Multiracial Experiences in Higher Education: Contesting Knowledge, Honoring Voice, and Innovating Practice

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Campus Life, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Social Science, United States on 2021-03-08 02:38Z by Steven

Multiracial Experiences in Higher Education: Contesting Knowledge, Honoring Voice, and Innovating Practice

Stylus Publishing
2021-02-17
Paperback ISBN: 9781642670691
E-Book (ePub) ISBN: 9781642670714
Hardback ISBN: 9781642670684
Lib E-Book ISBN: 9781642670707

Edited by:

Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero, Associate Professor
Department of Educational Studies
Ohio State University

Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe, Ed.D., Consultant and Author in Organizational Development and Social Justice Education

Foreword by:

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Recipient of the 2021 Innovation Award of The Multiracial Network (MRN)

In the last Census, over 9 million people – nearly 3% of the population – identified themselves as of two or more races. The proportion of college students who identify as Multiracial is somewhat higher, and growing. Although increasing at a slightly slower rate, Multiracial faculty and staff are also teaching and working on campuses in greater numbers. Together, Multiracial people from diverse backgrounds and in various roles are influencing college and university culture, practices, and climate.

This book centers the experiences of Multiracial people, those individuals claiming heritage and membership in two or more (mono)racial groups and/or identifies with a Multiracial term. These terms include the broader biracial, multiethnic, and mixed, or more specific terms like Blasian and Mexipino.

In addressing the recurring experiences of inclusion, exclusion, affirmation, and challenges that they encounter, the contributors identify the multiple sites in higher education that affect personal perceptions of self, belonging, rejection, and resilience; describe strategies they utilized to support themselves or other Multiracial people at their institutions; and to advocate for greater awareness of Multiracial issues and a commitment to institutional change.

In covering an array of Multiracial experiences, the book brings together a range of voices, social identities (including race), ages, perspectives, and approaches. The chapter authors present a multiplicity of views because, as the book exemplifies, multiracial people are not a monolithic group, nor are their issues and needs universal to all.

The book opens by outlining the literature and theoretical frameworks that provide context and foundations for the chapters that follow. It then presents a range of first person narratives – reflecting the experiences of students, faculty, and staff – that highlight navigating to and through higher education from diverse standpoints and positionalities. The final section offers multiple strategies and applied methods that can be used to enhance Multiracial inclusion through research, curriculum, and practice. The editors conclude with recommendations for future scholarship and practice.

This book invites Multiracial readers, their allies, and those people who interact with and influence the daily lives of Multiracial people to explore issues of identity and self-care, build coalitions on campus, and advocate for change. For administrators, student affairs personnel, and anyone concerned with diversity on campus, it opens a window on a growing population with whom they may be unfamiliar, mis-categorize, or overlook, and on the need to change systems and structures to address their full inclusion and unveil their full impact.

Table of Contents

  • Foreword —G. Reginald Daniel
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Part One: Framing Multiracial Experiences in Higher Education
    • 1) Insights on Multiracial Knowledge, Voices, and Practices: Lessons From Our Lives and Work—Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe and Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero
    • 2) Multiracial Identity on Campus: Identities and Experiences of Multiracial People in Higher Education—Kristen A. Renn
    • 3) The Naming and Framing of Identity: Reflecting on Core Concepts Through the Experiences of Multiracial People—Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe
    • 4) Monoracism: Identifying and Addressing Structural Oppression of Multiracial People in Higher Education—Jessica C. Harris, Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero, and Maxwell Pereyra
  • Part Two: Multiracial Narratives Across the Higher Education Landscape
    • 5) Back to Black—Nick Davis
    • 6) On the Path to Multiracial Consciousness: Reflections on My Scholar-Practitioner Journey in Higher Education—Victoria K. Malaney Brown
    • 7) Being Mexipina in Higher Education—Rebecca Cepeda
    • 8) Remembering to Resist Racist Colonial Forgetting on Campus—e alexander
    • 9) Existing In-Between: Embodying the Synergy of My Ancestors—Naliyah Kaya
    • 10) Reflections of a Creole, Indigenous, Afro-Latin Scholar: From Community to the Classroom—Andrew Jolivétte
  • Part Three: Strategies and Tools for Enhancing Multiracial Inclusion
    • 11) Contextualizing Multiraciality in Campus Climate: Key Considerations for Transformative Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—Chelsea Guillermo-Wann and Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero
    • 12) Building Multiracial Aikido: A Student Social Justice Retreat—Charlene C. Martinez and Stephanie N. Shippen
    • 13) Mixed and Multiracial Student Organizations on Campus: The Necessity of Weaving Together Art and Critique—Orkideh Mohajeri and Heather C. Lou
    • 14) Critical Mixed Race Studies: Rooted in Love and Fire—Nicole Leopardo, Kira Donnell, and Wei Ming Dariotis
  • Part Four: Future Directions
    • 15) Intergenerational Reflections and Future Directions—Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero, Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe, and Lisa Combs
  • Editors and Contributors
  • Index
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ONE DROP: Shifting the Lens on Race

