Conceptualizing color-evasiveness: using dis/ability critical race theory to expand a color-blind racial ideology in education and society

Abstract

Color-blind racial ideology has historically been conceptualized as an ideology wherein race is immaterial. Efforts not to ‘see’ race insinuate that recognizing race is problematic; therefore, scholars have identified and critiqued color-blindness ideology. In this paper, we first examine Gotanda’s (1991) identification and critique of color-blind racial ideology, as it was crucial in troubling white supremacy. We then explore literature in both legal studies and education to determine how scholars have built upon Gotanda’s intellectual theoretical foundations. Finally, using a Dis/ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) framework, we end by expanding to a racial ideology of color-evasiveness in education and society, as we believe that conceptualizing the refusal to recognize race as ‘color-blindness’ limits the ways this ideology can be dismantled.     

Mexican illegality,black citizenship,and white power: immigrant perceptions of the U.S. socioracial hierarchy

While some scholars contend that immigrant integration is predicated on a strategic distancing from Blacks and closeness to Whites, others argue that highly racialised immigrants share more commonality with Black Americans than Whites. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Mexican immigrant newcomers to Los Angeles, California, this article examines how immigrants make sense of their position in U.S. socioracial hierarchy vis-à-vis other racialised groups. I show that as immigrants navigate U.S. social, racial, and political landscapes, they come to view ‘American-ness’ and the citizenship status inherent in it as a key marker of distinction between themselves and those they deem ‘American’. Immigrants thus view their group status as an inferior one relative not only to the dominant White group, but also to Black Americans, albeit for qualitatively different reasons. Findings highlight how the vulnerability of ‘illegality’ not only reinforces existing social boundaries with Whites, but also shapes the nature of socioracial boundaries with Black Americans that can hinder the potential for racial solidarity and has broader implications for the U.S. socioracial hierarchy.     

‘Colour-evasiveness’ and racism without race: the disablement of asylum-seeking children at the edge of fortress Europe

This article explores discriminatory discourses articulated by Italian professionals operating in educational, health and social services for refugees in Rome, in relation to the educational and social inclusion of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children. It locates such narratives within the historical ‘concealment and invisibilisation of race and racism’ that have characterised Italy particularly since the end of the Second World War, while showing how they legitimate contemporary processes of disablement and over-representation of forced migrant children in the category of Special Educational Needs. A theoretical framework influenced by Dis/ability Critical Race Studies, Italian postcolonial studies, and Judith Butler’s notions of subjectivation and performative politics is used to discuss how a ‘colour-evasive’ racial ideology has seeped into various institutions in Italian society, and importantly into education policies and practices.     

‘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.     

Racial inequality and the recognition of racial discrimination in Jamaica

A growing body of literature posits that a population’s denial of the salience of racial discrimination acts as a mechanism of its perpetuation. Moreover, scholars locate a population’s propensity to deny racial discrimination in contemporary ideologies of racial mixing or ethnic fusion. Most quantitative studies of public opinion on these issues are limited to Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. This study examines the case of Jamaica. We first (1) examine the extent of Jamaica’s contemporary racial inequality using national census data. We then (2) use nationally representative data from the AmericasBarometer social survey to determine the extent to which a recognition of racial discrimination characterizes Jamaican public opinion. Finally, we (3) explore the salience of an ideology of racial mixing in Jamaica and (4) test whether that ideology affects the likelihood that Jamaicans acknowledge contemporary racial discrimination. Our findings document dramatic social inequality by skin colour in Jamaica and suggest that a majority embrace an ideology that racial mixing is negatively associated with Jamaicans’ recognition of racial discrimination. We discuss our findings and their implications for understanding ideologies of racial mixing and racial inequality in the Americas.     

‘Chinese-Mexicans’ and ‘Blackest Asians’: Filipino American youth resisting the racial binary

This study provides a deeper understanding of the interracial connections not just between non-whites and whites, but among non-whites. Filipino American youth attending high school in New York City contended with a dominant bipolar racial discourse that marginalizes the racialized experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders. However, instead of feeling invisible or marginalized, data point to how they negotiated a black–white racial discourse to decide when and how they enter dialogues about race. Filipino youth reconceptualized this racial binary to position themselves on a continuum to form the racial ‘middle ground’ between blacks and whites. Importantly, rather than a racial hierarchy that places whites at the top, youth used discursive strategies to place themselves on a racial continuum that emphasizes the interconnectedness among racial minorities.     

Desire for the desert: racialising white teachers’ motives for working in remote schools in the Australian desert

Abstract

Distinct from rurality, the Australian desert has long functioned as a signifier of remoteness in the dominant imagination; a product of spatialised binary relations between ‘progressive’ (white) mainstream or idealised white countryside, and disordered/dangerous Aboriginal periphery. Remoteness constitutes a complex racial dynamic that has historically mediated white teachers’ and missionaries’ desires to travel to the social margins. This article adopts a discursive understanding of remoteness to examine contemporary white teachers’ decisions to work in Aboriginal schools in the desert – decisions that are often articulated through unwitting recourse to the ‘three Ms’ or ‘tourist’. The article explores these identity constructs and how they enable different performances of whiteness. It examines how white people’s desires are often covertly raced but does not however, position the teacher as a priori racist. Rather, desire is theorised as a social construct in which subjects invest, which may at times contribute toward processes of decolonisation. This rendering moves beyond a logic of individualism and underpins the argument that recognising how these dynamics play out is vital with respect to understanding the place of white teachers inside remote Indigenous Education. Moreover, such insights are valuable for appreciating how whiteness continues to be reproduced in White Australia under a guise of good intentions.     

