Policy Feedback in a Racialized Polity

American public policy is and has always been profoundly racialized. Yet, the literature on policy feedback lacks cohesive theorization of how race matters for feedback processes. This article offers a conceptual road map for studying policy feedback in the context of racialized politics. Drawing together the substantial (but largely disconnected) work that already exists in the fields of public policy and racial politics, I develop the racialized feedback framework to provide theoretical guidance on (i) when race should be a core focus of policy feedback research and (ii) how race structures the relationship between policy and polity. I argue that both the scope of the questions that scholars ask and the nature of the answers they find are altered when race is afforded an appropriately central role in research on policy feedback.     

Reflections on the History and Historians of the black woman’s role in the community of slaves: enslaved women and intimate partner sexual violence

Taking as points of inspiration Peter Parish’s 1989 book, Slavery: History and Historians, and Angela Davis’s seminal 1971 article, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” this probes both historiographically and methodologically some of the challenges faced by historians writing about the lives of enslaved women through a case study of intimate partner violence among enslaved people in the antebellum South. Because rape and sexual assault have been defined in the past as non-consensual sexual acts supported by surviving legal evidence (generally testimony from court trials), it is hard for historians to research rape and sexual violence under slavery (especially marital rape) as there was no legal standing for the rape of enslaved women or the rape of any woman within marriage. This article suggests enslaved women recognized that black men could both be perpetrators of sexual violence and simultaneously be victims of the system of slavery. It also argues women stoically tolerated being forced into intimate relationships, sometimes even staying with “husbands” imposed upon them after emancipation.     

Gender,Race, and Rumours: Re-examining the 1943 Race Riots

Focusing on three riots of the World War II era – those of Beaumont (Texas), Detroit, and New York's Harlem – this essay examines the rumours that sparked these disturbances to uncover the gendered ideologies that underlie racial violence. In these rumour narratives, women appear as either rape victims or tortured mothers, while men appear as either depraved rapists or noble protectors. The deployment of these images helped forge a defensive collective identity that facilitated the outbreak of violence. Because racial and gender ideologies were intimately linked, the author argues, race riots must be analysed through the lens of gender in order to be fully understood.     

The fantasy of access: Neoliberal ordering of a public beach

Neoliberal governance has led to the progressive privatization and ordering of urban public spaces, restricting their use as domains of political expression and visible identity formation. While the processes of privatization have taken a variety of forms, the end result either produces new privately-owned spaces or restricts access and behavior in extant public space. A programmatic, bourgeois-public space emerges where a fantasy of open-access occludes the experience of exclusion. This fantasy of inclusive public space is upheld by dualistically countering its faux-democratic state management against private ownership. Though scholars have theorized the neoliberal production of public spaces elsewhere, this paradigm has rarely been applied to the large and proximate public beaches and coastlines that bound US lands. This paper seeks to complicate our understanding of the process of privatization by countering legal and experiential exclusions that govern access to beaches in Connecticut. A study of the Eastern Point beaches in Groton, Connecticut is used to analyze the impacts of a Connecticut Supreme Court case that struck down residents-only restricted beaches. Supported by empirical data from beachgoers at the small public and private beaches, the mechanics of exclusion are shown to hinge upon race class and locality. Though Connecticut beaches are now more legally inclusive, results from this research indicate that the ruling has had negligible effects upon the practice of social exclusion from the beach. Using anarchist theories of spatial practice, I suggest that a democratic public space can only be achieved through occupation and embodied resistance to neoliberal ordering.     

The electoral geographies of two segregationist (“Jim Crow”) referenda in Alabama

At the conclusion of the American Civil War, the states of the former Confederacy rapidly added sections to their state constitutions and legal statutes to codify racial segregation and limit the social, economic and political options for their African American citizens. These laws became the foundation for the Jim Crow system of racial segregation. Although such laws have been found unconstitutional, some have survived in state constitutions and statutes as legal relicts. Using the traditionalist–modernizer model and Thomas Frank’s concept of the Great Backlash, we examine the electoral geographies of two referenda in Alabama to delete Jim Crow era provisions from the state’s constitution. Although 59% of Alabama voters supported deleting the state’s constitutional ban on interracial marriage in 2000, a slight majority supported maintaining the unenforceable constitutional sections requiring poll taxes and segregated schools in 2004. We find the geographic pattern of voting on both referenda was substantially associated with the traditionalist–modernizer model and Great Backlash as they pertain to race, religious conservatism, and views towards public education and taxes.     

