Racial Identity Reading List

 During my never ending research I have often looked to Science Direct  for reading suggestions. Their website has a collection of academic books and scholarly journals. The overview offered for the subject of Race Identity gave me a fantastic new reading list. If you are interested in cultural studies or history or even just researching your own genealogy, this is a fantastic jumping off point for some educational reading.

1. Race Identity

T. Duster, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

 Politics and Identity Politics

Thus racial identity was generated by massive historical, economic, and political forces that far transcend the level of individual choice (Banton 1977, Miles 1989). Indeed, there is a substantial body of research indicating that in the nineteenth century European and US academics expended much energy trying to demonstrate the intellectual and moral superiority of whites (Gould 1981, Bernal 1987). The biological and medical sciences of the late nineteenth century assumed a Darwinian model of racial hierarchy of adaptation to civilization (Frazer 1900). Thus, in order to counter the assertion of white superiority, from Europe to South Africa to the North American continent to Australia, groups that wished to mobilize to change their position in a racial hierarchy often found that racial identity was a useful and powerful basis for achieving group solidarity (Kelley 1997, Fredrickson 1995, Crenshaw et al. 1995). Obviously, these groups would encounter competing group identities, such as tribal, regional, ethnic, linguistic, and class. This list would permit the white colonialists the advantage of playing one off against the other, and the strategic use of ethnic identity to trump ‘race’ could be deployed. For an elaboration of the distinction between race and ethnicity, see Fenton (1999).

If we take even a casual excursion through the last few centuries of racial classification, there is overwhelming evidence on the side of those who have argued that race is arbitrary, shifting, and often biologically and sociologically inconsistent and contradictory. A consortium of leading scientists across the disciplines from biology to physical anthropology issued a ‘Revised UNESCO Statement on Race’ in 1995—a definitive declaration that summarizes 11 central issues, and concludes that in terms of ‘scientific’ discourse, there is no such thing as a ‘race’ that has any scientific utility:’ … the same scientific groups that developed the biological concept over the last century have now concluded that its use for characterizing human populations is so flawed that it is no longer a scientifically valid concept. In fact, the statement makes clear that the biological concept of race as applied to humans has no legitimate place in biological science’ (Katz 1995, pp. 4, 5).

The rule that one drop of black blood makes one black is the easy mark along a full continuum of contradictory and incoherent taxonomies. ‘Passing’ and ‘miscegenation laws’ and slaveowner/slave offspring do more than simply dot the landscape of this topic (Harris 1995, Haney-López 1996). This continuum extends well into the present period where we find more and more people asserting a mixed-race identity. Since the classification of race is arbitrary and often whimsical (e.g., one drop of blood), accepting the idea that race is something identifiable with fixed borders that could be crossed and thus ‘mixed’ is just another indication of the power of social forces shaping racial identity. At the biochemical level of blood types and hematology, at the neurological level of neurotransmission patterns, at the level of cell function—at all these levels, we are all ‘mixed’ by any taxonomy or measure of allele frequencies in large population groups (Molnar 1992).

Yet a number of scholars of race have noted the increasing use of the category of ‘mixed race’ as the self-identity of a younger generation, mainly of relatively privileged and middle-class persons. Paul Spickard (1989) and Werner Sollers (1997) have each produced important studies of ‘mixed race’ identities that cross boundaries of Europe and the Americas. Maria Root (1996) has culled a collection of essays that deal with identity construction along ethnic and racial lines, and further explores these issues well beyond the black and white focus that has riveted much of this literature. The difference between ‘individual choice’ of a racial identity as opposed to having a racial identity ‘imposed’ by the state and/or the obdurate empirical reality of a group consensus (based primarily upon phenotype-stereotype) is profound, yet variable over time and place. There are concrete economic, political, social, and sometimes psychological benefits to choosing certain identities. That is why scores of thousands of light-skinned ‘blacks’ under slavery in Brazil, Jamaica, and the USA chose to ‘pass’ as white (Small 1994). For parallel reasons, thousands of persons in the USA have attempted to reclassify themselves as Native American or Latino or African American to benefit from affirmative action laws.

