Four Principles for Cultivating Alternate Cultural Paradigms in Psychology: Summary Reflections on Innovative Contributions

The contributors to this special issue have demonstrated the potency and promise of cultivating Alternate Cultural Paradigms (ACPs) in psychology that reflect and express the lived realities of non-White communities in America. Based on my past research engagement with several distinct American Indian and First Nations communities, I offer for consideration four principles for psychologists who seek to further cultivate ACPs: (a) attend independently to culture and power, (b) anchor conceptual abstractions in empirical examples, (c) complicate stock oppositions and essentialisms, and (d) integrate emancipation with application. Adoption of these four principles should assist with the development of robust ACPs that accurately reflect the lived experiences of non-White communities. The promotion of these in psychology represents the exciting possibility for a more just and equitable future in which the injuries of White racism are remedied and all Americans are granted equal opportunities to live and thrive in self-determined fashion.

The Legal Construction of the Notion of Anti-White Racism in France

This article focuses on the legal construction of the notion of anti-White racism in France. By analyzing cases litigated under criminal law, it describes how a right-wing NGO has been promoting this notion via a litigation strategy since the late 1980s, initially with only limited success. Public debates in mainstream media in the 2000s and intervention by more traditional antiracist NGOs in courts have since contributed to a creeping acceptance of anti-White racism both within courtrooms and in broader public discourse. This increased recognition of anti-White racism is highly problematic from a critical race and critical Whiteness perspective.

“Diversity is a code word. And what it means is white genocide!”

Although the language of extreme nationalism has been well-investigated, no studies have been concerned with the cinematic representation of racism. This article discusses the most prominent rhetorical strategies employed by neofascist characters in four race-related movies. Adopting a CDA perspective, it examines instances of hate speech targeted at minorities and identifies how immigrants and other social groups are constructed as antagonistic. Direct verbal attacks against minorities were found to be particularly humiliating due to the recurrent use of racial slurs, culture-specific stereotypes, directives and contemptuous remarks targeting the immigrants’ background. Deemed to possess an innate inclination to criminality, immigrants were presented as a threat to white rights, jobs and public safety. Modern multicultural environments, resembling dystopias, were characterised as the ideal places within which unlawfulness could thrive. The government was held responsible for abandoning the native population that was inflicted by ‘anti-white racism’. Finally, xenophobia and antisemitism intersected with gender-related bias.

Abdias Nascimento and Brazilian Politics

The 2016 impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and the decisions by new President Temer require us to focus on the life and work of Abdias Nascimento. Temer’s actions remind us that the recent efforts of Brazilian governments to be more racially inclusive and egalitarian have not been consolidated and that policies such as affirmative action, the teaching of Afro-Brazilian history and culture, and racial quotas in the public sector are at risk. Nascimento dedicated his life to fighting against White racism in Brazil and promoting government policies to improve social, economic, and political opportunities for Afro-Brazilians. He witnessed and experienced racial discrimination in his own life and observed various responses to it. Nascimento decided that he would denounce it, fight against it, organize Afro-Brazilians to empower themselves, and campaign for a racially inclusive, democratic, and prosperous country. He lived to see the early implementation of some of his policies. Nonetheless, he recognized that 500 years of White racism would not be defeated easily.

Understanding White Nationalism in American Politics

This article analyzes the contribution of Ronald Walters to the development of white nationalism as a theory of white subjugation and domination of African Americans in the post–civil rights era. It also discusses why his work has been ignored by political science scholarship on the subject, and the relationship between white nationalism and white racism.

Conclusion

Chapter 6 provides a reflection of the findings of the book. A story of recent resistance to the marginalization of people of color in the community provides the framework. Resistance to white racism and appropriated histories are a framework for understanding how people of color claimed their civil rights for the last two hundred years. The chapter concludes with a proposal for an affirmative action program in the heritage industry.

Playing the “Lady Sambo”

In the post–Civil War South, black women litigants made conscious tactical appeals to white male judges’ racism, particularly the racist-sexist stereotypes at the heart of the white paternalism ethos, in order to win lawsuits against whites who defrauded them. African American women’s arsenal of legal strategies included the “Lady Sambo,” an intentional racialized gender performance of feigned ignorance. By performing the “Lady Sambo”—an ignorant, servile black woman in need of protection—some poor black women mobilized their expertise in white racism to defend their economic rights. In a white-dominated society predicated upon the denial of black rights, freedom, and dignity, poor black women seeking justice in civil court cases had to employ resistance strategies that did not openly challenge white authority. In white paternalism, a cultural mainstay of the postbellum South, poor black women discerned and wrested an opportunity to covertly resist economic racism. Unable to attenuate or eradicate structural racism, black women treated racism as a weakness that, at times, made whites vulnerable to manipulation. As long as judges’ legal decisions left the white male power structure intact, some black women were the potential beneficiaries of jurists’ racial paternalism ethos. While whites imagined themselves as controlling paternalistic exchanges with blacks, black people engaged whites as conscious actors drawing on a keen understanding of white people’s supremacist self-perceptions and projections onto blacks. When possible, black women exploited white racism to their advantage and white judges’ racial paternalism ethos occasioned such exploitation. In so doing, black women earned their legal victories by acting intentionally and with savvy.

Conclusion

This chapter evaluates the gains won by black military service in the Civil War. Black soldiers won formal citizenship that was undermined by pervasive white racism, which impacted the ways in which laws related to citizenship and black rights were administered and interpreted. It looks at the relationship that black service created between black veterans and the US government, as well as between African Americans who came under direct federal purview and the federal government. It explains why African Americans considering serving the US in subsequent conflicts have faced the same dilemma that black men faced during the Civil War – why fight for a country that mistreats members of your community?