White Characters Research Articles

‘Of Course Muslims Can Be Gay’: Sexuality and Religion in Adiba Jaigirdar’s Young Adult Fiction

Today, Irish Young Adult (YA) literature examines a wide variety of youth experiences. However, an aspect that it is still slowly beginning to address is Ireland’s multiculturalism. While it is possible to find racialised characters or characters who belong to marginalised ethnic minorities in some Irish YA texts, white characters still predominate. Thus, it is significant to highlight the work of those authors who offer a depiction of today’s multicultural Ireland and a window into the experiences of characters that are usually found outside the mainstream, as is the case for Adiba Jaigirdar. Her YA novels The Henna Wars (2020) and Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating (2021) depict experiences and challenges that many Muslim girls may encounter in contemporary Ireland. This essay aims to analyse, in particular, how both novels explore matters of sexuality and religion together with race and ethnicity by focusing on how these intersecting elements of identity are negotiated by the characters of Nishat and Hani, two queer Muslim girls. This intersectional analysis will focus on how sexuality and religion working simultaneously both shape, and are influenced by, the girls’ experiences in a multicultural yet mainly white and Catholic Ireland.

Disney in Black and White: An Analysis of Race Representation Within Disney Animated Films From 1937 to 2021

This study examined Disney studios’ portrayals of race as it relates to the physical, mental, and social characteristics of major characters ( N = 319) within Disney animated films released from 1937 to 2021 ( N = 59). Findings revealed most of the characters featured were portrayed as White (68.3%) whereas BIPOC characters made up 31.7% of the total. Results suggest that BIPOC characters were significantly more likely to be featured in supporting character roles, with White characters featured in both the protagonist and antagonist roles. We further observed a limited integration of characters of varying races in a singular film.

“Can Corpses Undie?” Traces of Rothberg’s Trauma Model in Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s Ace of Spades

Interdisciplinary studies in memory have become more relevant since the turn of the twentieth century with scholars giving their divergent views. That way, personal and collective memories have been explored vis-à-vis communal identities. How tragic/traumatic events affect personal and collective memories remains the concern of trauma theory which has critically investigated both the personal and intergenerational traumas of victims of injustice. One major contribution of Michael Rothberg to collective memory is his advancement of solidarity between group victims of diverse cultures, nationalities, races, and identities in order to create a more peaceful world to live in. This paper purports that Rothberg’s multidirectional memory and theory of implication are useful theoretical tools for analysing Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s Young Adult novel, Ace of Spades (2021). The paper, therefore, indicates how diverse sites of trauma in the author’s world synergise with those of the protagonists. Also, the paper notably identifies some white characters in Ace of Spades as implicated subjects of racism and white supremacy. On the whole, the premise of this paper is that the new media can serve as a convenient site of thoughtful convergence for different victim groups to devise a means of dismantling long-existing regimes of oppression and injustice.

“De eso no se habla”: the complexities of representation in Love, Victor

ABSTRACT This article examines the Hulu/Disney+ dramedy, Love, Victor (2020–2022), highlighting its initial problematic and racist conflation of race/ethnicity and culture/religion to depict people of color as backwards and homophobic and white characters as secular, progressive, and accepting. However, the narrative evolves as the non-white mothers reclaim their understanding of religion to support their gay children. Bringing together Latinx Media Studies and the intersections between race/ethnicity and culture/religion, this article employs critical textual analysis to examine scenes throughout three seasons of Love, Victor. This article underscores the ever-changing landscape of representation for people of color.

Research brief: A quantitative content analysis to explore work value portrayals among characters in Belgian adolescents’ favorite TV series

ABSTRACT Occupational portrayals are omnipresent in adolescents’ favorite television (TV) series. Insights regarding such portrayals remain largely lacking. This study aimed to fill this gap via a content analysis of 334 characters across six TV series that are popular among adolescents. This study specifically examined portrayals of work values – qualities that an occupation should satisfy (e.g. skill utilization, earning potential) – because work values are a crucial part of adolescents’ vocational identity that guide career choices and affect well-being. By examining the content of such portrayals, scholars can better understand the potential effects of exposure to such portrayals. Therefore, we examined the extent to which various intrinsic, extrinsic, social, and prestige work values were portrayed as being upheld, violated, or mixed (RQ1). Work values were most frequently portrayed as being upheld among characters with a notable focus on portrayals of extrinsic work values (e.g. the upholding of a safe work environment). Attention was given to differences in work value portrayals according to characters’ job type (RQ2), gender (RQ3), and ethnicity (RQ4). High-skilled white-collar workers, male characters, and White characters were most positively portrayed, with work values shown as upheld in their occupations.

