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Virginia Commonwealth University

Ethnic Studies Review

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In Passing: Arab American Poetry And The Politics Of Race, Katherine Wardi-Zonna, Anissa Janine Wardi Jan 2005

In Passing: Arab American Poetry And The Politics Of Race, Katherine Wardi-Zonna, Anissa Janine Wardi

Ethnic Studies Review

Racial passing has a long history in America. In fact, there are manifold reasons for passing, not the least of which is to reap benefits-social, economic and legal-routinely denied to people of color. Passing is conventionally understood to be a volitional act that either situationally or permanently allows members of marginalized groups to assimilate into a privileged culture. While it could be argued that those who choose to pass are, in a sense, race traitors, betraying familial, historical and cultural ties to personhood,1 Wald provides another way of reading passing, or "crossing the line," as a "practice that emerges from …


Reader Expectation And The Ethnic Rhetorics: The Problem Of The Passing Subaltern In Who Would Have Thought It?, Pascha A. Stevenson Jan 2005

Reader Expectation And The Ethnic Rhetorics: The Problem Of The Passing Subaltern In Who Would Have Thought It?, Pascha A. Stevenson

Ethnic Studies Review

Mrs. Norval... hoped...Lola might be now all black or all white, no matter which, only not with those ugly white spots. - Who Would Have Thought It? 1872 (78) But these snowy, equable and smooth spots ... sometimes occur amongst our own people. I have myself had the opportunity of observing two instances of this kind .. .The skin of each was brownish, studded here and there with very white spots of different sizes. - "Mulattos" The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 1865 (220) As illustrated by these two excerpts, the "mixed blood" provoked in Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, as …


What's In A Name? Racial And Ethnic Classifications And The Meaning Of Hispanic/Latino In The United States, Keith M. Kilty, Maria Videl De Haymes Jan 2004

What's In A Name? Racial And Ethnic Classifications And The Meaning Of Hispanic/Latino In The United States, Keith M. Kilty, Maria Videl De Haymes

Ethnic Studies Review

The first national census was conducted in 1790, and has been repeated at ten year intervals ever since. While census taking has been consistent, the way individuals have been counted and categorized on the basis of race and ethnicity has varied over time. This paper examines how the official census definition of Latinos has changed over the twenty-two census periods. The modifications of the official definition of this group are discussed in relation to changes in national borders, variations in methodology used for census data gathering, and shifting political contexts.


[Review Of] Andrew Pilkington, Racial Disadvantage And Ethnic Diversity In Britain, Simboonath Singh Jan 2004

[Review Of] Andrew Pilkington, Racial Disadvantage And Ethnic Diversity In Britain, Simboonath Singh

Ethnic Studies Review

Andrew Pilkington's Racial Disadvantage and Ethnic Diversity in Britain (2003) is a comprehensive and systematic study of race and ethnicity in contemporary Britain. The approach taken is decidedly sociological but incorporates an inter-disciplinary perspective, drawing upon areas such as History, Politics, Geography and Cultural Studies. In Chapter 1 the author makes a fine conceptual distinction between core concepts such as race and ethnicity and theoretically subscribes to the more dynamic social constructionist approach to ethnicity as an acceptable alternative to previous models. Racialization is invoked as an alternative problematic of racism to alert the reader to the dangers of reification …


[Review Of] Henk Van Woerden. The Assassin: A Story Of Race And Rage In The Land Of Apartheid. Translated By Dan Jacobson., Ashton Wesley Welch Jan 2004

[Review Of] Henk Van Woerden. The Assassin: A Story Of Race And Rage In The Land Of Apartheid. Translated By Dan Jacobson., Ashton Wesley Welch

Ethnic Studies Review

This small volume deserves to be read by those engaged in the study of modern South Africa. It also has interests for students of biography. The Assassin: A Story of Race and Rage in the Land of Apartheid is the first biography of Demitrios Tasfendas. Were it not for his assassination of Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African Prime Minister, Tsafendas most likely would not have merited even a historical footnote. The Assassin saved Tsafendas from the historical anonymity accorded to the assassins of 20th century notables such as the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Princess Sophie, Mohandas Gandhi, …


Getting Into The Game: The Trickster In American Ethnic Fiction, Helen Lock Jan 2003

