Mixed Race Studies

Masculinity and whiteness in the construction of the Brazilian Republic

Agência FAPESP: News Agency of the São Paulo Research Foundation
2013-06-12

José Tadeu Arantes

Sexual discipline and whitening of the population were the guidelines of the conservative modernization promoted by the elite, affirms study

Agência FAPESP – Masculinity and whiteness were the ideals of the Brazilian elite at the end of the 19th century — ideals that represented rejection of Brazil’s colonial and monarchical past and the mixed-race heritage of its people and defining a model of sexual discipline and whitening on which to build the Brazil of the future.

From the perspective of this elite, which was at once conservative and modern, the past and the people were associated with nature, instincts and backwardness. The model that inspired the elite was the idealized portrait of more developed countries in Europe and the United States. That idea is the main thread of the book “The Desire of a Nation” by Richard Miskolci, professor in the Department of Sociology at the Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar) and coordinator of the study group “Bodies, Identities and Subjectivations,” which brings together several Brazilian universities.

The book, which was the result of post-doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in 2008 and a FAPESP Research Grant, also received funding from FAPESP for publication. The book explores how the desires and fears of this elite promoted the transition from a monarchy to a republic and the conservative modernization of the country.

“It investigated the national ideas running against the grain through analysis of the specters that haunted our elite: from fear of Negros, which after abolition became a fear of common people, to sexual anxieties and gender, which threatened the project of building a nation based on the idealized image of Europe,” commented Miskolci, who is currently a visiting professor at the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz…

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A big fish or a small pond? Framing effects in percentages

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Volume 122, Issue 2, November 2013
pages 190–199
DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.07.003

Meng Li, Assistant Professor
Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences
University of Colorado Denver

Gretchen B. Chapman, Professor of Psychology
Rutgers University

This paper presents three studies that demonstrate people’s preference for a large percentage of a small subset over a small percentage of a large subset, when the net overall quantity is equated. Because the division of a set into subsets is often arbitrary, this preference represents a framing effect. The framing effect is particularly pronounced for large percentages. We propose that the effect has two causes: A partial neglect of the subset information, and a non-linear shaped function in the way people perceive percentages.

Highlights

• We examined framing effects in percentages.
• We explored the functional form of percentage weighting.
• Big percentage of a small subset looms larger than small percentage of a big subset.
• Such effect occurs are more pronounced for percentages greater than 50%.
• The perception of percentages follows a non-linear function.

Read or purchase the article here.

Frizzly Studies: Negotiating the Invisible Lines of Race

Common Knowledge
Volume 19, Number 3 (Fall 2013)
pages 518-529
DOI: 10.1215/0961754X-2281810

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law
Vanderbilt University

Beginning with the assumption that race is a conceptual blur, this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies” argues that race conflates what is plain to see with something that is invisible. Race roots today’s policy decisions in a remote and often imagined past. It blurs agency and overwhelming structural inequality. It is a set of categories that people define for themselves and that, at the same time, others — strangers, neighbors, government officials — relentlessly impose upon them. For four hundred years, the meaning of racial categories in North America has remained unstable. A central question underlying the history of race in the United States is how people could acknowledge the incoherence of racial categories while still structuring their lives, communities, politics, and culture around the idea of race. At a fundamental level, race has functioned as a set of rules and rights—and legal entitlements and disabilities are a primary source of meaning for racial categories. The law provides a starting point for understanding how there could be so much consensus regarding such a blur. Legal decision making is itself a process that blurs what is objective and subjective, scientific and social, precise and penumbral. Taken together, the pervasive fuzziness of race and law ensured the resilience of clear and definable regimes of discrimination and hierarchy.

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UMASS Recognizes Growing Interdisciplinary Study of Black Germans in Academia

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
2013-08-12

Jamal Watson

AMHERST, Mass.—In an effort to recognize a relatively young academic discipline that many in the academy have never heard of before, nearly a hundred students and scholars gathered at Amherst College over the weekend to discuss their research and ideas for how to grow Black German Studies.

This marks the third year that the Black German Heritage & Research Association sponsored the international conference, which highlighted a variety of interdisciplinary topics ranging from Black Germans during the Third Reich to their ongoing presence in German theater.

Like African American, Women and Queer studies, Black German Studies has an admitted social justice focus, says Dr. Sara Lennox, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an early founder of the Black German Studies movement in the U.S.

“We’ve made the field legitimate. You can now do this work and get tenure,” says Lennox, who was chiefly responsible for jumpstarting the Black German Studies concentration at UMASS Amherst. “It’s kind of a burgeoning field and movement. The other thing that’s really cool is there is a pretty strong connection between activism and scholarship and a really strong connection with the experimental … Black Germans talking about their stories.”…

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Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story

Regina Griffin Films, Inc.
2011
102 minutes
color
United States

Regina Griffin, Director

Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story reveals the tragic lives of biracial, bicultural children, unwanted, ignored and forgotten by enemy nations. Imagine being born in a place and time where racism and hatred run rampant, and your mother is white and German and your father is a black American serviceman. Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story tells the painful and personal story of a forgotten piece of world history through eyes of the people who suffered most.

• ŸBest Documentary, American Black Film Festival 2011
• Best Film, Audience Award, African-American Women in Cinema 2011
• HBO Finalist, Martha’s Vineyard Black Film Festival, 2011
• Best Documentary Nominee, Black Reel Awards, 2012