Being black and non-citizen in South Africa: Intersecting race,white privilege and afrophobic violence in contemporary South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by growing feelings of pain, anger and frustration amongst black communities triggered by pervasive social inequalities. This has given birth to a new form of political and social activism shaped by crude violence, vandalism, destruction, brutal killings of women and children as well as thuggery in different black communities. It has also led to an upsurge in violence particularly on Africans from other parts of the continent. In this article, I attempt to examine how racial politics and resilient white privilege intersect to trigger afrophobic violence in South Africa. I draw on existing literature on broad conceptions of race and xenophobia to make a set of assertions about racial valuations, the resilience of white supremacy and black on black violence. In the article, I argue that black South Africans' pain, anger and the performance of violence on African migrants are on one level a consequence of resilient structural racism and racial practices, which continue to marginalize, emasculate and dispossess blacks. These racial practices force black South Africans to look elsewhere to express their anger, pains and frustrations.     

Coloniality and Intersectionality in Social Work Education and Practice

The history of social work education is deeply entangled with the structures of White supremacy and coloniality. Through an analysis of coloniality, the system from which social work operates, this article outlines an alternative framework of intersectionality, which decodes the dominant discourse in relation to power, privilege, White supremacy, and gender oppression. The framework of intersectionality moves professional social work pedagogy and practice from the trenches of coloniality toward decoloniality. The concepts of intersectionality and critical consciousness are operationalized to demonstrate how social work education can effect structural and transformational change through de-linking from its white supremacists roots.     

Having it both ways: White denial of racial salience while claiming oppression

This work will examine literature on white ideologies concerning the denial of the significance of race, the denial of white privilege, and increasingly popular claims of ‘anti‐white bias’ and white victimhood. Variant literatures on white attitudes and interracial practices recently emerged regarding racism; this review will examine how they are inextricably linked to one another. In reviewing the recent literature on colorblindness, the denial of white privilege, and white victimhood, I will show how these (sometimes contradictory) beliefs work in concert to perpetuate racial inequalities. I argue that volatile racist tactics obscure accountability, sustain denial, and ultimately create a protective barrier to directly addressing white supremacy in the United States.     

Identity Isomorphism: Role Schemas and White Masculinity Formation

This article explores a counterintuitive intersection of class, gender, and race within two politically antagonistic white movements—white nationalists and white antiracists. Ethnographic field‐notes, in‐depth interviews, and content analysis provide comprehensive data and triangulation for how implicit perceptions of class and gender are intertwined with the social construction of an ideal white, male, middle‐class identity. While both organizations express antithetical political goals, they together reinforce broader discourses about whiteness and white supremacy. In so doing, these two organizations present an empirical and theoretical puzzle: How and why do two supposedly antithetical and divergent white male organizations simultaneously rationalize the inclusion and exclusion of women and the lower class from their ranks? Findings gesture toward tempering conceptual models of white male identity formation to further explore how cultural schemas are utilized toward the construction of both identity formation and interest protection.     

White Supremacists and the (Pan-)Ethnic Imperative: On "European-Americans" and "White Student Unions"

Working from literature on the social construction of ethnicity and on white ethnic identity, I explore contemporary white supremacist discourse aimed at presenting whites as a "pan-ethnic" community of European descendants, whose ethnicity is equivalent to that of established ethnic and minority communities. First, I look at how white supremacists struggle with uniting all "whites," negotiate the meanings and boundaries of "whiteness" and "European-American," and conceptualize their putative ethnicity as lamentable. Second, I look at discourse on efforts to organize "White Student Unions." The use of the hyphenated-American strategy and the development of white student unions both reflect tactical breaks with the past and are part of a "new racist" focus on putting forth a more presentable image for white supremacy and presenting whites as an ethnic/minority group, with ethnic-like concerns and traits. If indeed there is an emergent pan-ethnic phenomenon among "European-Americans," then it may prove important to recognize when this phenomenon is rooted in white supremacy and when it is not.     

Race and Politics: Predicting Support for 2016 Presidential Primary Candidates among White Americans

Using a sample of up to 859 white Americans in the United States, we examine how racial resentment, perceptions of discrimination toward majority and minority populations, white identity salience, and American identity salience influence support for five candidates running for President in 2016. Using data from the American National Election Studies 2016 Pilot Study, we find that racial resentment influences support for both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, and white identity salience increases support for Trump and Clinton. Although policy issues, including the economy, health care, immigration, and terrorism, also shape attitudes toward political candidates, the effects of racial resentment and white identity salience persist. We conclude by arguing that America continues to be shaped by a white racial frame which views minorities as inferior and that this view is perpetuated through support for candidates who support white supremacy.     

