The (em)bodiment of blackness in a visceral anti-black racism and ableism context

Over the years, many scholarly publications have extensively discussed disability ‘diagnoses’ and placement practices in special education programs in the United States and the United Kingdom. These publications argue that racism and classism rather than clinically predetermined factors appear to influence the disability diagnosis and placement practices in special education. The present essay is contributing to the debate by critically exploring the relationship(s) between race, class, and disability ‘diagnoses’ and placement practices in special education programs in Toronto, Canada. The core ideas noted in the essay are drawn from a personal story of an African-Canadian parent – a story of a daughter with a diagnosed disability and her mother’s struggle to resist the disability ‘diagnosis’ as well as her battle rejecting her daughter’s placement in the special education program in a Toronto public school. Using this personal account, other literature, and anti-black racism theory, I argue that special education programming in Toronto, Canada helps white middle/upper class Canadians achieve a de facto race/class-based segregation in the Toronto public school system. Whereas the Supreme Courts’ rulings on Brown vs. the Board of Education in the United States and Washington vs. the Trustees of Charlottesville in Canada have insisted that whites and non-whites attend the same school, special education identification practices ensure that whites and non-whites do not have to belong to the same classroom. I conclude that when educational practices move into spaces of pathologization, blacks and working-class students are continually at risk of facing exclusionary practices. One thing is clear: the significance of skin color in the mind of the racist cannot easily be dismissed.     

Teaching while Black: racial dynamics,evaluations, and the role of White females in the Canadian academy in carrying the racism torch

For racialized academics, life in the academy can be marred by racial violence that leaves them caught between their commitment to their craft, desire for educational attainment and development, and the mental anguish that can dominate their existence. Drawing from experiences of the author and other Black faculty members in Canadian tertiary academic institutions, I provide a theoretical exposition recognizing the role of narratives as an act of counter-storytelling. I draw upon Black feminist epistemology, critical race theory, and critical theory to examine how the experiences of Black academics remain under-theorized, marginalized, and often erased within ‘strong/angry Black woman/man’ caricatures. I highlight how racial evaluation filters reinforce racism and affects the careers of Black academics. I also discuss the role that White women, who are charged with decision-making power, have come to play in carrying the ‘racism torch’ in the academy while adhering to the tropes of innocence.     

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.     

The roots of black resistance: race,gender and the struggle for urban land rights in Salvador,Bahia, Brazil

In Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, during the past ten years, the city has transformed its historical centre into cultural sites for leisure tourism. This process has included projects of ‘slum clearance’, negatively impacting black communities who have historically occupied these areas. In this essay, I present an ethnographic account of Gamboa de Baixo, a black coastal community in the centre of Salvador, and its political movement against urban renewal programmes. Specifically, I focus on the articulation of racial and gender politics in black women's grassroots activism against land expulsion and for access to material resources. This case in Salvador unearths one aspect of institutional racism in Brazil and the formation of an anti‐black racism resistance movement. Resistance to urban renewal plans in Salvador demonstrates how struggles for urban land rights are a crucial part of engaging in the broader national and international politics of race. In black communities in Brazil and throughout the African diaspora, urban land and territorial rights are the local idioms of black resistance.     

Environmental affects: NASCAR,place and white American cultural citizenship

Attempts to grapple with the complicated tangle of race and memory are more prominent than ever in the public discourse of the United States. In 2006, public intellectual Henry Louis Gates sought to popularize the search for roots and meaning with his project African American Lives, and in 2007 the black and white descendants of the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case met in New Orleans to discuss the past and present significance of their ancestors’ lives. As the crafting of identities around increasingly fluid notions of ‘race’ proceeds apace, the activities of family historians provide a useful entrée into struggles over race, identity, and collective memory in the United States. The research reported here illustrates how the shared history of the multi-racial descendants of eighteenth and nineteenth century St Domingue/Haiti in Louisiana is encountered in racially distinct ways. Participant observation is used to examine how race is dealt with in the activities of two groups: 1) a mainly European American genealogical society, called the St Domingue Special Interest Group; and 2) the LA Creole cultural and genealogy group, made up primarily of Louisiana creoles of color. Preliminary findings indicate that while the process of engaging in family history research provides an opening for some participants to better understand others across racial and ethnic divides, this kind of cross-racial dialogue was limited by the organization of family history activities into racially distinct social networks. As the popularity of genealogy increases, the findings here point to the need to recognize the public significance of these private histories.     

