Discussion of “Unraveling Whiteness”: Commentary on Paper by Melanie Suchet

In this discussion I consider several influences on the contemporary project of deconstructing racism and the concept of racialized subjectivity. This discussion applauds the turn in Suchet's work toward self-examination in a consideration of the experience of race and racism. Suchet's work moves the debates about racialized subjectivities into a deeper and more complex understanding of all the ways in which identifications and attachments cross race and class lines for many individuals. This discussion focuses on Suchet's treatment of the power of hybridic and biracial identifications, beginning with autobiographical material from Suchet's own childhood in South Africa. In this discussion of “Unraveling Whiteness” I integrate psychoanalytic concepts of enigmatic signification (the work of Laplanche) into a discussion of early attachment, and relational configurations with children and nonparental caretakers. The question of trauma or potential transformation in interracial experience is discussed, and some distinctions between American and South African experience are considered.     

Against “Transracialism”: Revisiting the Debate

This article critically reflects on some of the themes and assumptions at stake in the “transracialism” controversy, and connects them to important works in critical race theory: namely Rey Chow's notion of “coercive mimeticism” and Sara Ahmed's critique of white liberal multiculturalism. It argues that the analytic account of “race” that Tuvel draws upon in her article—Sally Haslanger's—is politically problematic, both on its own terms and in light of broader reflections on racialized and gendered power relations. In particular, I critique Haslanger's assumption that all racial identities exist on the same conceptual plane: that a single variable definition of “race” can be applied to any particular racialized group—including white and nonwhite racial identities. This erases racialized power relations, especially where, in liberal “multicultural” nations, whiteness constitutes the implied standard against which an appearance of “racial difference” is conjured. Finally, I extend my argument to the issue of treating “race” and gender analogously. Rejecting this move, I propose an alternative way of conceptualizing these as analytically distinct, yet constitutively interdependent, phenomena. In order to situate the debate historically, I consider an example of “racial transgression” from twentieth‐century China.     

Glued to the Image: A Critical Phenomenology of Racialization through Works of Art

I develop a phenomenological account of racialized encounters with works of art and film, wherein the racialized viewer feels cast as perpetually past, coming “too late” to intervene in the meaning of her own representation. This points to the distinctive role that the colonial past plays in mediating and constructing our self‐images. I draw on my experience of three exhibitions that take Muslims and/or Arabs as their subject matter and that ostensibly try to interrupt or subvert racialization while reproducing some of its tropes. My examples are the Jean‐Joseph Benjamin‐Constant exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2015), the exposition Welten der Muslime at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin (2011–2017), and a sculpture by Bob and Roberta Smith at the Leeds City Art Gallery, created in response to the imperial power painting, General Gordon's Last Stand, that is housed there. My interest is in how artworks contribute to the experience of being racialized in ways that not only amplify the circulation of images but also constitute difficult temporal relations to images. Drawing on Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, I argue that such racialized images are temporally gluey, or stuck, so that we are weighted and bogged down by them.     

Liturgy, Art and Politics

This article examines the category of "liturgy" in its relation to aesthetics, ethics and politics. It is argued that liturgy occupies a unique mediating position between art and politics, for, on the one hand, it ensures that the political points perpetually beyond itself, and, on the other hand, the artistic is prevented from lapsing into a "magic circle" of compensatory reality or merely "fine" art. Alternative aesthetic formulations, for example, that of Adorno, are examined and shown to be problematic and ultimately nihilistic and unrealizable. By contrast, a liturgical aesthetic is shown to have a genuine ethical practicability. Modernity is then examined. It is argued that late capitalist structures—including (contra Paul Piccone) is apparently opposed structures, such a post-Fordist organicism—can be seen as a kind of anti-liturgy liturgy, or, one might say here, "ritual" (for all the latter term's more dubious post-nineteenth century assumptions can here be assumed), which has produced an entirely self-perpetuating minimal automated subjectivity. Finally, it is concluded that the manifold problems faced by non-liturgical aesthetics and politics can be reduced to this separation of the ideal from the real. This separation is further examined. The lineaments of a specific liturgical tradition—in this case, the Christian—and especially its eucharistic focus—are analyzed, and it is suggested that here one might find suggestions as to a fusion of the ideal and the real, and hence indications of how one might begin to outwit several of the problems in aesthetic and political theory already shown to involve difficulties.     

