Assistant professors of color confront the inequitable terrain of academia: a community cultural wealth perspective

Abstract

This qualitative study adopted Yosso’s community cultural wealth (CCW) framework to examine how 16 assistant professors of color (APOC) drew upon various forms of capital (navigational, aspirational, social, resistant, linguistic, familial) to deal with racism and marginalization in academia. Findings revealed how APOC: dealt with students’ stereotypes of them, maintained their authentic selves to make academia more accessible and relevant, persevered with integrity despite hostility or marginalization, self-advocated for quality mentorship, and engaged in strategic service while avoiding cultural taxation and tokenism. Findings highlighted the positive cultural assets APOC enact within the academy while reiterating the need to address racist and marginalizing policies and practices in higher education. Variations in experiences based on gender and international status that can be explored further in future research also emerged. Working at a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) also did not eliminate or lessen racist or marginalizing experiences for participants.     

Devout Muslims or tough highlanders? Exploring attitudes toward ethnic nationalism and racism in Europe’s ethnic-Chechen Salafi communities

This is the first article that systematically deconstructs the idealised, widely shared view and formal self-representation of Salafis as a de-culturalised group of Muslim believers who are solely devoted to the idea of a uniform Muslim identity and are indifferent to the notions of ethnic nationalism and racism. Drawing on unique interviews with EU-based ethnic-Chechen émigré Salafis, the article illuminates the ways they draw boundaries and consequently construe their ethnic and racial identities as superior and opposed to Muslims stemming from the Middle East and Central Asia. Below the surface of coherent ideologically shaped self-representations, the diaspora Salafis’ identities reflect the idea of Chechnya’s mountainous topography being conducive to a superior ‘national mentality’, racial purity, and cultural uniqueness. Intriguingly, the diaspora-Chechen Salafis’ attitudes toward Middle Easterners and Central Asians employ a rhetoric which entails similarities with the notion of imagined geographies and to some extent resembles Western Orientalist discourse. In stark contrast to leading Salafi scholars’ statements emphasising a united Muslim identity, which are routinely echoed by outsiders, this article points out the maintenance of strong ethnic-nationalist and racist resentments amongst individual members of this religious community.     

Queer cultural capital: implications for education

This article takes the concept of cultural capital from Yosso’s (2005) work and transforms the model for queer communities. While Yosso identified five forms of cultural capital in communities of color (familial, aspirational, navigational, resistant, and linguistic), the author identifies an additional form: transgressive. Queer cultural capital can show teachers the strengths within queer communities and so allow them to have a positive, rather than a deficit, model of these groups. Brief examples for queer cultural capital are illustrated for familial, aspirational, navigational, and resistant, while queer linguistic and transgressive capitals are discussed in greater depth. Implications for K-12 teaching and working with preservice teachers are offered, as well as suggestions for future work.     

The politics of indigeneity,identity and representation in literature from north Australia's Gulf Country

The Aboriginal author Alexis Wright's novels Plains of Promise, Carpentaria and The Swan Book have prompted scholars and critics towards enthusiastic comparisons with the ground-breaking work of a range of international writers. With her novels all set partly in the remote Gulf Country of north Australia, Wright's work arises from intellectual and political commitment to Indigenous people, and aspires to the idea of a distinctive ‘Aboriginal sovereignty of the mind’. Much less known yet, we argue, of complementary significance, are a broader suite of writings about this region, and we address representations of cultural identity and connections to place by authors with both Aboriginal and European ancestries. With our interest in a deliberately cross-disciplinary methodology, ethnographic research complements our focus on texts to facilitate analysis of diverse identities in a setting produced through both the resilience of Indigenous cultural traditions and the legacies of European settler colonialism. We argue that the range of authorial representations arising from this sector of Australian society provides a focus for understanding shared and contested postcolonial imaginaries about place, culture and identity.     

