Language, Race, and Reflexivity

Author(s):  
Adrienne Lo ◽  
Elaine Chun

This chapter reviews research on language and race in the United States, concentrating on two paradigms of research: research focused on linguistic differences and racial discrimination and research focused on ideologies and racialization. It examines several thorny conceptual issues that arise in the first paradigm and that specifically relate to the notion of the ‘ethnolect’, including their labeling, distinctiveness, authenticity, and multidimensionality. It also argues for the importance of a reflexive approach that entails looking at racialized language as an ideological construct and situating processes of racialization across multiple scales of space and time and within structures of power. Such an approach recognizes how processes of racialization, which take place in both scholarly and everyday contexts, often prioritize the perspectives and interests of certain people over those of others.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 215013272110183
Author(s):  
Azza Sarfraz ◽  
Zouina Sarfraz ◽  
Alanna Barrios ◽  
Kuchalambal Agadi ◽  
Sindhu Thevuthasan ◽  
...  

Background: Health disparities have become apparent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. When observing racial discrimination in healthcare, self-reported incidences, and perceptions among minority groups in the United States suggest that, the most socioeconomically underrepresented groups will suffer disproportionately in COVID-19 due to synergistic mechanisms. This study reports racially-stratified data regarding the experiences and impacts of different groups availing the healthcare system to identify disparities in outcomes of minority and majority groups in the United States. Methods: Studies were identified utilizing PubMed, Embase, CINAHL Plus, and PsycINFO search engines without date and language restrictions. The following keywords were used: Healthcare, raci*, ethnic*, discriminant, hosti*, harass*, insur*, education, income, psychiat*, COVID-19, incidence, mortality, mechanical ventilation. Statistical analysis was conducted in Review Manager (RevMan V.5.4). Unadjusted Odds Ratios, P-values, and 95% confidence intervals were presented. Results: Discrimination in the United States is evident among racial groups regarding medical care portraying mental risk behaviors as having serious outcomes in the health of minority groups. The perceived health inequity had a low association to the majority group as compared to the minority group (OR = 0.41; 95% CI = 0.22 to 0.78; P = .007), and the association of mental health problems to the Caucasian-American majority group was low (OR = 0.51; 95% CI = 0.45 to 0.58; P < .001). Conclusion: As the pandemic continues into its next stage, efforts should be taken to address the gaps in clinical training and education, and medical practice to avoid the recurring patterns of racial health disparities that become especially prominent in community health emergencies. A standardized tool to assess racial discrimination and inequity will potentially improve pandemic healthcare delivery.


2020 ◽  
pp. 002087282097061
Author(s):  
Qin Gao ◽  
Xiaofang Liu

Racial discrimination against people of Chinese and other Asian ethnicities has risen sharply in number and severity globally amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This rise has been especially rapid and severe in the United States, fueled by xenophobic political rhetoric and racist language on social media. It has endangered the lives of many Asian Americans and is likely to have long-term negative impacts on the economic, social, physical, and psychological well-being of Asian Americans. This essay reviews the prevalence and consequences of anti-Asian racial discrimination during COVID-19 and calls for actions in practice, policy, and research to stand against it.


2020 ◽  
pp. 073346482097760
Author(s):  
Manka Nkimbeng ◽  
Yvonne Commodore-Mensah ◽  
Jacqueline L. Angel ◽  
Karen Bandeen-Roche ◽  
Roland J. Thorpe ◽  
...  

Acculturation and racial discrimination have been independently associated with physical function limitations in immigrant and United States (U.S.)-born populations. This study examined the relationships among acculturation, racial discrimination, and physical function limitations in N = 165 African immigrant older adults using multiple linear regression. The mean age was 62 years ( SD = 8 years), and 61% were female. Older adults who resided in the United States for 10 years or more had more physical function limitations compared with those who resided here for less than 10 years ( b = −2.62, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [–5.01, –0.23]). Compared to lower discrimination, those with high discrimination had more physical function limitations ( b = −2.51, 95% CI = [–4.91, –0.17]), but this was no longer significant after controlling for length of residence and acculturation strategy. Residing in the United States for more than 10 years is associated with poorer physical function. Longitudinal studies with large, diverse samples of African immigrants are needed to confirm these associations.


