Understandings Of Race Research Articles

Teorias em Psicologia Social: Explicações Intraindividuais na Análise do Racismo no Brasil

Abstract This article analyses four classic intra-individual theories in social psychology: Authoritarian Personality, Closed Mind Hypothesis, Social Dominance, and Aversive Racism. The article aims to answer three questions: (1) how classical and modern theories of psychology have explained racism over the years; (2) to what extent such theories have been used to understand racism/racial prejudice in Brazil; and (3) what are the possibilities and limitations of their use? The methodology consisted of describing the postulates of the theories, searching CAPES-Periódicos for their frequency and type of use, and analysing their potential to ‘fit’ or ‘not fit’ for understanding racism in Brazil. The results found suggest that they are rarely used, could be employed to analyse Brazilian racism, and can make important contributions to broadening the debate and understanding of the phenomenon, with the necessary contextual adjustments. These findings are discussed based on the social psychology of racism.

Formação de psicólogos no Estado do Piauí - discutindo as questões raciais do Brasil

Abstract Objective The aim of this discussion was to present how racial issues are treated with in some higher education courses in Psychology in the state of Piauí, Brazil. Method Our methodology involved qualitative analysis of the texts of the institutional curricular documents of these programs. We discussed the implications arising from the racial theme from a historical perspective, from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century, a period in which psychology was debating the Brazilian racial issue, as it was developing as an independent science, a situation in which the influence of other sciences, such as medicine, allowed psychological knowledge to be used to validate theories that were intended to defend scientific racism. Results The results of the analysis showed that the issue of race is not explicitly addressed in these courses. Conclusion Our conclusions indicate that we still need to overcome the challenge of understanding racism as a serious problem whose consequences affect society as a whole and that the discussion of these curricular absences is irrefutably relevant for the training of psychologists in a state like Piauí where 76.5% of the population is made up of Brazilians of African descent.

The Digital Contestation of Racialized Nationhood in Russia

This article offers an account of how digital-media communication enables the negotiation of nationhood from the bottom up. It explains how conservative understandings of national belonging can be challenged and co-constructed in the process of public communication over a given discursive event. Using a discourse-historical approach and multimodal critical discourse analysis focused on Manizha’s performance on the Eurovision Song Contest, the author shows the role of race, gender, citizenship, and origins for the construction of a sense of national belonging in the Russian Federation right on the eve of the full-scale war with Ukraine. The author argues that despite the commonly shared racialized understanding of Russian nationhood and the state-imposed conservative values that shape it, there was a dynamic toward a more inclusive understanding of national belonging that was advanced by some popular celebrities and picked up, bottom-up, by minority groups and liberal-minded RUnetizens.

Teaching Racial Reckoning: The CRT Panic as a Challenge and an Answer

Regular media coverage and social media discussion about Black Lives Matter, prison abolition, racialized police violence, and voter disenfranchisement mean that students arrive to our classes already primed to discuss and reckon with questions of racial justice and racial oppression and privilege. At the same time, we have also observed a groundswell of white Americans mobilizing in defense of white supremacy. Although this reckoning has been long in the making, recent successes of a violent and increasingly mainstream political movement have created new challenges for instructors teaching about racism. In this teaching note, I reflect on an experience with students who completed a “knowledge assessment survey” and how this was leveraged into a productive conversation about Critical Race Theory (CRT). More broadly, I suggest that discussion of politicized topics poses some challenges, but also presents opportunities for demonstrating the importance of critical race perspectives and prompts students to reflect on how their understandings of race are derived from their social worlds.

Antisemitism is a Form of Racism – or is it?

