Exotic Place,White Space: Racialized Volunteer Spaces in Honduras

In every year between 2004 and 2012, more than 800,000 Americans reported volunteering internationally (Lough 2013 ). These volunteers are overwhelmingly white (McBride and Lough 2008 ) and entering a largely nonwhite and developing world. This study starts by questioning how racial status informs volunteer/volunteer tourist interactions, both with locals and with other volunteers, in a global context. In‐depth interviews with 23 missionaries, teachers, and volunteers from the United States and Canada reveal that (1) international volunteering is largely motivated by romantic and exotic understandings of the Global South and (2) in spite of a stated interest in cultural immersion, participants’ notions of their whiteness guided their perceptions of Hondurans and their actions as they sought out and retreated to white spaces protected from Honduran influence. These findings further the work of those who have argued first world travelers have homogenized spaces on reserve, by demonstrating that whiteness can be the basis for the construction and maintenance of protected spaces in predominantly nonwhite countries.     

Mixed matters in Australia

ABSTRACT

Mapping attitudes toward intermarriage – who is and who is NOT considered an acceptable mate – offers an incisive means through which imaginings of belonging – ethnicity, nationhood, citizenship, race, and culture – can be critically evaluated. Looking specifically at Australia, despite a growing body of research on whiteness, and Mixedness, there is very little qualitative research on attitudes toward mixing among the different groups in Australia. Therefore, in this article, I document attitudes towards ‘mixed’ marriage through focus group interviews in communities across Australia to explore what boundaries, if any, exist and the attitudes of different groups toward intermarriage and ‘mixed’ families in Australia. Drawing from these 69 focus groups conducted across seven cities and the surrounding area of the six states of Australia: Darwin, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, and Melbourne with homogenous groups based on the ways Australians self-identify – indigenous (Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander), white (differentiating if applicable between those who identify as Australian as opposed to European or South African), African Australian, and other groups at various community locations, I argue that national discourses of multiculturalism and imaginings of who and what constitutes being Australian heavily influence attitudes toward mixing. Furthermore, there is a clear hierarchy of desirability in terms of who is considered marriable, with pattern in the narratives and counter-narratives offered by different groups. These findings are presented within a larger discussion of how the contemporary situation in Australia compares to the institutional, individual, and ideological practices that discourage mixing globally.     

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.     

Defending White Scientific Masculinity

While many feminist and postcolonial scholars have analyzed the post-9/11 politic in the United States, few have focused on the anthrax “attacks” that followed the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center disaster. The FBI search for the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax mailings was an important node in US national security discourse making – it culminated in the fingering of a white male government biodefense scientist and cast doubt on the role of scientific expertise in provisioning national security. This article argues that while “white scientific masculinity” was put into question, it was simultaneously shored up as a nationalist symbol of protection against bioterrorism. This article traces shifts across the three FBI-led profiles of the anthrax perpetrator, along with concomitant news media coverage: the white male “loner” nonscientist, the white male “loner” amateur scientist and finally the white male biodefense scientist. Using a cultural studies approach, this article details how at each successive investigatory stage profilers mobilized hegemonic discourses to re-instantiate the authoritative status of white scientific masculinity in US national security. This analysis offers an important dimension to feminist and postcolonial critiques of the symbolic and institutional investment in white masculinity during the War on Terror.     

Repelling the “Rutter”: Social Differentiation Among Rural Teenagers

This paper examines low‐income white rural teenagers' management of race and class‐based inequality. It analyzes how these teenagers constructed boundaries to distinguish themselves from outsiders, but also to distinguish themselves from the local abject category of “rutter.” The findings reveal hidden interconnections between race and class in interactional practice, and highlight local processes of differentiation through which actors attempt to deflect stigma and attain credibility. The paper discusses how interactional mechanisms such as “internal othering” and “stigma‐theory” bolster race and class credibility, but reproduce inequality.     