Posted in Arts, Autobiography, Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science, United States on 2021-02-27 04:26Z by Steven

ONE DROP: Shifting the Lens on Race

Beacon Press
2021-02-16
288 pages
9 x 9 Inches
ISBN: 978-080707336-0

Yaba Blay

Challenges narrow perceptions of Blackness as both an identity and lived reality to understand the diversity of what it means to be Black in the US and around the world

  • What exactly is Blackness and what does it mean to be Black?
  • Is Blackness a matter of biology or consciousness?
  • Who determines who is Black and who is not?
  • Who’s Black, who’s not, and who cares?

In the United States, a Black person has come to be defined as any person with any known Black ancestry. Statutorily referred to as “the rule of hypodescent,” this definition of Blackness is more popularly known as the “one-drop rule,” meaning that a person with any trace of Black ancestry, however small or (in)visible, cannot be considered White. A method of social order that began almost immediately after the arrival of enslaved Africans in America, by 1910 it was the law in almost all southern states. At a time when the one-drop rule functioned to protect and preserve White racial purity, Blackness was both a matter of biology and the law. One was either Black or White. Period. Has the social and political landscape changed one hundred years later?

One Drop explores the extent to which historical definitions of race continue to shape contemporary racial identities and lived experiences of racial difference. Featuring the perspectives of 60 contributors representing 25 countries and combining candid narratives with striking portraiture, this book provides living testimony to the diversity of Blackness. Although contributors use varying terms to self-identify, they all see themselves as part of the larger racial, cultural, and social group generally referred to as Black. They have all had their identity called into question simply because they do not fit neatly into the stereotypical “Black box”—dark skin, “kinky” hair, broad nose, full lips, etc. Most have been asked “What are you?” or the more politically correct “Where are you from?” throughout their lives. It is through contributors’ lived experiences with and lived imaginings of Black identity that we can visualize multiple possibilities for Blackness.

Table of Contents

  • Author’s Note
  • Intro
  • Introspection
  • Mixed Black
  • American Black
  • Diaspora Black
  • Outro
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgements
  • About
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Still the tragic mulatto? Manufacturing multiracialization in magazine media, 1961–2011

Posted in Articles, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2021-02-13 23:01Z by Steven

Still the tragic mulatto? Manufacturing multiracialization in magazine media, 1961–2011

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 42, 2019 – Issue 4: Special Issue: The mechanisms of racialization beyond the black/white binary
pages 645-665
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2017.1380212

Sheena K. Gardner, Assistant Research Professor
Mississippi State University
Social Research Center

Matthew W. Hughey, Professor of Sociology
University of Connecticut

On the heels of the 2000 US Census allowance of multiracial categorization and with rising mainstream discussion of multiracial heritage, questions over the meanings of multiracialism are quite prevalent. Scholars have highlighted how mainstream-oriented and black-oriented media structure (multi)racial conflicts, concepts, and categories. However, sociological analysis has neither examined qualitative differences and nuance among multiracial-oriented media sources nor specified the precise qualitative themes, frames, and discourse of that representation across time and media format. A content analysis of mainstream-, black-, and multiracial-oriented magazine articles demonstrates how varied media sources differently drew upon, resisted, and reproduced distinct understandings of multiracialism to reproduce the dominance of the “Tragic Mulatto” trope. The implications for this study illuminate the import of multiracial self-esteem, the intersection of conservative political movements and black interest groups in the fight for and against a multiracial movement, and the paradoxical role of anti-black stereotypes in multiracial representations.

Read or purchase the article here.

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‘Majority Minority’ America? Don’t Bet on It

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2021-02-09 17:52Z by Steven

‘Majority Minority’ America? Don’t Bet on It

The Wall Street Journal
2021-02-05

John J. Miller


Illustration: Ken Fallin

How a Census Bureau error led Democrats to assume they were on the right side of inexorable demographic trends.

