Search

ZainichiKoreans are the descendants of colonial subjects who migrated to Japan from 1910 to 1945, when Korea was part of the Japanese empire. In 1952, the Japanese state stripped them of their nationality status and left them stateless. Like racial minority groups in other societies, Korean descendants still face systemic discrimination in contemporary Japan. Although they were colonized by a non-European power and are not physically distinct from the dominant Japanese population, their situation is often compared to that of African Americans. Yet, for scholars who think that race is necessarily based on “phenotype,” anti-Korean oppression cannot qualify as an instance of racism in Japan and the comparison with Black Americans is misguided. This article explores the intellectual and political issues at stake in debates over the use of racial comparisons—what I call the “racial politics of comparison.” Examining the views of scholars andZainichiKorean activists, I show how the latter have drawn inspiration from the Black liberation struggle and built alliances with African Americans in order to resist oppression. I argue that their unique situation forces us to revise the role attributed to phenotype in current definitions of race and racism.

This short article reconstructs the forgotten story of Huldah Clark, a Black American teenager who studied in Moscow in the years 1961–1964 on a scholarship offered her by Nikita Khrushchev. It deploys her story to explore the complexities of Cold War racial politics and how ordinary people mobilized the superpowers’ competing slogans in creative ways. It shows how ordinary Black Americans found hope and even tangible support in Khrushchev's Soviet Union as they struggled for civil rights at home and sought avenues for asserting Black power and anti-racist protest on the global stage. Whereas the historiography on Black American sojourners to the USSR has focused on the interwar period, this article shows how the avowed Soviet commitment to racial equality and global anti-racism still had the power to inspire ordinary Black Americans in their struggle against Jim Crow and in their global pursuit of Black liberation.

Offering a sustained reading of Mark Mathabane's K*ffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa (1986), this essay examines the autobiography in light of Steve Biko's thought to demonstrate how Mathabane's stated goals of challenging racism and advancing liberation for Black people are in conflict with his liberalism. Interrogating the autobiography in view of Black Consciousness philosophy brings into stark relief the contradictions that inform its racial politics. As I read the work against the grain and probe the reasons for its enduring popularity among US readers, I show that, paradoxically, Mathabane both conceals and makes visible the workings of white supremacy. While Mathabane argues that white liberals are not responsible for apartheid, he unwittingly demonstrates the opposite, thereby exposing how white liberals worked alongside white nationalists to uphold racial dictatorship in South Africa. The autobiography thus illustrates what Biko calls "the totality of the white power structure," namely how white people work as a collective across ideological boundaries to maintain the racist status quo. In the process, the work shows that the attempt to fold Black people into the logics of liberalism upholds the racism that liberalism depends upon. Ultimately, K*ffir Boy reveals not only the fallacies of liberalism and impossibility of white antiracism, but also the unwavering importance of Black Consciousness in the ongoing struggle for Black liberation.

Community policing is a varying operation. Recent scholarship has attempted to grapple with this variation by examining differences in the way community policing operates across space (e.g., from neighbourhood to neighbourhood), but has problematically overlooked the issue of variation over time. Aiming to analyze both geographical and historical variation, this article examines community policing in the city of Montreal between 1978 and 1994. In this period, I argue, community policing embodied at least three distinct logics, each of which were linked to variations in the racial politics of the city: (1) a logic of collaboration, (2) a logic of compromise, and (3) a logic of counter-insurgency. These three logics, emerging at specific points in time, were also specific in their geography. Documenting geographical and historical variations in community policing, I conclude, can help to link diverse forms of policing to the differentiated socio-spatial hierarchies that shape it and better contribute to the making of what Gilmore (2017) “abolition geographies.”

While a long history of Black feminist thought grapples with the relationship between gender and racial oppression, both historical and present-day examples showcase how white feminists often strug...

