The Roots of Racialized Travel Behavior

Transportation inequities, particularly in the United States, result in part from historical and contemporary racism in planning, policy, urban development, decision making, and societal institutions. They have limited the mobility and access to opportunity for Black, Indigenous, and people of color, and shaped the ways that they travel. This chapter reviews the literature on racial and ethnic identity in travel behavior, examining the history and claims of transportation injustice. The chapter explores the barriers that historically marginalized communities experience as a result of disproportionate policing, safety and security issues, and neighborhood othering and belonging—that is, inviting suspicion because a person appears to be “out of place” in a neighborhood. It concludes by making the case for why transportation planners must consider race and racism explanatory factors in travel and why race-neutral planning processes exacerbate disparities.

Linguistic Identity with Special Reference to Western Hindi Dialects

Linguistic identity is the common bond that people share when they can understand each other in their native tongues, even if they share no other common heritage. Linguistic identity gets trickier when you’re talking about two people who may share linguistic bonds but come from mutually hostile ethnic groups. With racial and ethnic identity, linguistic identity does not exist in isolation; it is frequently yet one more facet of how a person identifies. There’s what we might call “reverse linguistic identity.” As Boas demonstrated over a century ago, everyone has at least three independent identities: race (in the traditional, not the anthropological sense), culture, and language. Language (or linguistic) identity take to mean the speech community with which someone is identified. This is probably always a historical phenomenon, either of birth or of personal choice. Most subjects to personal choice are culture and language, for instance, a given person identifies with, or belongs to a particular culture, and speaks a particular language. These identities may be due to birth or socialization, or they may be the result of a deliberate choice NOT to identify with the language and culture of birth. Linguistic identities are double-edged swords because, while functioning in a positive and productive way to give people a sense of belonging, they do so by defining an “us” in opposition to a “them” that becomes all too easy to demonize. All identity markers of a social group together constitute the “culture” or cultural identity of the social group. Therefore, the loss of one marker does not automatically entails the loss of cultural identity. Given the rich multilingual tradition of India where languages act as facilitators rather than as barriers in communication, one hopes that as linguistic identity. This paper is a case study of the author’s inferences regarding the Western Hindi dialects analysis.

“First Thing When I Walk Through the Door, I Am a Black Woman”: Pilot Study Examining Afro-Caribbean Women's Racial and Ethnic Identity

Hybrid identity theory was utilized to understand how race and ethnicity were perceived from the perspective of Afro-Caribbean women living in the U.S. Thematic analysis revealed four themes: (1) inability to understand African Americans’ experiences, (2) feelings of racial and gender bias, (3) racial pride in the Black community, and (4) ethnic pride in the Caribbean community as a protective factor. Findings indicate that women's observed racial role distancing was a fluid process where women moved freely between ethnic difference and racial togetherness depending on their perceptions of racial stereotypes among the African American community. Clinical implications are offered.

Considerations for using race and ethnicity as quantitative variables in medical education research

Throughout history, race and ethnicity have been used as key descriptors to categorize and label individuals. The use of these concepts as variables can impact resources, policy, and perceptions in medical education. Despite the pervasive use of race and ethnicity as quantitative variables, it is unclear whether researchers use them in their proper context. In this Eye Opener, we present the following seven considerations with corresponding recommendations, for using race and ethnicity as variables in medical education research: 1) Ensure race and ethnicity variables are used to address questions directly related to these concepts. 2) Use race and ethnicity to represent social experiences, not biological facts, to explain the phenomenon under study. 3) Allow study participants to define their preferred racial and ethnic identity. 4) Collect complete and accurate race and ethnicity data that maximizes data richness and minimizes opportunities for researchers’ assumptions about participants’ identity. 5) Follow evidence-based practices to describe and collapse individual-level race and ethnicity data into broader categories. 6) Align statistical analyses with the study’s conceptualization and operationalization of race and ethnicity. 7) Provide thorough interpretation of results beyond simple reporting of statistical significance. By following these recommendations, medical education researchers can avoid major pitfalls associated with the use of race and ethnicity and make informed decisions around some of the most challenging race and ethnicity topics in medical education.

The Smartest Girl in the World: Normalizing Intellectualism through Representations of Smart Latinx Youth on Stage

In a 2017 interview about her new play The Smartest Girl in the World, Miriam Gonzalez offers, “I’d like to sort of normalize difference.” In the play, Lizzy and her older brother Leo are essentially on a journey to become the smartest children in the world. Unlike much US Latinx dramatic literature for youth, The Smartest Girl in the World does not paint the racial and ethnic identity of the youth as a problem, nor does it reify stereotypes of undereducated, apathetic Latinxs. Rather, the play offers young people a look at young Latinx intellectuals who never question their smartness in relation to their ethnic and racial identity. This chapter explores The Smartest Girl in the World as an example of positive representations of Latin@ characters and families and specifically Latinx youth who celebrate their smartness. The chapter engages theory around Latinx youth identity development, culturally responsive pedagogy, and audience reception to examine how this play specifically and theatre in general may impact Latinx youth who see themselves represented in a legitimate space.

Uniquely Okinawan

This study explores the planning considerations of the United States military in formulating and implementing policy for the occupation of Okinawa from April 1945 to July 1946. American soldiers, Marines, and sailors on Okinawa encountered not only a Japanese enemy, but a large local population. The Okinawans were ethically different from the Japanese, yet Okinawa shared politics with Japan as a legal prefecture. When devising occupation policies, the United States military analyzed practical military considerations such as resources, weapons capability and terrain, as well as attempted to ascertain a conclusive definition of Okinawa’s relation to Japan through conscious, open, rational analysis of racial and ethnic identity. While the Marines held steadfast to the image of the enemy civilian, soldiers’ ideas about the race, ethnicity, and identity of the Okinawans evolved through their interactions with the civilians on the battlefield. As the population exhibited obedience and cooperation, the Army expressed feelings of kinship toward the civilians and reshaped its military government policies toward leniency. With the exception of the Marines, the U.S. military recognized the Okinawans as competent and civilized: a group that formed a distinct, separate, unique ethnic community that was neither American nor Japanese in its likeness. Considerations of race, ethnicity, and identity by the Americans deeply influenced the conduct of the occupation beyond practical concerns of resources and battlefield conditions. The mercurial nature of the identity of the Okinawans displays both the malleability of race and ethnicity and its centrality in occupation planning.