(Mis)Calculations, Psychological Mechanisms, and the Future Politics of People of Color

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Efrén Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
The Road ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Ethnicity And Politics ◽  
Contemporary United States

Abstract This essay comments on three questions about race, ethnicity, and politics in the contemporary United States—How did we get here? Who are we now? And, where are we going next? I grapple with these questions as a political psychologist steeped in the study of intergroup politics. In this capacity, I will argue that structural (mis)calculations have paved the road toward present intergroup relations, where identity politics reigns supreme. I then discuss America's current racial landscape, arguing that reality is more complex than before, especially as it concerns political relations between Whites and non-Whites. In this regard, I will claim that political psychology holds special insights to generate new knowledge about how (non-)Whites are navigating this changing racial landscape. Finally, I will advocate, strongly, for a greater sense of wonder about the multiplicity of identities that people of color hold. In particular, I will claim that by relaxing our assumption that race is the main identity that matters to people of color, we stand to better appreciate just how adaptive non-Whites are to their political surroundings, leading us toward new insights about the origins and nature of mass political engagement and involvement.

Excess Mortality During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Philadelphia

2021 ◽  
pp. e1-e6
Author(s):  
Megan Todd ◽  
Meagan Pharis ◽  
Sam P. Gulino ◽  
Jessica M. Robbins ◽  
Cheryl Bettigole
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Excess Mortality ◽  
Poisson Model ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Mortality Data ◽  
Registration System ◽  
Vital Registration System ◽  
All Cause Mortality ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Excess Deaths

Objectives. To estimate excess all-cause mortality in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the COVID-19 pandemic and understand the distribution of excess mortality in the population. Methods. With a Poisson model trained on recent historical data from the Pennsylvania vital registration system, we estimated expected weekly mortality in 2020. We compared these estimates with observed mortality to estimate excess mortality. We further examined the distribution of excess mortality by age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Results. There were an estimated 3550 excess deaths between March 22, 2020, and January 2, 2021, a 32% increase above expectations. Only 77% of excess deaths (n=2725) were attributed to COVID-19 on the death certificate. Excess mortality was disproportionately high among older adults and people of color. Sex differences varied by race/ethnicity. Conclusions. Excess deaths during the pandemic were not fully explained by COVID-19 mortality; official counts significantly undercount the true death toll. Far from being a great equalizer, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated preexisting disparities in mortality by race/ethnicity. Public Health Implications. Mortality data must be disaggregated by age, sex, and race/ethnicity to accurately understand disparities among groups. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 10, 2021: e1–e6. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306285 )

scholarly journals Feminist Scholarship and Its Relevance for Political Engagement: The Test Case of Abortion in the US

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-43
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Kamitsuka
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ethical Thinking ◽  
Societal Dynamics

This essay explores how gender studies in academe, including in religious studies, might remain relevant to ongoing feminist political engagement. I explore some specific dynamics of this challenge, using as my test case the issue of abortion in the US. After discussing how three formative feminist principles (women’s experience as feminism’s starting point, the personal is political, and identity politics) have shaped approaches to the abortion issue for feminist scholars in religion, I argue that ongoing critique, new theoretical perspectives, and attentiveness to subaltern voices are necessary for these foundational feminist principles to keep pace with fast-changing and complex societal dynamics relevant to women’s struggles for reproductive health and justice. The essay concludes by proposing natality as a helpful concept for future feminist theological and ethical thinking on the subject.

scholarly journals Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Women ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Stratification ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Experiences Of Women

Identity-based politics has been a source of strength for people of color, gays and lesbians, among others. The problem with identity politics is that it often conflates intra group differences. Exploring the various ways in which race and gender intersect in shaping structural and political aspects of violence against these women, it appears the interests and experiences of women of color are frequently marginalized within both feminist  and antiracist discourses. Both discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. However,  the location of women of color at the intersection of race and gender makes our actual experience of domestic violence, rape, and remedial reform quite different from that of white women. Similarly, both feminist and antiracist politics have functioned in tandem to marginalize the issue of violence against women of color. The effort to politicize violence against women will do little to address the experiences of nonwhite women until the ramifications of racial stratification among women are acknowledged. At the same time, the anti-racist agenda will not be furthered by suppressing the reality of intra-racial violence against women of color. The effect of both these marginalizations is that women of color have no ready means to link their experiences with those of other women.

