“But I’m not a racist!” Phenomenology,racism, and the body schema in white,pre-service teacher education

In this article, I call for a phenomenological turn in educating white, pre-service teachers. As opposed to dominant pedagogical models which focus on changing one’s beliefs about race, phenomenology points toward the importance of pre-conceptual, pre-critical forms of racial embodiment. Here I draw upon recent work on the different between body image (beliefs about the body) and body schema (what the body can do). The worry is that existing forms of anti-oppressive education miss the centrality of the schema, and thus do not go far enough in uncovering the embodied, perceptual roots of racism.     

“They Are Clipping Our Wings”: Health Implications of Restrictive Immigrant Policies for Mexican-Origin Women in a Northern Border Community

We examine racialization processes experienced by women of Mexican origin in a northern border community during a protracted period of restrictive immigrant policies that have disparately affected Mexican-origin communities, and consider pathways through which these experiences may affect health. This grounded theory analysis draws on interviews conducted in 2013–2014 with 48 first, 1.5, and second generation Mexican-origin women living in Detroit, MI. Racialization processes blurred boundaries between Latinas/os, immigrants, and undocumented immigrants. Racialized policies and interactions required women to negotiate shifting and often precarious social and political terrain. We describe racializing markers used by agents of multiple institutions to assess the legal status of women and members of their social networks, shaping their access to the resources over which institutional agents held power. Specifically, we consider the dynamic mechanisms by which multiple legal, social, and employment institutions exacted immigrant policing and bureaucratic surveillance. These include: (1) interior and border immigration enforcement agents’ active surveillance of residents; (2) local law enforcement officials’ assertion of authority over driver’s licenses and contact with immigration officials, often in traffic-related encounters; (3) Secretary of State clerks’ discretion in assessing legal status and issuing driver’s licenses and state IDs; (4) social welfare agents’ scrutiny of citizenship status in determining access to nutritional, economic, and medical resources; and (5) employers’ exploitation of these structural vulnerabilities to justify unfair treatment of immigrant workers. We theorize several mechanisms, by which these processes affect health, including: stigmatization; hypervigilance; and restricted access to health-promoting resources.     

“Heave Half a Brick at Him”: Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Muslim Converts in Late Victorian Liverpool

Throughout the existence of the Liverpool Moslem Institute, 1887–1908, there were many incidents of discrimination, intimidation, violence, and other acts of hate directed toward the British converts to Islam. This was particularly evident during the first decade after the group’s founding. The band of Muslims, led by Sheik Abdullah William Henry Quilliam, faced continued opposition, be it disruptions of events and religious services, or violent street fighting. This article explores the incidents of hate and discrimination, the milieu in which they occurred, and the reaction of the Muslim community. A brief comparison to the experience of the contemporaneous American Muslim converts also is presented.     

“Turkish Islam” as “Good Islam”: How the Gülen Movement Exploits Discursive Opportunities in a Post-9/11 Milieu

This paper argues that since 9/11 the orientalist discourse has been further adapted where both politicians and academics introduce provisos into their discourse, creating a dichotomy between “good” and “bad” Muslims. While this new discursive adjustment has created obstacles for many Muslims, they created opportunities for others. Drawing on empirical data, this paper demonstrates how the Gülen movement (GM), a Turkish-originated Islamic activist movement takes advantage of what it perceives as a discursive opportunity to expand its operations in the Western context. Since 9/11 Islamic activist movements have often been portrayed as irrational, homogenous and naturally prone to adopt violent action repertoires. Taking the GM as a case study, this paper demonstrates how an Islamic movement engages with the West strategically and rationally, adopting a non-violent action repertoire, embracing modernity and operating predominantly within the cultural arena. Rather than adopting violence as a means to an end, the GM has turned its rejection of violence in all forms into a core feature of Gülen's “Turkish Islam”, which is depicted as modern, peaceful, undogmatic and moderate.     

Ideal liberal subjects and Muslim “Others”: liberal nationalism and the racialization of Muslim youth in a progressive Danish school

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.     

Problematizing philanthropy: how a historical study of the General Education Board in the US west puts the “social” in race and region as social constructs

Abstract

This article explores how an examination of the philanthropic funding from the General Education Board (GEB) provided to the public schools in the western region of the US, particularly that impacting schools serving the historically marginalized cultures of the Latina/o, indigenous, and African American peoples, demonstrates just how fluid are the constructs of race and regionality. The article explores whether philanthropic funding followed the same racist and pecuniary patterns in the west/southwest as in the southeast and how actively researching that question reinforced the intersectionalities of race and region in defining the west as a social construct not conforming to geographic boundaries. Examining GEB funding should impact current thought regarding blindly accepting philanthropic influence in the public schools of the US.