Whiteness Garner, Steve
2007, 20070803, 2007-08-03, 20070101
eBook
What is whiteness? Why is it worth using as a tool in the social sciences?
Making sociological sense of the idea of whiteness, this book skilfully argues how this concept can help us understand ...contemporary societies. If one of sociology's objectives is to make the familiar unfamiliar in order to gain heightened understanding, then whiteness offers a perfect opportunity to do so.
Leaning firstly on the North American corpus, this key book critically engages with writings on the formation of white identities in Britain, Ireland and the Americas, using multidisciplinary sources. Empirical work done in the UK, including the author's own, is developed in order to suggest how whiteness functions in Britain.
Bringing an emphasis on empirical work to a heavily theorized area, this important text synthesizes and reviews existing work, incorporates multidisciplinary sources of interest to those outside the sociology sphere, and features concise chapters which will engage undergraduates. Garner deftly argues that whiteness is a multifaceted, contingent and fluid identity, and that it must be incorporated into any contemporary understandings of racism as a system of power relationships in both its local and global forms.
"Garner’s book on whiteness is a very powerful tool which I will use as a critical lens in which to understand racism and its relational systems of subordination and oppression as sustained through the construction of whiteness."— Howard Johnson, Secondary School Teacher
Steve Garner is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He has published on racism, immigration, whiteness and colonialism.
Introduction 1. Whiteness as Terror and Supremacy 2. Whiteness as a Kind of Absence 3. Whiteness as Values, Norms and Cultural Capital 4. Whiteness as Contingent Hierarchies 5. Whiteness in the Caribbean and Latin America 6. Whiteness at the Margins 7. How the Irish Became White (Again) 8. Asylumgration: The Others Blur 9. Racial Purity, Integration and the Idea of Home. Conclusion: In Defence of the Whiteness Problematic
More than fifty years after the civil rights movement, there are still glaring racial inequities all across the United States. In Rich Thanks to Racism, Jim Freeman, one of the country's leading ...civil rights lawyers, explains why as he reveals the hidden strategy behind systemic racism. He details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States is a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals who profit mightily from racial inequality. In this groundbreaking examination of "strategic racism, " Freeman carefully dissects the cruel and deeply harmful policies within the education, criminal justice, and immigration systems to discover their origins and why they persist. He uncovers billions of dollars in aligned investments by Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaires that are dismantling public school systems across the United States. He exposes how the greed of prominent US corporations and Wall Street banks was instrumental in creating the world's largest prison population and our most extreme anti- immigrant policies. Freeman also demonstrates how these "racism profiteers" prevent flagrant injustices from being addressed by pitting white communities against communities of color, obscuring the fact that the struggles faced by white people are deeply connected with those faced by people of color. Rich Thanks to Racism is an invaluable road map for all those who recognize that the key to unlocking the United States' full potential is for more people of all races and ethnicities to prioritize racial justice.
How the history of racism without visible differences between people challenges our understanding of the history of racial thinking Racial divisions have returned to the forefront of politics in the ...United States and European societies, making it more important than ever to understand race and racism. But do we? In this original and provocative book, acclaimed historian Jean-Frédéric Schaub shows that we don't—and that we need to rethink the widespread assumption that racism is essentially a modern form of discrimination based on skin color and other visible differences. On the contrary, Schaub argues that to understand racism we must look at historical episodes of collective discrimination where there was no visible difference between people. Built around notions of identity and otherness, race is above all a political tool that must be understood in the context of its historical origins.Although scholars agree that races don't exist except as ideological constructions, they disagree about when these ideologies emerged. Drawing on historical research from the early modern period to today, Schaub makes the case that the key turning point in the political history of race in the West occurred not with the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery, as many historians have argued, but much earlier, in fifteenth-century Spain and Portugal, with the racialization of Christians of Jewish and Muslim origin. These Christians were discriminated against under the new idea that they had negative social and moral traits that were passed from generation to generation through blood, semen, or milk—an idea whose legacy has persisted through the age of empires to today.Challenging widespread definitions of race and offering a new chronology of racial thinking, Schaub shows why race must always be understood in the context of its political history.
Racisms Bethencourt, Francisco
2014., 20131128, 2014, 2014-01-19
eBook
Groundbeaking in its global and historical scope,Racismsis the first comprehensive history of racism, from the Crusades to the twentieth century. Demonstrating that there is not one continuous ...tradition of racism in the West, distinguished historian Francisco Bethencourt shows that racism preceded any theories of race and must be viewed within the prism and context of social hierarchies and local conditions. In this richly illustrated book, Bethencourt argues that in its various aspects, all racism has been triggered by political projects monopolizing specific economic and social resources.
Bethencourt focuses on the Western world, but opens comparative views on ethnic discrimination and segregation in Asia and Africa. He looks at different forms of racism, particularly against New Christians and Moriscos in Iberia, black slaves and freedmen in colonial and postcolonial environments, Native Americans, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and Jews in modern Europe. Exploring instances of enslavement, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing, Bethencourt reflects on genocide and the persecution of ethnicities in twentieth-century Europe and Anatolia. These cases are compared to the genocide of the Herero and Tutsi in Africa, and ethnic discrimination in Japan, China, and India. Bethencourt analyzes how practices of discrimination and segregation from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries were defended, and he systematically integrates visual culture into his investigation.