Exposing the white avatar: projections,justifications, and the ever-evolving American racism

In the context of the United States, mainstream entertainment genres continue to recycle dominant racial ideologies typified by the perspectives of white men. American minstrelsy, literature, and film are key sites for whiteness to manifest itself in the design and projection of online personae via white avatars. These projections of whiteness also reify the US racial structure, one that subjects the perspectives of people of color to misrepresentation and further racial marginalization. This theoretical interpretative article employs Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) to investigate how these projections of whiteness are historically rooted and have evolved in the post-racial era. Using popular virtual gaming and social media examples, this paper critically deconstructs how the creation of white personae via avatars maintains and justifies the hegemonic power of whiteness.     

The Gent-rification of English masculinities: class,race and nation in contemporary consumption

The figure of the English gentleman is regaining traction in British society. This retrograde celebration of a type of masculinity articulating various intersections in class, racial and national identity provides not just a reliable identity-complex for contemporary British males but also imaginative solutions to the current cultural predicaments – notably, how to be English/British in the era of globalisation. This article will unpack this reformation of the gentleman and its paradoxical appearance and position at present through two consumer objects: clothing and cars. By first conceptually outlining the national, class and racialised background of the ‘gentleman’ for the British cultural imagination, the article will proceed to analyse Jack Wills' clothing aesthetic and the recent Jaguar F-Type coupe, ‘Good to be Bad’, adverts. The article draws upon Lévi-Strauss and Jameson to conceptualise this paradoxical, mythical resurgence of gentry/gentlemanliness. By focusing on how two artefacts utilise an Americanised mythical narrative of Britishness, I claim the contemporary landscape sees the oxymoronic return of an archaic character-type refigured in a manner appropriate for an increasingly plural, multi-cultural global landscape.     

Reframing craniometry: human exceptionalism and the production of racial knowledge

Focusing on the nineteenth century practice of craniometry, this paper considers how strategies of producing racial ‘knowledge’ played a key role in the development of ideas about the human. Supplementing the familiar claim that nineteenth century racial craniometry was designed to biologise longstanding aesthetic prejudices about variations in human physical appearance, the paper offers a more specific understanding of the role of this practice in biologising race. Taking up the post-Linnaean context in which a biological conception of race was elaborated, it considers how early nineteenth century debates about the unique and exceptional status of the human – classically identified with the soul or mind – centred upon the head. The practice of craniometry, it is suggested, can be understood in this context, as its centrality in the emergence of a biological conception of race is traced to an effort to demonstrate the material existence of the mind. The possibility proposed in this paper, therefore, is that particular physical differences between various peoples came to be regarded as racially significant in the nineteenth century attempt to determine the exceptional status of the human.     

Preserving white comfort and safety: the politics of race erasure in academe

ABSTRACT

In this paper four critical scholars/ activists reflect on the complex institutional and public responses to recent white supremacist events on Canadian campuses and the equity discussions they have affected. Specifically, we interrogate practices, which reify and reinsure positions of dominance and human/social hierarchy in four ways. To begin, (1) we interrogate freedom of speech and freedom of expression positions, as well as the reliance on critique of neoliberalism to supplant analyses of racism and colonial logics, to identify their role in preserving white fragility. Next, (2) we provide a local media analysis of academe’s responses to white supremacy on campus to trace the discursive moves that obscure institutional racism. Following these contextual scaffoldings, (3) we explore the ways equity projects within institutions remain projects protecting and preserving whiteness while exploiting the politics of identity. Finally, (4) we carefully reflect on the various modes of inclusion in the academy, which produce racialized scholars(hip) to be complicit in the reproduction of racial thinking, alongside and occluded by institutional narratives of equity and progress. Critical questions are raised regarding the possibilities, complicities and complexities of achieving equity and transformation in the academy, as well as the role of racialized scholars(hip) in this work.     

