Understandings Of Race Research Articles

Racial/Ethnic Socialization Practices of Biracial Asian Children in the United States

Despite a dramatic increase in Asian-White biracial individuals in the US, there is still a lack of research on this population. Using phenomenology, the purpose of this study was to delve into the lived experiences of Asian-White interracial couples and their experiences raising their biracial children. A total of 10 couples participated, and they reported on their perception of their children’s racial/ethnic identity, their children’s understanding of race, the types of racial and cultural socialization practices in which they engaged, cultural differences within their family, and differential treatment based on their children’s appearance.

„Rasse“ und Naturteleologie bei Kant

AbstractImmanuel Kant is, famously, not only the major philosopher of European enlightenment, but also one of the first philosophers to develop a philosophical theory of “human races”. How do these two sides of Kant relate to each other? What is the significance of race in Kant’s philosophy? In this article, we aim to discuss these questions by taking (1st) a close look into the conceptual and philosophical presuppositions underlying Kant’s understanding of race; relating them (2nd) to the concept of teleology as developed by Kant in theCritique of Judgementand to the idea of natural history that can be derived from there. In the last two chapters (3rdand 4th), we intertwine both perspectives in such a way that, on the one hand, we can determine the philosophical significance of race for Kant, and, on the other hand, show how a race-sensible perspective gives new and critical insight into Kant’s concept of reason.

Anti-Ethnic Hegemony, Identity Construction and Political Complicities

Teaching material and textbooks undoubtedly operate politically and should be scrutinized concerning the knowledge that they construct and legitimize. But such scrutiny often involves new hegemonies and political complicities that also require further scrutiny. Following Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse analysis the present article critiques one such hegemony: that which sets civic identity against ethnic identity and, to prioritize the former, depoliticizes or even effaces the latter. To illustrate the need for further scrutiny of such politics the article carries out a deconstructive reading of a text (that of Yannis Papadakis, 2008) that is representative of this hegemony. This reading reveals that Papadakis tacitly blames ethnic identity as such for the wrongful treatment of Otherness, thus incriminating ethnic attachment wholesale and, therefore the very Otherness in whose name he purportedly deploys his social constructionism. I argue that Papadakis’ modernist suggestion to disconnect the present from the historical past undermines ethnicity while failing to stave off essentialist and racial understandings of it. At cross-purposes with social constructionism, Papadakis’ critique of the pernicious political operations of ethnic identities ends up annihilating ethnic identities.

Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Church in the Early American North by Richard J. Boles

Reviewed by: Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Church in the Early American North by Richard J. Boles Antonio T. Bly Richard J. Boles, Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Church in the Early American North (New York: New York University Press, 2020) "It is appalling," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously noted, "that the most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 o'clock on Sunday morning."1 Long before the civil rights movement, the apostle of non-violence declared that Americans venerated a God who had seemed "a respecter of persons." Indeed, throughout America's long history, the cursed children of Ham had been compelled to acknowledge the God of Abraham in segregated spaces. Racism defined, in both implicit and explicit ways, the marrow of America's religious traditions. In Dividing the Faith, Richard J. Boles revisits the early history of churches in the North, challenges this conventional wisdom, and uncovers a forgotten world in which Dr. King's aphorism might not have always held true. An insightful analysis of extant church records, meeting minutes, and unpublished manuscripts of over four hundred congregations, the portrait Boles reveals is an appealing one. Building on the work of John Wood Sweet, Joanne Pope Melish, Gary B. Nash, Margaret Ellen Newell, and others, Boles argues [End Page 99] that early churches in British America were more integrated than segregated. Between 1730 and 1776, integrated churches were more or less a common part of life in the North. From the early to mid-eighteenth century, segregated congregations were incongruous to the practice of the Christian faith. Instead, "most Congregational, Anglican, Lutheran, and Moravian churches in the northern British colonies were interracial congregations as blacks and Indians participated through weekly church services and the rituals of baptism and communion" (5). Between the Great Awakening and the Revolution, the number of these churches increased significantly. Among the famed devotees who considered themselves members of these multi-racial and multi-ethnic houses of worship were Phillis Wheatley, Samson Occom, Richard Allen, and Absalom Jones. One hundred years before the Tremont Temple Baptist Church of Boston had been recognized as the first integrated church, the Gospels had been preached in numerous churches to mixed-race congregations. These diverse places of worship peaked around the advent of the new century (4, 222). Then, between 1821 and 1850, the number of integrated churches fell as African Americans, Afro-Indians, and Native Americans began to establish their own churches. In retelling the history of these mixed communities of faith and how they varied over time, space, and denominations in the North before 1860, Dividing the Faith seeks to challenge our understanding of race, history, and religion in early America. A comparative analysis of African American and Native American peoples' participation in white churches, Boles's study encourages us to reconsider the conflicting politics of history and memory; specifically, how the social and cultural views of subsequent generations of Americans have distorted the assorted nature of the past (92–131, 106–107, 70–73, 158–159, 162–234). However, missing in this study of the rise of segregated churches in the North is a much more nuanced account of the politics of race in America and the role it undoubtedly played in dividing the faith. Before the Revolution, African Americans and Native Americans were indeed members, but they were not members in full. They could not, as Boles makes plain, vote or lead the congregation, rendering questionable the extent to which they actually participated as members of these supposedly integrated flocks (6, 164, 182). Even when their numbers grew as a result of the Awakening and the Revolution, whites continued to hold fast to their position as the theological heads of the congregations. Why? Clearly, Boles overreaches; he downplays the nature of race in the northern colonies, conflating, inadvertently, obligatory attendance and participation. Little is made of the fact that baptism signified, at once, education and the possibility of a better life for most, if not all, African Americans and Native Americans. Even less attention is given to early African American and Native American expressions [End Page 100] of religiosity (66–67, 194–195). Phillis Wheatley embodies best...