Children's social preference for peers engaged in brilliance-required activities: The impact of gender and race.

Women's underrepresentation in academic fields and professions emphasizing high intellectual talents persists as a prominent societal issue. To explore early antecedents of this gender imbalance, the present study investigated the developmental changes in children's social preference of boys and girls who pursue brilliance-required (vs. effort-required) activities. Importantly, we took an intersectional perspective to explore whether children consider target race in their social preference. Five- to 9-year-old U.S. children (N = 207; Mage = 7.53; 104 girls and 103 boys; 48% White) were presented with pairs of Asian, Black, and White characters matched in gender. One character was depicted as enjoying a game requiring high intellectual talents and the other enjoyed a game requiring effort. Participants were then asked to choose the character that they liked more, as an indicator of their social preference. With age, children became increasingly likely to prefer White boys and girls of color (i.e., Black and Asian girls) pursuing activities requiring brilliance (vs. activities requiring effort). In contrast, children did not develop increasing social preference for White girls or boys of color who opt in for brilliance-required activities. Our data suggest that, as early as elementary school years, children's social preference in contexts valuing sheer brilliance becomes both gendered and racialized. These findings highlight the importance of using an intersectional approach to identify the specific developmental processes that contribute to social disparities in brilliance-required contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Children’s perceptions of race and ethnicity in media: a 25-year update to children now

ABSTRACT In 1998, Children Now surveyed 1,200 U.S. 10- to 17-year-olds about TV racial depictions, finding white children reported the most visibility. As a 25-year update, we surveyed 834 U.S. 10- to 17-year-olds: Asian/Asian American (n = 177), Black (n = 206), Hispanic (n = 150), Indigenous/Native American (n = 86), and white (n = 215). More youth now say it’s important to see their race in media, but fewer report seeing their group, with Hispanic and Asian youth reporting the lowest frequencies. Overall, youth perceived disparities: 93% said there were ‘enough’ white characters; fewer said there were enough Black (54%), Hispanic (43%), Asian (32%), and Indigenous (19%) characters. Perceptions of qualities varied, with Indigenous characters scoring lowest in positive qualities and Black and Hispanic characters highest in negative qualities. Indigenous, Hispanic, and Asian/Asian American youth perceived fewer positive ingroup representations than white and Black youth. Implications for media message design and the theory of invisibility are discussed.

The Arrival from Abroad: Train Travel and Mobile Ideas of Race in Pre-Apartheid South African Literature

ABSTRACT This article identifies and explores an inciting incident in two pre-apartheid South African novels: the trope of an ‘arrival from abroad’. This trope centres on a character arriving by train from a place figured as foreign, whether that is Cape Town or London, to the rural South African setting of the story, bringing ideas of interracial togetherness with them that challenge local racial hierarchizations. Two novels are used as case studies, one from the beginning of the 20th century – Perceval Gibbon’s Margaret Harding (1911) – and one written on the eve of apartheid – Peter Abrahams’s The Path of Thunder (1948). The traveller from abroad is either a black South African who has been educated in Europe or Cape Town and arrives home to effect change, or the traveller is a white character from Europe whose values are pitted against those of white South Africans. In both cases, the ‘arrival from abroad’ is a destabilizing force to the local community, bringing often unwelcome ideas from outside. Together, Gibbon’s and Abrahams’s novels allow me to explore the interrelations between the mobility of ideas from one place to another, ideologies of race, the figure of the outsider, and train travel in South African literature from the first half of the 20th century. Comparing Gibbon and Abrahams enables me to trace differences and continuities over time and in diverse uses of the trope. This article argues that the ‘arrival from abroad’ trope is used to embody a notion of mobile ideas at a time when trains served to shift both goods and people to radical effect on society.

