Everyday Racism

Convocation Address at Bethel University, August 29, 2016 about recent troubles in Minnesota, particularly the shooting of Philando Castille, and our responsibility as followers of the Gospel. There is an audio link also available. After you click the link, it's the first one in the queue; fast-forward to 15:00:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/2016-2017-chapel-college-arts/id1148681753?mt=10

My story on how one experienced Racism, Discrimination in Université Libre de Brussels. Hate continues because we stay quiet, shy away from denoucing it, speaking it or being compromised. Racism and hate or discrimination should never be condoned or tolerated, this paper narrate the ordeal i went through and an updated version will be posted. what one never think of, is now happening and the whole world should know this.

Is Africa a non-racial continent inhabited by racially undifferentiated peoples unschooled in, and unfamiliar with, the power and privileges of whiteness? This article surveys the quotidian, conceptual, spatial, and symbolic landscapes of racialized privilege and prestige in postcolonial Africa. I analyze this salient but discernible architecture of racial tropes, perceptions, and continuities as a counterpoint to the popular myth of contemporary Africa as a place in which race is an unintelligible and invisible factor in social relations, a place in which the colonial work of race and racism purportedly expired with political independence. Using examples from across Africa, I argue that colonial racial signs have persisted in the postcolonial public space, inflecting elite aspirational cultures and marking social distinctions disguised with the language of class and culture. In addition, African elites and common folk alike have actively expanded and added to a vast, variegated system of socio-cultural valuation and devaluation that is rarely acknowledged as racial in origin or interpellation, and whose connections to contemporary transnational structures of racial privilege remain hidden beneath non-racial signifiers. Deploying the popular Anglophone African conversational idiom of “colonial mentality,” which is often advanced to designate a range of practices, behaviors, and ways of seeing, acting, and conceptualizing the world, I contend that postcolonial Africa is saturated with numerous social idioms of race and racism. Africans, I argue, have not been passively imbricated in this universe of racial meanings; rather, they have been active participants in it.

Racial hoaxes are becoming a popular discursive strategy to disguise racism, as well as a powerful means for triggering waves of fake news and outraged comments both on mainstream and social media. Built on grounds of plausibility and consistency with existing narratives, racial hoaxes may remain latent for a long time, and periodically emerge when negative stereotypes can be framed as actual news stories. Racial hoaxes have relevant political and social implications: spread across multiple channels, they can foster exclusionary discourse on immigration, migrants , refugees, and other minorities, with concrete consequences on people and policies. In particular, far-right movements embrace hoaxes as a great opportunity to advocate their claims and legitimate their calls for violent action. Theoretical background Racial hoaxes are becoming a popular discursive strategy to disguise racism. This concept has mainly been used in US legal and criminological fijields, aimed at exploring the connection between racial stereotypes and related practices in policing, and shifting criminal responsibility from a white offfender to a fijictional black predator (Russell, 1998). Nonetheless, this concept could be scrutinized from wider social and communicational perspectives, looking at how racial hoaxes are created and circulated, and how they afffect ethnic relations. The concept also provides powerful insights into study how prejudices and stereotypes are objectivized, and how hostility tales turn into social action. Moreover, racial hoaxes should be a relevant matter for communication studies, since they involve both mainstream and digital media, and have relevant consequences on public.

In two studies, this thesis depicts the relationship between minority group status in the United States, perceived discrimination, and coping with stress. Past literature on coping and its types – problem-focused versus emotion-focused – is inconsistent in terms of differences between minority status groups and majority groups. It remains unknown whether or why Black Americans and lesbian or gay Americans may demonstrate coping patterns that differ from White Americans and heterosexual Americans, respectively. What is altogether absent from the literature is the possible mediating factor of perceived discrimination experienced by these minority groups. That is, differences in internal, stable coping processes that manage stress may have been molded by one’s experience with discrimination. Study 1 examines the relationship between race (Black versus White) and coping, mediated by perceived discrimination. Study 2 examines the relationship between sexual orientation (lesbian or gay versus heterosexual) and coping, mediated by perceived discrimination. Both studies confirm the thesis that minority group members exhibit maladaptive, emotion-focused coping more than majority group
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members – but that this difference is explained by the minority group members’ perceived discrimination. Historical and political relevance, social implications, and possible limitations in design and interpretation are discussed.