The Impact of the Economic Downturn,Immigrants, and Political Representation on White Supremacist Group Organization in the United States

Abstract

On the surface, groups advocating white supremacy appear similar. However, upon closer examination these groups vary in their strategies and goals as well as how they are affected by the economic downturn, immigrants, and political representation. This study utilizes resource mobilization theory to examine the relationship among political ideology, partisanship, public policy, social factors, and white supremacist group organization in the United States between 2000 and 2007. With the fifty states as the unit of analysis, I conduct a pooled time-series analysis to answer the following research questions: Is there a relationship among a state's political ideology, partisanship, public policy, social factors, and individual white supremacist group organization? Does this relationship vary by white supremacist group type? White supremacist group data disaggregated by type reveal that group dynamics are in play as groups navigate state political and social factors to determine ideal areas to organize. This study reveals the importance in examining white supremacist groups disaggregated by type, particularly the political and social factors that motivate their level of organization.     

WhiteSpace,Brown Place: Racialized Experiences Accessing Public Space in an Arkansas Immigrant Community*

This article examines the experiences of Latinos in Northwest Arkansas as they partake in community life within the Jones Center as a public setting traditionally dominated by legal and cultural practices intended to maintain white outlooks. We develop a conceptual model of race and space to theoretically frame how the implementation of an entrance fee system in this community setting shapes public space access into a restrictive racialized place. Drawing on ethnography and visual data gathered between fall 2014 and spring 2015, we found that the administration of the Jones Center made no effort to foster a more inclusive environment, creating a social atmosphere wherein participants construct the place as a whitespace. Whereas some challenged the exclusionary dimensions of symbolic white markers through spatial practices of resistance, others remained in what we call racialized subspaces. We argue that this form of restricting access aims to systematically, yet subtly preclude access to specific areas of the setting—i.e., swimming pool and ice rink. Nevertheless, participants in this study also demonstrate how community resiliency enables them to use “non-restricted” areas within the whitespace as mechanisms to disrupt the meaning of white markers symbolically embedded in areas where access cannot be negotiated by local Latinos.     

Discursive Colorlines at Work: How Epithets and Stereotypes are Racially Unequal

In a racialized social system, racial slurs and stereotypes applied to whites by nonwhites do not carry the same meanings or outcomes as they do when these roles are swapped. That is, racial epithets directed toward whites are unlikely to affect their life chances in the same way that racial epithets directed toward minorities do. Our central question in this paper is in what ways are epithets and stereotypes racially unequal? To answer this question, we rely upon a case study to drive our analysis. We argue that the symbolic meanings and outcomes of epithets and stereotypes matter because they maintain white supremacy in both material and symbolic ways. Thus, they serve as resources that impose, confer, deny, and approve other capital rewards in everyday interactions that ultimately exclude racial minorities, blacks and Latinas/os in particular, from opportunities and resources while preserving white supremacy.     

The heart of whiteness: On the study of whiteness and White Americans

From the nation's first non-white President, to prevalent narratives of demographic change, a surging reactionary Right and emerging social awareness of white identity, the social context in which white Americans relate to whiteness and white privilege has changed since the early 1990s foundations of whiteness studies. In this article we review work on white Americans and whiteness generally to grapple with their (dis)positions within, and provide a roadmap for sense-making through, recent cultural and racial-political developments. We begin with an overview of now canonical critical-theoretical scholarship, set in the context of other (more limited) empirical work about specific white American subgroups. We highlight how these related, frequently overlapping, though certainly non-synonymous tracks of inquiry into whiteness and white Americans have since evolved, emphasizing that iterative exchange between them may best situate potentially different, cross-cutting orientations toward whiteness and privilege held by various contemporary American whites. We then focus our discussion on several socio-historical developments that will have significant, if somewhat uncertain implications for the reproduction, possible transformation, and study of white America in coming years. Specifically, we detail literatures surrounding recent questions upon the shapes of the white color line, contemporary white nationalisms, and prospects for white antiracism.     

