Can't hold us back! Hip-hop and the racial motility of aboriginal bodies in urban spaces

Urban centers across Canada are partitioned by racial geographies that circumvent and circumscribe the movements of aboriginal bodies. This article examines how aboriginal youth experience and engage these racisms that organize Canadian social spaces. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken at a drop-in recreational centre in the inner city of Edmonton, Alberta, it documents the different ways in which indigenous youth employ hip-hop as a means to contest their subjection to these immobilizing racisms. First, it shows how these youth employ hip-hop as a technology of self-transformation through which they recreate their selves as meaningful, efficacious political actors capable of disrupting their relegation to criminogenic places. Second, it documents how the practice of a distinctly indigenous hip-hop allows these youth to innovate an aesthetic space disruptive of the historicist racisms that otherwise subject aboriginality to anachronistic spaces. Finally, this article shows that, by performing a hybridized, distinctly indigenous breakdance, these practitioners of hip-hop dramatize the physical and cultural motility of aboriginal bodies.     

A study of significance of racial and athletic identification on educational perceptions among African American male college athletes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the racial and athletic identities of African American male college athletes to determine how the identities might impact the athletic and educational potential and performance of this specific group of college athletes. The study revealed that participants who responded negatively to a poor athletic performance were more likely to have lower levels of academic self-concept. In contrast, college athletes who highly identified with their racial group were more likely to have higher levels of academic self-concept. Overall, the findings reveal the intricacies and complexities of being an African American college student and athlete at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) in the US. As such, the article details the implications of the findings as they relate to African American culture, American sports culture, and higher education realities.     

A social identity framework of American hip-hop cultural performance

The sociocognitive processes of marginalized-group social identity negotiation within a wider hegemonic sociocultural context can appear counterintuitive. Employing social identity theory to extend our understanding of the tension between racial and economic group-based identities, the mutations of three notable hip-hop referents serve as case studies that illuminate a framework of the intra- and intergroup relations facilitated by hip-hop's cultural performance within a racialized society.     

少数民族文化与中华民族共有精神家园建设

"民族共有性"是中华民族共有精神家园的重要特征.这一特征要求我们在中华民族共有精神家园的建设中注重对少数民族文化的吸收,尊重少数民族文化的应有地位.基于这种认识,本文对少数民族文化在中华民族共有精神家园建设中的意义进行了论述,并对其发挥作用的途径进行了探讨.     

“中华民族共同体”的差序格局及其文化实践

以三重差序格局的文化视角来理解"中华民族共同体",有助于把握这一概念的历史文化内涵与现实的文化实践。首先,基于"中华民族"的三重差序格局包括各族人民的中华民族;中国人民的中华民族;全世界华人的中华民族。由此,"中华民族共同体"的差序格局包括各民族凝聚而成的中华民族共同体;中国人民凝聚而成的中华民族共同体;作为人类命运共同体一部分的世界华人认同的中华民族共同体。其次,进一步探讨了三重差序的中华民族多元一体、三重差序的文化认同和文化自觉、三重差序的文化连接和文化超越。贯通中华民族共同体之差序格局的是中华文化,它是中华民族共同体的灵魂和根基。     

Fabulachia: urban,black female experiences and higher education in Appalachia

Abstract

This article draws on focus group conversations with black female college students attending a small, liberal arts institution in Kentucky. Based primarily on group interviews and discussions, as well as observations and analysis – a theoretical domain (referred to throughout the article as ‘Fabulachia’) emerged as a site-specific outcome of events and ideas regarding race, gender and identity experienced by the research participants. Specifically, ‘Fabulachia’ functions as a theoretical hybrid space in which urban (e.g. ‘ghetto fabulous’) black college student-voices find a sense of empowerment as they construct their own narratives of leaving ‘the hood’ to attend college in rural Appalachia. This project revises and updates previous research on race and rural identity/ies in order to situate the urban black female experience into an Appalachian context. Drawing on hip hop feminism and urban education based theoretical paradigms, the Fabulachia study seeks to give voice to black females in contemporary Appalachia, with attention to their self-proclaimed ‘ghetto fabulous’ identities honed in and through their urban upbringings. The unique experiences of (Fabulachian) black females are an important and largely absent part of larger conversations of the growing body of Urban education research that seeks to situate the black student/black youth and schooling experience in the US. In the Fabulachia study, a group of black female students shared personal narratives (part-oral history and part direct response) to prompts and queries about the role of hip hop culture, race and gender identity in their lives. They also discussed and debated what it means to be a black female in contemporary (often racist) Appalachia, and about how their families and urban surroundings influenced their processes of being and becoming in the context of higher educational achievement.     