Sind antimuslimische Diskurse Ausdruck einer aktuellen Form des Rassismus?
Anhand von Fallbeispielen – darunter auflagenstarke Buchpublikationen, Zeitungsartikel, Webseiten und Zuschriften an muslimische Verbände – geht Yasemin Shooman den antimuslimischen Narrativen und ihren Funktionen nach. Sie untersucht die artikulierten Selbst- und Fremdbilder ebenso wie die Rolle historischer Bezüge und arbeitet das Repertoire dominanter antimuslimischer Stereotype und Topoi heraus. Die empirische Analyse trägt auch zur Theoriebildung in dem relativ jungen Forschungsfeld bei und zeigt, dass eine Rassifizierung religiöser Zugehörigkeit zu beobachten ist, die auf dem Ineinandergreifen der Kategorien Kultur, Religion, Ethnizität, Geschlecht und Klasse basiert.

Race and Racism in Modern East Asia juxtaposes Western racial constructions of East Asians with constructions of race and their outcomes in modern East Asia. It is the first endeavor to explicitly and coherently link constructions of race and racism in both regions. These constructions have not only played a decisive role in shaping the relations between the West and East Asia since the mid nineteenth century, but also exert substantial influence on current relations and mutual images in both the East-West nexus and East Asia. Written by some of the field's leading authorities, this groundbreaking 21-chapter volume offers an analysis of these constructions, their evolution and their interrelations.


REVIEWS
"In the field of race studies, race and racism in East Asia has generally been little explored. These two books [Michael Keevak’s Becoming Yellow as well] each works to address that gap in scholarship. As a pair they go a long ways toward furthering our understanding of the historical, political, and social significance of the role of race in East Asia. Most significantly, these books help us to understand how prominent a factor race was in armed conflicts in twentieth-century East Asia. The volume is divided into two parts. Part One deals with Western conceptions of East Asians. Part Two, fully half of the volume, deals with questions of race and racism from perspectives located within East Asia, whether China, Korea, or Japan. The format of an edited volume allows for a large scope of overall inquiry as well as a significant degree of specificity within individual essay. …The juxtaposition of essays in Part One brings to light a number of important topics for reflection and future research, not least the large and thorny question of just how inextricably intertwined the connections between racism and rear of decline actually are. … Part two “East Asia Race Theories, Racial Policies and Racism” breaks new ground in the field of race studies in that it is devoted to race from entirely East Asian perspectives (and there are many!)."
— Laura Hostetler, Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal 37 (2015): 74-84.

"Within the historical research on the topic of racism, East Asia has barely played any role. This volume, the outcome of a multi-year project closes this research lacuna. ... Overall, the volume is superbly edited and easy to read and will undoubtedly remain, until further notice, the standard work on the subject of race in East Asia. For those interested in the historical development of the concept of race and wish to go beyond the European framework, this volume is highly recommended."
— Sven Saaler, Historische Zeitschrift (2014)

"A gigantic volume, its real strong point is its variety, with papers probing such interesting and understudied topics ... The scholarly summaries are very accomplished and provide a wealth of material for understanding that race is neither a fixed nor an atemporal construct, nor is it one that can be simply transferred from Western contexts into Eastern ones. ... The essays represent starting points for a variety of new work as such they are very valuable contributions to the burgeoning field. Highly recommended."
— Michael Keevak, Asian Ethnicity (2014)

"This collection of scholarly works explores racial constructions of East Asians from both external and internal perspectives. ... Not only does this book help readers understand how racial constructions of the West and East Asia interacted in shaping their relationships in the past, but also, more importantly, how these constructions still influence their current relationships in the 21st century. Summing up: Recommended. All levels/libraries."
— A.Y. Lee, Choice, 2013


TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Tables
Conventions
Preface

1. Modern East Asia and the Rise of Racial Thought: Possible Links, Unique Features, and Unsettled Issues
Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel

