White Supremacy Research Articles

Feeling a little uneasy: A comparative discourse analysis of White and BIPOC college students’ reflective writing about systemic racism

AbstractThis critical discourse analysis compares the ways in which White and BIPOC college students discuss their experiences of an educational intervention meant to promote better understanding of systemic racism. We analyzed reflective writing produced by 11 White psychology students from a private liberal arts college in the eastern United States and 17 BIPOC students from a Human Services program at a public university in the western United States. White students engaged in whiteness discourse that distanced themselves from the realities of systemic racism and/or relieved the cognitive dissonance associated with the self‐ and group‐image threat related to learning about systemic racism. In so doing, they unwittingly upheld white supremacy. BIPOC students, in contrast, engaged an antiracist discourse that employed critiques of the social systems that produce systemic racism and destabilized dominant colorblind narratives, often by drawing on lived experience. From the Critical Race Theory perspective that the centrality of lived experience is a legitimate lens through which to analyze racial subordination, we discuss the importance of attending to the action orientation and constructed nature of discourse in antiracist education.

High-efficiency anti-stokes Raman blue laser in CO2 enables high-luminance RGB laser-driven white light

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) is an efficient nonlinear frequency conversion method, enabling simultaneous generation of red, green, and blue (RGB) lasers. In order to synthesize a white light source for laser display by SRS, a 532 nm laser was used as pump source, and high purity gaseous carbon dioxide (CO2) was used as the Raman active medium. First, by optimizing experimental parameters, with an f = 1.5 m focal lens, in 0.8 atm CO2 pumped at 304 mJ, a first-order anti-Stokes (AS1) 495 nm blue laser was achieved, with an energy of 31.9 mJ, peak power of 10.9 MW and conversion efficiency (CE) of 10.5 %. Then, Then, the second-order Stokes light (S2) at 624 nm, residual pump laser (S0) at 532 nm, and AS1 laser were utilized as RGB primary colors. By the variation of pressure below 1 atmosphere (atm), the laser-driven white light (LDWL) with adjustable correlated color temperature (CCT) below 4700 K were simulated. Finally, LDWL up to 2.6 × 1018cd/m2 of a CCT of 3300 K could be synthesized at an RGB power ratio of PR: PG: PB = 0.447:0.094:0.459, resulting in a white light power CE of 44.4 % and luminous efficacy of 113.7 lm/W. In addition, use of the 574 nm yellow Raman light is expected to realize a four-primary (RGBY) laser display scheme with higher Luminance and broader color gamut. Moreover, the feasibility of using a 515 nm Yb: YAG laser as pump source to widen the range of CCT and improve the brightness of LDWL was discussed.

Wakanda forever! Consistency in correlates of black nationalist tendencies

Wakanda forever! Consistency in correlates of black nationalist tendencies

“I’m not saying this to be racist, but…”: uncovering attitude of whiteness in a narrative study of a Brazilian Pentecostal church leader

ABSTRACT This article examines the existence of whiteness and white supremacy in the words of Bishop Edir Macedo, leader of the powerful neo-Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) in Brazil. Through constructive narrative analysis, this article demonstrates evidence of attitude of whiteness (Teel 2019) in the bishop’s writings on race and racism, thereby demonstrating forms of racist thinking (Martinot 2003, 2010). These are manifested through thought patterns which suggest that to be white is to be normal or neutral and through a performance of whiteness which Macedo subtly encourages among pastors within the Church.

The racial politics of Afropolitanism and Zukiswa Wanner’s London, Cape Town, Joburg

ABSTRACT While scholars have long taken Afropolitanism to task for its classism, its racial politics have largely been praised. Pushing against this (un)critical consensus, this article offers the first sustained analysis of the racial politics informing Achille Mbembe’s theory of Afropolitanism alongside Zukiswa Wanner’s novel London, Cape Town, Joburg (2014). Making visible how institutional racism continues to define the post-apartheid present, it shows that both authors differentially single out race for scrutiny and collude in mystifying white dominance in South Africa. Just as Mbembe’s works on Afropolitanism are preoccupied with race but obfuscate racism, Wanner’s novel uses racialized drama as an important plot device yet stigmatizes the denunciation of white supremacy, while sharply critiquing homophobia, sexism, and xenophobia. In invoking race as central while relieving white people of responsibility for the racist status quo, these works display paradoxes that reveal an investment in silencing racism, paradoxes which this article lays bare.

