Navigating the ‘space between’ the Black/White binary: a call for Jewish multicultural inclusion

ABSTRACT

In the twenty-first century, diversity and multicultural analysis of race often falls along a Black/White binary paradigm. Therefore, those who are perceived to be White are often left out of the discussion of diversity and multicultural education (DME) in the United States. This absence is particularly true for American Jews of Ashkenazi descent. In academic circles today, the notion of ‘Whiteness’ is often used as a determining factor for overlooking antisemitism while addressing issues of racism aimed at other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Data show that acts of antisemitism continues to rise in the U.S., especially on college campuses. Due to a lack of acknowledgment in the university classroom, Jews continue to be overlooked in multicultural academic thought, which can have wide-ranging consequences for Jews and non-Jews alike.     

An intersectional approach to understanding how race and social class affect intergroup processes

Much of the current psychological literature investigates single category dimensions (i.e., race or social class), with little focus on the intersection of multiple social category dimensions. Yet some evidence suggests that the intersection of race and social class information influences (a) stereotype expression, (b) categorization, (c) impressions, (d) prejudice, and (e) discrimination, revealing common links between Blackness and low social class and Whiteness and high social class in at least the United States. The present article reviews evidence for considering both target race and social class as intersecting social categories that simultaneously influence intergroup processes. This analysis suggests that a more comprehensive understanding of intergroup processes can be achieved when considering the intersection of race and social class information. This review also provides a series of future directions to advance intergroup processes research.     

The diversification of psychology: a multicultural revolution

The National Multicultural Conference and Summit was held in January 1999 in Newport Beach, California. Hosted by Divisions 17 (Counseling Psychology), 35 (Society for the Psychology of Women), and 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues), the event drew support from many American Psychological Association (APA) divisions and other major organizations and sponsors. Approximately 550 psychologists and graduate students attended the conference, which was intended to (a) examine state-of-the-art issues in ethnic minority psychology, (b) identify barriers to becoming a multicultural profession, and (c) forge alliances for political action and advocacy. The summit participants unanimously endorsed resolutions aimed at implementing cultural competence in all psychological endeavors. Multicultural themes arising from the summit included the diversification of the United States; the facilitation of difficult dialogues on race, gender, and sexual orientation; spirituality as a basic dimension of the human condition; the invisibility of monoculturalism and Whiteness; and the teaching of multiculturalism and diversity. APA was strongly encouraged to take the lead in seeing that multicultural competence becomes a defining feature of psychological practice, education and training, and research.     

Treating People as Equals: Ethical Objections to Racial Profiling and the Composition of Juries

This paper shows that the problem of treating people as equals in a world marked by deep-seated and, often, recalcitrant inequalities has implications for the way we approach the provision of security and justice. On the one hand, it means that racial profiling will generally be unjustified even when it might promote collective interests in security, on the other, it means that we should strive to create racially mixed juries, even in cases where defendant and alleged-victim are of the same race. The paper examines a recent report on race and jury trials in the United Kingdom and concludes that, despite the author??s claims that all-white juries are fair, the data shows the complex ways in which racial differences are translated into unjustified and arbitrary inequalities. Hence, it concludes, racially mixed juries are desirable, and sometimes necessary for justice, though probably not sufficient.     

Community Disadvantage and Race-Specific Rates of Violent Crime: An Investigation into the “Racial Invariance” Hypothesis in the United Kingdom

Research into how structural disadvantage affects violent crime among racial groups has produced mixed results. In the United States, however, black and white community-level disadvantage distributions only partially overlap, precluding critical tests of the “racial invariance” hypothesis. We examine the relationship between race, violent crime, and disadvantage in the United Kingdom, where disadvantage distributions for race-groups have greater comparability. Using London borough-level data, we observe racial-invariance at comparably low/high disadvantage. However, at extreme disadvantage the effect increases significantly for black communities but not white or South Asian. This conflicts with studies demonstrating either racial invariance or weaker effects among blacks.     