Getting Into The Game: The Trickster In American Ethnic Fiction, Helen Lock

Ethnic Studies Review

Trickster novels, especially those by Gerald Vizenor and Maxine Hong Kingston, can be used to destabilize and undermine ethnic stereotypes. As many studies show, the trickster him/herself cannot be stable and thus resists the limitations of definition as the embodiment of ambiguity. Both insider and outsider, s/he plays with the whole concept of "sides" so as to erase the distinction between them. The trickster plays the game, including the game of language, in order to break and exploit its rules and thus destabilizes linguistic markers. Kingston and Vizenor use their novels to subvert the rules of the linguistic game and …


The Suppression Of Diversity, Adrian J. Lottie, Phyllis A. Clemens Noda Jan 2003

The Suppression Of Diversity, Adrian J. Lottie, Phyllis A. Clemens Noda

Ethnic Studies Review

Is it a systematic strategy or a mutation of millennial ferver that drives the escalating challenges to the civil rights of this nation's racial, linguistic, and national origin minorities? Increasing juridical, legislative, and popular assaults on affirmative action policies coupled with the sometimes less heralded emergence of a de facto U.S. language policy are sweeping through the states. These activities draw on a consistent repertoire of approaches from the invocation of the very language and concepts of the civil rights movement to the isolationist "buzz-words" of early twentieth century advocates of "Americanization." In an effort to legitimize their efforts this …


Centering Race And Ethnicity- Related Issues In Social Sciences Curricula, Joseph F. Sheley Jan 2003

Centering Race And Ethnicity- Related Issues In Social Sciences Curricula, Joseph F. Sheley

Ethnic Studies Review

A 2002 review of the course requirements and electives of Economics, History, Political Science, and Sociology programs in thirty randomly selected state and private, "doctoral-level" and "masters-level" institutions produced 201 courses relating to the study of race-and ethnic-related issues. Only two courses (History offerings on a single campus) were required for completion of a major. While some departments offered "concentrations" with mandated content, the concentrations themselves were elective. Diversity in America today is a truly important component of social (re)organization and change and, thus, a major source of social friction. Why is it, then, that students, those majoring in the …


Race, Sex, And Redemption In Monster's Ball, Celeste Fisher, Carole Wiebe Jan 2003

Race, Sex, And Redemption In Monster's Ball, Celeste Fisher, Carole Wiebe

Ethnic Studies Review

In this paper, we explore the way that interracial relationships between blacks and whites come to be represented as problematic for mainstream audiences. By looking specifically at the film Monster's Ball (2001), we examine how race is used to identify and characterize our culture's standard protagonist, the white male, and at how white male sexuality is constructed through the black female. Particularly striking in this film is how the social and institutional structures that create and reiterate problems of race are used to characterize the movie's central protagonists, yet then evaded and submerged in the discourse of romance.


[Review Of] Claudia Koonz. The Nazi Conscience, Gregory Paul Wegner Jan 2003

[Review Of] Claudia Koonz. The Nazi Conscience, Gregory Paul Wegner

Ethnic Studies Review

As the author observed in this engaging work, the expression "Nazi conscience" is not an oxymoron. Nazi morality, profoundly ethnic in nature, sharply defined those accepted and rejected as members of the German Volk. Claudia Koonz describes with great clarity the emergence of an "ethnic fundamentalism" supported by numerous "ethnocrats" under the Third Reich who, during the "normal years" of 1933-1 939, advanced decidedly racial and biological perspectives on ethnicity (141, 217). Especially significant for our understanding of Nazi racial policy is Koonz's exploration of German public opinion, much of which reflected an abhorrence of Nazi brutality. What made the …


[Review Of] Jun Xing And Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Eds. Reversing The Lens: Ethnicity, Race, Gender, And Sexuality Through Film, Susan Crutchfield Jan 2003

[Review Of] Jun Xing And Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Eds. Reversing The Lens: Ethnicity, Race, Gender, And Sexuality Through Film, Susan Crutchfield

Ethnic Studies Review

The fourteen essays collected in Xing and Hirabayashi's new volume make a strong argument for serious intellectual work involved not only in the college-level study of moving images for their messages about minority groups but also in pedagogical approaches that take film and video as their primary texts. Written by a collection of scholars who work in ethnic and racial studies and various allied fields, the essays share a concern with pedagogy and with showing "how visual media can be used to facilitate cross-cultural understanding and communications, particularly with respect to the thorny topics of ethnicity and race" (3). Indeed, …


Ethnic And Racial Definitions As Manifestations Of American Public Policy, Ashton Wesley Welch Jan 2003

Ethnic And Racial Definitions As Manifestations Of American Public Policy, Ashton Wesley Welch

