Mixed Race Studies

Whiteness Fractured

Ashgate Publishing
November 2013
256 pages
Includes 1 b&w illustration
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4094-6357-3

Cynthia Levine-Rasky, Associate Professor of Sociology
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Whiteness Fractured examines the many ways in which whiteness is conceptualized today and how it is understood to operate and to effect social relationships. Exploring the intersections between whiteness, social class, ethnicity and psychosocial phenomena, this book is framed by the question of how whiteness works and what it does. With attention to central concepts and the history of whiteness, it explains the four ways in which whiteness works. In its examination of the outward and inward fractures of whiteness, the book sheds light on both its connections with social class and ethnicity and with the ‘epistemology of ignorance’ and the psychoanalytic.

Representing the long career of whiteness on the one hand and investigating its expansion into new areas on the other, Whiteness Fractured reflects the growing maturity of critical whiteness studies. It undertakes a critical analysis of approaches to whiteness and proposes new directions for future action and enquiry. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, intersectionality, colonialism and post-colonialism, and cultural studies.

Contents

• Section I. Introduction: Framing whiteness; Theorizing whiteness; Interpreting whiteness and its correlates; Histories of whiteness.
• Section II. Four Ways in which Whiteness Works: Normalization and solipsism; Controlling terms of engagement; Ideological commitments; Exclusionary practices.
• Section III. Outward Fractures: Whiteness and Intersectionality: The rise of intersectionality theory; Intersectionality theory and the analysis of power; Intersections between whiteness and class; Intersections between whiteness and ethnicity; Intersections between whiteness and Jewish ethnicity.
• Section IV. Inward Fractures: the Psychic Life of Whiteness: The emotionality of whiteness; The epistemology of ignorance; The psychic turn; Construction of the other in popular racism; Psychoanalytic themes in the construction of the racialized other.
• Section V. Approaches to Studying Whiteness: Critical-relational-contextual revisited; Whiteness in popular culture; The paradox of action.
• References
• Index

What does race do?

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 38, Issue 8, 2015
Special Issue: Ethnic and Racial Studies Review
pages 1401-1406
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2015.1016064

Alana Lentin, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social Analysis
University of Western Sydney, Australia

In writing on ‘John Rex’s Main Mistake’, Michael Banton reveals more about Banton than he does about Rex. I use Banton’s discussion of the differences between his own and John Rex’s ‘mistakes’ to explore why, in my view, race continues to have analytical purchase in a purportedly ‘post-racial’ age

Why race?

Michael Banton claims that while he ‘wanted to supersede the use of race in sociology altogether’, Rex argued that its meaning should be expanded to ‘cover other beliefs of a deterministic kind’ (Banton this volume, original emphasis). This was born of Rex’s insistence on the significance of class and colonialism for understanding racial categories. Banton notes Rex’s neglect of other concepts that may have been ‘fit for purpose’, such as ‘gender, faith, or social origin’ (Banton this volume). However, the search for alternatives seems a fruitless one, even for Banton, who has devoted his entire career precisely to attempting to answer the question ‘why race?’

…Race as ordering, as management, sedimentation, sifting, as correction and disciplining, as empowering some while causing others to buckle under that power has always relied on a plurality of processes. Racism’s genocidal impulses have been condemned by those who live by the logics of division that ultimately enable the other’s annihilation. To be clearer: I can be utterly opposed to deaths in police custody while doubting whether I should send my child to the public school in the Aboriginal neighbourhood. So, race, not as wrong-headed theorization of inherent difference, but as a logic that gathers a suite of rationales in its armoury, persists precisely because so much has been invested in dismissing it as unreasonable. This is why Jared Sexton (2008, 27), following Albert Memmi, rightly points to the problem of attempting to unveil racism’s ‘secure foundation’. The arguments of those who call for race to be abandoned because it somehow participates in the reproduction of racism miss the point that there is no way of separating between race and racism as though racism were easily definable in relation to a pre-prescribed series of actions, beliefs or policies. On the contrary, while racism is ‘incoherent, unjustified’, according to Sexton, this does not mean that it is not ‘systemic, structuring and governing for the whole racist complex’ (27). In other words, it is not by treating racism as irrational that that very irrationality dissipates. Rather, as Sexton so presciently remarks, ‘racism does its most essential work in the shadow of the very attempt to explain it’ (27). We can see this most clearly in the workings of the supposedly ‘anti-racist racist states’ that most readers, I wager, inhabit…

Read the entire article here.

The Science Behind ‘They All Look Alike to Me’

The New York Times
2015-09-20

Rachel L. Swarns

The outcry was immediate and ferocious when a white New York City police officer tackled James Blake, the retired biracial tennis star, while arresting him this month in a case of mistaken identity. The officer mistook Mr. Blake for a black man suspected of credit card fraud, according to the police.

