scholarly journals A White Race Blindness?

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-135
Author(s):  
Sarah Mazouz
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
White Race ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Paradoxical Situation ◽  
The Way

Drawing on observations and on interviews conducted in a préfecture and in a municipalité of the Paris periphery, this article analyzes how republican universalism operates as a “particularizing” tool that enacts Whiteness. Starting from the paradoxical situation in which White state officials are reluctant to engage with the notion of racial discrimination when they are keen to ascribe racial categories to people of color, I argue that race blindness is in fact a form of White blindness to racialization. People of color who subscribe to the ideology of colorblindness tend to adopt a position whereby their loyalty toward the requirement of race blindness is supposed to protect them from suspicions raised by the racialized identity they are assigned to. But in practice, this stance internalizes the way they are viewed by Whites. The article concludes by discussing the link between White race blindness and the failure of republican policies against racial discrimination.

From “Mulatto” to the “One Drop Rule” (1870–1900)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schor
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
White Race ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Mixed Origin ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

This chapter discusses changes in racial categories applied to African Americans in the censuses from 1870 to 1900. At the time of the 1870 census, the schedules offered five choices of “color”: white, black, mulatto, Chinese, and Indian. The instructions for censustakers emphasized the importance of the “mulatto” category, which from that time on explicitly included quadroons and octoroons, and went all the way down the line to the “one drop rule.” The question of unions between members of subordinate groups was not addressed, but this was a secondary concern since the point of the system was to make it impossible for any person of mixed origin to claim membership in the white race. Only from 1900 onward was the question of racial mixing between non-whites formalized by the census.

The Postracial, Postcapitalist Zombie

2018 ◽  
pp. 161-182
Author(s):  
Tim Lanzendörfer
Keyword(s):  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The final chapter of the book discusses the question of race in contemporary zombie fiction. Departing from the observation that many zombie fiction texts insist that the zombie apocalypse will do away with race as a marker of difference, it reads two recent texts against this oft-used trope. Arguing against much recent criticism, it posits that Zone One is best read not as concerned with the history of racial oppression, but as concerned with the way capitalism constructs race as a category useful to it. It concludes by reading Díaz’s “Monstro” as a tale most instructive at the metalevel, for what it tells us about the zombie’s contemporary relation to Haiti on the pervasiveness of racial categories even outside a White-Black dichotomy. It also serves as a point for departure to the Coda, an investigation of the larger valences of zombie fiction.

Everyone Deserves to Live in an Opportunity Neighborhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward G. Goetz
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Housing Choice ◽  
Regional Equity ◽  
Development Initiatives ◽  
The Way

This chapter outlines the points of agreement and disagreement between integrationist and community development approaches to racial justice. The evolution of the debate between these two approaches is summarized. The chapter provides an argument for moving forward and resolving the conflict by focusing on providing people of color with real housing choice but without placing the burden for resolving inequalities on their shoulders. The way forward involves the larger pursuit of racial justice and regional equity, pursuits that are more readily achievable through community development initiatives.

scholarly journals Mostly ‘black’ and ‘white’: ‘Race’, complicity and restitution in the non-fiction of Antjie Krog

Literator ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacomien Van Niekerk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black People ◽  
Partial Answer ◽  
White People ◽  
White Race ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Way

This article analyses the role of ‘race’ in Antjie Krog’s non-fiction trilogy Country of My Skull (1998), A Change of Tongue (2003) and Begging to Be Black (2009). It explores her explicit use of terms such as ‘heart of whiteness’ and ‘heart of blackness’. Claims that Krog essentialises Africa and ‘black’ people are investigated. The article also addresses accusations of racism in Krog’s work. A partial answer to the persistent question of why Krog is so determinedly focused on ‘race’ is sought in the concept of complicity. There is definite specificity in the way Krog writes about ‘white’ perpetrators and ‘black’ victims in South Africa, but her trilogy should be read within the broader context of international restitution discourses, allowing for a somewhat different perspective on her contribution to the discussion of the issue of whether ‘white’ people belong in (South) Africa.

scholarly journals POLÍTICAS DE IDENTIDADE: POSIÇÕES ANTROPOLÓGICAS DIANTE DOS DIREITOS QUILOMBOLAS E DAS COTAS RACIAIS / IDENTITY POLITICS: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON QUILOMBOLAS’ RIGHTS AND RACIAL QUOTAS

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (50) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Hofbauer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
Brazilian Society ◽  
The Way

