Here is your weekly research brief with some of the latest research in the field of race and racism. As always, I note which pieces are freely available on the web, or “open access” with (OA), and those behind a paywall with (locked).

• Metzl, Jonathan M., and Dorothy E. Roberts. “Structural Competency Meets Structural Racism: Race, Politics, and the Structure of Medical Knowledge.” Virtual Mentor. September 2014, Volume 16, Number 9: 674-690. (OA) First paragraph: Physicians in the United States have long been trained to assess race and ethnicity in the context of clinical interactions. Medical students learn to identify how their patients’ “demographic and cultural factors” influence their health behaviors. Interns and residents receive “cultural competency” training to help them communicate with persons of differing “ethnic” backgrounds. And clinicians are taught to observe the races of their patients and to dictate these observations into medical records—“Mr. Smith is a 45-year-old African American man”—as a matter of course.
• Brennen, Bonnie, and Rick Brown. “Persecuting Alex Rodriguez: Race, money and the ethics of reporting the performance-enhancing drug scandal.” Journalism Studies (2014): 1-18. (locked) This qualitative textual analysis considers the US press coverage of Alex Rodriguez for his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. It evaluates nearly 500 newspaper, magazine and broadcast reports from 2007 to 2014 on Rodriguez, as well as reader and journalistic responses, and finds issues of overt and inferential racism, stereotyping and symbolic impurity, and a crude emphasis on money in the coverage. This research considers the ethics of the press coverage through a framework of Critical Race Theory and suggests an approach rooted in communitarian ethics to foster greater social justice and balance in sports media coverage.
• Da Costa, Alexandre Emboaba. “Training educators in anti-racism and pluriculturalismo: recent experiences from Brazil.” Race Ethnicity and Education (2014): 1-23. (locked) This article examines educator participation in training initiatives based on Brazilian federal education legislation (Law 10,639 from 2003) in one city in the state of São Paulo. Law 10,639/03 represents a significant moment in the institutionalization of ethno-racial policies in Brazil over the past 15 years. It makes obligatory the teaching of African and Black Brazilian history and culture in all school subjects, and requires in-depth study of black contributions in the social, economic, and political spheres. The article first contextualizes understandings of race and racism in Brazil, followed by an elaboration of the political and epistemological underpinnings of ethno-racial educational reforms focused on Afro-descendants. The article then analyzes the contradictory processes that emerge from teacher training initiatives where the perspectives of anti-racism, multiculturalism (pluriculturalismo), racial democracy, and miscegenation intermingle and get reconfigured into understandings that have the potential to advance as well as impede critical engagement with racism and racial inequality. Rather than view teacher training initiatives as default decolonization or inevitable co-optation, this article outlines a more complex and contradictory account of state-society collaborations on educational initiatives. The article reveals the practical challenges of decolonization to argue that anti-racist activism in the educational sphere must take seriously the variable and contingent results of such political efforts in order to meet teachers where they are at while also challenging them to go beyond these limitations.
• Loza, Susana. “Hashtag Feminism,# SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, and the Other# FemFuture.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology 5” (2014). (OA) Snippet: “Is mainstream feminism destined to remain the terrain of white women? Or can the digital media praxis of women of color, their hashtag feminism and tumblr activism, their blogging and livejournaling, broaden and radically redefine the very field of feminism?” 
• Moore, Darnell, and Monica J. Casper. “Love in the Time of Racism.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology 5” (2014). (OA) First paragraph: “We offer this collaborative essay as scholars, activists, friends, chosen family, and managing editors (with co-founder and sister-friend Tamura A. Lomax) of The Feminist Wire, an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, feminist digital publication launched in 2011 that now has over a million visitors annually. Following bell hooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and others, our work at TFW is guided by a deep, persistent commitment to love as praxis and pedagogy. Through both our collective, sometimes messy “behind the scenes” process and the work we publish, we attempt to embody this commitment—a necessary one, given that we are working at intense, highly visible, and contentious cultural intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and new media.”

Here is your weekly research brief with some of the latest research in the field of race and racism. As always, I note which pieces are freely available on the web, or “open access” with (OA), and those behind a paywall with (locked).

• Back, Les. “Street Corner Society” Public Books. In this piece on Richard Howe’s New York in Plain Sight, a project that involved taking more than 8,000 photographs of every street corner in Manhattan. In interviewing him about the project, Howe reveals to Back: “In the course of the project I became very conscious … about how racist I still was.” (OA) 
• Balfour, Lawrie. “Unthinking Racial Realism: A Future for Reparations?” DuBois Review 11, no. 1 (2014): 43-56. Considered costly, divisive, and backward-looking, reparations for slavery and Jim Crow appear to have no place in the politics of the “postracial epoch.” This essay proposes that the dismissal of reparations concedes too much. First, I contend that the conjunction of postracial discourse, on the one hand, and deepening racial inequalities, on the other, demands a counter-language, one that ties the analysis of the present to the historical conditions out of which it was produced. I explore reparations as a political language that (1) situates political claims within the historical framework of slavery, reconstruction, and segregation; (2) links past to present to future in its demand for concrete forms of redress; and (3) has played an important role in African American political life and in contemporary democracies in transition. Second, in contrast to much of the reparations scholarship, I focus on the demands of democracy rather than justice. Doing so both helps to evade some of the technical questions that have prevented full consideration of the political work of reparations and provides a vehicle for redefining both governmental and civic responsibility in the shadow of slavery and Jim Crow. (OA – whole issue is open through 9/19/14). 