For an extensive theoretical treatment of the way in which racial taxonomies shift over time, see Omi and Winant (1986). In addition, for specific cases of this phenomenon, see Harris (1995), Haney-López (1996) and Takaki (1998). From the other side, namely, individuals who come to collectively redefine their own situation, and thereby reveal how ‘race’ is sometimes in flux due as much to agency, interpretation, and circumstance, see Blumer (1958), Lal (1990), and Perry (1998). For an ‘interest-driven’ version of the collective will to create, sustain, or maintain a particular racial identity, see Lipsitz (1998) and Wellman (1993).

2. Counseling and Psychotherapy: Ethnic and Cultural Differences

V. Ota Wang, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

 Multicultural Psychology and Racial-cultural Identity Development

People throughout time have been challenged to understand their sense of self and life experiences in unifying ways. As critical tools for cultural understanding, racial-cultural identity development models have been considered ‘one of the most promising approaches to the field of multicultural counseling/therapy’ (Sue and Sue 1999, p. 123). By incorporating sociopolitical contexts, racial identity theories have provided a structure of how to understand life experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of one's own and other racial-cultural groups, identity formation and intra-group variation.

Diagnostically, racial-cultural identity models also have clinical utility by framing how individuals' experiences of counseling are influenced by their racial-cultural identity and not simply linked to presumed racial-cultural group affiliations (Carter 1995).

Racial-cultural identity attitude theories are dynamic identity models representing developmental ego differentiation and have existed for Blacks, other visible racial-cultural people (e.g., Asian, Latino, women), and Whites since the early 1970s (Sue and Sue 1999). Racial identity attitudes are the psychological consequences of racial socialization.

Whereas people are socialized in racialized environments, racial-cultural ego identity development is the psychological reaction to the benefits and consequences of racial-cultural social systems. Involving simultaneous perspectives of oneself in relation to members of dominant and subordinate groups, people with less developed racial-cultural ego identity statuses hold more simplistic and unexamined notions about race and race relations while greater differentiated racial-cultural ego identity statuses are based on more accurate and examined personal and group information and experiences. Thus, a person's presumed racial-cultural phenotype does not preclude racial-cultural orientation. Rather, a person's overall psychological self that has been validated, denied, or ignored influences the manner in which racial identity has been integrated into one's personality and psychological well-being. By exploring the psychological aspects of how feelings, thoughts, and behaviors people have about their own and other's race, a more realistic understanding of who a person rather than what a person is becomes possible.

 Racial Identity Theory

Based upon internal racial identification levels, racial identity models have provided a framework for understanding intra-group socio-racial psychological perspectives. According to Black racial identity theory (and more broadly, People of Color Identity Theory), Black people develop from (a) overvaluing and idealizing White cultural norms and internalizing negative stereotypes of Blacks (Preencounter); (b) feeling confusion as they try to understand their previously held beliefs of White superiority and Black inferiority (Encounter); (c) affirming ‘Blackness’ and denigrating ‘Whiteness’ by idealizing African cultural heritage and withdrawing from White society (Immersion); (d) accepting strengths and weaknesses of Black people and incorporating a more affirming and realistic Black identity (Emersion); (e) intellectually assessing and responding to Whites (internalization); and (f) integrating a positive Black identity while maintaining a balanced perspective of ‘Whiteness’ motivated by personal preferences rather than racial group self-denial (Integrative Awareness) (Carter 1995).

In White racial identity theory, identity development involves the abandonment of racism and the development of a non-racist White identity by moving from (a) being unaware of their own racial group and ignoring the race of others (Contact); (b) becoming aware of the saliency of Whiteness, feeling guilty over personal internal standards and societal norms about race and over-identifying with Blacks (Disintegration); (c) rejecting Blacks and over idealizing Whiteness (Reintegration); (d) intellectualizing rather than emotionally understanding race (Pseudo-Independence); (e) exploring biases and redefining Whiteness by trying to change Whites instead of Blacks (Immersion/Emersion); and (f) emotionally and intellectually internalizing a positive White identity through appreciation for and respect of racial differences and similarities (Autonomy) (Carter 1995).

