Racializing subversion: The FBI and the depiction of race in early Cold War movies

During the 1940s, as part of its investigation of 'Communist Infiltration Into the Motion Picture Industry', the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] borrowed criteria for determining if a motion picture contained communist propaganda from the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals [MPAPAI], a private, anti-communist organization located in Hollywood. An analysis of the FBI's interpretation of movies that featured black characters or explored racial themes reveals how the agency racialized its investigation of subversiveness in the early Cold War period. In the FBI's application of the MPAPAI criteria, blackness became synonymous with subversiveness and whiteness with Americanism. The FBI's racial project, as revealed in these reviews, is linked to its framing of the Communist threat and contrasted to the Truman administration's racial project and framing of the Communist threat     

“Indians” and native Americans in the movies: A history of stereotypes,distortions, and displacements

Knowledge about Indian cultures and history among non‐native children is extremely limited and stereotyped due to a continued process of distortions and displacements in literature and particularly in Hollywood movies. The dual Indian stereotype was functionalized according to the colonizers’ interests. Hollywood movies depicted Indians first as noble or blood‐thirsty savages, then, in the fifties, as cyphers in melodramatic racial conflicts, and in the seventies, as heroes of an anti‐war counterculture. Recently, films showing Indians as believable individuals have emerged, and native American actors and filmmakers are ready to be heard and seen.     

‘I'm black and I'll always be that way’: black identities through the lens of interracial intimacy

Early research on black racial identity development cautioned that close relationships with whites signalled an alienation from blackness and a subconscious acceptance that ‘white is right’. These assumptions mirrored popular media and political discourse suggesting that romantic relationships outside of one's racial group reflect a devalued or inauthentic racial self. More recent scholarly research presents a mixed picture about the role of interracial intimacy on black racial identities. Using in-depth qualitative narratives with forty-two interracially partnered African Americans, this article explores whether interracial intimacy recasts the meaning or intensity of black racial identities. Findings affirm that black racial identities are heterogeneous – some partners experienced blackness as a central, fundamental identity while others possessed ambivalent attachments to blackness. Across these experiences, however, adult interracial intimacy had at most an incremental influence on racial identity. Interracial contact during adolescence was far more influential because it allowed blacks to develop dimensions of white cultural identity.     

Social geographies of race: connecting race and space

This article examines what it means to study race from a spatial perspective. In order to make explicit connections between spatial and racial processes, we present an interdisciplinary snapshot of the work being done under the banners of space and race, and offer a framework – a theory of racial space – for linking these concepts. We provide four key characteristics of space – contested, fluid and historical, interactional and relational, and defined by inequality and difference – that overlap with prevalent theorizing on race and racialization. We suggest that a framework of racial space provides a language for explaining the persistence of racial inequality in its varied, and often subtle, forms today, and reveals a useful analytical and practical pathway for challenging and changing the existing racial order.     

American Anthropology in the Middle Decades: A View from Hollywood

North American anthropology had an earlier interest in studies of the United States and in critical approaches than is often recognized. Such interests were pursued before World War II but were set aside during the war and in anthropology's postwar expansion. This perspective on anthropological history was inspired by the work of Hortense Powdermaker, specifically the disjunction between her 1930s research in segregated Mississippi and her pioneering study of Hollywood in the late 1940s. Reexamining that study highlights the theoretical framework that led to omissions in her account of Hollywood, while her explanation of movie content invites a more diachronic approach. Parallels between the history of the movies and that of cultural anthropology from the 1930s through the 1960s suggest how both were shaped by the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.     

The state of ethnicity and the ethnicity of the state: Ethnic politics in Southeast Asia

Attitudes about racial inequality in the United States are often viewed through the lenses of discrimination and disadvantage. However, as whiteness studies suggest, systems of racial inequality produce both disadvantage and advantage. National surveys have documented explanations for African American disadvantage but have not collected data on explanations for white advantage. African American disadvantage and white advantage are two sides of the same coin – racial inequality. To understand attitudes about racial inequality, we need to know Americans' beliefs about both sides of the racialized system. This research uses national survey data to examine explanations for both sides of racial inequality and identifies which factors are believed to be most important in explaining white advantage, finding that racial attitudes are complex and are dependent upon the specific situation and context. This research will provide a valuable contribution to both whiteness studies and race relations research.     

