Racist Views Research Articles

The Defense of the Adoption of Critical Social Theory as a Framework for African Universities

With coloniality, thought itself became discriminatory and was categorized into racial forms. That discrimination and categorization of thought gave rise to the idea that philosophy itself must be differentially categorized as either Western, Eastern, or African as if thought has a race and geographic location. The issue at this age is that those categorizations get serious to the extent that it is unthinkable that African scholars can benefit from any thought system except from African philosophy. This paper argued that those vices dent human enlightenment and developmental progress. Within that purpose, this paper used an analytic theoretical framework to argue that it is an unguided racist view that there is no benefit for African scholars in Western philosophy. The adoption of Critical Social Theory was selected as one case whereby an African rural university received a plethora of criticisms as being hypocritical in the decolonization mission. Among the findings of this study one important aspect came out more clearly, that humans love unity rather than division according to race, class and so on. This study recommends that decolonization should be embraced willingly with a clear realization that humanity is one race rather than a divided existence. This study posits that having a proper perspective of decolonization will eliminate hypocrisy among scholars and create that realization of human knowledge as one racial epistemology. Keywords: Coloniality, Philosophy, Academic Discrimination, Decolonization, Theoretic Operandi.

Η ποικιλομορφία και η πολυλειτουργικότητα του ρατσισμού σε άρθρα μεταναστευτικής εφημερίδας

Contemporary western nation-states are built on national and racist discourses and values which are not easily contested by majority members and may affect the discourse and behaviors of minority members as well, even though the latter suffer from the discriminatory consequences of such discourses and values. Research has shown that minority members do not always resist national/racist pressures but often succumb to them, thus accepting majority values and perceiving themselves as Others, namely as majority members usually perceive them. In this context, the present study attempts to explore ways of detecting minority members’ (in the present case, migrants’) internalized racism (Pyke, 2010). The critical analyses performed on two newspaper articles written by young female migrants living in Greece aim to show that, in their effort to adjust themselves to the Greek linguacultural context and to form ties with majority members, the authors reproduce racist views and values usually attested among members of the Greek majority. Given that these articles are published in a newspaper of left wing, antiracist, and pro-migrant orientation, the co-existence of racist and antiracist meanings and values in the same texts blurs the boundaries between racism and antiracism. This renders the texts examined here instances of liquid racism (Weaver, 2016), namely an ambiguous form of racism giving rise to opposing (i.e. racist and antiracist) interpretations and further entrenching the hegemony of racist discourse.

Incarceration without Dehumanization: Public Support for Policies to Reduce Correctional Officer Misconduct

Misconduct committed against incarcerated people is severe and dehumanizing. As the media has begun to shine light on correctional officer misconduct, corrections departments have started implementing policies to curb misbehavior, such as equipping officers with body-worn cameras. Using survey data from a national sample (N = 1,000), the study explores attitudes toward policies intended to reduce officer misconduct in prisons. We also test experimentally whether information about misconduct affects policy preferences. Notably, we examine how racial attitudes are related to policy preferences and whether they moderate the effect of information on the latter. Findings reveal most Americans support reforms, that support is lower among those holding racially resentful or White nationalist views, and that information about misconduct increases support. Finally, there is not a significant interaction between the information and the racial variables suggesting that everyone, regardless of racial views, may be persuaded to support reform efforts.

Медный лик древней Америки: репрезентация мезоамериканских цивилизаций в американском pulp-журнале Weird tales в межвоенный период

In the Interwar period different form of Ancient civilization had been one the most frequent theme in American popular culture. Lost Indian civilization wasn’t exception, but this is-sue is still poorly investigate in the popular culture’s field. The article examines, based on John Cavelti's theory of for-mular fiction and John Saler’s “imaginary worlds”, the repre-sentation of pre-Columbian civilizations in one of the most significant American pulp magazines, Weird tales, and the ways in which their heritage is appropriated by American popular culture. We come to conclusion that representation of pre-Colombian indian civilization was within the general nar-rative of the ancient (like Egypt and Babylon), but had differ-ence in tropes. This concerned attention to the phenomenon of sacrifices. Also, the authors were anxious about issues of race, since the racist view of Latin Americans was a constitu-tive stereotype for many Americans. To prevent this problem from interfering with the appropriation of the Indian ancient heritage as uniquely American, the writers excluded the in-termediary in the person of a modern resident of Mexico. Mexico was represented as a poor, unstable country, just an epigone of its magnificent ancestors.