Overall, for visible racial-cultural people, as members of less powerful sociocultural groups, the primary socioracial identity issue in developing racial-cultural identity means overcoming internalized negative stereotypes associated with their racial-cultural group affiliation. For Whites, as members of the dominant sociocultural group, racial-cultural identity development means overcoming entitled stereotyping, learning self-value and appreciation as a White person. Therefore, in efforts to serve as racial-cultural change agents, all people must seek and promote racial-cultural affirmation—the experience of having various facets of their racial-cultural identities validated for themselves and by others. Thus, the strength of racial-cultural identity models has relied upon their dynamic nature of understanding within group racial-cultural variation within a social, historical, and political context as well as their diagnostic value for informing counseling processes and outcomes.

Whether its socio-political forces vs. poor psychological functioning, racial-cultural issues are silent or powerful environmental and psychological realities in a person's development. By examining how racial-cultural issues influence psychological phenomenon, therapists can help clients discover how their racial–cultural ego identity forms a filter which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors organize perceptions and interpretations of thoughts, emotions, and psychological life. To this end, racial-cultural identity models provide a framework understanding personal racial-cultural intrapsychic phenomena within and between people.

3. Race and the Law

R.T. Ford, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

Anti-essentialist and Cosmopolitan Conceptions of Racial Identity

An emerging strand of antiracist scholarship first articulated within postcolonial African, Caribbean, and Indian communities approaches racial identity as fluid and supple, yet also the source of rich political, social, and cultural affiliations. These approaches define racial identity not in terms of a biological or cultural essence, but instead in terms of identification (Appiah 1996, Bhabha 1994, Gilroy 1991). According to one strand of this scholarship, members of racial minority groups share common ‘passions’ based on shared or analogous experiences of racial subordination (Gilroy 1991). This approach dispenses altogether with any remnant of biological or inheritance notions of racial identity: members of what might traditionally have been several different ‘races’ can and do share a cosmopolitan racial identity which can transcend national boundaries, cultural traditions, skin color, and phenotype. This scholarship adopts an explicitly anti-subordination approach to antiracism, but rejects the multiculturalist focus on cultural traditions within distinctive racial or ethnic communities as traditionally defined. Instead it embraces a cosmopolitan or diasporic culture that joins racial minorities of various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

4. Mass Media, Representations in

R.M. Entman, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

 Media Representation and Political and Policy Disputes

Moving along a continuum from media representation's impacts on mass publics to impacts on the political linkages between them and elites, we turn now to representation in news coverage of current policy and political contests. Here too the research suggests media most often operate to reinforce structures of power that privilege native born white men.

Thus, for example, female political candidates have been shown to face disadvantages against male candidates. They often receive less news coverage than males, and the news agenda seems to follow male candidates' issue choices most closely. On the other hand, women candidates may benefit from being associated with positive sex-role stereotypes (Kahn 1994). With a black candidate in the race, campaign news tends to emphasize candidates' racial identities and to frame elections as contingent on bloc voting by whites and blacks (Reeves 1997), and this demonstrably handicaps African American candidates.

The representation of nonelectoral dissent against powerful institutions has also received careful scrutiny. Research reveals a tendency for media to accept moderate, polite dissidents who work within the system and make conventional, incremental demands, but to slant decisively against groups that seek more radical objectives, undermining their legitimacy with the public and thus reducing the need for elites to respond positively to their goals (Gitlin 1980).

A subject of much dispute in the US has been representations of parties and candidates in national elections, with some scholars alleging systematic biases favoring one party and others denying these exist. Additional studies explore other kinds of bias than partisanship, suggesting the possible impacts on voting turnout or civic orientations. For example, US journalists increasingly infused their representations of candidates and campaigns with cynicism during the latter decades of the twentieth century, and this appeared to encourage political distrust and withdrawal among audiences.

