Search Results

In a race sensitive society, how people racially identify and the salience of these identities influence their associations, including the churches they to choose to attend. This chapter explores the racial identities of interracial church attendees, and the role of racial identity for explaining who attends interracial churches.

The introductory chapter reviews the basic thesis of the book: whiteness (which includes the normativity of white culture, white privilege, and white structural dominance) governs how interracial churches work. Therefore, interracial churches work to the extent that they are first comfortable places for whites to attend. The chapter explains what is meant by whiteness and why whiteness matters. An historical overview of religious race relations in the United States is also provided. And the methods employed for this study are briefly reviewed.

This chapter focuses on the Latino identity. It calls for the understanding Latino identity as an ethnic identity. This option could allow for more internal heterogeneity and resist the racializing that brings racism as well as the mischaracterization of the Latino's sense of self. However, it is also argued that the “ethnic option” is not fully adequate for contemporary social realities, and may inhibit the development of useful political strategies for diverse Latino communities. The main argument in this chapter will take the form of a negative: the ethnic option is not adequate. The very failure of the ethnic option will establish some of the necessary criteria for such an alternative.

This chapter investigates how Latinos' racial and ethnic identities yield either similar or dissimilar educational outcomes to African American youth. It analyzes interethnic differences between African Americans and Latinos in behaviors and attitudes about “acting white” and suggests that gender has the strongest influence. It discussed findings that Latinos are more likely than Latinas to share cultural styles, such as those of hip-hop culture, with African American youths.

This chapter reports evidence from experimental games, adapted to explicitly observe whether racial identity has any impact on social interactions among black-and-white South Africans. In the first “dictator game,” respondents are given an endowment of money and asked how much they would like to give to another participant. In the control cases, the race of the possible recipient is hidden. In others it is indicated by either surname or a photograph. In a second variant of such games, this time with a strategic element added, the initial gift is tripled and the recipient then asked how much she would like to give back to the initiating respondent. If the first set of games measures some element of generosity or altruism, the second emphasizes strategic trust. The results indicate that both socioeconomic context and racial identity matter. In all settings black initiators give away less money than their white counterparts, reflecting the much lower economic resources common in the black community (and thus the relative higher value of each monetary unit).

This chapter explores the metaphysics and politics of being mixed, as well as the conditions (metaphysical, historical, etc.) under which being mixed creates an identity problem in the first place. It considers various proposed solutions to the problem, including assimilationism and nomadic subjectivity. It concludes with a description, assessment, and political analysis of the two main metaphysical options for conceptualizing mixed identity. The primary focus will remain on mixed racial identity, but race is mediated by ethnic and cultural identities in such a way that these cannot always be neatly disentangled.

This chapter addresses the question: How do Black lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGBs) who inhabit two socially significant identities, experience these identities? It considers two dominant perspectives in identity theory. One perspective views multiple salient identities as competing; the other perspective argues that multiple identities coexist to form a coherent self. It supplements these perspectives with two notions: (1) that individuals recognize the social origin of constraints placed on their identities; and (2) that identity is a dialectical process that occurs in distinctive interpersonal, sociocultural, and historical contexts. This conceptual framework shows how unity can exist alongside multiplicity and personal agency alongside social determination in Black LGB identities.

This chapter discusses how the drawing of symbolic boundaries between ethnic and racial groups and peer expectations of racial authenticity affect teens' taste preferences, focusing on the subtle differences in taste preferences between the Indian, Afro-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean, and white students in the schools. Hip-hop's association with African Americans has elevated black racial identity to high status among peers. Non-black students are sometimes chastised for acting black or inauthentic consumption of black popular culture. Hence, ethnic groups have found ways of engaging with hip-hop that connected with their particular ethnicity. Afro-Caribbean youth are equipped with the most authentic claim to hip-hop because of hip-hop's black roots. South Asian youth engage in hybrid bhangra–hip-hop and Hindi-hip-hop styles because they cannot easily boundary-cross in their consumption without being seen as racially inauthentic. The white youth in London choose from myriad cultural styles. Hence, although popular youth culture and status considerations exist in all social contexts, regardless of race and class, their manifestations differ by race and ethnicity.

The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the way in which Brazil has developed a system of colour classification with regard to Afro-descendants in the period since abolition. The intention is not only to show how this system developed over time, but also how it has been shaped by the mobilisation of the black population around the notion of race: as a group sharing solidarity and common experiences of subordination and discrimination. The strategy is to trace the terms ‘colour’ and ‘race’ and their meanings through time, as used or systematised into classifications by the state, social movements and social scientists. This study is both preliminary and incomplete, but it is hoped that it can serve as a guide for future and more systematic research on specific periods, places and social agents.

