Racial Privilege Research Articles

The property functions of whiteness and Swedishness – a case study of race reputation and status in urban education

ABSTRACT This paper examines the property functions of whiteness in urban educational practices in Sweden. Whiteness can be understood as racial privilege and racialized knowledge. Cheryl Harris’ theory on whiteness as property is applied in order to discuss critical incidences in the pedagogical discourse in which whiteness functions as a form of property in terms of reputation and status related to Swedishness and the right to use and enjoy public spaces. The analysis is drawn from ethnographic data from a study of ninth grade students and teachers at an urban compulsory school in Sweden. The results show that the status of Swedish is racialized and remains elusive to students of colour, whereby entitlements to take part in, use and enjoy Swedish society are truncated by the premise of white normativity.

Colorblind Racial Ideology Is Associated with the Use of Race in Medical Decision‐Making

Research ObjectiveColorblindness is an ideology or worldview that minimizes the role of systemic racism in shaping outcomes for people of color and attributes racial disparities to the bad choices and poor behavior of racial minorities. Physicians who adhere to a color‐blind ideology may be less likely to critically interrogate the role of racism in shaping health outcomes, and, therefore, less likely to challenge race‐based treatment guidelines. The purpose of this study is to determine if colorblindness is associated with the use race in medical decision‐making.Study DesignThis is a cross‐sectional analysis of survey data. Our online survey included demographic questions and two validated surveys: the Color‐blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) and the Racial Attributes in Clinical Evaluation (RACE) scale. CoBRAS measures colorblindness using three continuous subscales to measure respondents' unawareness of (1) racial privilege (scored 7–42); (2) institutional discrimination (scored 7–42) and blatant racial issues (scored 7–36). Higher scores indicate a lack of awareness and thus higher levels of colorblindness. The RACE scale (scored 0–28) was used to determine the extent to which physicians used race in medical management, with a higher score indicating a greater use of race. Multivariate regression analyses were used to assess the relationship between a color‐blind racial ideology and the use of race in medical decision making.Population StudiedIn September 2019, the survey was sent to the 2039 members of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians (MAFP). MAFP membership includes active and retired family medicine physicians, family medicine residents, medical students and “other members” (honorary, inactive and supporting members). Only family medicine physicians and residents completed the survey.Principal FindingsOur response rate was 14% (267/2039). Higher CoBRAS scores were associated with an increased use of race (β = 0.05, p < 0.01), after controlling for physician age, gender, race, location of training and practice characteristics. Of the three CoBRAS subscales, only unawareness of institutional discrimination was significantly associated with an increased use of race (β = 0.18, p = 0.01), after controlling for the aforementioned covariates. Additionally, physicians under 40 years of age, who worked in urban clinics, or had a clinic population consisting of at least 70% racial/ethnic minorities were significantly less likely to use race in their treatment decisions than physicians who were 40 years of age and older, worked in rural clinics, or had a clinic a population consisting of less than 30% racial/ethnic minorities, respectively.ConclusionsPhysicians who adhere to a color‐blind racial ideology, particularly those who deny institutional racism, are more likely to use race in their screening and treatment decisions.Implications for Policy or PracticeIn July 2020, American Academy of Family Physicians adopted a policy advising against the use of race in medical decision‐making. As the use of race may be due to colorblind racial ideology, and therefore due to a poor understanding of how systemic racism affects health, more physician education about racism as a health risk is needed. Additional research is also needed to evaluate physician motivations and beliefs as it relates to race‐based medical guidelines and policies.Primary Funding SourceMinnesota Academy of Family Physicians.

Taming and Training Greek “Peasant Girls” and the Gendered Politics of Whiteness in Postwar Canada: Canadian Bureaucrats and Immigrant Domestics, 1950s–1960s

Drawing on the voluminous government records as well as selective interviews in a large oral history archive created over several years, this article explores Canada’s recruitment of Greek female domestics in the 1950s and early 1960s within the context of the feminist scholarship on female labour schemes as well as more recent whiteness literature on the in-between racial status of peripheral Europeans. In considering the contradictory features of a large but little-known labour scheme through which more than ten thousand Greek women arrived, many of them before their families, it documents the role of the bureaucrats – who envisioned the domestics’ transformation into models of modern domesticity while portraying them as victims of their patriarchal communities and manipulators of Canadian immigration policy – and that of the women who negotiated various challenges. To account for the scheme’s remarkable longevity, a key argument probes the mix of factors that repositioned a traditionally non-preferred Southern European group of women into a desirable white source of immigrant labour and future Canadian motherhood. Ultimately, Greek women enjoyed a racial privilege and mobility not afforded to later arriving women from the Caribbean and Philippines.