Ethnic Studies Review

Official definitions of race and ethnicity in American law reveal a great deal about public policy in an environment of ethnic pluralism. Despite some ambiguity over who is black or Hispanic or an Aleut, relatively few people fall between the wide cracks in the American patchwork of identity classifications. Those cracks, however, tell us a great deal about the ambivalence of the American polity toward ethnicity.1


Moving Mountains In The Lntercultural Classroom, Vivian Faith Martindale Jan 2002

Moving Mountains In The Lntercultural Classroom, Vivian Faith Martindale

Ethnic Studies Review

Today many Alaska Natives are seeking a higher education; however due to subtle differences in communication styles between the Native Alaskan student and Euro-American instructor, both students and educator frequently experience communication difficulties. This paper examines the differences in non-verbal communication, the assumption of similarities, stereotyping, preconceptions, and misinterpretations that may occur between Alaska Native and Euro-American cultures. University classrooms are becoming increasingly multicultural, and one teaching style may not be effective with all students. Those involved with education need to promote flexibility and awareness of cultural differences in order to achieve successful communication in the classroom.


[Review Of] Jane M. Gaines, Fire And Desire: Mixed-Race Movies In The Silent Era, George H. Junne Jr Jan 2002

[Review Of] Jane M. Gaines, Fire And Desire: Mixed-Race Movies In The Silent Era, George H. Junne Jr

Ethnic Studies Review

Jane M.Gaines has written an important book on the topic of race movies and race relations in early American cinema. Using eclectic analyses that range from W.E.B. DuBois' insights on "double consciousness," to queer theory, Gaines is able to critically examine issues of mixed race people and race mixing in silent films. She wonderfully reworks some theories until they yield beneficial interpretations. For example, Gaines argues against the blanket use of psychoanalysis as a tool to comprehend African American Experience, including cinema, because, she says, "Historically psychoanalysis had no cognizance of black people nor was any attempt made to understand …


Saliency Of Category Information In Person Perception For Ingroup And Outgroup Members, Cynthia Willis-Esqueda, Rosemary J. Esseks Jan 2001

Saliency Of Category Information In Person Perception For Ingroup And Outgroup Members, Cynthia Willis-Esqueda, Rosemary J. Esseks

Ethnic Studies Review

The saliency of category information in person perception for ingroup and outgroup members was investigated. European American participants were presented with a fictional character that varied in race (African American or European American) and occupational garb (military, judge, doctor, or athlete). Occupations were chosen to be either stereotypical or nonstereotypical for African Americans and European Americans with the aid of the Statistical Abstract of the United States (1992) percentages. Based on prior research findings (Park & Rothbart, 1982; Mackie & Worth, 1989), it was predicted European American participants would spontaneously describe an outgroup character by race (superordinate category information), but …


[Review Of] Out National Amnesia About Race: A Review Essay Of David Blight's Race And Reunion: The Civil War In American Memory, Jennifer Jensen Jan 2001

[Review Of] Out National Amnesia About Race: A Review Essay Of David Blight's Race And Reunion: The Civil War In American Memory, Jennifer Jensen

Ethnic Studies Review

In Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, David Blight is not concerned with "developing [a] professional historiography of Civil War" but rather with documenting the ways that "contending memories [of the war] clashed or intermingled in public memory."^1 Blight and others working in the interdisciplinary field of "historical memory" have broadened the scope of historical writing in their insistence that uncovering "what really happened" in the past is but one piece of the historical puzzle. Another important piece is the recovery of how historical agents conceptualized and remembered their pasts and in turn how these memories impact …


[Review Of] Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Ed. Reading Race In American Poetry: An Area Of Act, Dean Rader Jan 2001

[Review Of] Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Ed. Reading Race In American Poetry: An Area Of Act, Dean Rader

Ethnic Studies Review

For some time now it has been fashionable when reviewing any sort of anthology to focus critical lens on what the anthology leaves out. In both formal and informal reviews of literary anthologies and collections of essays what an editor does not include in his or her text often takes precedent over the relative virtues of the texts actually appearing in the anthology itself. In the most postmodern of moments, absence erases presence.


