Racist Society Research Articles

Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy as a Narrative of Exile and Identity

Jamaica Kincaid's novel Lucy is an artist novel whose eponymous protagonist breaks away from such forces as colonial and patriarchal mores, which eventually contributes to her construction of her own hybrid identity and inaugurates her maturity. This struggle is established perfectly well through Lucy’s apparent resistance to the constraints primarily imposed on her race and gender at home by both her mother and the Eurocentric society on the one hand and the androcentric and racist society she encounters in diaspora on the other hand. Surprisingly enough, Lucy, who is chastened towards the end of the book, creates her rite of passage towards development and independence through her valiant efforts to overcome such confines at any cost. The aim of the present article is to analyse from a postcolonial perspective the protagonist’s quest for identity in diaspora, the obstacles she overcomes to do so and to what extent she is affected by her new culture. This is manifested through intertwining discussions of androcentrism, colonial and postcolonial rebellion with questions of identity, hybridity, diaspora and cultural displacement.

A Woman of Strange, Unfathomable Presencee: Ida Platt's Lived Experience of Race, Gender, and Law, 1863-1939

In 1894, Ida Platt became the first African-American woman lawyer in Illinois. She was one of only five black women lawyers in the country and the only one able to maintain a law practice. Throughout her thirty-three year career, Platt served as head of her household, providing for her mother and sisters, without marrying or having children. She accomplished these feats by employing a fluid racial identity, passing as white in her professional life, and by avoiding the dominant gender roles that excluded women from the masculine legal profession. In 1927, at the age of sixty-four, Ida Platt retired, married Walter Burke, a white man, and moved to England. Twelve years later, Ida Burke died. As is the practice in England, there was no race designation on her death certificate. Platt’s choice to employ a fluid racial identity allowed her to pursue her career as a lawyer amidst a racist and sexist society that particularly discriminated against black women. She entered the law when Jim Crow was taking root, race lines were hardening, and elite, white, male lawyers were intensifying their opposition to women’s rise within the profession. Platt’s life and career offer insights into how law and the legal profession responded to the complexities of race and tender a new story of the lived experience of race as it intersects with gender. It suggests that Platt’s pragmatic strategy of changing her racial identity both contested and shaped the ways in which race, gender, and identity were constructed and represented in American society, as it exposed both the rigidity and permeability of these constructions.

Virginia Woolf’s Representation of Women: A Feminist Reading of “The Legacy”

Over the centuries women have been struggling to gain recognition, calling their independent voice to be heard in patriarchal and racist societies. As they follow the standards and the values of their societies, women tend to break the stereotypical and submissive images that degrade their position in their societies. Thus, this paper will scrutinize thoroughly women’s intellectual ability from a Gynocriticism perspective taking Virginia Woolf’s short story “The Legacy” (published posthously in 1944) as an example. The present paper provides an analytical view of the four models of gynocriticism; i.e., biological, linguistic, cultural, and psychological. It also attempts to shed light on some common feminist themes such as the theme of marriage and how oppressed marriage motivates male dominance. The paper addresses the relationship between wife and husband in terms of gender inequality and women’s identity. It also tackles women’s trapped position as distinct from the liberty of men and oppressed by husband in an unhappy marriage. It relies heavily not only on feminist perspectives as gynocriticism, gender inequality, and the theme of marriage; but also on the authors’ personal life. The paper concludes that being unable to speak their voice freely, women view writing as their salvation for their voice to be heard.