Revisiting the Wages of Burman-Ness: Contradictions of Privilege in Myanmar

ABSTRACT Myanmar’s much lauded but short-lived transition to a liberal capitalist order was marked by an upsurge in Islamophobia, anti-Muslim riots and the violent expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into Bangladesh. Amid this conflagration, debates over ethnic inclusion, privilege and nationalism were prominent. Yet within these debates, even seemingly antagonistic positions incorporated the class-blindness characteristic of US liberal white privilege theory. In this article, we engage these debates by recalling an earlier radical theorisation of racial privilege that later liberal conceptions went on to displace. Taking capitalist class relations seriously, we argue that, for the poor Burman, ethnic privilege has been deeply ambiguous and ultimately harmful. Burman supremacy, in short, has served as ideological-material scaffolding for the enduring subjugation of the Burman proletariat itself. In order to elaborate our argument, we tell a critical history of Burman chauvinism in Myanmar – a history that reveals “Burman-ness” as a sign not simply of ethnic/racial privilege, but of class privilege as well.

A Pilot Evaluation of a Social Justice and Race Equity Training for Volunteer Mentors.

Mentor training on cultural humility is an area of needed support in formal youth mentoring relationships. This pilot study used an experimental design to examine the role of a social justice and race equity training on volunteer mentors' cognitive and affective outcomes related to cultural humility in mentoring. The sample included 99 volunteer mentors paired with adolescent mentees in an established formal mentoring program. Mentors predominantly identified as White (89%), and the majority (72%) were paired with youth of color. Participants were randomly assigned to either the training or control condition. Findings from intention-to-treat analyses indicated that training group participants (n=49) exhibited greater increases in self-efficacy to provide racial/ethnic support over time than participants in the control group (n=50). As-treated analyses indicated that training attendees (n=23) exhibited greater increases in self-efficacy to provide racial/ethnic support over time than participants who did not attend the training (n=76). Results indicated no significant changes over time in participants' training content knowledge, awareness of racial privilege, ethnocultural empathy, or social justice interest and behavioral intentions. Analyses also indicated an attendance bias within the training condition, such that mentors who attended the training reported significantly more awareness of racial privilege, social justice interest, and social justice behavioral intentions compared to training condition mentors who were invited but did not attend the training. Implications for training volunteer mentors within formal mentoring programs are discussed.

Girls Gone Fundamentalist: Feminine Appeals of White Christian Nationalism

GirlDefined Ministries is a flourishing multiplatform purity ministry developed by Texan sisters Kristen Clark and Bethany Beal. Clark and Beal’s goal for GirlDefined Ministries is to develop a sisterhood that encourages women and girls to find their identity in what they imagine as God’s design for femininity. Analyzing this discourse, we demonstrate how it mobilizes White supremacist strategies that have long nationalist histories within White Christian rhetoric in the United States. Moreover, we demonstrate how these strategies manifest in discourse through a particularly patriarchal version of femininity—thus, the sexism we identify in GirlDefined Ministries reinforces racial privilege for White people. Ultimately, we illustrate how this ministry utilizes rhetorical styles that first draw girls and women into an identity we describe as “pure White womanhood” and then deploy this identity on the front lines of the Christian culture wars.

Responsible Church Leaders Should Be Educating Their Congregations About Racism and Serving the Community Concerning the Black Lives Matter movement.

As our society wrestles with systemic racism, it is imperative that houses of prayer undergo the same reflection. African-Americans have been disappointed with majority Caucasian congregation church leaders who have the capacity to change minds and attitudes during this time of national reckoning over race but are not engaging their worshipers with honest educational conversations about social justice, race, and police brutality. Black lives matter. This is an obvious truth considering God's love for all God's children. When Black lives are systemically devalued by society, our outrage justifiably insists that attention be focused on Black lives. When a church claims boldly “Black Lives Matter” and attempts to educate their churchgoers about the societal and subtle ills of racial profiling, microaggressions, and privilege at this moment, it chooses not to be silent about a racial injustice for those in need. The paper explores the importance of this topic through current event literature.