War rape, natality and genocide

Feminist philosophy can make an important contribution to the field of genocide studies, and issues relating to gender and war are gaining new attention. In this article I trace legal and philosophical analyses of sexual violence against women in war. I analyze the strengths and limitations of the concept of social death—introduced into this field by Claudia Card—for understanding the genocidal features of war rape, and draw on the work of Hannah Arendt to understand the central harm of genocide as an assault on natality. The threat to natality posed by the harms of rape, forced pregnancy and forced maternity lie in the potential expulsion from the public world of certain groups—including women who are victims, members of the 'enemy' group, and children born of forced birth.     

Racial vibrations,masculine performances: experiences of homelessness among young men of colour in the Greater Toronto Area

This article explores the connections between race, masculinity and urban space in the lives of Canadian-born young men of colour (aged 17–26) who have experienced homelessness in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). It is based on ethnographic research including 40 interviews and eight ‘Where-I-Live-Tours’ of the city by the author and participants. This study explores the intersections between racial emergences and masculine performances in the lived experiences of homelessness, drawing connections between spatial representations and material experiences. It utilizes the concepts of affect and ‘racial vibrations’ to show how race emerges differently in different areas of the GTA. There exists a constant racial ‘vibe’ in the suburban areas of the GTA, whereas there is a vibrating whiteness that obscures racial events in downtown Toronto spaces. In both cases, the emergence of race contributes to continued oppression based on the intersections of racialized masculinities and homelessness.     

Introduction: Representing Racial Issues

This paper seeks to show why there is a need to theorise race relations as a feature of white Australia's culture and as the context of Aboriginal lives. The violent drama of racial politics as glimpsed on the public media and as experienced by black communities all over the country, demands analytic attention. Anthropologists were once the experts on race, before the field lost its legitimacy. If we turn our attention to exposing the forms of colonial power that saturate Aboriginal social life, Australian anthropology may be saved from becoming an anachronism.     

‘A NEW SEASON FOR PLANNING’: URBAN GARDENING AS INFORMAL PLANNING IN ROME

This article investigates the relationship between urban gardening and planning by building upon the results of field research on gardening initiatives in the city of Rome, Italy. The work is aimed at suggesting that, while often associated in geography and planning literature with urban informality practices (e.g. accidental city or self‐made urbanism), urban gardening actually presents the character of a distinctive form of people's interaction with urban space, here defined as “informal planning”. This includes practices that are intentionally put forward by local dwellers with the intention of urban space planning and organizing public life in the absence of legal definition, guidance and funds provided by public authorities or the private sector. Urban gardening cases in Rome exemplify the emergence of informal planning and show how, by questioning the counterplanning tradition that understands urban gardening as an antagonist spatial practice opposing institutional planning, informal planning can open up collaborative possibilities. A new mode of interaction between citizens' agency and the formal planning initiatives of local administration can lead to creative solutions to address some of the problems associated with the neoliberal transformation of the city space, most notably the decrease in public space and its deterioration.     

The trauma of war rape: A comparative view on the Bosnian conflict and the Greek civil war

This paper explores the practice and the political context of war rapes in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995) and in the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). It argues that conceptions about accountability and expected gender roles may lead social actors to commit atrocities that transgress the moral codes of their own society, while condemning their victims to silence. On the other hand, a change in the political context may undermine the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators and ultimately lead war rape victims to break their silence and bear witness. This argument is illustrated by a detailed analysis of one particular interview, in which a woman raped during the Greek Civil War decided to break her silence fifty years after the event. The interview material offers the opportunity to explore the effects of trauma and the multiple ways in which war rape victims may try to cope with past trauma and give meaning to a shattered life.     

Changing Discourses of Marital Violence in Sweden from the Age of Reformation to the Late Nineteenth Century

This article analyses how public attention to marital violence in Sweden changed from a question of maintaining good order and ambitions to discipline self‐indulgent house tyrants into responsible masters of households in the seventeenth century, to the vanishing of the house tyrant as a cultural stereotype in favour of the female shrew in the eighteenth century, following the formal abolition of the husband's legal right to chastise his wife and an equalisation of liabilities and responsibilities. It also traces the beginnings of the social marginalisation and silencing of marital violence in the nineteenth century as a phenomenon associated with the lower classes and regulated by the law as a case for private action only when committed within the household circle.     

