Racist Society Research Articles

The Trump Phenomenon and the Racialization of American Politics

If very few observers across the Atlantic predicted that a reality-TV star would succeed the United States’ first African American President, there is today among commentators of the political scene a scramble for analysis of the rise of Donald J. Trump. His victory can no doubt be attributed to a conjunction of causes but one in particular deserves special attention: the racial factor. The Trump phenomenon was regarded as the elevation to the highest office of a political misfit when it was actually a return to normalcy in a historically racist society. Barack Obama’s election was atypical, not Trump’s. The following essay attempts to throw light on the permanence of the race factor in American society, its impact on the 2016 election, either by means of its unabashed activation or through a coded rhetoric, its centrality in the Trumpian discourse, the heyday of white nationalism under a President prone to stoking the flames of division and prejudice, together with the disquieting signs of a “new civil war” in a disunited nation.

Rewriting American History in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: Metahistoricity, the Postcolonial Subject, and the Return of the Repressed

Writing as an African American woman existing at the margins of American society in the mid 1970s, Mildred D. Taylor demonstrated a postmodern awareness of fictionality and history in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976). Reworking African American history from the point of view and voice of a black subaltern female child, Taylor succeeds in recovering a silenced and repressed history of African Americans, and in adding that history to the larger American experience. Instead of reinforcing and perpetuating negative stereotypes of blacks—individual or collective—that are historically produced by and distributed in a white society, and taking their passive, marginalized, and violated status for granted, Taylor represents African Americans as active agents, who can employ strategic resistance—”trickery” and “disidentification”—in order to reappropriate dominant, repressive discourses for their own purposes to survive in a racist society. In doing so, Taylor does not make her historical fiction merely serve as a record of conventional history. Instead, she creates a meaningful place in which the once ostracized, discriminated against, and marginalized voice not only can be heard, recognized, and respected, but also the formerly voiceless Others can be transformed into historical subjects or agents able to challenge master narratives and hierarchies.

Seeking Race: Finding Racism

This article explores the somatic lessons that I have learned about race and racism from participating in schooling. Using arts-based research inquiry methods of storytelling, dance and poetry, I allowed my somatic knowledge of race to surface. In analyzing this emergent knowledge, I examined how the null curriculum in schools has influenced my own understandings of both race and racism. Here, I question how maintaining the status quo in school is perpetuating fractured self identities in students, as well as a social fractal of repeated racism in society. This article explores the interconnections between race and racism and the impact of erasure on student identity. By delving into and sharing my own personal experiences of race in school, this article aims to provoke educators to consider the impact of the choices made around diversity in schools.

Disabled Bodies and Norms of Flourishing in the Human Engineering Debate

In this paper, I argue that Jonathan Glover, a prominent advocate of human genetic engineering, relies on a limited naturalistic account of normal human function in his defense of genetic engineering as a means of decreasing future instances of disability. I show that his concept of disability and the normative argument informed by it in his Choosing Children: Genes, Disability, and Design fails to incorporate the phenomenological dimension of embodiment, and that this dimension should be included in any account of disability and human flourishing. Such inclusion, however, requires us to consider seriously the counterintuitive view that racial minorities are constitutionally disabled in racist societies.

Visualizing the uplift: digitizing poetry by African American women, 1900–1922

ABSTRACT“Women of the Early Harlem Renaissance: African American Women Writers, 1900–1922,” aims to digitize and annotate a limited array of primary texts, mainly poetry, and present these materials as a digital archive in the Scalar platform. The project aligns with what Kim Gallon has referred to as a “technology of recovery,” which is one of the core principles bridging African American literary studies and the digital humanities. The project uses Scalar’s visualization and tagging structures to explore stylistic, thematic, and social relationships among a small group of writers, as well as to explore the conversations these writers were having with established writers and editors. Several key themes have begun to emerge as the project has developed. The first of these is the confrontation with American racism, which impacted African American communities intensely in the 1910s; and these poets document the emergence racial violence and the response to that violence. Second, these poets show how the role of African American motherhood was evolving in the early years of the twentieth-century, in part because of the stresses of raising children in a racist society. Third, the black Church became strongly connected to the movement for social justice at this time; and several, if not most, of the writers in this archive explored Christian themes in their anti-racist writing.