• Bowman, S.W. (Ed.), Color behind Bars: Racism in the U.S. Prison System (2014). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Low-income African Americans, Latin Americans, and American Indians bear the statistical brunt of policing, death penalty verdicts, and sentencing disparities in the United States. Why does this long-standing inequity exist in a country where schoolchildren are taught to expect “justice for all”? The original essays in this two-volume set not only examine the deep-rooted issues and lay out theories as to why racism remains a problem in our prison system, but they also provide potential solutions to the problem. The work gives a broad, multicultural overview of the history of overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in our prison system, examining white/black disparities as well as racism and issues of ethnic-based discrimination concerning other ethnic minorities. This up-to-date resource is ideally suited for undergraduate students who are enrolled in criminal justice or racial/ethnic studies classes and general readers interested in the U.S. criminal justice system. (locked)

• Dilts, Andrew, “Punishment and Inclusion: Race, Membership, and the Limits of American Liberalism” (2014). Law. Paper 1. At the start of the twenty-first century, 1 percent of the U.S. population is behind bars. An additional 3 percent is on parole or probation. In all but two states, incarcerated felons cannot vote, and in three states felon disenfranchisement is for life. More than 5 million adult Americans cannot vote because of a felony-class criminal conviction, meaning that more than 2 percent of otherwise eligible voters are stripped of their political rights. Nationally, fully a third of the disenfranchised are African American, effectively disenfranchising 8 percent of all African Americans in the United States. In Alabama, Kentucky, and Florida, one in every five adult African Americans cannot vote.   Punishment and Inclusion gives a theoretical and historical account of this pernicious practice of felon disenfranchisement, drawing widely on early modern political philosophy, continental and postcolonial political thought, critical race theory, feminist philosophy, disability theory, critical legal studies, and archival research into state constitutional conventions. It demonstrates that the history of felon disenfranchisement, rooted in postslavery restrictions on suffrage and the contemporaneous emergence of the modern “American” penal system, reveals the deep connections between two political institutions often thought to be separate, showing the work of membership done by the criminal punishment system and the work of punishment done by the electoral franchise. Felon disenfranchisement is a symptom of the tension that persists in democratic politics between membership and punishment. This book shows how this tension is managed via the persistence of white supremacy in contemporary regimes of punishment and governance. (OA)

If you have research related to race and racism, let us know and we’ll include it in an upcoming ‘Research Brief.’

We’re back to our regular schedule after a summer of fewer updates here. Today is Monday, and with the start of a new week, and a new semester, we continue our ‘Research Briefs’ with highlights from recent publications by some of our colleagues in the UK. As always, I’ll note which citations are Open Access (OA) or locked behind a paywall or otherwise not available on the open web (locked).

The journal Patterns of Prejudice selected twenty-four of their top articles from previous years (2011-2013); those are collected here. A few of those titles that may be particularly relevant for readers here include:

• Charters, Erica. “Making bodies modern: race, medicine and the colonial soldier in the mid-eighteenth century.” Patterns of Prejudice 46, no. 3-4 (2012): 214-231. The expansion of British imperial warfare during the middle of the eighteenth century provided motivation and opportunity for observations on British and native forces. The nature of military medicine, with its use of regimental returns and empirical observations about mortality rates of large groups of anonymous individuals, encouraged generalizations about differences between native and European bodies. As foreign, colonial environments accentuated European deaths due to disease during war-time, and as early modern medicine advised the use of acclimatized, native labour, the physical experience of eighteenth-century colonial warfare encouraged the recruitment of native forces as menial labourers under the direction of professional British soldiers. Although not inherently racial, such practices buttressed emerging social and cultural prejudices. In contrast to the traditional focus on intellectual writings on race and science during the modern period of nineteenth-century imperialism, Charters’s article examines the experience of common men—rank-and-file soldiers—during the early modern period, demonstrating the relationship between developing empirical and scientific observations and burgeoning racial theories. (locked)
• Pitcher, Ben. “Race and capitalism redux.” Patterns of Prejudice 46, no. 1 (2012): 1-15. Pitcher’s article deals with a revival of interest in the relationship between race and capitalism. The old reductionist arguments that once held that capitalism was ultimately to blame for racism have been subject to a peculiar inversion, and now capitalism is being conceived as having anti-racist outcomes. Engaging with arguments that suggest that anti-racism similarly serves as an agent of neoliberal capitalism, Pitcher suggests it is necessary to rethink the terms of the imputed relation between race and capital. He goes on to interrogate some of the pieties of contemporary race politics, and argues that common blind spots in left critique constitute an obstacle to understanding the articulation of capitalism and race. (locked)
• Saggar, Shamit. “Bending without breaking the mould: race and political representation in the United Kingdom.” Patterns of Prejudice 47, no. 1 (2013): 69-93. Saggar draws together research evidence and practitioner insights to evaluate and interpret change in race and political representation in Britain. The starting point is to ask: how far have British democratic institutions been responsive to the emergence of an ethnically diverse society? There have been significant impacts of such diversity on attitudinal change, demographic and electoral composition and political participation. Saggar’s article proceeds in four parts. First, the issue of the political integration of ethnic minorities is discussed, including theoretical debates about political difference in outlook and in behaviour across and within ethnic groups, as well as the ways this may be connected to ethnic background. Second, key normative and empirical arguments are examined about why political change and ethnic pluralism matters, and to whom. The structure, institutions and processes that shape representative outcomes form the backdrop to the remainder of the article. The third section highlights aspects of the party and electoral landscape that disproportionately influence the electoral prospects for discrete minorities. Finally, attention is given to the rise of a ‘political class’ and discusses how these filters can skew the opportunities available to minorities. Saggar concludes with a discussion of long-term political integration, the emerging focus on executive appointments, and how, through political integration and social cohesion, minorities can affect the wider political system they have joined. (locked)