History, Memory, and the Law: The Historian as Expert Witness

There has been a widespread recovery of public memory of the events of the Second World War since the end of the 1980s, with war crimes trials, restitution actions, monuments and memorials to the victims of Nazism appearing in many countries. This has inevitably involved historians being called upon to act as expert witnesses in legal actions, yet there has been little discussion of the problems that this poses for them. The French historian Henry Rousso has argued that this confuses memory with history. In the aftermath of the Second World War, judicial investigations unearthed a mass of historical documentation. Historians used this, and further researches, from the 1960s onwards to develop their own ideas and interpretations. But since the early 1990s there has been a judicialization of history, in which historians and their work have been forced into the service of moral and legal forms of judgment which are alien to the historical enterprise and do violence to the subleties and nuances of the historian's search for truth. This reflects Rousso's perhaps rather simplistically scientistic view of the historian's enterprise; yet his arguments are powerful and should be taken seriously by any historian considering involvement in a law case; they also have a wider implication for the moralization of the history of the Second World War, which is now dominated by categories such as "perpetrator,""victim," and "bystander" that are legal rather than historical in origin. The article concludes by suggesting that while historians who testify in war crimes trials should confine themselves to elucidating the historical context, and not become involved in judging whether an individual was guilty or otherwise of a crime, it remains legitimate to offer expert opinion, as the author of the article has done, in a legal action that turns on the research and writing of history itself.     

BAKKE, WEBER, AND RACE IN EMPLOYMENT: ANALYSIS OF INFORMED OPINION

The article reports research on informed opinion as to linkage between Bakke and the discretionary use of race in private employment practice. Of particular concern is the legal parallel between the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title 6 as applied in Bakke and Title 7 as it relates to Kaiser Aluminum v. Weber and to other employment cases. The principal research entailed Q-methodology, a technique allowing respondents to produce and present a structured attitude (mind set) with regard to an issue or controversy. Focus of the study was upon 1) respondent values or norms as to race in employment; 2) opinions as to the impact of Bakke upon race in employment; and 3) perceptions of Bakke as portent of things to come. Responses were made in the Fall of 1978. Respondents were from groups indicating interest in Bakke, together with university teachers in relevant fields. Factor analysis of responses revealed three principal attitudes. One attitude (Factor I) strongly affirms race-conscious affirmative action, including quotas, sharply condemned the Supreme Court for abrogating (in Bakke) its responsibility for protecting minority rights, and saw Bakke as a portent of unwelcome things. Factor II condemns any consideration of race in programs of admission or employment, predicted some beneficial legacy of Bakke, but was most critical of its deference to racial considerations. Factor III is pragmatic and was supportive of the Supreme Court Bakke decision, from which it projected beneficial consequences. Factor III accepts the discretionary use of race while rejecting quotas. Survey research conducted by others reveals that a public majority holds opinions most congruent with Factor III. In the employment area specifically, a majority rejects quotas but endorses minority training programs. The 1979 Weber decision gives a limited sanction to voluntary quotas, but does not exceed the range of tolerance set by a public permissive in this particular policy area.     

Interpreting Racial Formation and Multiculturalism in a High School: Towards a Constructive Deployment of Two Approaches to Critical Race Theory

Abstract: This article interprets the shortcomings of a multicultural strategy aimed at undoing processes of racial formation in a diverse high school (Kaleido High School). To interpret racial formation in Kaleido High School, we looked to critical race theory, but we found two approaches: one emphasizes identity as interpellated, and the other as multiple, fluid, and mutable. Both approaches explain observations from the field. Consistent with Foucault, we consider both interpretations of race as different discourses, each intelligible in context‐specific terms. Accordingly, we interweave these two approaches and empirics to indicate circumstances whereby each approach is sensible. We find that Foucault's “governmentality” helps reconcile what may otherwise appear as competing approaches. We conclude with a discussion of how a multicultural program might be instituted towards opening up spaces for transformational processes.     

