‘Race isn't what defines me’: exploring identity choices in transracial,biracial, and monoracial families

Transracial adoption [TRA], particularly the adoption of black children by white parents, has been a controversial issue in the United States for more than half a century. Much of the criticism surrounding transracial adoption has dealt with concerns that black children raised in white homes will fail to develop a positive black identity. Such critiques are often based on assumptions about the identity of black children raised by their biological parents, yet studies of transracial adoption rarely address identity development struggles experienced by black children raised in black homes. Moreover, while the race of parents in relation to children is at the center of the transracial adoption debate, TRA studies rarely delve into socialization practices of biracial families headed by one white and one black parent. This study addresses a void in the literature by examining the experiences of young black adults whose parents may or may not be of the same race. The impact of varying racialized family structures on black identity development is examined by comparing the experiences of young black adults raised in families with two black parents (monoracial), one white and one black parent (biracial), and two white parents (transracial). Drawing from 32 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with middle-class young black adults between the ages of 18 and 30 years old, findings indicate that all informants, regardless of racialized family structure, approach racial identity development similarly by de-emphasizing the ascribed status of race in favor of achieved statuses as part of the identity construction process.     

Race still matters: preparing culturally relevant teachers

This qualitative study explores racial identity development of teacher candidates during a teacher preparation program dedicated to preparing teachers for diverse classrooms. Two black teacher candidates in the US demonstrate their racial identity development through critical reflections offered throughout the program. Findings suggest that teachers’ racial identities shaped their constructions of culturally relevant (CR) pedagogy. Implications for teacher education programs include considering how the development of CR pedagogues is influenced by teacher candidates’ racial identities and experiences.     

Retroactive phantasies: discourse,discipline, and the production of race

The present inquiry considers how the practice and notion of race can be figured as a type of discipline that functions to achieve the subjection of the individual – to form the individual as a racial subject. Focusing on the constructions of blackness and whiteness within US racial rhetoric, and engaging the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, I propose that racial identity is a retroactive phantasy that is always conditional on the subject enacting the very power that marks them: the formation and maintenance of subjectivity is premised on the individual being formed and forming themselves in relation to a normalized identity site and is, thus, always an action. Precisely due to this necessity to act, and to the incoherence of power, innovative acts of anti-discipline re-negotiate the ways in which racial subjectivity is lived and realized.     

Locating black mixed-raced males in the black supplementary school movement

This article draws upon data from semi-structured interviews conducted with black mixed-race males in the UK and the US, to argue that a revival of the black supplementary school movement could play an important role in the education of black mixed-race males. The article contends that a strong identification with blackness, and a concomitant rejection of the values of mainstream schooling, make black supplementary education a viable intervention for raising the attainment and improving the experiences of black mixed-race males. Whilst blackness was important to participants’ understandings of their lived experiences, this did not engender a disregard for their mixedness. Supplementary schools must therefore find ways of recognising black mixedness within their practice.     

‘I’m a different kind of biracial’: how black/white biracial Americans with immigrant parents negotiate race

Increasingly, multiracial families have garnered scholarly attention. However, the roles of ethnicity and immigrant ties are largely absent in bi/multiracial studies. Drawing on 17 in-depth interviews with black/white biracial Americans with at least one immigrant parent, this study analyzes the dynamic interplay of race, ethnicity, and immigrant roots in the bi/multiracial community. Our findings show that participants struggle to articulate the meaning of race, and they assert specific racial/ethnic identities to circumvent stereotypical connotations of whiteness and blackness. We highlight how biracial Americans with immigrant ties – those who we might assume would have a limited understanding of race – voice clear understandings of racial superiority and inferiority, racial relations, and racial stereotypes. Emphasizing their ethnic roots is not only an attempt to accurately describe their ancestry; it also allows them to avoid the social consequences (i.e. stereotypes, discrimination, etc.) of being (half) white or (half) black.     

