Keep the Change, You Filthy Animal

Hatred ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 239-277
Author(s):  
Berit Brogaard
Keyword(s):  
Hard Work ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Far Right ◽  
New Members ◽  
White American ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Working People ◽  
Agrarian Communities ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Far-right supporters paint a rosy image of the luxurious lifestyle of the 1950s white middle-class families or the Southern family living in peaceful agrarian communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In each imagined society traditional white American families lead satisfying, stress-free lives, which they built through honest hard work. The traditional values they embraced offered clear guidance on how to move up in society through hard work and willpower, unburdened by people of color, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, homeless, or other “inferior free-riders.” This American Phantasy lies at the core of the nefarious ideology that underpins white nationalism in America today and makes far-right extremists look down on non-whites with dehumanizing contempt and explode in hateful fits of rage when they don’t acknowledge their “proper place” in society. The newfound confidence of far-right extremists is partially due to the fact that the president refuses to condemn their hate crimes, but also to the ease of recruiting new members among hard-working people who tire in their struggle against the tide and young people who are increasingly likely to harbor vulnerable dark personalities, making them so thirsty for accolade that extremists specializing in ego-stroking have a good chance of recruiting them.

Alternatives to Coming Out Discourses

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuzhen Huang
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Queer Of Color Critique ◽  
Queer People ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Queer Of Color

The discourse of coming out has historically served as an effective vehicle to build and sustain the LGBTQ movement in the United States. It has also been utilized as an empowering resource that enables queer people to establish a queer identity organized around self-awareness and self-expression. However, queer of color critique and transnational queer theory argue that the prevalent discourse of coming out is built on a particular kind of queer experience and geography, which is usually from the standpoint of White, middle-class men of urban U.S. citizenship and is rarely derived from the experience of queer people of color and non-Western queer subjects. Taking an intersectional perspective, Snorton interrogates the racialization of the closet and proposes a sexual politics of ignorance—opposed to the disclosure imperative in coming out discourse—as a tactic of ungovernability. Centering the experience of Russian American immigrants who are queer-identified, Fisher proposes a fluid and productive relationship between the “closeted” and the “out” sexuality that resists any fixed categorization. Focusing on the masking tactic deployed by local queer activists, Martin theorizes the model of xianshen, a local identity politics in Taiwan that questions the very conditions of visibility in dominant coming out discourse. As a decolonial response to the transnational circulation of coming out discourse, Chou delineates a “coming home” approach that emphasizes familial piety and harmony by reining in and concealing queer desires. Being cautious against the nationalist impulse in Chou’s works, Huang and Brouwer propose a “coming with” model to capture the struggles among Chinese queers to disidentify with the family institution. These alternative paradigms serve as epistemic tools that aim to revise understanding of queer resistance and queer relationality and help people to go beyond the imagination of coming out for a livable queer future.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Seymour
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Future Thinking ◽  
Future Health ◽  
The Poor ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Ecological Values ◽  
Social Environmental

This concluding chapter maintains that queer ecological values are more aligned with futurity and future-thinking, particularly when it comes to combating corporate greed and social/environmental injustice, even as it highlights the fact that a lack of concern for the future more accurately characterizes regimes such as heteronormativity and global capitalism: while they may operate out of concern for the reproduction of the white, middle-class heterosexual family or for the accumulation of wealth, they also ignore their immediate and future costs to the poor, to people of color, to the environment, and even to themselves. The kind of queer ecological futurity thus posited here is, instead, ethically attuned to the present and future health and safety of the biosphere as it encompasses the human, the non-human, and everything in between.

scholarly journals A Critical Review of Bilingual Education in the United States: From Basements and Pride to Boutiques and Profit

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 14-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Flores ◽  
Ofelia García
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Immersion Programs ◽  
Middle Class Families