Manufacturing American Identity Among Immigrant Workers: Colorado Fuel & Iron Company at the Turn of the 20th Century

Extant research indicates that white racial framing is utilized to rationalize discrimination, but less work has examined how the white racial frame becomes filtered into institutional settings such as corporations and instilled within its programs and practices. This paper analyzes white racial framing in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company during the early twentieth century as part of its effort to Americanize and control its racially diverse workforce. The company developed a special unit headed by a physician and proponent of eugenics to promote “social betterment.” Our findings show how dominant racial ideologies were embedded within the company's conceptualization of social betterment and how these ideas influenced corporate programs aimed at mollifying the workforce and increasing productivity. We discuss the implications of our research for future analyses of historically embedded racial framing.     

Black Agrarianism: The Significance of African American Landownership in the Rural South

Agrarianism is important in the American mythos. Land represents both a set of values and a store of wealth. In this article, we ask how land matters in the lives of rural, southern, Black farmland owners. Drawing on 34 interviews, we argue that, since the end of slavery, land has continued to operate as a site of racialized exclusion. Local white elites limit Black farmers’ access to landownership through discriminatory lending practices. At the same time, Black farmland owners articulate an ethos in which land is a source of freedom, pride, and belonging. This we term “Black agrarianism.” They cultivate resistance to the legacies of slavery and sharecropping and contemporary practices of social closure. These Black farmland owners, then, view land as protection from white domination. Thus, we demonstrate how landownership is a site for the re‐creation of racial hierarchy in the contemporary period while also offering the potential for resistance and emancipation.     

The public life of white affects

The growing political power of racialized groups in white‐supremacist societies has unsettled the hegemonic position of whiteness. In the United States, this political shift has led to the linguistic repositioning of whiteness within public discourse as visible and vulnerable rather than unmarked and dominant; such repositioning operates as part of a larger strategy for maintaining white supremacy. Within white publics, which are simultaneously constituted through white public space, white public discourse, and white affects, those who are white‐identified linguistically engage in affective performances that reassert racial dominance by invoking claims of wounded whiteness. The article compares the affective strategies of white public discourse found, on the one hand, in ethnographic interviews with white youth in liberal educational spaces in California and, on the other hand, in the mediatized discourse of the US racist far right. The analysis identifies five affective discourse strategies deployed in the white public discourse of both groups: colormute racism; disavowals of racism; appropriations of diversity discourses; performances of white fragility; and claims of reverse racism. This shared set of discursive strategies is part of the larger convergence and mutual dependence of militant racism and mainstream racism in protecting all white people’s possessive investment in white supremacy.     

Racist humor: then and now

While recent scholarship has examined the capacity of race‐based humor to “upend” racial inequalities, or has focused on comedic “heroes” who use humor “subversively” to challenge racism, less attention has been paid to the evolution of racist humor and its continued role in supporting dominant racial ideologies. This article reviews key works on the historical and current functions of racist humor in the United States, in order to situate racist humor as a social practice that has contributed to the development, maintenance, and contestation of an ideology of white supremacy. First, I review the historical role of racist humor in supporting pro‐slavery ideology, in order to see that racist humor played a critical role in racial formation and domination. I focus on literature that examines the way racial ridicule operated in the pre‐civil rights era (e.g., blackface) and the way such race‐based comedy was used as a cultural form of racialization that supported the development of an ideology of white supremacy throughout this period. Then, I point to how the widespread use of racist humor of the pre‐civil rights era was challenged by the civil rights movement, and how this changed the ways in which racist humor was perceived/operated, in public and private, in the post‐civil rights era. Finally, I conclude by suggesting some areas where an examination of racist humor is in need of critical attention and analysis in the current era of “color‐blindness.”     

White Racial Socialization: Progressive Fathers on Raising “Antiracist” Children

For the past 30 years, the definition of racial socialization has referred to how parents prepare children of color to flourish within a society structured by white supremacy. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with eight white affluent fathers, this study explores fathers' participation in white racial socialization processes. The article focuses on fathers who identify as “progressive” and examines the relationship between fathers' understandings of what it means to raise an “antiracist” child, the explicit and implicit lessons of racial socialization that follow from these understandings, and hegemonic whiteness. Findings illustrate how these fathers understand their role as a white father, how their attempts to raise antiracist children both challenge and reinforce hegemonic whiteness, and what role race and class privilege play in this process.     