The Archaeology of Northern Slavery and Freedom

The Archaeology of Northern Slavery and Freedom

We cannot empathize with what we do not recognize: Perceptions of structural versus interpersonal racism in South Africa.

Recent research suggests holding a structural, rather than interpersonal, understanding of racism is associated with greater impetus to address racial disparities. We believe greater acknowledgment of structural racism also functions to mitigate against empathic failures in response to structural injustices. Given South Africa’s situatedness as a country characterized by historical racialized oppression and continuing unjust legacies, it is appropriate to examine these ideas there. Across three studies, we tested the hypotheses that members of advantaged groups’ perspective taking and empathic concern may be compromised in response to people challenging the unequal status quo, and that a priori perceptions about the impact of structural (vs interpersonal) racism may mitigate or exacerbate such empathic failures. In Study 1, a national sample of White South Africans (n = 195) endorsed perceptions of interpersonal racism more readily than perceptions of structural racism, and expressed high levels of competitive victimhood for perceived anti-White structural racism. Studies 2 (n = 138) and 3 (n = 85) showed that White participants at a historically White university responded with impaired perspective taking and intergroup empathy bias in response to people challenging structural disparities. Finally, reduced recognition of continuing structural racism predicted greater intergroup empathy bias, which, in turn, was associated with reduced willingness to engage in intergroup discussions about past harm (Study 3). We propose that greater acknowledgment of structural racism is necessary not only to surmount intergroup empathic failures, but also to transcend the socioeconomically unequal legacies of apartheid and beyond.

Fictions of Race: Racecraft, Reproduction, and Whiteness in Titus Andronicus

Fictions of Race: Racecraft, Reproduction, and Whiteness in <i>Titus Andronicus</i>