Whiteness and the Animal Question: Revisiting Coetzee's Postapartheid South Africa

Abstract: Scholars such as Evan Mwangi argue that postcolonial animal studies is all too often considered through white environmentalist perspectives, a point exemplified by the critical focus on white perspectives provided by writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Barbara Gowdy, and Lauren Beukes. Such focus bestows the authority to care for African natures to (white) Western visions of worldmaking. Mwangi's criticism suggests the white environmental discourses that have informed prominent readings of Disgrace (1999). The uncritical discourse of animal welfare in the post-colony has ties to apartheid governance and its rhetorical legacy. Through a comparative reading of Coetzee's Disgrace , the rhetoric of euthanasia used by animal welfare organizations, and contemporary reporting on the state of the animal, I outline a historical centering of white environmentalism—in particular welfarism—in institutional South African discourses about the animal. In opposition to assertions that the animal becomes a vehicle of redemption for the main character, David Lurie, and other redemptive readings of white characters in the novel such as Bev Shaw, I suggest that Disgrace reveals the legacies of white nationalist imaginaries that continue to undergird state and institutional environmental discourses in South Africa. The purportedly humane ideologies of animal population control and welfare perpetuate white interests. Disgrace reveals the tension between institutional expressions of care and the forceful integration of postcolonial nations into global markets, which sustain colonial legacies of white worldmaking.

Exploring Religious Animal Symbolism in Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves

In her 2009 novel The Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich weaves a complex story that demonstrates the attempted erasure of Native American culture and religion through contrasting religious animal motifs. Serpents, doves, and lambs have inherent associations with biblical and some indigenous religions that, together, build a conflict that is reflected by the tension between the occupants of the reservation and by the white characters. For example, the Biblical interpretation of serpents is that they are evil spirited and essentially the embodiment of Satan; however, some religions view serpents as creatures that cast out demons. These contrasting beliefs, along with other examples in the novel, create the religious and spiritual conflict that occurs in the novel as the Native Americans are bombarded with Catholicism and other pressures to abandon their culture. Associating or assigning these animals with religious symbolism to different characters, both white and indigenous, Erdrich enriches the conversation surrounding the conversion of Native Americans to Catholicism and the separation of indigenous peoples with their families and culture by exposing the entitlement and power imbalances present between Native Americans and Westerners.

“When I’m a Human Being”: race, bodies, and power in Disney’s adaptations of “The Frog King or Iron Henry”

In the summer of 2020, Walt Disney Theme Parks announced plans to reimagine the popular attraction “Splash Mountain” in the theme of the 2009 feature-length animated film The Princess and the Frog. As only the third Disney feature-length animated film to showcase Black characters prominently, The Princess and the Frog seems perfectly poised to replace the Song of the South—critiqued for its romanticization of race relations after the American Civil War—in the Disney parks. In this adaptation of “Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich” (“The Frog King or Iron Henry”), Walt Disney Animation Studios introduces its first Black princess. While a hardworking, self-starter princess of color is a step towards representation, the film’s portrayal of non-white characters reinforces a hierarchy of race and class which privileges the wealthy white characters while relegating characters of color to the bottom rungs of human society and into non-human bodies. This essay explores the intersection of gender, race, and class in Disney’s adaptations of the classic fairy tale “Der Froschkönig” from the Grimms’ 1812 variation and the plans to reimagine it for Disney theme parks. In conversation with adaptation studies, narrative theory, and feminist theories, this contribution interrogates the underlying messages of prejudice and -isms in The Princess and the Frog that reinforce twentieth- and twenty-first-century prejudices against people of color, women, and the working class, rendering the proposed update of the “Splash Mountain” attraction into a modernization of the problems already recognized in the current ride.

