Racial Ideology Research Articles

Stacked decks: Building inspectors and the reproduction of urban inequality. By Bartram,Robin, University of Chicago Press. 2022. ISBN: 978‐0‐226‐82114‐6. $27.50

The British Journal of SociologyEarly View BOOK REVIEW Stacked decks: Building inspectors and the reproduction of urban inequality. By Bartram,, Robin, University of Chicago Press. 2022. ISBN: 978-0-226-82114-6. $27.50 Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Corresponding Author Elizabeth Korver-Glenn [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0001-9513-8122 Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USASearch for more papers by this author Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Corresponding Author Elizabeth Korver-Glenn [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0001-9513-8122 Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 08 June 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13041Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. REFERENCES Du Bois, W. E. B. [1899] 1996. The philadelphia negro: A social study. University of Pennsylvania Press. Ladner, J. (1971). Tomorrow’s tomorrow: The black woman. University of Nebraska Press. Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell University Press. Mueller, J. C. (2020). Racial ideology or racial ignorance? An alternative theory of racial cognition. Sociological Theory, 38(2), 142– 169. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275120926197 Pattillo, M. (2013). Housing: Commodity versus right. Annual Review of Sociology, 39(1), 509– 531. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071312-145611 Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue ReferencesRelatedInformation

Jojo Rabbit, or On Education: Taika Waititi’s Take on Childhood, Democracy, and Hope

As fictional figures, children elicit strong emotional responses. This potential for identification presents a challenge in the case of Taika Waititi’s Academy Award–nominated film Jojo Rabbit (2019). Who would want to feel sorry for a Nazi child? Instead of portraying children as either inherently innocent or evil, the film shows that the Nazi regime has corrupted the child through humiliation and violence. This form of poisonous pedagogy is the root of his fanaticism. The author contends that the film illustrates how the grip of racist ideology can be loosened with love and empathy as its antidotes. More importantly, the film addresses issues of contemporary relevance. While a Hollywood film like Jojo Rabbit will not end political polarization or racism, its reassurance that everything could turn out all right is meant to provide comfort and foster hope. By making viewers aware that prejudice is a behaviour that can be unlearned, cinema thus becomes a tool for democratic education.

Parents' color-blind racial ideology and implicit racial attitudes predict children's race-based sympathy.

We examined the relation of White parents' color-blind racial attitudes (a global composite score and its subscales) and their implicit racial attitudes to their young children's race-based sympathy toward Black and White victims. One hundred and nighty non-Hispanic White children (54% boys, Mage = 7.13 years, SD = 0.92) reported their sympathy in response to short films depicting bullying toward White or Black children. Their primary caregivers' (mostly mothers') color-blind racial ideology (CBRI) was assessed through a questionnaire (reflecting global color blindness, as well as denial of institutional racism, White privilege, and blatant racial issues), and their implicit racial attitudes were assessed with a computerized test. Children's sympathy toward Black victims and their equitable sympathy (difference score toward Black vs. White victims) was predicted by parents' color blindness, implicit racial attitudes, and their interaction. Results indicated several interaction effects, such that parents' denial of blatant racial attitudes and global CBRI were negatively related to children's sympathy toward Black victims and equitable sympathy toward Black versus White victims, only when the parents held implicit racial attitudes that favored White people. In addition, parents' denial of White privilege was negatively related to children's sympathy toward Black victims. The findings are discussed in terms of potential ways to shape children's race-based sympathy and compassion, particularly with an eye toward ways White parents might socialize sympathy toward historically marginalized youth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 3