A Case Study of White Teacher Candidates’ Conceptions of Racial Profiling in Educational Contexts

Few studies have investigated how current events surrounding issues of racial profiling are understood by preservice teachers or how they affect their understandings and conceptions of race and racism in society and more importantly, in educational contexts. This qualitative case study explored how two White teacher candidates understood and conceptualized racial profiling in the wake of Trayvon Martin's murder. By interviewing teacher candidates about their own experiences with profiling, we hoped to prompt reflection and perspective-taking, especially in White teacher candidates who might hold beliefs that may not be adaptive for meeting the needs of students of color. In this study, one participant conceptualized racial profiling as intrinsic to her understanding of the educational experiences of students of color and articulated that profiling contributed to her broader understanding of racism. While the other participant regarded profiling as relevant to educational contexts, she implied that she found some truth in profiles and stereotypes of people of color and reported ‘colorblind’ approaches to teaching and learning. Implications for teacher education and future research are discussed.

"Not only Superior, but a Mother in the true sense of the word": Mary Louisa Noel and the Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1835–1885

Organized in the slave-holding city of Baltimore, Maryland in 1828, the Oblate Sisters of Providence dedicated themselves as "a Religious society of Coloured Women … [who] renounce the world to consecrate themselves to God, and to the Christian education of young girls of color." Early in the sisterhood's existence Oblate co-foundress Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange had explicitly articulated their consciousness of their exceptionalism as "persons of color and religious at the same time" who nevertheless sought "the respect which is due to the state we have embraced and the holy habit which we have the honor to wear" in a racist society. This essay examines the leadership of Mother Mary Louisa Noel (1817–1885), the longest serving Oblate Superior in the nineteenth century (1844–1851, 1861–1885), who guided the community through antebellum crises, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and its aftermath. She deftly negotiated uncharted waters as the internal authority to the sisterhood as it expanded its mission both in territory and ministry and the external representative of the community to both an institutional church and a general public often dubious of the possibility of black female virtue and agency—very real qualities which Noel embodied.

Post-racial paradoxes: rethinking European racism and anti-racism

ABSTRACTThe advent of a post-racial understanding of racism has changed the way in which Europe sees itself and its ethnic minorities. The concept of the post-racial emerged in the United States to describe a belief that America was no longer a racist society and the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land was a public and highly visible confirmation of that state of affairs. A global post-racial culture has taken hold of western plutocracies in which racism is universally denounced but increasingly difficult to pin down. Sayyid's study, by using a decolonial analytics, examines the different ways in which racism is imagined and how this imagination shapes the way in which the post-racial appears. The paper goes on to sketch out an alternative account of the post-racial as an aspect of the various trends that have been described as being post-political.