PART I: WESTERN RACE THEORIES, RACIAL IMAGES AND RACISM
2. Early Modern European Divisions of Mankind and East Asians, 1500-1750 50
Walter Demel and Rotem Kowner
3. How the “Mongoloid Race” Came into Being: Late Eighteenth-Century Constructions of East Asians in Europe
Walter Demel
4. Between Contempt and Fear: Western Racial Constructions of East Asians since 1800
Rotem Kowner
5. “A Very Great Gulf”: Late Victorian British Diplomacy and Race in East Asia
T.G. Otte
6. Pan-Mongolians at Twilight: East Asia and Race in Russian Modernism, 1890-1921
Susanna Soojung Lim
7. National Identity and Race in Post-Revolutionary Russia: Pil’niak’s Travelogues from Japan and China
Alexander Bukh
8. Class, Race, Floating Signifier: American Media Imagine the Chinese, 1870-1900
Lenore Metrick-Chen
9. Racism for Beginners: Constructions of Chinese in Twentieth Century Belgian Comics
Idesbald Goddeeris
10. Race, Imperialism, and Reconstructing Selves: Late Nineteenth Century Korea in European Travel Literature
Huajeong Seok
11. Race, Culture and the Reaction to the Japanese Victory of 1905 in the English-Speaking World
Philip Towle

PART II: EAST ASIAN RACE THEORIES, RACIAL POLICIES AND RACISM
12. A Certain Whiteness of Being: Chinese Perceptions of Self by the Beginning of European Contact
Don J. Wyatt
13. Racial Discourse and Utopian Visions in Nineteenth Century China
Sufen Sophia Lai
14. The Discourse of Race in Twentieth-Century China
Frank Dikötter
15. Racist South Korea? Diverse but not Tolerant of Diversity
Gi-Wook Shin
16. Skin Color Melancholy in Modern Japan: Male Elites' Racial Experiences Abroad, 1880s-1950s
Ayu Majima
17. Anatomically Speaking: The Kubo Incident and the Paradox of Race in Colonial Korea
Hoi-eun Kim
18. Who Classified Whom, and for What Purpose? The “Japanese” in Northeast China in the Age of Empire
Mariko Asano Tamanoi
19. Race and International Law in Japan’s New Order in East Asia, 1938-1945
Urs Matthias Zachmann
20. East Asia’s “Melting-Pot”: Reevaluating Race Relations in Japan’s Colonial Empire 583
Yukiko Koshiro
21. Categorical Confusion: President Obama as a Case Study of Racialized Practices in Contemporary Japan
Christine R. Yano

Contributors
Bibliography
Index

abstract This study engaged the relatively new method of on-line survey methodology to address a few key questions about perceptions of racism in Puerto Rico. The questions addressed whether Puerto Ricans perceive anti-black racism to exist; whether they have experienced it personally, or observed racist behaviors and practices; and in what realms of social life they perceive racism to exist. The article correlates these findings with the way respondents described themselves racially. Thus, this article reports on three distinct areas: (1) the use of on-line survey methodology to address questions of race and racism; (2) quantitative response patterns about racism in PR and among Puerto Ricans and their relationship to how people self-described racially; and (3) to how, when, and where racism is manifested according to respondents. [

Officially, the 300-year enslavement of Africans in America desisted on December 06, 1865, by virtue of the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. (African slaves were brought to so-called Spanish Florida as early as the 1560s.) Dismally, however, Morton's Fork ruled where blacks were concerned; it is an abominable fact that for the three quarters of a century supervening slavery-1865 to1940-capricious, malicious and tendentious applications of obscure, generally anachronistic-as well as flat-out concocted-legalities (not to mention thousands of lynchings) were foisted exclusively upon countless black men and (some) black women who were methodically sentenced to years of hard labor for lack of monies (as most all employers refused to hire blacks) to pay fines imposed for allegedly committing various (mostly trumped-up) misdemeanors.

The portrayal of Hispanics in American film and television has focused traditionally on negative stereotypes of the worst values and traditions of the Spanish-speaking communities in the country, with a racist and prejudiced misrepresented focus, a sample of the superficiality and hatred by some in the media industry. Recent examples show that our theory is not so far from reality as we all do want.

