Nobody's free until everybody's free: how feminist identification influences white Americans' willingness to recognize and respond to racial discrimination

The American Dream stems from the inaugural speech of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”(1941). The Four Freedoms envisaged an American society where the freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of movement and the rights to life are enshrined, guaranteed, and accommodated. America has been clouded with numerous yearnings from all angles – politics, academic, economic, among other social upheavals for the enthronement of the Four Freedoms. Literary scholars have diminutively expressed the horrors of African Americans in various forms and shades, and have hopefully waited for the day it will be implemented. This paper attempts to relay the horrors, echoes, and possibilities of the American Dream as expressed by literary scholars, and the mass media. It also attempts to unveil the measures the African Americans have tried to live within the face of the horrors that have attained their existence among the White Americans. The possibilities of their struggles to live above subjugations, oppressions, the Jim Crow Laws, and racial discrimination that have rocked the American society for decades are also within the wavelength of this work.

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SING SHEN VS. SOUTHWOOD

Pacific Historical Review ◽

10.1525/phr.2004.73.3.463 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 73 (3) ◽

pp. 463-494 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

C. BROOKS

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Racial Discrimination ◽

San Francisco ◽

Asian Americans ◽

Mexican Americans ◽

Chinese Immigrant ◽

White Americans ◽

Housing Discrimination ◽

The Family ◽

The Cold War

In 1952 Chinese immigrant Sing Sheng encountered racial discrimination when he tried to purchase a home in the all-white South San Francisco housing tract of Southwood. Sheng, believing that racism could not be the majority sentiment in a democracy, asked white Southwood residents to vote to accept or reject his family. The Shengs lost the unof�cial referendum, but it became national news and created immense sympathy for the family. Many white Americans claimed that housing discrimination against Asian Americans could in�uence Asian nations to reject democracy and embrace communism. The Sheng affair and similar incidents demonstrate that the Cold War improved housing opportunities for California's Asian Americans, even though many whites perceived them as foreign and continued to discriminate against blacks and Mexican Americans.

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Entitlement and Perceived Racial Discrimination: The Missing Links to White Opinions Toward Affirmative Action and Preferential Hiring and Promotion

American Politics Research ◽

10.1177/1532673x18816709 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 47 (2) ◽

pp. 415-442

Author(s):

Maruice Mangum ◽

LaTasha DeHaan

Keyword(s):

Affirmative Action ◽

Racial Discrimination ◽

Conflict Theory ◽

White Americans ◽

National Politics ◽

Racial Resentment ◽

Preferential Hiring ◽

Realistic Group Conflict Theory ◽

Group Conflict Theory ◽

Using Data

This article seeks to explain why some White Americans support affirmative action while others do not. Much of what has been written on White opinions on affirmative action is from an oppositional lens. This analysis seeks to add balance to the ways political science understands White opinions toward affirmative action. In so doing, this study identifies correlates of support for affirmative action not just rationales for opposition. Unlike most studies that examine White opinions by testing one or two theories, we examine the determinants of White opinions by testing several theories and hypotheses simultaneously (stereotypes, racial discrimination, racial resentment, and realistic group conflict theory). Using data taken from the 2004-2005 National Politics Study, we find that many Whites support affirmative action to combat racial discrimination experienced by racial minorities. However, we also find that many of them oppose affirmative action due to a sense of entitlement.

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Colorblindness as Identity: Key Determinants, Relations to Ideology, and Implications for Attitudes about Race and Policy

Sociological Perspectives ◽

10.1177/0731121417719694 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 60 (5) ◽

pp. 866-888 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Douglas Hartmann ◽

Paul R. Croll ◽

Ryan Larson ◽

Joseph Gerteis ◽

Alex Manning

Keyword(s):

Racial Discrimination ◽

Social Distance ◽

White Americans ◽

Social Phenomenon ◽

Representative Survey ◽

Racial Ideologies ◽

The Social ◽

Nationally Representative ◽

Racial Lines ◽

Empirical Implications

Colorblindness is often conceptualized as a set of deeply held but unrecognized ideological tenets. However, we believe that colorblindness has also now become an explicit cultural discourse involving self-conscious claims and specific convictions. To illustrate this point—which has both conceptual and empirical implications—we introduce the notion of colorblindness as identity. We define this concept as subjectively meaningful, self-asserted identification with colorblindness. We use data from a nationally representative survey to explore the social determinants of colorblind identification and assess its relationship to both colorblind ideologies and standard attitudinal measures. We find that a relatively large percentage of Americans across racial lines identify as colorblind. Furthermore, such identification is connected to racial ideologies but not all tenets of colorblind racism. For white Americans, colorblind identification is associated with decreased perceptions of social distance, but not support for policies designed to ameliorate the effects of racial discrimination. We conclude that colorblind identification is a unique social phenomenon, connected to views on race but not always in the ways that existing research would predict. We also suggest directions for further exploration of the depth of colorblindness as an identity form and implications for theorizing colorblind discourse more generally.

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The Complexity of Health Disparities: More Than Just Black–White Differences

Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups ◽

10.1044/2020_persp-20-00199 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

Charles Ellis ◽

Molly Jacobs

Keyword(s):

Health Disparities ◽

Clinical Outcomes ◽

The United States ◽

Careful Examination ◽

White Americans ◽

Speech Language Pathology ◽

Death Rates ◽

The Social ◽

Health Related ◽

Language Pathology

Health disparities have once again moved to the forefront of America's consciousness with the recent significant observation of dramatically higher death rates among African Americans with COVID-19 when compared to White Americans. Health disparities have a long history in the United States, yet little consideration has been given to their impact on the clinical outcomes in the rehabilitative health professions such as speech-language pathology/audiology (SLP/A). Consequently, it is unclear how the absence of a careful examination of health disparities in fields like SLP/A impacts the clinical outcomes desired or achieved. The purpose of this tutorial is to examine the issue of health disparities in relationship to SLP/A. This tutorial includes operational definitions related to health disparities and a review of the social determinants of health that are the underlying cause of such disparities. The tutorial concludes with a discussion of potential directions for the study of health disparities in SLP/A to identify strategies to close the disparity gap in health-related outcomes that currently exists.

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