Book to screen and back again—Dany Laferrière and (re)writing “Vers le sud”

This article examines the 2005 film adaptation of Dany Laferrière’s 1997 collection La Chair du maître, entitled Vers le sud, directed by Laurent Cantet. In La Chair du maître, Laferrière writes short stories that demonstrate how sexuality can be a form of dominance and simultaneously a method of liberation in Haiti. In Cantet’s film, we follow Legba, a sex worker in Haiti, and his relationship with two white women, an already decisive alteration from the short stories that inspired it. By comparing the film adaptation to the short stories that inspired it, I argue that Cantet’s film drastically alters the source material and undermines the original intent of Laferrière’s work. Cantet’s film is insensitive to Laferrière’s original intent because Cantet privileges the white characters over the Haitian characters and removes any nuance from the agency of Legba, and the responsibility the women have in his death. This conclusion is supported by Laferrière’s republication of the collection as a novel, using the film’s title, Vers le sud (2006). Instead of focusing on Legba, Laferrière re-establishes Fanfan, an entirely separate character, as the protagonist and he thus reclaims the title and the original intent of the stories.

The metaphorical aspect in J. M. Coetzee‘s Age of Iron (1990)

The present study aims at examining the metaphorical aspect in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron. To make the investigation a purposeful one, the Psychoanalytic approach is employed taken Displacement as a means of coexistence and adaptation. The study also seeks to underscore how J. M. Coetzee employs the Psychoanalytic approach in portraying the character of Elizabeth Curren –the protagonist- to convey his contempt toward the oppressive practices of the ruling system of Apartheid in South Africa. In the present novel, Coetzee presents a model of a female white character who is not in line with the practices of the system. Mrs. Curren finds a means of revealing her suppressed feelings in writing a confessional letter to her daughter because of her inability to openly express her adverse attitude toward the ruling system in her community. In a word, the main objective of the study lies in exploring J. M. Coetzee’s vision of the dilemma of both the oppressed and the oppressor South Africans through Metaphor of the body of both the protagonist and the system to convey the theme of his novel.

Impoliteness Strategies Used by White Males and Females toward the Black Staff in The Hidden Figures Movie

This qualitative research was done to find the types of impoliteness strategies used by the white characters in the Hidden Figures movie (Al Harisson, Paul Stafford, Vivian Mitchell, and Ruth), and how the recipient of impoliteness, Katherine Johnson (a black character), responded to it. The main theory used is Culpeper's (1996, 2003) impoliteness strategy and Bousfield’s (2008) responses to impoliteness. The findings revealed that not every impoliteness strategy was produced by the characters. The one strategy that was not produced is withhold politenessbecause there were no such silent scenes in the movie. Besides withhold politeness, every type of impoliteness strategy was produced in the Hidden Figures movie. In addition, Katherine Johnson produced two types of responses to Al Harisson and Paul Stafford: accepting face attack and countering face attack. While responding to Vivian Mitchell and Ruth, Katherine Johnson only produced one type of response: accepting face attack. In conclusion, in this research impoliteness strategies and the responses were used in the Hidden Figures movie. In addition, impoliteness could occur due to job status and race factor.

Unveiling Color-Blind Racism: Racial Violence, Identity, and Resistance in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees

Racism is pervasive in society; its roots have been deeply ingrained into individuals’ lives, hindering African Americans' ability to achieve stability and peace. It is established in favor of societal convictions that primarily benefit whites to maintain their superiority and dominance over Blacks. Naturally, white people are the foundation of racial supremacy, pretending to treat Blacks equally through practices such as color-blind racism yet limiting Blacks in different fields. African Americans continue to be victims of the dominant ideology of color-blind racism, which produces significant racial tension and conflict in American culture. Correspondingly, they face racial inequities in their daily lives. This study's primary goal is to examine how racial violence still exists in the form of color-blind racism in one of Kidd's most famous novels, The Secret Life of Bees, in which Lily, the white protagonist, is prejudiced against African Americans. Eventually, Lily realizes her ingrained white racial guilt and strives to change it once she embraces the Black community by valuing their identity. In addition, the study also examines how Lily recognizes society's color-blind racist approach, which attempts to instill racism in order to impact and constrain Blacks as an inferior race. Finally, the findings of this study provide a clear picture of the hegemonic ideology known as color-blind racism and how its ideals in practice affect the lives of Black people while favoring the prejudice and discrimination of white characters in the novel.

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.

