Investigating the Relationship between Ethnic Consciousness,Racial Discrimination and Self-Rated Health in New Zealand

In this study, we examine race/ethnic consciousness and its associations with experiences of racial discrimination and health in New Zealand. Racism is an important determinant of health and cause of ethnic inequities. However, conceptualising the mechanisms by which racism impacts on health requires racism to be contextualised within the broader social environment. Race/ethnic consciousness (how often people think about their race or ethnicity) is understood as part of a broader assessment of the ‘racial climate’. Higher race/ethnic consciousness has been demonstrated among non-dominant racial/ethnic groups and linked to adverse health outcomes in a limited number of studies. We analysed data from the 2006/07 New Zealand Health Survey, a national population-based survey of New Zealand adults, to examine the distribution of ethnic consciousness by ethnicity, and its association with individual experiences of racial discrimination and self-rated health. Findings showed that European respondents were least likely to report thinking about their ethnicity, with people from non-European ethnic groupings all reporting relatively higher ethnic consciousness. Higher ethnic consciousness was associated with an increased likelihood of reporting experience of racial discrimination for all ethnic groupings and was also associated with fair/poor self-rated health after adjusting for age, sex and ethnicity. However, this difference in health was no longer evident after further adjustment for socioeconomic position and individual experience of racial discrimination. Our study suggests different experiences of racialised social environments by ethnicity in New Zealand and that, at an individual level, ethnic consciousness is related to experiences of racial discrimination. However, the relationship with health is less clear and needs further investigation with research to better understand the racialised social relations that create and maintain ethnic inequities in health in attempts to better address the impacts of racism on health.     

The discursive detachment of race from gentrification in Cartagena de Indias,Colombia

In this article, I provide an ethnographic account of the gentrification process and its relationship to race and racism in the community of Getsemaní in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. I introduce Racial Attachment Processes as a conceptual framework for understanding how individuals reconcile Latin American discourses that suggest that race is not a primary stratifying principle with the material spatial realities of racial hierarchies that counter such discourses. Drawing on ethnographic participant observation and semi-structured interviews, including those employing photo-elicitation, I demonstrate how people discursively mobilize race in everyday life, yet selectively detach race in ways that allow them to interpret processes of gentrification as untethered to their racial underpinnings. This paper ultimately demonstrates how the discursive detachment of race from understandings of Colombian socio-spatial, political and economic relations obscures the relationship between racial domination and social inequality.     

Racial comparisons,relational racisms: some thoughts on method

The dominant method in studies of race and racism across different geographic and temporal instances has been comparative. This, I suggest, has been predicated on a set of assumptions about the discreteness of the instances. By contrast, I argue that comparativism misses deeper and larger issues about the workings of race and racism fuelled by the relations between racial configuration and racist conditions across times and places. I trace the varying methodological modalities of comparativism and relationality in the study of race and racisms, their contributions and shortcomings, contrasts and connections.     

U.S. racial and ethnic relations in the twenty-first century

The study of U.S. racial and ethnic relations is often reduced to the study of racial or ethnic relations. This article reveals the limitations of a focus on ethnicity or race, in isolation, and instead urges a new framework that brings them together. We consider three cases that have been conceptualized by the ethnicity paradigm as assimilation projects and by the race paradigm as structural racism projects, respectively: (1) African-American entrepreneurs; (2) the Mexican middle class; and (3) black immigrant deportees. We reveal the shortcomings of the ethnicity paradigm to consider race as a structural force or to acknowledge that structural racism conditions incorporation in marked ways; and the limitations of the race paradigm to take seriously group members’ agency in fostering social capital that can mediate racial inequality. Instead, we offer a unifying approach to reveals how ethnicity and race condition members’ life chances within the U.S. social structure.     