ABSTRACTIn this article we connect the institutionalization of bilingual education to a post–Civil Rights racial formation that located the root of educational inequalities in the psychological condition of people of color in ways that obscured the structural barriers confronting communities of color. Within this context, bilingual education was institutionalized with the goal of instilling cultural pride in Latinx students in ways that would remediate their perceived linguistic deficiencies. This left bilingual educators struggling to develop affirmative spaces for Latinx children within a context where these students continued to be devalued by the broader school and societal context. More recent years have witnessed the dismantling of these affirmative spaces and their replacement with two-way immersion programs that seek to cater to White middle-class families. While these programs have offered new spaces for the affirmation of the bilingualism of Latinx children, they do little to address the power hierarchies between the low-income Latinx communities and White middle-class communities that are being served by these programs. We end with a call to situate struggles for bilingual education within broader efforts to combat the racialization of Latinx and other minoritized communities.

scholarly journals Is Friendship Political in the Land of Opportunity? How Conservative Values Affect Helping Behavior towards Friends

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adèle Fantasia
Keyword(s):  
General Social Survey ◽  
Helping Behavior ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Dyadic Relationships ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
American Society ◽  
Conservative Values ◽  
The Relationship

Individualism operates as a dominant ideology in American society, so how does individualism pervade both people’s larger views on society as well as their dyadic relationships? Do world views about the value of hard work and if people deserve help permeate the private sphere in tangible ways? I propose a relationship between individualistic tendencies and the frequency with which individuals help their friends and family who are feeling depressed. I hypothesize that the more the respondent believes that those in need have to learn to take care of themselves, the less frequently they will help a relative, friend, or neighbor who is a bit down or depressed by talking to them. I also hypothesize that the more the respondent believes that people get ahead by their own hard work, the less frequently they will engage in this helping behavior. Finally, I hypothesize that the more conservative the respondent is, the less frequently they will engage in this helping behavior. I test the relationship between these typically conservative values and helping behavior using a sample of 828 respondents from the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS) dataset, controlling for gender, race, age, and education. Results from bivariate and OLS regression analyses report that there is no statistically significant relationship between conservative values and helping behavior, so the hypotheses are not supported. Instead, two control variables impact the dependent variable. Gender has the strongest effect on the frequency with which one helps a relative, friend, or neighbor who is feeling depressed, followed by race. On average, women and people of color engage in more helping behavior.

Race and Disability: From Analogy to Intersectionality

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Frederick ◽  
Dara Shifrer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Minority Model

Sociologists are using intersectional lenses to examine an increasingly wider range of processes and identities, yet the intersection of race and disability remains a particularly neglected area in sociology. Marking an important step toward filling this gap, the authors interrogate how race and disability have been deployed as analogy in both disability rights activism and in critical race discourse. The authors argue that the “minority model” framework of disability rights has been racialized in ways that center the experiences of white, middle-class disabled Americans, even as this framework leans heavily upon analogic work likening ableism to racial oppression. Conversely, the authors examine the use of disability as metaphor in racial justice discourse, interrogating the historic linking of race and disability that gave rise to these language patterns. The authors argue that this analogic work has marginalized the experiences of disabled people of color and has masked the processes by which whiteness and able-bodiedness have been privileged in these respective movements. Finally, the authors argue that centering the positionality of disabled people of color demands not analogy but intersectional analyses that illuminate how racism and ableism intertwine and interact to generate unique forms of inequality and resistance.

Resisting Camelot

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-51
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul R. deGuzman
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
White Flight ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Homeowner Associations ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The City

For generations white middle-class residents of the Valley, a longtime symbol of post-WWII suburbia, have attempted to break away from the City of Los Angeles. By the end of the 20th century, the secession campaign brought together homeowner associations, business leaders, and small government libertarians. During a period of massive global migration that transformed the city into an immigrant metropolis, this coalition successfully placed secession on the November 2002 municipal ballot. Critics of secession decried Valley independence as latter day white flight and a means to curtail the growing political power of Latinas/os. This article complicates previous studies that solely focus on the tactical failures of white secessionists, and rather unearths the genesis and impact of grassroots people of color organizing both in the Valley and across the rest of Los Angeles.