The article discusses relationships between racism and antisemitism. It focuses on three major contestations that have taken place during the post-Second World War era(s) regarding the ways racism, antisemitism and the relationships between them should be analysed. The first examines the different academic disciplinary approaches from which racism and antisemitism need to be studied. The second concerns the relationship between antisemitism, racism and modernity, introducing the notion of ‘new antisemitism’, which has become entangled in this contestation. The third examines how understanding racism and antisemitism relates to the theory and politics of intersectionality. The article argues against exclusionary constructions of racism resulting from different forms of identity politics. It calls for an inclusive definition of racism in which vernacular and specific forms of racism can be contextualised and analysed within an encompassing de-centred non-Eurocentric definition of racism. Within such an analytical framework, antisemitism should be seen as a form of racism.

“It’s like there is a veil placed over racial issues”: AfroBrazilians’ educational experiences negotiating transnational racialization and the pedagogy of mestizaje of the Americas

ABSTRACT “As the experiences of AfroLatinx groups continue to gain momentum in academic conversations, AfroBrazilians’ identity and racialized experiences remain undertheorized. Anchored by the conceptual framework of AfroLatinidades and methodologically situated in the realm of qualitative research, this study draws from oral history interviews to document AfroBrazilians’ educational experiences across transnational contexts. In contextualizing AfroBrazilians’ experiences transnationally, this study is attentive to the complex ways AfroBrazilians mobilized racial understandings to negotiate their multiple subjectivities in Brazil and in the U.S. Research findings revealed that educational discourses, curriculum, pedagogy, and policies play a key role in shaping how AfroBrazilians are forced to negotiate the politics of race within and outside educational spaces. I argue that AfroBrazilians’ lived experiences illuminate how racialized ideologies, such as mestizaje, colorism, and racial democracy, manifest in educational contexts and shape pedagogical discourses across the Americas. Such racial discourses inform AfroBrazilians’ deracialized learning experiences, which I call ‘Pedagogy of Mestizaje’.

Get In and Get Out: White Racial Transformation and the US Gothic Imagination

This article examines the Gothic trope of White racial transformation in Robert Montgomery Bird’s Sheppard Lee (1836) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). These seemingly disparate texts both feature White men who turn Black via supernatural body hopping or experimental surgery. In these texts, Blackness acts as an emotional and material resource for White characters that perversely bolsters Whiteness by escaping it. Little-known outside of antebellum specialisms, Sheppard Lee enhances our understanding of race in the Gothic by considering why Whiteness may be rejected in the early nation. Written in the context of blackface minstrelsy, the novel transforms downwardly mobile Sheppard into an enslaved man as a respite from the pressures of economic success. Get Out builds on its nineteenth-century precursors by showing the Black body as a desired and necessary vessel for the “post-racial” White American self, who swaps their physical Whiteness for Blackness to extend or enhance their own life, turning Black men into extensions and enforcers of White middle-class culture. In uniting these texts through the lens of critical Whiteness studies, this article argues that White racial transformation is a long-held tradition in the US Gothic that not only expresses White desires and anxieties, but itself transforms in each specific historical racial context.

Defeating the ‘social danger’ of homosexuality while ‘forging the fatherland’: Sexual science and biotypology in Mexico’s national development, 1927–57

This article situates Mexican sexology, and how it engaged homosexuality and gender nonconformity, within more familiar nation-building projects in Mexico following the Revolution (1910–20). It argues that much like with understandings of race, Mexican sexologists, influenced by neo-Lamarckism and ‘Latin' eugenics, viewed sexuality as caused largely by social and environmental factors, rather than simply as a congenital characteristic. Such experts advocated for social solutions for what they saw as the ‘state of danger’ that homosexuality represented, targeting their interventions at youths, who were seen as pliable, future citizens, rather than adults, who were largely seen as irredeemable and best isolated from the national body. The article explores discursive, ideological, and methodological threads in Mexican sexology from the 19th to the mid-20th century, the field’s professionalization and transnational connections, case studies of youths in which the preferred solutions involved promoting family stability and coherence, and adult cases ranging from prison studies to the case of Marta Olmos, recipient of Mexico’s first widely known sex reassignment. Overall, it demonstrates important intersections between sexology and nation-building projects related to criminology, anthropology, and eugenics, and how the attempted management of homosexuality and gender nonconformity sheds light on Mexican development more broadly.

