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.     

Playing Away from Home: Identity in Northern Ireland and the Experience of Derry City Football Club

This article explores aspects of the history of Derry City Football Club in the period 1968-1985, and the effect that the Northern Irish troubles had on the soccer club. The whole question of identity within Northern Ireland has always been contested between those pursuing an Irish nationalist agenda, and those wishing to remain within the Union. This article locates Derry City within this struggle, and demonstrates how far reaching the effects of the contest between identities have been, even on something so 'normal' as a soccer club. Soccer clubs, it is argued, are an important location for the creation and sustaining of identities that are reflective of wider issues within society.     

Racialisation and racial formation in urban spaces*

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I try to clarify the notions of racialisation and racial formation and how they operate in the framework of nation states like Brazil. My main argument is that these processes are always constrained by the formation of social classes and national cultural repertoires even if transnational forces are important in nurturing them. I conclude by making a preliminary effort to unravel mechanisms and institutions which allow these processes of racialisation and racial formation to form part of the daily lives of black Brazilians in the context of class-structured urban spaces.     

Indigenous identity construction: enacted upon us,or within us

ABSTRACT

This commentary essay questions, theorizes, explores and grapples with the phenomenon of the creation of racial, social and cultural identity: in childhood as Native American identity is negotiated from others; and in adulthood as Native identity is constructed from within. ‘Indigenous Identity Construction: Enacted upon Us, or Within Us?’ is a commentary piece focused around Native American identity and how it is formed both through childhood and into adulthood. I analyze and interpret my experiences and understanding of my identity formation as an indigenous person- which usually is left out of the socio-political notions of modernity. Conceptualizations from ‘othering’ racial identities are discussed along with indigenous ontologies constructed within land and water. Through metaphorically revisiting past racializing incidents this piece continues working through the idea of othering and induction into whiteness in childhood, but also focuses on how indigenous identities might be constructed and sustained in adulthood. Efforts to model the indigenous assertion of self-determination and decolonizing the mind was used to re-present thoughts on the construction of Native American identity     

‘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).     

Strict versus flexible categorizations of mixedness: classifying mixed race in Singapore and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Classifying and recording population data along racial and ethnic lines is common in many multiethnic societies. Singapore and New Zealand both use racial and ethnic categories in their population records and national censuses, although on different scales, using different methodologies and to different ends. Mixed race identities are particularly difficult to classify within traditionally singular racial categories, and each country has dealt with this in various ways. This paper explores the effects of different forms of classification on mixed racial and ethnic identities. Narratives from 40 men and women of mixed descent highlight the tangible and intangible impacts of categorization along racial lines, and the ways in which mixedness can be tied with belonging. The contrasting examples of Singapore and New Zealand illustrate the ways in which individuals of mixed heritage navigate both strict and fluid forms of classification, and how stories of identity are closely intertwined with institutional classificatory structures.     

An introduction: the predicament of Brazilian culture

‘Truth’ and ideology (as error or falsity), like any other oppositional terms, take up the same productive powers and necessarily track each other very closely. Not much is necessary for any statement to move from the former into the latter field. My review of the main twentieth‐century lines of Brazilian racial studies, in this introduction, traces how they have moved miscegenation and racial democracy back and forth across the border between social scientific ‘truth’ and racial ideology. Because the papers included in this issue, rather than repeating this move, address how these socio‐historical signifiers inform the contemporary Brazilian social configuration, they move beyond the predicament shared by both narratives of the nation and social scientific accounts of racial subjection in Brazil.     

The What,the Why,and the How: A Review of Racial Microaggressions Research in Psychology

Since the publication of Sue et al. (Am Psychol 62:271–286, 2007a, b) seminal article, there has been an enormous scholarly interest in psychology on this construct of racial microaggressions—subtle everyday experiences of racism. In this paper, we provide a review of racial microaggressions research literature in psychology since 2007, following the publication of the first comprehensive taxonomy of racial microaggressions, which provided a conceptual framework and directions for research related to racial microaggressions. However, our review suggests that important conceptual and methodological issues remain to be addressed in the three domains: (1) what are racial microaggressions and who do they impact; (2) why are racial microaggressions important to examine; and (3) how are racial microaggressions currently studied and how might we improve the methodologies used to study racial microaggressions. We propose recommendations to further facilitate racial microaggressions research, improve the scientific rigor of racial microaggressions research, and contribute toward a more complete and sophisticated understanding of the concept and consequences of racial microaggressions—a construct that is undoubtedly salient and psychologically relevant among many members of racial minority groups.     