This essay proposes first to chart the future of the pentecostal-charismatic movement in North America in terms of demographers’ projection of the movement’s numerical growth and other factors. Demographic growth is related to the continual arrival, in the near future, of pentecostal-charismatic Christians, other Christians, and potential converts to North America by way of diasporas mostly associated with the Global South. Second, within North America, these diasporas will continue to form transnational pentecostal-charismatic denominations with their international headquarters located in a country of the Global South. Related to these diasporas will be the further development of multiracial denominations led by American and Canadian citizens in North America. Third, the presence of transnational and multiracial denominations could prompt a reconfiguration of the movement, reshaping the religious infrastructure, racial politics, and post-secular engagement of the pentecostal-charismatic movement in North America. These demographic shifts offer the movement an opportunity to re-engage racial politics away from White supremacy with a critical use of the Racial Reconciliation Manifesto of the 1990s. Such a re-engagement could offer a sector within the pentecostal-charismatic movement a way to exit its alliance with the Christian Right, to participate with pentecostal-charismatic Christians of color in reconstituting the movement on the basis of the gospel rather than race, and to partner with secularists in generating post-secular sensibilities animated by post-racist practices that cultivate amicable civic relationships.

Muhammad Anwar passed away on 11 June 2019, at the age of 75 after 50 years of research and policy development in the area of race and ethnic studies. In this article, I explore his numerous contributions, including his important work, The Myth of Return: Pakistanis in Britain, published in 1979. His interest in politics and, in particular, participation, and representation within it, led to Race and Elections, published in 1994. His subsequent works on identifying the intergenerational differences among British Pakistanis, who also happen to represent a significant proportion of British Muslims, developed into his final major book, Between Cultures, published in 1998. I explore the nature of his contribution, the impact that it had in the field of race and ethnic studies, and the research openings generated for other scholars to expand on his social anthropological and sociological emphasis on better understanding the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities and the need to better develop policies to alleviate ethnic and racial disadvantage.

Masks have become part of the racial identity politics of our pandemic culture. In addition to providing protection from the coronavirus, masks play a symbolic role in pandemic imaginaries by reconstituting pre-existing racial ideologies and formations in new ways that separate good liberal citizens from “folk devils.” While some masked bodies are valorized and heralded as preserving the public good, others are rendered suspect and subject to greater surveillance, regulation, ostracism and exclusion. Rather than serving as a leveling device, the cultural politics of wearing masks exposes the entrenched inequalities that have resurfaced during the pandemic.

The unresolved question of Palestinian displacement raises important considerations in a settler colonial era of reparations. One line of inquiry that remains relevant for thinking about the future of redress to Palestinian displacement is the following: How did an Indigenous Palestinian society with historical ties to land come to be governed as refugees external to the land? Examining a set of progress reports issued by Count Folke Bernadotte – the first UN appointed Mediator on Palestine –, this paper considers how a land-based reparative justice question became folded into a humanitarian structure, which has now stretched the course of seven decades. Centering the struggle for return as a site of ontological contestation, I consider how we might read these key decisions made between 1948–1951 around redress and the emergence of humanitarian governance as part of, and within a wider genealogy of race and settler colonialism in Palestine. La cuestión irresoluta del desplazamiento palestino plantea importantes consideraciones en una era de reparaciones del colonialismo de asentamiento. Una de las líneas de investigación que continúa siendo relevante para reflexionar sobre el futuro de la resolución del desplazamiento palestino es la siguiente: ¿Cómo llegó la sociedad indígena palestina, con lazos históricos con la tierra, a ser considerada y gobernada como sociedad refugiada ajena a la tierra? Haciendo un repaso de unos informes de progreso escritos por el conde Folke Bernadotte, primer Mediador para Palestina de las Naciones Unidas, este artículo reflexiona sobre cómo una cuestión de justicia reparadora basada en la tierra quedó incorporada en una estructura humanitaria, la cual tiene ya siete décadas de existencia. Centrando la lucha por el retorno como sitio de contestación ontológica, planteo cómo se pueden leer esas decisiones clave tomadas entre 1948 y 1951 acerca de la reparación y la emergencia de la gobernanza humanitaria como parte de, y dentro de una genealogía más amplia de raza y colonialismo de asentamiento en Palestina. Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1128

