The Politics of Racist Dehumanization in the United States

Abstract

The concept of racist dehumanization is essential for political scientists who seek to understand the nature, scope, and consequences of white racial prejudice in the United States today. Racist dehumanization consists of a variety of processes that construct, refashion, and maintain race by coding some people as white and therefore fully human and others as other than white and therefore less than fully human. In this review, we focus on the racist dehumanization of Indigenous people and Black people, arguing that processes of dehumanization have long been implicated in both the practice of race-making and concurrent efforts to exploit and dominate racialized groups. We posit that contemporary white racial prejudice can be understood, in part, as the residue of these processes, and we conclude by describing how accounting for racist dehumanization can transform the study of white racial prejudice.

Mental health disparities of sexual minority refugees and asylum seekers: Provider perspectives on trauma exposure, symptom presentation, and treatment approach.

“…Unfortunately, this milieu has not changed dramatically. Racist and anti-immigrant policies continue to dehumanize Black, Indigenous, people of color and immigrants in the U.S. (Jardina & Piston, 2023). Recent legal U.S. rulings have also carried anti-LGBTQI + sentiments (e.g., 303 Creative vs. Elenis, GLAD, 2023; Arkansas Medical Ethics & Diversity Act [Cook, 2021]) which could perpetuate both fear of and actual SM-based persecution, thus increasing the chronicity of minority stress for SM RAS in the U.S. Future research may wish to determine how the sociopolitical context of the U.S. is impacting SM RAS mental health.…”

“…Unfortunately, this milieu has not changed dramatically. Racist and anti-immigrant policies continue to dehumanize Black, Indigenous, people of color and immigrants in the U.S. (Jardina & Piston, 2023) Development, 2023). Further, the U.S. public's sentiments toward RAS have continued to improve over time, with many individuals reporting more support toward refugees who are already on U.S. soil (Sana, 2021).…”

“…Unfortunately, this milieu has not changed dramatically. Racist and anti-immigrant policies continue to dehumanize Black, Indigenous, people of color and immigrants in the U.S (Jardina & Piston, 2023)…”

Unmasking the role of dehumanization in obstetric violence.

“…In the United States, for instance, deep-seated racism is interwoven with the proclivity for dehumanizing specific groups (Jardina & Piston, 2023). This idea is supported by studies documenting how White Americans animalistically dehumanize African Americans (Goff et al, 2008, 2014) and that Black women report higher levels of experienced objectification than other ethnic groups (e.g., Watson et al, 2015).…”