The Erotic Life of Racism

“There Is Queer Inequity, but I Pick to Be Happy”

“…First, race is articulated, contested, and essentially made in everyday situations, including the mundane realities that play out at work (Embrick and Henricks, 2015;Holland 2012;Lewis 2003). Second, emotions play a role in the material, structural implications of racism (Bonilla-Silva 2019); and emotions and their public and private management are shaped by political values external to the individual (Holland 2012). Controlling the emotions of social actors such that people of color are perceived to be irrational, angry, or biased, while Whites' emotions are seen as legitimate and rational (Muñoz 2006), reproduces the racial order.…”

Why Is the Time Always Right for White and Wrong For Us? How Racialized Youth Make Sense of Whiteness and Temporal Inequality

“…Like Michelle Wright's (2015) proposal for studying blackness, we must also ask "when" and "where" whiteness is. In answering the "when" part of this question, critical whiteness scholars have established that whiteness is associated with that which is future oriented and modern (Ahmed 2007;Goldberg 1993;Holland 2012;Mawani 2014;Mills 1997;Perry 2001). The latter part of the question (the "where" of whiteness) is more obvious given the white supremacist context in which ontologies form.…”

“…Hence, when he works 100 percent harder, he may be working at least twice as hard as his white counterparts to achieve similar goals. In claiming that white youth are "always ahead," Rahim is describing how race is temporalized or positioned within time (Fabian 1983;Freeman 2005;Holland 2012). In this case, he positions white youth ahead of him and other black youth in time.…”

“…Associated with that which is "future oriented" (Ahmed 2007;Goldberg 1993;Holland 2012;Mawani 2014;Mills 1997;Perry 2001), whiteness sets the pace in the proverbial "race against time." With most racialized youth referencing disparate life chances and temporal inequalities between them and their white counterparts, race itself figured prominently into the race against time.…”

‘Grandpa Lives in Paradise Now’: Biological Precarity and the Global Economy of Debility

“…Ahmed (2006) theorises orientation as a directional motivation in facing the world; 'The 'direction' of the social wish is for access', a direction that 'makes others accessible' (p. 118). Holland (2012) argues that the 'psychic life of racism' is propelled by its own eroticism and desire, longing and erotic orientations towards other subjects. Feminist discussions of the libidinous seductions embedded in ideological structures of racism help us to understand the ways in which images of the global South care centres that circulate in Northern media are sexualised and racialised not only through objectifications of the feminised body but through the overarching structures of eroticism attached to racialised domination.…”