Race Theory Research Articles

The racialisation of AIDS in Denmark: Tabloid media scandals of sex, race and contagion

In 1992, a Danish tabloid newspaper published the picture, name and address of a Black man on its front page under the title ‘He is the AIDS killer’. The outing marked the beginning of a controversial public scandal in Denmark directly leading to the introduction of a new law criminalising HIV in 1994. Centring questions of race and nationality in connection with HIV/AIDS, we examine in what ways the discursive framing of this, and two other public scandals, became tools of interpellation calling into existence ‘problematic’ and ‘dangerous’ groups like the racialised immigrant. Drawing on theories of race and racialisation through the work of Michel Foucault and Alexander G. Weheliye, we understand racism as structurally constituted within biopower and the violent expulsion of racialised people as a form of structural racism integrated in the state apparatus. Thinking about race in this way allows us to investigate how the figure of the racialised immigrant is represented vis-à-vis a racialised regime of representation as well as within a specific economy of fear and white paranoia. Our analysis shows that the racialisation of AIDS in Denmark, through which the control and disciplining of racialised bodies were made possible, worked in tandem with the cultural production of a national health crisis narrative that – put together – enabled, produced and pushed for particular political reactions and interventions culminating with the passing of the HIV Act in 1994.

Police leaders’ support for civilian oversight and implicit bias training: assessing the influence of perceptions of systemic racism

ABSTRACT This study uses a sample of police leaders from across the United States to explore the extent to which their support for civilian oversight boards and implicit bias training, as two aspects of police reform intended to improve racial injustices, relate to their belief that systemic racism is an issue in criminal justice. Presented in the context of symbolic racism theory, we assess how respondents’ willingness to acknowledge systemic racism in criminal justice relates to more supportive perceptions of civilian oversight boards and implicit bias training. These relationships remain significant even when controlling for other individual and agency-level factors that are known to affect perceptions of systemic racism and support for public policies designed to improve racial justice. This study discusses the need for additional research and consideration of how police officers’ racialized attitudes relate to their support for common reform recommendations.

Correction to: Separate from Class? Toward a Theory of Race as Resource Signal

Correction to: Separate from Class? Toward a Theory of Race as Resource Signal

Race, sovereignty, and White settler colonial studies: placing settlers at the Cultural Interface

ABSTRACT White settler colonial studies has been widely criticised for representing settler colonialism as an impenetrable and inevitable structure. This article therefore turns to explore how race preconditions and limits the construction of settler subjects. We draw on Torres Strait Islander theorist Martin Nakata’s Cultural Interface theory to unsettle ‘common-sense’ theories of race, and reconceive of the place where European and Indigenous cultures meet as sovereign Indigenous land. We extend Cultural Interface theory to locate White settler standpoints within the intertwined histories of racial capitalism and European and US imperialism. We argue that these histories orient settlers towards White possessive sovereignty. This article then deploys this framework to provide a deeper understanding of the disciplinary limits of White settler colonial studies through two case studies. First, we analyse Liberia’s construction as a settler colonial nation to denaturalise and historicise White settler standpoints. Second, we analyse the White settler standpoint institutionalised in White settler colonial studies’ descriptions of the settler/Indigenous binary, the logic of elimination, and settler sovereignty. In both cases, White settler standpoints are shaped and limited by the racialised logics of White possessive sovereignty. We nevertheless conclude that settlers may reorient themselves towards Indigenous sovereignty.

Looking Back to Look Forward: Publication Trends in the First Decade of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

Looking Back to Look Forward: Publication Trends in the First Decade of <i>Sociology of Race and Ethnicity</i>

Starting with the self: Conceptualizing an anti-racist early childhood pedagogy by critiquing white educators’ social-emotional competencies

While much research attention has focused on young children's social-emotional (SE) competencies, an increasing body of evidence points to the importance of educators’ SE skills. Indeed, scholars have suggested that such skills support educators’ emotional well-being which, in turn, prevents burnout and facilitates a positive learning environment for young learners. Although the preceding benefits are well recognized, scholars have yet to fully explore how the interconnected domains of SE competence are linked to and support anti-racist pedagogy in early years classrooms. Drawing on systemic racism theory, this paper builds on and broadens the scope of the extant anti-racism in early childhood literature by focusing on (i) the positionality of white educators as it pertains to anti-racist pedagogy; (ii) conceptual and practical connections between anti-racist pedagogy and white educators’ SE competencies; and (iii) identifying how educators can evaluate and improve their pedagogies in a play-based early years classroom.

