White Supremacy Research Articles

Shit Voyeurism, Anti-Blackness, and the Spherical: Rendering Antibiotic Use in Africa

This piece interrogates anti-Black racism and coloniality in global health reporting on antibiotic use in Africa. I focus on New York Times discourse, imagery, and films, reading these intertextually with wider political and public health rhetoric. In critically attending to mediated imaginaries of Nairobi, Kenya as “unhygienic,” I demonstrate how this figuration comes to index local pharmaceutical practices that appear “non-Scientific.” The situated knowledge informing such practices is disregarded or, worse, presented as a threat to be targeted and eliminated. Such biomedical transgressions are indexed in the NYT by racialized references to waste, dirt, and excrement, turning the (structurally white) reader-viewer into what I call a shit voyeur. Building on Sylvia Wynter’s conceptualization of Man, I argue that Man-the-shit voyeur disregards his own culpability in rising antimicrobial resistance, locating health risks instead in the contaminating nature of Others. This racialized grammar is further subtended by the logic of the spherical—the illusion that the world-as-sphere is a totality that Man can perceive with a unidirectional gaze. Global health reporting that is racialized via the logics of the spherical and shit voyeurism not only fails to accurately represent medical concerns in Africa but also perpetuates biomedical hegemony and/as global white supremacy.

The Whiteness Protection Program: A Typology of Agentic White Defense

White defensiveness in response to racial justice education has increasingly been understood through the “white fragility” framework. This study puts forth a new framework that instead identifies a typology of white defensive moves that actively work to uphold and fortify the white racial contract. Inspired by Solórzano and Delgado-Bernal’s (2001) framework for understanding students of color resistance to racism as active (even when it might look passive, on the surface), our theoretical model illustrates four distinct categories of white racial defense that actively protect whiteness. Because white defensiveness has been primarily examined in the context of Traditionally White Institutions, where white students have been presumed to be “ignorant” or “lacking stamina” for encounters in which whiteness is challenged, we provide examples from an instrumental case analysis (Stake, 1995) of 15 in-depth interviews with white students attending three different Historically Black Universities, where their whiteness has become hypervisible and salient. We identify a typology of four agentic forms of defense: The “Innocent Defense,” The “Liberal Defense,” The “Antiracist Defense,” and The “Persecuted Defense.” We refer to these defenses together as “the whiteness protection program” to connote a collective agreement (part of the racial contract), which calls for rethinking the individualized and passive notion of white fragility. In the end, we argue that understanding these modes of resistance as agentic, rather than fragile results of lack of exposure and knowledge, is essential to disrupting white supremacy and fostering students of color well-being.

The pragmatics of black–white conversations: Richard Wright’s representation of the African American experience

Abstract Richard Wright represents the African American experience of white racism in his novel Native Son and autobiography Black Boy. In the two works, Wright delves into the psychic effects of white racism on young African Americans. From a pragmatic perspective, this article analyzes the conversations between whites and young African Americans in the two works, with the aim of exploring how the conversations can impact on how the young African Americans think about reality and about themselves in relation to whites, that is, how whites attempt to form black subjectivity through conversation. The conversational mechanisms of the formation of black subjectivity are investigated by building on research in pragmatics on conversational cooperation and interpersonal pragmatics. The article first examines the structural features of black-white conversations, and explains the conversational norms by using Grice’s theory of conversation as the explanatory framework. The analysis sheds light on the relative nature of Grice’s maxims and the inseparability of the informational and the relational aspects of conversation. The article examines the relationship dynamics of black-white conversations by drawing on studies in interpersonal pragmatics. From the stylistic feature of the use of address terms, the study delves into the interracial pragmatics of black–white conversations.

'I can feel sad about it and I can worry, but inside I know everything happens for a reason': personal experiences in the aftermath of the March 15 Christchurch mosque attacks.

On 15 March 2019, a white supremacist gunman sequentially attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people aged from 3 to 77 years and bullet-injuring 40 more. Approximately 250 people survived the atrocity, and many more family and community members have been directly or indirectly affected. To develop an understanding of the personal experiences of some of those affected, including effects on daily life and well-being, in the 18-30 months following the attacks. Qualitative thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 21 men and women from September 2020 to August 2021 was performed. Participants were drawn from a larger quantitative study and included injured, bereaved, witnesses, family members and those from the wider Muslim community in Christchurch. Four superordinate themes were identified: being overwhelmed in the midst of chaos; experiencing silent and enduring impact; living similarly, but differently; and gaining meaning and growth. These themes captured ongoing distress inclusive of physical symptoms, family and community relationship dynamics and connectedness, secondary stressors, and diversity in coping and growth. For most, the centrality of Islam as a faith tradition was woven throughout. Consistent with previous literature, post-trauma reactions were pervasive and varied. This appeared to be compounded by secondary stressors in this cohort, such as sociopolitical circumstances, demographic diversity, the COVID-19 pandemic and justice processes. Findings also revealed a strong spiritual thread in the experiences of this minority faith community, shedding light on a complex interaction between recovery and post-traumatic growth.