The (racial) biases of communication: rethinking media and blackness

The media studies approach to race often examines blackness through depictions in music lyrics, movies, and videos. The vast majority of these studies posit that media may provide ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ depictions of blackness. Less examined is the importance of media environments to the structuring of racial relations in the United States. This article extends the contemporary literature on black media studies by taking a ‘medium theory’ approach to analyzing blackness. I argue medium theory aids studies of blackness by showing the ways in which the technologies we use transform the environments we inhabit in ways that further racialization processes beyond depictions of music lyrics or reality TV. To examine the interrelations between media environments and blackness, I offer a critical rereading of the Underground Railroad. I argue the Underground Railroad's success was related to the necessity of brilliant planning and a complex understanding by slaves and conductors of the essential overlapping of space- and time-biased media cultures. In short, the different understandings of media ensured that the slaves and slave catchers inhabited radically different yet interconnected worlds or galaxies, increasing the effectiveness of the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves.     

Unpacking racial identities: the salience of ethnicity in Southeast Asian-American youth’s schooling experience

This article reconceptualizes white teachers’ notion of their Asian-American students’ racial identity. Forty urban Southeast Asian-American (SEAA) students and seven of their white European-American teachers were examined to determine how the students responded to the white teachers’ assumptions about their identity. This study provides an overview of the U.S. historical and political contexts that shape the positionality of Southeast Asian-American youth in the black–white racial discourse. It found that despite the fact that the teachers lumped the SEAA students into one category, the students highlighted the salience of ethnicity in their lives. One implication of this study is for teacher education programs to train new teacher candidates to move beyond simple racial categorization or race-blind approaches. Instead, teachers should be taught to acknowledge the importance of ethnicity to their students; to examine their own positionalities; and to incorporate more culturally relevant pedagogies into their instructional practices.     

Constructions of identity,belonging and exclusion in the democratic welfare state

This article investigates the conflict between a shared national identity and immigration, posed by liberal, instrumental nationalists. They worry that immigration will undermine a shared national identity that is needed to generate trust and solidarity within the democratic welfare state. The article consists of a qualitative study of Swedish and British respondents. The main conclusion is that people experience and interpret their shared identity, ideas of belonging and exclusion in the democratic welfare state differently, with different consequences for the proposed conflict. When identity and belonging was tied to contributions or to institutions, rather than a nation, the conflict between a shared identity and immigration was cushioned.     

Thank you Jah Jah fe give me this a colour: Yellowman's revalorization of the dundus

In 1982, Winston ‘Yellowman’ Foster rose to prominence as Jamaica's king of dancehall reggae and popularized the music genre internationally in the wake of Bob Marley's death. As a dundus, or black person with albinism, Yellowman challenged colonial-derived Jamaican social codes that questioned his blackness and masculinity. By using white society's stereotypes of black hypersexuality and symbols of blackness derived from Rastafari and its ideological forebears, Yellowman was able to transform the dundus identity by portraying himself as African, black, and included in what Carnegie in ‘The Dundus and the Nation’ (1996) calls the imaginary racially homogeneous (i.e. black) Jamaican nation. Furthermore, through his performance of slack or sexually themed songs Yellowman contested embedded cultural definitions of the dundus as impotent and instead successfully represented the body with albinism as the sexually desirable ‘modern body.’ This paper uses interpretive methodologies from interrelated fields such as cultural studies, religious studies and anthropology in recognition that the context of Yellowman's racial critique is found not only in his songs but in his life story as well. Therefore it draws on ethnographic fieldwork, textual analysis of song lyrics and a study of the discourse on Yellowman in the popular and scholarly literature.     

The Stigma of Privilege: Racial Identity and Stigma Consciousness Among Biracial Individuals

Racial identification is a complex and dynamic process for multiracial individuals, who as members of multiple racial groups have been shown to self-identify or be identified by others differently, depending on the social context. For biracial individuals who have white and minority ancestry, such identity shifting (e.g., from minority to white, or vice versa) may be a way to cope with the threats to their racial identity that can be signaled by the presence or absence of whites and/or minorities in their social environment. We examine whether stigma consciousness (Pinel in J Pers Soc Psychol 76(1):114–128, 1999; i.e., the chronic awareness of the stereotyping and prejudice that minorities face) interacts with the sociocultural context to predict social identity threat, belonging, and racial identification. Using experience sampling methodology, minority/white biracial individuals (27 Asian/white, 22 black/white, and 26 Latino/white) reported the racial composition of their environment, social identity threat for their component racial identities, overall feelings of belonging, and racial identification over a 1-week period. Results suggest that stigma consciousness predicts the extent to which biracial people identify with their white background and experience belonging in different racial contexts. We discuss racial identity shifting in response to context-based threats as a protective strategy for biracial people, and identity where participants’ sociocultural contexts and experiences with racial identity and threat differ as a result of their minority racial group or ascribed race.     