A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice by Jenny Carson

Reviewed by: A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice by Jenny Carson Eric Arnesen (bio) A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice. By Jenny Carson. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. Pp. xi, 289. $125.00 cloth; $28.00 paper) Over the past half century, historians of race and labor have produced a substantial body of scholarship on various occupations, unions, and race relations that collectively reveals the complexity of working-class race relations, traditions of Black activism, and labor movement practices. While fewer such studies have appeared in recent years, Jenny Carson's new book reminds us that this historiographical genre continues to have much to offer. Focusing on the greater New York City laundry industry, A Matter of Moral Justice brings to life the on-the-job conditions experienced by a largely female labor force and its struggles for dignity and economic advancement. It also explores just how profoundly unionization transformed life on the job for the better and, at the same time, underscores just how limited that transformation proved to be. [End Page 436] New York's early twentieth-century laundry industry relied on a heterogeneous labor force that became increasingly African American and female. Despite low wages, poor working conditions, and abusive treatment, unionization efforts were sporadic and unsuccessful. Only in the late 1930s and early 1940s did sustained trade unionism finally take off, the result of efforts of Black women shopfloor activists, women reformers, and various Communist and Socialist organizers. Under the banner of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACW) during the upsurge of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), laundry worker unionization brought significant improvements to workers' lives. But, Carson insists, those gains were limited—laundry work remained poorly paid, racial and gender inequality persisted in the workplace, and the disproportionately male and white union bureaucracy resisted sharing power with women or African Americans. Advances notwithstanding, Carson argues that the outcome proved "disappointing" (p. 8). At the heart of her story is the activism of Black workers like Charlotte Adelmond, a Trinidadian immigrant, and Dollie Robinson, a migrant from North Carolina, whose aspirations and struggles Carson carefully reconstructs. As leaders of the "democratic initiative," they tenaciously but only sometimes successfully challenged their employers and union leaders with an agenda centered on racial and, to a lesser extent, gender equality (p. 127). Her considerable attention to intra-union battles that pitted these Black women activists against ACW officials makes clear that the union prioritized the preservation of "white male privilege in all its forms" (p. 197). As important as the "democratic initiative" was, however, the degree of rank-and-file Black workers' participation in this oppositional culture remains unclear, as does the extent to which the civil rights unionism pursued by these activists extended beyond union affairs. The story Carson tells is an important one that highlights the obstacles to successful organization and the role played by grassroots activists in overcoming them. She effectively draws out the complexities of [End Page 437] a powerful CIO union which, while ostensibly committed to interracialism, often blocked the efforts of its Black women activists to overturn entrenched racial and gender hierarchies. Her restoration to the historical narrative of the previously little-known efforts of Adelmond and Robinson suggests that the ranks of Black grassroots activists is larger than historians generally realize and that their inclusion into the history of American labor genuinely enriches our understanding of race, civil rights, and protest in the first half of the twentieth century. Eric Arnesen ERIC ARNESEN is the Teamsters Professor of History at the George Washington University. He is currently completing a biography of A. Philip Randolph. Copyright © 2021 Kentucky Historical Society

Runaways London: Historical Research, Archival Silences and Creative Voices

AbstractThis article explores how popular historical knowledge and understanding can be deepened by collaboration between historians, creative artists, and editors, publishers and those who support and develop the creative arts. Historical research into enslaved people who escaped in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London reveals much about their enslavers but very little about the enslaved people themselves. However, archival gaps and silences can be imaginatively filled, and those who engage with the historically inspired creative work can explore the nexus of historical research and artistic creativity. In this article the authors (a historian and two members of the creative industry) detail how their ‘Runaways London’ collaboration developed, and how the work of poets and artists, premised on extensive historical research, deepens our understanding of race and slavery in British history, achieving something that is beyond the reach of historical research and writing alone.

Gender at the Intersection of Racialization, Inequality, and Disability in Anbar Otin’s Writing

Abstract Racializing locals has been one of the main characteristics of Russian and Soviet imperial modernity. Anbar Otin (1870–1915) was among the thinkers and writers in Turkistan’s Muslim society engaging with such issues. In Risolai Falsafai Siyohon (The Treatise on the Philosophy of the Blacks) she treats siyohon (blacks) as a color employed as a social metaphor and social position used in reference to the ordinary people of Turkestan, their frustrated hopes, and their pain. In the work, Anbar indicates that the word siyohon (qoralar -blackness) has been used to racialize, discriminate against, and denigrate Turkestan’s peoples. According to Anbar, it also carries a positive connotation as in “inner and physical beauty.” In this paper, I analyze the writing of Anbar in relation to her understanding of racialization, inequality, religion, gender, and disability, situating Anbar’s experience within broader discussions of such topics in the Central Asian context.

