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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Being In One’S Place: Race, Ontology And The Killing Of Trayvon Martin, Ron Scapp
Being In One’S Place: Race, Ontology And The Killing Of Trayvon Martin, Ron Scapp
Ethnic Studies Review
The killing of Trayvon Martin along with the trial and acquittal of George Zimmerman provoked many discussions and debates: some touching upon painful issues, others just rather painful to listen to or read. What struck me most however were the conversations and opinions about what the killing, trial, and subsequent acquittal meant for our nation. What we came to learn is that the killing, trial and acquittal mean different things to different people. That fact should neither surprise us nor make us hesitant to examine, still further, the complex nature of the Trayvon Martin killing, its aftermath, and the history …
[Review Of] Mentoring Faculty Of Color: Essays On Professional Development And Advancement In Colleges And Universities, By Dwayne Mack, Elwood D. Watson, And Michelle Madsen Camacho, Eds., Marie Sarita Gaytán
[Review Of] Mentoring Faculty Of Color: Essays On Professional Development And Advancement In Colleges And Universities, By Dwayne Mack, Elwood D. Watson, And Michelle Madsen Camacho, Eds., Marie Sarita Gaytán
Ethnic Studies Review
Looking back at my graduate school years, the most vital mentorship I received came in the form of sometimes brutal, but often measured honesty from a small set of trusted advisors and advanced graduate students. Their guidance was critical to my journey because they talked openly about the obstacles they faced in navigating work/life balance, spoke candidly about dealing with unsupportive colleagues, and relayed freely the challenges they encountered in their attempts to gain legitimacy as academics or scholars-in-training. In short, much like the earnest insight shared by the authors of Mentoring Faculty of Color: Essays on Professional Development and …
[Review Of] Angry White Men: American Masculinity At The End Of An Era By Michael Kimmel, Jonathan Grove
[Review Of] Angry White Men: American Masculinity At The End Of An Era By Michael Kimmel, Jonathan Grove
Ethnic Studies Review
A well-established sociologist of masculinities, Michael Kimmel, in his work, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, offers a highly accessible journey through the oxymoron that white men are oppressed by disenfranchised women and minorities. Moreover, Angry White Men argues that their pain and rage is legitimate, though the direction of their anger is not "true." While attacking those with less social capital offers an easier target than the neoliberal policies of the powerful, this process denies the solidarity which could threaten the status quo. Instead, their pain becomes self-fulfilling as these men perpetuate the very …
[Review Of] How To Slowly Kill Yourself And Others In America: Essays By Kiese Laymon, Leslie K. Dunlap
[Review Of] How To Slowly Kill Yourself And Others In America: Essays By Kiese Laymon, Leslie K. Dunlap
Ethnic Studies Review
Social scientists will most likely categorize writer Kiese Laymon's collection of essays as a literary intervention into masculinity studies in our current era: marked by the (seeming) paradox of black presidency and celebrity on the one hand, and the entrenchment of police power over black boys and men on the other. Scholars of history and literature might situate Laymon in political and literary traditions stretching from tum-of-the-twentieth century "race men" to the work of feminists of color in our time, noting his acknowledgements to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison (12).1 With its Mississippi setting and sensibility, …
[Review Of] H. Samy Alim And Geneva Smitherman. Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, And Race In The U.S., Lisa Doris Alexander
[Review Of] H. Samy Alim And Geneva Smitherman. Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, And Race In The U.S., Lisa Doris Alexander
Ethnic Studies Review
In his introduction to Articulate While Black Michael Eric Dyson frames Barack Obama as the Orator-in-Chief and the authors would certainly agree with that assessment. Alim and Smitherman argue that in order to have an open and honest discussion about race in the United States, we must look at its linguistic dimensions; we need to language race, to view the racial politics of the United States through the lens of language (xviii). This book seeks to untangle how we talk about race and what assumptions are being made based on a speaker's use of language.
Scarlet-Letter Politics: The Rhetoric Of Shame In The Campaign To Unseat President Barack Hussein Obama, Myra Mendible
Scarlet-Letter Politics: The Rhetoric Of Shame In The Campaign To Unseat President Barack Hussein Obama, Myra Mendible
Ethnic Studies Review
This essay considers the politics of racial shaming as deployed against Barack Obama, arguing that it targeted "black" and "foreign" bodies as threats to the "American" body politic.