A white side of black Britain: The concept of racial literacy

Opposition to transracial adoption on both sides of the Atlantic, has been based, in part, on the assumption that white parents cannot understand race or racism and thus cannot properly prepare children of multiracial heritage to cope with racism. In this article I draw on a seven-year ethnographic study to offer an intensive case study of white transracial birth parents that counters this racial logic. I draw on a subset of data collected from field research and in-depth interviews with 102 members of black-white interracial families in England. I provide an analysis of three practices that I discovered among white transracial birth parents who were attempting to cultivate ‘black’ identities in their children of multiracial heritage. I offer the concept of ‘racial literacy’ to theorize their parental labour as a type of anti-racist project that remains under the radar of conventional sociological analyses of racism and anti-racist social movements.     

Being black,foreign and woman: African immigrant identities in the United States

This paper contextualizes racial and ethnic identities in shaping African women’s work lives in the USA. While the literature on black immigrant groups has posited that ethnic identities are often deployed to shield black immigrants from racism, my findings indicate that for a group of African women, their racial and ethnic identities are viewed as potential sources of discrimination. As black immigrant women from middle-class backgrounds in their home countries, they also articulate experiences with racism and downward social and occupational mobility. Accounting for how race and ethnicity intersect in the lives of black immigrant groups can nuance our understanding of racial identities and highlight diversity in experiences among national and regional groups. Focusing on particular health-care settings further suggests the importance of professional contexts in shaping the identity formations of recent black immigrants.     

From whiteness to diversity: crossing the racial threshold in bicentennial Argentina

This article examines recent transformations on the discourses of race and nation in bicentennial Argentina, which have shifted from the notion of a fundamentally white nation to an assertion of its racial and cultural diversity. I examine the production of race in contemporary institutional and non-institutional practices that challenge the discourses of modernity according to which Argentina is a white, homogenous and Europeanized nation. The article focuses on a set of cultural manifestations involving Japanese Argentines that – as non-traditional actors in the racial and national stages and as ‘desirable’ immigrants – reveal some inherent fissures in the current official narrative that ostensibly progresses from homogeneity to diversity, and from exclusion to inclusion. By observing the performativity of race and a non-constructivist understanding of race embedded within these cultural manifestations, I argue that the newly multicultural nation continues to inherit its mechanisms of racial production from the modern nation.     

Race and racial denial in Switzerland

Although mainstream historiography’s postcolonial indifference has been heavily contested, a profound engagement with how race relates to racism in Switzerland seems far-off. As the country’s direct democratic system relentlessly allows for race to be mobilized, Swiss racial denial results in an inability to productively name and contest racism. This would be particularly pertinent, as racism has not only been normalized by right-wing popular initiatives but also by a state-sponsored climate in which any attempt of naming racism is deemed excessive or hysterical. This article explores the effects of anti-racialist ‘anti-racism’ on public debates about racism in Switzerland. It has been argued that, in wake of the UNESCO consensus, anti-racialism has been established as the dominant paradigm of anti-racism across Europe. Through an analysis of Swiss state anti-racism, I will propose that an unexamined commitment to the anti-racialist tradition actively contributes to the difficulty of naming and combating racism in Switzerland.     

Is there a racial order? Comments on Emirbayer and Desmond

ABSTRACT

Emirbayer and Desmond’s THE RACIAL ORDER is a heroic but ultimately quixotic effort. The work relies upon an attempted synthesis of Deweyan pragmatism and Bourdieuian social capital theory. Emirbayer and Desmond deploy an uneasy combination of approaches, insisting upon ‘reflexivity’ in sociological study of race and racism (the pragmatism dimension), and crafting a dubious taxonomy of sociological ‘fields’ where racial conflict takes shape, and in which sociologists study race as well (the social capital dimension). A chapter on ‘racial reconstruction’ proposes to apply their understanding to concrete political struggles, in pursuit of an augmented ‘racial democracy’. While the book is tremendously erudite theoretically and provides a valuable literature review, it does not advance racial theory very much. The authors are distracted by Bourdieu’s scientism and obsession with classification. Although ‘racial order’ is revealed to be a chimera, there is still much to be learned here.     