Racism, pure and simple, some said.

But was it?

Scientists, pointing to decades of research, believe something else was at work. They call it the “other-race effect,” a cognitive phenomenon that makes it harder for people of one race to readily recognize or identify individuals of another.

It is not bias or bigotry, the researchers say, that makes it difficult for people to distinguish between people of another race. It is the lack of early and meaningful exposure to other groups that often makes it easier for us to quickly identify and remember people of our own ethnicity or race while we often struggle to do the same for others.

That racially loaded phrase “they all look alike to me,” turns out to be largely scientifically accurate, according to Roy S. Malpass, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Texas at El Paso who has studied the subject since the 1960s. “It has a lot of validity,” he said…

Read the entire article here.

One Drop of Love at Smith College

Smith College
Hallie Flanagan Theater, Theatre Green Room
122 Green Street
Northampton, Massachusetts 01063
Friday, 2015-09-18 and Saturday, 2015-09-19 (Two Performances!)
19:00-21:00 EDT (Local Time)

One Drop of Love is a multimedia solo performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, incorporating filmed images, photographs and animation to tell the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the United States and how it affects our most intimate relationships.

Performance followed by a Q & A.

Co-sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Smith College Theater Department, and the Wurtele Center for Work and Life.

Raising Mixed Kids: Family Workshop with Sharon Chang

Hapa-palooza Festival 2015
Heartwood Community Cafe
317 E. Broadway
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Saturday, 2015-09-19, 18:00-20:00 PDT (Local Time)

Sharon H. Chang, author, scholar, sociologist and activist
Multiracial Asian Families

How do we have transformative race conversations with multi-racial children when most grownups aren’t even able to so with each other? Is it possible to create an environment for mixed children that leaves them liberated, informed, and empowered to make change? Research shows children as young as 6 months old are able to categorize people by race. By 4 and 5-years-old children have used racial reasoning to discriminate against their peers. Studies also shows children’s biased attitudes are not directly correlated to those of their parents and caregivers. That’s because our children see and hear everything and racism is woven into the very fabric of society. But what does all this mean for mixed race children growing up across racial boundaries? How can we raise multiracial kids to feel good about themselves in a raced world? Please join Hapa-palooza Festival and parent educator Sharon H. Chang for the North American launch of her new book, Raising Mixed Race, and to dialogue on ways we can healthily talk about race with our mixed children at a time in their lives when it’s most critical.

For more information, click here.

Is Hawaii a Racial Paradise?

Zócalo Public Square
2015-09-15

Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., Associate Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies
Arizona State University

Nitasha Sharma, Associate Professor of African-American Studies and Asian-American Studies
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

David A. Swanson, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Riverside

Lee A. Tonouchi (“Da Pidgin Guerilla”)
Hawaii

Roderick Labrador, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies
University of Hawaii, Mānoa (also Director of the UCLA Hawaii Travel Study Program)

Maile Arvin, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies
University of California, Riverside

Races, Ethnicities, and Cultures Mix More Freely Than Elsewhere in the U.S., But There Are Limits to the Aloha Spirit

Early in the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jason Segal, playing a guy who travels to Hawaii to get over a breakup, drunkenly pours out his feelings to two people in his hotel, a newlywed man and a bartender. The new husband encourages Segal to think there’s still hope for the relationship, but the bartender, Dwayne, has no sympathy for Segal’s sadness.

“You’ve gotta move on,” Dwayne says. “It’s that easy, I promise you it is. I lived in South Central. South Central. And I hated it. So I moved to Oahu. Now I can name you over 200 different kinds of fish!” He starts naming them.

The scene is hilarious, but it also hints at one of America’s fundamental Gordian knots—race—and the various ways we’ve tried to untie it. The story uses Los Angeles’ “South Central” neighborhood as a code word for a place where gangs are divided along color lines, racial tensions can erupt in violence, and residents feel stuck in the cycle. The implication is that Dwayne, who’s black, escaped all that by coming to Hawaii. He puts forth Hawaii as a paradise—a place where the only thing he has to worry about is learning how to pronounce Humuhumunukunukuapua`a.

Hawaii is one of America’s most diverse and happiest states. Some would contend people get along better here than almost anywhere else. But tossing different groups together also means there are frictions—ones that perhaps are too often are obscured by the sunshine and ukuleles in tourist guides.

So what’s the actual nature of racial relations in Hawaii? And what can the rest of us learn from it? In advance of the “What It Means to Be American” event “What Can Hawaii Teach America About Race?,” we asked a variety of experts on and off the islands that same question…

Read the entire article here.

