‘African gangs’ in Australia: Perceptions of race and crime in urban neighbourhoods

Late in 2016, Melbourne experienced what was referred to in the media as the Moomba ‘riot’. This event led to a racialised political and media campaign regarding the problem of ‘African gangs’. Despite no evidence of actual gang activity, the backlash against black migrants in Melbourne was consequential with increases in reported racism and institutionalised forms of discrimination. In this study, we examine the neighbourhood context of exclusion against African Australians following the Moomba ‘riot’. Using census and crime data integrated with survey data from 2400 residents living in 150 urban neighbourhoods, we interrogate the relationship between sentiments (measured as anger) towards Africans and perceptions of neighbourhood crime and disorder. We further consider whether quality contact with Africans and neighbourhood cohesion mediates this relationship. We conclude with reflections on the significant and deleterious effects of the ‘black and criminal’ association on understandings of ‘Africanness’ in Australia.

“La Gente pide que estén los Senegaleses”: Negociaciones en una ciudad turística de la Patagonia Argentina

Resumen: Puerto Madryn, ciudad patagónica en expansión, es un destino elegido por migrantes senegaleses en el verano, para mejorar las ganancias del comercio ambulante, una práctica laboral que genera conflictos y negociaciones con sectores de la sociedad receptora. “Para entender las relaciones urbanas, hay que comprender las burocracias que las rigen y los medios de comunicación que las representan” sostiene Perelman (2017: 13). En esta etnofotografía indago en el modo articulado en que Inspección municipal y el periódico El Chubut custodian un modelo de ciudad de servicios y turismo dominante en Puerto Madryn, “amenazado” con la llegada de migrantes negros que venden en el sector costanero y representan una “anomalía socio-urbana” que los sectores dominantes buscan corregir, aplicando mecanismos de control social del campo de la contravencionalidad y de la objetivación discursiva. La disputa por el acceso a la ciudad también involucra decisiones y resistencias que los migrantes ejercen según las posibilidades y haciendo un uso estratégico de los recursos disponibles.Palabras clave: Ciudad patagónica argentina. Etnofotografía. Imaginarios urbanos. Relaciones urbanas. Agencia migrante "PEOPLE ASK FOR SENEGALESE PRESENCE": NEGOTIATIONS IN A TOURIST CITY IN PATAGONIA Abstract: Puerto Madryn, a growing city in Argentinian Patagonia, is a destination chosen by Senegalese migrants to improve the profits of their street vending in summer. This is a labor practice that lead to conflict and negotiations with sectors of the receiving society. "To understand urban relations, we must understand the bureaucracies that govern them and the media that represent them" says Perelman (2017: 13). Through an ethnophotography I analyze the articulations between the Municipal Inspection and the newspaper El Chubut to guard a dominant city model of services and tourism in Puerto Madryn. This model is “threatened” since the arrival of black migrants who sell in the coastal sector and represent a “socio-urban anomaly” that the dominant sectors seek to correct by applying mechanisms of social control, of the field of contraventionality and discursive objectification. The struggle over access to the city also involves migrants’ decisions and resistance according to existing possibilities and making an strategic use of available resources.Keywords: Argentinian Patagonian city. Ethnophotography. Urban imaginaries. Urban relationships. Migrant agency.

Burning Down the House

This chapter examines the Ku Klux Klan’s influence in the state and its focus on black migrants. Organized in the 1920s, as part of the second Klan, California’s Invisible Empire sought to purge what members saw as un-American elements. By the 1940s the state’s Klan had an explicit focus on black homeowners; cross burnings and arson became commonplace, and a coalition of activists pushed local and state authority for protection that rarely materialized. The 1945 murder of the family of O’Day Short, an engineer at the Kaiser Steel mill in Fontana, marked the beginning of a terrifying wave of violence specifically aimed at families like the Shorts who had dared to cross the color line

Introduction

The introduction uses Ruby McKnight Williams’s story after her arrival in California in the 1930s to present the themes and arguments of the book. Williams’s shock at the extent of segregation in her new home aligned with the experience of other black migrants and the introduction places her history in the context of black migration to the state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An overview of Jim Crow’s genesis during the era of statehood and the Gold Rush is followed by a discussion of African American resistance and the ways black bodies refused to follow the dictates of segregation. Organized resistance to black codes and antiblack practices put black Californians at the center of the state’s—and sometimes the nation’s—contestations over Jim Crow. An overview of the chapters is included.

Black migrants in Brazilian and South African tabloids: Representations on the Global South

This work investigates how Afro-migrants are represented within a Brazilian and a South African tabloid in terms of race and ethnicity. It also employs scorpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to analyse verbal language. Results suggest that the two newspapers represent black migrants in the light of criminality, either as victims or perpetrators. They often place migrants as beneficiaries of charity, especially in the Brazilian case, and more as perpetrators in the South African case. Passivization of migrants is noticeable in both tabloids; however, the Brazilian outlet resorts mostly to reported speech and editing of the migrants’ voices while the South African offers them either freer speech or silencing. Ultimately, Afro-Latin philosophical principles such as self-determination and empathetic zeal are often times neglected across many depictions.