Subordinated Knowledge as a Tool for Creative Maladjustment and Resistance to Racial Oppression

AbstractIn his address to the APA, King (1968) suggested that critical consciousness about racism, based on realities of African American experience, could serve as a tool for creative maladjustment: resistance to collective delusions and refusal to assimilate to pathological norms of a racist society. In this article, we summarize a program of research that applies decolonial perspectives of cultural psychology and a focus on the intentionality of everyday worlds to the topic of creative maladjustment. In particular, we consider the potential of critical historical consciousness, rooted in the experience of racially subordinated communities, as a resource for perception of injustice and support for policies designed to restore social justice. Hegemonic knowledge institutions (including psychological science) have evolved via cultural selection to protect White comfort and to promote White ignorance. An anti‐racist response requires investment in knowledge forms that challenge White delusions and afford creative maladjustment to systems of oppression—a task that King highlighted for psychologists more than 50 years ago.

Stigma, Stereotypes, and Attributional Theory: A Successful Merger

Critical race theorists assert that racism in society and schools is a factor that impedes the progress of minority students. Whiteness theorists argue that white racialized teachers and students assume entitlement to privileges within an educational system that promotes white privilege as natural and allows it to remain unchallenged. Researchers of both theories claim that until racism is recognized as real, stereotypes and biases will continue to be passed on by teachers and administrators and the educational divide will grow. While these theories provide a useful framework for the macro context of society by providing a lens to view how educational institutions have been constructed to reinforce the status quo, they fall short when examining the subtle ways discrimination seeps into daily practices. When combined, theories on stigma, stereotyping, and attribution may give policymakers and practitioners insight into the extent to which perceptions of race, ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status influence teachers' expectations for students.

Perceptions and experiences regarding the impact of race on the quality of healthcare in Southeast Brazil: a qualitative study

ABSTRACTObjective: To explore the impact of race on the quality of healthcare received by patients attending a primary care centre in Brazil.Design: This was a qualitative study consisting of 19 semi-structured interviews conducted on patients from six racial groups (as defined in Brazil as white, yellow, brown, black and indigenous and one self-identified ‘other’ group). The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: Four main themes were identified during analysis; factors affecting the access to healthcare, experiences regarding quality of healthcare, discrimination in healthcare and deep-rooted societal discrimination, which were categorised into a number of sub-themes. Within these themes, interviewees reported (1) experiences of racism in society towards the black racial group, (2) one personal perception and two observations of racial discrimination in healthcare, (3) perceived racial discrimination due to healthcare professional behaviour and (4) other factors, such as delays in appointments and long waiting times in health facilities were felt to impact access to care.Conclusion: The findings suggest that racial discrimination exists in Brazilian society but its direct impact on healthcare access was felt to be less obvious. Instead, organisational level factors were felt to contribute to difficulty accessing care. Interviewees perceived that racial discrimination may affect the quality of care, particularly for those designated as ‘black’. Socio-economic factors were felt to influence discrimination in healthcare. The findings can help inform further studies and educational initiatives to help address discrimination and access to healthcare in Brazil.

Black Activism: John Updike

A major novelist, a short story writer, and a poet, John Updike is a distinguished writer of American literature. His work has received International criminal acclaim. As a literary artist, he has given us most powerful expression of the American racist society. His writing is personal, not subjective. It pleases his busy imagination, his sense of humor and his understanding of contradictions within every segment of human display.

Rich’s Essential Essays

Rich’s <i>Essential Essays</i>

Black Buddhists and the Body: New Approaches to Socially Engaged Buddhism

This article deconstructs how Buddhist practitioners of African descent acknowledge racism and challenge predominantly white, affluent Buddhist sanghas that embrace the tenets of Socially Engaged Buddhism. It argues that practitioners of African descent directly acknowledge the social constructs of the black body that result in violent practices such as police brutality and disproportionate black incarceration. To support this argument, I rely on primary texts published by Socially Engaged Buddhists. The results conclude that black Buddhists not only highlight the suffering wrought by racism in the West, they also challenge white sangha members to reckon with the depth of racism in society and in their sanghas. I conclude that black Buddhists, in their acknowledgement of the socially constructed meanings of the black body, offer an important challenge to Socially Engaged Buddhism.

Shakespeare’s Othello: The Esteemed, Reviled, Shunned, and Integrated?