Historical Redlining and Resident Exposure to COVID-19: A Study of New York City.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been reported to disproportionately impact racial/ethnic minorities in the USA, both in terms of infections and deaths. This racial disparity in the COVID-19 outcomes may result from the segregation of minorities in neighborhoods with health-compromising conditions. We, thus, anticipate that neighborhoods would be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 if they are of present-day economic and racial disadvantage and were redlined historically. To test this expectation, we examined the change of both confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths from April to July, 2020, in zip code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) in the New York City using multilevel regression analysis. The results indicate that ZCTAs with a higher proportion of black and Hispanic populations are associated with a higher percentage of COVID-19 infection. Historically low-graded neighborhoods show a higher risk for COVID-19 infection, even for ZCTAs with present-day economic and racial privilege. These associations change over time as the pandemic unfolds. Racial/ethnic minorities are bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic’s health impact. The current evidence shows that the pre-existing social structure in the form of racial residential segregation could be partially responsible for the disparities observed, highlighting an urgent need to stress historical segregation and to build a less segregated and more equal society.

The truly advantaged: racial inequalities of educational opportunities among the privileged in the United States

This article pinpoints the mathematic performance gaps among high-socioeconomic background (SES) students from different racial groups in the United States. By doing so, it sheds light on how racial and socioeconomic privilege intersects thus creating different educational outcomes among high-SES children. In short, it illuminates who are the truly advantaged in the American educational system. Taken together, the results suggest that there are substantial racial performance gaps among high-SES children. First, white and Asian privileged children outperform their black and Hispanic counterparts. Second, black high-SES children appear to be the least advantaged among the privileged, and their mathematic performance lags over two years behind that of whites and Asians. What is more, low-SES Asians and whites are more likely to be high achievers than high-SES blacks are. Finally, Hispanics appear to perform better than their black counterparts, nonetheless, they lag about one year behind their Asian and white high-SES peers.

Raucous feminisms in neoliberal times

There is no shortage of media representations that reinforce the neoliberal order, emphasise individual freedom and self-regulation and downplay structural inequities and systemic oppression. The current paper analyses an alternative representation that works to dismantle the dominant social order. I interrogate the disruptive potential of the ‘unruly woman’ on Broad City by exploring two discursive themes that present robust alternatives to a neoliberal feminist agenda: transgressive representations of female sexuality and desire and the visibility and normalisation of ‘unfeminine’ behaviours. Multimodal critical discourse analysis reveals how these themes highlight the tension between women’s will to act freely and the structural binds that keep groups oppressed beyond any freedom individuals may enjoy. As white women, Ilana and Abbi’s racial privilege is central in scaffolding their gendered freedom; however, self-reflexive critiques and inclusion of diverse, non-tokenised representations show a path forward towards a collective and liberatory intersectional feminism.

The Soft-Shoe and Shuffle of Law School Hiring Committee Practices

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them. ” -Ida B. Wells It is in the spirit of Ida B. Wells, that we seek to turn the light upon the systemic racism of hiring practices. We believe these practices are indicators of the systemic failures on campuses and in workplaces that prevent them from being antiracist. We seek to use this piece as a “tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege.” Our specific intention is to recognize the largely performative nature involved in claiming to be committed to an idea while substantively and concretely ensuring the opposite. This piece is written with specific experiences, patterns, and practices in mind that are directly connected to broader contexts and phenomena. The data and trends on law school faculty hiring, and on the performance of students of color in law school and on bar exams show that acts of discrimination are often obscured by the outcomes of systemic oppression misconstrued as academic achievement. We wrote this not in the often fraught and silencing tradition of typical legal scholarship; but instead drew from diverse traditions that center narrative, storytelling, and satire (both classical and modern). We wrote this to speak truth to who we are, the roles played, and compromises made. Most of all, we wrote this with students in mind. Students are very involved on their campuses and contribute an immense amount of time and effort listening to law faculty candidates. Students speak up when faculty use their teaching platforms to espouse harmful rhetoric and when decisions disproportionately and negatively harm marginalized people. Marginalized students often lead the service and contributions on these issues, while also dealing with the everyday challenges law school presents to the average law student. We want students to know that we hear them and see them. We also want students to know that the burden of these structures is not theirs to carry. We hope that by illuminating faculty recruiting and hiring practices we can empower students to refocus and conserve their energy. Ill-conceived meetings and discussions called by administrators and faculty are distractions that devour precious time. All of our students’ time and energy matter because their lives matter. We recognize but do not accept or assume the risk in writing this piece. We have thought about and have been reminded of how we may face retaliation and other insidious responses. We do not know any Black or otherwise marginalized person in the legal academy whose silence or complicity has allowed them to escape these kinds of harms. Could writing this create more or intensify those barriers? Certainly. But that is why we have said we acknowledge but do not accept or assume the risk.