Anti-racism praxis in an emerging community-academic approach to environmental and climate justice

Abstract Background Racial injustices, environmental and climate threats, and COVID-19 inequities that disproportionately affect communities of color have contributed to social reckoning with racism. Public health is grappling with how to strengthen collaborative processes, research, and practice to be grounded in an understanding of racism as a public health issue and incorporate a structural racism lens into strategies to promote health equity. We describe a process for strengthening anti-racism praxis for an emerging academic center focused on community-academic collaborative approaches to advancing participatory action research for environmental and climate justice. Methods University-based faculty and staff and popular education designers and facilitators collaborated to design an anti-racism process for an emerging environmental and climate justice academic research center. The anti-racism process focused on building leadership and action through deep discussion, reflection, narrative generation, and visioning. This process involved clarifying the Center's purpose, anticipated short- and long-term outcomes, collaborative processes, and theories of change. Results The anti-racism process focused on building deep connections and capacity to practice and advance racial justice within the administrative, research, teaching, and practice spheres of academic and community participants identified as active and passive allies on the Spectrum of Allyship. Dialogues illuminated the centrality of storytelling for listening to and learning from a range of lived experiences and envisioning processes and ways of working together. We discuss themes, facilitating factors, and challenges that emerged from our dialogic process. Conclusions This case highlights the importance of anti-racism processes as a collective experience to inform racial justice approaches within emerging and sustained public health units - large and small - and in participants’ spheres of influence. Key messages • As the field of public health grapples with racism as a driver of health inequities, anti-racism approaches are critical to public health practice and research. • Anti-racism approaches that engage narratives have potential to inform guiding approaches for public health units committed to health equity.

Navigating ambiguous privilege: Jewish refugees in the Belgian Congo during the Holocaust

ABSTRACT How did Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Europe relate to colonial regimes in Africa? While the scholarly studies of Nazism and European colonialism usually belong to separate academic fields, this article by Cassen examines their intersection through the story of the author’s grandparents, Henri and Pola Katzengold, who survived the Holocaust by fleeing to the Belgian Congo. In the Congo, where white people constituted the ruling class, they experienced a sudden transition from being hunted by Nazis in Europe to becoming Belgian colonialists. But while their whiteness gave them power and status over black Africans, their Jewishness rendered their privilege ambiguous, relegating them to the margins of white colonial society. Using the memoir of the author’s grandmother as a source, this article provides a window into understanding racism and social relations between different groups in the Belgian colony during the Second World War.

Destination: Wokeness? Possibilities for exploring domestic educational travel as conscientizing praxis

I explore the possibilities for domestic educational travel to impact students’ understandings of racism, and their attitudes and planned behaviors toward enacting change in their communities. Prompted by movements for racial justice and drawing from the critical pedagogies of Paulo Freire, students on the “America’s Race Issues” community engagement program traveled throughout the Northern and Southern US to explore issues impacting the Black experience, such as slavery and the Civil War, the civil rights movement, environmental injustice, contemporary racial justice activism, and community organizing. Six students documented their experiences through photos and participated in interviews that illuminated the program’s impact on their process of conscientization. The program contributed to students’ conscientization in various ways and to varying degrees, yet shortcomings exist. This study suggests that domestic educational travel with a purposeful focus on race and racial justice activism can contribute to student conscientization, but further research and program improvement is needed.

Increasing dental and medical students' understanding of race as a social construct.