Muslim Women in Australia,Britain and the United States: The Role of “Othering” and Biculturalism in Identity Formation

When Muslims migrate to Western countries, they bring their identity and culture with them. As they settle in their host countries, some Muslims encounter structural inequality, which is often revealed through media representation, unequal labour market status and racial profiling. Through the dynamics of structural inequality, some Muslim women remain doubly disadvantaged. Within their ethnic/religious community, Muslim women are expected to follow their cultural traditions and in the wider society their overtly Muslim appearance is often questioned. The discussion of identity formation in this paper is based on interviews with Muslim girls and women in Australia, Britain and the United States, aged between 15 and 30 years. Though the cultural and political contexts of these three countries are different, the practice of “othering” women have been similar. Through their life stories and narratives, I examine the formation of the participants’ identities. It was found that for many of these women their sense of identity shifted from single to multiple identities, thus revealing that identity formation was a flexible process that was affected by a variety of factors, including the relevance and importance of biculturalism in the women’s identity formation.     

A community of paradigm subjects? Rights as corrective tools in culturally contested claims of recognition in Europe

This article analyses the role of rights in human rights jurisprudence dealing with recognition of identities and cultural diversity in Europe. Using examples of selected case law of the European Court of Human Rights, it discusses the understanding of rights and their impact on the notions of community and recognition. It critically evaluates the recourse to the notions of a closed, established community and the defence of the established status quo in culturally contested conflicts. It analyses claims articulated by those framed as standing outside the narrow confines of such a cultural community. By reference to critical perspectives, the article illustrates how rights operate with categories of paradigm and foreign subjects and regulate respective entitlements of these subjects to enjoy rights. It demonstrates how these categories impact upon the notion of a community and how the narrowing of its boundaries limits the possibilities of belonging of foreign subjects. The article argues that these categories embedded in rights regimes lead to a mutation of rights from tools of inclusion to tools of correction. In their corrective function rights rather than serving as tools of ensuring belonging are used for maintenance of established identities and cultural regimes of power. In the final section by reference to the latest judgments of the same Court expanding rather than narrowing the understanding of a community, the article examines whether rights can reach beyond these subjectivities and offer possibilities of renegotiating the established regimes of cultural power.     

The legacy of Derrick Bell and Latino/a education: a critical race testimonio

In this article, we trace Bell’s influence in our lives from graduate students to teacher educators and engaged scholars, and note how we have always read Bell alongside and inseparable from Latino/a Studies and Latina/Chicana feminist thought. We highlight the powerful and fruitful tensions of these interconnections in addressing our curricular struggles and innovations, professional identities and scholarly trajectories. We address Bell’s theory of interest convergence to discuss the tensions and possibilities of personal ‘success’ in the academy by interweaving our testimonios with Critical Race and Latino Critical Race (LatCrit) scholarship in Latino/a education. Latina feminist scholars have re-worked the Latin American tradition of testimonio as a way to link individual stories to a collective story of Latina/o racialization in the US, and to epistemological racism in the academy. Our collective story centers the intersections of race with indigeneity, class, citizenship, language, gender and sexuality. We begin from the earliest influence of Bell’s counterstorytelling method for examining Latino/a students’ racializing experiences in higher education and move through other critical race work in Latino education that both directly and indirectly addresses Bell’s scholarship as these intersect with our intellectual journeys. Finally, we offer a story of the complex legacy of Bell’s anti-subordination and social justice scholarship for intellectual alliances, coalition building, and inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary engaged scholarship.     

Im/mobile subjects: identity,conflict and emotion work among East Timorese Meto diaspora

ABSTRACT

Changes in situations of mobility as a result of violent conflict and displacement pose major challenges to the maintenance, mobilisation and restoration of family ties across national boundaries. Sustaining these relationships through which personal and group identities are embedded and resources for survival are provided can be emotionally and materially taxing while living in exile. This is particularly so when poor relations are perpetuated as a result of unattended and deeply rooted conflict. This paper illustrates the ways legacy of mistrust manifest in diaspora persons’ im/mobility in relation to their moral community ‘back home’. It considers the case of East Timorese Meto diasporic families against the background of widespread impunity that featured the end of the Indonesian state’s occupation of Timor-Leste, which resulted in serious disruptions of cultural and kinship ties. It starts by discussing their mobility context to elucidate the emerging narratives and strategies people employed to negotiate issues of identity and belonging. In particular, the paper reveals the emotion work of translocal mobility through the flows of material, circulating words of good deeds and physical presence, aimed at the repair and strengthening of relationships after dividing conflict.     