Free Your Mind: Contemporary Racial Attitudes And Post Racial Theory, Lakeyta M. Bonnette, Sarah M. Gershon, Precious D. Hall
Free Your Mind: Contemporary Racial Attitudes And Post Racial Theory, Lakeyta M. Bonnette, Sarah M. Gershon, Precious D. Hall
Ethnic Studies Review
The inauguration of the United States first Black President has prompted mass discussions of race relations in America. It is often articulated that America is now in a post-racial society. However, the question still remains: does the election of a Black president demonstrate that America is now a "color-blind" society? To answer this question, we rely on data collected by PEW (2007). Our results suggest that white and African Americans differ significantly in the extent to which they express post-racial attitudes. Specifically, we find that whites more commonly express post-racial attitudes, claiming that racism and discrimination are rare, in opposition …
Ida B. Wells And The Forces Of Democratization, Jane Duran
Ida B. Wells And The Forces Of Democratization, Jane Duran
Ethnic Studies Review
The work of Ida B. Wells is examined not only from the standpoint of her anti-lynching writings, but from a perusal of her diaries and her efforts as a young woman. It is concluded that she exemplifies the best of the notion of a genuine democratic political force.
Identity And The Legislative Decision Making Process: A Case Study Of The Maryland State Legislature, Nadia Brown
Identity And The Legislative Decision Making Process: A Case Study Of The Maryland State Legislature, Nadia Brown
Ethnic Studies Review
Both politicians and the mass public believe that identity influences political behavior yet, political scientists have failed to fully detail how identity is salient for all political actors not just minorities and women legislators. To what extent do racial, gendered, and race/gendered identities affect the legislation decision process? To test this proposition, I examine how race and gender based identities shape the legislative decisions of Black women in comparison to White men, White women, and Black men. I find that Black men and women legislators interviewed believe that racial identity is relevant in their decision making processes, while White men …
"For Heart, Patriotism, And National Dignity": The Italian Language Press In New York City And Constructions Of Africa, Race, And Civilization, Peter G. Vellon
"For Heart, Patriotism, And National Dignity": The Italian Language Press In New York City And Constructions Of Africa, Race, And Civilization, Peter G. Vellon
Ethnic Studies Review
"For Heart, Patriotism, and National Dignity": The Italian Language Press in New York City and Constructions of Africa, Race, and Civilization" examines how mainstream and radical newspapers employed Africa as a trope for savage behavior by analyzing their discussion of wage slavery, imperialism, lynching, and colonialism, in particular Italian imperialist ventures into northern Africa in the 1890s and Libya in 1911-1912. The Italian language press constructed Africa as a sinister, dark, continent, representing the lowest rung of the racial hierarchy. In expressing moral outrage over American violence and discrimination against Italians, the press utilized this image of Africa to emphatically …
"We Are Joined Together Temporarily" The Tragic Mulatto, Fusion Monster In Lee Frost's The Thing With Two Heads, Justin Ponder
"We Are Joined Together Temporarily" The Tragic Mulatto, Fusion Monster In Lee Frost's The Thing With Two Heads, Justin Ponder
Ethnic Studies Review
In Lee Frost's 1972 film The Thing with Two Heads, a white bigot unknowingly has his head surgically grafted onto the body of a black man. From that moment on, these two personalities compete for control of their shared body with ridiculous results. Somewhere between horror and comedy, this Blaxploitation film occupies a strange place in interracial discourse. Throughout American literature, the subgenre of tragic mulatto fiction has critiqued segregation by focusing on the melodramatic lives of those divided by the color line. Most tragic mulatto scholarship has analyzed overtly political novels written by African American writers from the Reconstruction …
The Possibilities Of Asian American Citizenship: A Critical Race And Gender Analysis, Clare Ching Jen
The Possibilities Of Asian American Citizenship: A Critical Race And Gender Analysis, Clare Ching Jen
Ethnic Studies Review
Conventionally, citizenship is understood as a legal category of membership in a national polity that ensures equal rights among its citizens. This conventional understanding, however, begs disruption when the histories and experiences of marginalized groups are brought to the fore. Equal citizenship in all its forms for marginalized populations has yet to be realized. For Asian Americans, rights presumably accorded to the legal status of citizenship have proven tenuous across different historical and political moments. Throughout U.S. history, "Asian American" or "Oriental" men and women have been designated aliens against whom white male and female citizenships have been legitimized. These …
How Does Race Operate Among Asian Americans In The Labor Market? : Occupational Segregation And Different Rewards By Occupation Among Native-Born Chinese American And Japanese American Male Workers, Chang Won Lee
Ethnic Studies Review
The effect of race in the U.S. labor market has long been controversial. One posits that racial effects have been diminished since the civil rights movement of the 1960s (Alba & Nee, 2003; Sakamoto, Wu, & Tzeng, 2000; Wilson, 1980). Even if some disparities in labor-market outcomes among race groups are found, advocates of this "declining significance of race" thesis do not attribute these disparities to racial discrimination. They, instead, understand the racial gaps as a result of class composition of racial minority groups, classes represented by larger proportions of the working-class population (Wilson, 1980, 1997) as well as unskilled-immigrant …
