The Unbearable Whiteness of the Polish Plumber and the Hungarian Peacock Dance around “Race”

Böröcz, József; Sarkar, Mahua

doi:10.1017/slr.2017.79

Cited by 65 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This requires critique of race as a product of modernity/coloniality (Mignolo 2000) to be placed in dialogue with discussion on Eastern Europe's position in modernity itself. Thus, this article contributes to analysis of race in the context of postcolonial and postsocialist Europe (Böröcz 2017;Ivasiuc 2017;Baker 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Swedish surnames, British accents: passing among post-Soviet migrants in Helsinki

Krivonos

2020

Ethnic and Racial Studies

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In analysing efforts to pass as white, this article examines the ways racialized difference materializes on the bodies construed as "Eastern European". Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Russian-speaking migrants in Helsinki, it examines their attempts to inhabit whiteness through tactics of passing, such as changing their surnames, working on their accents, and adjusting how they dress. I argue that these efforts to pass as not "Russian" should be understood through the postcolonial formation of Europeanness, with its internal racialized division between (proper) Western Europeanness and (incomplete) Eastern Europeanness. The labour of approximating whiteness through passing draws attention to sites of racialized differentiation such as accent, audibility, language, surnames, and clothing. These efforts of attempting to pass for someone Russian speakers are not recognized as point to the structural racist hierarchies that refuse to attach value to their bodies.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Swedish surnames, British accents: passing among post-Soviet migrants in Helsinki

Krivonos

2020

Ethnic and Racial Studies

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“…Of course Poles can become a problem in their difference, in their status as an Other elsewhere in Europe (e.g. Moriarty et al 2013;Böröcz, Sarkar 2017) but they can also assimilate far more readily than fellow immigrants from another location on the global color line. That, however, might itself be contingent, as Sosnowska's (2016) comparison of Poles with other immigrant laborers in New York suggests.…”

Section: Exemplars Of the People/nation/blacknessmentioning

confidence: 99%

National Cultures and Racial Formations: Articulating the Knowledge Cultures of Kłoskowska And Du Bois

Kennedy

2019

kis

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One of the most powerful ways in which we can globalize knowledge, and sociology, is to figure ways in which leading intellectual figures within insufficiently articulated knowledge cultures might inform readings of the other’s work. With the recent revivals of Antonina Kłoskowska and W.E.B. Du Bois in Polish and US sociology respectively, it is a propitious time to figure the ways in which their scholarship aligns, contrasts, and can mutually transform. In particular, the two are both concerned for how marginalized communities with their associated subjectivities engage dominant cultures, but Kłoskowska works within a national/regional frame and Du Bois a global and racial one. Too, Du Bois theorizes from within that marginalized community, with political pointedness, not from outside it or with any attempt to refrain from value judgements. Finally, while Du Bois blends Marxist accounts with a culturally rich account of Blackness and its others, Kłoskowska offers a more semiotic and intersubjective hermeneutic view of how various fusions of horizons might also create a more open world. Those who extend Kłoskowska’s tradition exemplify that very potential while Du Bois, in his very conditions of existence, made racism’s hardest shell manifest. Figuring exemplars of national and racial leadership might, however, invite powerful figurations of the future, but only when their cultural and political constitutions are made explicit.

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“…As such, the word "white" in this paper refers to someone of European descendant, and excludes Syrian/Lebanese, Central and South Americans who can sometimes pass as white, and expatriates who stay in the Caribbean for the sojourn. [4] , Europe [5] , African countries that are former colonies of Europe [6] , and east Asia [7], especially Japan [8] , where exists a massive skin-whitening market for women who are obsessed to become like Caucasians. In comparing the existing studies of whiteness around the world, it is significant that there is a paucity of such studies on whiteness in the Caribbean.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning Whiteness: “Who is white?”

Ito

2019

Int J Hum Cult Stud.

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This paper seeks to produce knowledge of identity as European-descended white in the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Trinidad, where the white populations account for 2.7% and 0.7% respectively, of the total population. Face-to-face individual interviews were conducted with 29 participants who are subjectively and objectively white, in August 2016 and February 2017 in order to obtain primary data, as a means of creating oral history. Many of the whites in Barbados recognise their interracial family background, and possess no reluctance for having interracial marriage and interracial children. They have very weak attachment to white hegemony. On contrary, white Trinidadians insist on their racial purity as white and show their disagreement towards interracial marriage and interracial children. The younger generations in both islands say white supremacy does not work anymore, yet admit they take advantage of whiteness in everyday life. The elder generation in Barbados say being white is somewhat disadvantageous, but their Trinidadian counterparts are very proud of being white which is superior form of racial identity. The paper revealed the sense of colonial superiority is rooted in the minds of whites in Barbados and Trinidad, yet the younger generations in both islands tend to deny the existence of white privilege and racism in order to assimilate into the majority of the society, which is non-white.

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The Unbearable Whiteness of the Polish Plumber and the Hungarian Peacock Dance around “Race”

Cited by 65 publications

References 8 publications

Swedish surnames, British accents: passing among post-Soviet migrants in Helsinki

Swedish surnames, British accents: passing among post-Soviet migrants in Helsinki

National Cultures and Racial Formations: Articulating the Knowledge Cultures of Kłoskowska And Du Bois

Questioning Whiteness: “Who is white?”

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