Alongside such research there also arose theoretical essays that challenged the notion of bias by questioning the legitimacy of its presumed opposite, ‘objectivity.’ The notion that media can represent people and events in comprehensively accurate and politically neutral ways appears to be a powerful professional ideal for journalists. Nonetheless, scholarship almost universally denies the proposition and asserts that in the course of manufacturing the news, individuals and media institutions must inevitably embed certain kinds of biases (that is, preferred meanings or politically consequential omissions) into their reports. Although US studies, at least, fail to uncover systematic partisan biases, other forms of bias have been analyzed extensively, such as a bias for reporting political conflict over agreement, and political process over policy substance.

 

5. Multiculturalism, Anthropology of

D.A. Segal, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

From Civil Rights to the Politics of Identities and Representation

When considered in relation to the historically antecedent Civil Rights movement in the US, what is arguably most striking about multiculturalism is the relative valorization and amplifying of ‘identity’ consciousness. In the key legal statutes and cases of the Civil Rights movement, attending to identity distinctions, such as observable signs of racial identity, was condemned as the very root of unjust discrimination—as when an employer judges a job applicant on the basis of ‘color’ rather than ‘merit’ or ‘ability.’ Indeed, one of the lasting legacies of the Civil Rights era in the US is the legal principle that employers are permitted to take social identity into account only when it can be established that social identity is a ‘bona fides occupational qualification,’ as when a synagogue is hiring a religious instructor. Moreover, that ‘race’ could ever be so regarded was diminished almost to the vanishing point in US law, for it was held that resistance to nonwhites serving in certain positions, for example, as policemen in predominantly white communities, did not make nonwhites less qualified to serve in those positions, even if it made it more difficult for them to do. In sum, in the defining legal battles of the Civil Rights era, social injustice was defined as discrimination on the basis of group identity, as distinct from a judgment based on an individual's abilities and accomplishments.

While advocates of multiculturalism do not repudiate this understanding of ‘discrimination,’ they add to it in ways that are transformative. They argue that prevalent and institutionalized standards of worthiness are themselves fundamentally biased, due to systematic privileging of dominant identity-groupings in the social recognition and definition of merit. Here too, as in the US Civil Rights movement, we see that social injustice is defined in a context of meritocratic ideals and institutions claiming allegiance to such ideals. In the case of multiculturalism, however, unjust discrimination is found to be embedded deeply in institutionalized standards of merit. Persons of color, women, and other subordinated identity groupings are disadvantaged because standards of judgment are, on a systematic basis, disguised measures of ‘whiteness’ and ‘maleness,’ rather than the ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’ measures they are represented as being. Concomitantly, these same persons suffer harm because they find ‘achievement’ defined in institutional and public settings as something alien to their ‘identity’ and ‘culture.’ The comments of Dale Fleming, the director of the Native American Center of the Stockton Unified School District in California, capture well this multiculturalist vision of both injustice and the social reproduction of identity-group stratification: ‘The culture is the base … [I]f the kids feel bad about themselves or can't deal with their own history or who they are, then school is real difficult’ (quoted in Gallagher 2000, p. 37). By contrast, even the most intensely class-disadvantaged white male, multiculturalism tells us, does not experience the acquisition of school knowledge—be it in the form of ‘correct’ speech, knowledge of Shakespeare, or mastery of calculus—as contradicting, violating, or masking ‘who they are’; instead, they experience this more happily as individual ‘achievement.’

From such a diagnosis of the manifold injuries of identity, it follows that social injustice cannot be achieved without a systematic revaluation of subordinated identities. On this view, in contrast to the judicial lessons of the Civil Rights era in the US, identities and their observable signs should not be disregarded categorically in the quest for social justice. On the contrary, overcoming existing injustice requires a compensatory identity consciousness.