Peddling sport: liberal multiculturalism and the racial triangulation of blackness,Chineseness and Native American-ness in professional basketball

Abstract

Deploying liberal multiculturalist discourse, the media depicts professional basketball as a post-racial space where all talented players, regardless of their race, can thrive if they work hard. An analysis of the construction of non-white players in the 1930s and in 2010 demonstrates sport as modulated by racially charged discourse. As part of a liberal multiculturalist frame, the coding of basketball players as hero, threat and novelty serve to privilege whiteness and replicate racialized and gendered images that can be traced to the 1930s. In doing so, the article highlights how liberal multiculturalism involves racial triangulation and the simultaneous processes of hyper-racialization and de-racialization.     

The Pan-African Brotherhood of Langston Hughes and Nnamdi Azikiwe

The African American Langston Hughes (1902–1967) and the Nigerian Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904–1996) were alumni of Lincoln University, transatlantic culture warriors, and literary collaborators. In their friendship of thirty years, the two leaders of twentieth century black discourse shared more in common than there had ever been in relationships between African and African American elites. Surprisingly, very little attention has been paid to the meeting of two great minds who individually and collectively stirred the imagination of their successors across Africa and the black Diaspora. By excavating the influences and unusual similarities in their childhood and adult experiences and by a close reading of their poetry, this paper examines the cultural kinship as well as the shared vision of social justice between Hughes and Zik. Obiwu is a writer, literary historian, and comparative theorist. His publications include Rituals of the Sun (poetry collection), Igbos of Northern Nigeria (Diasporaic studies), and the seminal essay “The History of Nigerian literature, 1772–2006.” He is director of the writing center at Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio.     

Corresponding patterns of geographic variation among populations ofSilene latifolia (=S. alba =S. pratensis) (Caryophyllaceae)

Morphological and biochemical data were analysed from 30 greenhouse-grown populations of EuropeanSilene latifolia. Six separate character sets (flavones, seed, pollen, capsules, male and female flower morphology) were used in the analyses. There was broad-scale congruence between trends of geographic variation in most character sets, with the populations being assigned to western (or southern and western) and eastern clusters. The eastern and western clusters abut along a transition zone that runs roughly from Belgium to the northern Balkans; this zone represents a region of relatively rapid change and contains populations intermediate between the eastern and western clusters. Variation in flower morphology was weak and discordant with variation in the other character sets. The origin and maintenance of the variation pattern is discussed in terms of migrational history and hybrid zones.     

Drinking Money and Pulling Women: Mobile Phone Talk,Gender, and Agency in Vanuatu

This paper examines aspects of gendered discourse around mobile phones in Vanuatu, focusing especially on the talk of high-ranking men from the northern Raga-speaking region of Pentecost Island. Rather than being restricted to the technologies or their direct capacities alone, it is argued that the local reception of new technologies such as mobile phones should be contextualised in terms of broader dialogues of change, and should also take into account the visual and discursive expressions of culture that accompanies them, including in the form of marketing. Examination of the ‘impact’ of such new technologies should also include taking account of broader local meanings and messages that become associated with them. As the ethnography presented here suggests, while mobile phones themselves certainly provide a useful tool for furthering positive social change, such as in the empowerment of women, the meanings and narratives that surround them may by marked contrast entail more negative entrenchments of unequal relations of power.     

Risk,parental autonomy and the epistemic divide: preimplantation genetic diagnosis in the Australian print news media, 1990–2007

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a reproductive/genetic technology which has become the subject of public and scholarly debate because it involves the evaluation and consequent selection (and implantation) or destruction of human embryos. This research investigates the way PGD is constituted in the Australian print news media. Foucauldian discourse analysis reveals that proponents draw on their direct knowledge and experience of PGD to support their claims. There is an epistemic divide between consumers and others claiming direct knowledge, and critics and others drawing on indirect or abstract understandings of PGD. This divide characterizes the discourses present in the data and is directly linked to changes in these over the period under analysis.     

THE PROBLEM OF THE FUTURE WORLD: W.E.B. DU BOIS AND THE RACE CONCEPT AT MIDCENTURY

Most studies of police–minority relations in America focus on blacks, usually in comparison with whites. This pattern is particularly puzzling in light of the growing population of Hispanic Americans throughout the US, now outnumbering blacks and consisting of the majority in some major cities. Aside from the need for more empirical research on the policing of Hispanics per se, comparing Hispanics’ relations with the police to other racial and ethnic groups offers some important insights into both the dimensions that are shared across groups and those that are distinctive to Hispanics. This article critically evaluates the small body of empirical research literature on this topic – highlighting both deficiencies in this literature as well as suggestive findings – and concludes by identifying a set of issues that should be addressed in future studies. The available evidence largely supports a racial-hierarchy perspective with regard to the policing of different racial and ethnic groups in the US.     

‘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.     

Disaffected black and white youth: The role of unemployment duration and perceived job discrimination*

While unauthorized immigration has existed in the USA since the inception of immigration laws in the early twentieth century, ‘illegality’ did not become a central concern in mainstream debate until the late 1970s. Existing scholarship has developed two lines of argument to explain the salience of illegality: a state-centred approach that sees bureaucrats pushing forth the category, and a ‘bottom-up’ approach that emphasizes the grass-roots activism of restrictionist organizations effectively disguising their nativism by appealing to law and order. The data collected here builds on but complicates the state-centred explanation, and points away from the ‘bottom-up’ approach. I locate a critical juncture in the immigration debate during the early 1970s and argue that the shift towards the focus on illegality as a point of concern was due to an alignment of interests that brought an array of civil society organizations commonly understood as progressive to coincide with sectors of the bureaucracy.     

The ‘other’ looks back: racial distancing and racial alignment in migrant domestic workers' stereotypes about white and Chinese employers

While the racial and ethnic stereotyping practised by the employers of migrant domestic workers has received significant scholarly attention, these workers' racial essentializations of their employers have been largely ignored. Drawing upon interviews with Filipino migrant domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong, I present findings concerning the racial stereotypes these workers hold about white and Chinese employers. This stereotyping involves both racial distancing from local Chinese employers and racial alignment with expatriate white employers. This two-track racial project is a defensive tactic that allows Filipino workers to redefine themselves as occupying a higher position in the global racial order (as they see it) on cultural grounds. However, it also makes them complicit in naturalizing legacy stereotypes that valorize whites as morally and culturally superior. In addition, it encourages them to privilege the West as an idealized destination where they fantasize they will enjoy comfortable working conditions from local white employers.     

Exclusive recognition: against reductionism and distortion

This article analyses two dominant discourses of racial politics in Hawai'i and the work they do naturalizing haole (white people or whiteness in Hawai'i) in the islands. The first is the well-worn discourse of racial harmony representing Hawai'i as an idyllic racial paradise with no conflict or inequality. Frequently contrasting the islands with the ‘racist mainland’, this discourse circulates among many communities and is widely referenced. There is also a competing discourse of discrimination against non-locals which contends that haoles and non-local people of colour are disrespected and treated unfairly in Hawai'i. As negative referents for each other, these discourses work to reinforce one another and are historically linked. I suggest that the question of racial politics be reframed towards consideration of the processes of racialization themselves – towards a new way of thinking about racial politics in Hawai'i that breaks free of the not racist/racist dyad.