Ethnic Identity, Risk, And Protective Factors Related To Substance Abuse Among Mexican American Students, Edward Codina, Zenong Yin, Jesse T. Zapata, David S. Katims Jan 2001

Ethnic Identity, Risk, And Protective Factors Related To Substance Abuse Among Mexican American Students, Edward Codina, Zenong Yin, Jesse T. Zapata, David S. Katims

Ethnic Studies Review

This study examines the relationship between ethnic identity, risk and protective factors for substance use and academic achievement. Risk factors include deviant behavior and susceptibility to peer influence, while the protective factor is self-reported "confidence" not to use substances. The sample consists of 2,370 Mexican American students enrolled in eighth, ninth, and tenth grades. Results of the analysis (MANOVA) revealed that females had more positive ethnic identity than males. Furthermore, males were significantly more susceptible to peer influence, reported higher levels of deviant behavior, used more substances and had lower grade point averages than females. There was no significant difference …


Ethnicity And The Jury System, Ashton Wesley Welch Jan 2001

Ethnicity And The Jury System, Ashton Wesley Welch

Ethnic Studies Review

Discrimination in the jury system has been a matter of constitutional and ethical concern at least since the mid-nineteenth century. Ethnic and linguistic minorities have been disadvantaged by the use of the peremptory challenge, statutory requirements, and administrative practices which compromised the Sixth Amendment provision for a jury of one's peers with its implication for juror impartiality. Attacks on the discriminatory applications of those systems and practices resulted in reduction, as gradual as it was, of the exclusionary practices. Batson vs Kentucky made the Sixth Amendment guarantee more reachable for ethnic and linguistic minorities.


Languages And Postmodern Ethnic Identities, Livia Käthe Wittmann Jan 2000

Languages And Postmodern Ethnic Identities, Livia Käthe Wittmann

Ethnic Studies Review

Specific discourses of our mother tongue (which is not always our mother's tongue) are supposed to decisively constitute our subjectivity. These discourses which are constituting us and are available to us offer possible identities. These identities carry ethno-culturally-specific meanings, which are symbolised within and by spoken, written, and non-verbal language/s. Are languages given the same relevance when giving meaning to postmodern ethnicity, if one understands postmodern ethnicity as a "stance of simultaneously transcending ethnicity as a complete, self-contained system but retaining it as a selectively preferred, evolving, participatory system?" Multilinguality, as it may correspond with aspects of postmodern ethnicity, seems …


Distinctive Features Of The African-American Family: Debunking The Myth Of The Deficit Model, David L. Briscoe Jan 2000

Distinctive Features Of The African-American Family: Debunking The Myth Of The Deficit Model, David L. Briscoe

Ethnic Studies Review

Throughout the 1900's, social scientists have debated the question of whether the African American family is an adaptative social system or whether it is pathological, perpetuating its poverty over the generations. This article examines the holistic perspective as the preeminent comprehensive approach in studying the African American family and provides empirical evidence of distinctive features of the African American family in support of the adaptation argument. The adaptation/deficit debate will probably continue as long as the scientific community fails to fully acknowledge and make the most of theoretical constructs that are holistic in principle and design.


[Review Of] Sandra Jackson And Jose Solis Jordan (Eds.). I'Ve Got A Story To Tell: Identity And Place In The Academy, James Adolph Robinson Jan 2000

[Review Of] Sandra Jackson And Jose Solis Jordan (Eds.). I'Ve Got A Story To Tell: Identity And Place In The Academy, James Adolph Robinson

Ethnic Studies Review

I've Got A Story To Tell is a "place and space wherein the contributors can momentarily unload the baggage they carry and speak incisively of the challenges associated with their success in gaining entry into the academy" (2).


[Review Of] Michéle Lamont, Ed. The Cultural Territories Of Race: Black And White Boundaries, Rainer Spencer Jan 2000

[Review Of] Michéle Lamont, Ed. The Cultural Territories Of Race: Black And White Boundaries, Rainer Spencer

Ethnic Studies Review

The aim of this volume is to illuminate various black and white boundaries in the United States through an examination of the "cultural dimensions of racial inequality." Fourteen essays touch on a wide variety of subjects including African American corporate executives, fast-food workers in Harlem, Afrocentrism, single-parenting, rap music, and feminism, to name only some. The authors of these essays strive to move beyond a static structure versus culture dualism and to instead highlight the theoretical and empirical importance of cultural scripts, all without reducing discussion to the level of "blaming the victim."


[Review Of] America Rodriguez. Making Latino News: Race, Language, Class, M. L. (Tony) Miranda Jan 2000

[Review Of] America Rodriguez. Making Latino News: Race, Language, Class, M. L. (Tony) Miranda

Ethnic Studies Review

This is an excellent book. In the writing of this edition the author has left little to be criticized. The only criticism that could be made is that most of her analysis focuses on Latino media in Los Angeles and Miami and glosses over other U.S. cities with large Latino populations, however she provides valid reasons for this.