Teaching the January 6th Insurrection: Historical Perspectives on a Crisis in American Democracy

Abstract This article offers a framework for analyzing and teaching the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. The crisis itself offers an opportunity to unpack and better understand American political discourses and institutions. I focus on four historical and contemporary currents that elucidate the January 6th crisis: 1) White supremacy and backlashes against Civil Rights; 2) conservative assaults on the New Deal order and the regulatory state; 3) organized labor’s decline, right-wing populism’s rise, and nativism; 4) political polarization, sectarianism, and minority rule. These themes enable students to assess both crucial challenges posed by January 6th and the vitality of American democracy.

“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.

“Our American Optimism”: Race, Recognition, and Belonging in Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

This paper explores Claudia Rankine’s representation of the feelings of racialisation in her 2004 poetry collection Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Contextualising this work within wider debates in Afropessimist philosophy, it considers how the poet’s portrayal of emotional pain, depression, and numbness exemplify a form of ‘social death’ instigated by the ubiquitous violence of antiblackness. Through close readings of select sequences, it argues that Rankine frames death as an ongoing structure of African American experience, rather than a singular event. In turn, this paper also considers how her innovative and hybrid “American Lyric” form functions to create a new grammar for Black self-expression in an ostensibly ‘post-race’ culture that obfuscates contemporary systems of racial inequality. It argues that Rankine’s collection cultivates an ethics of attention to the experiences and pain of others, offering poetry as a form of “exhausted hope” to challenge the dehumanising force of White supremacy.

Hotep anti-Blackness: Misogynoir and queer exclusion in online conspiracy theorizing

Research suggests African Americans are more likely than Whites to support conspiracy theories, especially those related to the U.S. government. Locating the pedagogical practices of Black activists in the online hotep subculture, I use the concept of public pedagogy to understand how these activist influencers use social media to spread political messages in the public sphere. This essay situates hotep subculture as a conspiritualist project that uses Pan-Africanism, Afrocentricity, Black spirituality, and hip-hop culture to advance conspiracy theories among Black communities for consciousness-raising and economic independence. While hoteps have promulgated a pro-Black politic, their reliance on ethnonationalist homophobia and misogynoir promotes a form of erasure that is not only exclusionary and anti-Black but also reflects racial fears rooted in anxiety. This essay contributes to the growing literature on conspiritualism’s investment in white supremacy and the need for conspiritualist critiques to investigate how anti-Blackness shows up in discourses at the intersection of faith, spirituality, and global regimes of power. Drawing on the concepts of misogynoir and anti-Black heterotopias, Black gender and sexual minorities are framed within hotep discourse as subservient, deviant, and perilous to Black liberation.

Almost-Invisible White Supremacy: Racism, Silence and Complicity in the Interracial Interaction Order

Almost-Invisible White Supremacy: Racism, Silence and Complicity in the Interracial Interaction Order

Racial Regimes and White European Jewish Supremacy as Property

This article argues that the Zionist theft and expropriation of Palestinian land resulted in it being made into white property and that Zionism can be understood as a textbook case of Cedric Robinson's concept of racial regimes that explains how race is reproduced even though race is denied by the Zionist colonisers as justifying the relations of power. The article follows Cheryl Harris's and Noura Erakat's work on whiteness as property that, according to Erakat, leaves the Palestinian natives outside the category of Jewish nationals to be removed, dispossessed, and contained. The article illustrates how the ongoing colonisation of Palestine as expressing white European supremacy involves several aspects of racial capitalism—the Judaisation of Palestinian lands, the segmentation of labour from the Zionist policy of the Conquest of (Hebrew) Labour to the reliance on cheap and dispensable Palestinian labour, and the lebensraum plans to relocate the Gaza Strip population and re-settle it. 2

Civic-military schools in Brazil: Feminist lenses to uncover a patriarchal, white supremacist, and queerphobic project