Power,knowledge and Black Feminist Thought’s enduring contribution towards social justice

In this review, I focus on three themes approached in Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought – difference and inequality, knowledge and power, and black feminist thought and black women intellectuals – in order to argue that what makes it a unique work is the fact that it features an original framework that grapples with epistemological and conceptual issues in order to grasp black women’s intellectual legacy.     

Monuments outlive history: Confederate monuments,the legacy of slavery,and black-white inequality

ABSTRACT

The conceptual linkages among Confederate monuments, slavery, and race suggest that Confederate monuments are relevant for explaining contemporary black–white inequality, yet we have little evidence on these relationships. I aim to further develop these possible connections. My analysis relies on a unique data set of Confederate monuments located in public spaces in the US South. I find that counties with Confederate monuments – specifically monuments inscribed with rhetoric glorifying either the soldiers as “heroes” or the cause as “pure” – have higher than expected levels of black–white poverty inequality. However, this relationship is stronger where the legacy of slavery is weaker, namely in counties with smaller historical concentrations of slaves. Confederate monuments are intertwined with a complex history, one that may continue to be reflected in the contemporary landscape of black–white inequality. The presented results are only suggestive, but they provide guidance for important avenues of future research.     

A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014

A geographically-resolved, multi-level Bayesian model is used to analyze the data presented in the U.S. Police-Shooting Database (USPSD) in order to investigate the extent of racial bias in the shooting of American civilians by police officers in recent years. In contrast to previous work that relied on the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reports that were constructed from self-reported cases of police-involved homicide, this data set is less likely to be biased by police reporting practices. County-specific relative risk outcomes of being shot by police are estimated as a function of the interaction of: 1) whether suspects/civilians were armed or unarmed, and 2) the race/ethnicity of the suspects/civilians. The results provide evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average. Furthermore, the results of multi-level modeling show that there exists significant heterogeneity across counties in the extent of racial bias in police shootings, with some counties showing relative risk ratios of 20 to 1 or more. Finally, analysis of police shooting data as a function of county-level predictors suggests that racial bias in police shootings is most likely to emerge in police departments in larger metropolitan counties with low median incomes and a sizable portion of black residents, especially when there is high financial inequality in that county. There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.     

Race-centrism: a critique and a research agenda

This article reviews some of the most prominent books in the field of race studies in the USA and identifies their shared assumptions: that racial inequality is the primary principle of stratification in the USA; that is has transformed but not lessened since the civil rights era; that it can be explained by the racist inclinations of the white majority, which operates as a collective, strategic actor to preserve its dominance; and finally, that racial domination plays a similarly crucial role around the world. I explore what kind of questions would need to be answered in order to put these assumptions on firmer empirical and theoretical ground and outline a corresponding research agenda. Some empirical evidence is provided to question the assumption that race plays a dominant role around the world and is associated with more political inequality than ethnic divisions.     

Spectacles of South Asia at the American circus, 1890–1940

This article examines how racial and gendered images of South Asia were played out in performance at the American circus around 1900. These representations reinforced the Anglo‐American construct of a racial hierarchy in which South Asians were depicted to be static, and unable to keep pace with the Anglo‐American “race”. American circus spectacles featuring Indian subjects glorified British imperialism and helped to popularize the common colonialist stereotype that a minority of English officials were needed to rule millions of Indians. The American circus, as the most popular form of American public entertainment in an era before movies and television, helped to form a constellation of racial and sexual stereotypes concerning South Asia which continue to this day.     

Folk conceptualizations of racism and antiracism in Brazil and South Africa

Abstract

Folk conceptualizations of racism can be defined as ordinary people's understandings of the sources and persistence of racism. They function as equalization strategies – by denying the legitimacy of racism – and guide beliefs regarding antiracism strategies. I explore folk explanations of racism among black professionals in Brazil and South Africa by drawing on sixty interviews with members of these groups. In Brazil, racism is understood as an historical lingering, a product of ignorance, which will disappear with time and education. In South Africa, racism is viewed as more resilient, as a part of human nature and as a consequence of the competition for resources. These explanations of racism are closely related to the antiracism narratives that are salient in these two contexts: while Brazilian respondents affirm their belief in racial mixture and moral education, South African respondents are more uncertain about the possibilities of weaker racial boundaries in their country, relying on institutional constraints as their main antiracism strategy.     