Neighborly Surveillance: The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and the Development of a Post-Jim Crow Ideological Apparatus

The relations of production in Deep South regions like the Mississippi Delta require a high degree of control over race and class configurations. While the overt, de jure White supremacy that marked the post-Reconstruction era allowed for effective repression of dissent, the promise of federal intervention and grassroots organizing during the years of the civil rights movement required White elites to recalibrate methods of control. By integrating theories of racialization of space, internal colonialism, and Althusser’s (2006) notion of the ideological state apparatus, I suggest that this transition from overt to implicit control was accomplished by creating a culture of neighborly surveillance in which everyday Whites were deputized to surveil and report on civil rights organizing at the grassroots level. By neighborly surveillance, I refer to surveillance between and amongst private citizens enacted outside the purview of the formal state but in the interest of the powerful elite who control the state. I document this process through analysis of the archives of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an official state agency tasked with spying on and counteracting civil rights activity. These records demonstrate the extent to which non-state actors assumed the roles originally exercised by the de jure Jim Crow regime. Beyond augmenting understandings of the civil rights movement-era US South, this article contributes analytical insights to social and ideological transitions in other post-colonial, post-authoritarian spatial contexts.

Racist targeting and denial in academia: the ineffectiveness of current policies and practices to address evolving forms of racism

ABSTRACT Studies on bullying and harassment in academia, investigative news reports, and surveys continue to find that reporting these incidents leads to retaliation. Contributing to this work, we apply the lens of systemic and everyday racism theory to a narrative analysis of 25 semi-structured interviews with faculty and staff of colour, who experienced racist targeting and how they addressed these issues formally and informally. We find that, rather than assist them with the harassment they faced, such policies created an additional layer of everyday racism, emotionally segregating experiences leading to isolation and withdrawal, and contributed to racism-evasiveness in academia. Our data expose weaknesses in the implementation of policies that do not reflect modern-day expressions of racism. We recommend individual and institutional changes to protect faculty and staff of colour who have challenged racist individuals and structures.

What to Do after the Emancipation Proclamation? A Princeton Seminary Alumnus’s Views on Racial Issues and Slavery in Brazil and the United States (1852–1867)

Abstract This article reflects on how the concept of race and views on African Americans and Afro-Brazilians permeated the American Presbyterian missions that operated in the Brazilian empire in the nineteenth century. This analysis considers the writing and reading of Ashbel Green Simonton (1833–1867), a Princeton Seminary alum sent to Brazil as a missionary by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA). In his missionary activity, Simonton founded the first Presbyterian Church and the first evangelical periodical in Brazil. Considering the intercessions between the racial theories stemming from natural history and nineteenth-century theological anthropologies, as well as the missionary’s interactions with the racial and slavery issues that permeated the American Civil War (1861–1865), this article analyzes Simonton’s journal (1852–1867), the books requested by Simonton at Princeton Theological Seminary (1856–1858), and the periodical Imprensa Evangélica (Evangelical Press, 1864–1867).

