Colombian Criminals,Moral Whites: Reproducing and Resonating Hierarchy in U.S. Film

In this project, we analyze the representations of Colombian and white characters in U.S. feature films. As a pervasive form of storytelling, films serve an elemental source of analysis for their role in reproducing social realities and resonating with public consciousness. Here, the specific focus upon the representation of race, racial hierarchy, gender, and nationalism produced nuanced observations that expand on sociological understandings of racism in film. Past research on representations of race in media has shown the use of binary oppositions in making difference. We find the use of binary opposition via persistent themes of criminalization of Colombia and Colombian characters alongside the prevalence of white male heroes and white morality. The importance of these cultural representations is placed within the social and political contexts of U.S.–Colombia relations and racial transitions within the United States.     

The Neglected Social Psychology of Institutional Racism

Theories of institutional racism and institutionalized discrimination have been remarkably influential in the understanding of continuing racial inequality and contemporary race relations. These theories and related claims have also been criticized as being improperly conceptualized, employing circular reasoning, neglecting nonracial dimensions of inequality, failing to specify causal mechanisms, and employing questionable inferences and attributions. These issues can be illuminated by critically reviewing how theories of institutional racism and institutionalized discrimination handle issues of social psychology. Issues of social psychology are often treated only minimally or implicitly, and often dismissively. This neglect is the root of many concerns about theories of institutional racism and institutionalized discrimination. Increased attention to and employment of scholarship in social psychology can contribute greatly to an understanding of contemporary racial inequality and race relations that advances both academic interests and practical interests in the evaluation and reform of the institutional practices that perpetuate racial inequality.     

Occupational Race Segregation,Globalization, and White Advantage: White-Black Earnings Inequality in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Addressing the need to systematically assess the materialist foundations of color-blind racism, we use insights from critical race theory to investigate the metropolitan-level racial inequality at the turn of the century. Namely, we examine the association between occupational race segregation and white advantage (i.e., white-black earnings inequality) for men and women in 202 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas in the year 2000. We find that occupational race segregation exacerbates white advantage for both male and female workers, supporting the tenets of the materialist conception of color-blind racism. We also consider how processes of globalization and labor market transformation impact white advantage. Our findings indicate that global capital increases white advantage for males, whereas foreign direct investment and casualization serve to decrease it. They also indicate that exports decrease white advantage for females, whereas percent foreign born increases it.     

Restructuring for Whom? Race,Class, Gender,and the Ideology of Invisibility

This paper examines how changes resulting from economic restructuring affect views of racial inequality across different race, class, and gender groups. First reviewing some of the consequences of restructuring for different race, class, and gender groups, the paper also reviews research documenting the different views of racial inequality held by dominant and subordinate groups. The paper concludes by examining how race-blind ideologies affect discussions of race and multiculturalism and suggests that race-blind thinking has thwarted teaching about structural racism.     

Critique on the notion of model minority: an alternative racism to Asian American?

This research note attempts to probe how contemporary racism has evolved to replace physical characteristics with cultural traits by examining the notion of model minority in America. The analysis begins by positing that this notion manifests a problematic deployment of cultural differences. A short historical review justifies that model minority is generated and maintained by a stereotyped understanding of Asian tradition, especially Confucianism. Racial antagonism and class consciousness are then invoked by fostering essentialist ideas of cultural traditions. While America advocates its democratic system of inclusion, the logic of ‘model minority’ suggests an ‘internal exclusion’. The implications of model minority are thus that: (1) ‘race’ is replaced by ‘cultural difference’ – when cultural racism replaces biological racism, race is subsumed into a pure realm of cultural difference and race as a sociohistorical category becomes obscured; (2) the deployment of cultural differences creates an illusion that US society has already reached ‘color-blind’, and therefore neglects the social oppression and inequality along racial lines; (3) in the transforming process from a biologistic conception of race to a culturalist one, cultural differences are deployed to differentiate Asia(n) from American(n). Cultural differences are by all means essentialized, and race is furthermore reduced to essentialized cultural differences.     