The British Sociological Association’s Race and Ethnicity Study Group (@BSArace) released a special issue that provides an overview of the field:

• Andrews, Kehinde, Leah Bassel, and Aaron Winter. “The British Sociological Association Race and Ethnicity Study Group Conference ‘Mapping the Field: Contemporary Theories of Race, Racism and Ethnicity’.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37, no. 10 (2014): 1862-1868. (OA)

The editors of the journal Sociology, the flagship journal of the British Sociological Association’s (@britsoci), have put together what they’re calling an “E-Special,” which is a compilation of previously published articles on race and racism, including this classic:

• Solomos, John and Les Back. “Conceptualising Racisms: Social Theory, Politics and Research.” Sociology 28 (1994): 143-161.  This paper explores the changing terms of debate about race and racism in contemporary social and political theory. It focuses attention on criticisms of what is often called the `race relations problematic’, and looks at some of the critical approaches that have emerged in the past decade. By looking at the questions addressed in the debates of the 1980s and the 1990s, it outlines some of the issues which researches have to address in developing new research agendas. It suggests that we need to rethink key theoretical concepts in order to analyse the complex forms of racism that have emerged in contemporary societies. (OA) 

The E-Special also includes ‘new’ classics, like this one:

• Bhambra, Gurminder K. “Sociology and Postcolonialism: AnotherMissing’Revolution?.” Sociology 41, no. 5 (2007): 871-884. Sociology is usually represented as having emerged alongside European modernity. The latter is frequently understood as sociology’s special object with sociology itself a distinctively modern form of explanation. The period of sociology’s disciplinary formation was also the heyday of European colonialism, yet the colonial relationship did not figure in the development of sociological understandings. While the recent emergence of postcolonialism appears to have initiated a reconsideration of understandings of modernity, with the development of theories of multiple modernities, I suggest that this engagement is more an attempt at recuperating the transformative aspect of postcolonialism than engaging with its critiques. In setting out the challenge of postcolonialism to dominant sociological accounts, I also address `missing feminist/queer revolutions’, suggesting that by engaging with postcolonialism there is the potential to transform sociological understandings by opening up a dialogue beyond the simple pluralism of identity claims. (OA)

The introduction to the E-Special, which provides a nice overview, is here:

• Meer, Nasar, and Anoop Nayak. “Race Ends Where? Race, Racism and Contemporary Sociology.” Sociology (2013): 0038038513501943. In this introductory article we critically discuss where the study of race in sociology has travelled, with the benefit of previously published articles in Sociology supported by correspondence from article authors. We make the argument for sociologies of race that go beyond surface level reconstructions, and which challenge sociologists to reflect on how their discipline is presently configured. What the suite of papers in this collection shows is both the resilience of race as a construct for organising social relations and the slippery fashion in which ideas of race have shifted, transmuted and pluralised. It is in a spirit of recognising continuity and change that we present this collection. Some of the papers already stand as landmark essays, while others exemplify key moments in the broader teleology of race studies. This includes articles that explore the ontological ground upon which ideas of race, citizenship and black identity have been fostered and the need to develop a global sociology that is critically reflexive of its western orientation. The theme of continuity and change can be seen in papers that showcase intersectional approaches to race, where gender, nationality, generation and class offer nuanced readings of everyday life, alongside the persistence of institutional forms of discrimination. As this work demonstrates, middle-class forms of whiteness often go ‘hiding in the light’ yet can be made visible if we consider how parental school choice, or selecting where to live are also recognised as racially informed decisions. The range and complexity of these debates not only reflect the vitality of race in the contemporary period but lead us to ask not so much if race ends here, but where? (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.