The notions of conviviality, everyday multiculturalism, ordinary cosmopolitanism focus on how people live together in contexts of cultural diversity. However, discussion has been to a large degree limited to the context of the postcolonial Global North metropolis. Taking it further afield helps reveal a number of conceptual flaws. To resolve them the debate should move from looking at techniques for living together to the politics of living together.
This paper brings post-communist Eastern Europe into the debate through the case study of a street market in Sofia, Bulgaria. It is argued that the everyday encounter of different social strata in an urban space gives rise to similar tensions as the mixing of cultures and ethnicities. The notion of social multiculture is therefore introduced along the lines of Paul Gilroy’s “everyday multiculture”. Importantly, in the East European context deeply ingrained norms of civility do not protect from outspoken expressions of racism, nor is cultural or social mixing much celebrated. It is such social contexts that permit a study of how inter-ethnic and inter-class diversity are truly negotiated from below.

Video games are increasingly becoming an important media today, despite the light connota-tion of its initial categorization. Today they are an industry that produces billions of dollars and employs engineers and artists alike in an art form spanning interactive games, to virtual socie-ties where millions of people dwell. However, like all human products, our same fears, flaws and xenophobia show in the games, with the reflection of hatred, racism and stereotypes that are our everyday experience. Also, because of the influence of other media, like television, with misrepresentations of blacks, Latinos and other races, or the objectification of women are pre-sent in video games. The significant thing found researching for this assignment is that most of those who use these games are themselves part of minorities or races that are not exactly white Americans. Abuse of the frustrations and desires of the user, handling codes and the system an-swers of gamers to maintain the player engagement, has more resemblance to the use of illegal drugs than with art, but however, the complexity of the design, stories and global assessment, have led to other considerations by experts. Competing in the games could be considered as having more of escapism that the reality of engaging, but all human beings are expected in their tribes to compete and demonstrate their value as a member while complying with social norms or expectations. Same as satisfying or surrender to corporate or group interests. Here are some thoughts for the purpose of this study.

This study will comprehensively analyze the article “Using Racial and Ethnic Concepts: The critical case of very young children” by Debra Van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagin from the journal of American Sociological Review (1996). From this perspective, it should be necessary and efficient if we start our examination with the short summary of this paper.

The "white Australia policy" has so far largely been discussed with regard only to its political-ideological perspective. No account was taken of the central problem of racist societalization, i.e. the everyday production and reproduction of "race" as a social relation ("doing race") supported by broad sections of the population.
This comprehensive study of Australian racism and the "white sugar" campaign shows that the latter was only able to achieve success because it was embedded in a widespread "white Australia culture" that found expression in all spheres of life.

Somalia is generally thought of as a homogenous society, with a common Arabic ancestry, a shared culture of nomadism and one Somali mother tongue. This study challenges this myth. Using the Jareer/Bantu as a case study, the book shows how the Negroid physical features of this ethnic group has become the basis for ethnic marginalization, stigma, social exclusion and apartheid in Somalia. The book is another contribution to the recent deconstruction of the perceived Somali homogeneity and self-same assertions. It argues that the Somalis, just like most societies, employ multiple levels of social and ethnic distinctions, one of which is the Jareer versus Jileec divide. Dr. Eno successfully portrays another Somalia, in which a mythical homogeneity masks the oppression and social exclusion suffered by some ethnic groups in the country

"En nuestra vida cotidiana de habitantes del llamado “mundo occidental” abundan las situaciones en que la música suena mientras estamos ocupados en alguna otra actividad. Calles y plazas, transportes, supermercados, casas particulares, restaurantes, tiendas de moda y no tan de moda, entornos de
trabajo, sitios públicos y menos públicos, son lugares donde suenan a menudo músicas de una u otra especie, muchas de las cuales fueron compuestas originalmente para ser escuchadas en un entorno de atención. Además, la música acompaña también buena parte de los productos audiovisuales que consumimos a lo largo del día, aunque muchas veces ni siquiera seamos conscientes de su presencia. Ante la proliferación de músicas a nuestro alrededor, la actitud de escucha distraída e intermitente se ha convertido prácticamente en norma: es lo que llamamos “escucha ambiental”. Esta
modalidad de escucha tan habitual está sin embargo poco estudiada: es compleja y escurridiza, y sin duda requiere una aproximación interdisciplinar.

