W.E.B. Du Bois and the ideology or anthropological discourse of modernity: the African Union reconsidered

Pan-Africanism is usually considered a progressive movement for black socio-political and economic advancement. This focus on activism alone sometimes occludes the profound philosophical issues that inform Pan-Africanist discourse. The last decade has witnessed tremendous changes in the ideological posture of the African Union (AU) as reflected in the change of name from the Organization of African Unity (OAU). This paper explores the historical and philosophical contexts for understanding the agenda of the African Union and highlights the consequences of such an agenda. The paper argues that the establishment of the African Union conforms to certain aspects of W.E.B. Du Bois's philosophy of Pan-Africanism that focuses on economic self reliance, at the same time that it uses Du Bois as a template for critiquing the neoliberal economic dispensation of the African Union implemented through its program, the New Partnership for Africa's Development. This it accomplishes with its emphasis on Du Bois's critique and skepticism of modernism and Western philanthropy.     

W.E.B. Du Bois and Filipino/a American exposure programs to the Philippines: race class analysis in an epoch of ‘global apartheid’

The article highlights the ongoing relevance of W.E.B. Du Bois for the global analysis of race and class. Engaging scholarly debates that have ensued within the educational subfields of critical race theory (CRT) and (revolutionary) critical pedagogy, the article explores how a deeper engagement with Du Bois’s ideas contributes theoretically and methodologically to these two subfields. Of particular focus is Du Bois’s conceptualization of a ‘guiding hundredth,’ which he forwarded as a corrective to his ideas of a ‘talented tenth.’ The article also offers a case study analysis of the film Sounds of a New Hope, which documents a hip hop exposure program to the Philippines. The case study draws upon Du Bois’s ‘guiding hundredth’ for a twenty-first century context as a Filipino American cultural worker utilizes hip hop to articulate, analyze, and alter the lived experiences for Filipino/a Americans in a global diaspora.     

Performing race in the Barranquilla Carnival: the case of the Negritas Puloy de Montecristo

ABSTRACT

In the city of Barranquilla, Colombia, carnival is a main source of identity. Since the 2003 UNESCO proclamation of this carnival as an Intangible Cultural Heritage, the celebration has gained national and international attention, while the city has developed a whole cultural market around it. This essay traces the evolution of a popular costume and street performance that carries racial stereotypes and as such, has become almost emblematic of carnival time itself. La Negrita Puloy de Montecristo is now the only female symbol of the Barranquilla Carnival. It is argued in this essay that as long as blackness is performed during the regulated time of carnival, lived by the city as an illusion of racial integration and black pride, the consciousness of inequality stays dormant and inequality continues being a quotidian practice in a supposedly tri-racial nation that was funded on the principles of mixture. This essay is the product of a research project that lasted a year and combined ethnographic and archival work. Las Negritas Puloy de Montecristo perform exclusion annually, as they intend to paradoxically perform inclusion. This very popular carnival manifestation seems to be a sign that only as stereotype can the sexualized black woman participate in the public sphere. As the mulata, she is a sexual object. As a slave, she is forgotten. Thus, she can dance.     

Taiwan and ROC: A critical analysis of President Chen Shui-bien's construction of Taiwan identity in national speeches

Names used to address Taiwan – such as taiwan and zhonghuamingguo (Republic of China [ROC]) – are symbols defining Taiwan's political realities, each with their own unique historical significance. Since his election in 2000, Taiwan's president Chen Shui-bien has had to alternate between taiwan and ROC to strike a balance among conflicting ideas about Taiwan's national identity. The act is grounded in complex political discourse dictating that Taiwan must not be seen as separate from the sinic world and simultaneously to respond to steadily rising Taiwanese consciousness. Facing intercessions by the United States and China, as well as ever-present domestic clashes, rhetorical exigency requires the president to fashion unique political discourse concerning what Taiwan is and ought to be. This study explores how these names and related expressions are used in Chen's public addresses to the nation during his two-term tenure from 2000 to 2008, and how their development reflects the struggle over Taiwan's national identity.     

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.     