Racial capitalism and firearm violence: Developing a theoretical framework for firearm violence research examining structural racism

Despite the early promise of centering structural racism in explanatory models of firearm violence, there are noticeable gaps in what's been produced thus far; in particular, a deeper and more serious engagement with long-standing theories of racism is needed to further enrich our understanding of how structural inequalities produce unequal burdens of firearm-related harms. Thus, building on theories and concepts from a range of academic fields and Black philosophical perspectives, we developed a theoretical framework to help explain the role of place-based structural racism on firearm violence disparities. A central component of our framework is the concept racial capitalism, which contends that racial exploitation and the accumulation of assets depend on and reinforce one another. In this article, we present our framework and highlight how two processes related to racial capitalism—racialized dispossession and racialized spatial stigma—are connected with geographic disparities in firearm violence. We also present the results of an ecological cross-sectional study that reveals a potential key association between racial capitalism and firearm violence disparities on the neighborhood-level. We used a structural intersectionality approach and descriptive epidemiological methods to highlight and quantitatively describe spatial firearm violence disparities that could potentially be linked to the varying exposure of two dimensions of racial capitalism—historical redlining and contemporary racialized subprime mortgage lending. We found that sustained disadvantaged census tracts (tracts that were historically redlined and experienced higher contemporary subprime lending) experienced the highest burden of firearm violence in Baltimore City between 2015 and 2019. Our research suggests that racial capitalism could potentially be a root cause of firearm violence disparities. A theoretical framework based on racial capitalism can inform the development and usage of indicators and analytic methods for racism-related firearm violence research. Moreover, this framework can identify factors to prioritize in equity-based violence prevention policies and programs.

Racialized Horizontal Stratification in US Higher Education: Politics, Process, and Consequences

In this review, we integrate three bodies of scholarship—education stratification research, political-historical sociology of higher education, and sociological theories of race and racism—to understand the production of “separate and unequal” postsecondary experiences for racially marginalized college students in the United States. We argue that the US postsecondary system is plural, heterogeneous, and stratified partly as a result of hundreds of years of contested efforts to deploy higher education in the service of white supremacy and capital accumulation. Organizational stratification of higher education along racial lines leads to horizontal stratification in individual experiences within the same level of schooling, and even within the same university. We review literature on racialized sorting between schools, which channels racially marginalized students to different parts of the postsecondary system relative to their racially advantaged peers. We also describe stratification within schools, as students are tracked, often by race, into divergent academic and social pathways internal to a single university. Both types of sorting have racial consequences for students’ career trajectories, economic security, and well-being. Finally, we detail recent efforts to challenge horizontal stratification, responses to those efforts, and avenues for future research.

Enslaved People, Aliénés, and Gradual Freedom: Condorcet and Pinel on Sensibility

ABSTRACT In his 1781 work, Réflexions sur l'esclavage des nègres, Condorcet argued for a gradual abolition of slavery, driven by his concerns about the enduring impact of violence on enslaved people's sensibility. He recognized that “sensibility,” or the locus of a person's sensory, emotional, and intellectual interaction with the world, could be severely affected by oppression, a point also emphasized by his friend, alienist Philippe Pinel. While Condorcet proposed a state-regulated transition to freedom for enslaved people, Pinel warned that the damage to their sensibility might be too profound for his treatment to work, paving the way for subsequent racial theories.

‘[K]neeling only goes to highlight your ignorance. England is NOT! a #racist country’: aversive racism, colour-blindness, and racist temporalities in discussions of football online

ABSTRACT Drawing on theories of aversive racism and colour-blindness, which stress the invisibility of contemporary racism, this article analyses online discussions on taking the knee (TTK) during EURO2020 men’s football tournament. While highly visible racist abuse directed at Black English players after losing the final to Italy (dominative racism) received most public attention and repudiation, based on 6,850 English language tweets published on Twitter/X, this article shows how subtle racism and colour-blindness were reinforced in discussions around TTK over the duration of the tournament (aversive racism). The article also shows how individuals online developed a variety of strategies (evidence, othering, critique, and activism) to challenge the main arguments against anti-racist activism in football (identified in four themes: BLM, Marxism, virtue signalling, and woke). The article makes an original contribution by examining the changing intensity of online conversations on TTK over the duration of the tournament. Our analysis identifies key moments in the tournament, political elites’ rhetoric, and trends of success and failure as relevant factors that shaped vernacular conversations online. The discussion ultimately argues that investigating the temporal patterns of public discussions on (anti)racism provides valuable insights to understand the contemporary complexity of racism in football and society more broadly.