Breaking the silences,breaking the frames: a gendered diasporic analysis of sexual violence in the DRC

ABSTRACT

The role of diasporas in fuelling conflict has been extensively studied, with much less attention being paid to their role in peace-building. It is increasingly recognised that diasporas from conflict regions are contributing to the reconstruction of their countries of origin, acting as ‘peace-makers’ rather than ‘peace-wreckers’. Women and men migrants have also been found to engage differently towards their country of origin, but attention to women’s activism is still scarce. This article addresses the issue of political activism by Congolese women in the diaspora in both the UK and Belgium. Their activities are assessed analytically through the prism of ‘mechanisms of framing’, which shape the ways in which messages are conveyed during the mobilisation process. The paper discusses diagnostic, motivational and prognostic frames to address sexual and gender-based violence against Congolese women in the protracted conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Framing strategies vary among Congolese diaspora women’s groups depending on the national context in which they are embedded (Belgium and the UK) but a variety of narratives is also discerned which transcends and is shared among Congolese women beyond national borders.     

Ideal liberal subjects and Muslim “Others”: liberal nationalism and the racialization of Muslim youth in a progressive Danish school

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.     

Exile,gender and identity: the short stories of Afghanistani author Maryam Mahboob

The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed the largest migration of the Afghanistani population in modern history. More than six million people migrated to neighbouring countries, and to North America, Europe and Australia. Among them were almost all of Afghanistan's female authors; some eventually returned, but others chose to remain in diaspora. Some stopped writing, while others have continued. Maryam Mahboob was the first Afghanistani female author to leave Afghanistan (in 1981). Her major works since then have dealt chiefly with the issues of women living in ‘Outlandia’. Having been treated as second-class citizens in Afghanistan, how do Afghanistani migrant women perceive their social status in a new environment? How has migration affected the lives of Afghanistani women of different generations? Have they assimilated with the new culture and adopted new identities, or have they retained their cultural identities and stayed in closed communities? How do these women perceive their ‘new home’ vis-à-vis the ‘old home-land’. What does it mean to be a female author from a Third World Islamic society living and writing in the First World? Why does Mahboob still write overwhelmingly about themes from her place of origin and in her native language, after so much time abroad?     

‘Mixed’ Japanese-Filipino identities under Japanese multiculturalism

ABSTRACT

The ways in which multiculturalism is debated and practiced forms an important frame for ‘mixed’ ethnic identities to take shape. In this paper, I explore how young migrants of Japanese-Filipino ‘mixed’ parentage make sense of their ethnic identities in Japan. My key findings are that dominant discourses constructing the Japanese nation as a monoracial, monolingual and monoethnic nation leave no space for diversity within the definition of ‘Japanese’, creating the necessity for alternative labels like haafu or ‘mixed roots’. Japanese multiculturalism does not provide alternative narratives of Japaneseness but preserves the myth of Japanese racial homogeneity by recognizing diversity while maintaining ethnic and racial boundaries. Lastly, these categories have not been actively questioned by my respondents. Rather, they show flexibility in adopting these various labels – haafu, ‘mixed roots’, Filipino, Firipin-jin – in different contexts.     

Marketing an imagined Muslim woman: Muslim Girl magazine and the politics of race,gender and representation