The Spatial Reproduction of Inequality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon C.C. Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
The Other ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
American Cities ◽  
Reproduction Of Inequality

Chapter 5 turns to a more immutable element of biography that also defines the typical do-it-yourselfer: most are white, middle-class men and thus operate from a position of considerable privilege in society, including in public space and in interactions with authority. People of color and people from low-income communities, on the other hand, are heavily disincentivized from participating in activities that skirt legal boundaries due to common societal prejudices and inequality. Some informal urbanisms occur in communities worldwide (and among under-served communities in certain contexts), but members of legally vulnerable groups in American cities are less likely to break the law to make local streetscape improvements, even though their communities often need official investment. Interventions by privileged do-it-yourselfers and the cultural values they represent, while more appealing to authorities, can provoke unwelcoming receptions and unintended consequences in the communities they aim to improve.

Enraged, Rattled, and Wronged

2021 ◽  
pp. 176-217
Author(s):  
Kristin J. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Resistance To Change ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Dominant Group ◽  
White People ◽  
Group Position ◽  
Working People ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Divide And Rule

Chapter 6 explores the backlash to social progress by the entitled. Dominant group members are not accustomed to being bossed around. They tend to be ill-equipped to adapt to changing circumstances, and their resistance to change comes in many forms, with a range of consequences to themselves and others. Dominant group members are both highly sensitive to criticism and object to being sidelined. The history of divide and rule by elites toward poor and working people begins Chapter 6. This history helps us understand why a less-educated working- or middle-class White person comes to share a sense of the same group position to that of wealthy and influential Whites rather than working- or middle-class people of color. Some White people have so internalized their superiority over people of color, that even Whites who are in economic distress support legislation and politicians that have no intention of aiding them. They reject government assistance that they desperately need, they refuse to sign up for the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) because they believe that these initiatives help undeserving minorities. These White people are dying of Whiteness. And politicians capitalize on this White racial resentment. The entitled resentment of those who feel their superior status is undermined manifests in various ways. White fragility and fragile masculinity are emotionally hyperbolic reactions by dominant group members when they are asked to acknowledge the existence of racism and sexism.

The Production of National Racial Innocence

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-110
Author(s):  
Joanna Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
American Christianity ◽  
White American ◽  
Mormon Tabernacle Choir ◽  
Moral High Ground ◽  
Taking Responsibility

Since when and on what grounds have white American Christians declared themselves innocent of the sins of their generations? When did white American Christianity excuse itself from grappling with the most serious and far-reaching human abuses to make as its object instead the perpetuation of an undisturbed and unchallenged hold on continuity and capital? This chapter examines how mass media contributed to the production of white racial innocence by featuring spectacles of white patriotism and “wholesomeness” including, prominently, Mormon performing acts. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Osmonds enacted a spectacle of innocence that normalized anti-Black racism as an unremarkable element of a “wholesome” morality. Their performances engaged audiences in a silent agreement to “forget” racism and to claim a moral high ground without taking responsibility for the oppression of people of color.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 152-156
Author(s):  
Peter Charles Hoffer ◽  
Williamjames Hull Hoffer
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
Narrow Band ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Great Capacity ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Working People ◽  
New Nation ◽  
New Generation

Almost evenly divided in numbers and talent at the start of the crisis, in 1782 the revolutionary bar and the loyal bar faced vastly different futures. The revolutionary lawyers had stepped into the role of constitution drafters and lawgivers. Their lives, fortunes, and honor were enhanced by their part in the Revolution. Having a “vested interest in making sure the new nation succeeded” they fashioned an American republican law, a concept of public engagement, adorned with categories of fundamental liberties and rights that had great capacity for expansion. Though originally confined to a narrow band of the citizenry, time, sacrifice, and a growing sense of inclusiveness would, eventually, expand a male, white, entrenched, and propertied governing class to include women, people of color, working people, and newcomers. A second achievement was a little more self-serving. The revolutionary lawyers’ participation in the new confederated and state governments set a pattern, a precedent if you will, of a public role for lawyers outside of the courts. When a new generation of lawyers passed the bar and began practicing,...

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