‘A town new and modern in conception’: non-racial dreams and racial realities in the making of Gaborone,Botswana

ABSTRACT

Botswana has long been praised for its financial and political achievements. High economic growth rates and uninterrupted democratic governance since independence in 1966 have led to Botswana's labeling as the ‘African Miracle’. Long before Botswana's emergence as a darling of Western development agencies however, Tswana elites and colonial officials also saw Botswana as exceptional: surrounded by states divided along racial lines, these individuals sought to construct a nation organized around principles of racial and tribal unity. Aspirations of non-racialism were to be exemplified in Botswana's newly constructed capital city, Gaborone. At the same time, underlying the planning vision for Gaborone was a competing set of narratives, practices and aspirations that undercut these lofty ideals and resulted in the creation of a city highly stratified by racial segregation. This essay identifies three complementary urban planning rationales that produced urban exclusion in Gaborone: the desire to build Gaborone as an administrative capital, borrowing from both colonial and indigenous Tswana traditions that privileged spatial divisions related to status and race, and the goal to build a ‘modern’ urban center to lead Botswana into the future. These tensions divided the city in ways both familiar and unexpected and set the parameters determining who counts as a legitimate resident of the city. The paper, therefore, seeks to explore how a city founded on an ideal of racial unity instead became a site of stark division(s).     

The power of Hyphen-Nationalism: Martin Scorsese's sojourn from Italian American to White-Ethnic American

Martin Scorsese is one of the most celebrated American filmmakers of the last 50 years. This essay looks at his public story in films, books, television, radio, journals, and newspapers. This story reflects the personal and artistic journey of Scorsese and the collective rendition of this journey by Scorsese, critics, journalists, and others. It shows the intersection of the personal life, public biography, creative work, and critical reception of a public intellectual negotiating his ethnic and racial-identity for six decades. Informed by work in Race and Ethnic Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Critical Rhetoric Studies, this essay uses this story as a case study of the ideological power of white ethnic-identity and white racial-identity in the racial formation of post-civil rights America. I show how the public story of one of the most popular and critically acclaimed American artists over the last half-century transcribed the conversion of an ‘unmeltable’ Italian-American of the late 1960s Ethnic Revival to a White-Ethnic American of an end-of-the-century Hyphen-Nationalism. I demonstrate the power embedded in the institutional and cultural regime of Hyphen-Nationalism in the United States that acts to erase in personal memory, creative imagination, and art the power and legacy of white privilege.     

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.     

Performing Identity and Persuading a Public: The Harlem On My Mind Controversy

This article analyses the performance of racial identity in the events surrounding the 1969 exhibition Harlem On My Mind held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This racial performativity reflected widespread anxiety about the inclusion of African Americans in American art museums, where they had typically been excluded, and the ambiguous role of whites in addressing demands for representation. Faced with such demands, white curators, directors, and other museum professionals did not easily cede their authority. Instead they tried to demonstrate that they were no longer impediments to African American access, but rather facilitators of that access. Using the exhibition Harlem On My Mind as a case study, this article aims to shed light on the instrumental uses of race identity in the field of museums in the 1960s and today.     

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.     

Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neoliberalism in the New Gilded Age

Under the current reign of neoliberalism, the US has entered a New Gilded Age, more savage and anti-democratic than its predecessor. The current form of market fundamentalism demands a new set of conceptual and analytical tools that engage neoliberalism not only through an economic optic but also as a mode of rationality, governmentality, and public pedagogy. The essay develops a biopolitics of neoliberalism, exploring how it uses market values as a template for realigning corporate power and the state, but also how it produces modes of consent vital to the construction of a neoliberal subject and a more ruthless politics of disposability. Within this new form of neoliberal rationality and biopolitics – a political system actively involved in the management of the politics of life and death – new modes of individual and collective suffering emerge around the modalities and intersection of race and class.     

Will to love,will to fear: the emotional politics of illegality and citizenship in the campaign against birthright citizenship in the US

Anti-immigration activists argue that the broad inclusivity of the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is a national security concern that enables criminalized migrant mothers to give birth to citizens who can later harm the US through violence and resource consumption. Seeing this argument as representative of the problem of inclusivity inherent to citizenship in a liberal democracy, this essay asks how the children of undocumented and temporary migrants are constructed as what Mae Ngai calls ‘alien citizens.’ Drawing from Sara Ahmed's affective economy of emotion, I find that affect and emotion figure prominently in how citizens are made ‘alien.’ Specifically love and fear function as pivot points in the anti-birthright citizenship argument, wherein the ‘real citizen’ is ‘willed’ to love and be loved by the nation and to fear the nation's Others. Moreover, the emphasis on national feelings does not evacuate white supremacy or heteronormativity from its imagination of citizenship, but instead displaces these loci of power into feeling and affect. Thus, this essay claims that the birthright citizenship argument illustrates how national love and fear work in tandem to uphold, naturalize, and expand the racial and sexual exclusions inherent to citizenship in a nation-state.     

