scholarly journals Diversity, Identity, Oppression: The Construction of “Blackness” in Dear White People

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Laura Schelenz ◽  
Marcel Vondermaßen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Student Life ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
White People ◽  
Theoretical Approaches

Abstract In the series Dear White People (DWP), students at the fictional University of Winchester struggle for racial justice. We analyze how the series treats “race” and racism and how this relates to contemporary debates in the United States. While the series presents an imaginary environment, we recognize strong similarities to actual student life and students grappling with various experiences of oppression including sexual violence. We draw on theories of identity formation (Margalit and Raz; Vondermaßen; Young) and intersectionality (Crenshaw; Collins) to uncover how the series portrays and complicates “Blackness” as an identity-forming experience and as an experience shaped by converging forms of structural discrimination. While we highlight the merit of combining two theoretical approaches (one of identity formation and one of oppression), we note that especially intersectionality helped uncover a major blind spot of the series. Although Black women are at the center of the series and the struggle for racial equality at Winchester, their particular experiences of violence are marginalized in seasons 1–3. This tendency to overlook the experiences of Black women reflects the larger debate around race, racism, and movements for social justice.

Racism at the End of White Christian America

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-32
Author(s):  
Kristopher Norris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
The United States ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Womanist Theology ◽  
White People ◽  
The Many

Chapter 1 engages in social analysis to outline the current racial landscape in churches in the United States. Beginning with our current political and religious moment, it addresses and defines the many layers to the problem of whiteness. Drawing on the work of James Baldwin, womanist theology, and contemporary sociology, this chapter describes whiteness as a process of social and identity formation currently experiencing a crisis of legitimation. This current legitimation crisis has precipitated the phenomenon of colorblindness, which leads white people to see our interests and perspectives as universal, blinds us to our epistemological limitations, and leads to a posture of defensiveness and fragility. The chapter concludes by arguing that whiteness presents itself as a “wicked problem” with no identifiable solution.

scholarly journals #DiminishingDiscrimination: The symbolic annihilation of race and racism in news hashtags of ‘calling 911 on Black people’

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492091927
Author(s):  
Robert E Gutsche ◽  
Xinhe Cong ◽  
Feihong Pan ◽  
Yiyi Sun ◽  
LaTasha DeLoach
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Black People ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
White People ◽  
Symbolic Annihilation ◽  
Black Resistance ◽  
Social Policing

This critical textual analysis examines the symbolic annihilation of race and racisms by the use of hashtags, such as #BBQBecky and #CornerstoreCaroline, in news coverage of White people in the United States who called or threatened to call 911 to report everyday behavior of Black individuals in 2018. This study argues that the use of humorous and virtual hashtags to represent the callers contributed to overall coverage of racially charged incidents in ways that reduced the events’ seriousness in terms of social policing of Black individuals. Collectively, this coverage formed a type of symbolic annihilation of racist interpretations of callers’ acts and Black resistance and meanings embedded within the hashtags themselves.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Color Blind ◽  
American Society ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

The persistence of racial inequality in the United States raises deep and complex questions of racial justice. Some observers argue that public policy must be “color-blind,” while others argue that policies that take race into account should be defended on grounds of diversity or integration. This chapter begins to sketch an alternative to both of these, one that supports strong efforts to address racial inequality but that focuses on the conditions necessary for the liberty and equality of all. It argues that while race is a social construction, it remains deeply embedded in American society. A conception of racial justice is needed, one that is grounded on the premises provided by liberal political theory.

Creating Intersectional Subjects: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Health Science Breastfeeding Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 233264922098109
Author(s):  
Shannon K. Carter ◽  
Ashley Stone ◽  
Lain Graham ◽  
Jonathan M. Cox
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Science ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Race Disparities ◽  
Breastfeeding Policy

