The good ol’ days: White identity, racial nostalgia, and the perpetuation of racial extremism

A prevailing theme in White nationalist rhetoric is nostalgia for a time when Whites dominated American culture and had unchallenged status. The present research examines a form of collective nostalgia called racial nostalgia and its association with negative intergroup attitudes and extreme ideologies (White nationalism). In Studies 1 and 2, racial nostalgia was associated with higher racial identity, anti-immigrant attitudes, and White nationalism. Study 2 revealed that racial nostalgia was related to extreme ideologies, in part, through perceptions that immigrants and racial minorities posed realistic/symbolic threats. Study 3 manipulated nostalgia using a writing prompt (“America’s racial past” vs. “games of America’s past”) and an identity prime (prime vs. no prime). Racial nostalgia was higher in the racial prompt versus the games prompt condition, regardless of identity prime. Furthermore, there were significant indirect effects of the nostalgia manipulation on support for anti-immigrant policies and endorsement of White nationalism through increased racial nostalgia and its association with perceived threats. These findings show that racial nostalgia can be a maladaptive form of collective nostalgia linked to a sense of loss and threat, and can make people sympathetic to extreme racial ideologies.

Talking more and saying less: White parents’ discussions of race-related current events before and after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

This study presents a detailed qualitative analysis of the racial ideologies White parents of adolescents communicate to their children in the context of discussions of race-related current events. Two samples of White parents of adolescents ages 14-17 were recruited online in September 2019 (Study 1, N = 124) and June 2020 (Study 2, N = 104), respectively. Parents responded to prompts about race-related current events, and their answers were coded. Rates of discussion of race-related current events in 2020 were double that of 2019; however, qualitative analysis revealed that White parents in the 2020 sample communicated fewer clear messages about race and Whiteness to their children. Socialization messages relating to Whiteness were rare in both samples.

The Myth of the Latin American Race Monolith: Notes for Future Comparative Research on Racial Inequality in the Americas

It has become common to compare racial inequality in the United States with a “Latin American” pattern of racial inequality in which egalitarian racial ideologies mask stark socioeconomic inequalities along racial lines. However, relatively few comparative studies exist attempting to analyze variations in degrees of racial inequality in the Americas. To stimulate further research in this area, the following study analyzes census data on racial inequality in unemployment rates, educational attainment, homeownership rates, and income in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States. The results suggest that while Brazil is similar to the United States in displaying large levels of racial inequality in the areas measured, Cuba and Puerto Rico display significantly lower levels of racial inequality and Colombia falls in between, undermining conceptions of a monolithic Latin American racial system.

#ChinaMustexplain: Global Tweets, COVID-19, and Anti-Black Racism in China

One of the consequences of the emergence of COVID-19 has been the glaring racial and ethnic disparities that have defined the course of the spread of the virus. As a recent migrant-minority community in China, the Black community’s experience has been defined by vulgar racism, exploitation, and stigmatization. In the context of COVID-19, the Black community in China was again a target of multiple racial projects which sought to label their bodies as diseased and physical presence as a threat to the viability and safety of the Han majority. The global response was to mobilize online to expose how the Chinese government is systematically facilitating discriminatory policies against Black migrants in China. In the present paper, we explore how Twitter was utilized to mobilize awareness about anti-Black racism in China. We first present a brief history of African migration to China and then discuss the Han racial ideologies that are inspiring the anti-Black racism. We then use latent Dirichlet allocation as a topic modeling algorithm to extract underlying themes to discuss how anti-Black racism in the COVID-19 context was framed and subsequently challenged by the global community. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion on COVID-19 and the future of the Black community in China.

Remixing Resilience: A Critical Examination of Urban Middle School Learning Environments among Resilient African American Learners

This study examines a sample of African American students attending urban middle schools in a Southern city, and considers their perceptions of learning environments within mathematics classrooms. This study concluded that variables like Academic Self-Concept, Mathematics Anxiety, Satisfaction, Involvement, and Academic Aspiration varied significantly among higher and lower performing students. These variables are informed by the classic resilience literature on learning environment that tends to be less culturally affirming. In an effort to move resilience theory away from racial ideologies, we reconceptualize resilience as a cultural trait common among African American learners that should not be conceptualized dichotomously nor hierarchically

Developing a Conceptual Framework of Black Women’s Gendered Racial Identity Development

Previous research has identified contextual factors that influence gendered racial identity development among Black women. Less is known about the specific process of Black women’s gendered racial identity development and the meaning Black women ascribe to their gendered racial identity. In the current study, we sought to identify phases of this process and the types of gendered racial ideologies that Black women endorse during their identity development. Drawing on intersectionality and Black feminist theory, we analyzed the data to center these findings within the unique sociocultural context of Black women’s experiences. A total of 19 Black women at a large, predominantly White Southeastern public university participated in semi-structured individual interviews about their gendered racial identity development. Using constructivist grounded theory to guide our data analysis, we found four phases of the developmental process (hyperawareness, reflection, rejection, and navigation), each of which was influenced by various factors unique to Black women’s intersectional experiences. We also found six gendered racial ideologies (assimilation, humanist, defiance, strength, pride, and empowerment), which represent Black women’s values, beliefs, and attitudes toward their gendered racial identity. We found that Black women utilized aspects of their gendered racial identity in ways to protect themselves from gendered racism and intersectional oppression. Researchers, practitioners, educators, and policy makers can utilize this conceptual framework to increase their critical awareness of the complexity of Black women’s gendered racial identity development.