Biases in the Perception of Barack Obama’s Skin Tone

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy
Volume 14, Issue 1, December 2014
pages 137–161
DOI: 10.1111/asap.12061

Markus Kemmelmeier, Professor of Sociology
University of Nevada, Reno

H. Lyssette Chavez
University of Nevada, Reno

White Americans higher in prejudice were less likely to vote for Barack Obama than other Americans. Recent research also demonstrated that supporters and opponents of Mr. Obama engaged in skin tone biases, i.e., they perceive Mr. Obama’s skin tone as lighter or darker in line with more positive or negative views of him. Across two studies we hypothesized that skin tone biases occur as a function of two independent sources: racial prejudice, which is always related to skin tone bias, and political partisanship, which is related to skin tone bias primarily during elections. Study 1 assessed perceptions of Mr. Obama’s skin tone shortly before and after the 2008 Presidential election, and shortly after the first inauguration. Study 2 assessed perceptions in the middle of his first term, immediately prior to the 2012 Presidential election, and 1 year into his second term in office. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that partisan skin tone bias was limited to the election period, whereas prejudice-based skin tone biases occurred independent from any election.

Read or purchase the article here.

Do Children See in Black and White? Children’s and Adults’ Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals

Child Development
Published Online: 2015-08-28
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12410

Steven O. Roberts
Department of Psychology
University of Michigan

Susan A. Gelman, Heinz Werner Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Linguistics
University of Michgan

Categorizations of multiracial individuals provide insight into the development of racial concepts. Children’s (4–13 years) and adults’, both White (Study 1) and Black (Study 2; N = 387), categorizations of multiracial individuals were examined. White children (unlike Black children) more often categorized multiracial individuals as Black than as White in the absence of parentage information. White and Black adults (unlike children) more often categorized multiracial individuals as Black than as White, even when knowing the individuals’ parentage. Children’s rates of in-group contact predicted their categorizations. These data suggest that a tendency to categorize multiracial individuals as Black relative to White emerges early in development and results from perceptual biases in White children but ideological motives in White and Black adults.

Read or purchase the article here.

Penn Lightbulb Café Presents ‘Fatal Invention: Re-creating Race in Genomic Era’

World Cafe Live Upstairs
3025 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Tuesday, September 15, 18:00-19:00 EDT (Local Time)

Dorothy Roberts, Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor; George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology, Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, Professor of Africana Studies, and director of the Program on Race, Science and Society
University of Pennsylvania

After the human genome was mapped, there was an unexpected resurgence of scientific interest in genetic differences between races. Some scientists are defining race as a biological category written in our genes, while the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries convert the new race science into race-based products, such as race-specific medicines and ancestry tests. Professor Roberts argues that the genetic interpretation of race is not only mistaken but also masks the continuing impact of racism in a supposedly post-racial society. Instead, she calls for affirming common humanity by working to end social inequities supported by the political system of race.

The talk is part of the Penn Lightbulb Café free public-lecture series presented by Penn Arts & Sciences and the Office of University Communications that takes arts, humanities and social-sciences scholarship out of the classroom for a night on the town. Each hour-long talk begins at 6 p.m., and the presentation will be followed by an audience Q&A. Café events are free and open to the public. Food and beverages will be available for purchase. Seating is limited.

For more information, click here.

Color-Blindness Is Counterproductive

The Atlantic
2015-09-13

Adia Harvey Wingfield, Professor of Sociology
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri

Many sociologists argue that ideologies claiming not to see race risk ignoring discrimination.

How many times have you heard someone say that they “don’t see color,” “are colorblind,” or “don’t have a racist bone in their body?” Maybe you’ve even said this yourself. After all, the dominant language around racial issues today is typically one of colorblindness, as it’s often meant to convey distaste for racial practices and attitudes common in an earlier era.

Many sociologists, though, are extremely critical of colorblindness as an ideology. They argue that as the mechanisms that reproduce racial inequality have become more covert and obscure than they were during the era of open, legal segregation, the language of explicit racism has given way to a discourse of colorblindness. But they fear that the refusal to take public note of race actually allows people to ignore manifestations of persistent discrimination.

For the first half of the 20th century, it was perfectly legal to deny blacks (and other racial minorities) access to housing, jobs, voting, and other rights based explicitly on race. Civil-rights reforms rendered these practices illegal. Laws now bar practices that previously maintained racial inequality, like redlining, segregation, or openly refusing to rent or sell real estate to black Americans. Yet discrimination still persists, operating through a combination of social, economic, and institutional practices…

Read the entire article here.