Training educators in anti-racism and pluriculturalismo: recent experiences from Brazil

This article examines educator participation in training initiatives based on Brazilian federal education legislation (Law 10,639 from 2003) in one city in the state of São Paulo. Law 10,639/03 represents a significant moment in the institutionalization of ethno-racial policies in Brazil over the past 15 years. It makes obligatory the teaching of African and Black Brazilian history and culture in all school subjects, and requires in-depth study of black contributions in the social, economic, and political spheres. The article first contextualizes understandings of race and racism in Brazil, followed by an elaboration of the political and epistemological underpinnings of ethno-racial educational reforms focused on Afro-descendants. The article then analyzes the contradictory processes that emerge from teacher training initiatives where the perspectives of anti-racism, multiculturalism (pluriculturalismo), racial democracy, and miscegenation intermingle and get reconfigured into understandings that have the potential to advance as well as impede critical engagement with racism and racial inequality. Rather than view teacher training initiatives as default decolonization or inevitable co-optation, this article outlines a more complex and contradictory account of state-society collaborations on educational initiatives. The article reveals the practical challenges of decolonization to argue that anti-racist activism in the educational sphere must take seriously the variable and contingent results of such political efforts in order to meet teachers where they are at while also challenging them to go beyond these limitations.     

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.     

‘Mixed’ Japanese-Filipino identities under Japanese multiculturalism

ABSTRACT

The ways in which multiculturalism is debated and practiced forms an important frame for ‘mixed’ ethnic identities to take shape. In this paper, I explore how young migrants of Japanese-Filipino ‘mixed’ parentage make sense of their ethnic identities in Japan. My key findings are that dominant discourses constructing the Japanese nation as a monoracial, monolingual and monoethnic nation leave no space for diversity within the definition of ‘Japanese’, creating the necessity for alternative labels like haafu or ‘mixed roots’. Japanese multiculturalism does not provide alternative narratives of Japaneseness but preserves the myth of Japanese racial homogeneity by recognizing diversity while maintaining ethnic and racial boundaries. Lastly, these categories have not been actively questioned by my respondents. Rather, they show flexibility in adopting these various labels – haafu, ‘mixed roots’, Filipino, Firipin-jin – in different contexts.     

Negotiating postcolonial Eurasian identities and national belonging in global-city Singapore

ABSTRACT

A racial classification regime, partly derived from colonial race categories that solidified during the British Empire, remains a key governance strategy in postcolonial Singapore, sorting citizens into the categories of Chinese, Malay, Indian or Other (CMIO). This racial grid continues to be a simplification of the actual complexity of lived identities and experiences, particularly for people of mixed descent. In this context, we explore the contemporary meanings and resonances of racial identity and national belonging as negotiated among members of a historic mixed-descent community – the Eurasians – in the context of a nation-state built on an institutionally fixed racial template. As a community, Eurasians are commonly attributed to the presence and mixing of especially Dutch, Portuguese and British – but also other Europeans – with an equally variegated palette of Asian cultures, since the 16th century. Based on 30 biographical interviews with self- identified Eurasians of two generations, this paper examines how individual and collective narratives of ‘old’ hybrid identities are changing in relation to the emergence of potentially new hierarchies of racial belonging with the arrival of new migration and the rise of international marriage in globalizing times. Given the lived reality of an expanding range of ‘race’ identities of different permutations and combinations, the politics of choice is played out between countervailing forces which draw racialized boundaries around the community more tightly on the one hand, and liberalize claims to racial and national belonging on the basis of self-identification on the other.     

Gender and citizenship in academic career progression: an intersectional,meso-scale analysis in German higher education institutions

ABSTRACT

In tune with the fundamental shift in Germany’s skill-b(i)ased immigration policy since 2005, higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly becoming ‘magnets’ for a skilled migrant workforce. While ‘internationalisation’ is often understood as something to be celebrated and (further) accomplished, some observers speak of clear signs of discriminatory experiences among racialised and migrant academics. This is a new aspect, as social inequalities have by and large been considered in migration studies to be the sole terrain of labour mobility into less-skilled sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, abundant literature on gender and higher education shows that women academics have poorer access to career progression than men, demonstrating gender-based academic career inequalities. However, the insights generated in these two strands of scholarship have seldom been in conversation with one another. This paper takes stock of the lack of an intersectional perspective, focusing on citizenship and gender within HEIs as hiring meso-level organisations that are becoming increasingly transnationalised. It explores the intersectionality of citizenship and gender in accessing academic career advancement by examining three key career stages, that is, doctoral researchers, postdoctoral researchers, and professors, in two case-study HEIs.     

Perceived Racial Discrimination in Health Care and Race Differences in Physician Trust