This book provides an original approach to the connections of race, racism and neoliberalisation through a focus on ‘postethnic activism,’ in which mobilisation is based on racialisation as non-white or ‘other’ instead of ethnic group membership. Developing the theoretical understanding of political activism under the neoliberal turn in racial capitalism and the increasingly hostile political environment towards migrants and racialised minorities, the book investigates the conditions, forms and visions of postethnic activism in three Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden and Finland). It connects the historical legacies of European colonialism to the current configurations of racial politics and global capitalism. The book compellingly argues that contrary to the tendencies of neoliberal postracialism to de-politicise social inequalities the activists are re-politicising questions of race, class and gender in new ways. The book is of interest to scholars and students in sociology, ethnic and racial studies, cultural studies, feminist studies and urban studies.

This essay examines the depiction of women, travel, natural science, and race in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters (1864–66) and Andrew Davies’s BBC adaptation of the novel (1999). It argues that the adaptation offers a recognizable transposition of Gaskell’s text, but makes some significant adjustments that reveal its contemporary reimagining of the novel’s gender and racial politics. In particular, Davies transforms Gaskell’s unexceptional female protagonist Molly Gibson into a proto-feminist naturalist adventurer, and revisions the casual racism the novel expresses towards black people in line with late-twentieth-century sensibilities. Each text, novel and film, reveals the period-specific ideological forces that shape its portrayal of Englishwomen and African people.

The United States has been shaped by clashes between rival “racial orders” or “racial policy alliances” since the nation’s very beginning. For the last half century, those contests have chiefly been between proponents of “color-blind” and “race-conscious” public policies. Today, however, the nation’s dominant racial policy alliances are transforming into ones centered on significantly new themes. The racially conservative “color-blind” policy alliance is, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, becoming an alliance promising “white protectionism.” The “race conscious” policy alliance is, with the mobilizations around the slogan of Black Lives Matter, becoming an alliance focused on “racial reparations” to end “systemic racism”. These new, even more polarized racial policy alliances have counterparts across the globe, and they are likely to shape political life for many years to come.

The racial framework of Martin McDonagh’s 2017 film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri rests at the intersection of three persistent cultural myths—the Frontier Myth, the hero cowboy myth and the myth of white supremacy. There has been much criticism of the portrayal of black characters in the film, and particularly the lack of significant black characters in a film that sports a solid undercurrent of racial politics. While the black characters in the film occupy a small amount of screen time, this paper argues that the film’s treatment of black characters, including their absence, puts on display the cultural dysfunction of racial politics in the US, especially in rural America, and particularly in Missouri. The film’s subversion of the cowboy hero instead reveals the disturbing reality of the Frontier Myth and its dependence on racism and white supremacy for validation. In its unmasking of myth, Three Billboards challenges the illusion of a glorious Western past that never existed and at the same time supports racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Although Olive Schreiner features in most literary criticism as a champion of the disenfranchised, her portrayal of ethnic differences is inflected by transatlantic racial politics. The Irish and B...

This article examines the origins of US mass incarceration. Although it is clear that changes in policy and practice are the proximate drivers of the prison boom, researchers continue to explore—and disagree about—why crime control policy and practice changed in ways that fueled the growth of incarceration in all 50 states. One well-known account emphasizes the centrality of racial and electoral politics. This article more fully explicates the racial politics perspective, describes several friendly amendments to it, and explores a range of arguments that challenge it in more fundamental ways. In the end, we maintain that although mass incarceration has many drivers, it cannot be explained without reference to the centrality of racial politics; the importance of the crime issue to the GOP electoral strategy that emerged in the wake of the civil rights movement; and the nature of the decentralized, two-party electoral system in the United States.