The Lives of Frederick Douglass by Robert S. Levine

Reviewed by: The Lives of Frederick Douglass by Robert S. Levine Kelly Mezurek The Lives of Frederick Douglass. By Robert S. Levine. ( Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. x, 373. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-674-05581-0.) In The Lives of Frederick Douglass, Robert S. Levine seeks to provide new insights on Frederick Douglass the writer and social reformer. Levine argues that historians and literary critics have paid a disproportionate amount of attention to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), consequently obscuring Douglass's life as a free person and his "larger autographical project" (p. 4). By analyzing Douglass's collective writings and speeches, Levine presents Douglass as an autobiographer who had a keen awareness of the historical moment and his place within it, using revision and rhetorical strategies to craft an identity for himself out of his "complex racial, familial, and political identities" (p. 294). The biography is divided into five chapters corresponding to periods in Douglass's life as a writer. Levine begins with his analysis of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, calling it "The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Narrative" (p. 31). He claims that the work has been inaccurately promoted as a black narrative uninfluenced by white sponsors, when it was actually a collaborative project in which Douglass negotiated his position within a mutually respectful and cooperative effort with William Lloyd Garrison. This was a short-lived partnership, though, and in the second chapter Levine traces Douglass's public speeches, writings, and revisions of Narrative to demonstrate Douglass's growing autonomy as a social reformer and over his own life story. Levine uses his close readings of The Heroic Slave (1853), Douglass's fictional account of the enslaved Madison Washington who led the 1841 Creole slave rebellion, and of My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Douglass's second autobiography, to argue that The Heroic Slave was "one of the lives of Frederick Douglass" (p. 123). Through these two publications and his other writings in the early 1850s, Douglass grappled with how to characterize black lives in an overwhelmingly racist society. The radicalized Douglass also reevaluated his position on how to oppose slavery and incite change—including the use of violent methods—and made his break with Garrison. Levine then explores Douglass's relationship with Abraham Lincoln and admiration of John Brown. He concludes that Douglass's account of his friendship with Lincoln included in his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself (1881), is a rhetorical exercise in mythmaking. Even though he continued to hold John Brown in higher regard than the former president, Douglass downplayed his political support for other candidates and his criticisms of the president and exaggerated their friendship to help secure his place within the Republican Party. Douglass also recrafted his complicated relationship with his former master, Thomas Auld. Levine denies that there was any love between the two men, and that Douglass's 1877 meeting with the dying Auld should not be understood as one of reunion and reconciliation. Instead, Douglass used Auld, and his later meetings with Auld's daughter Amanda, as another rhetorical tool that he revised in the same way that he reworked other events in his autobiographies [End Page 684] in order to facilitate his ever-evolving identities within the historical context of the time. Levine's work contributes to discussions about how Douglass regarded his place within nineteenth-century America as a black man and about Douglass's revised notions of what he wanted others to remember about his accomplishments. Levine's use of sources, both primary and secondary, is thorough, and he offers compelling arguments. He places his analysis—although unevenly—within the context of other Douglass scholars, but he does not shy away from pointing out the differences that he has with these historians and literary critics, or their shortcomings. Overall, though, this is a well-written book about an important nineteenth-century American that demonstrates that there is still more to learn about Frederick Douglass. Kelly Mezurek Walsh University Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

“IT’S LIKE WE HAVE AN ‘IN’ ALREADY”

AbstractThe increasing bi/multiracial1community in the United States has generated much literature about racial identity and social psychological well-being. Drawing on sixty in-depth interviews with Black/White biracial Americans, this paper shifts the theoretical focus from identity and well-being to the conceptual development of how race shapes bi/multiracial Americans’ social interactions with both Whites and Blacks. The majority of participants reported interacting differently when in predominately White settings versus predominately Black settings. I offer the concept of “racial capital” to highlight the repertoire of racial resources (knowledge, experiences, meaning, and language) that biracial Americans use to negotiate racial boundaries in a highly racialized society. These findings reveal the continuing significance of racial boundaries in a population that is often celebrated as evidence of racial harmony in the United States.

“We’re a Culture, Not a Costume:” Ethical Analysis of a College Student-Led Organization’s Anti-Racism Campaign

Students Teaching against Racism in Society (STARS) attracted both national and international headlines in October 2011 with their anti-racism campaign entitled “We’re a culture, not a costume.” At the time of the campaign, STARS was composed of ten undergraduate student members at Ohio University (OU). Situated in Athens, Ohio, OU has a history of hosting block parties for Halloween. In order to combat “racist” costumes, STARS initiated a campaign, funded by the Dean of Students in order to foster conversation and to bring awareness to racist, discriminatory, stereotypical, and prejudiced Halloween costumes. This campaign raises many ethical dilemmas. Therefore, this analysis seeks to explore implicit and explicit values and ethical dilemmas inherent within the campaign. Since racial inequalities often lead health disparities, this ethical analysis of STARS’ campaign has implications for both intercultural and health communication scholars. Additionally, future implications and directions of research as well as future considerations for similar campaigns are discussed.