El seminario “La música que no se escucha”, que tuvo lugar en el marco del Festival Zeppelin 2003, se concibió precisamente con la intención de ofrecer algunos conceptos y modelos teóricos útiles para empezar a pensar esta práctica, partiendo de la necesidad de revisar las tipologías de la escucha
heredadas de la tradición musicológica. Las ponencias que allí se presentaron, y que este libro recoge, descubren algunas de las muchas cuestiones implicadas en la escucha ambiental, como su función en el cine y la radio, en las estrategias de control del espacio público, en las transformaciones de la
tradición y en la relación de los oyentes con su contexto y su identidad."

The Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review ('the Review') is a peer-reviewed publication that is available online through the Australian Psychological Society. Its remit is to encourage research that challenges the stereotypes and assumptions of pathology that have often inhered to research on lesbians, gay men, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people. The aim of the Review is thus to facilitate discussion over the direction of LGBTQ psychology both within Australia and abroad, and to provide a forum within which academics, practitioners and lay people may publish.

Video games are increasingly becoming an important medium today, despite the light connota-tion of its initial categorization. Today they are an industry that produces billions of dollars and employs engineers and artists alike in an art form spanning interactive games, to virtual socie-ties where millions of people dwell. However, like all human products, our same fears, flaws and xenophobia show in the games, with the reflection of hatred, racism and stereotypes that are our everyday experience. Also, as a result of the influence of other media, like television, with misrepresentations of blacks, Latinos and other races, or the objectification of women are present in video games. The significant thing found researching for this assignment is that most of those who use these games are themselves part of minorities or races that are not exactly white Americans. Abuse of the frustrations and desires of the user, handling codes and the sys-tem answers of users to maintain the player engagement, has more resemblance to use of illegal drugs with art, but however, the complexity of the design, stories and global assessment, have led to other considerations by experts. Competing in the games could be considered as having more of escapism that the reality of engaging, but all human beings are expected in their tribes to compete and demonstrate their value as a member while complying with social norms or ex-pectations. Same as satisfying or surrender to corporate or group interests. Here are some ideas for the intent of this survey.

This article uses a Latina/o critical theory framework (LatCrit), as a branch of critical race theory (CRT) in education, to understand how discourses of racist nativism-the institutionalized ways people perceive, understand and make sense of contemporary US immigration, that justifies native (white) dominance, and reinforces hegemonic power-emerge in California public K-12 education for Chicana students. I use data from 40 testimonio interviews with 20 undocumented and US-born Chicana students, to show how racist nativist discourses have been institutionalized in California public education by English hegemony, that maintains social, political, and economic dominance over Latina/o students and communities, regardless of actual nativity. Teacher practices of English dominance is a manifestation of this hegemony that can be articulated by the concept of racist nativist microaggression-systemic, everyday forms of racist nativism that are subtle, layered, and cumulative verbal and non-verbal assaults directed toward People of Color.

Contemporary approaches to integrating "self" and the "other"—such as multiculturalism, cultural diversity, race relations, inclusiveness strategies, or identity politics—are flawed from the perspective of traditional thought. At their core, modernist ideologies are inimical to and destructive of all human diversity. The new face of antipathy to pluralism is becoming more deceptive as it grows less focused on respecting diversity and more on promoting ideological uniformity and the erection of a global monoculture. This essay argues that it is from a metaphysical perspective that human diversity can be fully understood and can seek to reconcile the dichotomy of "self" and the "other".

From my childhood in a family of Algerian origin in Istres (Marseilles, France) to my present academic life in Berlin, an overview of the different stages of my career, with a focus on themes like migration, immigration, integration, discrimination, sport, Islam, the Arabic language, the post-colonial condition in France, cities of the Arab world, gender and of course Ottoman urban studies.