Reducing race disparities in breastfeeding has become a health objective in the United States, spurring research aimed to identify causes and consequences of disparate rates. This study uses critical discourse analysis to assess how Black women are constructed in 80 quantitative health science research articles on breastfeeding disparities in the United States. Our analysis is grounded in critical race and intersectionality scholarship, which argues that researchers often incorrectly treat race and its intersections as causal mechanisms. Our findings reveal two distinct representations. Most commonly, race, gender, and their intersection are portrayed as essential characteristics of individuals. Black women are portrayed as a fixed category, possessing characteristics that inhibit breastfeeding; policy implications focus on modifying Black women’s characteristics to increase breastfeeding. Less commonly, Black women are portrayed as a diverse group who occupy a social position in society resulting from similar social and material conditions, seeking to identify factors that facilitate or inhibit breastfeeding. Policy implications emphasize mitigating structural barriers that disproportionately impact some Black women. We contribute to existing knowledge by demonstrating how dominant health science approaches provide evidence for health promotion campaigns that are unlikely to reduce health disparities and may do more harm than good to Black women. We also demonstrate the existence of a problematic knowledge set about Black women’s reproductive and infant feeding practices that is both ahistorical and decontextualized.

scholarly journals Urban specters

2021 ◽  
pp. 026377582110302
Author(s):  
Asha Best ◽  
Margaret M Ramírez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spatial Method ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
Black Life ◽  
The Relationship

In this piece, we take up haunting as a spatial method to consider what geography can learn from ghosts. Following Avery Gordon’s theorizations of haunting as a sociological method, a consideration of the spectral offers a means of reckoning with the shadows of social life that are not always readily apparent. Drawing upon art installations in Brooklyn, NY, White Shoes (2012–2016), and Oakland, CA, House/Full of BlackWomen (2015–present), we find that in both installations, Black women artists perform hauntings, threading geographies of race, sex, and speculation across past and present. We observe how these installations operate through spectacle, embodiment, and temporal disjuncture, illuminating how Black life and labor have been central to the construction of property and urban space in the United States. In what follows, we explore the following questions: what does haunting reveal about the relationship between property, personhood, and the urban in a time of racial banishment? And the second, how might we think of haunting as a mode of refusing displacement, banishment, and archival erasure as a way of imagining “livable” urban futures in which Black life is neither static nor obsolete?

scholarly journals Balancing race, gender, and responsibility: Conversations with four black women in educational leadership in the United States of America

2021 ◽  
pp. 174114322199183
Author(s):  
Natasha N Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Educational Leadership ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Hermeneutic Phenomenology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender

This article focuses on equitable leadership and its intersection with related yet distinct concepts salient to social justice pertinent to women and minorities in educational leadership. This piece is rooted and framed within the context of the United States of America, and the major concepts include identity, equity, and intersectionality—specific to the race-gender dyad—manifested within the realm of educational leadership. The objective is to examine theory and research in this area and to discuss the role they played in this study of the cultures of four Black women, all senior-level leaders within the realm of K-20 education in the United States. This work employed the tenets of hermeneutic phenomenology, focusing on the intersecting factors—race and gender, specifically—that impact these women’s ability and capability to perform within the educational sector. The utilization of in-depth, timed, semi-structured interviews allowed participants to reflect upon their experiences and perceptions as Black women who have navigated and continue to successfully navigate the highest levels of the educational leadership sphere. Contributors’ recounted stories of navigation within spaces in which they are underrepresented revealed the need for more research specific to the intricacies of Black women’s leadership journeys in the context of the United States.

Delegitimizing al-Qaida: Defeating an “Army Whose Men Love Death”

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Mark Long ◽  
Alex S. Wilner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Theoretical Investigation ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recruitment Tool ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
New Social Order

Deterring terrorism is no longer a provocative idea, but missing from the contemporary theoretical investigation is a discussion of how delegitimization might be used to manipulate and shape militant behavior. Delegitimization suggests that states and substate actors can use the religious or ideological rationale that informs terrorist behavior to influence it. In the case of al-Qaida, the organization has carefully elaborated a robust metanarrative that has proved to be remarkably successful as a recruitment tool, in identity formation for adherents, as public apologia and hermeneutic, and as a weapon of war—the so-called media jihad. In the wake of the upheaval of the Arab Spring, al-Qaida and its adherents have redeployed the narrative, promising a new social order to replace the region's anciens régimes. Delegitimization would have the United States and its friends and allies use al-Qaida's own narrative against it by targeting and degrading the ideological motivation that guides support for and participation in terrorism.

Between a Rock and a Hard Past

Contexts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 54-56
Author(s):  
Katharine Gary
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice

In this article, the author compares the May 4th protests on Kent State's campus to the current protests for racial justice across the United States.

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