Submission from the IRR to the Labour Party Inquiry into anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, including Islamophobia

Following a number of accusations of anti-Semitism against British Labour Party activists, including former London mayor Ken Livingstone, an inquiry into racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia was instituted by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in May 2016 – to be chaired by Shami Chakrabarti (former director of Liberty). This article consists of the submission to the inquiry from the Institute of Race Relations which suggests the parameters within which recent accusations of anti-Semitism should be analysed: the personalising of racism in society at large and the gradual blurring of the line between what incites hatred and what merely gives offence. While racism is offensive, not everything which gives offence is per se racist. The challenge for the Labour Party is to strike the correct balance between education against prejudice, protection from racial hatred and freedom of speech. The IRR believes that the Party would be in danger of losing that balance if it were to adopt the proposition (recently advocated by Eric Pickles, former secretary of state for communities and local government) to extend the definition of anti-Semitism to include particular types of criticism of the state of Israel.

A Kenotic Struggle for Dignity

AbstractAlthough Booker T. Washington stands outside the theological canon, his writings offer a pragmatic theology that connects the desire for dignity to a kenotic Christology through an ethic of unceasing work. While Washington's project to improve the lives of African Americans in the Jim Crow–era South was severely compromised by political circumstances, problems within his theology of work made his project especially susceptible to those circumstances. The tragedy of Washington's theology stems from his making dignity contingent upon work being recognized as useful by a worker's community. His kenotic ideal of “Christlike” work can actually degrade workers, if their community refuses to recognize their work's merit. Workers’ anxiety about dignity causes them to pour themselves into their work, but a racist society sees African American workers as inherently undignified. Even without Jim Crow's pervasive violence, the postindustrial reappearance of economic doctrines that characterized Washington's era makes his theological ethic relevant again.

The Impact of Unpunished Hate Crimes: When Derogating the Victim Extends into Derogating the Group

Just world research has shown that observers derogate victims more for their misfortunes if the perpetrator is not harshly punished (Lerner in J Personal Soc Psychol 1(4):355–360, 1980). However, few studies have investigated minority group derogation as a just world preservation strategy after instances of intergroup harm-doing. This study is among the first to demonstrate the derogation of both individual victims and of the victim’s minority group experimentally, using the context of a racist hate crime in Australia. In the present experiment, participants (N = 110) read a news article describing a hate crime against an Aboriginal Australian teenager and were informed that the perpetrator was harshly or leniently punished (secure vs. justice threat condition). Our results show that in the justice threat condition, participants not only derogated the individual Aboriginal Australian victim more after his death, they also expressed greater racism toward the victim’s group. An indirect effect of the justice threat condition on modern racism via individual victim derogation was observed, along with moderating effects of individual differences in belief in a just world. These findings provide support for the alarming hypothesis that racist hate crimes are not only the manifestation of a racist society, but may also bolster racial prejudices if leniently treated. The results highlight the important role of political and judicial authorities, whose response or non-response to a hate crime can exacerbate or ameliorate existing prejudices.

“Modern Medicine Had to Start Somewhere:” Performing Health and White Privilege in The Knick

800x600 800x600 Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This essay examines the interrelations of health and white privilege in the U.S.-American historical and medical drama The Knick (2014-). Employing a broad definition of health and drawing from performance studies, this article argues that the everyday life within the series depicts a racist society, while the television series itself with its rhetoric of modernity and visual strategies makes white privilege visible in the context of health. The television series and everyday life within the show are examined in regard to their performative dimensions, i.e. both levels of performance do not merely represent, but take an active part in defining health and its surrounding discourses. Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <w:LsdException Locked=

A Black Woman Character's Trauma In Racist Society: A Thorough Reading On Faulkner's “That Evening Sun”

This paper discusses a black woman character named Nancy in Faulkner's “That Evening Sun” who experiences trauma as the accumulation of her constant fear. The analysis is conducted by using Fanon's theory of psychological trauma in colonial society. The researcher used descriptivequalitative method as it is a qualitative research in which data are nonnumeric. The analysis examines Nancy's unconsciousness resulted in a trauma. It also highlights Faulkner's technique to compare fear experienced by Blacks and Whites. Based on the analysis, Nancy's fear is sourced from her husband's harsh treatments because she is pregnant with a white man's child. Her husband's violent treatments are the manifestation of his disappointment and anger towards his racist surroundings. Nancy's acute fear is worsened by her surroundings' treatment that mostly consist of white Southerners and are apathetic towards her fear. The crippling fear accumulates into trauma. Faulkner's method to contrast the fear experienced by Whites and Blacks are effective to show that the level of fear felt by Blacks is greater than that of Whites.

