The United States

Abstract

This chapter examines how African Americans residing in New York experience specific incidents of stigmatization and discrimination. It first provides an overview of the background conditions and the place of African Americans in U.S. society in general and in the New York metropolitan area in particular, citing the latter's history of racial tension and deindustrialization. It then presents a complex portrait of African American ethnoracial groupness, with a focus on self-identification and group boundaries, before analyzing how African Americans responded when asked a series of questions about their experiences of stigmatization and discrimination, from what they call assault on worth to racism (blatant or subtle), poor service, and double standards. The chapter also considers how the respondents understand discrimination and describes variations in their experiences by class, age, and gender. Finally, it explores the group's responses (ideal and actual) to stigmatization and discrimination.

Students’ Perceptions of Their Rights in School: A Systematic Review of the International Literature

“…Some aspects of these findings conflict with studies showing positive associations between the fulfillment of rights and the development of students’ rights consciousness (Hart et al, 2001; Khoury-Kassabri & Ben-Arieh, 2009). As discrimination in the United States may relate to dominant cultural repertoires (Lamont et al, 2016), it can be conjectured that students acquire their rights consciousness regarding school-based discrimination from nonschool domains, such as family and the media, which enables them to recognize and criticize unfair school discipline. It may also be that when students believe that they receive worse treatment than their peers, their anger and frustration drive them to seek out flaws in the system, manifested in the naming of rights (see Abrams, 2011).…”

“…National cultural repertoires may also explain the discrepancy between studies reporting students’ dissatisfaction regarding insufficient participation rights in school (Allan & Ianson, 2004; Geldenhuys & Doubell, 2011; McCluskey et al, 2013; Osler, 2000) and Quennerstedt’s (2016) findings regarding the Swedish students’ appreciation of these rights in school. Additionally, national cultural repertoires may explain why U.S. students who experienced discrimination did not normalize the discriminatory practices but instead named them as rights infringements (Preiss et al, 2016; compare Lamont et al, 2016).…”

“…The latter suggestion explains the difference between Veiga et al’s study and those conducted in the context of race in the United States (Byrd & Andrews, 2016; Morrill et al, 2010). As noted, cultural repertoires concerning racial discrimination among African Americans in the United States may facilitate their naming of equality-focused rights (Lamont et al, 2016; Morrill et al, 2010). Immigrant students in Portugal and other countries may experience no less discrimination in school, but they have not been socialized with the same cultural repertoires that promote naming as African American students in the United States.…”

“…They termed this phenomenon the “vigilance theory,” which holds that people of color are more likely than Whites to detect discrimination because they are on alert (or “vigilant”) about recognizing it. Lamont et al (2016), who examined how minority group members in the United States, Brazil, and Israel perceive discrimination, found that African Americans reported more discrimination experiences, described more types of occurrences, and expressed more confidence in defining these instances as racially based. They concluded that cultural repertoires about American society’s racist character and the legal gains of the civil rights movement (among others) facilitated the inclination of U.S. interviewees to define incidents as race related.…”

The Culture of White Space: On The Racialized Production of Meaning

“…Sometimes, these strategies are overt, like interpersonal violence, active policing, discrimination, gatekeeping, harassment, and displacement. Other times, they are more covert, like surveillance, stigmatization, assaults on worth/dignity (Lamont et al, 2016), invisibilization, and interpersonal ostracization.…”