Racialization and religion: race,culture and difference in the study of antisemitism and Islamophobia

Abstract

It is striking to observe the virtual absence of an established literature on race and racism in the discussion of Islamophobia; something that is only marginally more present in the discussion of antisemitism. This special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies locates the contemporary study of antisemitism and Islamophobia squarely within the fields of race and racism. As such it problematizes the extent to which discussion of the racialization of these minorities remains unrelated to each other, or is explored in distinct silos as a series of internal debates. By harnessing the explanatory power of long-established organizing concepts within the study of race and racism, this special issue makes a historically informed, theoretical and empirical contribution to aligning these analytical pursuits.     

The racial formation of medieval Jews: a challenge to the field

Social science discourse on race and racism has limited itself through processes of periodization and temporal constructions of racial differences, and recent scholars continue to posit race and racism as effects of modernity rather than investigating its development prior to modernity. This article looks to present a challenge to contemporary understandings of the phenomena of race and racism through a historical investigation of Jews' relationship to medieval Christendom. Through the framework of racial formation (Omi and Winant [1986] 1994) I look to show how race as a marker of both corporeal difference and socio-political consequence was formulated over time through a rearticulation of Church doctrine which first positioned the inferiority of the Jew within their religious practices, to one which located their inferiority as inherently part of their soul and manifest upon their bodies – from fixable through conversion to incurable and diseased.     

Social integration and identity of immigrants from western countries,the FSU and Ethiopia in Israel

This study of immigrants’ integration in Israel centers on one major subjective parameter, namely the immigrant's identity. To explain it we explore a series of possible factors: demographic variables, economic status, and human and social capital characteristics. Three recent immigrant groups are examined: from Western countries, from the former Soviet Union (FSU), and from Ethiopia. These immigrants came to Israel during the last two decades from different societies, following different immigration circumstances and various motives.

The findings, based on the 2007 Ruppin survey data, point to the significant impact of the identity as perceived by veteran Israelis on the immigrants’ self-identity for the three groups under study. Also, different variables affect each of the immigrant groups. FSU immigrants behaved according to most of our hypotheses, whereas Western and Ethiopian immigrants did not. Findings are discussed in light of the debate on measuring and defining immigrants’ identity.     

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.     

White doctors and nurses on racial inequality in health care in the USA: whiteness and colour-blind racial ideology

In this paper we report on an interdisciplinary project interviewing doctors and nurses about racial inequality in health care in the USA. We analysed data from interviews with twenty-two white doctors and nurses in which they were asked to offer explanations for racial inequality in health care. Results provide insight into how whiteness operates to provide white patients more often with appropriate health care and how colour-blind ideology can be adapted to accommodate naming white advantage and potential racial discrimination. However, even when naming mechanisms of white advantage in accessing resources, the white respondents avoided acknowledging how they are implicated in racial inequality in health care. We discuss the implications for understanding whiteness and colour-blind ideology.     

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.     

White families and race: colour-blind and colour-conscious approaches to white racial socialization

This paper examines the role that social context plays in mediating racial socialization in upper-middle-class white families. Outcomes of white racial socialization, as well as the process itself, depend in large part on the distinctive racial contexts designed by parents in which white children live and interact. I examine variation in white middle-school-aged children's common-sense racial knowledge and discuss the importance of exploring the social reproduction and reworking of racial ideologies and privilege in childhood.     

White ethnicity in twenty-first-century America: findings from a new national survey

The 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a great deal of research on white ethnicity. Yet since this time, few systematic empirical studies of white ethnicity have emerged. This paper uses data from a recent nationally representative survey of Americans to (re)assess white ethnicity in the twenty-first century. Three primary areas are explored: (1) the pervasiveness and salience of ethnic claims among white Americans; (2) the social and demographic characteristics of self-identified white ethnics; and (3) the impact of white ethnic identity on political opinions and racial attitudes. We find that a smaller but significant number of white Americans claim ethnicity today and that distinguishing social characteristics of white ethnics still remain. Contrary to current prevailing theoretical formulations, however, these markers of distinction do not appear to be related to political or racial attitudes in any systematic way.     

Who's invited to the (political) party: race and party politics in the USA

ABSTRACT

From the political behemoths of the Democratic and Republican Parties, to the Civil Rights Era racially progressive Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and reactionary American Independent Party, to the contemporary third party Green and Libertarian Parties, party politics in the USA has a long and storied relationship to the reproduction and contestation of racial domination. Recent works illuminate the strategic use of racial discourse by major party political elites, their deployment of racialized political platforms, and the relationship of these phenomena to power dynamics and racial interests but have yet to fully move beyond the two-party system and engage with innovations in political and cultural sociology. We outline openings for an empirically-grounded sociology of political parties that would reveal the micro- and meso-level features of racialized party politics and the operations of discursive and performative power within both major and minor political parties.     