A question of blood, race, and politics

This article explores the political and intellectual context of a controversy arising from a proposal made at the 1959 meetings of the American Society of Blood Banks to divide the blood supply by race. The authors, a group of blood-bankers and surgeons in New York, outlined difficulties in finding compatible blood for transfusion during open-heart surgery, which they attributed to prior sensitization of their patient, a Caucasian, by a previous transfusion from an African American donor. Examining the statistical distribution of blood-group antigens among the various races, they concluded that risk of adverse hemolytic reactions and the cost of testing could be reduced by establishing separate donor pools. The media reported the suggestion, which, given the political climate of the day, rapidly became a public issue involving geneticists, blood-bankers, physical anthropologists, and the African American medical community. Liberals condemned it, whereas eugenically inclined segregationists used the finding to support their views concerning evolutionary distance between the races and the dangers of miscegenation. Here we examine the contribution of comparative racial serology to this affair, the arguments and background of the main players, and the relevance of the debate to discussions about the role of "race" in post-genomic medicine.     

Policy Cues and Ideology in Attitudes toward Charter Schools

Charter schools have generated support from politicians in both major American political parties while stimulating intense debate among interest groups. We investigate whether and how public attitudes reflect interest group polarization or politician consensus. Using an original survey, we find that charter school opinions diverge along ideological lines among high‐information respondents. With embedded experiments, we manipulate respondents' information using policy cues tied to opposing sides of the charter debate: We assess whether the role of private companies and nonunion teachers changes support for charter schools. We find that the public responds favorably to some informational cues; conservatives without prior information are especially persuaded by information about nonunion teachers. This explains how polarized opinion can develop even in the absence of strong partisan sorting among top political leaders and clarifies the partisan and ideological context of ongoing education policy debates.     

Medical Hermeneutics of Murder. Race,Medicine and Law in a Murder Case from Finnmark, 1911

Abstract

This article seeks to investigate the investigation of a murder case in Finnmark in 1911, where four siblings killed their young brother. In the legal investigations following the misdeed, a number of medical experts played a prominent role. Their role was to assess the mental condition of the defendants, but also to make sense of the murder. A specific interpretational mode was called for: a “medical hermeneutics” of the murder. The murder investigation becomes an occasion for discussing medical and juridical interpretations of human agency at the turn of the century, and especially of the role of the concept of “race” in these interpretations. For at least some of the physicians involved, the racial make-up of the ethnic group to which the actors belonged constituted an inevitable part of the context that made the act intelligible. Although the concept of race, and the conceptual frameworks offered by degenerationism and medical psychology to a certain degree made the act intelligible, these interpretational schemes had little to offer in terms of assessing the legal accountability of the defendants. Hence, the case illustrates the profound epistemological limits of medical interpretation in facing a legal case.     

Heroes and Invaders: Gay and Lesbian pride parades and the public/private distinction in New Zealand media accounts

Public space is constructed as heterosexual space in at least two senses. First, heterosexuality in public is regarded as unproblematic, whereas lesbian and gay identities are policed by subtle or overt means. Second, heterosexuality is not obviously marked in public. In this article these positions are used as a starting point to investigate the complexities of the relationships between heterosexuality, homosexuality and the public and private spheres. Much of the discussion takes as its basis the media coverage of New Zealand's lesbian and gay pride parades. Recent heterosexist discourse in New Zealand implies that gay men and lesbians are leaving the private sphere and are forcing a politicisation of both the public sphere and the metaphorical space of the private, heterosexual mind. A discursive inversion occurs whereby the homosexual subject becomes powerful and tyrannous, and the heterosexual is coerced and oppressed. Crucial to such discourse is a mobilisation of the conservative tendencies of liberalism, and an attendant denial of the privileged position granted to heterosexuality .     

Madrid's Retiro Park as publicly-private space and the spatial problems of spatial theory

The scholarly focus on the production of space necessitates a thorough reassessment of the static categories employed in the analysis of spatial processes. Emphasizing space as a process, this essay calls attention to the recent implication of Madrid's Retiro Park in larger processes of capital accumulation. At the same time, it highlights the insufficiency of the tempting yet problematic distinction between public and private space that obtains in easy solutions to the struggles over city-space. As many critics have pointed out, there is design flaw in the idea of public space—it can never explain how a given space, such as a park, comes to be free of the ‘private’ (personal and structural) interests operating throughout its societal context. The story of the Retiro ultimately foregrounds the pivotal role of city-space in the drive for capitalist intercity-competition and suggests that the latter process is insufficiently confronted by idealized notions of the role truly ‘public’ spaces might play in radical democracy and citizenship.