Conceptions of Immigrant Integration and Racism Among Social Workers in Sweden

Drawing on 22 qualitative interviews with social workers in Sweden, this article analyzes how social workers conceive immigrant integration and racism and tackle racism within their institutions and the wider Swedish society. The majority of the white social workers framed integration in relation to cultural differences and denied or minimized the role of racism in structuring their services and the ethnic relations in Sweden. In contrast, social workers with immigrant backgrounds were less compromising in discussing racism and assumed it as a problem both for themselves as institutional actors and as immigrants in everyday life and institutional settings. Social institutions in Sweden have been important actors in endorsing equality and accommodating differences. However, it is of paramount importance for social justice-minded social workers to identify and unsettle those structures and discourses that enable racist and discriminatory policies and practices against those groups who are not viewed as “core” members of the Swedish society. The absence of anti-racist social work within Swedish social work is primarily related to the idea of color-blind welfare universalism that is assumed to transcend the particularity of the needs, experiences, and perspectives of different groups in Sweden. While integration is envisioned and framed as a political project of inclusion of non-white immigrants, it tends to become a political device through which hierarchies of belonging are constructed. Following such conception of integration, cultural/religious differences and equality are framed as conflicting where cultural conformity underpinned by assimilationist discourses becomes a requirement for political, social, and economic equality.     

Incorporating Struggles with Racism and Ethnic Identity in Therapy with Adolescents

Ethnic and racial minority adolescents enter therapy with the behavioral, emotional, social, familial, and educational problems common to clinical practice. However, therapy with these youth necessitates attention to the effects of racial discrimination on their psychological functioning and to matters of how their ethnic or racial identities are integrated. Of the myriad issues that become part of therapy with minority adolescents, the profound effects of racism and the process of ethnoracial identity development can be seen in adolescents' sense of self and behavior. Experiences with racism and with their own ethnic reference group and others may have led to distortions and partial understanding of their identities that may affect adaptation and functioning. In this paper, the author draws from experiences in clinical practice with minority youth to highlight issues of racism and ethnic identity emergent in treatment. Three cases illustrate discussions of struggles with racism and ethnic identity as they emerged in therapy. In each case, the struggles were made salient by the therapist's purposeful eliciting of them to clarify issues of transference, family relations, peer group relations, and achievement.     

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’.     

"The World's Against Me As A Black Man": Charles Mingus and Segregated America

This paper examines how the artistic output of Charles Mingus was influenced by the question of race in U.S. politics. Employing material from the liner notes of Mingus's albums, his autobiography, and interviews for his oral history, I argue that issues of race and their political manifestation were forced upon Mingus by the circumstances of American politics. Mingus's experience as an African American vehemently opposed to segregated race relations and alert, throughout his life, to racism, is part of his compositional presence.     

Racialization and Muslims: Situating the Muslim Experience in Race Scholarship

This article reviews how racialization enables an understanding of Muslim and Muslim American experience as racial. Race scholarship in the United States has historically been a Black/White paradigm. As a result, the experiences of many racial and ethnic groups who have become a part of the American landscape due to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 have largely been ignored in race scholarship. By reviewing racialization and its application to Arabs and Muslims, it is apparent that scholars must continuously explore newer theories and languages of race. Racialization not only provides a way to understand the fluidity of race and racism but it also contributes to the advancement of race scholarship by reflecting on the current contextual influences on race.     

Applying critical race theory in social work education in Britain: pedagogical reflections

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on personal experiences of teaching white British and Black African students on a social work Master’s course in England. In this paper, I critically discuss the fire at Grenfell Tower in London (14 June 2017) and how it served as a pedagogical tool to open up critical discussions among students about racial in/justice, intersectionality and neoliberal racism. I also explore how Black students were enabled to share their experiences of immigration, racism, and racial inequality in Britain as part of these discussions. Inviting personal experiences of race in the classroom can be highly emotive; but, as this paper shows, these voices can also highlight institutionalized racism and provide a way for Black and ethnic minorities’ histories to be told and learned. These histories matter and can develop student consciousness about racial inequality for pursuing a social agenda. They also challenge claims that Britain is now a ‘post-racial’ society. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) provided a way to counter such claims and critique my ‘whiteness’ and socio-economic class in my teaching, as well as challenge the neoliberal ideologies and structures that reproduce and mask ‘white privilege’ and racial injustice in Britain today.     

Black Movements Need Black Theorizing: Exposing Implicit Whiteness in Political Process Theory

The history of racism in the United States has produced a paradox in social movement literature: blackness shaped the character and substance of black antiracist mobilization, but whiteness shapes most analysis of their efforts. Despite frequently using the black Civil Rights Movement for theory development and testing, leading theorists have yet to identify a specific theory of race undergirding their analysis or explaining how racism impacts the trajectory of antiracist social movements. Instead, theorists rely on common white-privileging notions of race that hinder analyses of black movements. I critically analyze political process theory (PPT) from a racial perspective, showing that the dominant critiques of PPT stem from PPT creators’ failure to critically theorize race while analyzing the Civil Rights Movement. Theorists implicitly adopted white-centered perspectives that ultimately undermined PPT’s development. I conclude with a call to simultaneously theorize collective action and the system of inequality with which a movement is engaged.     