Dissection, media portrayals, and reaction: Black bodies and medical education in nineteenth-century newspapers.

Throughout the nineteenth century, medical schools in both the Northern and Southern regions of the United States required a regular supply of bodies for medical study and experimentation. Physicians and medical students targeted the bodies of African Americans, both freedmen and the enslaved, to meet this demand. Simultaneously, the nation's booming newspaper market became a stage on which debates about the cruelty of slavery and the social consequences of pursuing medical knowledge played out in articles about the dissection of Black bodies. Such stories increased fears about dissection and mistrust towards the medical profession among African American communities, which manifested in riots against physicians, vandalism against medical schools, and corrective responses from African American newspaper editors and journalists. Through an extensive examination of nineteenth-century U.S. newspapers, this article identifies themes evident in the coverage of dissection during this period. Southern newspapers crafted stories of dissection that served the dual purpose of entertaining White readers and humiliating African Americans. This public humiliation fostered what became a popular genre of derogatory and vile humor that reinforced negative and inaccurate racialized stereotypes as well as racist science. Ultimately, such newspaper coverage provoked reactions within Black communities and among antislavery advocates that showcase how people often excluded from practicing medicine themselves viewed issues like medical education. Newspaper rhetoric around these themes amplified tensions between religious and scientific perspectives, reflected differences and similarities between the northern and southern areas of the United States, and fortified racist views in both cultural and scientific contexts.

Online Satirical News as Instances of Liquid Racism: Evidence from Greek

When discussing the relationship between humour and racism, research usually concentrates on ethnic or racist jokes or on other humorous texts which expressly target migrants or other minorities. Relevant studies more or less explicitly ascribe to critical humour studies investigating topics such as how and why humour targeting the linguistic, cultural, or religious Other reproduces and maintains social discrimination and inequality, as well as how and why the generic conventions of humorous genres do not incite the audience to think critically of their content but instead enhance their tolerance for discriminatory and racist standpoints. In this context, the present study explores humorous texts that at first sight appear to have antiracist intentions. More specifically, I analyse a corpus of satirical news coming from popular Greek websites and targeting majority people for their racist views and practices towards migrants. The analysis is based on the concepts of script opposition and target as defined in the framework of the General Theory of Verbal Humour. The findings suggest that distinguishing between antiracist and racist interpretations is not an easy or straightforward matter: humour seems to blur the boundary between racism and antiracism. In order to account for this dimension of humour, I exploit the concept of liquid racism put forward by Weaver (The Rhetoric of Racist Humour) to account for the ambiguities of humorous discourse when it involves racist and antiracist meanings and interpretations.

Interventions supporting positive psychosocial functioning of Black adolescent girls: A narrative review

ABSTRACTThe disparate experiences of Black adolescent girls across academic and behavioral domains when compared to their same-gender peers call for further examination and discussion to aid in tailoring support efforts. This narrative review aims to identify processes that contribute to the psychosocial functioning of Black girls, an understudied area of research. By employing an intersectional framework grounded in Black feminist ideology, this article explores the racial identity and socialization of Black girls, their academic and behavioral experiences within school and beyond, how the strong Black woman schema can conceal the needs of Black girls, and the impact of racial stress. Identified themes of support for Black girls include gender-specific programming that focuses on positive racial identity development, messages regarding positive racial views as part of racial socialization, psychoeducation on the impact of racial trauma as well as lessons on power, privilege, and oppression to aid in self-understanding and cultivate critical consciousness.