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 3ROBOTIC BUDDHIST FUNERAL PRIESTSHumanoid robot ‘Pepper’, produced by SoftBank Robotics, debuts to great fanfare in 2017 in its new role as a Buddhist priest and funeral attendant at ENDEX, the Japanese funeral and cemetery industry convention. Alongside AR grave design programs, eco‐urns and ash jewellery, Pepper is one of many striking, experimental products and services aimed at reinvigorating and reinventing Japan's ‘ending industry’.In a country with a rapidly aging population, Japan is facing a crisis in how to handle death. Traditional Buddhist funeral rites are becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to find, and many families are looking for new ways to say goodbye to their loved ones.One possible solution is the use of robotic Buddhist priests. These robots are programmed to chant sutras, lead prayers and perform other traditional funeral rituals. They are also much cheaper than human priests, making them an attractive option for families on a budget.The use of robotic priests is still in its early stages, but it has the potential to revolutionize the way death is handled in Japan. By providing a more affordable and accessible option for funeral services, robots could help to ensure that everyone has a dignified send‐off, regardless of their financial situation.These interventions respond to the weakening of traditional Buddhist death rites and the socio‐religious structures that once supported them.THE FIRST BLACK STUDENT IN ANTHROPOLOGYJames Arthur Harley (1873‐1943), a talented polymath with a degree from Harvard University, arrived in Edwardian England in 1907 and enrolled in the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford to pursue a Diploma in Anthropology. Unfortunately, the curriculum at the time perpetuated racist ideologies that portrayed and thought of black people as intellectually inferior, exotic, sub‐species, sub‐human – savage. However, Harley's presence at Britain's world‐renowned university, a bastion of white elite privilege, prestige and class, was not unique.Thirty‐four years earlier in 1873, Christian Frederick Cole (1853‐1885) from Sierra Leone became the university's first black scholar when he matriculated at University College, aged 21, to read for an honours degree in Classical Moderations, going on to achieve the august status of Britain's first black barrister.Harley, an Antiguan scholar, completed the course and became the first black man to earn the diploma. In so doing, he, like many black scholars at the University of Oxford, from Alain LeRoy Locke (1885‐1954), the first black Rhodes scholar, later known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance, to Kofoworola Moore (1913‐2002), the first black woman to receive a degree in 1932, all obliterated the preconceived racist‐held ideologies with their achievements and later contributions.Anthropology continuously evolves and adapts to the changes humans experience in this world. Through the presence of Harley and his fellow pioneers in these institutions, we see how they gradually evolve and reframe how black students are viewed. These early students were change agents and perhaps instigators of decolonized curricula and forged a path for other black students to follow.

Shedding Light on Racial Realist Parent Engagement through the Experiences of Black Families and Othermothers

As educator-scholars committed to building family learning communities rooted in principles of educational liberation, McCarthy Foubert’s book Reckoning with Racism in Family-School Partnerships caught our attention because of its promise to expose the challenges of systematically racist ideologies about family-school partnerships, to confront these issues during a toxic time in race relations and elucidate the narratives of Black racial realist parents. Our reading and discussion of the book were informed by our own experiences as an inter-racial reviewing team with shared commitments to anti-racist family engagement.

Sociocultural engagement in a colorblind racism framework moderates perceptions of cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation refers to an action whereby an individual makes use of, imitates, or takes possession of cultural products of an outgroup or source community. Compared to Black Americans, many White Americans do not differentiate between high (i.e., White) and low (i.e., Black) status actors when making judgments of cultural appropriation (Mosley & Biernat, 2021). The goal of the current research is to assess why some individuals exhibit a lack of recognition of structural and historical racism when making judgments of cultural appropriation. To answer this question, we draw on theoretical work on colorblind racism, a framework of racial ideologies that emphasize that group differences should be ignored, and that people should be treated as individuals (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). Three experiments investigate the colorblind - racism hypothesis: perceivers who are highly invested in a colorblind racism ideology —assessed along three dimensions including racial group identification, historical knowledge of racism, and endorsement of assimilationist ideologies—will see equal levels of appropriation in the actions of White and Black perpetrators. In contrast, perceivers low in a colorblind ideology will see White (versus Black) actors as more culturally appropriative. We see for evidence for this hypothesis among White (Studies 1–2) and Black (Study 3) perceivers. These findings suggest that endorsement in a colorblind ideology can facilitate ignorance of power differences between groups when perceiving cultural appropriation.

Cultivating a Sense of Belonging in Allied Health Education: An Approach Based on Mindfulness Anti-Oppression Pedagogy.

To address accreditation standards and to meet a need due to a disparity in health care providers engaged in direct patient care, many institutions of higher education have focused on initiatives to increase the numbers of ethnic and racial minority populations. Despite these efforts, there remains a dearth of diversity in health care. For many underrepresented minority populations (URM), numerous barriers exist to becoming a health professional. Greater levels of discrimination and bias reduce belonging and agency in URM students impacting recruitment and retention. Research has shown that discrimination and bias are antithetical to feeling a sense of belonging on college campuses for URM students. The sense of belonging for URM students has been positively linked to retention and other academic outcomes. Faculty interaction and campus environment have been correlated to sense of belonging. Thus, faculty members as mentors, advisors, and shapers of campus climate have an important role to play in supporting URM students. However, due to socialization in an oppressive society, narratives about race and racism can become entrenched. The entrenchment of racial ideologies, without tools to examine, deconstruct, and reflect, leads to little forward progress. Incorporation of mindfulness anti-oppression pedagogy provides a needed paradigm shift for allied health educators to act with intentionality as they cultivate spaces of belonging for URM students.