In Shakespearean literature, one can find themes that challenge the Elizabethan conventional way of thinking and life, and the tragedy of Othello is no exception. In a dramatic presentation, Shakespeare challenges the way in which Black people are seen in Elizabethan society by placing a Moor in the context of Venice, Italy who is both hated and respected in his place in a racist society. There is no doubt that there is racism in Elizabethan society. According to Eldred Jones, during the era in which Othello is composed, Queen Elizabeth enacts legislation that calls for all Black people to leave the country (Jones, 1994). Racism is not the core theme of the dramatic piece; however, the existence of racism is illustrated and expressed via Shakespeare’s artistic medium. Just as feminism, greed, jealousy, hubris, and varying other matters dealing with the human spirit do not seepage Shakespeare’s consideration, nor do race matters. Furthermore, just as he dramatizes human issues, he dramatizes race matters. There are fictional elements in Othello that are intertwined with nonfictional matters of human behavior and racial unrest. In the middle of racial unrest, Shakespeare composes a theatrical production with a Black character who is esteemed, reviled, shunned, and integrated into such a society, capturing the complicated nature of communal racism itself. Keywords: Shakespeare, Othello, Integration, Racism Section 1.0

Religião e educação: o posicionamento das igrejas cristãs em relação às questões dos negros no Brasil

O presente artigo tem como objetivo tecer uma análise teórico-crítica acerca do posicionamento das Igrejas Cristãs Protestantes em relação às questões do negro no país e como a escola pode contribuir com a desconstrução de uma sociedade racista. Parte-se da premissa de que essas igrejas têm se mostrado omissas e silenciosas no que se refere ao lugar marginal em que a população negra ocupa na sociedade brasileira desde o período escravista. E, também, que lidar com a história e cultura africana, no currículo e cotidiano escolar, tem sido cada vez mais difícil devido à problemática questão religiosa presente no espaço educacional.

Where Are the People of Color?: Representation of Cultural Diversity in the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and Advocating for Diverse Books in a Non-Post Racial Society

Where Are the People of Color?: Representation of Cultural Diversity in the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and Advocating for Diverse Books in a Non-Post Racial Society

Racism without Hatred? Racist Humor and the Myth of “Colorblindness”

Critical Race scholars contend that the current period of “race relations” is dominated by a “color-blind” racial ideology. Scholars maintain that although individuals continue to hold conventional racial views, today people tend to minimize overt racial discourse and direct racial language in public to avoid the stigma of racism. This essay identifies racist humor as a discourse that challenges such constraints on public racist discourse, often derided as “political correctness,” in ways that reinforce everyday and systemic forms of racism in an ostensibly color-blind society. While humor research generally highlights the “positive” aspects of social humor and celebrates the possibilities of humor to challenge and subvert dominant racial meanings, the “negative” aspects of racist humor are often overlooked, downplayed, or are viewed as extreme and fringe incidents that occur at the periphery of mainstream society. Moreover, race scholars have largely ignored the role of humor as a “serious” site for the reproduction and circulation of racism in society. I contend that in a post-civil-rights and color-blind society, where overt racist discourse became disavowed in public, racist humor allows interlocutors to foster social relations by partaking in the “forbidden fruit” of racist discourse. In this article, I highlight the (re)circulation of racist jokes across three social contexts (in mass market joke books, on the Internet, and in the criminal justice system), to illustrate that racist humor exists not in a bygone past or at the margins of society but is widely practiced and circulated today across various social contexts and institutions in an ostensibly color-blind society.

Anti-Racist Pedagogy in the Canonization of Toni Morrison

The paper aims to examine the anti-racist approach in pedagogy in relation to the issues of representations of African Americans in American schools, curricula, and literary canon. It has considered anti-racist pedagogy as a correct approach to creating a truly democratic society in a racist society like the United States of America. In order to address these issues, Toni Morrison has been considered the most successful African American writer who has attained canonical status within the mainstream of both African American and American literature. The paper has, thus, raised some of the vital issues related to the representations of African Americans in American schools, curricula, and the literary canons.Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 5(2) 2017: 15-24

Offline: Racism—the pathology we choose to ignore

Offline: Racism—the pathology we choose to ignore

The vitality of social media for establishing a research agenda on black lives and the movement

ABSTRACTSocial media provides scholars with important portals into the lives of marginalized communities and the movements organized to combat issues of race and racism in society. However, how to incorporate the seemingly unwieldy amount of social media data for research in our fields can pose challenges to further clarify how people navigate our social world and the issues with in it, but also how they organize to push for social change and equality. In what follows, the authors discuss how social media data can be used to enhance our studies of black lives in reflection of the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement on issues such as gun violence, public health, and higher education.

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.

Recapturing the Lost

Rhodesians occupy a very specific digitalized time-space bubble at the very edges of a margin that researchers think of as “past.” In this study, I trace the memorization of the Rhodesian Bush War on YouTube, of what it was like to fight for a dream and see it crumble in an isolated and highly racialized society. Th rough narrative analysis focusing on identity formation and social networks of relationships, a militaryromantic story of racialized masculine heroism, suffering and sacrifice is pieced together, forming a globally shared Rhodesian space-time bubble of meaningfulness, making it an active part of the present as much as a remnant of the past.