How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality

The current debate over racial inequalities in health is arguably the most important venue for advancing both scientific and public understanding of race, racism, and human biological variation. In the United States and elsewhere, there are well-defined inequalities between racially defined groups for a range of biological outcomes—cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, low birth weight, preterm delivery, and others. Among biomedical researchers, these patterns are often taken as evidence of fundamental genetic differences between alleged races. However, a growing body of evidence establishes the primacy of social inequalities in the origin and persistence of racial health disparities. Here, I summarize this evidence and argue that the debate over racial inequalities in health presents an opportunity to refine the critique of race in three ways: 1) to reiterate why the race concept is inconsistent with patterns of global human genetic diversity; 2) to refocus attention on the complex, environmental influences on human biology at multiple levels of analysis and across the lifecourse; and 3) to revise the claim that race is a cultural construct and expand research on the sociocultural reality of race and racism. Drawing on recent developments in neighboring disciplines, I present a model for explaining how racial inequality becomes embodied—literally—in the biological well-being of racialized groups and individuals. This model requires a shift in the way we articulate the critique of race as bad biology. Am J Phys Anthropol 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Oh,you're racist? I've got a cure for that!

It has recently been discovered that the beta blocker drug, propranolol, can potentially reduce implicit racial bias among its users. By acting upon the affective conditions associated with implicit racial bias functioning at the non-conscious and pre-conscious levels, researchers have expressed excitement about the potential of propranolol and similar drugs to decrease implicit racial attitudes, and, thus, potentially decrease racism. This study and others like it not only provide indications of an affective component to modern-day racism, but, more importantly, an epistemological shift in the meaning of racism within academia from a social and cultural problem to a medical problem. In this article, we examine this shift in academic discourse towards a pathologization of racism and the implications of this on the sociological study of race and racism.     

Revisiting the rural/race debates: A view from the Welsh countryside

The analysis of the specific features of rural racism and rural/race issues is a developing field of study. Much of the debate and existing research focuses on demonstrating the “specificity” of rural/race issues and responding to the “rural ethnic subject” as the victim of racial exclusion and/or violence. Drawing on a study conducted in the north of Wales and work on Welsh narratives on race, this article seeks to revisit the rural/race debate and argues for its repositioning within wider discourses of British multiculturalism. It explores the conceptual basis of the rural racism debates, in particular seeking to qualify the notion of the “specificity” of rural/race matters within the context of the newly devolved nations and particular constructions of “the ethnic subject” in rural/race relations. It suggests ways in which the “rural” discourse on race decentres the dominant narratives of multicultural Britain and is contributing to its reformulation.     

Hyperracialized: interracial relationships in post-apartheid South Africa and the informal policing of public spaces

Dynamics of race in South Africa are deeply entangled within a world system that continues to enable hegemonic white privilege. Prevalent views and behaviours towards “interracial” relationships reveal a rebellion against the non-racial philosophies and policies of the new government and are an indicator of the ongoing salience of race in shaping lived experience. Drawing on interviews with couples in so-called “interracial” relationships, this article argues that unequal power dynamics continue to hyperracialize and regulate these relationships through “privatized” racial boundary policing, even though such relationships are no longer stigmatized and criminalized by the state as in apartheid South Africa. Their experiences of racism show up in two distinct ways: aggressive policing and covert policing; these in turn can lead to self-policing, and perpetuate racial social organization.     

Black lives matter in Brazil

Michelle Lamont and her collaborators examine the experiences and responses of racialized minorities in confronting racism in the United States, Brazil and Israel. Among their findings, they find that while U.S. blacks often confront offenders, black Brazilians respond by ignoring or humouring them. They often do not understand such situations as racial because of Brazilian narratives that extensive miscegenation has diminished racism and that class may be the major culprit. The book’s comparative approach permits them to leverage theoretical claims about race by examining it beyond the U.S. black–white experience. The authors interpret micro subjective experiences as responses to a macrocomparative context filtered through cultural repertoires, groupness and institutions. My main critique for Brazil is that conclusions are based on a highly selective sample of the educated elite in Rio de Janeiro.     