Shaking the bad boys: troubling the criminalization of black boys’ childhood play,hegemonic white masculinity and femininity,and the school playground-to-prison pipeline

ABSTRACT

Few studies have sought to understand the childhood play experiences of Black boys in early childhood education (ECE), and a majority of those that investigate them often socially construct Black boys’ play as criminal, dangerous, and monstrous. Considering the dangers of hegemonic masculinity and femininity or the racial and gendered power and privilege White boys and girls bring to societal spaces including playgrounds, little is known about how such power influences the experiences of Black boys who play with them. In this conceptual paper, I draw on critical race theory (CRT) to trouble the criminalization of Black boys’ childhood play and hegemonic White masculinity and femininity, which can prove violent and dehumanizing to Black boys. As such, I suggest that similar to the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP), Black boys may become victims of what I call the school playground-to-prison pipeline (SPTPP) as a consequence of White children’s accusations, fears, misperceptions, and misreadings of Black boys’ play. Recommendations are provided for teacher and ECE to better support Black boys and the cross-cultural play interactions between them and White children.     

Italians with veils and Afros: gender,beauty, and the everyday anti-racism of the daughters of immigrants in Italy

This paper explores the everyday anti-racist practices of the female children of immigrants in Italy. We analyse two case studies: first, a group of Muslim young women in Italy who have publicly re-appropriated what is popularly known as ‘Islamic fashion’; and second, a group of young Afro-Italian women who meet both online and offline to share resources about the care of ‘natural’ Afro-textured hair. We argue that transnational feminist analysis can shed light on the complex ways that aesthetics and the female body are implicated in struggles for social and legal recognition in Italy among the so-called second generation.     

Learning to labour unequally: understanding the relationship between cultural production,cultural consumption and inequality

Inequality has become essential to understanding contemporary society and is at the forefront of media, political and practice discussions of the future of the arts, particularly in the UK. Whilst there is a wealth of work on traditional areas of inequality, such as those associated with income or gender, the relationship between culture, specifically cultural value, and inequality is comparatively under-researched.

The article considers inequality and cultural value from two points of view: how cultural value is consumed and how it is produced. The paper argues that these two activities are absolutely essential to understanding the relationship between culture and social inequality, but that the two activities have traditionally been considered separately in both academic research and public policy, despite the importance of culture to British and thus international policy agendas. The article uses the example of higher education in the UK to think through the relationship between cultural consumption and production. In doing, so the article maps out a productive possibility for a new research agenda, by sketching where and how research might link cultural consumption and production to better understand inequality.     

A tale of four cities: the boundaries of blackness for Ethiopian immigrants in Washington,DC, Tel Aviv,Rome, and Melbourne

ABSTRACT

Scholars increasingly view urban areas as fragmented spaces where migrants are policed in ways that promote differential access to mobility, but the glocal meanings of race are often undertheorized. This paper explores the mobility experiences of Ethiopian migrants in four cities: Washington, DC, Tel Aviv, Rome, and Melbourne. Using a textual analysis of newspaper coverage in each city, the analysis finds that media and police often act as agents who racialize Ethiopian migrants relative to native minorities and other migrants. The paper concludes that the experiences Ethiopian immigrants faced in urban areas were informed by glocal meanings of race (blackness); they were shaped in relation to not only other migrants and native minorities, but also a globalized discourse on immigration.     

Using our voices,losing our bodies: Michael Brown,Trayvon Martin,and the spirit murders of Black male professors in the academy

Abstract

The recent deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other Black males have generated new civil rights urgencies in Black communities and spirited academic discourses in higher education regarding the educational and social plight of Black males in America. Connecting the deaths of Black males to our lived experiences in the academy, we use a text messaging performative writing style to demonstrate how Black males are not only gunned down in the streets of America by police but also are metaphorically gunned down in the academy. That is to say, white colleagues and students attempt to use what we call the bullet of rejection, the bullet of silencing, and the bullet of disrespect to destroy us and our academic agenda. We conclude with a call to action for teacher education programs as a way to deepen their understanding of the racialized experiences of Black males in the academy and Black males in America.     