Questioning the Canon: Counter-Discourse and the Minority Perspective in Contemporary German Literature by Christine Meyer

Reviewed by: Questioning the Canon: Counter-Discourse and the Minority Perspective in Contemporary German Literature by Christine Meyer Bethany A. Morgan Questioning the Canon: Counter-Discourse and the Minority Perspective in Contemporary German Literature. By Christine Meyer. Translated by Dustin Lovett and Tegan Raleigh. Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. Pp. 343. Cloth $99.00. ISBN 978-3110674361. Christine Meyer’s Questioning the Canon masterfully treats the representative works of Rafik Schami, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and Feridun Zaimoglu through a postcolonial methodology to reveal their overlooked counter-discursive aspects. In response to a field of scholarship that lags behind its Francophone and Anglophone counterparts, Meyer calls for the necessity of utilizing a postcolonial approach to Germanophone literature and its authors originating from stigmatized countries. This work questions the power relations between the center, the canon, and the margins. Utilizing Genette’s theories of “hypertext” and “hypotext,” Meyer shows which authors have written into the canon and essentially asserted themselves as “successors” to canonical authors. Meyer exposes the problems with a literary canon as a collection of texts approved for universality by cultural and academic institutions. From a position inferior to the main subject of discourse in canonical texts, the un-, under-, or misrepresented, such as women and ethnic and sexual minorities, question the ability of canonical authors to universally represent the human experience. For her methodology, Meyer convincingly demonstrates both the validity and importance of approaching German-language “migration literature” from a postcolonial perspective, which originated with “orientalism” and has developed through “mimicry” and “third space,” “subalternity,” and “writing back.” The main difference between the German-speaking canon and the Anglophone or Francophone canon lies in the aims and discourse itself. Rather than uncovering a colonialist or racist ideology in the canon, German-language authors of “migration literature” endeavor to “de-ethnicize” and “denaturalize” the canon by uncovering cosmopolitan and hybrid elements already within. The German canon does not contain the same cultural imperialism or notions of expansionism, but rather focuses on its own “cultural nation.” Moreover, Meyer points out that Germany’s immigration population does not come from colonized subjects but rather from Turkey or from nations conquered by other colonizers. Despite these differences in colonial and immigration histories, Meyer does not excuse the German canon from its share of literary protests but rather [End Page 342] shows how a postcolonial approach unveils a power struggle between the margins and center analogous to that between writers in post-colonial regions and the colonizer. In considering the conditions under which Germany’s contemporary literary canon has developed, the fraught twentieth century required the redefinition of a common patrimony and cultural foundation upon which to build its Kulturnation. Schami, Özdamar, Zaimoglu, and others have entered intertextual dialogue not only with canonical German authors but also with Shakespeare and authors of the larger Western canon. By rereading authors such as Adelbert von Chamisso, Heinrich Heine, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in a “minor” mode, contemporary authors of “migration literature” recontextualize these authors into a decentered space. Beginning with chapter two, Meyer introduces the counter-discursive strategies of her representative authors, including metatextuality and rewriting. Continuing through chapter six, Meyer involves us in her fruitful close readings of numerous texts to show how they write back from the East, test national traditions by diversity, write oppositionally, and utilize a bottom-up approach. Rafik Schami even writes directly to some of these authors. He adopts the position of a grandchild to Chamisso in the epistolary preface to Chamisso’s 1990 biography. To address “Harry Heine,” Schami chooses an interview in which he and Heine realize they have political persecution, exile, and marked status as a historical minority in common. Meyer reads Schami’s epistolary and interview writings as postcolonial in that he assumes a position of successor and kin rather than outsider. In Schami’s corrective (re)reading of European classics such as the fairy tales and Dracula, he rewrites the Wolf as the misunderstood outsider and the Count as misrepresented. Meyer argues that these texts and yet another text in which a fictional sultan evaluates Goethe’s corpus all point to Schami’s postcolonial tendencies to scrutinize the canon and to...

Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic

Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic

Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations

It has long been recognized that the law of the Spanish empire was more supportive of manumission than was the case with other New World slave regimes. Adriana Chira's Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations gives us a nuanced look at the role of law in regulating the lives and possibilities of freedom for quasi-free and enslaved persons in one Spanish venue, Santiago de Cuba in the nineteenth century. Chira's choice of Santiago, on the eastern part of the island, provides us with a particularly appropriate jurisdiction in which to look at the processes and strategies that people used to gain freedom or at least a freer status. Located far enough away from the large sugar plantations that would transform the worlds of race and slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century, Santiago was a venue whose economic conditions supported a large free population of color engaged in small-scale farming. These conditions facilitated the growth of quasi-free people who were able to lawfully purchase shares of their own lives and to hope for eventual purchase of total freedom.In the first chapter Chira traces slavery and freedom in Santiago from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. With conditions more suited to tobacco farming than sugar cultivation, the region became home to numerous small farms and a population of African descent that was able to purchase free or partially free status. The Spanish crown, wary of possible slave rebellion, had policies that were designed to limit the number of African captives brought to the island. The crown also had policies designed to encourage or at least facilitate manumission. All of this contributed to the growth of a free population of color, many of whom might have logically seen themselves as stakeholders in the Spanish imperial system, as witnessed by their participation in the militia, utilization of the courts, and manipulation of political patronage.Because Santiago escaped the sugar boom that transformed Cuba in the nineteenth century, the region also escaped some of the harshness that came with the expansion of the plantation economy and the increase in the African slave trade. The east remained somewhat underdeveloped, which led to somewhat greater autonomy for Santiago's population of African descent. The revolution in Saint-Domingue would heighten the concerns of Spanish authorities over possible rebelliousness, as would the arrival of French-speaking refugees from Hispaniola. This new fear would lead to increased governmental and legal support for manumission.Chira takes us through Cuba's nineteenth century, including the earliest rebellions that would ultimately culminate in Cuba's independence. But it is in her discussion of how the slave and partially free population used the law to gain partial or full freedom that Chira makes her strongest contribution. Chira's portrait of nineteenth-century Santiago society is nuanced and textured, reflecting a society where race and color as well as slavery and freedom came in complex and overlapping layers. Phenotype might set a presumption as to an individual's color or racial status, but it was a presumption that might be overcome by social, economic, political, and military accomplishments. There were individuals who were free and others who were enslaved, but there was also the possibility of purchasing a part of one's freedom, a topic previously explored in Michelle McKinley's Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700 (2016). This possibility in turn made the law a vehicle for settling not only disputes between those who claimed ownership of an individual and those who claimed their manumitted status but also legal quarrels over fractions of ownership of human beings.Patchwork Freedoms is at its best in taking us through the legal processes that determined what quantum of freedom an individual was entitled to claim. The enslaved and quasi-enslaved people of Santiago became skillful navigators of the legal system, with an ability to use formal and customary law in the quest for greater freedom. They were also adept at using patronage networks, especially connections with free and quasi-free people of color that enabled slaves and partially free individuals to earn the money for self-purchase.With Patchwork Freedoms, Adriana Chira has helped to expand our understanding of race and slavery in the Spanish empire. Her localized study guides the reader through the varied considerations—economic circumstances, imperial rivalries, shifting racial ideologies, and political and legal change—that determined the fate of many peoples of African descent in nineteenth-century Cuba. The book is a critical addition to the burgeoning field of Afro-Latin history.

“We can’t go to them, but now they are here”: Ideologies of religion and culture in evangelical ESL classrooms

The history of colonialism, missionary work, and White supremacy is omnipresent in ESL. This study observed ESL instructors at two evangelical Christian ESL programs in South Carolina and investigated locally circulating ideologies of language, race, religion, and gender. The programs, Omega and Pinewood, aimed to share Christianity but used opposing strategies. Omega obfuscated evangelism by conflating Christianity with American culture and focused on assimilating students into English-centric, White evangelical culture. Pinewood accommodated students’ cultural norms, sharing both Christianity and students’ religion. Results of this study are important for understanding how institutional practices correlate with negative outcomes students may experience.

Police Recruits’ Cognitive Engagement in a Racial Literacy Education Program: Does Racial Ideology Matter?

