scholarly journals Dismantling Purity: Toward a Feminist Curdling of Hawaiian Identity

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
L Brooke Rudow-Abouharb
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Western European ◽  
Racial Identity Formation ◽  
Definition Of

This paper explores Hawaiian racial identity formation using María Lugones’s metaphor of curdling as a guiding theme. I aim to show that the accepted definition of “native Hawaiian” is based on a purity model of race that serves to undermine the unity of the Hawaiian Nation. I begin by outlining the pre-contact understanding of Hawaiian identity. This conception of identity was subsequently altered through various political agendas to fit within a Western/European notion of “pure” racial identity. I argue that continuing to use the imposed definition of “native Hawaiian” makes the fragmentation of Hawaiian identity and society difficult to overcome. Additionally, I offer a discussion of the gendered rhetoric of some Hawaiian activists that complicates the effort to regain a precolonial cultural identity that was largely egalitarian. Finally, I suggest that a rejection of racial purity and a rearticulation of Hawaiian identity that recaptures pre-contact, strategic notions of belonging by way of Lugones’s “impure resistance” can set the stage for a more inclusive Hawaiian Nation.

scholarly journals Self-Abdication and Otherness in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assia Mohdeb ◽  
Sofiane Mammeri
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Racial Passing ◽  
The Core ◽  
Class Discrimination ◽  
The Subject ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of

Identity, in one of its understanding, signifies a set of characteristics that make up a person’s ethical faithfulness to, identification with, and pride of one’s origin, tradition, and culture. Remaining true to one’s identity and being faithful to the core values of one’s culture is a complicated matter when it comes to a black living in white society like America, where color and racial identity are rudimentary prerequisites in self-definition and naming. Philip Roth’s novel entitled The Human Stain (2000) shows how some black figures undress their black identity to wear the prestigious white one to go onward with life as full selves, to have access to all the privileges the whites enjoy, and, above all, to live without the specter of race and the decisiveness of epidermal signs. The novel calls into question and revision such essentialist notions as other, class,andrace by describing the crises the subject or self undergoes in the light of racial prejudices, center-periphery relations, and class stereotypes. The present paper, then, addresses the act of self-abdication the protagonist, Silk Coleman, carries out to overstep the feeling of otherness and to dodge racial discrimination. The paper looks into the notions of selfhood and Otherness by negotiating the definition of the self and the distortion it undergoes in its encounter with the Other . The study aims at revealing, primarily, the effects of Black racial-passing, a common phenomenon in American society of the first half of the twentieth century, on familial relationships and cultural heritage. It also reveals the weight of gender and class discrimination in the individual’s identity formation and well-being.

“WHITENESS” IN CONTEXT

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jorge Ballinas ◽  
James D. Bachmeier
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
State Level ◽  
Community Survey ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Mexican Origin ◽  
Racial Identification ◽  
Racial Context ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Racial Identity Formation

Abstract Using data from the 2008–2016 American Community Survey, we compare the racial identification responses of the Mexican-origin population residing in California to their counterparts in Texas, the two states with the largest and most established Mexican-origin populations. We draw on existing theory and research in order to derive a theoretical account of state-level historical mechanisms that are likely to lead to varying patterns of racial identification within the two states and a set of propositions predicting the nature of this variation. Results indicate that the Mexican-origin population in Texas is substantially more likely to claim White racial identification than their counterparts in California, even after accounting for factors related to racial identity formation. Further analysis indicates that this result is robust and buffets the notion that the historical development of the racial context in Texas has engendered a present-day context in which “Whiteness” carries a distinctive social value, relative to California’s ethnoracial context, and that this social value is reflected in the ways in which individuals of Mexican origin respond to race questions on U.S. Census surveys.

COLOR CAPITAL, WHITE DEBT, AND THE PARADOX OF STRONG WHITE RACIAL IDENTITIES

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew W. Hughey
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Identity Management ◽  
White Racial Identity ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Racial Projects ◽  
Racial Identity Formation

AbstractThis article examines how meaning is made of White racial identity by comparing two White racial projects assumed antithetical—White nationalists and White antiracists. While clear differences abound, they make meaning of Whiteness and racial “others” in surprisingly similar ways. Racial identity formation is structured by understandings of Whiteness as dull, empty, lacking, and incomplete (“White debt”) coupled with a search to alleviate those feelings through the appropriation of objects, discourses, and people coded as non-White (“Color capital”). Drawing from in-depth semi-structured interviews, fourteen months of ethnographic observations, and content analysis, this article demonstrates how the prevailing meanings of Whiteness, not their antithetical political projects or material resources, enable racial identity management. By examining seemingly antithetical White formations, the article illuminates not only striking differences but how divergent White actors similarly negotiate the dominant expectations of Whiteness.

Socio-Psychological Processes in Racial Identity Formation: A Case Study of the Autobiographies of African American and Latino/a Activists

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-205
Author(s):  
Monica M. White
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
Racial Knowledge ◽  
Racial Identity Formation

This essay explores the social-psychological processes of racial identity formation. As a result of an analysis of the autobiographies of African American and Latino/a activists, a distinct trajectory in the development of racial identity around three sources of racial knowledge is proposed: (1) kinship networks; (2) hegemonic influences; and (3) direct experience. These findings suggest a fluid, complex process of racial identity formation contrary to assumptions that racial formation is fixed, static and formulaic.

Sites of Sanctuary: Examining Blackness as “Something Fugitive” Through the Tactical Use of Ethnic Clubs by Haitian Immigrant High School Students

2021 ◽  
pp. 074355842110282
Author(s):  
Fabienne Doucet ◽  
David E. Kirkland
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Third Space ◽  
School Students ◽  
Third Space Theory ◽  
Black Adolescent ◽  
Racial Identity Formation

In this theoretical article, the authors elaborate a revisited theory of Third Space from a BlackCrit/Afropessimist stance, exploring Black youth ethnic and racial identity formation searching for place and belonging in the context of a raced world. To illustrate their theoretical contributions, the authors draw on empirical research conducted with Haiti-born and U.S.-born Haitian immigrant high school students and their teachers. They argue that, as Third Space, Haitian ethnic clubs were sites of sanctuary where students felt free to challenge, play with, and question complex ideas about racial identity, sites of resistance to test and exercise resistance against demoralizing forces, sites of fluidity for Black adolescent development, and sites for regulating and protecting Blackness. Thus, Third Space Theory from a BlackCrit perspective can offer an anti-racist approach to capturing how Black youth become aware of contradictions and ambivalence in the worlds they inhabit and their acceptance of situations where ambivalence helps in their learning and also their survivance.

scholarly journals Contested Citizenship: The Dynamics of Racial Identity and Social Movements

1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (S3) ◽  
pp. 159-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony W. Marx
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Relative Deprivation ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
State Agents ◽  
Racial Identity Formation ◽  
Related Process

While scholarly discussions of citizenship, social movements and racial identity-formation have generally remained distinct, these social institutions and processes are intimately connected. Official policies of exclusion from citizenship according to race have drawn boundaries solidifying subordinated racial identity, which then forms the basis for collective action in response to shifting state policies. Forms of domination are thus two-edged; exclusion of officially specified groups has the unintended consequence of defining, legitimating and provoking group identity and mobilization, forging struggles for inclusion between state agents and emerging political actors. This dynamic has generally been overlooked by those theorists of social movements, who have focused on relative deprivation, resource mobilization and responses to political opportunities, without explaining the related process of identity formation.

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