Remember the “coalition of the ascendant”? National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein invented the phrase in 2008 to describe the “growing elements of American society” that had elected Barack Obama and given Democrats commanding majorities in both congressional houses: “young people, Hispanics and other minorities, and white upper-middle-class professionals.”

Republican successes in 2010, 2014 and 2016 called the coalition’s durability into question. But the 2020 election—Joe Biden’s victory notwithstanding—may provide the greatest reason to doubt it. Compared with 2016, President Trump and congressional Republicans improved their standing significantly among Hispanic voters and made smaller strides among other groups, such as Asian-Americans, blacks and Muslims.

“The majority minority narrative is wrong,” says sociologist Richard Alba, referring to the idea that nonwhite Americans will outnumber whites by 2050 or so. In his recent book, “The Great Demographic Illusion,” Mr. Alba, 78, shows that many “nonwhites” are assimilating into an American mainstream, much as white ethnic groups did before them. Government statistics have failed to account for this complex reality, partly for political reasons, and in doing so they’ve encouraged sloppy thinking about the country’s future…

Read the entire article here.

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Biracial Families: Crossing Boundaries, Blending Cultures, and Challenging Racial Ideologies

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2020-11-18 02:56Z by Steven

Biracial Families: Crossing Boundaries, Blending Cultures, and Challenging Racial Ideologies

Springer International Publishing
2019
260 pages
9 illustrations in colour
Hardcover ISBN 978-3-319-96159-0
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-96159-0
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-96160-6

Edited by:

Roudi Nazarinia Roy, Associate Professor and Child Development and Family Studies Area Coordinator
California State University, Long Beach

Alethea Rollins, Instructor, Child and Family Development
University of Central Missouri

  • Provides a lifespan overview of the diverse experiences of biracial families
  • Includes research on transracial and international adoption
  • Offers historical background on race in America
  • Highlights areas for future research

This interdisciplinary volume surveys the diverse experiences of biracial families, both across and outside the black/white binary. The book examines the deep-rooted social contexts that inform the lifespan of interracial families, from dating and marriage through the stages of parenthood, as well as families’ unique responses and realities. Through a variety of structures and settings including blended and adoptive families, contributors describe families’ strengths and resilience in meeting multiple personal and larger social challenges. The intricacies of parenting and family development are also revealed as an ongoing learning process as parents and children construct identity, culture, and meaning.

Among the topics covered:

  • Social constitutionality of race in America: some meanings for biracial/multiracial families.
  • Interracial marriages: historical and contemporary trends.
  • Racial socialization: a developmental perspective.
  • Biracial families formed through adoption.
  • Diverse family structures within biracial families.
  • Racial identity: choices, context, and consequences.
  • Addressing lingering gaps in the existing literature and highlighting areas for future study, Biracial Families gives readers a fuller understanding of a growing and diversifying population. Its depth and breadth of coverage makes the book an invaluable reference not only for practitioners and researchers, but also for educators and interracial families across the spectrum.

Table of contents

  • Introduction / Roudi Nazarinia Roy
  • Social Constitutionality of Race in America: Some Meanings for Bi/Multiracial Families / Farrell J. Webb, JahRaEl Burrell and Sean G. Jefferson
  • Questions and Concerns Regarding Family Theories: Biracial and Multiracial Family Issues / Farrell J. Webb and Vanessa Gonlin
  • Partnering Across Race /James E. Brooks and Jeremy Lynch
  • Interracial Marriages: Historical and Contemporary Trends / Chalandra M. Bryant and Jeneé C. Duncan
  • Transition to Parenthood / Roudi Nazarinia Roy
  • Parenting Mixed-Race Children / Fabienne Doucet, Marcella Runell Hall and Melissa Giraud
  • Racial Socialization: A Developmental Perspective / Alethea Rollins
  • Biracial Families Formed Through Adoption / Leigh A. Leslie, Katie M. Hrapczynski and Jennifer L. Young
  • Diverse Family Structures Within Multiracial Families / Henry L. Harris, Katie W. Lamberson and Clare P. Merlin
  • Racial Identity: Choices, Context, and Consequences / Annamaria Csizmadia and Susan White
  • New Directions / Alethea Rollins
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Dr. Jennifer Sims wins 2020 Mid-South Sociological Association Book Award