Czech Hercules: Gustav Frištenský, ‘Musculinity’, the Others and Visual Pleasure around 1900

Before 1900, in the Czech lands of the Habsburg Monarchy, the lean body of an athlete became a representation of strength, health, and beauty. Through Sokol gymnastics, the body of every Czech man was to be shaped into the form of the somatic mythotype Apollo. After 1900, in circuses, variety shows, and strength sports clubs, a new ideal man embodying somatic mythotype Hercules appeared: the strongman, who transformed a lightly muscled Apollonian shape into a modern Herculean form bulking massive shredded musculature. Strongman Gustav Frištenský in particular, whose body was eroticized, photogenized, nationalized, and racialized, embodied a mobilizing sports star who strengthened the Czech national community. Frištenský’s body was shaped by Hellenistic idealism, which gave rise to his adherence to the somatic mythotype of Hercules. This subsequently gave birth to ‘musculinity’, a new kind of hegemonic masculinity. The perception of Frištenský’s body was influenced by a physical resemblance to the Estonian wrestler Georg Lurich, by practices of othering, and the myth of white male supremacy. The steel and statuesque aesthetic of Frištenský’s body and the voyeurism of the masses then undermined traditional middle-class prudery and patriarchal control over the distribution of visual pleasure.

Studying ‘Religion’ Critically and the Decolonial Turn: Lessons for Critical Terrorism Studies

Abstract Being ‘critical’ when studying religion, whilst it does not have to be limited to studying religion’s discursive (and colonial) employments only, it certainly has to begin with it, if we aim to contribute to much-needed decolonial efforts across the social science disciplines. Critically studying religion, as I argue in this article, means starting with a normative and moral responsibility and aspiration towards a more just, equal, and progressive social world that grapples with the coloniality, and structures of white supremacy we are all embedded in. In this article I will reflect on the contributions of Critical Religion (CR) especially to fields like (Critical) Terrorism Studies and related disciplines which regularly discuss ‘religion’ and religiously-inspired violence but never actually acknowledge ‘religion’s’ colonial and gendered implications, definitional instability, or Euro- and Christian-centric invention. The work Critical Religion does in uncovering and excavating the modern-colonial origins of the term ‘religion’, I argue, is essential in realising and contributing to the decolonial turn we are currently experiencing and which disciplines like (Critical) Terrorism Studies can only benefit from.

Savarkar's Miscegenous Hindu Race

This article establishes racial thinking as central to V. D. Savarkar's (1883–1966) founding theory of Hindutva. Savarkar's issue with the Muslims was not that they were irreducibly “other,” a foreign race polluting Hindu “blood.” Jettisoning racial and caste purity, Savarkar instead grounded Hindutva's myth of a single Hindu race in all-round biological admixture. “Miscegenation,” as it was conceptualized by Nazis and white supremacists at the time, buttressed Hindutva's tremendous violence against Muslims, whose annihilation would come through gendered incorporation. Savarkar redefined the caste system as the crucible of the Hindu race, its endless proliferation testimony to a history of intermarriage expired in the present age. To reestablish the broken bonds of the Hindu race, Savarkar championed intercaste marriage. He offered the same solution to the “Muslim problem.” Muslims, who had carved themselves out of the Hindu race, needed to be reclaimed through conversion coupled with (forced) marriage, sex, and reproduction with a Hindu. Yet only Muslim women could be appropriated in this way, as paternity imparted race; Muslim men would be crushed in their potentiality for sovereignty and decimated in war with the Hindus. Savarkar, this article concludes, based the Hindu body politic on kinship and a vision of gendered incorporation modeled on war.

Reparations and the Ministry of Planetary Peace

AbstractThis article explores the historical roots and unfolding legacies of reparations denial as a continuation of the spiritual and socioeconomic planetary war perpetuated through the transatlantic slave trade. An examination of the social production of an anti‐reparations norm against Afro‐Americans in the United States seeks to uncover underlying fears of national destabilization and their relations to underexamined opportunities for functional solidarities across ethnicities, potentially offering a unique contribution to the pursuit of lasting global peace. The article proposes a twofold re‐examination. First, it insists on the rejection and reconception of religious concepts upholding and extending the socioeconomic relations of slavery and white supremacy through evasive political theological notions of human nature and historical time. Second, it advocates the formation of local, national, and international alliances dedicated to articulating, supporting, defending, and achieving reparations for distinct historical events as a means of repairing unique legacies of the transatlantic slave trade and Western colonialism for the common good, using an international ecumenical alliance for repair and reparations (AIRRE) developed by the Presbyterian Church's (USA) Center for the Repair of Historical Harms as an active example.