Studies suggest shorter term racial diversity education is ineffective in changing police officers’ attitudes and behaviors, partly due to strong emotional reactions and resistance to this type of content ( Schlosser, 2013 ; Zimny, 2015 ). In this investigation, we explored across two studies whether police recruits’ racial beliefs were related to their level of cognitive engagement in a racial literacy education program. Consistent with the research hypothesis, findings from Study 1 with 81 mostly White male police recruits suggested that recruits with higher color-blind racial beliefs (i.e., greater denial or minimization of institutional racism) as assessed in the first two weeks of the academy were less cognitively engaged in 10 hours of racial literacy education that they received in the training academy. In Study 2, we replicated and extended the results with a separate sample of 74 police recruits. In addition to completing a measure of color-blind racial beliefs at the beginning of their training, participants completed evaluations after each of the three education sessions offered over the course of the police academy. Findings indicated that the recruits’ level of color-blind racial beliefs at the beginning of police academy was associated with lower cognitive engagement in the education sessions. Limitations of the findings are discussed as well as the implications for future evaluation and racism education programming efforts.

Community Psychology's abuse of empowerment to further a white supremacist agenda.

When White people are predominantly in power and the discipline has yet to grapple with its own involvement in oppressive and racist ideologies, the concept of empowerment has the potential of being misused, or worse, abused. This is my experience and observation within Community Psychology (CP). In this paper, I interrogate the history of CP, especially the interplay of colonized knowledge production practices and the concept of empowerment, and uncover the use and abuse of well-meaning community psychological principles by scholars and leaders without the critical racial awareness to apply them to communities to which they do not belong. Lastly, I offer a "slash and burn" approach to starting over.

The Long Shadow: A Historical Perspective on Racism in Medical Education.

To dismantle racism in U.S. medical education, people must understand how the history of Christian Europe, Enlightenment-era racial science, colonization, slavery, and racism shaped modern American medicine. Beginning with the coalescence of Christian European identity and empire, the authors trace European racial reasoning through the racial science of the Enlightenment into the White supremacist and anti-Black ideology behind Europe's global system of racialized colonization and enslavement. The authors then follow this racist ideology as it becomes an organizing principle of Euro-American medicine and examine how it manifests in medical education in the United States today. Within this historical context, the authors expose the histories of violence underlying contemporary terms such as implicit bias and microaggressions. Through this history, they also gain a deeper appreciation of why racism is so prevalent in medical education and how it affects admissions, assessments, faculty and trainee diversity, retention, racial climate, and the physical environment. The authors then recommend 6 historically informed steps for confronting racism in medical education: (1) incorporate the history of racism into medical education and unmask institutional histories of racism, (2) create centralized reporting mechanisms and implement systematic reviews of bias in educational and clinical activities, (3) adopt mastery-based assessment in medical education, (4) embrace holistic review and expand its possibilities in admissions, (5) increase faculty diversity by using holistic review principles in hiring and promotions, and (6) leverage accreditation to combat bias in medical education. These strategies will help academic medicine begin to acknowledge the harms propagated throughout the history of racism in medicine and start taking meaningful steps to address them. Although the authors have focused on racism in this paper, they recognize there are many forms of bias that impact medical education and intersect with racism, each with its particular history, that deserve their own telling and redress.

I cinesi among others: the contested racial perceptions among Chinese migrants in Italy

ABSTRACT This article examines the vernacular system of racial designations and perceptions deployed by Chinese migrants in Italy for making sense of the pluralistic and hierarchical racial reality in which they live. Data primarily came from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Bologna from 2014 to 2015 and the subsequent annual visits until the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Focusing on three major racial labels, it sheds light on the ways in which Chinese diasporic subjects produce a racialized vocabulary related to racism and practice racial formations in transnational contexts. Their localised racial ideology reflects their predicament of being simultaneously both socially vulnerable and economically privileged. It paradoxically both reproduces and negotiates the preexisting Italian racial hierarchy that also reflects globally circulating racial hierarchies, while intersecting with their own understandings of civility and modernity. The perspectives of Chinese migrants who, themselves subject to racialisation, also racialise others reveal a contested bottom-up narrative of racial formation in a European society experiencing rapid demographic change. This ethnographic study thus challenges the existing narratives of racialisation and immigration beyond Eurocentric frameworks.