The Butterfly Dilemma: Asian Women,Whiteness, and Heterosexual Relationships

Critical Whiteness theory explores Whiteness as a form of power and privilege that originated in Western countries and has been dispersed globally. Its form is particular to location and its interaction with race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and gender. Two ways it has operated historically is through making the norms of Whiteness universal and the marker of reason and rationality. This article examines Whiteness through two lenses, the colonial-era opera, Madame Butterfly, and three recent therapy case studies involving White American husbands and Asian immigrant wives. Although the women in these therapy cases have emigrated from different Asian countries and cultures, the treatment toward them suggests that colonial-era images and stereotypes of Asian women still resonate in contemporary White American culture and are impervious to national or cultural boundaries. A comparison of the opera’s themes with those of the therapy cases suggest how historical and social constructions of Whiteness continue to promote inequality in heterosexual relationships comprised of White American males and Asian females. Feminist, multicultural analyses of the therapy cases are provided to highlight more egalitarian treatment of the women in therapy, in their families, and in the broader society. The intersectionality of gender with ethnicity and culture is discussed for these Asian women who experience the homogenization of their identities in spite of having immigrated to the U.S. from distinct cultures.     

Consumer Racial Discrimination in Tipping: A Replication and Extension

This study examined the effects of server race, customer race, and their interaction on restaurant tips while statistically controlling for customers' perceptions of service quality and other variables. The findings indicate that consumers of both races discriminated against Black service providers by tipping them less than White service providers. Furthermore, this server race effect on tipping was moderated by perceived service quality and dining party size. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. Particularly noteworthy is the possibility that the server race effect on tipping represents an adverse impact against Black servers that makes the use of tipping to compensate employees a violation of employment discrimination law in the United States.     

The Construction,Deconstruction, and Reconstruction of Difference

The construction of difference is central to racism, sexism and other forms of oppression. This paper examines the similar and dissimilar ways in which race and gender have been constructed in the United States and analyzes the consequences of these differences in construction for the development of social policy and the growth and nature of movements for social change.     

Race Dialogues in Group Psychotherapy: Key Issues in Training and Practice

Growing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States and globally requires culturally competent mental health professionals who can address ongoing racial tensions and experiences of racism and xenophobia. Attending to racial and ethnic issues and infusing race and ethnic dialogues in group psychotherapy can play a major role in addressing mental health problems, promoting racial harmony, and healing deep psychological wounds and trauma that are the result of racial tensions. This article describes seven key issues necessary to effectively address race and ethnicity in group psychotherapy.     

Little White Lies: Racialization and the White/Black Divide

This article emphasizes the importance of considering the history, context and epistemological bases of the use of race and racial categories in North America. Using this contextual grounding, I propose that racial categories are born of racism and not the reverse. I include some salient personal examples of the effects of the construct Whiteness in my own life experience. They are, at the same time, personal, political and cultural. Finally, some suggestions are offered for dealing with the issue of Whiteness, in particular, in feminist therapy, which seeks to uncover power differentials and the personal and political, each embedded in the other.     

‘The Inner Citadels of the Color Line’: Mapping the Micro‐Ecology of Racial Segregation in Everyday Life Spaces

The role of racial segregation in perpetuating racial prejudice and inequality has been widely investigated by social scientists. Most research has concentrated on the macro‐sociological organization of institutions of residence, education and employment. In this paper, we suggest that such work may be usefully complemented by research that investigates the so‐called ‘micro‐ecology of segregation’ in everyday life spaces – the dynamic, largely informal network of social practices through which individuals maintain racial isolation within settings where members of other race groups are physically co‐present. Developing this argument, we discuss some historical examples of research on the micro‐ecological dimension of race segregation in the United States. We also draw examples from an ongoing program of work on everyday practices of contact and segregation in post‐apartheid South Africa. The paper concludes by exploring some conceptual and methodological implications of treating racial segregation as a micro‐ecological practice.     

WHITE PROTESTANTS AND BLACK CHRISTIANS: The Absence and Presence of Whiteness in the Face of the Black Manifesto

This essay brings Critical Whiteness Studies into liberationist Christian ethics in order to analyze white Protestant responses to the 1969 Black Manifesto, which demanded reparations from white churches. The essay's primary argument is that the absence of a sense of white moral agency among white Protestants manifested itself in behaviors and rhetoric that ensured whiteness went unacknowledged, which caused Protestant responses to the Manifesto to fail. A related argument is that white behavior and rhetoric were particularly dramatic because of the call for reparations. Reparations assume that race is a material relationship in which there has been a perpetrator and a victim, rendering the acknowledgment of white agency unavoidable. This essay thus analyzes several ways in which whites can be seen turning away from white selves, turning a scrutinizing gaze instead to Black selves and, in the process, absenting white agency from the work of racial justice.     