Johann Daniel Metzger and Kant's So‐Called Human Races

AbstractAround 1788, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach compiled a list of notable contributions to the discussion on Kant's concept of race. This list included references to Kant's second and third essays on race, Georg Forster's 1786 response, and two essays by Johann Daniel Metzger. Blumenbach's compilation stands in stark contrast to contemporary discussions of Kant's racial theories. Despite the increasing interest in this subject, Metzger's critiques are still largely unnoticed. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of eighteenth‐century discussions on race, it is crucial to broaden our perspective beyond the viewpoints of Johann Gottfried Herder and Forster and include Metzger's contributions. In this article, I aim to elucidate (the context surrounding) Metzger's endeavours to engage with Kant's concept of race.

Reconstructing the Identity of African-Americans in Countee Cullen’s “Heritage”: Why Race Matters in America

The present paper argues that it is the color of the Africans that is an object of mockery and humiliation hurled at them by the whites. To escape from this color-induced discrimination and identity crisis, yearning for the ancestor’s native heritage is the sole sanctuary for the American people of color. This paper examines the subtle use of the symbols of dark images to show how Countee Cullen, in his poem “Heritage,” shows black people's identity crisis based on color. The dark color symbolizes a constraint on civilization and creates a distinct bifurcation between synchronization and harmony in the nation. Hence, the recurring dark color in the poem leads the minority group to quest for identity through social strengthening. The poet calls for African Americans' personal, social, and geographical identity based on hereditary identity. In the context of America, the question of true identity in the new nation leads black people to feel a deep anguish of estrangement and alienation. Drawing on Cullen’s poem as the primary source for analysis, this paper applies Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancis, Winthrop D. Jordon, Michael Banton, and Lois Tyson’s racial theory and search for identity for textual analysis. Racial discrimination creates gloom and generates inferiority among individuals. The minority group seeks identity establishment for social inclusion. Therefore, this study concludes that national coherence in American society invariably rests upon minimizing gloom, distancing, and uneasiness.

Анархическая этничность

The chapter “Anarchist Ethnicity” makes an attempt to consider the concept of ethnicity as part of the modern politics of values. The topic of ethnicity, which arose as a scientific response to a politically discredited racial theory, nevertheless, as the author shows, does not leave the political space. Both primordialist and constructivist concepts of ethnicity retain the priority of ethnic identity (separation of oneself from another, and in political form, attitude towards the enemy) in relation to that archaic (pre-political) community, which can also be extracted from the very idea of ​​ethnos. The author proposes to consider ethnicity not as a tool for dividing communities, but as one of the forces of bringing together the weak, different, and incapable of political solidarity and mobilization. This reveals a unique ethics of ethnicity, which the author calls “ethical mythology,” since here the action of myth and ethics are inseparable. Using the example of the polemics of Derrida and Lévi-Strauss regarding preliterate societies, it is shown that the myth in which a community manifests itself in opposition to various forms of imposed political community (be it a people, a nation or an ethnic group) is a variant of arche-writing in the form in which it described in the concept of deconstruction. In fact, ethnicity contains signs of resistance to the “common meaning” and “political will”, peculiar traces of ritual, non-government practices of heterogeneous communities. The attempt made in this chapter to present such communities as the elusive source of ethnicity and as a distinguishing unit of modern political thinking, like a phoneme in linguistics, reveals the anti-authority and anti-social layer of ethnicity, which is therefore called here “anarchic”. In the chapter “Maidan: Redefining Democracy,” through an analysis of the events that occurred in Ukraine in 2013, which resulted in a change in political power in the country, the author attempts to offer a different version of democracy. It was on the Kiev Maidan, in his opinion, that the event of depoliticization of protest took place, as a result of which many words, such as “freedom”, “justice”, “trust”, “dignity”, ceased to be moral and political tools for manipulating society, but they acquired the concreteness of practical action, not reducible to politics, morality, or economics. The article shows the Maidan effect from the side of its resistance to politics, where the dominance of affective trust exceeds possible political disagreements. It is this that Spinoza, and later Antonio Negri, describes as the “multitude” (multitudo) that underlies democracy. It is this kind of democracy that realizes “freedom”, “equality” and “justice” not as political concepts, but as affects of community, allowing for the realization of both trust and risk in a world filled with political falsehood and disinformation.