The significance of post-racial ideology, black political struggle, and racial literacy for Brazilian anti-racist education policy

This paper furthers current analysis of anti-racist, critical multicultural, and decolonial educational reforms in Brazil through a focus on the significant role played by post-racial ideology, black politics, and racial literacy in policy design and implementation. The paper first details the ways in which post-racial commonsense and anti-black racism have been central to the Brazilian social formation and continue to constitute crucial obstacles to fundamentally reshaping the curriculum, educational institutions, educators’ racial literacy, and classroom pedagogies. The article then contends that understanding the politics of race and education in Brazil necessitates acknowledging emergent anti-racist policies and discourses as the product of decades of black political struggle by activists, educators, and community organizations to make racism and racial inequality public issues. In this way, the policy documents and discourses shaping recent educational reforms in Brazil should be understood as political interventions within a particular historical conjuncture and racial formation. Such an analysis reveals contemporary black Brazilian efforts in education as mobilizations that go beyond a ‘politics of identity,’ recognition and apolitical multiculturalism and towards building more transformative anti-racist and decolonial proposals that directly challenge the nature and effects of anti-black racism in society.

Dead Man Walking: Nat Turner, William Styron, Bruce Springsteen, and the Death Penalty

GAVIN COLOGNE-BROOKES Bath Spa University Dead Man Walking: Nat Turner, William Styron, Bruce Springsteen, and the Death Penalty IN A 1968 INTERVIEW, WILLIAM STYRON DISCUSSED THE POSSIBILITY THAT The Confessions of Nat Turner might be read in ways other than “as a strict rendition of the history of slavery” in America. “In every time, every era we live in, people seek intellectually in books for different things,” he continued. “Obviously, the thing that is closest to us at this moment is the agony of the race problem. So therefore, quite clearly, the book has seized on people’s imaginations for that reason” (Barzelay and Sussman 96). The book may never be viewed without race at the forefront.WhetherornotNatTurner’s“problems,”“residualPuritanism,” “idiom,”and“peculiarlyfrontiersortofexperience”are“trulyAmerican” (97), as Styron went on to say of his fictional recreation, his character and circumstances are inextricable from the fact that he is a black slave in a racist society. Moreover, in Michelle Alexander’s view, it’s not just an“uncomfortable truth” that “racial differences will alwaysexistamong us” (243). It’s also that “the basic structure” of American society has changed less, despite the evolution fromslavery through segregation and the Civil Rights movement to the Obama presidency, than the language used “to justify it” (2). Looking back on the novel decades after I first read it, for instance, I am struck by a fact that I gave little thought to on previous readings: Nat Turner is on death row. We witness his final thoughts as he reflects on his short life before being killed by the state. He views his actions as war crimes. If he also sees them as sins, then that is a personal matter. After rebelling against oppression, he has been hunted down, captured, and convicted, so far as the state of Virginia in 1831 is concerned, of an act of terrorism that has led to the murder of fifty-five people. To focus on this is to open up an area of discussion about The Confessions that, half a century on from its publication, feels all the more relevant, and yet for decades has been largely ignored. To do this, I will consider the novel with reference to some of Styron’s key European influences, namely Stendhal, Fydor Dostoevsky, George Orwell, Albert Camus, and Arthur Koestler, as well as to Richard 10 Gavin Cologne-Brookes Wright as a twentieth-century American novelist concerned with oppressionandpunishment,andtoacontemporaryartisticcommentator on the social justice system, Bruce Springsteen. In the novel, Styron underlines that the execution of Nat Turner was not about justice but a predetermined act of vengeance, and an attempted consolidation of the logic of slavery as a crude commercial enterprise. As what Styron’s fictional version of Thomas Gray, author of The Confessions of Nat Turner, relishes calling “an-i-mate chattel,” Turner is capital and receives capital punishment (20). One way Styron illustrates the corruptness of the legal procedures is by having Gray, as Turner’s supposed representative, treat the law as a mechanism serving the white perspective on “the killing spree” rather than as a true investigation of facts in the name of justice (Woodard 89).1 Turner asks Gray if his fellow insurrectionists have had trials. “Trial?” replies Gray. “Hell, we had a million trials. Had a trial pretty near every day. September and this past month, we had trials runnin’ out our ears” (18). As for Turner’s own trial, Gray assures him that it’s timetabled for “next Sattidy,” after which he will be “hung by the neck until dead” (22). But Styron also illustrates state vengeance and the underscoring of Turner as capital by placing a brief statement at the end of the novel, taken from a second historical source, Thomas Drewry’s The Southampton Insurrection (1900). From this, the reader learns that Nat Turner’s body was “delivered to the doctors, who skinned it and made grease of the flesh.” “[A] money purse” was “made of his hide,” and “His skeleton was for many years in the possession of Dr. Massenberg, but has since been misplaced.” Such treatment of an executed prisoner has, of course, nothing to do with justice. It’s an...