Black client,white therapist: Working with race in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in South Africa

In post‐apartheid South Africa we speak about race extensively. It permeates our workplace, weaves a thread through the fabric of our professional and personal lives, as well as our private conversations and public interactions with others. From within psychoanalytic theory, the thread weaves through the unknown content of our racialized unconscious. When there is a focus on race in the South African psychoanalytic context it largely takes the form of the struggle to articulate the complexities of working with difference, as Swartz notes, or the struggle to map out issues of race. Such struggles are not localized in South Africa, but strongly reflect a much broader struggle within the global psychoanalytic community, as mirrored in the expanding focus on race. Although the consulting rooms seem far removed from the ongoing political tensions that have recently emerged in South Africa, psychoanalytic psychotherapy remains a space of meaningful engagement with the other, and where the therapeutic dyad is one of racial difference it permits an encounter with our racialized unconscious. This article seeks to document the experience of my black client and my white response to her racial pain and struggle; in doing so, I describe the racial ‘contact’ between us and within us that triggers a racialized transference and countertransference dynamic, which contains the space for racial healing for both of us.     

‘Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty’: The Silent Call of Art

One of the urgent tasks facing Christian educators at the present time is how they might encourage the spiritual growth of their students. This paper invites reflection on this central question by discussing the role aesthetics might play with particular focus on its relationship to the ‘spiritual senses’, a theme which has been strikingly absent from recent publications on religion and Christian education. Paying particular attention to the work of the contemporary French phenomenologist, Jean‐Louis Chrétien, I shall argue that art invites us to listen to as well as to see the power of beauty. Educators should not ignore this capacity of art to engage the spiritual senses within a contemplative ethos of silence. But I go further than simply pointing to these seminal ideas about Christian formation, by discussing the ‘wound’ that beauty inevitably inflicts. I illustrate this suggestion by referring to Pope Benedict XVI's essay ‘Wounded by the Arrow of the Beautiful’ and to two visualizations of religion: Delacroix's painting Fight between Jacob and the Angel and Beauvois' film Of Gods and Men.     

Association Learning with Own‐ and Other‐race Faces in three‐ and six‐month old infants – A longitudinal study

This longitudinal study assessed 133 Caucasian German infants at 3 and 6 months of age to investigate the influence of own‐race and other‐race faces as visual stimuli on association learning in the visual expectation paradigm (VExP). The study is related to the findings on the other‐race‐effect (ORE) which is said to emerge at 6 months of age. Caucasian faces were used as stimuli of a familiar ethnic category, whereas African faces were used as stimuli of an unfamiliar ethnic category. There was no significant difference between the two stimulus classes in infants' reaction time (RT) to stimulus shifts at 3 months. At 6 months of age, infants' RT decreased significantly in the Caucasian faces condition but not in the African faces condition. These results indicate that the processing of other‐race versus own‐race faces by the age of 6 months, which is also the relevant age for the onset of the ORE, has an important influence on the performance on the VExP. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Relational Encounter with Race

Race remains one of the most highly charged subjects of discourse in our society. At a cultural level, white racial identity has become dissociatively split off from the rest of identity formation. A racialized subjectivity is usually carried by those with darker skin colors, whereas whiteness is experienced as an unmarked and invisible state. The author argues that whites have dissociated the historical position of the oppressor from collective consciousness, due to our inability to tolerate an identification with the aggressor. Our disavowal of race as constitutive of subjectivity ensures that race becomes a site for enactments.

This paper follows the transference-countertransference dynamics between an African American patient mandated to treatment and the author, a white analyst born in South Africa. The haunting presence of racial trauma infused the analysis. Focus is placed on the rich, often unmetabolizable experiences of race, including the ways in which the structure of the treatment recreated the racial dynamics of slavery.     

The approach‐avoidance framework for identifying athletes’ coping style as a function of gender and race

Anshel, M.H., Kang, M. & Miesner, M. (2010). The approach‐avoidance framework for identifying athletes’ coping style as a function of gender and race. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. The purpose of this study was to identify the coping styles of competitive athletes as a function of gender and race in response to events experienced during the contest perceived as highly stressful using the approach and avoidance coping framework. Participants (N = 218) consisted of 111 males (48 African American and 63 Caucasian) and 107 females (41 African American and 66 Caucasian), and ranged in age from 18 to 54 yrs (M ± SD; 22.29 ± 3.9 yrs). They attended a university in the southeastern US, and were considered highly skilled athletes based on their current or former participation as competitive athletes. A 12‐item inventory was completed consisting of six approach coping and six avoidance coping strategy items. Confirmatory factor analysis, composite reliability and Cronbach’s alpha indicated acceptable model‐data fit and internal scale consistency. The results suggested the athletes’ preferred coping style was avoidance, rather than approach. A 2 × 2 ANOVA showed significant main effects for gender (p = 0.003) and race (p < 0.01); males used more approach coping than females, while Caucasians applied more approach coping than African Americans. No significant interaction was found. The results indicated the need for future study on examining gender and race as moderating variables in examining athletes’ coping styles.     