‘They were constantly on the losing side of things’: the pedagogical power of an African-American teacher candidate bearing witness in teacher education

The stories of students and teacher candidates of Color (Just as singular racial/ethnic identities are capitalized (i.e. African-American, Asian, Latina, Native American etc.), I capitalize Color to honor the various identities that many ‘non-white’ people hold near and dear. I recognize the nuances in doing so- such as the reality that the term ‘people of Color’ actually erases identity while the term also highlights a shared experience (though also nuanced) of being ‘non-white’ in a white supremacist society.) hold powerful lessons and insights for teacher education programs and educational reform efforts. Yet, rarely do educators and policy-makers solicit or critically engage the educational narratives of these stakeholders. In particular, research confirms that we know little about how students’ of Color educational experiences are impacted by race(ism) and culture and how those experiences subsequently inform their ideas about teaching. This study, framed by critical race theory (CRT), examines an African-American (African-American is used intentionally here as this is how Ariel identifies racially.) teacher candidate’s racialized K-12 and postsecondary school experiences to more fully understand the connection between lived experience and developing teacher identity. Ariel’s story reflects her own school experiences; her focus on her peers’ school experiences when asked about her own; and how those experiences, informed by race and culture, contribute to her development of pedagogy. Analytical considerations illustrate that memory and remembrance, witnessing and bearing witness, and testimony are deliberate and powerful acts in the development of pedagogy and should be central to teacher education curriculum.     

Crossing the border: immigrant student identities in Swaziland schools

This paper sets out to explore how the resettlement of immigrant students in a host country and schooling context influenced the constitution, negotiation and representation of their identities. Data capture included a mix of semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, observations and a researcher journal. Data were analyzed by means of the content analysis method. Findings were fivefold. First, the sociocultural context influenced the way immigrant students constructed their identities. Second, categorization was based on phenotypical features, accent, negative attitudes and stereotypical perceptions of immigrants by Swaziland society. Third negotiated identities were multiple in nature and rooted in their culture of origin. Fourth, self-determination was a strong trait of immigrants; reflected in their work ethic, in the resolution of culture conflicts, and in their drive to achieve linguistic competency. And fifth, psychosocial passing was consistent with second generation immigrants. New knowledge generated from this study revealed that African immigrants preferred to be clustered with Mozambican immigrants, as it provided solid ground from which they negotiated identities in Swaziland schools. Mozambican immigrants recruited other African immigrants into their cluster, which they referred to as the ‘Chico nation’. And, the culture of non-Christian immigrants was suppressed to promote Christian religious beliefs and values.     

Diversity,difference and nation: Indigenous peoples on Mexican screen

This article draws on constructivist theories of identity that regard the self as coming into existence through interaction with the other. It investigates the discursive formation of Indigenous people in the forging of Mexican national identity. The aim of this article is to show how difference has been managed and deployed in the establishment of national Mexican identities from independence until the present. This is done with reference to visual culture and film and illustrated with examples from the ‘Golden Age’ as well as ‘the New Mexican Cinema’.     

边境牧区各族民众铸牢中华民族共同体意识的关键性要素

铸牢中华民族共同体意识是我国西部边境牧区现代化治理的关键目标和价值引领,从顶层设计、文本分析和实践总结等三个层面出发,明确贯穿于牧区安全、稳定、团结、发展的边境建设与民族团结是其中的关键性要素。在顶层设计中,物质层面推进更高质量的发展,持续改善民生;在精神层面,持续增强文化认同,巩固各民族大团结。上述两个层面都是宏观的关键性要素。在对《"兴边富民"行动"十三五"规划》等政策文本的分析中,发掘出6个中观要素、23个微观要素在内的关键性要素体系。在具体实践过程中,明确聚焦发展、普惠民生、促进互嵌、增进认同的实践逻辑。在铸牢中华民族共同体意识中,要着眼于边境民众个体的思想认识,真正打牢中华民族共同体的思想基础。     

‘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.     

Islamophobia and the Discursive Reconstitution of Religious Imagination in Europe

Since much of the discussion about Islamophobia has been concerned with positive-self and negative-other representations of Muslims, understanding it as a culturally racist discourse foregrounds the way Muslims are constructed as deeply threatening to the values and identities of the spaces they occupy. These representations invoke an essentialised and determinative Muslim culture that can be understood as the central organising principle of Islamophobia: the belief that relies upon binary oppositions that allow its proponents to advocate a host of positive values, while repudiating and denigrating Muslims. This paper explains how Islamophobia can be conceptualised as the racist discourse that upholds a system of Eurocentric supremacy, a historical development based on the universalising aspects of Western culture that led to the development of a racialised social system in Europe. By demonstrating the form and content of Islamophobic discourse, the paper draws attention to a wide array of issues ranging from the securitisation discourse, institutionalisation of Islamophobia, to its modes of articulation in specific European countries. It further argues that given the rise of racist, especially Islamophobic, far-right parties in European countries, combating Islamophobia becomes an institutional priority that requires outspoken and brave initiatives and persons who not only challenge this pervasive form of racism but also address structural forms of discrimination affecting Muslims or those perceived as such.     