‘Tell your own story’: manhood,masculinity and racial socialization among black fathers and their sons

This study examines how black fathers and sons in the USA conceptualize manhood and masculinity and the racial socializing practices of black men. Drawing upon data from an ethnography on black male schooling, this paper uses the interviews with fathers and sons to explore how race and gender intersect in how black males make meaning of their gendered performances. Common notions of manhood are articulated, including independence, responsibility and providership. However, race and gender intersect in particular ways for black men. The fathers engaged in particular racial socializing practices preparing their sons for encounters with racism. Both fathers and sons adopted black existentialist perspectives, emphasizing self-determination and resilience as racially and politically motivated acts of resistance. Finally, the paper describes how the fathers modelled to their sons how to navigate racialized spaces as black men.     

Focus: Preventive Medicine: Race,Racism, and the Policy of 21st Century Medicine

This perspective describes three new policies passed at the November 2020 Special Meeting of the American Medical Association House of Delegates. These policies (1) denounce racism as a public health threat; (2) call for the elimination of race as a proxy for ancestry, genetics, and biology in medical education, research, and clinical practice; and (3) decry racial essentialism in medicine. We also explore the social and institutional context leading to the passage of these policies, which speak directly to the harmful legacy of racism in America, and its insidious impact on the healthcare system.     

Making Fun out of Difference: Ethnicity–Race and Humour in a London School

This article highlights the importance of humour and laughter in analyses of ethnicity and race in everyday life, and contributes to the growing anthropological engagement with the role of the ludic in social life. Focusing on pupil interaction in an ethnically and racially diverse London school, it argues that while peer classification practices can lead to reification of ethnic and racial differences, ludic interactions have cross-cutting, counter-balancing or liquefying effects. In interactions of humour, ethnic and racial differences can become the very material from which banter and laughter are created, constituting a convivial sociality that manifests closeness at the same time as difference. Such interactions enable peers to address their racial and ethnic differences, and a wider context of prejudice and racism, lightly, ‘making fun out of’ what could potentially divide and distance them.     

Community,mobility and racism in a semi-rural area: Comparing minority experience in East Kent

Much research into community, racism and racialization has been conducted in metropolitan urban settings. It is only recently that race in rural areas has received some attention. A key theme of existing research on race in rural areas has focused on the issue of racial violence. Drawing on interviews with a variety of ethnic minority groups in East Kent the article will focus on broader issues of race and ethnicity in a semi-rural area. The study explores the meaning of race, ethnicity and belonging in the partially rural setting of East Kent, UK. The article will raise issues around the intersection of the regional and global, the problematic notion of “community”, and the fluidity of racialization in a setting in which many ethnic minorities were transitory and mobile. We conclude by highlighting the ways in which community, racism and racialization are embedded in differentiated discourses and processes.     

Racial physics or a theory for everything that happened

This political commentary invokes the concept of racial physics, a theory of race and racism influenced philosophically and metaphorically by Albert Einstein's principle of equivalence and theories of relativity, especially in light of the recent political season. The goals for this essay are twofold: (1) provide a critical race conscious assessment of the 2016 political season both within the United States and abroad, and (2) demonstrate how race and racism reflect a broader social cosmology of great consequence, underscoring the tendency among humans to develop constructs that persist across space and time with effects that mirror the nature and properties of matter and energy.     

Pariah capitalism and the overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia: Problems in the definition of the problem

This paper explores how current shifts in racial discourse and demographics are reflected within the negotiation of paid domestic work. Various scholars have pointed out that racism in the United States has become increasingly covert and institutionalized, void of racial terminology and invisible to most whites. This shift has been institutionalized in the negotiation of domestic work, as alternative racial markers such as language and citizenship replace explicit racial terminology. Through an analysis of thirty interviews with white women who employ domestic workers this research examines contemporary negotiations of racial privilege and subordination in domestic work. Overall, white employers insisted that race did not matter when making hiring decisions; however other cultural markers such as language mattered greatly, at times even resulting in firing. In addition, complex and contradictory narratives about immigration were used to simultaneously both vilify immigrant workers and romanticize their work experiences.