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     

On the back of blackness: contemporary Canadian blackface and the consumptive production of post-racialist,white Canadian subjects

This article is based on a qualitative research project examining the phenomenon of contemporary Canadian blackface. It addresses the discursive juxtaposition of blackface with the claim to Canadian racial progressiveness that typically attends public debates about blackface. I argue that blackface and the discourses defending it are forms of racial consumption through which ostensibly progressive white subjectivities are secured. I further argue that contemporary Canadian blackface discourse is postracialist in its ability to juxtapose racist expression with claims of racial transcendence, and I identify this postracialism as a long-standing feature of Canadian national narratives that are partially constructed through revisionist understandings of the nation’s relationship to blackness, and against an ostensibly more virile racism in the US. This analysis reminds us of the symbiotic relationship between racial fetishization/fascination as found in contemporary blackface, the foundational white supremacy of the Canadian settler-colonial context, and the always uneven terms upon which blackness is included in Canada. It clarifies what is at stake for Canadians who participate in blackface and in defending it, and helps us to understand the pedagogical import of both blackface and Canadian egalitarianism for perpetuating anti-blackness in Canada.     

Recycling the idea of race: socio-political agenda,transnational business culture,and diversity management in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article intends to contribute to the line of studies that critically addresses diversity management, bringing the Brazilian experience into the discussion. It aims to demonstrate how large Brazilian companies and transnational corporations operating in the country have been recycling the idea of race in order to cope with the greatest politicisation of debates on the racial issue within the Brazilian public sphere since the late twentieth century. This phenomenon is related to changes in the political actions of the black movement in Brazil, which since the same period has been absorbing the new socio-political agenda existing within the global network of anti-racism advocacy. This is an agenda in which two purposes have a central importance: the battle against racial inequality and the demand for affirmative action policies. The data presented in this paper are part of broader research in which, by means of the biographical method and the ethnographic fieldwork, the social trajectories and career paths of two generations of Brazilian black executives were analysed.     

Strict versus flexible categorizations of mixedness: classifying mixed race in Singapore and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Classifying and recording population data along racial and ethnic lines is common in many multiethnic societies. Singapore and New Zealand both use racial and ethnic categories in their population records and national censuses, although on different scales, using different methodologies and to different ends. Mixed race identities are particularly difficult to classify within traditionally singular racial categories, and each country has dealt with this in various ways. This paper explores the effects of different forms of classification on mixed racial and ethnic identities. Narratives from 40 men and women of mixed descent highlight the tangible and intangible impacts of categorization along racial lines, and the ways in which mixedness can be tied with belonging. The contrasting examples of Singapore and New Zealand illustrate the ways in which individuals of mixed heritage navigate both strict and fluid forms of classification, and how stories of identity are closely intertwined with institutional classificatory structures.     

Shame and pride in second-generation German identity in Melbourne,Australia: emotions and white ethnicity

As members of an established, well-integrated, white ethnic group, second-generation Germans are largely invisible in Australian society. Given this, they are easily presumed a group for whom Gans’ notion of ‘symbolic ethnicity’ might apply. However, based on interviews with adult children of German immigrants in Melbourne, Australia, this article suggests an alternative interpretation using recent literature on the role of emotions for identity. In the interviews with adult children of German immigrants in Melbourne, Australia, the notions of shame and pride in relation to ethnic identity were clearly evident. Shame often emerged in interaction with other people in Australia, and particularly in relation to Nazism and the Second World War. However, most respondents felt equally proud of their German heritage, particularly later in life. These findings suggest that ethnic identity for these second-generation Germans is a deeper, embodied experience that is similar to what Bourdieu terms habitus.     

