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Religious Freedom In Faith-Based Educational Institutions In The Wake Of 'Obergefell V. Hodges': Believers Beware, Charles J. Russo

Charles J. Russo

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s fateful words, uttered in response to a question posed by Justice Samuel Alito during oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges,² likely sent chills up the spines of leaders in faith-based educational institutions, from pre-schools to universities. In Obergefell, a bare majority of the Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions in the United States. Verrilli’s words, combined with the outcome in Obergefell, have a potentially chilling effect on religious freedom. The decision does not only impact educational institutions—the primary focus of this article—but also a wide array of houses of worship. Other religiously affiliated …

Racial Glass Ceilings, Gendered Responses: Taiwanese American Professionals' Experiences Of Otherness, Chien-Juh Gu

Chien-Juh Gu

Constructing A Shared Identity In Deeply Divided Societies, John M. Nagle

John M Nagle

In order to bolster sustainable peacebuilding in violently divided societies, a normative suggestion is that efforts should be made to construct a shared public identity that overarches ethnic divisions. A number of different centripetal/transformationist processes are identified as engendering a shared identity in comparison to consociational arrangements, which are accused of institutionalizing ethnic differences and perpetuating conflict. These transformationist approaches essentially rest on the premise that since ethnicity is constructed it can be reconstructed into new shared forms. Looking at Northern Ireland, we argue there are limits to the extent that ethnicity can be reconstructed into shared identities. By analysing …

The Myth Of The White Minority, Andrew Pierce

Andrew J. Pierce

In recent years, and especially in the wake of Barack Obama’s reelection, projections that whites will soon become a minority have proliferated. In this essay, I will argue that such predictions are misleading at best, as they rest on questionable philosophical presuppositions, including the presupposition that racial concepts like ‘whiteness’ are static and unchanging rather than fluid and continually being reconstructed. If I am right about these fundamental inaccuracies, one must wonder why the myth of the white minority persists. I will argue that by re-envisioning whites as a minority culture struggling against a hostile dominant group, and by promoting …

Reconstructing Race: A Discourse-Theoretical Approach To A Normative Politics Of Identity, Andrew Pierce

Andrew J. Pierce

This paper aims to get clear on the normative implications of the idea that race is a “social construction,” not just for political practice in non-ideal societies where racial oppression remains, but in “ideal” (presumably non-racist) societies as well. That is, I pursue the question of whether race and/or racial identity would have any legitimate place in an ideally just society, or to state it another way, whether the concept of race can be extricated from the history of racial oppression from which it arose. The position I defend is a version of what has come to be called a …

Exposing Whiteness In Higher Education: White Male College Students Minimizing Racism, Claiming Victimization, And Recreating White Supremacy, Nolan L. Cabrera

Nolan L. Cabrera

This research critically examines racial views and experiences of 12 white men in a single higher education institution via semi-structured interviews. Participants tended to utilize individualized definitions of racism and experience high levels of racial segregation in both their pre-college and college environments. This corresponded to participants seeing little evidence of racism, minimizing the power of contemporary racism, and framing whites as the true victims of multiculturalism (i.e. ‘reverse racism’). This sense of racial victimization corresponded to the participants blaming racial minorities for racial antagonism (both on campus and society as a whole), which cyclically served to rationalize the persistence …

The Problem With Similarity: Ethnic Affinity Migrants In Spain, David Cook-Martín, Anahi Viladrich

David Cook-Martín

Politics that give a privileged migratory or citizenship status to individuals abroad because of presumed common origins with a granting state’s people foster the expectation that ethnic affinity facilitates social and economic integration. However, a growing literature has documented a mismatch between the social and the economic expectations of people defined as co-ethnics by these policies. Relying on a study of Spanish-descent Argentines who have ‘returned’ to Spain, we argue that the effect of perceived ethnic affinities varies by social context. While ethnic similarity with natives may offer an advantage to migrants in search of housing or educational opportunities, it …

Towards A Bibliography Of Critical Whiteness Studies, Tim Engles

Tim Engles

As the title implies, this book offers a multi-disciplinary overview of the explosion of work in scholarly critical whiteness studies. The contributing bibliographers acknowledge that this work follows and builds upon a great deal of whiteness critique previously provided by African American writers, and by those writing from other racialized positions. Each section provides a solid introduction to key concepts and practices regarding whiteness in a particular field, including: philosophy, history, literature, cinema, the visual arts, psychology, education, media studies, qualitative inquiry, personal narratives, and international and comparative approaches.

The Color Of Crime: The Case Against Race-Based Suspect Descriptions, Bela August Walker

Bela August Walker

Law enforcement in the United States relies on racial identifiers as a crucial part of suspect descriptions. Unlike racial profiling, this practice is regarded as both an essential tool for law enforcement and as an unproblematic use of race. However, given the racial history of the United States, such descriptors, particularly “Black,” have developed in such a way to create an extremely large and unreliable category. Due to these factors, the use of race as a physical descriptor in suspect decisions is both discriminatory and inefficient. Employing race as an identifying characteristic allows law enforcement officers broad discretionary powers that …