The French academic system of the "Habilitation à diriger des recherches" requires the writting of a such autobiographic essay (ego-history). I will probably never make a real book out of it, but this small e-book is anyway the occasion for me to share this experience

Key words: habilitation à diriger des recherches, HDR, essai d'égo-histoire, mémoire autobiographique

The term “microaggression” has experienced a lively existence in the field of psychology since its introduction in 1970s.  Sociology has recently come to study microaggressions, yet, serious gaps remain in the study of microaggressions.  In particular, sociological analysis has not taken into account how exposure to microaggressive interactions may affect racial attitudes, how variations in microaggressive interactions have different effects, and what racial and gender positions render one more or less likely to engage in, or fail to oppose, microaggressions.  Based on a GSS-based survey and an experimental vignette design, we address the following two questions: First, how might the presence of racial microaggressions affect racial attitudes?  Second, what is the power of specific types of interactional microaggression?  Results indicate that both exposure to microaggressions and the type of microaggressions are correlated with changes in specific racial attitudes associated with the marginalization, problematization, and symbolic and physical repression of people of color.

While a focus on institutional anti-racism challenges structural formations of racialized inequality, the inattention to quotidian resistance misses the complex manner in which racism is negotiated in everyday life. Examining ‘everyday anti-racism’ can better identify the cultural repertoires that frame how individuals deal with racism across different contexts. This paper shares findings from ethnographic research with Filipino migrants living in Sydney. Specifically, it focuses on middle-class Filipino migrants and their use of social mobility to manage routine racism. The experience of middle-class racial minorities presents distinct perspectives as their strategies do not sit comfortably with anti-racism ideals of ‘equality for all’. I advance the concept of everyday anti-racism to argue for a broader anti-racism politics that captures situated approaches to combating racism. Furthermore, I propose that the identity repair in middle-class contexts offer a chance to build antiracism praxis that cuts across traditional solidarities.

Reflecting on European colonialism in 1950 - at a time when discussions about what we now know as the European Union emerged in western Europe, Aimé Césaire wrote, . . . Europe is morally, spiritually indefensible. This idea is fairly commonplace in much of the post-colonial world and it has some purchase within certain academic and intellectual circles elsewhere. And yet, in the process of denouncing the widely noted presence of racism in Hungary, thirty-six leading Hungarian intellectuals have, in a recent public document, felt compelled to thank France, and through France, a generic, trans-historical notion of Europe, for what they saw as the latter's profound, longue-durée goodness. It is partly my concern for the economic hardship, political marginality, cultural discrimination, and social exclusion faced by the Romanies of eastern Europe and partly the precision with which the Letter articulates the topos of west European moral superiority - a central pattern of European identity discourse - that prompts me to raise the following initial questions: How is it possible to denounce racism by referring to Europe, especially western Europe, the main historic source and promoter of racism as we know it today? What purpose does the genre of the open letter serve and how does it function? How does the signatories' implicit project of geopolitical self-positioning relate to the theme of the West as an object to be emulated, long dominant in the modern history of east-central European ideas of emancipation?

Unconscious mental processes (such as the automatic activation of racial stereotypes) can lead to such phenomena as negative pygmalion effects and stereotype threat, both of which directly interfere with black students' academic success, thus widening the racial achievement gap. Because stereotype activation occurs automatically and outside of conscious awareness, there is the disturbing possibility that nothing can be done to fully mitigate its harmful effects. It is proposed, however, on the basis of recent cross-disciplinary research, that by expending deliberate effort along the personal, instructional, and environmental dimensions, conscientious teachers can counteract these effects and help close the achievement gap.

Despite the fact that much of ‘the history of anti-racism consists of the actions of ordinary people’, studies on ‘everyday anti-racism’ remain little consolidated in racism and anti-racism theory (Bonnett, 2000: 88). Following from Essed’s (1991) seminal work on the concept of ‘everyday racism’, the term ‘everyday anti-racism’ has been employed across varied studies to refer to the ways in which individuals respond to racism in interpersonal interactions and spaces of encounter in their day-to-day lives (Bonnett, 2000; Lamont and Fleming, 2005; Pollock, 2008; Mitchell et al.,2011; Nelson, 2015a; Aquino, 2017). This can include the actions of victims confronting perpetrators, witnesses speaking out against racism, practices that bridge cultural di!erence, material and subjective strategies deployed by those on the receiving end of racism to repair stigmatized identities, and aestheticized expressions through popular culture such as forms of music, youth cultures and media that challenge racism. In this chapter, I review selected works examining anti-racism in everyday life and draw out its key tenets as an area of study with the aim of highlighting how it contributes to broader anti-racism theory and praxis.