Sexual Health Counselor Preferences of African American and European American Women: A Brief Report

African American women (n = 42) and European American women (n = 46) were queried regarding their comfort level discussing various sexual health topics with hypothetical counselors who were varied by race (African American vs. European American) or counseling value (culturally sensitive vs. knowledgeable). Contrary to hypotheses, European American participants were more comfortable with the knowledgeable African American counselor and the culturally sensitive European American counselor, while African American women showed no preference. Implications are discussed for improving sexual health counseling services for African American and European American women with consideration of client sexual attitude and race of counselor in order to reduce disparities in sexual health.     

Mother–Child Book‐Sharing and Children's Storytelling Skills in Ethnically Diverse,Low‐Income Families

The present study examined book‐sharing interactions between mothers and their 4‐year‐old children from African American (n = 62), Dominican (n = 67), Mexican (n = 59) and Chinese (n = 82) low‐income U.S. families, and children's independent storytelling skills one year later. Mothers' book‐sharing style was analysed in terms of how much storyline information they provided (story components), the extent to which they asked children about the story (dialogic emphasis) and which features of the story they highlighted (story content). African American mothers referred to more story components than did Dominican mothers, and Mexican mothers surpassed Dominican and Chinese mothers. Mothers of all groups were low in dialogic emphasis; they predominantly narrated rather than asked about the story, although Mexican mothers asked relatively more questions than did African American and Dominican mothers. In terms of content, compared with other groups, African American mothers were most likely to emphasize ‘individual goals’, and Chinese mothers were most likely to emphasize ‘negative consequences’. Latino mothers were more likely to emphasize ‘emotions’ than were Chinese mothers. Children's storytelling styles partially mirrored those seen in their mothers. Mothers' dialogic emphasis related to children's contributions to book‐sharing, which in turn predicted children's later independent storytelling skills. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Critical Whiteness Theories and the Evangelical “Race Problem”: Extending Emerson and Smith's Divided by Faith

In their 2000 book, Divided by Faith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith use the case of evangelical Christians to demonstrate how uncompromising individualist ideals get in the way of clear thinking and decisive action about racial inequalities in contemporary American society. We use insights developed from whiteness studies and critical race theory to sharpen and further extend this analysis. More specifically, we suggest: (1) that anti‐black stereotypes may be subtler, more pervasive, and more functionally necessary than Emerson and Smith assume; and (2) that the individualistic ideals Emerson and Smith focus on are not race neutral but, instead, are part of a taken‐for‐granted and vigorously defended majority white culture and identity. These points are developed through a theoretical reconstruction of Emerson and Smith's argument and a reevaluation of their methodological approach and data. Finally, we present data from a recent national survey of race and religion in American life that provide preliminary quantitative support for our revisionist claims.     

The Japanese Tea Ceremony and Pancultural Definitions of Art

Dominic McIver Lopes and Yuriko Saito claim that the Japanese tea ceremony, or chadō, is a non‐Western art form. Stephen Davies also defends that claim. In this article, I utilize the tea ceremony as a test case for pancultural definitions of art that claim to be inclusive of non‐Western cultures without relying on Western ethnocentrism to justify their status as artworks. I argue that Davies's (2015) hybrid definition is not justified in assuming a homogenous art tradition and/or a unified conception of artistic practices in a non‐Western culture. Moreover, the cladistic structure of his definition fails to accommodate the spontaneous instantiation of new art traditions. Additionally, Jerrold Levinson's Intentional‐Historical definition cannot satisfactorily accommodate chadō. First, the nonart origins that were formative for the regard that is required for appreciation of the tea ceremony mean that the relational interpretation of the definition fails. Second, Rikyū’s tea ceremony does not count as art incidentally, as it is not a form of mimesis nor does the Japanese wabi aesthetic that is central to chadō have a precursor in known Western art. Third, if chadō does satisfy Levinson's extended theory, it comes at the cost of embracing Western ethnocentrism.     