A Black British Racial Formation

This chapter uses the Indies mentality to relearn British racial discourse, focusing on Julius Soubise, the Afro-British assistant of celebrity fencing master Domenico Angelo. During his own lifetime, Soubise's celebrity rivaled that of his better remembered Afro-British contemporaries, Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho. Soubise's “life geography” overflowed the borders of the Black Atlantic: born in Saint Kitts, he grew up in London and spent the last two decades of his life in Calcutta. The chapter first details his time in London, where he catalyzed tropologies of Eastern royalty in order to fashion himself as a “Black Prince,” thereby carving out a racialized but still exalted place for himself in the beau monde. It then follows Soubise to Calcutta, tracing how his racial self presentation altered in his journey from metropole to colony, from the circum-Atlantic to India. While British ideas about race certainly traveled from the former to the latter, India's colonial racial formation was also shaped by Mughal precedents. Indeed, aspects of the subcontinent's Indo-Persian racial formation even migrated westward through imperial networks, influencing the evolution of racial ideologies in the British Atlantic world.

Re-mediating designs for equity: making commitments concrete

Purpose The design narrative details how the authors systematically and concretely adapted the design of afterschool club for children and pre-service teachers to respond to the increasingly explicit racism in US political discourse that fueled Trump’s election and coinciding forms of evading race. Design/methodology/approach The purpose of this paper is to present a design narrative focused on tensions around evading race in our after-school program for predominantly Latinx children and White pre-service teachers; how the authors re-mediated the material, ideational and relational resources of the program to address the tension; and the effects of our re-mediation on the adaptation of the program and how this shaped pre-service teachers’ engagement with children’s racialized experiences. Findings Re-mediating the design of ideational, relational, and material resources in the afterschool club allowed the designers to address how racial ideologies of color evasiveness limited opportunities for trust and mutual learning between the predominantly White preservice teachers and Latinx children. Research limitations/implications The paper describes how concerns with equity emerged and were addressed in a program in a particular place and time for particular people. It offers a systematic view into the inner-workings of designing for equity and why people’s lived experiences, history and social practices around engaging with processes of racialization and power matter for the design of learning. Practical implications The design narrative suggests practical implications including the need to develop coursework and practicum experiences that support pre-service teachers’ and educators’ study of how power, enacted through racial ideologies of color evasiveness and other forms of epistemic violence, frames and materially impacts our interactions with children from non-dominant groups. Social implications Two social implications from the design narrative include the following: the need to deepen the understandings of the past and present, proud and violent, histories of minoritized communities to organize consequential learning; and the need to recruit more students of color into the programs recognizing that it alone is not adequate for enacting educational justice. Originality/value As designers working toward equity, the authors must hold lightly onto their designs, be willing to let go of features that no longer serve the goals and develop new approaches that can help them achieve them. The authors must also attend seriously to the critiques offered by our youth-partners so that they can better support their learning and desires for the future.

“He’s a South Korean When He’s Running with You, and He’s a North Korean When He’s Running after You”

Through a carefully contextualized analysis of Samuel Fuller’s 1951 film The Steel Helmet, this chapter illuminates several tropes that circulated in contemporaneous US depictions of the Korean War: an interracial group of US soldiers, a Korean orphan, and enemy soldiers who disguise themselves as refugees and routinely violate other rules of war. In this movie are the remnants of a prior racial ideology that had demonized the entire Japanese population during World War II and the emergence of a new one that emphasized lawfulness as the primary criteria that could distinguish between subjects of color—both American and Asian—who were loyal and those who posed a threat. As this film demonstrates, the integration of the US military, and particularly the incorporation of Japanese American and African American soldiers into formerly all-white units, became vital during the Korean War to US assertions of its own ethical superiority over the Communist enemy, as was its soldiers’ humanitarian commitment to protecting Korean civilians—especially orphans. Ultimately, this chapter demonstrates how The Steel Helmet both crystallizes the emergent racial ideologies of US Cold War liberalism—especially their legalistic aspects in regards to war and their espousal of military multiculturalism—and then shatters them.

Conjuring Abolition Phonography in A Record Album Interpretation

The Wooster Group’s 2017 The B-Side: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” A Record Album Interpretation has three actors reanimate a 1965 vinyl LP of prison work songs. This formally simple production embeds a series of almost imperceptible shifts between past and present, thus “interinanimating” the men on the record and the men onstage, conjuring an “abolition phonography”: a mode of sensory (dis)formation that short-circuits the racial ideologies of the senses and points towards a collective future.