Chicana/Latina Undergraduate Cultural Capital: Surviving And Thriving In Higher Education, Maricela Demirjyn
Chicana/Latina Undergraduate Cultural Capital: Surviving And Thriving In Higher Education, Maricela Demirjyn
Ethnic Studies Review
This study addressed the retention of Chicana/Latina undergraduates. The problem explored was one; how these women perceive campus climate as members of a marginalized student population and two; which strategies are used to "survive the system." As a qualitative study, this work was guided by a confluence of methods including grounded theory, phenomenology and Chicana epistemology using educational narratives as data. The analysis indicated that Chicanas/Latinas do maintain a sense of being "Other" throughout their college experiences and this self-identity is perceived as a "survival strategy" while attending a mainstream campus. Further analysis also showed that Chicanas/Latinas begin their college …
How Are They Racialized? Racial Experiences Of Chinese Graduate Students, Ying Wang
How Are They Racialized? Racial Experiences Of Chinese Graduate Students, Ying Wang
Ethnic Studies Review
The present study explores the lived experiences of Chinese graduate students at a Southwestern University in order to find out how they experience race in daily life, what their interpretations of the racial experience are and how do racialized experiences shape their perceptions of life chances. The results indicate that the racialization process plays an important role in Chinese students' life through their lived experiences. Most Chinese students have noticed race and some of them have experienced racial discrimination. However, Chinese students still hold up the importance of education and believe that education will blunt the racial edge
Immigration And Domestic Politics In South Africa: Contradictions Of The Rainbow Nation, Vernon D. Johnson
Immigration And Domestic Politics In South Africa: Contradictions Of The Rainbow Nation, Vernon D. Johnson
Ethnic Studies Review
The region of Southern Africa has been part of the global capitalist system since its inception in the late 15th century, when Portugal incorporated Angola and Mozambique into its empire. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company established a "refreshment station" at the Cape of Good Hope for ships travelling between Europe and the Far East.1 From that time the region has experienced several periods of deepening incorporation into the global system.
Orientals Need Apply: Gender-Based Asylum In The U.S., Midori Takagi
Orientals Need Apply: Gender-Based Asylum In The U.S., Midori Takagi
Ethnic Studies Review
Every other year I teach a course entitled "The History of Asian Women in America," which focuses on the experiences of East, South and Southeast Asian women as they journey to these shores and resettle. Using autobiographies, poetry, journal writings, interviews and academic texts, the students learn from the women what political, social, cultural, economic and ecological conditions prompted them to leave their homelands and why they chose the United States. We learn of their rich cultural backgrounds, their struggles to create a subculture based on their home and host experiences, and the cultural gaps that often appear between the …
Trends In Black-White Church Integration, Philip Q. Yang, Starlita Smith
Trends In Black-White Church Integration, Philip Q. Yang, Starlita Smith
Ethnic Studies Review
Historically, the separation of blacks and whites in churches was well known (Gilbreath 1995; Schaefer 2005). Even in 1968, about four years after the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. still said that "eleven o'clock on Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week" (Gilbreath 1995:1). His reference was to the entrenched practice of black and white Americans who worshiped separately in segregated congregations even though as Christians, their faith was supposed to bring them together to love each other as brothers and sisters. King's statement was not just a casual …
George S. Schuyler, Black And Conservative, Helen Lock
George S. Schuyler, Black And Conservative, Helen Lock
Ethnic Studies Review
When George S. Schuyler published his autobiography Black and Conservative in 1966, its title was intended to be paradoxical, underscoring how the two adjectives were rarely used together, particularly in an era that had recently seen the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. When it came to political affiliation, the general assumption was that African Americans, more or less by definition, were not likely to be conservatives; rather, conservatism meant a desire to preserve the pre-existing status quo, making very little sense in Civil Rights era for a majority of African …
[Review Of] Irene Vilar, Impossible Motherhood: Testimony Of An Abortion Addict, Jade Hidle
[Review Of] Irene Vilar, Impossible Motherhood: Testimony Of An Abortion Addict, Jade Hidle
Ethnic Studies Review
From its flesh-toned cover etched with red tallies marking the author's fifteen aborted pregnancies, to its unflinching accounts of each procedure, Irene Vilar's Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict forces readers to confront the issue of abortion. Though the topic is inevitably divisive, Vilar's purpose, as stated from the prologue of her memoir, is clearly neither didactic nor partisan.