Embodied Methodologies,Participation, and the Art of Research

In this article, I make the case for scholarship potential at the overlap of art and research. Using the case of the psychological study of adolescence, I show that in order to produce findings of meaning from a critical psychological perspective, it is imperative to consider methodology and epistemology. With a focus on artistic embodied methodologies within participatory action research projects on adolescence, I explore how creative approaches can be an analytic process for knowledge production in the critical social sciences. I argue that the artistic approaches employed using embodied methodologies can be considered as a way to make meaning and that especially within participatory research, these approaches can strengthen validity. In response to the epistemological violence (Teo, 2010) of some conventional social psychological studies, participatory artistic embodied methodologies contribute to building liberatory knowledge and rigorous science.     

An Examination of Race Differences in Patients' Psychological Adjustment to Cancer

Although African Americans are at increased risk of cancer morbidity and mortality, very little is known about their psychological adjustment. African American males may be at especially high psychological risk, considering their disproportionately higher cancer mortality. Subjects were 42 African American and 56 White adults similar in age, cancer stage, marital status, and socioeconomic status. Analyses revealed no significant race or gender effects on global indices of psychological adjustment, depression, or anxiety. However, African Americans were more likely than Whites (a) to use avoidant coping strategies in dealing with the exigencies of their illness, (b) to report more cancer-related disruption in family relations, and (c) to identify fewer individuals in their social support network. No significant race differences were found on a measure of health care satisfaction. These findings highlight the need to provide a more comprehensive examination of individual, family, and socioecological variables and their relationship to psychological adaptation among minorities with cancer.     

Minority children's intergroup attitudes about peer relationships

Intergroup attitudes were assessed in African‐American (N=70) and non‐African‐American minority (N=80) children, evenly divided by gender, in first (M=6.5 years old) and fourth (M=9.6 years old) grades attending mixed‐ethnicity public schools in a suburban area of a large mid‐Atlantic city in the USA. Children were interviewed to test hypotheses about implicit racial biases, perceptions of similarity between peer dyads, and judgments about cross‐race friendships. Implicit racial biases emerged when children evaluated ambiguous picture cards, with children viewing a White child as more likely to be a transgressor than a Black child in certain situations. There were no racial biases when evaluating potential cross‐race friendship (it was judged to be feasible); nor was there any evidence of an outgroup homogeneity effect. Children who used ethnicity as a reason for judging peers to be similar, however, were less likely to judge that the cross‐race dyads could be friends. The findings indicate the ways in which minority children's judgments about the majority and their perceptions of similarity between peer dyads influence their interpretations of peer interactions.     

Civil Religion and the Cultural Politics of National Identity in Obama's America

American civil religion (ACR) burst on to the scholarly scene in 1967, and has been periodically revived as a source of analytic insight and normative hope since that time. It posited a universalist, prophetic, nonsectarian faith, referenced on the nation, that served as both a source of unity for the American people and a discursive resource for political leaders and protest movements. Using recent political events as illustrative cases, I argue that ACR is not only a universalist, prophetic creed, it is also an expression of tribal identity that ascribes a particular character and purpose to the American people. In particular, this “tribal” civil religion has an often‐unstated assumption about the inseparability of religion, race, and national identity—that is, white, Christian, and American. Recent events have disrupted those implicit connections, leading to a vociferous reemphasis of their centrality to the national story. I maintain that neither ACR, nor recent politics involving immigration and Barack Obama's presidency, can be understood fully without considering the religion‐race‐national identity nexus.     

Recognizing faces across continents: The effect of within-race variations on the own-race bias in face recognition

People are better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of other racial groups. This own-race bias (ORB) in face recognition manifests in some studies as a full crossover interaction between race of observer and race of face, but in others the interaction is accompanied by main effects or other complexities. We hypothesized that this may be due in part to unacknowledged within-race variation and the implicit assumption that the terms white and black describe perceptually homogeneous race categories. We therefore tested white and black South Africans on their recognition of black and white American faces and black and white South African faces. Our results showed the expected interaction, but only for South African faces. This finding supports explanations of the ORB that are premised on intergroup contact and perceptual experience and highlights the danger of assuming homogeneity of appearance within groups. Author Note     

Gender Ideology and Motherhood: The Consequences of Race on Earnings

Using a nationally representative US sample, this study explores the relationship between gender ideology and the earnings of African American and white mothers over a 10-year period (1988–1998). We further investigate how factors related to fertility (i.e., age at first birth and the number of children) impact earnings for these mothers. Findings show, that regardless of race, a conservative gender ideology reduces women’s earnings but less so for African Americans compared to whites. With regard to fertility, the number of children is detrimental to the earnings of white mothers, but has no effect on the African American mothers in our sample. However, early childbearing does depress the earnings of African American women more so than for their white counterparts.