Desire for the desert: racialising white teachers’ motives for working in remote schools in the Australian desert

Abstract

Distinct from rurality, the Australian desert has long functioned as a signifier of remoteness in the dominant imagination; a product of spatialised binary relations between ‘progressive’ (white) mainstream or idealised white countryside, and disordered/dangerous Aboriginal periphery. Remoteness constitutes a complex racial dynamic that has historically mediated white teachers’ and missionaries’ desires to travel to the social margins. This article adopts a discursive understanding of remoteness to examine contemporary white teachers’ decisions to work in Aboriginal schools in the desert – decisions that are often articulated through unwitting recourse to the ‘three Ms’ or ‘tourist’. The article explores these identity constructs and how they enable different performances of whiteness. It examines how white people’s desires are often covertly raced but does not however, position the teacher as a priori racist. Rather, desire is theorised as a social construct in which subjects invest, which may at times contribute toward processes of decolonisation. This rendering moves beyond a logic of individualism and underpins the argument that recognising how these dynamics play out is vital with respect to understanding the place of white teachers inside remote Indigenous Education. Moreover, such insights are valuable for appreciating how whiteness continues to be reproduced in White Australia under a guise of good intentions.     

The Whitening Hypothesis Challenged: Biculturalism in Latino and Non‐Hispanic White Intermarriage

Assimilation theory holds that intermarriage between minorities and non‐Hispanic whites is a gauge of integration and assumes that minorities jettison their ethnic identification in favor of whiteness. Drawing on race relations theory to argue that intermarriage is potentially transformative for non‐Hispanic whites as well as Latinos, this article challenges assimilation theory's bias that minorities (should) undergo cultural change and that non‐Hispanic whites remain unmoved. This article uses in‐depth interviews with Latino and non‐Hispanic white married couples to assess the consequences of ethnic intermarriage from the perspectives of both partners. Interethnic partners engaged in four “ideal types” of biculturalism, running largely contrary to assimilation theory's social whitening hypothesis. Due to boundary blurring, exemplified by affiliative ethnic identity, non‐Hispanic whites can migrate into Latino culture.     

“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.     

RIDICULING THE ‘WHITE BREAD ORIGINAL’

The 1994 US Supreme Court decision in Luther Campbell et al. v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., written by Justice David Souter, reversed a lower court decision and argued in favor of the rap group 2 Live Crew's playful critique of Roy Orbison's ‘Oh Pretty Woman’ by its function as parody. This essay seeks to contextualize that decision by showing the roots of 2 Live Crew's recording in the practice of ‘covering’ – the re-recording of an existent popular composition – and thus the possibilities for redefining authorship that arose with the advent of digital technology. The compositional techniques allowed by computer programs led to the proliferation of sampling in the hip-hop community, thereby liberating sounds from the original content and reconfiguring them in new songs. The technique allowed a critical, and in some cases adversarial, stance to be taken towards long-standing Western definitions of authorship and ownership. 2 Live Crew added to this rich stew of possibilities the familiar and time-tested genre of parody. Their piece took what one judge referred to as the ‘white bread original’ of the Roy Orbison record and twisted about the implicit point of view with regard to gender and sexuality. Discussion of the legal complications that followed upon the suing of the group by the holder of the copyright in the Orbison song, Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., includes the apparently sanctioned use of the song in the Disney-produced film Pretty Woman as well as the use of other Orbison material in director David Lynch's Blue Velvet. The essay concludes with suggestions as to how the language of Justice Souter's decision allows not only for future parodies but also a reinvigoration of speech, one which calls into question power relationships codified in US copyright statutes.     

Expanding Boundaries of Whiteness? A Look at the Marital Patterns of Part‐White Multiracial Groups

Using a boundary perspective (Alba and Nee 2003 ), I examine the marital behavior of three self‐identified multiracial groups: black/whites, American Indian/whites, Asian/whites. With a focus on marriage with whites, I assess whether the boundaries of whiteness are expanding to include these part‐white multiracial groups. Marrying whites at a large scale may signify that part‐white multiracial Americans are in the process of being accepted as “white.” At the same time, due to differences in the racial identity experiences of multiracial groups, marital patterns may differ by racial combination. Based on analysis of 2008–2012 American Community Survey data, I find that the majority of all three groups are married to whites, suggesting that most members in these groups are on the path to whiteness. On the other hand, multinomial logistic regression analysis demonstrates that American Indian/whites and Asian/whites are more likely than black/whites to have a white spouse, relative to spouses of another race/ethnicity. Moreover, separate regression analyses by multiracial group reveal gender differences in their likelihood of marrying whites for black/whites and Asian/whites. These results indicate racial stratification in the marriage market among part‐white multiracial Americans, with further stratification by gender for some groups.