Institutions,inculcation, and black racial identity: pigmentocracy vs. the rule of hypodescent

This research paper investigates the effect political institutions have on black racial identity. In particular, I study individual inculcation in contexts where political institutions institutionalize either of two forms of racial social structures – a pigmentocracy (the Dominican Republic), or the rule of hypodescent (the US South), and the effect such inculcation has on black racial identity. I sampled 101 respondents from the Dominican Republic and 102 from the state of Mississippi, USA. Consistent with the basic assumptions of my hypotheses, respondents in the Dominican Republic study sites showed a weaker degree of identification with blackness vis-à-vis something ‘whiter’. Nevertheless, respondents in the Dominican Republic sites demonstrated a stronger identification with blackness than what most conventional observers would have anticipated. Respondents in the Mississippi study sites showed a stronger sense of identification with blackness. Surprisingly, however, Mississippi respondents demonstrated a larger degree of neutrality than expected in their belief of being of a mixed racial heritage rather than just a black African heritage.     

‘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).     

Immigration,anti-racism,and Indigenous self-determination: towards a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary settler colonial

ABSTRACT

Anti-racist attempts to conceptualize Indigenous decolonial justice are preoccupied with the contested relationship between immigrant settlement and Indigenous self-determination. In the process, an ethically and politically driven practice of implicating immigrants onto the settler colonial project has emerged. Paying particular attention to the emerging concept of ‘immigrant settlerhood’ as a sign of severing of political economic considerations from theories of settler nationalism, I advocate for a comprehensive and concrete analysis that does not lose sight of the capitalist colonial project of simultaneous dispossession (of Indigenous people) and precarious incorporation/resettlement (of immigrants). Next, since notions of sovereignty primarily enact the conditions for exploitation of immigrants and impale them onto the settler project via anti-racist claims, I propose ‘no border’ politics as a conceptual tool for confronting settler colonialism. Finally, considering the centrality of land/place in Indigenous self-determination, I reflect on the possibility of a ground between Indigenous rootedness and diasporic placelessness. This essay thus makes an attempt to conceptualize an anti-racist politics that could meaningfully respond to the settler-colonial project of simultaneous recruitment/resettlement (of immigrants) and dispossession (of Indigenous people) without casting social justice demands of Indigenous peoples and immigrants as inherently oppositional.     

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.     

Postcolonial reproductions: disability,indigeneity and the formation of the white masculine settler state of Australia

There has been a growing debate within the broad field of postcolonial scholarship which seeks to challenge both its territorial boundaries with the advent of globalization and its limitations when applied to the realm of white-settler societies. The debate has been extremely fruitful in situating emerging scholarship that seeks to extend postcoloniality, its theoretical framing, and the internal processes of social categorization for peoples caught within the nation-state's territorial sphere. Unfortunately, disability and indigeneity remain largely absent from these fresh debates; or when included, are explored as singular fields of analytical inquiry with little intersectional dialogue. With this paper, I aim to extend these nascent debates by critically engaging with both disability and indigeneity as two interlocking sites of (post)colonial nation-state power. To explicate this argument, my analysis focuses on a key historical moment in the Australian experience – the formation of the colonial white-settler society of Australia in its early years (1901–1920s), comparing and contrasting the systems of administrative management of disability and indigeneity. In doing so, the paper reveals the deep materialities of white, able-bodied, masculine, (post)colonial settler rule that bring together disability and indigeneity via gender reproductive controls. The conclusion reflects on the transformative effects of managing transgressive bodies and minds under the white able-bodied settler state and the potential this opens to negotiate practices of solidarity.     

Not a simple coffee shop: local,global and glocal dimensions of the consumption of Starbucks in China

This article examines the ways in which Chinese consumers engage with foreign brands, looking specifically at their perceptions and experiences of Starbucks. Rather than assuming an inherent conflict between global and local meanings, or collectivist and individualist values, we examine the accomplished meaning of foreign brands: how Chinese consumers make sense of Starbucks, and what their engagements with the brand can tell us about the interplay between the local, global and glocal in the consumption of Western goods. Based on interviews with urban, middle-class consumers, the article explores four major themes in respondents' narratives about Starbucks. First, we discuss the strategies and cues respondents use to understand and authenticate Starbucks as a foreign brand; second, we focus on the local socio-cultural context for engagements with the brand as a symbol of status; third, we discuss the respondents' associations of Starbucks' global status with quality and trustworthiness; and, finally, we consider how respondents use Starbucks as a glocal bridge, to experience a Western way of life. We suggest that these findings highlight the role of foreign brands – and consumer goods more generally – in the problems of individual and collective identity formation.