Posted in Articles, Campus Life, Media Archive, Social Science, United Kingdom, United States on 2020-11-05 01:27Z by Steven

Dr. Jennifer Sims wins 2020 Mid-South Sociological Association Book Award

University of Alabama in Huntsville News
2020-10-19


Pictured Dr. Chinelo L. Njaka and Dr. Jennifer Sims with Bookcover Photo Credit Paul Wright

UAH Assistant Professor Dr. Jennifer Patrice Sims has won the 2020 Stanford M. Lyman Distinguished Book Award for her co-authored book Mixed-Race in the US and UK: Comparing the Past, Present, and Future (Emerald Publishing, 2020). The award is given annually by the Mid-South Sociological Association (MSSA) to “honor MSSA members whose recently published work makes a significant contribution to the field of sociology.”

The Association held its annual conference virtually October 14-17. Dr. Andrea Hunt, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Alabama and Chair of this year’s Book Award Selection Committee, presented the award at a virtual ceremony Friday evening. Dr. Hunt noted that six books were nominated this year, which she said is the largest amount received in the last several years. She described the 2020 nominations as “very very competitive. The scores were very close. In fact, there was a 0.28 difference between the first and second place scores.”

Speaking of Dr. Sims’ Mixed-Race in the US and UK specifically, Dr. Hunt quoted one member of the Selection Committee as saying the book “helps to open an emerging area in the study of race and demography and has created a new and interesting area for social scientists that will guide research for decades.”…

Read the entire article here.

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Understanding Kamala Harris, the Great Multiracial (Black) Hope

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States, Women on 2020-11-03 22:13Z by Steven

Understanding Kamala Harris, the Great Multiracial (Black) Hope

Bitch Media
2020-11-02

Dr. Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, Program for African American Studies
Florida State University


Democratic U.S. vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harris poses for a selfie during a Thurgood Marshall College Fund event at the JW Marriott February 07, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Though the last few months of political theater have certainly been terrifying, they’ve also provided ample material for those interested in engaging with the construction and perception of multiraciality in the United States. The race discourse surrounding Senator Kamala Harris arose in August when Democratic candidate Joe Biden selected her as his running mate, and it has quickly morphed from a mainstream conversation about the possibility of a Black woman president to a resurgence of the hope and change narrative that characterized President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Multiraciality is a central component of Harris’s candidacy in ways that it wasn’t for Obama: After all, being a multiracial child of immigrants bolsters a narrative of “futurity.” But others have observed that perhaps the only way a nonwhite person could make it onto a major party ticket is to be multiracial and therefore considered racially palatable…

Read the entire article here.

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The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream

Posted in Books, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science, United States on 2020-10-11 02:22Z by Steven

The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream

Princeton University Press
2020-09-01
336 pages
15 b/w illus. 7 tables.
6.13 x 9.25 in.
Hardcover ISBN: 9780691201634
eBook ISBN: 9780691202112

Richard Alba, Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Graduate Center, City University of New York

Why the number of young Americans from mixed families is surging and what this means for the country’s future

Americans are under the spell of a distorted and polarizing story about their country’s future―the majority-minority narrative―which contends that inevitable demographic changes will create a society with a majority made up of minorities for the first time in the United States’s history. The Great Demographic Illusion reveals that this narrative obscures a more transformative development: the rising numbers of young Americans from ethno-racially mixed families, consisting of one white and one nonwhite parent. Examining the unprecedented significance of mixed parentage in the twenty-first-century United States, Richard Alba looks at how young Americans with this background will play pivotal roles in the country’s demographic future.

Assembling a vast body of evidence, Alba explores where individuals of mixed parentage fit in American society. Most participate in and reshape the mainstream, as seen in their high levels of integration into social milieus that were previously white dominated. Yet, racism is evident in the very different experiences of individuals with black-white heritage. Alba’s portrait squares in key ways with the history of immigrant-group assimilation, and indicates that, once again, mainstream American society is expanding and becoming more inclusive.

Nevertheless, there are also major limitations to mainstream expansion today, especially in its more modest magnitude and selective nature, which hinder the participation of black Americans and some other people of color. Alba calls for social policies to further open up the mainstream by correcting the restrictions imposed by intensifying economic inequality, shape-shifting racism, and the impaired legal status of many immigrant families.

Countering rigid demographic beliefs and predictions, The Great Demographic Illusion offers a new way of understanding American society and its coming transformation.