РАСИЗМ И ДИСКУРС (ПО МАТЕРИАЛАМ ЗАРУБЕЖНЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЕЙ)

The article examines the manifestation of racist views and beliefs in various discursive practices. Words, texts and speech can play a key role in the formation of the modern racism. The study provides a brief overview of the concepts of “race” and “racism” adopted in Western science, describes the main approaches to the discursive analysis of racism. The focus is on discursive aspects of racism in Germany and New Zealand. Terms “prejudice” as a negative attitude towards a social group and “stereotype” as expression of a belief about a group or a representative of a group are explored. Strategies for rationalizing prejudices about minorities are listed; themes of racist discourse are described. The semantics of racist discourse manifested in the social, cultural, political, information, business and everyday spheres of life is examined. The authors summarize the broad meaning of the term racism applied in the Western science. The conclusion is made about the unifying and divisive functions of racist discourse and its differentiation into levels: “domestic racism”, “elitist racism”.

The racism of Maria Montessori

ABSTRACT In this historical study, the author explores the racial views of Maria Montessori as expressed in her largely forgotten 1913 book, Pedagogical Anthropology. As a physician and physical anthropologist, Montessori espoused three racial beliefs that were in wide circulation during the late nineteenth century: biological racism, racial determinism, and craniology. Montessori combined these beliefs to warrant the underlying conviction that the races of the world were organized hierarchically with the White races at the top and the races of colour at the bottom, and that, even within the broader White race, there were numerous racial types that could likewise be organized hierarchically based on their physiological features and intellectual potential. The author demonstrates how Montessori expressed these racist beliefs in Pedagogical Anthropology, how she connected them to her famous pedagogy and curriculum, and how they fit into the racial discourses of contemporaneous educators and anthropologists.

Courage in the Anthropocene: Towards a philosophical anthropology of the present

AbstractIn the late 18th century, Immanuel Kant attracted attention for his criticisms of colonialism, that problematized the established boundaries between civilization and barbarism, and chastised English colonialism in particular. Some years later, however, in his lectures on Anthropology, he ventured some oddly racist views, concerning the specific differences between European and Indigenous peoples. Kant's racism is by now well‐documented. However, less attention has been paid to the peculiarities of that racism, and especially its foundations in a theory of virtue. His racism comes to light especially in his discussions of the virtues of patience and courage, and in passages which have rarely been subject to critical scrutiny still to this day. This article starts out from an analysis of the functions of Kant's concepts of courage and patience in his account of European versus Indigenous difference, with a view to interrogating the politics of virtue in the present, where this discussion is reoccurring in new guises. What Kant considered courage has now been devalorized, while what he considered patience is now valorized. This reversal of perspectives on what counts as virtuous has occurred in correlation with a reversal in western perspectives on Indigeneity. Such that contemporary accounts of courage are correlated with contemporary accounts of Indigeneity. These reversals of perspective must be understood in context of the transformation which philosophical anthropology has undergone under the duress of the Anthropocene. Contemporary works by Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jonathan Lear are of great relevance to this correlated transformation and will be discussed here. The article analyses what both Chakrabarty and Lear understand by courage today, its relevance to the Anthropocene, and points out the limitations of their theories. Ultimately the article argues for a rethinking of the definition of courage as a political virtue of the Anthropocenic present.

David Hume – An Apologia

In September 2020, ‘The David Hume Tower’ in Edinburgh was renamed ‘40 George Square’ because Edinburgh University had concluded that the philosopher, historian and essayist, David Hume, was guilty of holding racist views. There were also public allegations of his support for slavery. The supposed evidence comes from a letter he wrote to Lord Hertford in March 1766; an assumed loan to a slave plantation investor; a letter he received in June 1766 from the Marquis d’Ennery and a footnote added to his essay Of National Characters in 1753. In this essay we review the events in Edinburgh prior to the renaming of the tower and re-examine some of the documentary evidence used to support current attacks on Hume’s moral character. Each of the charges of supporting slavery and being a racist is examined, both in the context of Hume’s writings as a whole and in relation to modern definitions of racism. Our conclusion is that Hume is innocent of both accusations, and that he has been unjustly vilified.

