Mondays are getting a new feature here. As part of the revamped schedule, we’ll post short briefs about the latest research on race, racism and how that intersects with other dimensions of inequality.

Whenever possible, I’ll include an abstract or brief description about each piece of research.  I’ll also note which citations are Open Access (OA) or locked behind a paywall or otherwise not available on the open web (locked).  Here’s today’s round up (in Chicago Style citation format):

•  Chávez-GarcÍa, Miroslava. “The Interdisciplinary Project of Chicana History: Looking Back, Moving Forward.” Pacific Historical Review 82, no. 4 (2013): 542-565. Chicana history has come a long way since its inception in the 1960s and 1970s. While initially a neglected area of study limited to labor and class, today scholars in history, literature, anthropology, and sociology, among others, study topics of gender, culture, and sexuality, as well as youth culture, reproductive rights, migration, and immigration. In the process, these scholars contribute to the collective project of Mexican and Mexican American women’s history in the United States, making it diverse in its analytical themes, methodologies and sources. Indeed, Chicana history is not confined by disciplinary boundaries. Rather, its cross-disciplinary nature gives its life. This article charts that interdisciplinarity and demonstrates its significance in expanding and recasting Chicano history more broadly. (locked)
• Cresswell, Catherine, Kevin A. Whitehead, and Kevin Durrheim. “The anatomy of ‘race trouble’in online interactions.” Ethnic and Racial Studies ahead-of-print (2014): 1-16. South Africa has a long history of race-related conflicts in a variety of settings, but the use of the concept ‘racism’ to analyse such conflicts is characterized by theoretical and methodological difficulties. In this article, we apply the alternative ‘race trouble’ framework developed by Durrheim, Mtose, and Brown (2011) to the examination of racialized conflicts in online newspaper forums. We analyse the conflicts using an approach informed by conversation analytic and discursive psychological techniques, focusing in particular on the emergence and use of race and racism as interactional resources. Our findings reveal some mechanisms through which the continuing salience of race in South Africa comes to be reproduced in everyday interactions, thereby suggesting reasons why race continues to garner social and cultural importance. Disagreements over the nature of racism were also recurrent in the exchanges that we examined, demonstrating the contested and shifting meanings of this concept in everyday interactions. (locked)
• Hellman, Deborah. “Racial Profiling and the Meaning of Racial Categories.”Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics 22 (2014): 232.  Hellman argues that racial profiling by government officials is often more problematic than that done by individuals. (locked)
• Nogueira, Simone Gibran. “Ideology of white racial supremacy: colonization and de-colonization processes.” Psicologia & Sociedade 25, no. SPE (2013): 23-32.   This article is a literature review on how the ideology of white racial supremacy dehumanizes and colonizes the minds of Whites and Blacks in Brazil. For this aim I use critical references about whiteness to highlight dehumanization processes in Whites, and I make use of critical references of Black and African studies to examine specific dehumanization processes of the Black population. Furthermore, the work seeks to reflect on possibilities of mental humanization and de-colonization in both groups considering current policies of Affirmative Action in Education in Brazil.(OA)
• Thakore, Bhoomi K. “Must‐See TV: South Asian Characterizations in American Popular Media.” Sociology Compass 8, no. 2 (2014): 149-156. In the 21st century, representations of South Asians in American popular television have increased significantly. However, there has been very little critical analysis on the ways in which these characters are created and produced. In this review, I use literature from the sociology of race/ethnicity, immigration, and critical media studies to identify the concept of “(ethnic) characterization.” While it may be assumed that these representations are created unconsciously, I suggest that media producers intentionally use particular ethnic characteristics that are identified and discussed in contemporary sociological literature. As a result, I argue that these types of media characterizations representations are relevant to these types of media characterizations discipline of sociology. (OA) 

Do you have new research on race, ethnicity, or racism? Want it included in an upcoming Research Brief?  Use the contact form to let us know about your work.  Be sure to include an abstract and a link.