How is ‘racism’ understood in literature about black and minority ethnic social work students in Britain? A conceptual review

ABSTRACT

This conceptual review interrogates a body of literature concerned with black and minority ethnic (BME) social work students in Britain since 2008. This period has coincided with an increasing focus on diversity in Higher Education, but also lower prominence being given to race in social work. In social work education, there has been increased attention to the needs and experiences of BME students. While most of this literature acknowledges racism, what constitutes racism and how it can be understood usually remain implicit. This review aimed to explore influential concepts in the literature and the ways these affected how racism is understood and identified. A search was carried out for articles in peer-reviewed academic journals between 2008 and 2018. In this article, we discuss four recurring concepts of racism in this literature: subtle racism, institutional racism, cultural difference and pedagogical solutions. The article analyses the assumptions underpinning these concepts, and the implications for how racism has been understood and investigated in this literature. The subsequent discussion calls for a more reflexive approach and identifies questions that future research could explore, which could lead to improved understandings of racism in social work education.     

Some kids are left behind: The failure of a perspective,using critical race theory to expand the coverage in the sociology of youth sports

Sports are no longer simply extracurricular activities. For many children, sports are curricular, central to their identity, development, and peer and familial relationships. However, sport scholars and sociologists spend little time trying to learn and understand the huge growth in youth sports participation and even less attention to the role of race in youth sports. Sociology could offer much more, but suffers from what James McKee calls ( 1993 ) “the failure of a perspective” with regard to studying and understanding race, racism, and race relations. Critical Race Theory can help to extend the coverage of youth sports to include more input from Youth and of Scholars of Color. In this article, we review a current debate in the sociology of youth sports, which illustrates the gap in understanding the experiences of youth of color and Black athletes in particular. And, we provide solutions and ideas for future research.     

Historical Knowledge of Oppression and Racial Attitudes of Social Work Students

Racism has a long history in the United States. For generations, people of color have been systematically oppressed, whereas White people have benefitted from unearned privilege. Despite major advances in civil rights, the ongoing presence and legacy of racism and White privilege result in pervasive inequities. Social work education prepares graduates to advocate for racial justice. The present study describes the historical knowledge of oppression that students (N=305) possess at the beginning of their MSW education and examines the relationship between this knowledge and the endorsement of a color-blind ideology. Students with more historical knowledge reported fewer color-blind beliefs; millennial generation students reported fewer color-blind beliefs than older students. Implications are discussed for race-conscious and competency-based social work education.     

Public and Academic Questions on Race: The Problem with Racial Controversies

This essay offers an in‐depth look at how some national discussions of race serve to heighten divisions and to distort Americans' understandings of racism. First, I contend that these controversies produce questions that create racial and partisan divisions. In other words, they focus on who or which group is guilty of racism. Second, I argue that such questions about racism depart from the kinds of questions that sociologists seek to answer. As such, racial controversies move the public away from applying a sociological imagination to the problem of racism.     

Analyzing ethnoracial mobilization

This article examines scholarship about ethnoracial mobilization written by sociologists within the subfields of social movements and race and racism. We situate our synthesis within critiques put forward by other scholars about the treatment of ethnoracial movements within the social movement subfield. Using these critiques as launching points, we find two broad patterns in the literature: (a) a focus on ethnoracial social movements that decenters race, at times treating it as an independent variable and (b) a focus on mobilizations for racial equity that treats race as a dynamic and constructed process. Within the latter focus, we note research that investigates ethnoracial mobilization at the macro‐, meso‐, and micro‐levels. We call for more research on movements that specifically consider the mobilization and construction of ethnoracial identities. In doing so, we provide a conceptual map of the field and make suggestions for how social movement scholars employing distinct theoretical foci can engage in ethnoracial analysis. Finally, we hypothesize why there might be a dearth of research within the social movement subfield that engages in critical analysis of ethnoracial dynamics of social movements.     

Racially Charged Cookies and White Scholarships: Anti-Affirmative Action Protests on American College Campuses

Between 2001 and 2012, students at colleges throughout the United States protested affirmative action policies using various tactics, most notably anti-affirmative action “bake sales,” where the price of the goods was based on the race of the purchaser: white males were charged the most; blacks and Latinos, the least. Other means of protest included “whites-only” or equal opportunity scholarships, an “equal opportunity carnival,” and other satirical productions. Through qualitative content analysis of print and online materials about each protest, I found that the motivations of these protesters can be understood using Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s theories of color-blind racism, particularly the concepts of “abstract liberalism” and “minimization of racism.” I also contend that a secondary goal of these demonstrations is to establish white racial identity as a public identity upon which claims of “reverse discrimination” and oppression can be built.