2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Skop ◽  
Wei Li

AbstractIn recent years, the migration rates from both China and India to the U.S. have accelerated. Since 2000 more than a third of foreign-born Chinese and 40% of foreign-born Indians have arrived in that country. This paper will document the evolving patterns of immigration from China and India to the U.S. by tracing the history of immigration and racial discrimination, the dramatic transitions that have occurred since the mid-20th century, and the current demographic and socioeconomic profiles of these two migrant groups.


English Today ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Carmen Ebner

Having studied attitudes towards usage problems such as the notorious split infinitive or the ubiquitous literally in British English as part of my doctoral thesis, I was intrigued by the sheer lack of scientific studies investigating such attitudes. What was even more intriguing was to discover that the same field and the same usage problems seem to have received a different treatment in the United States of America. While my search for previously conducted usage attitude studies in Great Britain has largely remained fruitless, besides two notable exceptions which I will discuss in detail below (see Section 3), a similar search for American usage attitude studies resulted in a different picture. Considerably more such studies seem to have been conducted in the US than in Great Britain. On top of cultural and linguistic differences between these two nations, it seems as if they also hold different attitudes towards studying attitudes towards usage problems. Now the following question arises: why do we find such contradictory scientific traditions in these two countries? In this paper, I will provide an overview of a selection of American and British usage attitude studies. Taking into account differences between the American and British studies with regard to the number of usage problems studied, the populations surveyed and the methods applied, I will attempt to capture manifestations of two seemingly diverging attitudes towards the study of usage problems. By doing so, I will provide a possible explanation for the lack of attention being paid to usage attitudes in Great Britain.


Author(s):  
Madeline Y. Hsu

“Living in the margins” considers the lived realities of immigrants’ efforts to foster community, livelihood, and family under exclusion. Birthright citizenship was a key steppingstone to securing some rights in the United States, but still did not protect the American-born from racial discrimination. Asian Americans remained primarily associated with demarcated residential and employment niches that confined their perceived threat, but also facilitated the pooling and sharing of resources necessary for survival in an openly hostile society. Anti-Asian hostilities became institutionalized through laws, government bureaucracies, and social and economic discrimination. The nadir was World War II when Japanese, even American-born citizens, were removed into “relocation camps” as “enemy aliens.”


Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Kennedy ◽  
Chris Hess ◽  
Amandalynne Paullada ◽  
Sarah Chasins,

Abstract Racial discrimination has been a central driver of residential segregation for many decades, in the Seattle area as well as in the United States as a whole. In addition to redlining and restrictive housing covenants, housing advertisements included explicit racial language until 1968. Since then, housing patterns have remained racialized, despite overt forms of racial language and discrimination becoming less prevalent. In this paper, we use Structural Topic Models (STM) and qualitative analysis to investigate how contemporary rental listings from the Seattle-Tacoma Craigslist page differ in their description based on neighborhood racial composition. Results show that listings from White neighborhoods emphasize trust and connections to neighborhood history and culture, while listings from non-White neighborhoods offer more incentives and focus on transportation and development features, sundering these units from their surroundings. Without explicitly mentioning race, these listings display racialized neighborhood discourse that might impact neighborhood decision-making in ways that contribute to the perpetuation of housing segregation.


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zheng Wang ◽  
Kevin Avruch

AbstractThis article traces the course of the Sino-U.S. negotiation in April 2001, to resolve the crisis following the collision of a U.S. surveillance aircraft with a Chinese fighter jet off of China's coast and the subsequent unauthorized emergency landing of the U.S. plane at a Chinese airfield on Hainan Island. The negotiation focused on the Chinese demand for a full apology from the United States and the U.S. resistance to this demand. The article examines the role that culture, particularly linguistic differences, played in the course of the negotiation and its eventual resolution.


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