Can White Guilt Motivate Action? The Role of Civic Beliefs.

Limited research has investigated factors that shape White youth's civic action aimed at social change. Investigating the relation between Whiteness and civic action is an essential step toward identifying and cultivating environments that encourage White youth to use their racial privilege to combat inequality through civic engagement. To address this gap in the literature, across two distinct samples, this study investigates the role of White guilt in motivating civic action and the moderating role of civic beliefs. Participants included all young adults who self-identified as White from two online survey studies (Study 1, N = 219 college students, 71.9% Women, 28.1% Men, mean age = 19.6; Study 2, N = 185, 50% current college students, 54.6% Women, 45.4% Men, mean age = 23.9). In Study 1, White guilt related to more civic action. In the context of high social responsibility, White guilt related to more civic action; in the context of low social responsibility, White guilt corresponded with less civic action. In Study 2, White guilt also related to more civic action, and civic efficacy emerged as a potential moderator. Collectively, these results highlight the potential for White guilt to be turned into meaningful civic action, particularly when coupled with civic beliefs.

Sticky Floors and Glass Ceilings: Transformation of a Criminology Journal in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Privileges of race and gender remain characteristic of the South African landscape despite the end of apartheid in 1994. Little is known in the country about race and gender (in)equalities in the production and dissemination of knowledge. This paper reports on the race and gender profile of authors who published in the Acta Criminologica: African Journal of Criminology and Victimology with particular reference to first and second authorship, academic positions, research methods and the universities from which publications originate. Interval sampling was used to select 385 articles that were published between 1993 and 2018. The results show that, overall, White male scholars dominated publications and nearly two in five articles originated from one university. A statistically significant shift featured in publications from Black male and female researchers, as well as articles from marginalized universities, although these changes only occurred towards the end of the study period. The study further confirms racial homogeneity in multi-authored publications, and that men are mostly responsible for quantitative research articles. Male and female scholars from minority groups were virtually absent from publications in the journal. Overall, the study shows that transformation of the Acta Criminologica is taking place at a slow pace.

The impact of a diversity intervention on White college students’ colour-blind racial attitudes

ABSTRACT This research explored the impact a 3-day pre-college diversity intervention had on incoming White college students’ (N = 63) colour-blind racial attitudes (COBRAS), or their unawareness of racial privilege, blatant racial issues, and institutional discrimination. Repeated measures analysis of variance tests indicated that students reported a greater awareness of racial privilege and blatant racial issues immediately after the programme. Students’ awareness of institutional discrimination – a potentially more abstract and complex understanding of racism – did not change after the program. To isolate the effects of the intervention, independent sample t-tests between White college students who did not undergo the intervention and intervention participants were conducted. Results indicated that both samples did not have significantly different COBRAS before the intervention, providing evidence that the intervention likely contributed to changes in intervention participants’ COBRAS. These results suggest that the pre-college diversity intervention impacted forms of COBRAS differently. Implications for diversity interventions on predominantly White college campuses are discussed.