Racial discrimination in health care is more often perceived by racial minority patients than by whites. In this study, we explored whether two types of perceived racial discrimination, perceptions that the healthcare system is racially biased in general (perceived institutional racial discrimination) and perceptions that one has personally encountered racial discrimination while seeking health care (perceived interpersonal racial discrimination), mediated racial differences in patients’ trust in physicians. We examined this in a sample of black (N = 127) and white (N = 303) patients being treated in two Veterans Affairs orthopedic clinics for advanced osteoarthritis. Patients completed measures of perceived institutional and interpersonal racial discrimination in health care before meeting with an orthopedic surgeon and a measure of physician trust after the visit. Using a multiple mediator bootstrapping procedure, we tested whether perceived institutional and/or interpersonal racial discrimination mediated the association between race and trust. Compared to whites, blacks reported lower physician trust (M = 4.00 vs. 4.17, β = ?0.15, 95 % CI = ?0.25, ?0.05), more perceived institutional racial discrimination (M = 3.13 vs. 2.60, β = 0.43, 95 % CI = 0.25, 0.61), and more perceived interpersonal racial discrimination (M = 1.94 vs. 1.21, β = 0.60, 95 % CI = 0.47, 0.74). Perceived interpersonal, but not institutional, racial discrimination mediated the race difference in physician trust and accounted for 55 % of the variance. Our finding that lower physician trust among black patients than white patients was explained by perceptions of interpersonal racial discrimination in health care suggests that issues of racial discrimination may need to be addressed in order to foster minority patients’ trust in physicians.     

Teacher-Based Racial Discrimination: The Role of Racial Pride and Religiosity Among African American and Caribbean Black Adolescents

This study explored the extent to which private regard and religiosity beliefs serve as protective factors for school bonding among African American and Caribbean black adolescents who experience racial discrimination in school. Findings are drawn from a nationally representative sample of (n = 810) African American and (n = 360) Caribbean black adolescents (52% girls) aged 13–17 (M_age = 15, SD = 1.42) years. Results suggest that perceiving racial discrimination from teachers was associated with lower levels of school bonding for African American and Caribbean black adolescents. For African American adolescents, perceiving more racial discrimination from teachers and reporting lower private regard beliefs was associated with less school bonding. The findings for Caribbean black adolescents revealed that endorsing moderate levels of religiosity and perceiving higher rates of teacher discrimination was associated with less school bonding. The developmental significance and implications for future research are discussed.     

Young,Black, and (Still) in the Red: Parental Wealth,Race, and Student Loan Debt

Taking out student loans to assist with the costs of postsecondary schooling in the US has become the norm in recent decades. The debt burden young adults acquire during the higher education process, however, is increasingly stratified with black young adults holding greater debt burden than whites. Using data from the NLSY 1997 cohort, we examine racial differences in student loan debt acquisition and parental net wealth as a predictor contributing to this growing divide. We have four main results. First, confirming prior research, black young adults have substantially more debt than their white counterparts. Second, we find that this difference is partially explained by differences in wealth, family background, postsecondary educational differences, and family contributions to college. Third, young adults’ net worth explain a portion of the black–white disparity in debt, suggesting that both differences in accumulation of debt and ability to repay debt in young adulthood explain racial disparities in debt. Fourth, the black–white disparity in debt is greatest at the highest levels of parents’ net worth. Our findings show that while social and economic experiences can help explain racial disparities in debt, the situation is more precarious for black youth, who are not protected by their parents’ wealth. This suggests that the increasing costs of higher education and corresponding rise in student loan debt are creating a new form of stratification for recent cohorts of young adults, and that student loan debt may be a new mechanism by which racial economic disparities are inherited across generations.     

The AKP,sectarianism, and the Alevis’ struggle for equal rights in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been ruling Turkey since 2002, was founded by a splinter group from within the Islamist Virtue Party (FP). The most obvious difference between the old guard of the FP and the younger, reformist cadres who established the AKP was the latter’s deliberate and efficacious implementation of the discourse of democracy and human rights in articulating their political agenda. This discursive shift not only increased the AKP’s votes, but also gained them many supporters among liberal intellectuals in Turkey and abroad, who saw in them a potential to reconcile Islam with democracy. So much was invested in this hopeful vision that pro-AKP liberals for a long time turned a blind eye to many contrary developments in the country or tried to diminish their significance. One such major blind spot has been the Alevis, who after nearly 14 years of AKP rule continue to face formal and informal discrimination on a daily basis. Despite their alleged commitment to religious freedom, and notwithstanding an ephemeral ‘Alevi opening’ in 2007–2008, the disenfranchisement of the Alevis has only deepened under the AKP with its accelerated top-down Islamization of broader Turkish society and the corollary intensification of sectarian discourse both in domestic and foreign policy.     

Distribution,Composition and Exclusion: How School Segregation Impacts Racist Disciplinary Patterns

This paper investigates a broad two-pronged social problem: the persistent segregation and fragmentation of school districts alongside the disproportionate application of school discipline to students of color. Previous work suggests many factors within schools that contribute to the unequal application of school discipline. We use hierarchical linear modeling to move beyond this immediate school context and ask how broader social processes, specifically multiple forms of school segregation, impact the disproportionate discipline administered to black students in secondary schools. Results demonstrate that schools located in more segregated districts tend to have lower racial disparities in suspensions for black students, thus painting a complex picture of the consequences of segregated schooling for students of color. The findings suggest that racial inequality can arise in many guises and that efforts to create racially integrated schools do not release districts from other important work related to racial equity. Integrated school districts should be even more concerned with creating policies and practices to raise awareness of and reduce racial disparities, specifically in school discipline.     

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.