The evolving internationalisation of imperial and colonial affairs fostered the emergence of specific, and interrelated, arguments, institutional arrangements and repertoires of political action re...

Objective Until recently, whiteness was not considered a politically significant social identity. This study builds on recent work and explores empirically the different ways in which white people understand their whiteness with the objective of recognizing how variations in white identification shape attitudes about the Black Lives Matter movement. Methods I use qualitative analysis of in‐depth semistructured interviews to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how white Americans understand and identify with their whiteness and apply this typology to expressed attitudes about Black Lives Matter. Results I find three distinct patterns of white identification that characterize how white people understand their own race and privilege. These patterns subsequently affect how white Americans understand the experiences of minorities, specifically analyzed through opinions about Black Lives Matter. Conclusion Variations in the way that white Americans understand their whiteness have tangible effects on the way they approach racial politics, with this article focused specifically on white attitudes about the Black Lives Matter movement. As the movement engages a broad multiracial coalition it is very possible that those who were previously unaware of their whiteness will come to see it as important, with potentially wide‐ranging impacts on the future of racial politics in the United States.

Scholars and political observers point to declining labor unions, on the one hand, and rising white identity politics, on the other, as profound changes in American politics. However, there has been little attention given to the potential feedback between these forces. In this article, we investigate the role of union membership in shaping white racial attitudes. We draw upon research in history and American political development to generate a theory of interracial labor politics, in which union membership reduces racial resentment. Cross‐sectional analyses consistently show that white union members have lower racial resentment and greater support for policies that benefit African Americans. More importantly, our panel analysis suggests that gaining union membership between 2010 and 2016 reduced racial resentment among white workers. The findings highlight the important role of labor unions in mass politics and, more broadly, the importance of organizational membership for political attitudes and behavior.

This essay will act as an analysis of the Indo-Afro racial politics of two west Indian countries: Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. I will give the circumstances that led to the migration of large numbers of East Indians as indentured servants to Trinidad and Guyana, specifically. I will also explain how these conditions led to a distinct form of government and society. Through tables of electoral data in Trinidad, the racial voting patterns will be observed, and I will elaborate on how political parties do or do not pander to their respective racial communities. Finally, I will conclude by addressing how the racial divide in these two large Caribbean nations impact Caribbean regionalism on a larger scale.

While easy to empirically document the explicit bias underlying authoritarian populism, most of the individuals animating the movement are driven by sentiments harder to detect, such as implicit bi...

Historically, the Chinese community in Indonesia has been stereotyped as exclusive of the ‘indigenous’ social group; hardworking and industrious but frugal; and apolitical or lacking nationalistic ...

This essay examines communication's historical anxieties regarding disciplinary legitimacy as an investment in whiteness. We argue that such anxieties are predicated upon a normative ideal of citiz...

If V. S. Naipaul’s late fiction demonstrates the crisis of narrative in the arrested dialectic of what I have called postcolonial naturalism, then the work of South African novelist, playwright, and critic Lewis Nkosi epitomizes the intersection of postcolonial naturalism with the double-voiced discourse of the hysteric. Situated between a post-independence melancholy and the registration of globalization’s volatile new dispensation and refracted through the racial politics of apartheid and its end as well as the lived experience of exile, Nkosi’s apartheid-era debut novelMating Birdsarticulates in both form and content the noble self-exemption of Hegel’s “Beautiful Soul” and the subversive anxiety of the hysteric, to whom no satisfaction can be given. Such an accounting helps to reframe split critical appraisal of the novel by reading its complex of form and content as the living crystallization of historical processes.

