The dynamics of racial exclusion and expulsion: racist politics in western Europe

Abstract. The concept of political racism is necessarily more specific than the more universal concepts of racism used in social science outside the sphere of politics. Thus, despite the common tendency to explain political racism using theories developed to account for other forms of racism, one turns most profitably to a range of political factors operating differently in time and/or location in order to arrive at the most thorough understanding of the expression of political racism. However, that does not deny the relevance of certain theories of more general racism in recognizing those circumstances that predispose to political racism. Some major theories in sociology and social psychology that might be applicable to political racism are described and their respective usefulness is assessed on the basis of available evidence about support for political racism in four west European countries.     

Socialist racism: Ethnic cleansing and racial exclusion in the USSR and Israel

During the 1970s, both the Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks in Soviet Central Asia compared their plight to that of the Palestinians. The Stalin regime deported both the Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks from their homelands to dispersed settlements in Central Asia. The similarities between the Soviet policies of expelling and permanently excluding the Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks from their homelands and similar Israeli policies towards the Palestinians are not entirely coincidental. The Zionists based their mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and subsequent prohibition on allowing them to return to their homes in part on the Soviet model. The similarities between the two instances of ethnic cleansing are due in large part to this conscious emulation of Stalin's methods by the Zionists.     

Belgium adopts law against racial discrimination and incitement to racial hatred

German neo‐Nazis revive an old World War I myth to whitewash Hitler.     

References to racial issues

This paper explores the readiness with which the issue of race comes to the minds of ordinary Americans—the accessibility of racial issues—by assessing the frequency with which ordinary Americans refer to racial issues when talking about politics. Explicitly racial issues have declined dramatically in accessibility among the general public over the past thirty years. Coinciding with the decrease in the accessibility of issues explicitly involving race there has been some increase in the accessibility of other issues—crime, poverty, and welfare—that some regard as code words with which whites communicate, in socially acceptable language, continued anxiety about race. There is little evidence, however, that many white Americans use references to such issues to express hostility toward black Americans. Contrary to some interpretations of recent presidential elections, moreover, the increased accessibility of such issues has not produced a windfall of votes for the Republicans.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 3–6, and at the 1993 conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, St. Charles, Illinois, May 20–23.     

Sexual orientation and gender identity in Nepal: Rights promotion through UN development assistance

United Nations (UN) development agencies have been actively working to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights in Nepal, despite having no official mandate to work on these rights. This presents an important example of how such agencies are able to act independently to set their own agenda and illustrates the “open system” approach to international bureaucracies. It also suggests that these agencies have the potential to be important instruments of LGBTI rights promotion outside the traditional human rights machinery such as the Human Rights Council and various committees. Based on extensive interview research as well as documentary evidence, this article traces the origins of the UN's engagement with LGBTI rights. It then discusses the work of UN agencies in South Asia, and Nepal in particular, focusing on the UN Development Programme, the UN Children's Fund, UNAIDS, and UN Women. Political changes in Nepal since 2006 have opened it up for change in its approach to these rights, and UN agencies have worked actively to change both legal norms and social attitudes. The conclusion considers whether these lessons are applicable to other states and whether the UN development machinery must be considered an important ally in pursuing LGBTI rights worldwide.     

Racial structural solidarity

Abstract

Effective political action against racial injustice requires a conception of solidarity based on the social and material reality of this form of injustice. I develop such a notion of solidarity by extending Iris Young’s notion of ‘gender as seriality’ to race. This notion of solidarity avoids the problems encountered by Shelby’s ‘common oppression view’ and Gooding-Williams’s non-foundational view. On Shelby’s ‘common oppression’ view, solidarity is based solely on the victims’ shared condition of oppression. According to Shelby, all victims of racial oppression can be reasonably expected to endorse a set of principles that will move them to common action. Gooding-Williams sheds doubt on the idea that such shared principles exist and defends instead a view of politics as action-in-concert, marked by reasonable disagreement, and a non-foundational view of solidarity constituted through the controversy of politics rather than given in virtue of pre-political commitments or interests. I argue that the problem with such a notion is that it is unable to link the material and social reality of the unjust structures to the forms of political action that would effectively transform social reality. My notion of ‘structural racial solidarity’ would avoid these problems.     

Racial Contexts and White Interests: Beyond Black Threat and Racial Tolerance

The impact of racial context on white voters' support for black candidates in biracial elections has drawn considerable attention from students of racial politics. Two major theories—black threat and social interaction—use different geographic units and provide conflicting explanations. The present study seeks to contribute to the resolution of the controversy by empirically examining white crossover voting at both election unit and neighborhood levels. Twenty-nine mayoral and councilmanic district elections in New Orleans from 1977 to 1998 are investigated. The findings are not consistent with the hypotheses derived from black threat and social interaction theories. Rather than a reflection of racial tolerance or hostility, the changes in white crossover voting in different racial contexts may indicate a rational and strategic adjustment on the part of white voters when they face the prospect of black electoral success.     