The chapter deals with implicit meanings in political advertising. It argues that an adequate interpretation of some messages, particularly those that appear vague, ambiguous and semantically indeterminate, needs to be contextualized with reference to diverse extra-linguistic variables. These include shared presuppositions, institutional frames, genre constraints, as well as socio-cultural background, which may involve, among other things,knowledge of the speaker’s discursive history. Within such a context,words and other extra-linguistic signs may yield the relevant meanings which–though deniable by the speaker–constitute interpretations that are contextually plausible. Based on an analysis of an election slogan by a politician ill-famed for racist remarks and actions in the past, the article shows that a message can ambiguously convey preferred overt and covert meanings, with the latter potentially deniable once the recipients arrive at meanings that are dispreferred and excessively face-threatening to the speaker. The mechanism identified in the article is a common discursive strategy of racist and other discriminatory discourse, in that such discourse is subtly provocative, yet strives to stay within the limits of public acceptability.

This article argues for the analytical potentials of the concept of spontaneity in our effort to understand critically the socio-spatial dynamics of Athens, but especially the contemporary collective protest actions in the city. Such critical understanding emerges as a significant task given the current urgency to grasp the capitalist crisis and the collective reactions to it. However, taking into account the re-configuration of extreme-Right violence in the streets of Athens, the article attempts to revisit the Marxist dichotomy between spontaneity and non-spontaneity. Via an anthropological critique of this distinction, the paper suggests an additional point of focus beyond spontaneity.

The portrayal of Hispanics in American film and television has focused traditionally in negative stereotypes of the worst values and traditions of the Spanish-speaking communities in the country, with a racist and prejudiced misrepresented focus, a sample of the superficiality and hatred by some in the media industry. Recent examples show that our theory is not so far from reality as we all do want.

Each year, Israel's young men and women are drafted into compulsory military service and are required to engage directly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict is by its nature intensely complex and is played out under the full glare of international security. So, how does Israel's education system prepare its young people for this? How is Palestine, and the Palestinians against whom these young Israelis will potentially be required to use force, portrayed in the school system? Nurit Peled-Elhanan argues that the textbooks used in the school system are laced with a pro-Israel ideology, and that they play a part in priming Israeli children for military service. She analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity. This book provides a fresh scholarly contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian debate, and will be relevant to the fields of Middle East Studies and Politics more widely

"“Bernstein’s powerful account of how the sentimental ideology of childhood innocence, and particularly its highly gendered manifestations, function to articulate racial hierarchies gives strong and detailed evidence for how paying attention to childhood serves to refocus many all too familiar, and troublesome, facets of American culture. I know of virtually no one of her generation who writes with this kind of verve, authority and pleasure. Racial Innocence will prove an important and widely read book—in part simply because it will be so much fun to read.”
—Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Amherst College

“Nineteenth and early twentieth-century material culture comes alive in Robin Bernstein’s brilliant study of the racialized and gendered ideologies that shape, inform and continue to haunt notions of American childhood into the present day. Through imaginative and masterfully innovative archival research, Bernstein shows how representations of childhood and child’s play are integral to the making of whiteness and blackness and citizenship in this country. Racial Innocence is a groundbreaking book that for the first time illuminates the powerful and critical connections between constructions of girlhood, racial formations and American popular culture.”

—Daphne Brooks, Princeton University

In Racial Innocence, Robin Bernstein argues that the concept of “childhood innocence” has been central to U.S. racial formation since the mid-nineteenth century. Children—some imbued with innocence, others excluded from it—figured pivotally in sharply divergent racial agendas from slavery and abolition to antiblack violence and the early civil rights movement.

Bernstein takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which she analyzes as “scriptive things” that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how “innocence” gradually became the exclusive province of white children—until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself.

Robin Bernstein is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her previous books include Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater.

In the America and the Long 19th Century series"

This chapter is theoretical and will briefly discuss the role of environmental epigenetics, and the vulnerability to physical and mental health-related disease passed down from the horrors of African slavery and what this racial history means for generations of black people in the United States.