Unsettling Environmentalism

AbstractDecolonial ecological imaginations entail a critical interrogation of mainstream environmentalism to unmask and unsettle it. These reflections expose how mainstream environmentalism legitimizes and perpetuates the colonization of the Earth and subaltern and Indigenous communities. Mainstream environmentalism is a colonial project to perpetuate the interests of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. This calls for a new search for decolonial and alternative ecological reimagination, informed by the epistemologies and eco‐politics of the Indigenous and subaltern communities and other grassroots social movements. Decolonial ecological imaginations involve the task of contesting and unsettling settler colonialism, extractive/exploitative capitalism, white supremacy, and all ideologies and practices of domination and exclusion.

Mending fragile alliances to fight racism: A developing framework for cross-racial/ethnic solidarity.

In today's sociopolitical climate (e.g., erasure of history, increase in anti-Asian violence, repeal of affirmative action), the fragility of minoritized alliances has become more prominently exposed. Cross-racial/ethnic solidarity work, which is broadly defined as joining a resistance through physical presence or activism against common oppression (Araiza, 2009), is an important response to this sociopolitical shift. Solidarity work between minoritized communities has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history with common goals and movements. However, solidarity work can be challenging because of the fractured alliances that have occurred within the historical context of racism and White supremacy. One initiative that is committed to action regarding this understudied area of cross-racial/ethnic solidarity is Dr. Kevin Cokley's Division 45 Presidential Task Force on Cross-Racial/Ethnic Solidarity: Toward Being an Accomplice. We developed a cross-racial/ethnic solidarity framework to explore historical and contemporary contexts (e.g., slavery/capitalism, genocide/colonialism, orientalism/war) that perpetuate "colonial splitting" among marginalized communities as well as mediating and moderating factors that can lead to either conflictual or coalitional cross-racial/ethnic tendencies. We hope that our working framework will provide a foundation for research, training, clinical, and community work toward an interdisciplinary approach to cross-racial/ethnic solidarity accompliceship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

White superiority in Flannery O’connor’s The Barber and The Artificial Nigger

This research analyzes two short stories created by Flannery O’Connor entitled “The Barber” and “The Artificial Nigger” which depict the ideology of white superiority by scrutinizing the context of the stories and discussing the homology between the texts and the contexts. Data were analyzed using qualitative methods, and the theory used was genetic structuralism by Lucien Goldmann. Primary data concerning white superiority were taken from both short stories. Secondary data about socio-cultural and historical facts of white superiority in America in the 1940s -1950s were taken from journal articles and books. The research results show similarities between literary works and socio-historical conditions in the year when the literary works were written. The author’s worldview shows that she wants to represent the ideology of white superiority that has oppressed the black race. Through these short stories, the author wants to illustrate how cruel and difficult it is to fight the ideology of white superiority.

The raced and gendered persistence of human‐exemptionalism

AbstractThis paper makes the case for a reconsideration of the human exemptionalist paradigm in sociological research. Reviewing recent research on the racialized and gendered dimensions of environmental use and abuse in North America, this paper argues that the persistent belief that humans dominate over all other biota is a direct result of the white supremacist, patriarchal gender system. Traditional Anglo‐European performances of and expectations for masculinity not only mandate the subjugation of women, but of all biota. Consequently, the burdens for repair and regeneration are disproportionately placed upon feminized subjects. This racialized gender system is strengthened as long as human exemptionalism persists. Ultimately, sociologists should contend with ‘human supremacy’ as a system of inequality that strengthens all other systems of inequality that plague human society. Moving forward, theories of liberation must go beyond the species boundary to account for an end to unjust domination of all life on Earth.

Research as resistance: Naming and dismantling the master narrative of "good" science.

The call for psychological science to make amends for "causing harm to communities of color and contributing to systemic inequities" (American Psychological Association, 2022a) requires a critical acknowledgment that science itself is not neutral but a sociopolitical and ideological endeavor. From its inception, psychology used science to produce what was framed as incontrovertible "hard" evidence of racial hierarchy, infallible "proof" that white people (i.e., cismale, heteronormative, and economically resourced white people) were superior to Indigenous and Black people. We first trace the historical links between postpositivist epistemology and the ideology of white supremacy in psychological science, showing that although explicitly racist science (e.g., eugenics) has faded, the widely shared and strictly enforced epistemological norms about what is (and is not) "good" science remain entrenched. We then outline three epistemic imperatives to resist this harmful master narrative: (a) embrace humanizing epistemologies, (b) listen and learn from those who have been systematically left out of science, and (c) recognize resistance as normative and necessary. We discuss how these imperatives, rooted in critical, feminist, and antiracist scholarship, disrupt oppression and guide us toward doing science that does good. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Systemic White supremacy: U.S. state policy, policing, discrimination, and suicidality across race and sexual identity.