Nuclear fetishism,the fear of the ‘Islamic’ bomb and national identity in Iran

The paper's focus is the concurrence in the Islamic Republic of Iran between the state's enrichment of uranium, internationally feared as a potential Islamic atomic bomb, and the identification of the radio-active material by many Iranians as a national cultural object. In contrast to the Islamic virtues imposed by the state that had created an autarkic image of Iranians in the global context, nuclear technology offered them the opportunity to become cosmopolitan consumers of nuclear energy, a global product that also represented the ‘excellence’ of Iranian scientists’ and engineers’ competence. Instrumental in this re-invention of national identity outside the political space was a reified (fetishised) conception of the nuclear object as a utility – nuclear energy. The enhanced utilitarian use of nuclear material mystified (metamorphosed) both the oppressive relation of Iranian people with their Muslim rulers and their incongruous relation with the rest of the world. The mystifying impact of nuclear production on their national and international relations served Iranians to draw on their role as internationally recognised bourgeois agents (burghers) by subsuming (neutralising) their brutalised relation with the Muslim rulers within the instrumental relation of producers/consumers of the nuclear product. Thus, in their exclusive demand for the right to emulate the non-Iranian producers/consumers of nuclear energy as a global product, Iranians acted in their capacity as burghers. A burgher is defined here, following Hegel, as the agent of civil society whose primary concern is to pursue his/her own interest by using the needs of others as the means to satisfy his/her own. The rationality that governs the action by burghers is ‘the suitability of means to their ends’. By adopting the rationality of a burgher, Iranians abandoned their quest for citizenship. The rights of citizen, in contrast with the cosmopolitan right of burgher to emulate producers/consumers, were geared to the exercise of individual autonomy within the political space, as a domain of contested representations. The paper examines the inadequate mediation of modern institutions that has historically postponed the nationalisation of Iranian society and has delayed the emergence of the Iranian nation as a political community. Looked at from this standpoint, nuclear production offered to Iranians the opportunity to avoid a hazardous route of taking part in a political construction of Iranian identity by acting as citizens and instead draw on their fragmented bourgeois identity to define the nuclear product as ‘national’. This identification matched their Muslim rulers’ interest to represent the enriched uranium internationally as a national, as opposed to Islamic, achievement without having to face the Iranian nation as a political community. The consequence was the Iranians’ failure to deal with nuclear technology and the question of public safety both as a national and international issue which could only be addressed if Iranians had acted in their capacity as citizens.     

The Black,continental African presence and the nation-immigration dialectic in Canada

How is the Canadian national identity constructed? What are the relationships between the national identity and the immigration policy of Canada? And how has the Black presence in Canada influenced Canada's national identity formation and immigration policy? This paper examines the extent to which Black, continental Africans are implicated in the nation-immigration dialectic of Canada. It sets various conceptions Black African identities in Canada against notions of Canadian national identity, using the dialectical principles of negation and sublation. As the number of Black Africans continues to grow, it is important to understand the interplay between the social construction of ‘blackness’ and the national identity formation of Canada.     

Reconstructing the future: Du Bois,racial pedagogy and the post-civil rights era

This essay addresses the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois, as both scholar and activist, at a time when the university's civic mission is imperiled by corporatisation and racial backlash, access to its resources are increasingly predicated on whiteness and wealth, and the greater public good is financially and spiritually starved with every advance of American empire abroad. Focusing on Black Reconstruction, it elaborates in particular on the pedagogical implications of Du Bois's reading of the post-Reconstruction era for progressives caught in the contradictions of the current post-Civil Rights era. Drawing on Du Bois's insistence that education (both formal and informal) is central to the functioning of a nonrepressive and inclusive polity, the essay reflects on the current crisis of black educational access to quality schooling at all levels, as well as the relentless attacks on more public sites of pedagogy, within the context of neoliberal social and economic policies as well as the racist backlash against the civil rights gains of the 1960s. It addresses the degree to which engaged dialogue about the history and politics of racialised exclusion in the US and globally in the university have been derailed by the dictates of a particularly limp version of liberal multiculturalism and its allegiance to the privatised discourses of identity and difference. In so doing, it explores the role that educators might play in linking rigorous scholarship and critical pedagogy to progressive struggles for securing the very conditions for racial justice and political democracy.