[Review Of] Eric Greene. Planet Of The Apes As American Myth: Race, Politics, And Popular Culture, George H. Junne Jr Jan 2000

[Review Of] Eric Greene. Planet Of The Apes As American Myth: Race, Politics, And Popular Culture, George H. Junne Jr

Ethnic Studies Review

Planet of the Apes (1968) was such a hit movie that it spawned several sequels. They included Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). In the 1974 television season CBS broadcast the series "Planet of the Apes." NBC followed with the animated Saturday morning series (September, 1975-September, 1976), "Return to the Planet of the Apes." Eric Greene clearly demonstrates that the Apes saga is little more than the support of the American myth of triumphalism: …


Interethnic Antagonism In The Wake Of Colonialism: U. S. Territorial And Ethnic Relations At The Margins, Michael P. Perez Jan 2000

Interethnic Antagonism In The Wake Of Colonialism: U. S. Territorial And Ethnic Relations At The Margins, Michael P. Perez

Ethnic Studies Review

Since the proliferation of scholarship on racial and ethnic antagonism following the Civil Rights era, neo-Marxist, colonialism, and other power-conflict theories reached popularity and have been widely applied to explain racial and ethnic conflict throughout the world, particularly in the United States. However there is a lack of scholarship on racial and ethnic relations in the U.S. territories in general and the Pacific Islands in particular. Although a few works exist in terms of interethnic antagonism and anti-immigrant sentiment in Puerto Rico, Melanesia, and Hawaii, there is a lack of research on interethnic antagonism in Micronesia; therefore comparative analyses of …


[Review Of] William G. Bowen And Derek Bok. The Shape Of The River: Long-Term Consequences Of Considering Race In College And University Admissions, Robert L. Perry Jan 1998

[Review Of] William G. Bowen And Derek Bok. The Shape Of The River: Long-Term Consequences Of Considering Race In College And University Admissions, Robert L. Perry

Ethnic Studies Review

The metaphor conveyed in the title, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, captures the undercurrents, uncharted obstructions, and twists and turns as they unfold through the experiences and research of two captains who have navigated the mysteries of their journey through Affirmative Action in higher education.


[Review Of] Katheryn K. Russell. The Color Of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, And Other Macroaggressions, Calvin E. Harris Jan 1998

[Review Of] Katheryn K. Russell. The Color Of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, And Other Macroaggressions, Calvin E. Harris

Ethnic Studies Review

Is Crime a problem or color or race? What about the question of disproportionality: Do blacks commit more crimes in proportion to their percentage of the total population? Does disproportionality, as one measure of crime statistics, tell the whole story? What is black protectionism? Probably the most critical question Russell raises is does a racial bias exist in the reporting of crime statistics in the United States? This is not the first time such an issue has been raised. These are among the major questions dealt with in The Color of Crime.


[Review Of] Yanick St. Jean And Joe R. Feagin. Double Burden: Black Women And Everyday Racism, Lisa Pillow Jan 1998

[Review Of] Yanick St. Jean And Joe R. Feagin. Double Burden: Black Women And Everyday Racism, Lisa Pillow

Ethnic Studies Review

The women interviewed in Double Burden share personal accounts of what it is like to be black and female in the contemporary United States. Drawing on over two hundred interviews with middle-class, well-educated black women, Yannick St. Jean and Joe R. Feagin present a collective memory of the misrepresentation of black women in our history, as well as individual experiences and triumphs. Through excerpts of personal narratives on topics including career, work, physical appearance, media representation, relationships with white women, and motherhood, the women recount experiences dealing with everyday racism, the denigrating social messages about their beauty, self-worth, sexuality, intelligence, …


[Review Of] T. M. Singelis, Ed. Teaching About Culture, Ethnicity, And Diversity: Exercises And Planned Activities, Beate Baltes Jan 1998

[Review Of] T. M. Singelis, Ed. Teaching About Culture, Ethnicity, And Diversity: Exercises And Planned Activities, Beate Baltes

Ethnic Studies Review

Professors and students of teacher education can always appreciate theoretical discussions of multicultural education in books and journal articles. Even more useful are concrete examples such as the multicultural lesson plans in Sleeter's Turning on Learning (1998) and the case studiesin Nieto's Affirming Diversity (2000). Teacher-credential students find the lesson plans illustrative and relate to the students' stories in the case studies. Singelis' book Teaching about Culture, Ethnicity, and Diversity goes a step further in providing professors and students with experiences and hands-on activities that should help to enhance the sensitivity of teacher-credential students towards cross-cultural differences and help them …