Of Racist Philosophers and Ravens

How can historians of philosophy justify spending the preponderance of their professional lives writing about historical philosophers who held racist views? I use the controversy over University of Edinburgh’s David Hume Tower as a jumping-off place for discussion of this issue. I argue that worthwhile philosophical ideas in historical philosophers can be conceptually isolated from their racist views.

Exploring The Convergence of Social Disparities and Interracial Relationships in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings

Slavery is one of the most significant social disparities in human history. It is defined as the practice of owning and exploiting another individual as property or inferior. It is characterized by enforced labor and restraints on freedom. Specifically, slavery was a system that allowed the enslavers who possessed the power to force the enslaved people to work and limit their lives and liberty. In the United States, slavery was solely based on the race and identity of one group of people. However, given their race and skin color, many Black people in America were forced into slavery. Since enslavers considered enslaved people their property, they considered them insignificant. Therefore, this study's primary purpose is to determine how whites dominated Blacks and controlled enslaved people through slavery. Further, it analyses how the interracial bond promotes racial equality in one of Kidd’s novels, The Invention of Wings. Despite initially holding racist views, Sarah, the white protagonist in the novel, develops a close bond with Handful, a Black character. Through this relationship, Sarah gained a deeper understanding of the struggles faced by Black people and eventually became an abolitionist, committed to gradually freeing them from slavery. In addition, this study also explores how the Black characters in the novel fight tirelessly to attain their independence without losing their faith. Hence, the study results in greater insight into Sarah's Interracial relationship with Handful, including how they got inspired and influenced by each other, thus diminishing discrimination between the two races.

Between General Strike and Dissensus: W. E. B. Du Bois’sBlack Reconstruction

For W. E. B. Du Bois, the tragedy of Reconstruction was that its achievements were overthrown and erased from collective memory. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction corrects this, claiming enslaved people who fled plantations self-emancipated, thus enacting a “general strike against the slave system.” Yet Du Bois contravenes his general strike thesis when he quotes without rebuttal several Union officials who spoke of the formerly enslaved in degrading, nonagentic terms. I turn to Jacques Rancière’s politics of dissensus to understand why Du Bois quoted such racist views without comment. In Rancière, political actors “stage a scene” of equality that is shared, even among parties in conflict. Recording conflicting perceptions of the strike, highlighting divisions that persist despite momentary advances of equality, Du Bois’s reading of the general strike is dissensual in Rancière’s sense, I argue. But Du Bois also offers a valuable corrective to Rancière, whose account of the first plebeian secession erases a different general strike from memory. Rancière reads the Aventine as an event of confrontation unconnected to the collective action that Du Bois summoned from the archive and named “general strike.”

Is the Hobbesian State of Nature Racialized?

Abstract Thomas Hobbes, like other early modern social contract theorists, has been accused of promoting racist views in his philosophy – ideas used to justify European imperialism and the devastation of Indigenous peoples. I argue that his philosophy does not assume or promote a naturalized racial hierarchy. I demonstrate that the logic of Hobbes’s project requires rejecting a racially essentialist conception of human nature. His is a thoroughgoing and unrepentant anti-essentialism; he claims that there are no objective, immutable, necessary differences between ‘civilized’ people and ‘savages.’ Instead, I locate Hobbes’s bias in his reliance on culturally-specific notions of government. Finally, I suggest that the Hobbes’s natural law requirement of ‘acknowledging’ equality can be applied to questions about race. Though this was not its purpose, this requirement might provide a useful – and distinctively Hobbesian – tool to combat the impulse behind the problematic and persistent desire to find ‘real’ differences among racial groups.