‘White digital footballers can’t jump’: (re)constructions of race in FIFA 20

ABSTRACT Drawing on the quantitative datasets of Electronic Arts’ FIFA 20 top 100 players and their qualitative descriptors, the paper addresses the following: (1) How do ideas of race manifest and influence digital worlds? (2) How do digital football simulations (games) disrupt or reproduce racialised stereotypes and logics found within football in the social world? (3) How does playing football video games contribute to users’ understandings of race and sport. This paper, the first in-depth study of its kind, provides new empirical insights into the presence of the ‘natural athlete’ discourse within the operative datasets that underpin White and Black digital player performances in FIFA 20. We conclude that FIFA 20 is a site for a potent experiential socialisation in racialised myths, where gamers come to know race and the racialized other in sport through feeling the racialized differences of the procedurally generated natural athlete quite literally through their controllers.

White teachers developing racial identity awareness and critical consciousness through critical reflexivity

ABSTRACT Racial understanding is essential for many reasons, one being that the United States population is growing increasingly diverse while many communities are still racially segregated. At the same time, many white teachers are uncomfortable investigating their racial identities, and do not engage pupils in discussions about race. Using critical reflexivity, this study sought to ascertain how, if at all, four white kindergarten to fifth-year teachers who taught in predominantly white schools began developing their racial identities and critical consciousness. We also sought to understand their comfort in discussing race. Teachers did not have identical experiences, but all voiced awareness of racial truths about their own social positions and that of members of non-dominant communities. To some degree, all started advancing their critical consciousness and became more comfortable talking about race committing to further use of multicultural texts. Most importantly, they understood that this ongoing process requires continuous reflection and learning.

Scientist or Racist? The Racialized Memory War Over Monuments to Carl Linnaeus in Sweden During the Black Lives Matter Summer of 2020

This is a study of the Swedish debate on statues and monuments to the world-famous Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus that took place during the Black Lives Matter movement breakthrough in the summer of 2020. The purpose is to examine how understandings of race, racism, identity, and history were articulated in the debate. The empirical material consists of Twitter posts and newspaper editorials, which we approach through thematic analysis complemented with discourse analysis of illustrative examples and excerpts. Theoretically, we conceptualize the debate as a case of a Swedish racialized memory war. The results show that discourse participants constructed the terms of the debate as a matter of being “for” or “against” Linnaeus’ legacy, and consequently as a matter of being for or against science, reason, progress, and a supposedly non-ideological historiography, rather than as a matter of qualitatively renegotiating how we selectively remember and celebrate historical persons and legacies, and formulate tendentious narratives of the past that serve present agendas. In this memory war, discourse participants mainly representing the white majority population of Sweden mobilized a defense of a “canonized” understanding of Linnaeus’ legacy on the editorial pages of the Swedish newspapers and on Twitter. This defense, we argue, supports an ongoing effort to absolve Swedes of any substantial complicity in European and Western racism and colonialism. In effect, what is defended is a white-washed use and understanding of history – a status quo that largely remains unchallenged in Sweden.

Don’t Read the Comments: Examining Social Media Discourse on Trans Athletes

How are transgender athletes understood in popular discourse? This paper adapts and merges Glaser and Strauss’ 1967 Grounded Theory Method with computerized Automated Text Analysis to provide clarity on large-n datasets comprised of social media posts made about transgender athletes. After outlining the procedures of this new approach to social media data, I present findings from a study conducted on comments made in response to YouTube videos reporting transgender athletes. A total of 60,000 comments made on three YouTube videos were scraped for the analysis, which proceeded in two steps. The first was an iterative, grounded analysis of the top 500 “liked” comments to gain insight into the trends that emerged. Automated Text Analysis was then used to explore latent connections amongst the 60,000 comments. This descriptive analysis of thousands of datapoints revealed three dominant ways that people talk about transgender athletes: an attachment to biology as determinative of athletic abilities, a racialized understanding of who constitutes a proper “girl”, and perceptions of sex-segregated sports as the sole way to ensure fairness in athletic opportunities. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications of this research for how scholars understand the obstacles facing transgender political mobilizations, presents strategies for addressing these roadblocks, and underscores the importance of descriptive studies of discourse in political science research concerned with marginalization and inequality.

Neither White nor Black: The Dutch Reformed Mission Church and the Colour Issue (1881–1982)

This study investigates the role and understanding of race, particularly “Coloured” identity on the formation and life of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church. Particular focus is given to how the DRMC has dealt with and responded to the colour issue since its inception. An attempt is made to indicate how the history of the DRMC and “Coloured” identity in South Africa are inextricably bound up together. More emphasis is placed on “Coloured” being perceived as neither White nor Black and how the initial critique from the DRMC comprised of “Coloureds” being “less” than White, but superior than Blacks. The study concludes with the influence of Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement on the DRMC.