Black Disability Gone Viral: A Critical Race Approach to Inspiration Porn

Black Disability Gone Viral:A Critical Race Approach to Inspiration Porn Sami Schalk (bio) On May 31, 2018, tattoo artist Milton Purnell of Tattoo Supreme in Raleigh, North Carolina posted a striking video on his Instagram and Face-book pages. The video shows Purnell presenting Michael Mack, Jr., a ten-year-old Black boy amputee, with a new prosthetic leg.1 The leg features custom airbrush artwork, with white and silver flames around the name and image of the Black Panther, the Marvel superhero from the blockbuster film, Black Panther (2018). The video captures young Mack's eyes growing wide with excitement, as Purnell shows him the prosthetic, asking the boy what he thinks of it. Suddenly, Mack's jaw drops. He spins off the stool he is seated on and hops away briefly, with his hand over his mouth. He then returns to his seat, where he grasps the leg in his hands, admiring it. In the background, two voices, including Mack's mother, Sandra Mc-Neill, express awe and admiration for the custom artwork. In front of the camera, Purnell encourages Mack to try it on, stating "Put yo leg on man! Put yo leg on!" In the background, we hear McNeill saying that she forgot the "connecting part" for the new leg, but that Mack should still put it on for a picture. Mack puts on the prosthetic, stands up, and starts to dance. Within days, this video went viral, with hundreds of thousands of views, shares, likes, and comments across multiple social media platforms. Whenever a video, image, or story of a disabled person goes viral, it most often occurs within the context of inspiration porn, a term popularized by the late Australian disability rights activist Stella Young.2 Generally, inspiration porn refers to representations that "objectify disabled people for the benefit of non-disabled people."3 The term, which has taken strong hold within disability and activist communities, is beginning to appear in academic scholarship, and was even featured in an episode of the ABC sitcom Speechless in 2017. Inspiration porn has strong similarities to the older concept of supercrip, a term used to describe narratives about [End Page 100] disabled people who are represented as inspiring or extraordinary for performing both mundane and exceptional activities. Inspiration porn and supercrip narratives are similar in several ways. Both concepts rely on certain affective registers, such as inspiration, awe, tragedy, triumph, and pity; they also presume a non-disabled audience and engage ableist concepts, such as overcoming or compensating for the perceived obstacle caused by disability. They are also both narrative frameworks.4 That is, the people represented in these images and stories are not themselves supercrips nor inspiration porn, but rather supercrip and inspiration porn frameworks are applied to represent people and their stories in this way. There are a few differences between inspiration porn and supercrip narratives, however. The main difference is that inspiration porn often includes representations of non-disabled people "helping" disabled people, an approach not typically considered part of supercrip narratives. Inspiration porn is also used primarily in reference to memes, photos, videos, and news stories that are shared on the internet, whereas the term supercrip has most often been applied to news stories and fictional representations. Scholarly work on inspiration porn and supercrip narratives lacks engagement with race. In most cases, scholars never mention race and the objects of analysis represent white or non-racially identified subjects. With a few exceptions, scholars do allude to race, such as in Russell Meeuf's footnote acknowledging that his analysis of John Wayne as supercrip is specifically focused on white masculinity and my argument that Christopher Reeve's racial and class privilege is often overlooked in representations of him as supercrip.5 In both cases, racial privilege is acknowledged as a constitutive factor in supercrip narratives, but race is not a central analytic of the scholarship. Relatedly, only a few scholars have analyzed how audience identity impacts the reception and interpretation of representations of disabled people, while focusing primarily on how disabled people at large respond, as opposed to disabled people of color or people of color more generally.6 A major exception to...

Application of an antiracism lens in the field of implementation science (IS): Recommendations for reframing implementation research with a focus on justice and racial equity.

Despite the promise of implementation science (IS) to reduce health inequities, critical gaps and opportunities remain in the field to promote health equity. Prioritizing racial equity and antiracism approaches is critical in these efforts, so that IS does not inadvertently exacerbate disparities based on the selection of frameworks, methods, interventions, and strategies that do not reflect consideration of structural racism and its impacts. Grounded in extant research on structural racism and antiracism, we discuss the importance of advancing understanding of how structural racism as a system shapes racial health inequities and inequitable implementation of evidence-based interventions among racially and ethnically diverse communities. We outline recommendations for explicitly applying an antiracism lens to address structural racism and its manifests through IS. An anti-racism lens provides a framework to guide efforts to confront, address, and eradicate racism and racial privilege by helping people identify racism as a root cause of health inequities and critically examine how it is embedded in policies, structures, and systems that differentially affect racially and ethnically diverse populations. We provide guidance for the application of an antiracism lens in the field of IS, focusing on select core elements in implementation research, including: (1) stakeholder engagement; (2) conceptual frameworks and models; (3) development, selection, adaptation of EBIs; (4) evaluation approaches; and (5) implementation strategies. We highlight the need for foundational grounding in antiracism frameworks among implementation scientists to facilitate ongoing self-reflection, accountability, and attention to racial equity, and provide questions to guide such reflection and consideration. We conclude with a reflection on how this is a critical time for IS to prioritize focus on justice, racial equity, and real-world equitable impact. Moving IS towards making consideration of health equity and an antiracism lens foundational is central to strengthening the field and enhancing its impact. There are important gaps and opportunities that exist in promoting health equity through implementation science. Historically, the commonly used frameworks, measures, interventions, strategies, and approaches in the field have not been explicitly focused on equity, nor do they consider the role of structural racism in shaping health and inequitable delivery of evidence-based practices/programs. This work seeks to build off of the long history of research on structural racism and health, and seeks to provide guidance on how to apply an antiracism lens to select core elements of implementation research. We highlight important opportunities for the field to reflect and consider applying an antiracism approach in: 1) stakeholder/community engagement; 2) use of conceptual frameworks; 3) development, selection and adaptation of evidence-based interventions; 4) evaluation approaches; 5) implementation strategies (e.g., how to deliver evidence-based practices, programs, policies); and 6) how researchers conduct their research, with a focus on racial equity. This is an important time for the field of implementation science to prioritize a foundational focus on justice, equity, and real-world impact through the application of an anti-racism lens in their work.