Exploring Canadian perceptions and experiences of stigma during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to stigmatization of individuals based on race/ethnicity, age, gender, and occupation, among other factors. We canvassed Canadian residents to explore perceptions of and experiences with stigma during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted an online survey between June 10 and December 31 2020. The survey was rooted in the Health Stigma and Discrimination Framework and included multiple choice, Likert and open-ended questions related to perceived and experienced stigma. Residents of Ontario, Canada were eligible to participate and we aimed to recruit a sample that was diverse by race/ethnicity and age. A total of 1,823 individuals participated in the survey (54% women, 39% men; 54% 18-40 years old, 28% 41-60 years old, 12% 61+ years old; 33% White, 26% East/SouthEast Asian, 14% Black, 12% South Asian). Fifty-one percent of participants agreed/strongly agreed that racist views had increased toward certain racial/ethnic groups in Canada during the pandemic. Participants perceived that people in Canada were stigmatized during the pandemic because of race/ethnicity (37%), political beliefs (26%), older age (24%), being a healthcare worker (23%), younger age (22%), being an essential worker (21%), and gender (11%). Thirty-nine percent of respondents feared experiencing and 37% experienced stigmatization during the pandemic. Men, individuals aged 18-40, and racialized participants were more likely to fear or experience stigma. With respect to health behaviors, 74, 68, and 59% of respondents were comfortable masking in public, seeking medical care if they became ill, and getting tested for COVID-19, respectively. Men were less likely to indicate comfort with mask wearing or seeking medical care. Participants aged 18-40 and Black participants were less likely to indicate comfort with all three behaviors compared to those over age 41 and White participants, respectively. South Asian participants were less likely to be comfortable seeking medical care compared to White Participants. Participants feared or experienced stigmatization towards various demographic characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is critical that the factors driving stigma during health emergencies in Canada be better understood in order to develop effective public health messaging and interventions.

Dark Stars

Carl Van Vechten created a set of portraits of African American entertainers who knew each other through an interracial New York—London circuit during the interwar period. Less studied than the New York—Paris axis, this network offers rich insights for those interested in this important moment in modernist and African American cultural histories. Best known for the controversial racial views promulgated in his infamous novel Nigger Heaven (1926), Van Vechten, in his photographic practice, reveals a different approach to race. An analysis of his photographs reveals that he and this cohort refashioned Blackness in their own terms. Blackness was displaced to expressive shadow, becoming a malleable sign divorced from the body that allowed them to negotiate racial identities that were distinguished from inherited stereotypes. The acknowledgment that race was a social construct opened up new possibilities for living unfettered by traditional constraints on African American lives.