The interview was motivated by an interest in exploring how Singapore film directors perceive the three major Chinese cinema awards, mainly the Golden Horse Awards (GHA), Hong Kong Film Awards (HKFA) and Golden Rooster Awards (GRA), and what they might signify for Singapore cinema, especially for a nation that is predominantly ethnic Chinese. Amongst the directors interviewed, Boo Junfeng went beyond to share his views on film education, funding and the implications of racial politics and ethnic privilege underlying the nomination for international film awards.

As one of contemporary Japan’s most famous authors, Murakami Haruki’s stories have inspired many producers of various media and genres. In this transmedial process where creative content is transpo...

This paper examines the political life of Malcolm X in the context of the Black Prophetic Tradition. By exploring historical, literary, and theological considerations of political violence and divi...

Prior research indicates that faith-based social service providers are overrepresented in disadvantaged neighborhoods, which has led some to advocate for their increased involvement in the U.S. social safety net. Yet, we have little understanding of how they and other social service organizations understand the significance of place in their work. Here I explore how conceptions of place matter for social service provision by drawing on 12 months of ethnographic observation and interviews with 24 key informants in two faith-based social service organizations in Houston, Texas. I find that faith-based organizations attach significance to their geographic location based not only on their proximity (or lack thereof) to their target service recipients, but also through relationships with key stakeholders. Agencies label places as safe or unsafe to recruit donors and volunteers, but in doing so they channel resources unequally between communities in ways that perpetuate racial disparities in social service access. The results have implications for understanding the importance of place within social service organizations, particularly faith-based agencies, which are increasingly relied upon to serve the urban poor.

Widespread reliance on credit increasingly defines realities of economic citizenship in American society. This article theorizes the racial politics of credit expansion. It examines the federal ini...

This article revisits Julia Alvarez’s critically acclaimed historical novel In the Time of the Butterflies (1994). While much scholarship has paid attention to the novel as historiographic metafiction, its depiction of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s regime (1930-61), and its feminist perspective on the Dominican Republic, its racial politics are under-studied. In particular, scholars have overlooked Fela, the Afra-Dominican servant, spirit medium, and storyteller. I argue that studying Fela’s presence in the text as an unauthorized and unauthored voice not only adds complexity to the production of historiography and storytelling but also provides new insight into postcolonial feminist critiques of voice/lessness, narrative, and marginalized identities in the novel and criticism on it. Closely analyzing Fela’s voice—as it intersects with storytelling, historical slave narratives, Vodou, the maternal, and Haiti’s contribution to the Dominican Republic’s history—makes visible the unacknowledged yet essential role of the Afra-Dominican not only in this novel specifically but also to the Dominican Republic more generally.

As long as African Americans place their faith in political rightness and correctness of American democracy, they would never know what it feels like to be equal. The hope and optimism that coursed through Black America in anticipation of Obama’s victory as the first Black president in 2008 seemed a million miles away. It seems like slavery was never abolished, it was only redesigned.

This essay considers how the creative writing workshop transformed the white Vietnam vet into a minority writer. The MFA system, which organized the group-based politics of post–civil rights American literature, originated as a space geared toward white combat veterans. Some of the first graduate programs in creative writing were founded in the years after World War II, and their classes were dominated by white vets attending college on the GI Bill. The vets received the now-clichéd advice to write what they know, to turn their war experiences into war stories. The next wave of program building followed the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966, which brought Vietnam vets into a changing workshop, where students still learned to write what they know but also, as pre–civil rights racial liberalism turned to post–civil rights liberal multiculturalism, write who they are. The trauma of combat allowed white men to situate themselves within late twentieth-century literary culture by writing not as white men but as “veteran-Americans.” Veteran-American literature set white men within the pluralist institution but without forfeiting the cultural center, or the front seat in the classroom.

This is a big book – not so much in length, but in the breadth of coverage, depth of analysis, and gravitas of its contributors. It grows out of a multi-year transnational collaboration between sch...

Here is the lay of the land in regard to film scholarship – academics know far more about Classical Hollywood film practices and business models than they do about contemporary motion picture econo...