Deceptive Benevolence: Witnessing Whiteness in Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Dance on the Volcano

Focusing on the Haitian author Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s novel Dance on the Volcano (1957), this essay examines representations of an anxious White minority on the eve of the Haitian Revolution. It argues that Vieux-Chauvet deploys theatrical conventions to suggest that White benevolence, a valence of White saviorism, is a performance designed to maintain the status quo of colonial Saint-Domingue. The essay also considers the implications of examining global South critiques of Whiteness for the often US-centric field of critical Whiteness studies. Dance on the Volcano focuses on a uniquely formative moment: the last years of colonial rule punctuated by the raced tensions that gave way to a revolution that forever altered the global colonial order. Vieux-Chauvet’s use of dialogue, gestures, and eavesdropping illustrate the duplicity of White characters, while foregrounding the critical gaze of the protagonist, the first woman of color to perform in the theater of Saint-Domingue.

THE REPRESENTATION OF NATIVE AMERICAN IN THE LONE RANGER FILM: A GENETIC STRUCTURALISM ANALYSIS

Racism is part of America's dark history. Racism seems to have never been resolved. This article examined how racism is narrated in The Lone Ranger Film. As genetic structuralism studies, The Lone Ranger film is exploited both intrinsically and extrinsically. At first glance, this film features American-Indian characters but with a white character. This is contradictory considering that American Indians are Native American tribes who have colored skin. Therefore, this film is used as an object of study to look at social construction, especially about Native Americans, which actually wants to be conveyed to the wider community, and the empirical reasons for this construction are shown. The research results showed that intrinsically, the character Tonto, played by Johnny Depp (a white), correlated to the economic purpose. As a mass culture, this film was produced to gain profits. choosing John Depp is a form of strategy to achieve the film's success because Johnny Depp is one of the top actors who has many fans. Portraying characters using well-known actors is one of the strategies for achieving the success of a film. Furthermore, this film showed how Native Americans are reconstructed by a new image. White and smart Americans are positive stereotypes. It is contradictive due to This is very contradictory considering that Native Americans are a group that has a negative stereotype. Native Americans are also a minority that experiences a lot of discrimination, especially from white or European-American groups. In conclusion, the stereotype of native Americans in the film Lone Ranger is constructed in different stereotypes showing how the whites (European-Americans) have always occupied a high position in the social strata. This film shows that Native Indians can have the same position in the social strata if their skin is colorless. This makes racism actually perpetuated through this film.

Fan perspectives of queer representation in DC's Legends of Tomorrow on Tumblr and AO3

DC's Legends of Tomorrow (2016–2022) is a television show with an ensemble cast of existing characters from other DC TV shows, formed into a single, time-traveling team of antiheroes. The show is known for its inclusion of multiple queer characters, particularly Sara Lance, the show's long-running central character and captain of the Legends team and an openly bisexual woman. Fans use Tumblr and Archive of Our Own to discuss queer characters, canonical same-sex pairings, and noncanonical slash pairings. Queer representation in television matters to the show's fan community, and users are appreciative of and invested in canonically queer characters and pairings. Beyond the canon content, users are perhaps equally invested in noncanonical queer pairings and utilize manipulation of the source text in order to appreciate these pairings. Fans simultaneously enjoy watching and blogging about the show while also forming their own interpretations of queer characters and relationships. However, the central canon queer couple of the show is still by far the most popular with fans, and fans pay more attention to white characters and relationships, regardless of canonicity, than to the show's characters of color.

Ethnic representation and stereotypes in mathematics and Dutch language textbooks from the Netherlands

ABSTRACT The current study examined ethnic representation and stereotypes in textbooks from two core secondary school subjects: maths and Dutch. We examined all 25 hard-copy textbooks used in first-year secondary schools in the Netherlands in 2019, and coded characters’ ethnic background, competence-related activities, and occupational status. Ethnicity was identifiable for 8897 characters. Results indicate that characters of colour were underrepresented in the text and images in the textbooks compared to Dutch population statistics. Additionally, subtle stereotypical patterns were found in which characters of colour were less competent and lower in occupational status than White characters. These findings suggest that implicit biases influence which groups are featured and how they are portrayed. To help all students to reach their full potential and develop an inclusive worldview, we recommend publishers use publicly available tools (e.g. random name generators) to make their textbooks more inclusive.