A Tribute to Professor Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr.: Professor Emeritus of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst

A Tribute to Professor Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr.: Professor Emeritus of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst James Leheny (bio) My tribute to Joseph Skerrett begins by drawing people’s attention to his early and excellent 1975 Yale dissertation, entitled Take My Burden Up: Three Studies of Afro American Fiction. There and in articles derived from it one gets a solid sense of his many talents that flourished as his interests broadened during his thirty-year academic career. [The full text of his dissertation is available at the Thesis and Dissertation Database website, available in most research libraries.] Skerrett’s dissertation focuses on James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. He describes his methodology as “psychobiographical criticism” and credits the theoretical work of Kenneth Burke and Harold Bloom for informing his critical perspective. His essays approach the three authors in different ways, often incorporating psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology to illuminate his subject. His essay on Johnson explores the relationship between the nameless narrator of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, Johnson’s only novel, and his autobiography, Along This Way, published over twenty years later. The essay explores the ambivalence towards black identity, both in Johnson’s fiction and in his life history. His essay on Wright describes the author’s psycho-social situation. Examining Black Boy and Native Son, he addresses how Wright’s fiction enabled him to express his ambivalence towards his mother and other female authority figures. By killing two women—one white, one black—Bigger Thomas achieves a sense of freedom from repression embedded both in his own black culture and in the white racist society that surrounds it. His third essay discusses Ralph Ellison’s reading and criticism of Richard Wright. His distortions of Wright’s work are critical to understanding how Ellison came to envision an antithetical and competing image of Afro American culture. After achieving this substantial and original scholarship Skerrett published articles and presented papers on other Afro American writers: James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison, to name a few. He chaired the MLA’s Executive Committee on Black American Literature and Culture in 1999. While he never lost interest in Afro American literature, Skerrett broadened his scholarly focus to include issues of ethnicity and literature in America. He was elected President of the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States in 1984, and he served as editor of MELUS, the Society’s scholarly journal, from 1987 to 1999. With Amritjit Singh and Robert Hogan, he edited Memory, Narrative, and Identity: Essays in American [End Page 8] Ethnic Literature (1994) and Memory and Cultural Politics (1995). In 2001 he published a book-length study, Literature, Race, and Ethnicity: Contesting American Identities. Those of us fortunate enough to have known and worked with him recognize what an extraordinary person Joseph Skerrett was. A real polymath, he was able to examine issues from various, often quite different, perspectives, drawing, when appropriate, upon history, the social sciences, and even popular culture. He was an avid movie-goer, a talented cook, a wonderful gardener, and a fan of grand opera. He loved people as he loved life. And the mantle of his learning rested easily upon his shoulders. He enjoyed talking with students about their everyday lives, interests, and concerns. He was as eager to learn from them as he was to have them learn from him. [End Page 9] James Leheny JAMES LEHENY is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a former Associate Chancellor of the Amherst campus. He is editor of Joseph Addison’s The Freeholder (Oxford University Press, 1979). Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press