When one realizes the indeterminacy of racial categories — their fluid borders, arbitrary criteria, and cultural variety — it may be tempting to adopt a nominalism about race, that race is no more real than phlogiston or witchcraft. This chapter resists this conclusion based on phenomenological grounds and insists that race is real. It explores reasons for the current confusion about race, considers various approaches to knowledge about race, and proposes a preliminary phenomenological account of racial identity as it is lived in the body of various racialized subjects at a given cultural moment. It is argued that only when we come to be very clear about how race is lived, in its multiple manifestations, and only when we can come to appreciate its often hidden epistemic effects and its power over collective imaginations can we entertain even the remote possibility of its eventual transformation.

Psychosocial literature covering theory and research on identity evolution in deaf and hard-of-hearing persons is relatively recent. This chapter presents extensive conceptual and theoretical perspectives on the formation of diverse deaf identity categories and how individuals may transition into and out of categories. The following paradigms are covered: disability, racial identity, social identity, acculturation, and narration. Supporting research and anecdotal evidence are included for each paradigm. The interface of d/Deaf/hard of hearing with core identity is examined. Related to this interface, how covert and overt deaf identities influence adjustment is also explored.

Increasing numbers of people manage multiple racial, ethnic, national, or gender identities. The question explored in this book is how people navigate a variety of socially constructed but deeply embodied identities, in a variety of circumstances and contexts. This first chapter provides the theoretical and organization context for the book. Addressed here is the issue of the construction of coherence when coherence is no longer guaranteed by the sameness of collective identity. A variety of theories shed light on the experience of individuals navigating multiple identities. This chapter focuses on such constructs as development of ego identity, identity formation, racial identity development, acculturation and immigration, transnationalism, intersectionality, multiple identity development, and cultural frame switching. The last section of the chapter details how chapter authors view these issues from a range of standpoints.

Even as Edendale Communists elaborated and deepened their own sense of community and their own distinct politicized identity, they also become increasingly concerned with the identities of others. In particular, the white Angelenos were eventually paying attention to racial identities and the treatment of racial minorities in the city. Across the 1930s and 1940s, the white Communists and Edendale leftists became focused on addressing racial discrimination and injustice. In fact, for many Edendale leftists, what drew them to the Party and its associate organizations was the priority over racial issues. Beyond cultivating a community, culture, and identity of their own, they also examined identities broadly as a matter of political practice and principle. This chapter discusses the Communist and related organizations’ effort to bring forth the issue of racial discrimination. It discusses the emergence of racial issues during and after World War II. During this period, racial concerns became central for many Angelenos, particularly the whites. The conflicts over race during the war and postwar years injected a vital conceptual framework into the evolving thinking about the political meaning of individual essence: the broad notion of oppressed social minorities with valid political claims. As the essence was being politicized, the racial battles of the 1940s promoted a clear and powerful model of oppression-driven group-based political power. This model formed the base for the quest for essence in an explicitly political framework of group action. The awakening of the Angelenos to racial identities and racial discrimination transformed the understandings of the city and how other minority groups came to see themselves.

This chapter argues that even if we try to build coalition around what might seem to be our most obvious common concern — reducing racism — the black-white paradigm that dominates racial discourse in the United States inhibits our comprehension of the variety of racisms and racial identities and thus proves more of an obstacle to coalition building than an aid. It uses the situation of Latinos and Asian Americans to explore the black-white binary, what it is, how it operates, and how it is limiting. It then discusses the black-white paradigm.

This chapter examines various dimensions of Black racial identity, and compares the determinants of racial identity of African Americans with those of Black immigrants. The Model of Racial Identity (MMRI) identifies four dimensions of Black racial identity. The first dimension, racial salience, concerns the extent to which one's race is a relevant part of one's self-concept at a particular moment or in a particular situation. The second dimension is racial centrality, which “refers to the extent to which a person normatively defines himself or herself with regard to race.” The third dimension, racial regard, “refers to a person's affective and evaluative judgment of his race in terms of positive-negative valence.” Finally, ideology is the dimension that corresponds to “individuals' beliefs, opinions, and attitudes with respect to the way one feels that members should act.”

This chapter’s focus on Black immigrant authors addresses the tension between the continued racialization of American culture and shifting demographics that undermine the applicability of previous definitions of Blackness. Novels such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah make explicit the connection between the prominence of such immigration and the rise of a figure such as Barack Obama. As Adichie’s novel makes clear, Obama’s background—the son of an African student and a white mother—underlines the shifting definitions of racial identity in twenty-first century America. While her protagonist’s presence in the United States is testament to the symbolic resonance that America still holds as a land of opportunity, her ultimate disillusionment with the United States, and the role that race plays in her return to Nigeria, underscores the incompleteness of the project of racial progress. The chapter engages with Afropolitanism as a post era discourse related to the African immigrant experience.