To improve health equity, dental and medical students must have a firm grasp of the proper use of race as a social construct. The purpose of this study was to determine the degree to which an innovative learning event affected students' understanding of race as a social construct. It also sought to examine the effects that personally experienced and/or witnessed racism and previous education had on students' responses to the learning event. In 2022, all incoming first-year dental (N=48) and medical (N=114) students completed an online pre-matriculation assignment about the use of race in healthcare. Students initially completed an anonymous 14-item pre-survey and then read assigned publications, followed by answering questions about a real-life vignette concerning the topic of race as a social construct. Students finished the assignment by completing an anonymous seven-item post-survey. Data from the pre- and post-surveys were collected and analyzed to assess if differences existed among students and between the two surveys. Dental and medical students were significantly more likely to endorse race as a social construct after the learning experience (p<0.001). Students who had experienced discrimination or obtained training were more likely to define race as a social construct before and after the learning event. Dental and medical schools can increase students' understanding of race as a social construct, rather than a biological construct, with educational interventions.

Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought and echoes in the present

This article theorises the contemporary convergence of neoliberal and fascist principles by examining the thought of political actors in the 1930s and 1940s who were active in both neoliberal and fascist organisations. I suggest that a sympathy for fascism formed a minor but significant strand of early neoliberal thought, and that unpacking the logics that led particular thinkers and political actors to believe that fascism was compatible with neoliberalism can shed light on the contemporary political moment. Based on my reading of early ‘neoliberal fascists’, I theorise three points of convergence. The first was a belief that socialism had to be opposed by all possible means, including violence and the repression of popular democracy. The second was a racialized understanding of the underpinnings of the market economy, leading to an acceptance of the necessity of racial exclusion. Thirdly, both fascist and neoliberal thinkers believed that patriarchy was a necessary feature for the reproduction of capitalism, and hence that traditional gender roles had to be preserved against pressures for social change. In theorising this convergence, I also gesture to how the overlap of neoliberalism and fascism can be witnessed in the contemporary milieu, with a focus on the libertarian Mises Institute.

Understandings of race and racism in globalizing higher education: when east Asian international student perspectives resonate with color-blindness

ABSTRACT This article examines how class, race, and neoliberal cultural logics are intertwined with the understanding of race and racism among Chinese and Korean international undergraduate students, drawing on data from an 18-month ethnography. The data suggests that the discourse of color-blind racial ideology and the positionality of the ‘strategic cosmopolitan’ interactively fabricate the perspective of East Asian international students. Specifically, their motivation for acquiring globally competitive cultural capital is connected to the pursuit of White capital. Despite aspiring to be cosmopolitan, students find themselves socially isolated on campus, which is attributed to cultural differences and individual responsibility rather than racial dynamics. Students tend to deny the existence of racial discrimination or avoid discussing racism, distancing themselves from ostensible racial subordinates while emphasizing individual responsibility and meritocracy. By investigating these dynamics, the article adds complexity to the understanding of racism and diversity in global higher education.

How psychoanalysis can contribute to understanding racism

How psychoanalysis can contribute to understanding racism

African American/Black race, apolipoprotein L1 , and serum creatinine among persons with HIV.

Accurate estimation of kidney function is critical among persons with HIV (PWH) to avoid under-dosing of antiretroviral therapies and ensure timely referral for kidney transplantation. Existing estimation equations for kidney function include race, the appropriateness of which has been debated. Given advancements in understanding of race and the necessity of accuracy in kidney function estimation, this study aimed to examine whether race, or genetic factors, improved prediction of serum creatinine among PWH. This cross-sectional study utilized data from the Center for AIDS Research Network of Integrated Clinical Systems cohort (2008-2018). The outcome was baseline serum creatinine. Ordinary least squares regression was used to examine whether inclusion of race or genetic factors [ apolipoprotein-L1 ( APOL1 ) variants and genetic African ancestry] improved serum creatinine prediction. A reduction in root mean squared error (RMSE) greater than 2% was a clinically relevant improvement in predictive ability. There were 4183 PWH included. Among PWH whose serum creatinine was less than 1.7 mg/dl, race was significantly associated with serum creatinine ( β = 0.06, SE = 0.01, P < 0.001) but did not improve predictive ability. African ancestry and APOL1 variants similarly failed to improve predictive ability. Whereas, when serum creatinine was at least 1.7 mg/dl, inclusion of race reduced the RMSE by 2.1%, indicating improvement in predictive ability. APOL1 variants further improved predictive ability by reducing the RMSE by 2.9%. These data suggest that, among PWH, inclusion of race or genetic factors may only be warranted at higher serum creatinine levels. Work eliminating existing healthcare disparities while preserving the utility of estimating equations is needed.