Racial Composition, White Racial Attitudes, and Black Representation: Testing the Racial Threat Hypothesis in the United States Senate

We make the case for why the racial threat hypothesis should characterize the relationship between states?? racial composition, whites?? racial attitudes, and black representation in the United States Senate. Consistent with this claim, we find that senators from states with larger percentages of African-Americans among the electorate and more racially conservative preferences among whites provide worse representation of black interests in the Senate than their counterparts. We also apply theories of congressional cross-pressures in considering how senator partisanship and region moderate the effect of white racial attitudes on black representation. Finally, consistent with the racial threat hypothesis, we show that the negative effect of white racial attitudes on the quality of black representation is stronger when state unemployment rates are higher.     

The electoral consequences of racial fluidity

Brazilian politicians have seemingly adopted new racial identities en masse in recent years. What are the electoral consequences of asserting membership in a new racial group? In the Brazilian case, politicians who change how they racially identify themselves and secure greater access to campaign resources may become more electorally competitive. If voters learn a politician has changed their self-declared race, however, the politician’s reputation is likely to be tarnished and their chances of victory are likely to decline. Building on evidence that voters acquire greater information about election front-runners in high-profile contests than other types of politicians, I expect incumbents running for executive offices who change how they publicly identify themselves to suffer an electoral penalty. Drawing on data from local elections in Brazil, I find limited evidence that voters penalize city council candidates who adopt new racial identities. I show that incumbent mayors seeking reelection, however, receive significantly fewer votes after they assert membership in new racial groups.     

A Soviet analysis of racial prejudice

The persecution of Christian sects such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists in totalitarian societies is a neglected subject. In Hitler's Germany, some refused to compromise and suffered the fate of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. Others were tempted to buy a stay of execution and publicly adopted elements of national‐socialist ideology.     

Placing Racial Stereotypes in Context: Social Desirability and the Politics of Racial Hostility

Past research indicates that diversity at the level of larger geographic units (e.g., counties) is linked to white racial hostility. However, research has not addressed whether diverse local contexts may strengthen or weaken the relationship between racial stereotypes and policy attitudes. In a statewide opinion survey, we find that black‐white racial diversity at the zip‐code level strengthens the connection between racial stereotypes and race‐related policy attitudes among whites. Moreover, this effect is most pronounced among low self‐monitors, individuals who are relatively immune to the effects of egalitarian social norms likely to develop within a racially diverse local area. We find that this racializing effect is most evident for stereotypes (e.g., African Americans are “violent”) that are “relevant” to a given policy (e.g., capital punishment). Our findings lend nuance to research on the political effects of racial attitudes and confirm the racializing political effects of diverse residential settings on white Americans.     

The Long Shadow of Police Racial Treatment: Racial Disparity in Criminal Justice Processing

This article explores racial disproportionality in criminal justice processing in an era of punitive criminal justice policies and mass incarceration. Using arrest data from New York State, the authors compare the racial disparity in prison sentencing with the disparity at arrest while controlling for crime type and criminal history of the arrest population. Findings show that the racial disparity in prison sentencing at the state level is established before courts begin criminal case proceedings. Scholars and policy makers interested in the sources of racial disparity in incarceration should concentrate on the processes that generate crime and arrests. However, a decrease in racial disparity at prison sentencing, relative to arrest, suggests that the practices of courtroom actors still merit scholarly attention.     

Racial proximity and campaign contributing

A distinguished tradition of social science research has shown higher levels of U.S. Southern political participation in areas of black-white residential proximity, attributing this activism to the political threat perceived by white voters from having African Americans concentrated close-by. Here we examine whether elevated participation in the form of campaign contributions is also visible in areas of mixed settlement, and which party, if any, this activism has come to favor. The findings from contribution data show that the South remains a distinctive political region. Southern locations of joint black-white settlement are productive of intensified donor mobilization favoring Republican candidates. Republicans not only raise more money in these places, but also receive numerically more contributions than they do in Non-Southern locations that are otherwise similar. These differences remain even after introducing statistical controls for affluence, the aged population, the number of potential contributors, and the competitiveness of local campaigns.     

Racial Solidarity and Political Participation

Studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s generally confirmed that racial group solidarity boosted rates of participation among African Americans. But since the 1980s, research has tended to conclude that the effect of solidarity on voter turnout among blacks and other minorities has moderated if not faded entirely. We hypothesize that part of this observed decline is explained by a dilution of measures of group solidarity in recent studies. We argue that a fair test of racial solidarity requires using a comprehensive measure that incorporates both psychological “identification” and the ideological beliefs that comprise “consciousness.” Moreover, we hypothesize that the effects of solidarity, will vary across forms of participation and be greatest on political activities that require group coordination. Our re-analysis of the 1984 NBES using separate measures of identification and consciousness indicates that the more narrowly circumscribed measures of these concepts used in recent studies are likely to have underestimated its influence on political participation. We show that racial identification and consciousness had a modest effect on voting turnout in 1984, but a significant influence on participation in several traditional campaign activities, petitioning government officials, and especially participation in protests and boycotts.