiences in Somalia, relocation to refugee camps in Kenya, and finally relocation to the United States exposed their families to the very real impact of static and stereotypical notions of race. Through the lens of critical literacy, classroom interactions and activities are analyzed through one cycle of literacy events in anELLclassroom. Findings show thatELLeducators can explore the contested nature of racial identities in ways that support and enhance language instruction. Findings also highlight the complexities of immigrant and refugee identity positions, even among members of the same group.

The Role of Gender, Class, and Religion in Biracial Americans’ Racial Labeling Decisions

Racial attachments are understood to be socially constructed and endogenous to gender, socioeconomic, and religious identities. Yet we know surprisingly little about the effect of such identities on the particular racial labels that individuals self-select. In this article, I investigate how social identities shape the racial labels chosen by biracial individuals in the United States, a rapidly growing population who have multiple labeling options. Examining national surveys of more than 37,000 respondents of Latino-white, Asian-white, and black-white parentage, I disentangle how gender, socioeconomic status, and religious identity influence racial labeling decisions. Across biracial subgroups and net of all other influences, economic affluence and Jewish identity predict whiter self-identification, whereas belonging to a religion more commonly associated with racial minorities is associated with a minority identification. Gender, however, is the single best predictor of identification, with biracial women markedly more likely than biracial men to identify as multiracial. These findings help us better understand the contextual nature of racial identification and the processes via which social identities interact with racial meanings in the United States.

Black and White, or Shades of Gray? Racial Labeling of Barack Obama Predicts Implicit Race Perception

The present research capitalized on the prominence and multiracial heritage of U.S. 2008 presidential election candidate Barack Obama to examine whether individual differences in classifying him as Black or as multiracial corresponded to differences in implicit perception of race. This research used a newly developed task (Sedlins, Malahy, & Shoda, 2010) with digitally morphed mixed-race faces to assess implicit race perception. Participants completed this task four times before and one time after the election. We found that people who labeled Obama as Black implicitly perceived race as more categorical than those who labeled Obama as multiracial. This finding adds to the growing literature on multiracial perception by demonstrating a relationship between the explicit use of multiracial and monoracial race classification and implicit race perception. The results suggest potential implications for governmental, educational, and judiciary usage of racial categories.

Multiracial versus Collective Black Categories

Current census debates in Brazil surrounding Brazilian race categories center on two contrasting proposals: the adoption of the multiracial moreno term vs. the use of the collective black classification negro. Those proposing the former base their argument on the right to self-classify according to one’s own sense of identity. Proponents of the negro category contend that it would be most efficient for redressing racial discrimination. We examine the meaning and saliency of these categories and explore the possible consequences of their adoption. Using national survey data, we demonstrate how education, age, color, sex and local racial composition structure the choices of moreno and negro over official census terms. Findings include a negative correlation between education and the choice of moreno, while the opposite is true for negro. In addition, an age effect on both categories suggests a popular shift in racial labeling away from official census terms. We note that similar issues structure current census debates in the USA.

Interracial Families and the Racial Identification of Mixed- Race Children: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

In this article, a nationally-representative sample of kindergarten-aged children is used from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to explore the structure of parental racial designation of mixed-race children. The variation in these parental designations of a variety of mixed-race children is described. Parental racial designations in the three most common majority-minority interracial couplings - White/Hispanic, Black/White and Asian/White - are predicted using multinomial logistic regression models. The results may indicate a movement by the parents of these multiracial children away from minority status through racial labeling and towards multiracial and White - movements that are predicated upon gender, class and context. Critical discussions of the implications of these results as well as directions for future research are offered.

Psychodynamic Speculations on Derogatory Names for Blacks

The phenomenon of linguistic racism is explored through the application of the psychoanalytic theory of Joel Kovel's White Racism: A Psychohistory and the data of such analytic explorers as Kubie, Pinderhughes, Hamilton, and Grier and Cobbs. The psychodynamics of racism are related to the psychosexual development of the child and particularly to that phase encom passing toilet training with its conflicts, fears, and fan tasies. It is demonstrated that these psychological phenomena are corroborated by the sociolinguistic phenomenon of racial labeling. That is, each of the seventy-odd derogatory names for Blacks—e.g., nigger, boogie, etc.—embodies one or more of the three un conscious fantasies that Kovel believes Whites project: Blacks are bestial, sexual, and fecal. The three large groups are subdivided on the basis of allied characteristics, and each is then linked to the underly ing psychodynamic. The result is a further illumination of the phenomenon of racial labeling and of the power of the unconscious to determine human behavior.

Racial self-identification and self-concept by means of unobtrusive measures.

Summary The relationship between self-designated racial labeling and indirect assessment of self-esteem was investigated through the use of unobtrusive measures. Archival data were collected from the 1971–1973 tenant files of a low rent public housing authority in the state of Florida, U.S.A. Usable data were obtained from 145 tenants who identified themselves as either black, colored, or Negro. On the basis of univariate and multivariate analysis, it was concluded, as predicted, that tenants who identified themselves as “black” differed from those using the term “Negro” or “colored” on a number of dimensions including age, earned income, employment, and reliance on welfare payments.

Legislative Attempts at “Racial Labeling” of Blood

Legislative Attempts at “Racial Labeling” of Blood