He Named Me Malala: connecting the historical,the local,and the global

My essay highlights how this (otherwise excellent) documentary film He Named Me Malala suffers from a historical amnesia in failing to connect the historical, local, and global/Western factors that have set the political-social context within which occurred the Malala incident in 2012. This is because the documentary – exposing the voice of a Pakistani female activist as a postcolonial/global agent – does not look into the historical-colonial, Cold War, or the post-Cold War dynamics that have set the ‘context’ within which the theme of the documentary unfolded. My essay addresses these issues of historical amnesia, arguing that to better comprehend the Malala incident (and broadly the issue of gender violence in Pakistan’s socio-cultural context) it remains imperative to connect how factors of power, politics, and vested interests have intersected at historical, local, and global levels to explain the 2012 Malala incident.     

Identities and inequalities: an examination of the role of racial identity in the formation of social capital inside a voluntary youth organization

This ethnographic study provides empirical illustrations of patterns of racial homophily and network ties within a voluntary youth association. The paper seeks to examine the role of racial identity and its relationship to the formation of social capital among a diverse group of youth participants. Drawing on narrative data, this article explores the kinds of organizational experiences that promote the development of interracial ties as well as how the construction of racial identity influences network formation and enhances social capital. The major findings are that racial homophily (staying within one's own group) are strongest among white participants while blacks are equally likely to form interracial ties with socially dissimilar peers as with socially similar peers. Some gendered and class differences also emerged. Institutional agents were also found to be important in helping youth participants bridge racial barriers.     

Towards a Critique of the Socio-logos of Justice: The Analytics of Raciality and the Production of Universality

Fear of police terror has long been a daily facet of the lives of economically dispossessed people of colour in the urban spaces of North America, Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere. This essay addresses the conditions of possibility of the form of race injustice manifested in racial profiling and police brutality. It challenges the centrality of the logic of exclusion - the view that race is only politically and socially significant when race identification is explicitly or implicitly used to justify discrimination - in the understanding of race injustice. It explores the political-symbolic processes that have produced the mechanisms of racial power of which police brutality is a most dramatic example. To elaborate this critique of the logic of exclusion, I discuss the newspaper account of an episode of police terror in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. What the examination of the newspaper coverage of the Chacina de Vigário Geral reveals, is that this form of race injustice indicated the operation of meanings produced in an analytic of raciality , encompassing the various instances of manufacturing the modern concept of the racial - the science of life , the science of man , and the sociology of race relations.     

Shedding light on economic opportunity: skin tone and job quality during the Great Recession

A significant body of literature suggests that skin-tone segmentation is a salient characteristic of inter-group economic inequality in the United States. Yet, empirical investigations of this social phenomenon and its impact on labour-market outcomes for worker’s in the United States remains limited or focused on the impact of skin tone on wages. This article examines whether or not phenotypic variability in skin tone among workers influenced levels of job quality experienced during the recessionary era (2007–2012). Data from the Puerto Ricans and the Impact of the Great Recession Survey were used to estimate a Poisson Regression with Endogenous Treatment Effects to consider the impact that variations in skin tone have on levels of job quality experienced by workers. Findings suggest evidence of skin-tone labour-market segmentation, as workers with darker skin shades experienced lower levels of job quality than those workers with lighter skin tones within and across larger racial and ethnic groups. The results also suggest important regional variations in the experience of skin-tone labour-market segmentation in the United States. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of the findings for racial economic inequalities and patterns of social stratification in the contemporary United States.     

The vicious circle: effects of race and class on university entrance in Brazil

Brazil has high levels of socio-economic inequality and an inequitable distribution of access to higher education. How much of this inequality is associated with race or class is an important question in light of the current debate over affirmative action and the suitability of race and social targeted policies. There are those who claim that racial disparities in the educational system are a result of students’ social status and not a result of racism, while others believe race is an important factor that superposes the effect of class. This study uses national survey data from Brazil’s Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (National Secondary Education Exam [ENEM]) to examine the relationship between race and access to higher education of high school students between 2004 and 2008. The results document a vicious circle which connects the schooling of the young with their race, socio-economic status, and university attendance.     

The Fate of Obamacare: Racial Resentment,Ethnocentrism and Attitudes about Healthcare Reform

Health care has been a contentious issue in American politics for decades, and scholars are beginning to understand the reasons behind public support for, and opposition to, healthcare reform. Using national survey data, we measure the impact of various racial attitudes, including Racial Resentment and Ethnocentrism, on white support for healthcare reform. We measure participants’ attitudes across a range of important dimensions of healthcare reform and examine a randomized experiment with a control group that frames legislation as “recent” healthcare reform and a treatment condition that frames legislation as “President Obama’s” healthcare reform. The findings demonstrate that racial attitudes and Ethnocentrism continue to play a role in both support and opposition to healthcare reform.     

‘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.