Race differences in support for anti‐racism policies: Endorsements of anti‐black and anti‐white stereotypes

AbstractIntroductionSupport for anti‐racism policies such as mandatory diversity training and affirmative action varies by race. Research in the racial resentment and symbolic racism traditions focuses on whites’ endorsements of stereotypes that blame blacks for their unequal position in society, causing whites to be less supportive of anti‐racism policies. Systemic racism theory suggests an additional hypothesis: People who believe whites are not doing enough to dismantle the systemically racist system that disadvantages blacks and other groups should be more supportive of anti‐racism policies.MethodsWe examine both hypotheses using data from a national YouGov survey of 1125 U.S. adults gathered in 2021.ResultsRace differences in support for anti‐racism policies are accounted for by race differences in endorsements of both anti‐black and anti‐white stereotypes.ConclusionFuture studies of support for anti‐racism policies should consider the influence of both anti‐black and anti‐white stereotypes.

Historiography and Political Discourse The history of Roman imperialism in the thought of Theodor Mommsen and Tenney Frank

This article explores the nexus between power and historiography, particularly ancient Roman imperialism, in the German and American historical writings from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Scholars have intensively explored the use of the roman imperialism in supporting the British imperialism. However, the relations between Roman imperialism and its usage in German and American historiography remain critically unexplored. Through the of Michel Foucault’s power-knowledge and discourse analysis, this paper aims to delves into the relationships between power of those traditions and historical productions. The central questions are: How does the narrative surrounding Roman imperialism shape discussions on the nation-state building and expansion beyond state borders? And how does the discourse on Roman imperialism incorporates racial theories? particularly in the works of German scholar Theodor Mommsen and American scholar Tenney Frank. Despite their different approaches, both scholars drew from Roman history to achieve similar political aims. This paper contends that history, as exemplified by Roman imperialism, serves as a powerful tool in justifying political actions.

Toward a relational racialization lens in education: addressing critiques of CRT’s race theory

In the interdisciplinary field of education, critical race theory (CRT) is the predominant framework for studying racism. However, some have argued CRT lacks a racial theory and that CRT-education scholarship should examine how education racializes (i.e. contributes to making racialized categories). In this theoretical article, I suggest that one way to address this gap is by adopting a relational racialization lens—a perspective that helps scholars theorize on the process of creating the boundaries of racialized groups and that places these boundaries as always relational to the different racial categories. To support my proposal, I discuss CRT and the trends in the education literature focused on racialization. I then present an account of how a relational racialization lens complemented my CRT research and illuminated issues concerning racialization and racisms. I argue this lens can help education scholarship advance with a racial theory and in doing so contribute to important conversations about racialization.

Beyond racial resentment: Systemic racism beliefs and public attitudes toward criminal justice institutions and reforms

AbstractIntroductionSystemic racism theory has become a central part of academic and public discussions about criminal justice institutions and reforms. Little, however, is known about the association between people's belief in the ubiquity of systemic racism and their attitudes toward criminal justice institutions and reforms.MethodsTo fill this gap, we examine the association between systemic racism beliefs and support for police, police reform, and the BLM movement using a national YouGov sample of 1125 U.S. adults.ResultsSystemic racism beliefs are associated with Americans’ attitudes toward all three outcomes, net of a wide range of controls, including negative experiences with police, political ideology, and most notably, racial resentment.ConclusionOur study provides compelling evidence that belief in systemic racism is an important driver of Americans’ support for police, police reforms, and BLM.