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Interracialism: Biracials Learning About African-American Culture (B.L.A.A.C.)

Posted in History, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States, Videos on 2020-09-12 00:51Z by Steven

Interracialism: Biracials Learning About African-American Culture (B.L.A.A.C.)

YouTube
2020-04-09

Dr. Zebulon Miletsky, Associate Professor of Professor of Africana Studies and History
State University of New York, Stony Brook

‘Interracialism: Biracials Learning About African American Culture (B.L.A.A.C.)’ with Dr. Zebulon Miletsky. February 19th 4:00PM-5:30PM Melville Library, Central Reading Room, Stony Brook University.

A discussion of #interracialism and #interracialmarriage, and the phenomenon of “#antiblackness”—identity and #mixedrace in the 21st century, and the possible stakes for those who identify as multiracial and biracial—in these politically divided times.

Watch the video (01:08:02) here.

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Suddenly a Person of Color [Plötzlich Person of Color]

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Europe, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science on 2020-08-26 00:50Z by Steven

Suddenly a Person of Color [Plötzlich Person of Color]

Die Zeit
Hamburg, Germany
2020-08-14

Von Fernanda Thome de Souza

Graciously translated from German into English for me by Gyavira Lasana and his wife Anne.


Ein Leben in Abhängigkeit von der Beurteilung der eigenen Hautfarbe: in Brasilien Subjekt, in Deutschland Objekt © . liane ./​unsplash.com

In Brazil, I was white and privileged, but in Germany I was not white enough. That told me a lot about racism and social participation.

Fernanda Thome de Souza, born in Sao Paulo, has lived in Berlin since 2008, working as a freelance writer, journalist and copywriter. She is a guest author of “10 to 8.” © private

In my first months in Berlin, when I was in the city, I was busy reading subway plans, translating social codes and discovering new landscapes. So I didn’t immediately notice that there was something particularly uncomfortable for me behind the differences and the new.

At some point, in the subway, in the supermarket, at work, I began to feel a disturbing look at my body, burdened with a reproach I had never experienced before. To this day, this gaze, which is determined in transmitting its message, accompanies me. He draws a clear line: that of the territory to which he belongs, where I am read as a stranger, the one that comes from outside.

My skin is dark, my eyebrows are thick, my hair is black and curled. Where I was born, in Brazil, I am white. A fact that is often difficult for Germans to understand. In Berlin I discovered myself as a Person of Color. This process did not happen overnight, but it definitely began with the perception of this depifting gaze.

While, as white people in Brazil, I have the legitimacy to occupy spaces – whether public, academic, professional, or cultural – as a matter of course, my presence here is called into question. While I live in Brazil the privilege of neutrality (I am the center, the “normal”, the subject), in Germany the equation has reversed. Because of my appearance, I was transformed into “the other”, an object of the edge, prone to the arbitrariness of the German white gaze.

I have been living with this ambiguity for twelve years. That, of course, changed me. Oscillating between different sides of social geographies, even from a safe place, has forced me to look beyond my horizons and question my own role. I have started to talk to other Brazilians living in a similar situation in Berlin. I wanted to know if it was just me. What is whiteness in Brazil? Why do we in Germany stop being white? How can the complex backgrounds be described? What have we learned and how has it changed our self-image and our relationship with the society to which we belong?

Legacy of European Colonialism

Brazil is an extremely racist country – a legacy of centuries-old European colonialism. After the abolition of slavery, at the beginning of the 20th century, a group of Brazilian intellectuals was first engaged in formulating the self-image of the young Republic of Brazil. Based on ethnic mixing, the theory of a supposed harmony between the different groups was developed.

Notwithstanding the fact that this ethnic mix-up was caused by the rape of black and indigenous women by white men, the idea served as evidence that there was no racism in Brazil and that in this tropical paradise, everyone, regardless of color or origin, would have equal opportunities. The notorious myth of so-called racial democracy was thus born and disseminated. For decades, racism has been kept out of debate and public policy, and has increasingly become established in all areas of social structure.

Today, the statistics show the brutal ethnic inequality in the country. While the indigenous population has been almost wiped out and now accounts for only 0.4 percent of total society, blacks – just over half of the total population – are systematically oppressed. Seventy-five percent of those killed by the police, 64 percent of the prison inmates and 75 percent of the poorest are black. Every 23 minutes, a young black man is killed in Brazil. Their biographies and struggles are not in the history books, and their religions are still subject to constant persecution.