Beyond the Nuclear Family? Familism and Gender Ideology in Diverse Religious Communities

Religious familism, or ideology about "the good family," has been central to the culture and practice of local religious communities in the United States. Recent research has suggested that the "Ozzie and Harriet" familism dominant among mainstream religious groups in the 1950s religious expansion has remained formative for many local religious communities in the intervening decades. This research suggests that religious familism shapes how gender is symbolized and enacted in local religious communities and leads to differences in the meaning of religious participation for contemporary men and women. However, this work has been based largely on studies of white, middle-class religious communities. In this article, we analyze the relationship between family ideology and gender in three congregations chosen to exemplify those social locations where we would expect considerable distance from the 1950s "Ozzie and Harriet" ideal—one Hispanic Catholic parish, one African-American congregation in the black Church tradition, and one white liberal Protestant congregation that has adopted an open and affirming stance toward homosexuality and same-sex unions. We find considerable innovation in family-oriented rhetoric and ministry, and a range of gendered practices that prove considerably more inclusive than those found in previous research. We also find considerable symbolic affirmation of the value of more traditional gender roles and practices, particularly in the realm of the family, than we expected to find. We explore the implications of these findings for how we understand the production of gender in local religious communities and for the capacity of local religious communities to become truly gender-inclusive spaces.     

The Culture of White Space,the Racialized Production of Meaning,and the Jamband Scene

This study critically examines the subculture of the jamband scene, particularly that of the band Phish, through the notion of “white space.” We demonstrate the existence of colorblind racism and denial of white privilege in the white space of Phish subculture, which is also emblematic of the jamband subculture at large. This study utilizes content analysis drawing from social media comments that react to an article written by Headcount, a political organization in the jamband subculture, titled “Phish Scene is So White: Let's Talk.” The most salient themes we found were colorblind racism and particular online forms of colorblind racetalk through emotional deflection and sarcasm—that we term NIMBY. Our findings add to our understanding of how colorblind racism operates in online versions of subcultural white spaces. We conclude by considering the importance of sociologists to urgently map the social and cultural contours by which white spaces are (re)produced, particularly through cultural processes of meaning-making.     

A culture of silence: modes of objectification and the silencing of disabled bodies

Throughout history different practices have attempted to silence the experiences of disabled people. In this paper we explore some of these practices including the medical, familial, and self-subjugating practices English-speaking Canadian polio survivors experienced throughout their lives. We analyze participant’s experiences of silence and silencing through a Foucauldian lens, drawing on the three modes of objectification to explain the institutional and cultural discourses around polio subjects that acted upon and through the polio body to silence it. Participants’ oral history accounts demonstrate how sociocultural and medical practices effectively silenced survivors from speaking about their polio experiences. However, the trope of silence is also uprooted within oral history traditions. We will demonstrate how participants broke their silence and shifted their perspectives on polio and disability, and how this process contributed to their resistance of hegemonic conceptualizations of disability as defective.     

A revised approach to racism in youth multiculture: the significance of schoolyard conversations about sex,dating and desire

Anxieties about social cohesion in multicultural societies have prompted scrutiny of how young people negotiate culturally diverse spaces. A key perspective of the literature at the intersections of youth studies and urban multiculture is that young people shift between racist and convivial modes of relationality to navigate their complex social worlds. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a culturally diverse high school in Melbourne, Australia, I suggest that this binary framing fails to capture some of the diverse logics and practices within multicultural youth sociality. Reconciling dichotomous conceptual frames that position young people as moving back-and-forth between forms of exclusion and openness, I propose an alternative frame – a perverse form of everyday cosmopolitanism – through which to consider young people’s intercultural relations. To do this, I draw on young people’s conversations about sex, dating and desire as an entry point for new theorising about racism. Race and ethnicity were cornerstones of students’ frequent discussions about sexual ‘tastes’ and activity, discourses that have racist histories and effects. However, students did not understand their social world in such terms. These students’ social practices offer a situated illustration of how racism can function as part of a more inclusive cosmopolitan ethos in young lives, which I term ‘perverse cosmopolitanism’.     

#BlackIsBeautiful: the radical politics of black hair

Black Lives Matter 5280 (BLM5280) posts an image on its Facebook page each morning with the caption ‘Good morning #Beautiful people. #BlackIsBeautiful.’ The images in this series often depict Black people in ways that challenge heteronormative conceptions of family and white beauty standards. Through feminist visual culture and digital ethnography, I show how BLM5280’s photo series leverages the radical legacy of Black hair to claim symbolic and political power. I discuss my work as an allied filmmaker with the group, and examine BLM5280’s online practices in relation to its local organising. Although curating images on social media may not, in itself, bring about social change, this cultural practice plays an important role in shaping perceptions of Blackness, amplifying the voices and agency of underrepresented people, and strengthening the social and emotional well-being of BLM5280’s online and offline communities.