Racial individualism in middle school: How students learn white innocence through the social studies curriculum

ABSTRACT This study explores how the ideology of racial individualism—which prioritizes an understanding of racism as individual wrongdoing—becomes embedded in the curriculum and discourse of the middle school social studies classroom and becomes embedded in the curriculum and discourse of the middle school social studies classroom to shape the racial socialization of students shapes the racial socialization of students. I provide a case study of one teacher’s combined English and U.S. History class, drawing on data from classroom observations, teacher interviews, student work, and classroom artifacts. The analysis shows how racial individualism was the dominant narrative to frame racism from the colonial period to the present day. I argue that this racial ideology reproduces white racial innocence, including the innocence of individual white people in creating and participating in racist systems and the innocence of the United States as a white nation. Moreover, I show how racial individualism allows white students to appear as anti-racists while creating unsafe conditions for Students of Color to engage in honest dialogue about race. The study thus advances existing scholarship on color evasion in education by illuminating how young adolescents negotiate racial individualism in their everyday classroom interactions.

Alt‐right gangs and far‐right extremists: From the margins to the mainstream

AbstractThe continued public presence of far‐right groups, particularly alt‐right gangs (e.g., Proud Boys) participating in mass demonstrations and protests across the United States has made it clear that these groups and their behavior remain a concern. The overall lack of knowledge among policy makers, law enforcement, and community residents on how to deal with alt‐right gang members has limited their ability to intervene and prevent violence. The misconception that alt‐right gangs are domestic terrorist organizations, primarily driven by racist ideology, ignores just how unrefined and rudimentary the beliefs that connect members together actually are. The reliance on ideology has limited the inclusion of alt‐right gangs in conventional gang studies and has directly impacted gang scholars' ability to understand group dynamics among these far‐right gangs. This has in turned skewed also how law enforcement is trained to identify and deal with alt‐right gangs. This manuscript overviews the need to rectify the historical apathy of traditional gang scholars and law enforcement in dealing with far‐right/alt‐right gangs. We conclude with a discussion on how the mainstreaming of alt‐right groups over the last few years has accelerated and the growing need to explicitly treat these groups as street gangs.

Racial Violence and Visual Media in Vista del amanecer en el trópico

What is the relationship between visuality, racial violence, and political hegemony in Cuba? In Vista del amanecer en el trópico (1974), Guillermo Cabrera Infante tries to answer this question by focusing on visual media and its manipulation over half a millennium. My analysis of the novel as a parody of a Latin American álbum de vistas—a book with idealized etchings, engravings, maps, and/or photos of places and people—uncovers the connection of engravings and photography to Cuba’s racialized political projects. Vista del amanecer underscores continuities in racist ideologies and policies that undermine indigenous people and Afro-Cubans, despite revolutions and changes in political configurations. My thematic and structural study of the novel’s engagement with engravings and photographs demonstrates how Cabrera Infante criticizes state actors who promote race-based violence through the production and dissemination of those two distinct media.

Enforcing Trust: Race, gender, and the policing of citizenship in Rio de Janeiro

AbstractPolicing in Rio de Janeiro is notorious for its brutality. For Unidades da Policía Pacificadora (UPP), a proximity policing program marked by less overt violence, the forging of trust became a strategy for reshaping the image of police and favelas. Yet, this policing model reproduced racial and gender bias that was persistent in broader Brazilian society where trust is coded as white and female while danger is coded as Black and male. In UPP, these ideologies manifested in using lighter‐skinned and female officers to produce trust through whiteness and gender. For residents, pacification underscored a longstanding racial encoding of citizenship and trust as performances of whiteness and belonging. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2015 among the military police and in favelas, I examine in this article how Brazilian ideologies of race and gender intersect with local notions about trustworthiness and class. For the UPPs, enforcing trust was attached to the expectation of submission and uniformity—ultimately strengthening white supremacy. Through intimate ethnographic accounts of commanders' and residents' experiences, I show the nuanced ways trust intersects with local ideas about race and gender and how it served both as a vehicle for pacification and as a mode of citizenship.

White Racism and Dutch Churches: In Search of Liberative Practices

For more than 50 years Dutch churches have spoken out against racial injustices. Yet, this call has rarely translated into transformative practices. This article identifies two obstacles currently preventing churches from combatting white racism: (1) a challenging social climate, including a polarised public debate concerning racism and a lack of interaction between churches of diverse racial compositions, and (2) the role of Christian theology in constructing and maintaining racial ideologies of white supremacy. This article proposes two liberation hermeneutics methods, which combined have the potential to confront these challenges and transform practices.