This article examines the rise of conservative policies in Brazilian education, particularly since 2014 when teachers became targets of accusations related to "ideological indoctrination" and "gender ideology." The Non-Partisan Schools Movement has significantly contributed to fostering a climate of distrust and the militarisation of education has gained momentum under Jair Bolsonaro's presidency (2019–2022). Focusing on the Civic-Military Schools Program (PECIM), the article employs relational and feminist lenses to analyse the arguments of conservative supporters. Although the policy does not overtly promote anti-gender or anti-feminist rhetoric, its documents and implementation reveal underlying biases. While militarisation is framed as a means to improve educational quality, results indicate a dangerous initiative involving untrained military personnel, abusive behaviours, and practices that undermine the self-esteem of girls, queer and Black students. An intersectional feminist perspective, therefore, is fundamental to highlighting contradictions in conservative discourse and interrupting their policies.

An analytic framework for theorizing the anti-gender agenda in education

This article theorizes the global anti-gender movement in education. This conservative movement opposes “gender ideology,” which is perceived as a threat to traditional social values. Building on a systematic literature review of how the anti-gender movement shapes educational policies, politics, and practices, with a specific focus on Brazil and the US, this article presents a theoretical framework for conceptualizing: 1) the contested meanings of “gender ideology”; 2) its discursive components; 3) the characteristics and composition of anti-gender alliances; 4) the anti-gender agenda’s manifestations in curriculum, pedagogy, the social relations of schooling, and education policy. We attempt to highlight the ways in which anti-gender politics often operate together with racial politics to reveal the ways in which conservative, right-wing alliances, frequently predicated on and united through anti-Blackness, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny, exert influence on educational policies, politics, and practices to simultaneously maintain a white supremacist, cis-heteronormative, and patriarchal state. We conclude with a discussion of the contradictions of this agenda and resistances to these conservative attacks on equity, inclusion, diversity, and human rights.

Rhetorics of white preservation: racial violence and the Johnson–Reed Act

ABSTRACT In this essay, we suggest that the historical legacies of the 1924 Johnson–Reed Act and U.S. Border Patrol highlight the centrality of race and racialization. To do so, we briefly revisit moments of racialized rhetoric from the Johnson–Reed Act as influential in the creation (and violence) of the U.S. Border Patrol. The 100-year-old legacies of the 1924 Johnson–Reed Act, we argue, provide a lens through which we might view the current moment of racialized border violence as emergent from white supremacist ideologies historically connected to racial capitalism in the U.S. Lastly, we suggest that scholars of race and rhetoric ought to attend to racialized violence within its historical continuities in the current rhetoric of the border “crisis.”

Colonial shadows: Exploring coloniality of being among Puerto Rican immigrants in the United States.

Coloniality, or the enduring legacy of domination and White supremacy stemming from colonization, manifests across power dynamics, knowledge systems, and personal identity. This study investigated the coloniality of being of 12 Puerto Rican adults living in the United States. We explored their perceptions of the self, other Puerto Ricans, Puerto Rican cultural patterns, and self-aspirations. Using consensual qualitative research, six domains emerged from the data, including (a) self-identity, (b) Puerto Rican pride, (c) other Puerto Ricans, (d) Puerto Rican dependency, (e) Puerto Ricans and work, and (f) reasons for migrating or staying in Puerto Rico. Results portrayed colonial power dynamics' profound and complicated mark on different aspects of the participants' individual and collective selves. Participants' language and narratives also conveyed ruptures between participants and other Puerto Ricans. Findings from our study help expand our understanding of Puerto Ricans' lived experiences of colonization, a group that still experiences the occupation and domination of its land and people. Our article also discusses the clinical and theoretical implications of this work, particularly as it pertains to Puerto Rican identity formation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Guilt, shame, and/or both? Further validation of the White Racial Affect Scale.

In this study we assessed the construct validity of the recently published White Racial Affect Scale (Grzanka et al., 2020). Specifically, we assessed the convergent, criterion-related, and incremental evidence for construct validity of the White guilt, White shame, and White defensiveness (called "White negation" in the original article) factors. We used a video stimulus to trigger state guilt and shame in participants as part of the construct validity investigation. White adults in the United States signed up for the study online (N = 262) and watched a 5-min video stimulus and completed questionnaires before and after the video. Results of this study replicated many of the findings from the original White Racial Affect Scale validation study (Grzanka et al., 2020). We found strong evidence of construct validity for the White guilt and White defensiveness factors and mixed evidence for the White shame factor. We discuss directions for future research and implications for potential interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Un enfoque epistémico sobre el pelo como elemento interseccional de significación