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.     

Exploring Greek-Cypriot media representations of national identities in ethnically divided Cyprus: the case of the 2002/2004 Annan Plan negotiations

ABSTRACT

This paper explores Greek-Cypriot media representations of national identities during negotiations on a United Nation Plan (the Annan Plan), aiming to reunite ethnically divided Cyprus under a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. The study analyzed thematically 57 editorials and lead commentaries published in all the daily Greek-Cypriot Press from the presentation of the Annan Plan in November 2002 to April 2004, at which point two simultaneous referenda were held. The study’s findings are consistent with ideas that national identifications are not static and provides an in-depth exploration of exclusive forms of Cypriot identities vis-à-vis more inclusive forms and vis-à-vis hellenocentric identifications.     

Creating and inhabiting virtual places: Indian immigrants in cyberspace

The Internet is often appropriated by groups seeking to preserve, develop and celebrate their identities across space. Using an online survey of a group of immigrants to the United States from India as well as their American-born children, this article reveals that the Internet is utilised for overcoming separation at intra- and international scales, for creating a variety of transboundary networks and for constructing a sense of identity in virtual place. Yet the results also suggest that those individuals who use websites related to Indian culture, society, politics, history and news are distinct ‘communicationally defined’ sub-populations with regard to sex, generation and citizenship status. Indeed, ‘indices of traditionalism’ demonstrate key differences in the types of users of these virtual places.     

An Australian immunisation to the extreme right?

Unlike many of its western counterparts, Australia has been spared powerful surges of the extreme right throughout its history. While the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw European democracies threatened time and time again by movements relying on ethno-exclusivism and thriving on capitalist crises, Australia suffered only relatively weak extreme right bursts whose impact remained marginal. Even the rise of the One Nation Party in 1996, as sudden as it was impressive, showed the limits in the Australian context for organisations which have proved long-lasting in Europe. This brief outline could bear a simple conclusion: Australia is immune to the extreme right. However, through a study of some of the most important extreme right failures in Australia, this article shows that rather than being immune, the country was spared an extreme right because of the policies put in place by mainstream parties and governments. By analysing mainstream politics in times of extreme right resurgence, this article highlights that by negating the extreme right's ability to appear as an alternative to the power in place, Australian mainstream politicians suffocated it. The conclusion of this article demonstrates that while the Australian extreme right has been mostly inaudible since 2001, extreme right politics, such as ethno-exclusivism, still play a crucial part in the shaping of Australian politics, notably during election campaigns.     

On becoming Mexican in Napa: Mexican immigrant girls negotiating challenges to transnational identities

This article examines the ethnic identity formation of high school aged Mexican immigrant adolescent girls. The ethnic identity is new to them and acts as a coping mechanism that allows them to confront the racial order and gender monitoring they experience at home and at their high school. Being Mexican allows them to make meaning of their immigrant experience. The author contends that these girls rather than disconnecting from their national ethnic identity are developing a stronger sense of being Mexican than if they had never left Mexico. However, developing a strong sense of being Mexican comes with challenges. This article is based on 20 unstructured interviews conducted at a local high school in Napa, California. The interviews trace the identity transitions and challenges each girl experienced both before migration and after they arrived in the US. The author finds that they develop an ethnic identity based on their memories of Mexico that they share amongst each other where they long to continue to be part of their old community. The stories of girls point to the identity transitions Mexican immigrant youth experience. Their stories also point to how identities are not clean sequential transitions, but are rather messy, conflicting, and contradictory.     

State power and the role of education in the constitution of natives’ subjectivities: the Druze in Israel

Collective identities are largely conceived as the essence of human subjectivity, the basis of moral collectivities and the code by which people tend to relate to histories and current affairs. Michel Foucault, notwithstanding, argued that identities are the product of power relations. Through various techniques, such as the classification of populations to certain categories, the hierarchical ordering of these categories, the allocation of differential treatment to those who occupy the various categories and the association between belonging to particular categories and certain jobs and means of living, regimes establish group identities. This process of sorting out, we argue, is the beginning of a laborious endeavor whose final goal is to institutionalize the new identities in the consciousness of the wider public as natural. Education is thought to constitute an essential tool by which regimes inculcate the young generations with constructed identities. Despite that, hegemonic discourses are not stable; rather, they are constantly challenged by all sorts of groups who speak in the name of silenced histories or moral claims. In line with these insights, we aim in this article to trace the Israeli methods employed to constitute the Druze as a distinct ethnic category, which is different not only from the Muslims, a faith community to which they affiliated until 1961, but also from the Palestinian-Arab minority. Particularly, we aim to look at the role that the educational system has played in the constitution of Druze separate identity.