A Military History of Texas by Loyd Uglow

Reviewed by: A Military History of Texas by Loyd Uglow Christopher M. Rein A Military History of Texas. By Loyd Uglow. War and the Southwest Series. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2022. Pp. xiv, 433. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-57441-865-1.) While the state flag of Nevada bears the phrase “Battle Born,” Loyd Uglow’s A Military History of Texas demonstrates that the appellation applies equally to the Lone Star State. Long a contested borderland between various Indigenous peoples and European colonizers, the modern state of Texas is very much a creation of the series of nineteenth-century wars and irregular conflicts that defined its modern borders, privileged certain groups of immigrants, and determined its current form of government. The author clearly demonstrates that Texas’s history is military history, and that military conflict has been instrumental in the formation of modern Texas. Uglow organizes his work chronologically, moving from pre-Columbian warfare to Texas’s involvement in current conflicts, and he relies almost exclusively on secondary sources, as is necessary for a work of this breadth. With a few exceptions, these sources are well chosen and represent the most current literature in the field. The nineteenth century dominates the work, reflecting both the author’s interests and the role the various wars of that period had in carving the Republic of Texas out of Mexico, attaching it to the United States, [End Page 165] and depopulating the state of the Indigenous peoples who had lived there for centuries. Uglow provides a straightforward accounting of events, with some bias shown toward the declared wars and set-piece battles that dominate traditional military history, though there is some attention in later chapters to irregular warfare and the home front. A too-brief conclusion of just eleven pages (with one page devoted to the 2009 Fort Hood shootings) covers the entire period since World War II, and it delivers an at times celebratory accounting of the manpower and resources that Texas contributed to the growth of militarism in the United States and the nation’s various military adventures of the past eighty years. By providing a strict narration of mostly well known events, Uglow misses a number of opportunities to provide more in-depth analysis, especially analysis reflecting the “war and society” turn in military history. Other than brief mentions of “racially motivated” violence during Reconstruction and the violence that erupted between white residents of Houston and Black soldiers stationed there during World War I (which the author labels a “mutiny”), there is little attention paid to the impact of military conflict on the state’s troubled history of race relations (pp. 243, 307). Similarly, despite the long history of violence along the state’s southern border, with armed incursions emanating from both Mexico and the United States, and notable episodes of brutality committed by the state-authorized Texas Rangers, the author offers a spare analysis of how this legacy impacts current views of border security both within the state and across the nation, or of the lingering hostility and mistrust among the state’s Anglo and Hispanic residents. There is little discussion of how Texas’s violent past, including the frequent incursions by both Comanche and Mexican raiders, continues to influence both racial views and positions on issues such as gun rights in the modern state. However, Uglow does point out that the Texas Revolution began with an attempted confiscation of firearms by Mexican officials. Citing works such as Susannah J. Ural’s Hood’s Texas Brigade: The Soldiers and Families of the Confederacy’s Most Celebrated Unit (Baton Rouge, 2017), which fully explores the connections between military forces and the societies that raise and sustain them, might have helped the author move past the detailed accounting of well-chronicled events to offer some explanation of how military history shaped modern Texas society, and how that culture continues to influence larger events and movements in the nation as a whole. Thus, the book fully achieves its limited aim of recounting Texas’s military past but misses an opportunity to highlight its broader significance and, thereby, to make a larger contribution to the existing literature. Christopher M. Rein Air...

Racial and Religious Convergences and Divergences among Christian Students’ Approaches to Color‐Blindness, Color‐Cognizance, and Race in Christian Organizations

AbstractDrawing on survey data of Christian students (N = 4261) enrolled at 11 colleges that are part of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, we examine color‐blindness, different types of color‐cognizance, and views on race in Christian organizations. We find significant differences between students of color and White students in color‐blindness and color‐cognizance but find racial convergence in the importance of racial reconciliation. Net of controls, greater evangelical orthodoxy is associated with color‐cognizant views that perceive prejudicial treatment against White people, undercut the experiences of people of color, and is associated with more positive views of Christian organizations’ roles in race relationships. Concurrently, upper year students differ significantly from first years in their racial attitudes and views on race in Christian organizations, suggesting that Christian education may shape racial views positively. Our findings have implications for theorizing how evangelical Christianity and evangelical colleges maintain and challenge color‐blindness and White supremacy.

Rooted in Racism? Race, Partisanship, Status Threat, and Public Opinion Toward Statehood for Washington, D.C.

In recent years, a number of prominent elected officials on both sides of the partisan divide have weighed in on the possibility of making Washington, D.C., the nation’s fifty-first state. While Democratic supporters of statehood for D.C. emphasize issues of equal representation, some Republican opponents have stressed the partisan and ideological consequences of D.C. statehood. Other Republican opponents, in justifying their position, have made the claim that Washington, D.C., lacks the necessary and sufficient characteristics associated with statehood, and these claims have been widely interpreted as implicitly racist appeals. In this paper, using three nationally representative surveys, we explore whether mass opinion on this issue is primarily shaped by partisanship, ideology, racial status threat, or racial prejudice. We find clear and consistent evidence that while partisan and ideological attachments, as well as perceptions of racial status threat, influence opinion on statehood for Washington, D.C., the strongest determinant of opposition to statehood are negative racial attitudes. We take these results as further evidence of the debate over D.C. statehood, like debates over public policies that are purported to benefit African Americans, is intimately intertwined with negative racial views expressed by the mass public.