Racial Disparities in Puerto Rican Law-Making as a Result of the Americanized Census

The island of Puerto Rico is characterized not only by its tropical landscapes but also by its extensive history of “mestizaje” and welcoming nature, regardless of race and ethnicity. However, the apparent lack of racial prejudice in its culture is contradicted by the recent increase in racial inequality throughout the island's municipalities. Such racial and ethnic inequalities in Puerto Rico result from the lack of government institutions, tools, and models specifically designed for the island's complex national identity. In particular, implementing the census and its Americanized view on race has further increased inequality among racial minorities in Puerto Rico. Despite the U.S. government's attempts to broaden the census' scope of racial understanding, many of the island's inhabitants remain disadvantaged and unacknowledged by a system that cannot accurately identify their needs, perpetuating the cycle of governmental inaction through inaccurate data regarding Puerto Rican's racial composition.

Convenient Frailty: Medical Contestations of Asthma and Hay Fever in African Americans in Late Nineteenth-Century America.

Post-Emancipation medical and social science scholars extensively theorized Black susceptibility to illness, disease, and death. Most studies of late nineteenth-century medical ideas about the relationship between race and disease have highlighted the construction of medical beliefs that associated Black physical weakness with a proclivity to ill health. This study presents an alternate narrative, one where certain diseases - asthma and hay fever - reflected an opposing racialized understanding of disease that instead centered on White frailty. Based on an examination of turn-of-the-century asthma and hay fever medical literature produced by George Miller Beard, the professionalization of the United States Hay Fever Association, and the publication and dismissal of the first recorded case of asthma in an African American man in 1884, this article argues that late nineteenth-century asthma and hay fever physicians, who themselves often suffered from the conditions, defined the typical asthma patient along racial lines to protect the exclusivity of their own professional and social identities. As a result, asthma and hay fever in Black communities, particularly in the North, where asthma and hay fever scholars primarily lived and worked, remained obscured and untreated until the mid-twentieth century.

Seeing Race Like a State: Higher Education Affirmative Action Verification Commissions in Brazil

ABSTRACTA growing body of literature has focused on how different states continuously “make race” by legitimizing certain racial categories while invisibilizing others. Much less has been written on the actual processes of transforming race into a bureaucratic category when implementing antiracist public policies. This article focuses on the recent use of verification commissions to validate the racial self-identification of potential beneficiaries of racial quotas at federal higher education institutions in Brazil. We argue that through their choices, particularly through their definition of what race is, of who can see race, and of how to see race, these commissions are transforming not only understandings about affirmative action’s aims but also understandings of race. The study focuses on three potential consequences of commission practices for Brazilian racial boundaries: the disciplining of racial identifications, the decontextualization of race, and the individualization of racial injustice.

Racializing the concept of ‘housing otherness’: The effects of temporary housing policies on squatters in Rome

This paper explores the long-standing relationship in Rome between socio-cultural diversity and the temporary nature of low-income housing solutions. I argue that that this phenomenon began long before recent neoliberal trends and the global post-2008 crisis, and instead emerged from the gradual development of a moral and racialized understanding of housing as a ‘social award’. This has created a specific social category known as ‘housing otherness’, which includes migrants and Italian squatters who are experiencing severe housing distress. This exclusionary approach towards the most ‘diverse’ sections of the population in Rome can be traced back to the inception of public housing in Italy during the 1920s. The paper aims to provide a historical account of this process and demonstrate how it is based on the limited availability of residency and settling as a commodity. I also introduce the grassroots Roman housing rights movements and highlights their efforts to challenge the notion that residency and settling should be seen as something that is earned or deserved rather than as basic human rights.