Indigenous identity construction: enacted upon us,or within us

ABSTRACT

This commentary essay questions, theorizes, explores and grapples with the phenomenon of the creation of racial, social and cultural identity: in childhood as Native American identity is negotiated from others; and in adulthood as Native identity is constructed from within. ‘Indigenous Identity Construction: Enacted upon Us, or Within Us?’ is a commentary piece focused around Native American identity and how it is formed both through childhood and into adulthood. I analyze and interpret my experiences and understanding of my identity formation as an indigenous person- which usually is left out of the socio-political notions of modernity. Conceptualizations from ‘othering’ racial identities are discussed along with indigenous ontologies constructed within land and water. Through metaphorically revisiting past racializing incidents this piece continues working through the idea of othering and induction into whiteness in childhood, but also focuses on how indigenous identities might be constructed and sustained in adulthood. Efforts to model the indigenous assertion of self-determination and decolonizing the mind was used to re-present thoughts on the construction of Native American identity     

‘Being while black’: resistance and the management of the self

‘Being while black’ is ultimately an ‘everyday revolution’, Despite the fact that people manage their selves by their own choosing, especially as their desires are being shaped (Foucault, 1977), their selves remains the basic revolutionary unit. Foucault's oeuvre on power and concept of dressage is utilized to explain racial profiling of blacks of what I call ‘racial dressage’, intended primarily to discipline the ‘black body’ (el-Khoury, 2009). In this paper, I argue that despite this false sense of presence of power and internalized social-control, blacks actively construct their day-to-day activities as a discursive object of resistance. Critical awareness to racial oppression is in itself is a form of opposition to it (Collins, 1990). I argue that social control and resistance are coproduced. Using discursive analysis of interviews I identified the following modes of resistance: disposition to steadiness (constituting an ethical self, sustaining an internal dialogue, and emotional management), rejecting criminalizing identities, discursive consciousness, refusing the spatial power, and lastly disbelief in the system. Ultimately, blacks live against ‘themselves’ and this is because the soul that has become the prison of the body, is being dismantled (Luxon, 2008).     

Review article

Social processes in the world today are characterized by the growing importance of relations between actors located in different national spaces (transnational relations). Based on case studies, this article illustrates how nowadays transnational relations between local and transnational actors affect in different ways the social production of representations that are sociopolitically significant – insofar as they articulate meanings in the constitution and practices of social organizations and movements of diverse political orientations. Through the analysis of cases related to the social production of representations of ideas of pan-ethnic indigenous identities, ‘culture and development’, ‘civil society’, and ‘free trade’, this text seeks to contribute to the theoretical debate about culture, communication, and social change in the contemporary world. The cases discussed in this article are based on field and documentary research undertaken in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela.     

‘From badness to sickness’:1 the role of ethnopsychology in shaping ethnic hierarchies in Israel

This article explores the role of the psychological sciences in depoliticising processes of ethnic demarcation and marginalisation within the Jewish population in Israel. It shows how the psychological sciences have provided the scientific foundation by which cultural domination and subordination have been essentialised. The study traces the ways in which ethnopsychological discourse has changed its contours over time. Early ethnopsychological discourse provided an overt link between the ‘cultural backwardness’ and ‘psychological impairment’ of the Mizrahi Jew. In light of broad social and political transformations, in the more recent model the overt ethnic signifier was silenced, and the Mizrahi ‘impaired mind’ appeared to be detached from its ethnic roots while being attributed to the same ethnic population. Both ethnopsychological forms have focused on the individual's ‘special needs’ and ‘inherent psychological impairment’, obscuring the role of social and political forces in shaping social gaps in Israeli society and reinforcing the hegemonic discourse of nurture. The latter has provided a negative mirror image of the modern Ashkenazi secular Israeli Jew following Western cultural models of self‐control as the universal index of health and progress. This study is based on both primary and secondary sources as well as on my in situ observations.     

