Maybe, maybe not: Racial discourse and worldview in interracial relationships.

Racism in the Aotearoa New Zealand media is the subject of scholarly debate that examines how Māori (Indigenous Peoples of New Zealand) are broadcast in a negative and demeaning light. Literature demonstrates evolving understandings of how the industry places Pākehā (New Zealanders primarily of European descent) interests at the heart of broadcasting. We offer new insights by arguing that the media industry propagates a racial discourse of silencing that sustains widespread ignorance of the ways that Pākehā sensibilities mediate society. We draw attention to a silencing discourse through one televised story in 2018. On-screen interactions reproduce and safeguard a harmonious narrative of settler–Indigenous relations that support ignorance and denial of the structuring force of colonisation, and the Television Code of Broadcasting Practice upholds colour-blind perceptions of discrimination and injustice through liberal rhetoric. These processes ensure that the media industry is complicit in racism and the ongoing oppression of Indigenous peoples.

Download Full-text

Narrating the Territorial Foundations of Privilege: Racial Discourse and Indigenous Peoples

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity ◽

10.1177/23326492211043908 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 233264922110439

Author(s):

David W. Everson

Keyword(s):

American Indian ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Empirical Support ◽

Theoretical Framework ◽

Cultural Narratives ◽

Racial Discourse ◽

Red Power ◽

Colonial Theory ◽

Color Blind

This article focuses on the cultural narratives underlying U.S. society’s racialized inequalities. Informed by settler colonial theory and Charles Tilly’s work on “durable inequality,” I outline a privilege narratives framework that centers the dual mechanisms of racial dispossession that construct white supremacy’s material foundations: (1) the exploitation of non-Indigenous bodies and (2) the opportunity hoarding of Indigenous resources. I argue that these complementary, yet divergent, mechanisms shape distinctive patterns in contemporary racial discourse. In contrast to color-blind racism’s ahistoric and spatially disembedded storylines, the hoarding of Indigenous resources requires narrations that historically legitimate the dominant culture’s territoriality. Thus, in comparison with other racialized groups, racial discourse surrounding Indigenous peoples remains rooted in the defense of the territorial foundations of white property. Empirical support for the theoretical framework is provided through a sample of purposive follow-up interviews of non-Indigenous bystanders with historical connections to the American Indian Movement’s (AIM) “Red Power” activism in the 1970s.

Download Full-text

From Institutional Racism to Community Cohesion: The Changing Nature of Racial Discourse in Britain

Sociological Research Online ◽

10.5153/sro.1705 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 78-90 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Andrew Pilkington

Keyword(s):

Social Cohesion ◽

Institutional Racism ◽

British Society ◽

Racial Discourse ◽

Community Cohesion ◽

Nationalist Discourse ◽

The World ◽

First Time ◽

Official Recognition ◽

Equality And Diversity

It is imperative that an appropriate balance is reached between three key principles: equality, diversity and social cohesion. In many countries across the world, however, there is a discernible move away from a concern for equality and diversity as the problem of order looms larger. I shall focus here on Britain in presenting my central thesis that there is a very real danger that a new nationalist discourse centred on community cohesion and integration is trouncing any duties on us to promote racial equality and respect cultural diversity. The paper comprises three sections. I shall firstly identify a radical hour when there was for the first time official recognition that institutional racism existed in British society and some urgency that this needed to be combated. I shall secondly highlight the fragility of such progressiveness and identify threats from the changing nature of racial discourse since 2001. Here, I shall highlight in particular how the prominence given to institutional racism, with the publication of the Macpherson report, was remarkably short lived and how multiculturalism has come under increasing attack, not least because of its purported threat to social cohesion. I shall finally offer some tentative proposals for a more positive way forward.

Download Full-text