Moving away from ideas of linear or innate racism, this is a major interdisciplinary work that recasts our understanding of interethnic relations.
Greater racial diversity is good news for America's future
Race is once again a contentious topic in America, as shown by the divisive rise of Donald Trump and the activism of groups like Black Lives ...Matter. YetDiversity Explosionargues that the current period of profound racial change will lead to a less-divided nation than today's older whites or younger minorities fear. Prominent demographer William Frey sees America's emerging diversity boom as good news for a country that would otherwise face declining growth and rapid aging for many years to come.
In the new edition of this popular Brookings Press offering, Frey draws from the lessons of the 2016 presidential election and new statistics to paint an illuminating picture of where America's racial demography is headed-and what that means for the nation's future.
Using the U.S. Census, national surveys, and related sources, Frey tells how the rapidly growing "new minorities"-Hispanics, Asians, and multiracial Americans-along with blacks and other groups, are transforming and reinvigorating the nation's demographic landscape. He discusses their impact on generational change, regional shifts of major racial groups, neighborhood segregation, interracial marriage, and presidential politics.
Diversity Explosionis an accessible, richly illustrated overview of how unprecedented racial change is remaking the United States once again. It is an essential guide for political strategists, marketers, investors, educators, policymakers, and anyone who wants to understand the magnitude, potential, and promise of the new national melting pot in the twenty-first century.
The origins of anti-Haitian and anti-black nationalist ideologies in the Dominican Republic have long been central to debates among the historians, political scientists, and journalists who wish to ...understand the relationship between popular expressions of Dominican identity and official nationalism.
In The Mulatto Republic, April Mayes looks at the many ways Dominicans define themselves through race, skin color, and culture. She explores significant historical factors and events that have led the nation, for much of the twentieth century, to favor privileged European ancestry and Hispanic cultural norms such as the Spanish language and Catholicism.
Mayes seeks to discern whether contemporary Dominican identity is a product of the Trujillo regime--and, therefore, only a legacy of authoritarian rule--or is representative of a nationalism unique to an island divided into two countries long engaged with each other in ways that are sometimes cooperative and at other times conflicted. Her answers enrich and enliven an ongoing debate.
What happens to a country that was built on race when the boundaries of black and white have started to fade? Not only is the literal face of America changing where white will no longer be the ...majority, but the belief in the firmness of these categories and the boundaries that have been drawn is also disintegrating. In a nuanced reading of culture in a post Obama America, this book asks what will become of the racial categories of black and white in an increasingly multi-ethnic, racially ambiguous, and culturally fluid country. Through readings of sites of cultural friction such as the media frenzy around 'transracial' Rachel Dolezal, the new popularity of racially ambiguous dolls, and the confusion over Obama's race, Fading Out Black and White explores the contemporary construction of race. This insightful, provocative glimpse at identity formation in the US reviews the new frontier of race and looks back at the archaism of the one-drop rule that is unique to America.
As COVID-19 made inroads in the United States in spring 2020, a common refrain rose above the din: “We’re all in this together.” However, the full picture was far more complicated—and far less ...equitable. Black and Latinx populations suffered illnesses, outbreaks, and deaths at much higher rates than the general populace. Those working in low-paid jobs and those living in confined housing or communities already disproportionately beset by health problems were particularly vulnerable. The contributors to The Pandemic Divide explain how these and other racial disparities came to the forefront in 2020. They explore COVID-19’s impact on multiple arenas of daily life—including wealth, health, housing, employment, and education—while highlighting what steps could have been taken to mitigate the full force of the pandemic. Most crucially, the contributors offer concrete public policy solutions that would allow the nation to respond effectively to future crises and improve the long-term well-being of all Americans.Contributors. Fenaba Addo, Steve Amendum, Leslie Babinski, Sandra Barnes, Mary T. Bassett, Keisha Bentley-Edwards, Kisha Daniels, William A. Darity Jr., Melania DiPietro, Jane Dokko, Fiona Greig, Adam Hollowell, Lucas Hubbard, Damon Jones, Steve Knotek, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Henry Clay McKoy Jr., N. Joyce Payne, Erica Phillips, Eugene Richardson, Paul Robbins, Jung Sakong, Marta Sánchez, Melissa Scott, Kristen Stephens, Joe Trotter, Chris Wheat, Gwendolyn L. Wright
In the global convulsions in the aftermath of World War II, one dominant world racial order broke apart and a new one emerged. In Represent and Destroy, Jodi Melamed portrays the postwar racial break ...as a transition from white supremacist modernity to a formally antiracist liberal capitalist modernity in which racial violence works normatively by policing representations of difference.
A collection of wide-ranging primary source material that tracks the shifting relationships between race and science through two centuries of American history.