Black Mayors In Non-Majority Black (Medium Sized) Cities: Universalizing The Interests Of Blacks, Ravi K. Perry
Black Mayors In Non-Majority Black (Medium Sized) Cities: Universalizing The Interests Of Blacks, Ravi K. Perry
Ethnic Studies Review
The nature of political representation of Black constituents' interests from their elected Black representatives is changing in the twentyfirst century. Increasingly, African Americans are being elected to political offices where the majority of their constituents are not African American. Previous research on this question tended to characterize Black politicians' efforts to represent their Black constituents' interests in two frames: deracialized or racialized (McCormick and Jones 1993; Cruse 1990). However, the advent of the twenty-first century has exhausted the utility ofthat polarization. Black politicians no longer find explicit racial appeals appropriate for their electoral goals, given the changing demographic environment, and …
"I'Ll Rise": Rememory, Hope And The Creation Of A New Public Sphere In Ben Harper's Music, Delphine Gras
"I'Ll Rise": Rememory, Hope And The Creation Of A New Public Sphere In Ben Harper's Music, Delphine Gras
Ethnic Studies Review
Recent studies about resistance music in the United States primarily focus on the hip-hop movement. However, it does not offer the only musical discourse contesting contemporary injustices. Even though the debate about hip-hop is a crucial one that deserves full attention, it seems necessary to widen the current conversation on music to take into account a wider array of musical genres and artists. This will in turn allow us to see the revolutionary power of music in its full force. In the United States, black music, from the Spirituals to Rhythm and Blues, has undeniably been a potent agent for …
The Dialectics Of "Oriental" Images In American Trade Cards, Sue J. Kim
The Dialectics Of "Oriental" Images In American Trade Cards, Sue J. Kim
Ethnic Studies Review
A late nineteenth-century trade card, or a color-printed circulating advertisement, touts Shepherd and Doyle's new "Celluloid" waterproof collars, cuffs and shirt bosoms (Fig. 1).1 These "economical, durable, and handsome" clothing items require less starching and washing, and so remove the need for Chinese laundries. The text on the reverse side includes directions on how "to remove yellow stains," and the image enacts a kind of literal version of this removal. The slovenly laundryshop (the clothes overflowing the basket, the linens hung up askew, the steaming basins), the mix-and-match, gender-ambiguous garments of the workers, and their thin, slouching bodies all participate …
(In) Visible Fissures And The "Multicultural American: Interrupting Race, Ethnicity, And Imperialism Through Tv's Survivor, Sarah Hentges
(In) Visible Fissures And The "Multicultural American: Interrupting Race, Ethnicity, And Imperialism Through Tv's Survivor, Sarah Hentges
Ethnic Studies Review
One of the longest running reality TV shows, with 15 seasons as of 2007, Survivor is an important text for considerations of race and ethnicity, legacies of imperialism, and the idea of the "multicultural" America. Survivor provides an evolving adventure narrative -one that relies upon the legacies of the past, like colonialism and imperialism, as well as the myths of the present and future, like tourism as a means of survival in a globalized economy. As these imperial contexts are adapted Survivor provides moments for (mostly white or white-identified) privileged, "multicultural" first-world Americans to participate in neo-colonial cultural and economic …
The Ties That Bind: Asian American Communities Without ''Ethnic Spaces" In Southeast Michigan, Barbara W. Kim
The Ties That Bind: Asian American Communities Without ''Ethnic Spaces" In Southeast Michigan, Barbara W. Kim
Ethnic Studies Review
According to the 2000 census, over 12 million Asian Americans, almost 70 percent of them either immigrants who came to the U.S. after 1970 or their children, comprised an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population that was more regionally dispersed throughout the U.S. than ever before. (Lai and Arguelles, 2003). Despite these transitions and increasing heterogeneity, discourses about Asian American communities have focused on ethnic enclaves such as Chinatowns, Koreatowns, and Little Saigons where coethnic residents, businesses, services, institutions and organizations exist and interact in urban or suburban physical spaces of the bicoastal United States (Fong, 1994; Li, 1999; Zhou and …
The Apartheid Conscience: Gender, Race, And Re-Imagining The White Nation In Cyberspace, R. Sophie Statzel
The Apartheid Conscience: Gender, Race, And Re-Imagining The White Nation In Cyberspace, R. Sophie Statzel
Ethnic Studies Review
It is not just that the limits of our language limit our thoughts; the world we find ourselves in is one we have helped to create, and this places constraints upon how we think the world anew.