Inside the black box: affirmative action and the social construction of race in Brazil

The recent adoption of race-targeted public policies makes Brazil an insightful place to study the social construction of race. This article estimates the effect of racial quotas in college admissions on patterns of racial identification. The authors collected data on persons who matriculated before and after the implementation of quotas at the University of Brasilia, which reserved 20% of admissions slots for persons who self-identified as black. A baseline survey was conducted during college and a follow-up survey was conducted post-college. In sum, the findings suggest that racial quotas had inspired a persistent shift in racial identification from non-black to black and from lighter to darker racial categories. As a whole, the evidence indicates that the policy induced race-making boundary effects, which broadly confirms the insights of social constructionist theories.     

Ethnicity, ‘status groups’ and racialization: A contribution to a debate on national identity in Britain

This paper is an intervention in a debate on national identity between ­Kenneth Smith on the one hand, and Tariq Modood, Richard Berthoud and James Nazroo, on the other, which had its origins in the influential study, Ethnic Minorities in Britain written in 1997 by Modood, Berthoud and Nazroo, and also Jane Lakey, Patten Smith, Satnam Virdee and Sharon Beishon. I pay particular attention to Smith’s insistence on ethnic self-­selection; his critical observations on the concept of ‘ethnicity’; and his advocacy of its replacement with the Weberian concept of ‘status groups.’ It is argued first of all, that self-selection should be pre-eminent; second that, in racialized societies, ‘ethnicity’ needs to be retained as a defining category; and third that the Marxist-derived concept of ‘racialization’ is more useful than ‘status groups’ as a way of understanding racism, both historically and in the present.     

Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion: Comparing Mental Illness Narratives of Haredi Male Patients and their Rabbis

By comparing versions of mental illness narratives – told by Haredi (Utraorthodox Jews) male patients of a mental health clinic in Israel and by their rabbis – this paper relates to two distinct, yet interrelated, theoretical questions: the place and agency of narrators, and the tension between experience and representation. A pair of narratives exemplifies a pattern in which the patients (Talmudic students) tell a narrative of a sudden breakdown related to a dramatic meeting with a non-human figure (often, a woman) or force. Their rabbis, by contrast, tell a narrative that emphasizes their students' mundane symptoms, ``abnormal' and ``immoral' behavior, and use a local adaptation of a Western psychological explanatory model. A dynamic of inclusion and exclusion emerges as students are seeking legitimization and avoidance of stigma, while their rabbis are silencing themes that challenge social and cultural orders. The different narratives are further interpreted in the context of the micropolitics of the interviews and of identity politics between the Haredim and secular Israelis. This social dynamics shows how differently placed social actors-narrators-interpreters construct differently contested and diverse cultural narratives of a seemingly shared reality.     

Inflective and reflective whiteness in the sociology of race and ethnicity: a comment on an integrative framework for the field

Zulema Valdez and Tanya Golash-Boza offer an integrative framework for the sociology of race and ethnicity to bridge a divide undergirding different, yet related perspectives in the field. Their work provides an initial roadmap for linking the cultural perspectives often taken in the study of ethnicity to the structural perspectives utilized in the study of race. The authors put these perspectives in dialogue with one another to elucidate the strength of integrating commonly used approaches in each area, while avoiding the pitfalls of relying only on one paradigm. Behind much of sociology’s theoretical developments to understand racial and ethnic groups’ experiences in US society, and in relation to global discussions of race and ethnicity as well, are influences of identity and ideological processes inflected and reflected by whiteness. This comment reflects on how these processes can shape future conversations considering the intertwined cultural and structural processes framing group experiences and life chances.     

Jewish identity and the meaning of community in contemporary Denmark

This article examines social, ritual and political structures in the Jewish Community of Copenhagen, Denmark. This community maintains great vitality despite profound fragmentation in its membership, as well as intensive interaction by its members with non-Jewish culture. It does so by providing flexible contexts for participation by its members, so that Jews with profoundly diverse understandings of group and self can engage with Jewish identity. The community does not foster a single model of ethnic identity, but rather provides a symbolic space within which individual members can construct their own understandings of self and group. Such symbolic spaces may become increasingly essential for ethnic groups in late modern societies, where it has become difficult to maintain the sorts of cultural consensus and separation that have historically grounded ethnic communities.