Sunshine,fertility and racial disparities

This research investigates the effect of sun exposure on fertility, with a special focus on how its effects and consequences for birth outcomes may differ by race. Sun exposure is a key mechanism for obtaining Vitamin D, but this process is inhibited by skin pigmentation. Vitamin D has been linked to male and female fertility and risk of miscarriage, and Vitamin D deficiency is more prevalent among blacks than whites. Using 1989–2004 individual live births data from the Natality Detail Files, county-level, monthly conceptions are estimated as a function of monthly solar insolation, temperature and humidity, as well as month, time and location fixed effects and controls. Insolation has positive, statistically significant effects on fertility for both non-Hispanic blacks and whites, but the effects are stronger and the pattern of effect different for black mothers than white mothers. Poisson estimates from the main model suggest that a 1 kWh increase in average daily insolation in the conception month – approximately the difference in sunshine experienced in the typical September vs. October – increases non-Hispanic black conceptions by 1% and non-Hispanic white conceptions by 0.6%. Allowing insolation's effect to differ by maternal characteristic suggests that the racial differences are not being driven by differences in socioeconomic status (SES). Models that allow for more complicated timing of insolation's effect further suggest that insolation pushes black (white) conceptions into the unfavorable (favorable) season of birth. These estimated effects and our decomposition analyses suggest that insolation – and the implied Vitamin D deficiency underlying its effect–helps explain why black conceptions are more likely to display a seasonal pattern that is disadvantageous to birth outcomes.     

Changing racial boundaries and mixed unions: the case of second-generation Filipino Americans

I examine an understudied topic of intermarriage – nonwhite mixed unions. Drawing on a study of second-generation Filipino Americans, I compare how respondents in inter-ethnic (those partnered with other Asians) and nonwhite interracial (i.e. Latino, black, and non-Asian bi-racial) unions perceive racial boundaries, or their ‘racial schemas’. I argue that mixed unions can change how partners view racial boundaries. Drawing on phenotype, culture, and power position, both inter-ethnically and nonwhite interracially partnered respondents viewed themselves as different from whites. However, they differed in how they constructed nonwhite boundaries. Respondents in inter-ethnic unions drew on their Asian identity to distinguish themselves from Latinos and blacks, while informants in nonwhite interracial unions highlighted their Filipino identity to distance themselves from East Asians and align themselves with Latinos and blacks. These findings show that marriage affects racial boundary development and that mixed unions impact individuals’ racial incorporation.     

A note on changes in age at marriage of females and their effect on the birth rate in India

Abstract

Epidemiologists contend that income inequality reduces the health and life expectancy of the whole population, but this argument does not make sense within its own evolutionary framework. Recent evolutionary psychological theory suggests that the human brain, adapted to the ancestral environment, has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment, and that general intelligence evolved as a domain‐specific adaptation to solve evolutionarily novel problems. Since most dangers to health in the contemporary society are evolutionarily novel, it follows that more intelligent individuals are better able to recognize and deal with such dangers and live longer. Consistent with the theory, and replicating an earlier study of cross‐national data, income inequality has no effect on the health and longevity of the population across the American states, when the racial composition (percent black) is controlled, but the average intelligence of the population (state IQ) has a significant effect The data presented here and in the earlier study challenge the conclusion that income inequality reduces the health of the population.     

A different contender? Barack Obama,the 2008 presidential campaign and the racial politics of sport

Abstract

This paper explores popular representations of Barack Obama's relationship to sport during the 2008 US presidential campaign. It delineates how white normativity framed the candidate's passion for basketball and his participation in a highly publicized bowling game. We argue that Obama's athletic activities became key vehicles for reading his body and by extension his identity and his politics. The question that could only be asked in a white supremacist context – is Obama too black or not black enough to be President? – mirrored long-standing tensions in America's affective relation to black male athletes. Representations of Obama bowling further illuminate the complicated ways in which whiteness operates. The essay concludes with a brief discussion suggesting the importance of analyses of sport for ethnic and racial studies.     

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.