Alternatives to Coming Out Discourses

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuzhen Huang
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Queer Of Color Critique ◽  
Queer People ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Queer Of Color

The discourse of coming out has historically served as an effective vehicle to build and sustain the LGBTQ movement in the United States. It has also been utilized as an empowering resource that enables queer people to establish a queer identity organized around self-awareness and self-expression. However, queer of color critique and transnational queer theory argue that the prevalent discourse of coming out is built on a particular kind of queer experience and geography, which is usually from the standpoint of White, middle-class men of urban U.S. citizenship and is rarely derived from the experience of queer people of color and non-Western queer subjects. Taking an intersectional perspective, Snorton interrogates the racialization of the closet and proposes a sexual politics of ignorance—opposed to the disclosure imperative in coming out discourse—as a tactic of ungovernability. Centering the experience of Russian American immigrants who are queer-identified, Fisher proposes a fluid and productive relationship between the “closeted” and the “out” sexuality that resists any fixed categorization. Focusing on the masking tactic deployed by local queer activists, Martin theorizes the model of xianshen, a local identity politics in Taiwan that questions the very conditions of visibility in dominant coming out discourse. As a decolonial response to the transnational circulation of coming out discourse, Chou delineates a “coming home” approach that emphasizes familial piety and harmony by reining in and concealing queer desires. Being cautious against the nationalist impulse in Chou’s works, Huang and Brouwer propose a “coming with” model to capture the struggles among Chinese queers to disidentify with the family institution. These alternative paradigms serve as epistemic tools that aim to revise understanding of queer resistance and queer relationality and help people to go beyond the imagination of coming out for a livable queer future.

Political Behavior of Religious Elites

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Oldmixon
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Opportunities To Learn ◽  
Civic Skills ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Political Milieu

Churches are at the fulcrum of religious politics, and as church leaders, religious elites have an important role to play in the political milieu. They possess many of the resources associated with potent activism, but more importantly their job is to provide guidance to participants in a vast voluntary network. They can engage in agenda setting, encourage the faithful to apply their religious values to political engagement, and create opportunities to learn civic skills. Even so, religious leaders are subject to influence even as they try to exercise influence. In the foreground, religious leaders have a predictable set of goals, the substance of which varies by race, ethnicity, gender, and social theology. In the background, religious leaders pursue their goals in different sociodemographic and institutional contexts. The political behavior of religious leaders, then, is the product of background and foreground balancing.

Identity politics and hybrid tribunals

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 993-1014
Author(s):  
Aaron Fichtelberg
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Justice ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
The Creation

AbstractMany of the conflicts that have led to the creation of hybrid tribunals were identity-based conflicts – people who identified as members of one tribe, race, ethnicity, or religion used these distinctions as grounds to attack and persecute another group who often responded in kind. This reality means that the criminal justice processes that take place in the wake of such conflicts must take issues of identity seriously to be effective. This article uses the notion of framing contests to examine different identity-based responses to international justice. Defenders of the tribunals seek to portray them as impartial observers while critics paint them as illegitimate outsiders. Because hybrid tribunals have identity considerations as features built into them, they are better suited to promote their own legitimacy in these framing contests. These features include the personnel they use, the witnesses they call, the strategies their prosecutors deploy, and their local outreach programmes. Each of these tools can be used to frame the tribunal as a legitimate means to promote criminal justice and thereby advance the values of transitional justice.

Abstractions of Whiteness in Downtown Los Angeles: Ate9’s Kelev Lavan

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-177
Author(s):  
Meghan Quinlan
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Police Violence ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Social Tension ◽  
The Us ◽  
Specific Performance ◽  
Downtown Los Angeles

Ate9 Dance Company’s Kelev Lavan raised questions about the politics of individualism and the neutrality of whiteness in art, during a period of acute social tension surrounding police violence against people of color in the US. Issues of technique, aesthetics, and the invisibilization of identity politics are explored in the context of this site-specific performance.

scholarly journals A Psychological Account of the Unique Decline in Anti-Gay Attitudes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Kumar ◽  
Aditi Kodipady ◽  
Liane Young
Keyword(s):  
Attitudes Toward Women ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Genetically Determined ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

Anti-gay attitudes have declined in the U.S. The magnitude, speed, and demographic scope of this change have been impressive especially in comparison with prejudice against other marginalized groups. We develop a psychological account of the unique decline in anti-gay bias in the context of background cultural and political conditions. We highlight two key psychological mechanisms: interpersonal connection and social category classification. First, many people have discovered that a close friend or family member or an admired individual is gay, motivating them to identify the harm and discrimination faced by the individual they know, and catalyzing moral consistency reasoning such that they generalize this interpersonal insight to strangers. Second, many people take an essentialist stance toward social categories, including sexual orientation, leading them to infer that being gay is genetically determined and not subject to free choice or moral responsibility, nor mutable and worth attempting to change. We contrast this to the relationship between essentialism and attitudes toward women and people of color, and provide an account of the difference. This psychological account has implications for the future decline of anti-gay attitudes, in the U.S. and other countries, along with the nascent decline of anti-trans attitudes.

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