Desiring Domestic Workers in "The Maid" and "The Desert Bride"

This article analyzes the representation of feminine desires in two Southern Conefilms, The Maid (La nana, Sebastián Silva, Chile, 2009) and The Desert Bride (La novia del desierto, Valeria Pivato and Cecilia Atán, Argentina/Chile, 2017), that feature female protagonists who have worked as live-in domestic employees for the same families for over twenty years. Both films eschew traditional depictions of domestic workers as either servile or aggressive to instead present these women as desiring and desirable subjects, thereby questioning how desire and desirability are determined by dominant social norms of femininity predicated on privileges of age, class, and race. Following Rosi Braidotti’s work on nomadism, the article examines desire, as depicted in these films, as a fluid notion that emphasizes transformation and the process of becoming. Ultimately the desires that the protagonists experience in horizontal, affective relationships lead them to embrace newfound independence outside of employment.

Witnessing racial discrimination shapes collective action for racial justice: Enhancing awareness of privilege among advantaged groups

AbstractThree studies tested whether witnessing incidents of racial discrimination targeting Black people may motivate White people to engage in collective action for racial justice. In studies of White Americans (Study 1) and self‐identified White activist “allies” (Study 2), witnessing incidents of racial discrimination predicted greater willingness to participate in collective action for racial justice, through the pathway of enhanced awareness of racial privilege. Studies 1 and 2 showed that awareness of racial privilege uniquely predicted the link between witnessing incidents of racial discrimination and willingness to participate in collective action for racial justice; these effects were consistent both with and without controlling for Whites’ sense of identification with their own racial group. Study 3 tested experimentally how witnessing incidents of racial discrimination may compel White people to become more motivated to engage in collective action for racial justice. Compared to those in a control condition, White participants who were randomly assigned to watch a brief video depicting recent discriminatory incidents targeting Black people (e.g., Starbucks incident in Philadelphia, housing incident at Yale University) tended to show greater motivation to engage in collective action for racial justice, an effect accounted for largely by enhanced awareness of racial privilege. How witnessing incidents of racial discrimination can transform views of privilege and willingness to stand up for racial justice among members of advantaged racial groups is discussed.

(Re)enacting Settler Colonialism via White Resident Utterances

This is a qualitative study outlining the links between white resident utterances and settler colonialism. Specifically, this article provides evidence of how settler colonialism continues to operate in a progressive community, despite the narratives of community and diversity shared by research respondents. This is primarily done by the cultural master narratives that respondents uttered to make sense of “community” and “diversity” in a borough that is undergoing gentrification. Because master narratives are created and reinforced by the socialization process where whiteness is the norm, white utterances continue the settler colonial project that invests in separate white communities to maintain racial privilege. While prior studies have detailed the tensions between community and diversity, this study contributes to this debate by adding a settler colonial frame that validates the idea that in a progressive neighborhood, diversity becomes a violation of settler emplacement. These findings are particularly significant given the vast literature on communities and diversity, but few have taken a settler colonial analytical approach to the debate.

Polyamory in Paris: A social network theory application

Multiple sexual partnerships can be viewed as networks in order to assess the nature of links between lovers and metamours (lover’s lovers) as well as the larger population. In such non-monogamous networks, where participants share sex, friendship, ideas, and economic resources, there exists a vast web of nodes connected in much more intimate and complex ways than one finds in the mono-normative landscape. This study explored gender dynamics in network centrality on a sample of 62 polyamorists in Paris, France using participant-observation, informal and structured interviews, and social network analysis. Though evolutionary psychology and pornographic film tend to reinforce heteronormative stereotypes of males as central social actors with multiple sexual partners and women as sexually passive, feminist theorists have argued for a more “agentic female sexual subjectivity”. My data showed that cis- and trans-women, with a strong sense of family and skills in interpersonal communication, score highest on network metrics of density/degree, homophily, indirectedness, and transitivity. The network data also indicate high modularity and endogamy with clustering tendencies for both cis-men and cis- and trans-women linked to kink, atypical intelligence, sexual and gender non-conformity, and mitigating factors of socioeconomic advantage and racial privilege.