The Chinese Dilemma

Malaysia is a prosperous, modern Islamic nation in which three main ethnic groups-Malay, Chinese and Indian-coexist peacefully, while maintaining their unique cultural identities. Yet this stable society is founded upon a form of affirmative action that has led to condemnation of Malaysia as an inherently racist society, and to criticisms of the architect of that policy, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who outlined his ideas in his book, The Malay Dilemma, in 1970. The winners from Mahathir’s New Economic Policy have been the indigenous Malays who receive preferential treatment in education and business; the losers are the Chinese who feel they are the victims of inherently undemocratic restrictions. The author, a Chinese Malaysian businessman, argues controversially that whatever the cost, the benefits of the policy are indisputable. He not only queries many of Mahathir’s ideas, he also challenges the simplistic views of the leader’s Chinese and Western critics. Besides making a major contribution to Malaysian political and social thought, this book raises broader questions about Chinese cultural identity and the role and expectations of the overseas Chinese-a people who have left their mark in almost every corner of the world.

Can a Racist Society Produce and Sustain Just and Healthy Interracial Relationships? A Few South African Case Studies

In this study the experiences, perceptions and challenges of being in a mixed-race relationship (M-R) are explored against the backdrop of previous South African pieces of legislation meant to keep the various race groups apart. The study is located within a conceptual framework predominantly informed by a constructivist approach, including some tenets from the social constructionist approach. For the purposes of this study, six cases of mixed-race couples consisting of black and white partners only were recruited through snowball sampling. The results of the study indicate that individuals found their involvement in M-R relationships to be a positive experience, and thus resulting in a positive attitude change and a sense of personal growth. However, M-R couples and their extended families experienced cognitive dissonance which required them to discard their previously internalised racial stereotypes. To do this, strategies such as cognitive differentiation, re-categorization and de-categorization were used. This enabled the couples and their families to attempt the shift toward non-racial socially constructed categories. Most of the challenges of being in M-R relationships were experienced on both the interpersonal and the inter-group levels. The losses, disadvantages, challenges, concerns and pains experienced by M-R couples were mainly related to family and social disapproval as well as general family and social efforts aimed at discouraging race mixing.

White racial identity, color-blind racial attitudes, and multicultural counseling competence.

Multicultural counseling competence (awareness, knowledge, and skills) is necessary to provide effective psychotherapy to an increasingly diverse client population (Sue, 2001). Previous research on predictors of competency among White clinicians finds that above having multicultural training, exposure to racially diverse clients, and social desirability, that White racial identity stages predict multicultural counseling competence (Ottavi et al., 1994). Research also suggests that higher color-blind racial attitudes (denying or minimizing racism in society) correlates with less advanced White racial identity stages (Gushue & Constantine, 2007). However, no studies have examined these variables together as they relate to and possibly predict multicultural counseling competence. The current study aims to add to this literature by investigating the effects of these variables together as potential predictors of multicultural counseling competence among (N = 487) White doctoral students studying clinical, counseling, and school psychology. Results of 3 hierarchical multiple regressions found above the effects of social desirability, demographic variables, and multicultural training, that colorblind racial attitudes and White racial identity stages added significant incremental variance in predicting multicultural counseling knowledge, awareness, and skills. These results add to the literature by finding different predictors for each domain of multicultural competence. Implications of the findings for future research and the clinical training of White doctoral trainees are discussed.