Although suicide rates are stable or decreasing among White communities, rates are increasing among Black communities, a trend that appears to be disproportionately affecting Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) people. To understand the structural drivers and mechanisms of these trends, we examined associations between U.S. state-level racist and heterosexist criminal legal policies and policing, discrimination, and suicidality among White and Black, heterosexual and LGBQ, communities. We recruited 5,064 participants in 2021 using online census-driven quota sampling. Structural equation modeling estimated associations from objective indicators of racist and heterosexist criminal legal policies to self-reported police stops, discrimination, and suicidal ideation and behavior. For White heterosexual participants, racist (β = -.22, SE = 0.03, p < .001) and heterosexist (β = -.26, SE = 0.03, p < .001) policies were negatively associated with police stops. For White LGBQ participants, racist and heterosexist policies were not significantly associated with police stops. For Black heterosexual participants, racist (β = .30, SE = 0.11, p = .005), but not heterosexist, policies were positively associated with police stops. For Black LGBQ participants, racist (β = .57, SE = 0.08, p < .001) and heterosexist (β = .65, SE = 0.09, p < .001) policies were positively associated with police stops which, in turn, were positively associated with discrimination and suicidal ideation and behavior. Results provide evidence that racist and heterosexist state policies are linked to policing and interpersonal drivers of suicide inequities and suggest that repealing/preventing oppressive policies should be a suicide prevention imperative. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Racism in counseling and psychotherapy: Illuminate and disarm.

For the first time in its 130-year history, the American Psychological Association formally admitted to its ugly racist past and acknowledged how White supremacy continues to pervade the profession. Although the apology spans the entire field of psychology, the primary focus of this article is on how the profession of counseling and psychotherapy has reinforced and contributed to the oppression of people of color. First, we contend that psychology mirrors cultural racism/White supremacy and represents the major framework from which psychologists and other social scientists with power and privilege located the source of problems within people of color, their family values/structures, and their communities. Second, we maintain that the concept of professionalism has resulted in four legitimizing pillars of counseling and psychotherapy in which polarities are created that value universalism over relativism, individualism over collectivism, objectivism over subjectivism, and empiricism over experientialism. These four foundations of a White epistemology channel and subsidize racism by equating racial/cultural differences with pathology; promoting color and power blindness; blaming the victim; dehumanization and objectification; and denial of different racial realities. Last, we offer solutions for dismantling racism in counseling and psychotherapy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity by Donald Yacovone (review)

Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity by Donald Yacovone (review)

영화 속에 나타난 백인 예수의 정치적 영향력과 사회언어학적 상징성

Shaun King's assertion that “the statues of White Jesus must be destroyed” presupposes that the portrayal of Jesus as white in popular media and artistic works in the United States has symbolized racial discriminatory consciousness associated with white supremacy since the early days of American history and continues to influence the current society and political landscape. This paper examines how the portrayal of White Jesus in films, in particular, operates in relation to racial stereotypes, how it has functioned as a political tool through its theologization, and what sociolinguistic symbolism it has been utilized with. After analyzing these aspects, the paper seeks various alternatives to overcome this phenomenon.

Digital platforms, Hindutva, and disinformation: Communicative strategies and the Leicester violence

ABSTRACT The digital infrastructure of Hindutva seeds, circulates and amplifies Islamophobic hate, interacting bidirectionally with brick-and-mortar violence. This paper examines the circulation of Hindutva on digital platforms (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Telegram) around the intercommunal violence that emerged in Leicester in September 2022. Based on a digital ethnography of Twitter, interconnected digital platforms, and Hindutva media (Hindutva-related digital video channels such as Citti Media on YouTube, mainstream broadcast media such as NewsX, and text-based digital platforms such as OpIndia), the analysis theorizes the global flow of Hindutva across geographically dispersed contexts, connecting the diaspora with India, creating an uninterrupted communication infrastructure around the frame of the “Hindu in danger,” simultaneously intersecting with white supremacy in producing and amplifying Islamophobic hate.

Examining Online Behaviors of Violent and Non-Violent Right-Wing Extremists During Peak Posting Days

Despite the ongoing need for practitioners to identify violent extremists online before their engagement in violence offline, little is empirically known about their digital footprints generally or differences in their posting behaviors compared to their non-violent counterparts particularly – especially on high-frequency posting days. Content analysis was used to examine postings from a unique sample of violent and non-violent right-wing extremists as well as from a sample of postings within a sub-forum of the largest white supremacy forum during peak and non-peak posting days for comparison purposes. Several noteworthy posting behaviors were identified that may assist in identifying credible threats online.