“This is for the Brown Kids!”

Abstract

Recent research shows that non-Muslims “read” Muslim and non-Muslim Others through an Islamophobic lens, whether the victims of Islamophobia are practitioners of Islam or not. Yet how Muslims and non-Muslims band together against anti-Muslim racism in nonreligious ways and venues is less understood. The author draws on a wide range of qualitative data to show how “Taqwacore” punks ( taqwa means “God consciousness” in Arabic and core comes from hardcore punk) create a racial identity as “brown kids” that is panethnic and opposed to the major racial frames used to vilify Muslims and brown-bodied Others. Taqwacore punks do this by (1) using punk rock attitudes to call out whiteness and keep it out of their punk and (2) redefining punk in favor of “brown kids.” These findings expand a new body of scholarship that shows how marginalized youth are using popular culture to create new racial identities against whiteness.

Intercultural Citizenship in the Making: Public Space and Belonging in Discriminatory Environments

“…Crul et al, 2012;Safi, 2010;Lentin, 2011Lentin, , 2014Seng, 2012;Bobowik et al, 2014;ENAR report, 2014). There are also several works that look into the ways in which groups who often perceive exclusion and non-acceptance from the majority society construct alternative forms of belonging; for instance, in countercultures and movements (McDowell, 2016;Pilati, 2016), or in the construction of a collective identity that is closely linked to the physical space, generally the city or the neighbourhood where everyday life is played out (Oosterlynck et al, 2017;Hellgren, 2019). This identity-construction is often problematic.…”

“…These multi-sited data lend support to the argument that people who are visibly different from the white, western norm feel more at ease in public spaces with high degrees of ethnic mixing. Several scholars have engaged with identity-formation in multiethnic or "super-diverse" neighbourhoods, where many different nationalities, colours, cultures and religions meet, and young people grow up with hybrid identities and form solidarity and a sense of belonging across ethnic boundaries (e.g., Barwick & Beaman, 2019;McDowell, 2016;Hellgren, 2008;Stevenson, 2003). If we dare to be optimistic, perhaps this ongoing process of emerging identities could be described in terms of "interculturalism from below," grounded in attitudes and practices at the micro level.…”

“…Ethnically mixed or super-diverse neighbourhoods generally count on low levels of native inhabitants, and those who do live in such areas and share public spaces with newcomers and racialized minorities are often natives in vulnerable positions and with low socio-economic status, who share many of the disadvantages that affect racialized people to a high extent. As discussed above, thus, the type of intercultural identity-formation that takes shape in these areas is often what we denominated as underdog belonging, based on a shared situation of disadvantage, and sometimes, distancing from the mainstream (McDowell, 2016;Pilati, 2016;Hellgren, 2019). In that sense, such identities would rather be in opposition with the construction of an intercultural citizenship, based on egalitarian relations between minorities and natives.…”

Racialization and Aporophobia: Intersecting Discriminations in the Experiences of Non-Western Migrants and Spanish Roma

“…In contemporary scholarship on racism and discrimination, the intersectional approach requested by Crenshaw (1991) is increasingly common (e.g., Seng 2012;Viruell-Fuentes et al 2012), though there are different and sometimes contradictory currents in the migration and diversity literature. At present, there is an emerging focus on race and racialization, which has hitherto largely been absent from the European discourses (Small 1994;Dalal 2002;Leach 2002;Grosfoguel 2004;Silverstein 2005;Lentin 2008Lentin , 2011Lentin , 2015Vincze 2014;McDowell 2016;Gans 2017;De Genova 2018;Gonzalez-Sobrino and Goss 2019;Johansson 2020). This "racial turn" has recently been fueled by the global Black Lives Matter movement.…”