“Whiteness” in Brazil

Germans, Italians, Jews, Syrians, Lebanese, Japanese and all the other groups that were part of the various waves of migration that have arrived in Brazil since the 19th century were accepted and treated as free people. This immediately gave them advantages and privileges. While the newly liberated black population was let down by the system, immigrants were given subsidized travel tickets and a job guarantee. Europeans were often given additional land for the establishment of colonies, driven by an effort to “wash” the Brazilian population whiter. In Brazil, color is inextricably linked to the class.

“Being white in Brazil means not suffering from racism,” says Berlin-based writer Fred Di Giacomo Rocha. It is said that they are not constantly being watched in the supermarket, that they are not afraid of the police and that they have access to lawyers. It is the knowledge that one’s own rights are respected by the institutions.

The choreographer and stage artist Rodrigo Garcia Alves explains the inequality in the state of schools. “Sending your own children to the best private school in the city is a mark of being white. These are only white environments. Because Brazil is not only a racist country, but also a classicist country.” In fact, enough teachers, hot meals, and school safety are a right reserved for whites, who are already entering the brutal competition for the best university places with a head start. In this context, privilege softens with reward for achievement – social inequality is entrenched.

In the 21st century, being white in Brazil still means coming through the front door and having domestic workers, who are mostly black and underpaid. “It’s impossible not to talk about who is serving and who is being served,” says school social worker D. Wiltshire Soares. “These relationships, which on the one hand are very emotional, on the other hand are also full of violence,” adds Lia Ishida, a Doctoral student in German studies. “It’s about integrating these people into the family without making them equal. A situation very similar to slavery.”

Fall into the European colonial fantasy

We white Brazilians come to Germany with European passports, higher education, fluent English, university places, money in our pockets and all the security, self-respect and arrogance that has been granted to us throughout our lives through historical privileges. Our bodies do not carry the traumas of racism. And yet we have definitely lost the “white status” we were used to here. And what does that mean?

As the Portuguese interdisciplinary artist and author Grada Kilomba put it in her book Plantation Memories, although there are Germans of all skin colors, the colonial fantasy prevails that being German means being white. It is a racism in which prejudice and discrimination arise not from an idea of the superiority of individual “races”, but on the basis of ideas of nation, ethnicity and cultural differences, incompatibilities and hierarchies.

What racism does to all of us

Since being German in the hegemonic imagination means first of all being white, I am automatically marked as someone who does not belong here.

This is the first “transition” of a Brazilian who ceases to be white: the loss of neutrality and the position of the subject. We will immediately become objects that are observed and questioned. Kilomba explains this by referring in her text to the Afro-German experience. While the white subject is preoccupied with the question “What do I see?”, the subject of color is forced to deal with the question “What do they see?” And what they see is not born of a mere interest in the story we have to tell, but from the projection of white fantasies about what we should be.

The experiences of the Brazilians I have spoken to coincide with mine. Deprived of our human complexity, we are reduced to stereotypes that in no way reflect our identity. If you read a Brazilian with a beard as a “terrorist Arab,” he becomes a “harmless Iberian” without a beard. The clothes we wear tell us whether we are read as Syrians or Italians, which means being considered suspicious or not.

Subordination and condescension

Because of this colonial dialectic, as Grada Kilomba defines it, the white subject deserves a position of authority, while the racist is forced to subordination. This hierarchy in relations is repeated from one area to another and represents a loss of status for Brazilians, who until then saw themselves as whites. Actually accustomed to hegemony, our mobility is suddenly monitored, our environment is reduced, our habits and behaviors are questioned and corrected, and finally our experiences and points of view are simplified and disqualified.

When Di Giacomo Rocha presented his latest book at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2019, he criticized the German condescension. The universal voice is a white domain. In his opinion, Latin American literature only gains space when it talks about its regionality, its exotic peripheral reality.

Theories like Kilomba’s have helped me not only to process my experiences in Germany, but above all to understand the extent of my privileges, their structures and the origins of violence. There is an urgent need to break with the white idea of universality. The systematic small-termization of marginal voices is not only used to secure the status quo. It allows the privileged classes to be ignorant of realities of which they prefer not to know. If there is a moral and legitimate obligation to combat racism, there is an urgent need for stolen spaces to be returned to their actual owners. It is necessary to read these voices, to listen to them and to get to know them. Until we irrevocably understand what racism does to us as a society and as a human being.

Read the article in German here.

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