White Conceptions Of Racial Hierarchy: Temporary Versus Permanent Preferences, Jonathan Gayles, Sarah Tobin
White Conceptions Of Racial Hierarchy: Temporary Versus Permanent Preferences, Jonathan Gayles, Sarah Tobin
Ethnic Studies Review
Ideas of race, racial identity, and racial categorization, reflect the inconsistent, context-specific and fluctuating nature of racial meaning (Nagel, 1986; Forbes, 1990; Davis, 1991; Nagel, 1994; Haney-Lopez, 1995; Ignatiev, 1995; Kibria, 1996,1998; Niven & Zilber, 2000; Morning, 2001; Lacy, 2004). Studies of racial hierarchy, specifically, enable an understanding of not only the social construction of race, but also the manner in which ideas of race operate to influence human reality.! Within the United States, race "permeates the lives of the native-born and immigrants alike" (Bashi & McDaniel, 1997, p. 686, see also Bashi, 1998). More specifically, a continuum between white …
Reflections On Racial Identity And The Black Movement In The United States And Brazil, David Covin
Reflections On Racial Identity And The Black Movement In The United States And Brazil, David Covin
Ethnic Studies Review
These reflections are based on a long history of study and involvement in the Black movement in the United States, on friendships with militants in the Brazilian Black movement, and on study of that movement. They arise directly from musings occasioned by comments made by an undergraduate white student in my course, Politics of the African Diaspora, and by my observation of a couple on the Avenida Sete de Setembro in Salvador, Bahia.
[Review Of] Evelyn Nakano Glenn. Unequal Freedom: How Race And Gender Shaped American Citizenship And Labor, Philip Q. Yang
[Review Of] Evelyn Nakano Glenn. Unequal Freedom: How Race And Gender Shaped American Citizenship And Labor, Philip Q. Yang
Ethnic Studies Review
Evelyn Glenn is among the pioneers who laid the groundwork for an intersective approach of race, class, and gender to the analysis of social inequality. This new book carries on and extends her well-established intellectual project along this line of inquiry in both depth and breadth. In Unequal Freedom, Glenn offers an exemplary historical and comparative analysis of how race and gender as fundamental organizing principles of social institutions shaped American citizenship and labor system from the end of Reconstruction to the eve of World War II. She begins with a brief introduction to the book project in the introductory …
In Search Of A "Singular I:" A Structurational Analysis Of Passing, Dawkins Marcia Alesan
In Search Of A "Singular I:" A Structurational Analysis Of Passing, Dawkins Marcia Alesan
Ethnic Studies Review
It is easy to envision the socio-cultural phenomenon of passing as a relic of a bygone era, yet passing is markedly more. From a historical perspective, "passing-as-white" is a strategy of representation through which light-skinned, white-looking, legally non-white Americans attempt(ed) to reconcile "two unreconciled ideals:" their limited opportunities as non-white people in a segregated society with their idealized life goals as full American citizens (DuBois, 1903; Candy, 1998). Recent scholarship on the phenomenon explains that passing is more than a masquerade. Passing can be accidental, incidental, or a committed lifestyle that is noted: when people effectively present themselves as other …