COLOR CAPITAL, WHITE DEBT, AND THE PARADOX OF STRONG WHITE RACIAL IDENTITIES

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew W. Hughey

AbstractThis article examines how meaning is made of White racial identity by comparing two White racial projects assumed antithetical—White nationalists and White antiracists. While clear differences abound, they make meaning of Whiteness and racial “others” in surprisingly similar ways. Racial identity formation is structured by understandings of Whiteness as dull, empty, lacking, and incomplete (“White debt”) coupled with a search to alleviate those feelings through the appropriation of objects, discourses, and people coded as non-White (“Color capital”). Drawing from in-depth semi-structured interviews, fourteen months of ethnographic observations, and content analysis, this article demonstrates how the prevailing meanings of Whiteness, not their antithetical political projects or material resources, enable racial identity management. By examining seemingly antithetical White formations, the article illuminates not only striking differences but how divergent White actors similarly negotiate the dominant expectations of Whiteness.

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (suppl 4) ◽  
pp. 1540-1547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Aparecida Baggio ◽  
Rosilene Berres ◽  
Bruna Penteado Silva Gregolin ◽  
Solange Aikes

ABSTRACT Objective: to understand the introduction of the School Health Program in the city of Cascavel, Paraná State, as opposed to the report of nurses. Method: a qualitative study with fifteen participants. The data were collected from April to August 2015, through semi-structured interviews, analyzed by content analysis and thematic modality. Results: the category “Introduction process” of the School Health Program integrates the subcategories “Identified health problems” and the “Challenges of intersectoriality”. The program was implemented quickly, with a fragile training of professionals to perform in the phases that compose it. Structural conditions of schools, human and material resources, and emerging intersectoral interaction were identified obstacles. The integration of the health, school, and family constitutes the program’s potentiality. Final considerations: it is understood that the actions of the program were based on health assessments of students, and it is necessary for professionals and managers to discuss and analyze the obstacles identified to achieve all the proposed objectives.


Author(s):  
Jorge Ballinas ◽  
James D. Bachmeier

Abstract Using data from the 2008–2016 American Community Survey, we compare the racial identification responses of the Mexican-origin population residing in California to their counterparts in Texas, the two states with the largest and most established Mexican-origin populations. We draw on existing theory and research in order to derive a theoretical account of state-level historical mechanisms that are likely to lead to varying patterns of racial identification within the two states and a set of propositions predicting the nature of this variation. Results indicate that the Mexican-origin population in Texas is substantially more likely to claim White racial identification than their counterparts in California, even after accounting for factors related to racial identity formation. Further analysis indicates that this result is robust and buffets the notion that the historical development of the racial context in Texas has engendered a present-day context in which “Whiteness” carries a distinctive social value, relative to California’s ethnoracial context, and that this social value is reflected in the ways in which individuals of Mexican origin respond to race questions on U.S. Census surveys.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
L Brooke Rudow-Abouharb

This paper explores Hawaiian racial identity formation using María Lugones’s metaphor of curdling as a guiding theme. I aim to show that the accepted definition of “native Hawaiian” is based on a purity model of race that serves to undermine the unity of the Hawaiian Nation. I begin by outlining the pre-contact understanding of Hawaiian identity. This conception of identity was subsequently altered through various political agendas to fit within a Western/European notion of “pure” racial identity. I argue that continuing to use the imposed definition of “native Hawaiian” makes the fragmentation of Hawaiian identity and society difficult to overcome. Additionally, I offer a discussion of the gendered rhetoric of some Hawaiian activists that complicates the effort to regain a precolonial cultural identity that was largely egalitarian. Finally, I suggest that a rejection of racial purity and a rearticulation of Hawaiian identity that recaptures pre-contact, strategic notions of belonging by way of Lugones’s “impure resistance” can set the stage for a more inclusive Hawaiian Nation.


2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-205
Author(s):  
Monica M. White

This essay explores the social-psychological processes of racial identity formation. As a result of an analysis of the autobiographies of African American and Latino/a activists, a distinct trajectory in the development of racial identity around three sources of racial knowledge is proposed: (1) kinship networks; (2) hegemonic influences; and (3) direct experience. These findings suggest a fluid, complex process of racial identity formation contrary to assumptions that racial formation is fixed, static and formulaic.


2021 ◽  
pp. 074355842110282
Author(s):  
Fabienne Doucet ◽  
David E. Kirkland

In this theoretical article, the authors elaborate a revisited theory of Third Space from a BlackCrit/Afropessimist stance, exploring Black youth ethnic and racial identity formation searching for place and belonging in the context of a raced world. To illustrate their theoretical contributions, the authors draw on empirical research conducted with Haiti-born and U.S.-born Haitian immigrant high school students and their teachers. They argue that, as Third Space, Haitian ethnic clubs were sites of sanctuary where students felt free to challenge, play with, and question complex ideas about racial identity, sites of resistance to test and exercise resistance against demoralizing forces, sites of fluidity for Black adolescent development, and sites for regulating and protecting Blackness. Thus, Third Space Theory from a BlackCrit perspective can offer an anti-racist approach to capturing how Black youth become aware of contradictions and ambivalence in the worlds they inhabit and their acceptance of situations where ambivalence helps in their learning and also their survivance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-326
Author(s):  
Hannah B. Bayne ◽  
Danica G. Hays ◽  
Luke Harness ◽  
Brianna Kane

We conducted a content analysis of counseling scholarship related to Whiteness for articles published in national peer-reviewed counseling journals within the 35-year time frame (1984–2019) following the publication of Janet Helms’s seminal work on White racial identity. We identified articles within eight counseling journals for a final sample of 63 articles—eight qualitative (12.7%), 38 quantitative (60.3%), and 17 theoretical (27.0%). Our findings outline publication characteristics and trends and present themes for key findings in this area of scholarship. They reveal patterns such as type of research methodology, sampling, correlations between White racial identity and other constructs, and limitations of White racial identity assessment. Based on this overview of extant research on Whiteness, our recommendations include future research that focuses on behavioral and clinical manifestations, anti-racism training within counselor education, and developing a better overall understanding of how White attitudes and behaviors function for self-protection.


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