Race-Norming of Neuropsychological Tests

Recent studies in the United States indicate that some neurologically intact minority groupings perform well below White Americans on neuropsychological tests. This has sparked the production of race-norms, especially for African Americans, that seek to reduce false positive rates (i.e., neurologically intact individuals misdiagnosed with cognitive impairment) in neuropsychological assessments. There are problems with this enterprise including: possible justification for inferior/superior treatment of different racial groupings; unknown effects on false negative rates (i.e., cognitive deficit misdiagnosed as normal); the overlooking of factors possibly responsible for group racial differences (e.g., acculturation); non-scientific and non-operational definitions of race/ethnic groupings; and an impossibly large number of potential race/ethnic groupings for which to generate race-norms. An alternative approach is to use a single set of combined race/ethnic norms and estimate preexisting neuropsychological skill levels by using individual comparison standards. This alternative has been poorly researched, a situation that needs correcting.     

Whiteness

This paper seeks to make meaning of the experience of being white in the United States at this point in history. The self-awareness of white people is limited by a blind spot around the meaning and impact of being white in a multiracial society. Using psychoanalytic and literary methodology, the author seeks to cast light with which to explore this blind spot. Everyday experiences are used to illustrate the widely pervasive impact of race in the lives of white people, and a clinical vignette illustrates how race might show up in a white-on-white psychotherapy. Enactments within this paper are noted when they are evident to the author     

Remembering Nat Schoenfeld

William Nathan Schoenfeld was born in New York City on December 6, 1915, and died in Sun City West, Arizona, on August 3, 1996. He was an undergraduate at the College of the City of New York, where he received a BS degree in 1937. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 1942 and then continued there as a faculty member, advancing from lecturer to full professor. In 1966 he moved to Queens College of the City University of New York, where he remained until his retirement in 1983. During his years at Queens, he also took on visiting appointments in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela. In retirement, he spent roughly a decade in Israel, where he occasionally taught as a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He returned to the United States for his final years. He is survived by his wife, Melanie, their three children, Rivka, Joshua and Naomi, and a son, Mark, from a previous marriage.     

Successful teaching techniques in a race relations class

The authors present suggestions for enhancing a university course in race relations. These approaches were used in a series of classes offered at a state university in the southeastern United States during a historical period of notable racial tension. This course provided a supportive arena for personal questioning, student interaction, and positive change. Even 20 years later, former students reported that experiential components, such as living with a family of another race, were powerful instruments in self-growth, development, and racial understanding. Many reported this class as the basis of profound, life-long positive changes in racial attitudes.     

Development and Risk Behavior Among African American, Caucasian, and Mixed-race Adolescents Living in High Poverty Inner-city Neighborhoods

Youths growing up in low-income inner-city neighborhoods are at substantial risk for initiating substance use, violent behavior, and sexual intercourse at early ages; these risk behaviors continue at comparatively high rates through adolescence. Hopelessness has been implicated as a risk factor for these behaviors. In this paper, we consider how race influences this process. African Americans form a demographic minority within the United States, but they are often the majority within inner-city neighborhoods. For Caucasians, the opposite typically holds. Mixed-race populations form a minority within both contexts. Using longitudinal data, we examine the relationship between race and risk behaviors in several impoverished inner-city neighborhoods where African Americans form the distinct majority and Caucasians and people of mixed racial heritage form a small minority. We also consider how race moderates the relationship between hopelessness and risk behavior. Our findings show that compared to Caucasian or mixed-race adolescents, African American adolescents are less likely to engage in risk behaviors, and that hopelessness has a less important impact on their behaviors.     

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.     

Chronic Self-Destructiveness and Locus of Control in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Abstract

Chronic self-destructiveness and external locus of control were significantly correlated in student samples in Hong Kong, India, and the United States. Responses to the Chronic Self-Destructiveness Scale (Kelly et al., 1985) evinced high levels of internal reliability in these samples. The data from Venezuela were the only exception to this pattern of results. The results demonstrate some generalizability of the Chronic Self-Destructiveness Scale across three diverse cultural boundaries.     

How Gender and Race Stereotypes Impact the Advancement of Scholars in STEM: Professors’ Biased Evaluations of Physics and Biology Post-Doctoral Candidates

Sex Roles - The current study examines how intersecting stereotypes about gender and race influence faculty perceptions of post-doctoral candidates in STEM fields in the United States. Using a...