Humour in the Ancient World

Since the ending of the Second World War and the establishment of the United Nations, the international concept of racism, first initialised in the 1930s, has been inscribed in an unacknowledged conceptual double bind. Western political culture has inherited a hegemonic concept of racism that foregrounds those meanings associated with the anti‐fascist critiques of the Jewish Holocaust, while foreclosing subaltern anti‐colonial critiques centred on Western Imperialism. This can be taken to suggest a divergence within a western tradition of critical thought that in one of its guises occurs between the view that ‘‘race’ thinking’ resembles ideological exceptionality and the contrary view that ‘race relations’ approximates colonial conventions. The present essay explores the extent to which these views are constituted conceptually and dialogically in opposition and divergence. This is defined as racism's conceptual double bind. In other words, the international concept of racism is doubly bound into revealing its imprints in nationalism and concealing its anchorage in liberalism; or recognising extremist ideology while denying routine governmentality. The essay, therefore, asks the following: is it im/plausible to deny that there is an inescapable conceptual double bind between these differing conceptualisations of racism that has been ignored by the dominant social science traditions in the West? The idea of a double bind in the concept of racism, reiterated throughout this essay, is not to be confused with the proposition that there are two concepts of racism. On the contrary, during the twentieth‐century conceptualisation of racism, there have rather been two distinct orientations, the hegemonic Eurocentric and the subaltern De/colonial, based on conflicting yet dialogical paradigmatic experiences of the referent of racism.     

The new ‘twice migrants’: motivations,experiences and disillusionments of Italian-Bangladeshis relocating to London

Taking our cue from an earlier study of East African Asians who ‘onward-migrated’ to the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, this paper looks at the more recent phenomenon of Bangladeshi immigrants in Italy who are onward-migrating to London. We seek to answer three questions. First, why does this migration occur? Second, how does the ethnic group we call ‘Italian-Bangladeshis’ narrate their working lives in London and to what extent do they feel ‘at home’ there? Third, what are the gaps between their expectations held before the move and the actual social and economic conditions they encounter in London? Empirical evidence comes from 40 in-depth interviews with Italian-Bangladeshis who have already onward-migrated or plan to. Most Italian-Bangladeshis move to London to escape socially limiting factory work in Italy, to invest in the educational future of their children, and to join the largest Bangladeshi community outside of their home country. In London, they describe feeling more ‘at home’ than in Italy, due to the size and multiple facilities of the Bangladeshi community, their lack of ‘visibility’ and of racialisation, and the greater sense of religious freedom. But their onward-migration experience has its more negative sides: the inability to access more than low-paid casual work in London’s service economy, the cost of housing, and the difficulty of making social contacts beyond their ethnic community, especially with those they regard as ‘natives’, i.e. ‘white’ British.     

Fearing yellow,imagining white: media analysis of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a watershed event in the context of race, nation, and the law because it denied Chinese immigration into the USA for over 80 years. This paper analyses the media coverage of the Chinese in the San Francisco Chronicle during the year of the Act's passage. The theoretical framework of ‘Purity and Danger’ provides a starting point in analyzing how whiteness and nation are constructed as ‘pure’, while Chinese immigration is constructed as a ‘danger’ within a symbolic, racial and political manner. Discourse analysis was applied to the data for an intersectional investigation of race, class, gender, and nation, to determine how the discourse is organized thematically, as well as uncover ideological meanings in relation to how ‘fearing yellow’ also reflected ‘imaging white’ in media discourse.     

Colonial laboratories,irreparable subjects: the experiment of ‘(b)ordering’ San Juan's public housing residents

This article provides a genealogy of the discourses that shaped the public housing policies of the mid-twentieth century in the US island colony of Puerto Rico. In the 1950s and 1960s, a conversation arose between government officials, social science experts, and the local press about how to fix social inequalities by ‘ordering’ mostly black and mulato, economically dispossessed families residing in shantytowns and barrios. This led to the establishment of caseríos (housing projects) as places where the government would attempt to ‘modernize’ residents through architectural design, planning, and social betterment programs. Because the caseríos did not address the structural causes of inequalities of power and wealth in the island, they failed in lifting residents out of poverty. From the mid-1960s onwards, a host of writings blamed caserío dwellers for the failure of the projects, attributing it to their purportedly dysfunctional – and nearly incorrigible – ‘culture of poverty’. This perpetuated a particular characterization of Puerto Rican economically dispossessed people as incapable of political or social agency without the guidance of elite Puerto Ricans and the ‘benevolent’ American colonial metropolis. It also led to the subsequent ‘bordering’ of caseríos spaces with walls and checkpoints, which in turn reproduced the branding of public housing residents as irreparably dysfunctional and ‘criminal’.     

‘A brutal blow against the democratic normality’: unlearning the epistemology of the political

ABSTRACT

The objective of this paper is to rethink our understanding of ‘the political’ through an examination of two novels by José Saramago, Blindness and Seeing. Both novels tackle directly a central, if not the central, signature metaphor of Western political thought, namely that of ‘seeing the light’. This metaphor takes many forms and recurs throughout the tradition of Western political philosophy as a source, legitimiser, and validator of knowing, and perhaps even a guarantor of knowledge. In particular, this metaphor has served to make knowable whatever it is that is signified by ‘the political’. By extension, it also means that whatever might be outside of this epistemological frame is rendered unknowable, if not unthinkable. Both of Saramago’s novels provide a fruitful means to recalibrate how we might know ‘the political’. The novels call into question the epistemic signatures that frame our commonly accepted understandings of ‘the political’ and in so doing provoke us further to question how we might move towards unlearning the epistemology of the political.