In this text, halfway between the theoretical and the readings from the lens of popular ethnography (film, social movements, poetry, literature, and commercials), we traverse three stations: hair as a countercultural history of Black women, where an obvious juxtaposition exists between norms, institutions, and modes of presentation; as a linguistics, where we observe hair as a hermeneutic, where everything is pure metaphor and mimesis; and lastly, as performative, where a struggle is established involving truth, spaces, and not only what can be said but also shown and touched, through new languages and identities of power via hair. Yet, the text carries another layer, less obvious: the play with the ideas of how we deal with modernity-coloniality, which tells us what is worth investigating, thinking about, and publicizing. We could do nothing if we do not understand that the machinery of racism, discrimination, homophobia, poverty, and belief in white supremacy involve as many elements as there are hairs on our heads. We shout that from another academy, everything is possible: championed by ALMARGEN, a research group that delves into the symbiosis of understanding and analyzing hair beyond a mere aesthetic requirement that sets trends or influences. Attracting hegemonic nuances that compel us to delve deeper into the positions of individuals socially, politically, and epistemologically in diverse contexts that make us either choose or are compelled to position ourselves in order to perpetuate imposed standards about how we should appear and perceive our hair. Drawing upon an "on the margin" structure of the structural, which we elucidate in the present work.

Parents' anti-Black messages, empathic reactions toward racism, fear of Black individuals, and perceived ability to engage in anti-racism advocacy among Asian American emerging adults.

Asian Americans, historically oppressed and influenced by White supremacist norms, may internalize anti-Blackness (beliefs of behaviors that minimize, marginalize, or devalue Black individuals) as they navigate White-dominated environments to survive and seek acceptance. However, there is limited research addressing the intergenerational socialization of anti-Blackness within Asian American communities and its impact as a barrier to cross-racial solidarity and involvement in anti-racism efforts. Thus, we tested whether parents' anti-Black messages were associated with fear of Black individuals and lack of empathic reactions to anti-Black racism, and in turn, related to hindrance in the perceived ability to engage in anti-racism advocacy among Asian American emerging adults. With data from 205 participants (Mage = 19.92, SD = 2.64, online convenience sample), we conducted a path analysis of parents' anti-Black messages indirectly associated with perceived ability in advocacy against anti-Black racism through fear of Black individuals and empathic reactions to anti-Black racism. Parents' anti-Black messages were associated with greater fear of Black individuals, which was associated with lower empathic reactions to racism, and in turn, ultimately associated with a lower perceived ability to engage in advocacy against anti-Black racism. This pathway was the best-fitting model compared with an alternative parallel model (fear and empathy as separate mediators) and a model with empathy as the first mediator. Our study suggests that clinicians, educators, and researchers should target parents' anti-Black messages and Asian American emerging adults' emotional responses (fear, empathy) to anti-Black racism in disrupting anti-Blackness at parental/family and individual levels.

Snowboarding while Black: race, aesthetics, and Jamaican migrant workers

ABSTRACT How snowboarding intersects with race in a Canadian mountain resort is explored in this research note. Snowboarding is now globalised but emerged in the USA in the 1960s as an alternative lifestyle sport. Race was embedded in its birth as then, as now, snowboarding is dominated by privileged White participants who are mostly male. The White dominance is masked as whiteness is invisibilized by claims of being neutral or colour-blind. Yet, a Black presence surrounds snowboarding. The second theme examines snowboarding’s commodification of Black aesthetics. It uses Black music and urban fashion to enhance and market its supposedly radical or coolness credentials to its suburban White audience. The mining of Black aesthetics is unacknowledged and thus whitewashes the economic exploitation of Black culture. Migrant workers are the backbone of snow resorts, and the third theme examines this use of transnational labour. It probes why Australians are the visible workers on the snow-kissed slopes and front desks, while Jamaicans are the invisible labour in catering and housekeeping. The use of migrant labour is racialised and further reifies the whiteness of snowboarding. Black snowboarders, riding the snowy slopes for leisure, expose and disrupt the politics of race and place in snowboarding.

‘A name was banned. Nothing more!’: identity, democracy and banning white supremacists in Germany

‘A name was banned. Nothing more!’: identity, democracy and banning white supremacists in Germany

Troubling Rigor: Exploring Intersections of Campus Hazing and White Supremacy

Troubling Rigor: Exploring Intersections of Campus Hazing and White Supremacy