Propostas para implementar políticas focadas que pretendem combater os efeitos da discriminação racial no Brasil têm provocado muita polêmica na sociedade brasileira. Neste debate, os posicionamentos e as contribuições de antropólogos brasileiros, tanto para a defesa quanto para o questionamento destas políticas de identidade, ganharam destaque. Este artigo propõe-se a analisá-las ao exemplo de dois casos emblemáticos: o dos direitos, garantidos pela Constituição, aos remanescentes de comunidades dos quilombos e o da implementação de cotas raciais em universidades públicas. Especial atenção é dada à maneira como conceitos paradigmáticos do pensamento antropológico – raça, cultura, identidade (etnicidade) – são acionados nas respectivas linhas de argumentação. ABSTRACTProposals to implement targeted policies aimed at combatting the effects of racial discrimination in Brazil have provoked great controversy in Brazilian society. In this debate, perspectives and contributions of Brazilian anthropologists, both in defense and questioning these identity politics, have been widely commented upon. This article proposes to analyze these policies using examples of two representative cases: the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to the remnants of maroon communities (quilombos) and the implementation of racial quotas in public universities. Special attention was given to the way in which paradigmatic concepts in anthropological thought – race, cultural, identity (ethnicity) – are mobilized in these respective lines of argument.

What Is "Your" Race?

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Prewitt
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Color Line ◽  
White Race ◽  
Asian Race ◽  
The Way

America is preoccupied with race statistics—perhaps more than any other nation. Do these statistics illuminate social reality and produce coherent social policy, or cloud that reality and confuse social policy? Does America still have a color line? Who is on which side? Does it have a different “race” line—the nativity line—separating the native born from the foreign born? You might expect to answer these and similar questions with the government's “statistical races,” but this book observes that this is not likely and shows why the way we count by race is flawed. The book calls for radical change. The nation needs to move beyond a race classification whose origins are in discredited eighteenth-century race-is-biology science, a classification that once defined Japanese and Chinese as separate races, but now combines them as a statistical “Asian race.” One that once tried to divide the “white race” into “good whites” and “bad whites,” and that today cannot distinguish descendants of Africans brought in chains 400 years ago from children of Ethiopian parents who eagerly immigrated 20 years ago. Contrary to common sense, the classification says there are only two ethnicities in America—Hispanics and non-Hispanics. But if the old classification is cast aside, is there something better? This book clearly lays out the steps that can take the nation from where it is to where it needs to be. It is not an overnight task—particularly the explosive step of dropping today's race question from the census—but the book argues persuasively that radical change is technically and politically achievable, and morally necessary.

Managing Labor

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-106
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Delton
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Relations ◽  
National Association ◽  
Open Shop ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Labor Management ◽  
Modern Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces industrial relations, which emphasizes reason over “emotion” in dealing with labor. Confronted with the failure of previous approaches, and facing a postwar strike wave and immigration restrictions, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) leaders adopted this more moderate, professional-industrial-relations approach to labor management in the 1920s. Still committed to a union-free workplace, NAM reconceived the open shop as good industrial relations. This paved the way for the employment of “nontraditional” workers, such as women, the disabled, and, later, people of color. While unions remained focused on skilled workers, this more modern approach to management was necessarily inclusive of all employees. Indeed, one of its hallmark features was attention to the social demographics of workforces in order to understand how employees might work better together.

Introduction

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Living World ◽  
Biological Classification ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter argues that modern racial thinking could not have taken the form it did if it had not been able to piggyback, so to speak, on conceptual innovations in the way science was beginning to approach the diversity of the natural world, and in particular of the living world. It also points out an oft-neglected aspect of the scope and aims of the natural and social sciences: the emergence of racial categories, of categories of kinds of humans, which may in large part be understood as an overextension of the project of biological classification that was proving so successful in the same period.

Stories of Servitude

2019 ◽  
pp. 86-124
Author(s):  
Cati Coe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Place Of Origin

Most of the African research participants in northern New Jersey and the Washington DC metropolitan area told stories of deliberate humiliation or diminishment in which their place of origin or Blackness was used against them. Through these interactions and stories about these interactions, African care workers were becoming familiar with American racial categories, in which they were Black, mixed in with stereotypes about Africans as non-human and about immigrants stealing jobs from citizens. These insults incorporated them into American racial categories as “Blacks” and “people of color,” social categories of person that made little sense in their home countries. As a result, African care workers were becoming more sensitive to the experiences of African-Americans. Care workers take stories of racism to be paradigmatic of their experiences in the United States.

“We are not a Mascot”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Heldman
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Consumer Activism ◽  
Stated Goal ◽  
Almost All

This chapter examines all of the national consumer activism campaigns for racial/economic rights for people of color from 2004 – 2014. These 15 campaigns involved racial discrimination, damaging stereotypes, and efforts to secure better working conditions. Almost all of these campaigns were effective in achieving their stated goal. Most of these campaigns strengthened different aspects of democracy by amplifying the political voices of the disenfranchised, furthering protection of minority rights, and preventing encroachment on civil liberties.

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