This article examines the magazine Muslim Girl (started publication 2007) and explores how the representations on the magazine's pages construct a particular type of identity for Muslim women: an ‘idealized’ Muslim woman who is both North American/Western and Muslim. Such a woman is portrayed as liberal, educated, fashionable, a ‘can-do’ woman, who is also committed to her faith. This ‘ideal’ woman is situated squarely as a neo-liberal subject in an increasingly consumerist world: she is ‘marketable’ (and marketed) as the ‘good Muslim’ (Mamdani, 2004) and is positioned as the ‘familiar stranger’ (Ahmed, 2000) in North America. This so-called ‘modern’ Muslim (read: ‘good Muslim’) is juxtaposed both against the ‘fundamentalist’ Muslim (read: ‘bad Muslim’) and the ‘normalized’ white North American subject. Against the discourse of post 9/11 nationalism and within the context of (gendered) Orientalism, this article argues that such idealized representations present easily recognizable tropes, which serve important political, ideological and cultural purposes within North American society. An analysis of these representations – and the purposes which they serve – provides an important window into the nuances of the structured discourses that seek to control and discipline the gendered Muslim body. On the one hand, the representations in Muslim Girl focus on the so-called ‘integrated North American Muslim’ – a ‘modern’ or ‘good’ Muslim – within the context of the multicultural, neo-liberal and post 9/11 nation-state. On the other hand, these representations also highlight examples of Muslim women, who seemingly remain committed to their faith and community. Such representations of hybridized North American Muslims speak powerfully to the forces – ideological, cultural, political and social – that are at play in the post 9/11 world. In analyzing the representations found in Muslim Girl, this paper provides an insight into some of these forces and their implications.     

Perceptions of diversity and attitudes of tolerance in the ‘fragmented’ U.K.

ABSTRACT

Relying on a quantitative survey (n = 1497) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30) conducted in the U.K., we explore British nationals’, Romanian and Turkish migrants’ attitudes of tolerance and the factors influencing them in the current socio-political context in the U.K. The quantitative data reveal the role of younger age, diverse networks, higher education, attachment to city/region and supranational identifications in more open attitudes towards diversity. The qualitative findings illustrate how diverse these three groups’ attitudes of tolerance can be and how they are affected by their position and status in the U.K. The British’ attitudes show their tolerance can reflect diverse forms of acceptance of ethnic and cultural differences but can also draw lines in terms of civic values opposing ‘those who contribute to society’ versus those who ‘live as parasites’. The Turks are in favour of diversity with the expectation of receiving more civic rights and facing less prejudice. The Romanians tend to have a more ambiguous relation to diversity given their position of stigmatised migrants in the U.K. Our analysis reveal how inclusive or exclusive people’s (sub- and supra-)national identities can be and how these frame their attitudes of tolerance.     

College teaching on sacred ground: Judeo-Christian influences on Black women faculty pedagogy

This study examines the perceptions and ideals of Black women faculty in the US who self-identify as possessing strong faith commitments within a Judeo-Christian denomination. The study considers the influence religio-spirituality has on their perceptions of pedagogy and student engagement. There are four major findings that emerged in this study, organized within two veins: (1) Religio-spiritual educator ideal as a guide for ways of being and teaching in the academy; and (2) Religio-spirituality’s relationship to equity and emancipation. This study is significant in that it identifies a largely under-theorized religio-spiritual frame employed by many Black women faculty in the US, and contributes to the literature in its exploration of the ways Judeo-Christian Black women faculty can serve as important resources and change agents in US higher education.     

‘People take for granted that you know how to dance Salsa and Merengue’: transnational diasporas,visual discourses and racialized knowledge in Sweden's contemporary Latin music boom

In recent years US-based Latin culture has gained worldwide popularity through artists such as Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Ricky Martin. Taking the national context as an emerging vantage point from which to consider globalization processes, this article explores the growing popularity of ‘Latin music’ as a specific contemporary expression of global popular culture and its impact on young Latina women's everyday lives and identity work in Sweden. Based on interviews and focus group discussions with 29 high school young Latina women between 14–20 years of age, born and/or brought up in Sweden, the article examines how musical arenas and their appeal to hybrid identities are construed in contemporary articulations of commodity cultures and representations. In the particular context of Sweden, the article looks at how young Latina women negotiate popular representations of latinidad through an intentional and unintentional embodiment of these images. It is argued that while visual discourses and representations of popular culture tend to fix young women in preconceived ideas of ethnicity, race and gender, the young women themselves find a myriad of ways of reconstructing stereotyping ideas and creating diasporic links with other Latino/a diasporas, especially in the United States.