The Complexities of Race

Identity, Power, and Justice in an Evolving America

Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479801398
• Print ISBN:
  9781479801411
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations

Illuminates how recent shifts in demographics, policy, culture and thinking have changed how race is understood today

The Complexities of Race illustrates how several recent dynamics compel us to reconsider race, racial identity, and racial inequality. It argues that race and racism provide key but complex lenses through which critical events and issues of any moment can be more fully understood. The emergence of intersectionality, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, changing ethnic and racial demographics in the United States, and other forces challenge prevailing values and narratives related to race.

The volume provides new and detailed snapshots of the diverse and complicated ways that race, racism, racial identity, and racial justice are represented, experienced, and addressed in America, offering new ways of understanding the complex dynamics of power and systems of oppression. Each chapter uses a current, real-world example to demonstrate how race works in tandem with other locations of identity, with the aim of showing that a single social identity is rarely at play in issues of social inequality. The contributors include scholars who have studied race, identity, racism, and social justice for decades, as well as emerging researchers and practitioners at the forefront of examining evolving topics related to race, culture, and experiences of naming and belonging.

This exploration of pressing, current, and emerging issues offers the depth, information, and clarity needed to understand many of the questions left unanswered and issues avoided in current discussions of race, identity, and racism, whether those discussions occur in the classroom, in the boardroom, at the dining room table, or in the streets of America. The Complexities of Race provides readers with inspiration, information, and paths for moving the understanding of race, identity, and social justice forward.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Day George Floyd Died: Change That Goes beyond Police Reform
• 2. Who Gets to Choose? Racial Identity and the Politics of Choice
• 3. Naming the Problem: Epistemic Violence, Cognitive Maps, Relationships of Power, and Resistance in National Narratives about Belonging
• 4. Queer and Trans* People of Color Worldmaking as Subject Formation and Identity Development
• 5. Race and Power in Transracial and Transnational Adoption: Historical Legacies, Current Issues, and Future Challenges
• 6. How Did Black Folks Become Indians? What Lived Experiences Say about Belonging, Culture, and Racial Mixture in Native America
• 7. Racializing Faith: The Intersections of Racism and (White) Christian Hegemony
• 8. The Dangers of Being Too Certain: How White Desires for Racial Innocence Hinder Meaningful Racial Justice Work
• 9. Islam and Hip Hop in Black America: Oral Tradition as Critical Liberatory Praxis
• 10. Understanding and Responding to Resistance When Intersectionality Is Utilized to Address Race, Racism, and Racial Justice Work
• 11. Embracing the Complexities of Race, Racism, and Social Justice in Changing Times
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• Index