Editorial

EDITED by Kerri Greenidge, an assistant professor of Tufts University and a member of our editorial board, and associate editor Holly Jackson, our special edition “Revisiting Black Boston” illustrates the vitality of recent scholarship that has recast our understanding of race, racism, and abolitionist movements in antebellum Boston. It appropriately recognizes the imagination and prescience of Lois Horton and James Oliver Horton. On the occasion of her husband's death, Lois Horton recounted being told that a project on Boston's Black community was simply not possible: “There was no community and the documents aren't there.” They nonetheless persisted and in 1975 produced Black Bostonians: Family and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North. A testament to their combination of diligence and imagination, the Hortons’ study provided the seminal work that, nearly fifty years later, has made possible the essays assembled in this issue. Each of our essays in this issue reflects on how much historians stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors. Unfortunately, Professor Lois Horton passed away suddenly in September 2021 and cannot see how her and her husband's work has inspired a new generation of scholars.The editors also wish to take this opportunity to thank our external readers and book reviewers for their good cheer and willingness to take on these tasks that are so crucial to the publication of the Quarterly. We also wish to acknowledge the donors to the 2021 Annual Appeal who are equally essential to the contained quality of the journal.

What Is a White Epistemology in Psychological Science? A Critical Race-Theoretical Analysis.

Critical race theory guides the analysis of the nature of a white epistemology in psychological science, the consequences for the study of race, and how scientific racism has been possible in the pursuit of knowledge. The article argues that race has not only been misused in the politics of psychology but misappropriated because of the logic of psychological science. The epistemic process is divided into four components to argue that naïve empiricist approaches in psychology, centered on scientific method, prevent an intricate understanding of race. Reasons for privileging method in psychology and the consequences of a white epistemology are discussed, including a narrow epistemic horizon and an inability to account for the temporality and contextuality of psychological phenomena. Ignorance, failure, or unwillingness to account for epistemic complexity when studying race are identified as problems. Questions about who benefits from narrow epistemologies are answered and suggestions for a broader practice of knowledge and education are provided.

The Burden of Conviviality: British Bangladeshi Muslims Navigating Diversity in London, Luton and Birmingham

This article considers the convivial turn in migration and diversity studies, and some of its silences. Conviviality has been conceptualised by some as the ability to be at ease in the presence of diversity. However, insufficient attention has been paid to considering who is affectively at ease with whose differences or, more particularly, what the work of conviviality requires of those marked as other vis-a-vis European white normativity. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with British Bangladeshi Muslims in London, Luton and Birmingham, we argue that a focus on ‘ease in the presence of diversity’ obscures the ‘burden of conviviality’ carried by some, but not others. We discuss three key types of burden that emerged from our data: the work of education and explanation, the work of understanding racism, and quite simply the work of ‘appearing unremarkable’.

Stuart Hall and the Absent Irish

AbstractStuart Hall was undoubtedly one of the key theorists of late twentieth-century British politics and one of the most important leaders in the development of a serious understanding of race and racism in British society. This short review essay examines the odd ways in which Ireland and Irishness are only nominally present—and thus, in a real sense, absent—in his voluminous writings. Given the centrality of Irishness to the deep history of race in Britain and the role played by fears of Irish terrorism in Thatcherism, both central concerns of Hall’s, this is a major lacuna. This essay offers some speculative assessments as to why Hall generally ignored Ireland and draws a connection to the broad context of the British Left, which had (and still has) similar blind spots.

Affective legacies: narrating the intergenerational transmission of racial feeling in oral history interviews

ABSTRACT This article explores the concept of affective legacies – the intergenerational transmission of affect through storytelling and embodied performance. I examine affective legacies as embedded in oral history interviews of school desegregation in rural North Carolina and what these oral history interviews teach us about how performances of memory shape our understandings of racism and racial integration as an embodied and affective practice. This study illuminates how affective legacies guide our relations, inform the way we perceive and remember, shaping an emotional meaning-making system that motivates our personal and cultural understandings and judgments as well as contemporary stories of racial struggles.