Strategic solidarity: Japanese imaginings of Blacks and race in popular media

By the twentieth century, Black intellectuals envisioned Japan as a beacon of their own possibilities. Japanese perceptions of this bond are typically implicitly assumed in most research on the subject. In this essay we argue that Japan saw Black America as a symbol of strategic not substantive solidarity. With its entrance onto the international scene in the nineteenth century, Japan encountered an international racial hierarchy, and struggled in formulating an emergent self-identity that would allow it to rationalize its rightful place alongside White Western powers. On the eve of the Second World War, Japan's national/racial identity is a complex set of influences: a merging of its own indigenous perceptions of race, an importation of outside racial ideology, and contextual needs linked to still trying to insert itself as an equal to Western powers.     

Differential item functioning of the Acculturation,Habits, and Interests Multicultural Scale for Adolescents (AHIMSA) by race/ethnicity

BackgroundAcculturation is a complex multidimensional construct that plays an important role in various outcomes across many domains (e.g., psychological, behavioral, social, and developmental). While there are many acculturation measures for specific racial/ethnic groups, few multigroup measures exists. Even fewer have been psychometrically evaluated for differential item functioning (DIF; e.g., measurement invariance). This is a critical step in determining whether item properties are equivalent across groups and thus, whether scores obtained from different groups are in fact comparable.MethodsThe Acculturation, Habits, and Interests, Multicultural Scale for Adolescents (AHIMSA) was completed by first and second generation participants identifying as White, Hispanic, or Asian (n = 1399). The scale can be used to compute scores on four acculturation orientation subscales: Assimilated, Separated, Integrated, and Marginalized. Racial/ethnic DIF was evaluated for the Assimilation, Integration, and Separation subscales.ResultsAnalyses revealed racial/ethnic DIF was present for two items on the Separation scale based on McFadden’s pseudo R². No DIF was identified for the Assimilation and Integration scales. Supplemental analyses revealed no evidence of longitudinal DIF or by generation status and some DIF by sex for Assimilation and Integration. Based on evaluation of test characteristic curves and DIF plots, it was determined that DIF was trivial and could likely be ignored.ConclusionsPsychometric properties were generally equivalent across the three racial/ethnic groups for each of the subscales evaluated. This indicates that scores obtained from each subscale could be compared across racial/ethnic groups. By establishing cross-group usability of the scale, racial/ethnic differences in acculturation orientation can be examined, and, more importantly, used in the context of research on related mental, physical, and behavioral health outcomes.     

Discourses about race in the United States: A thematic analysis of short essays

Conversations around race have come to the forefront of public discourses in the United States with incidents of police brutality leading to movements such as Black Lives Matter and its opposition, All Lives Matter. Although there is substantial psychological literature focusing on racial attitudes and intergroup relations, much of this research is experimental, failing to capture diverse and evolving viewpoints of people in the United States. In the present study, our aim was to understand folk definitions and diverse perspectives about the role of race in the United States in participants’ own words. We thematically analyzed submissions to The Race Card Project (n = 913), a publicly available platform, and responses from a sample of college students describing perspectives on race (n = 1092). A total of 27 identified themes were organized in four domains: opinions about race, race-based interactions, race and identity, and emotions. Opinions about race ranged from color-blind ideology to racial equality, race as divisive or providing community, and excessive focus on race. References were made to historic and current race relations, assumptions based on skin color, prejudice and discrimination, White privilege, and “reverse racism.” These findings contribute to evolving scholarly understanding of race in the United States, with implications for informing initiatives to promote race relations and reduce experiences of discrimination for individuals of color.     

Empathy towards people of different race and ethnicity: Further empirical evidence for the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy

The present study examined the generalizability of the factor pattern, structural parameters, and latent structure of a multidimensional hierarchical model of ethnocultural empathy in males and females. The Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) (Wang et al., 2003) was administered to a sample of 610 Italian undergraduates to examine the generalizability and reliability of its factor structure across gender, the psychometric properties and the validity of the scale. Two models were tested through multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA): a confirmatory factor-analytic model that hypothesized a multidimensional model of ethnocultural empathy; and a structural equation model that proposed a multidimensional, hierarchical structure with global ethnocultural empathy as a superordinate construct that explained the covariances among the subdomains of the SEE. Both models satisfied multiple criteria for goodness-of-fit with the data. Full metric invariance of factor loadings and factor covariances, and partial invariance of error variances across gender for the four-factors model were supported. Scale reliability was also satisfactory, showing good internal consistency. As regard scale validity, evidence was found for a positive moderate association with a measure of general empathy and a negative high association with a measure of prejudice. Implications are discussed.     

Prurient Interests: Sexuality,Ideology, and Popular Communication

The popular communication media provide a site where the contradictions between conservative and progressive cultural ideologies about sexuality (and concomitantly about power, gender, and social control) are enacted within an endless series of narratives. These narratives fulfill the economic requirements of the culture industries by an increasing focus on the sexual, including sexualities outside the mainstream. This seemingly progressive move is undermined by a variety of strategies, either within narrative outcomes or at the level of production. Such strategies offer a conservative reading that highlights the negative consequences of sexual insubordination. In the meantime, the popular press provides a platform for conservative ideologues who write about sexuality in the media without the benefit of serious research or expertise. They influence public policy while we in the academy are reluctant to seek a popular venue to discuss our work.     

Intercultural communication competence: Theory,measurement, and application

This brief article focuses on issues or concerns about the current state of intercultural communication competence (ICC) research. Theoretical issues include problems with ICC terminology and with conceptualizations of ICC. Measurement issues include problems with the use of self-reports to assess the “appropriateness” dimension of ICC and with the domain of skills and traits that make one more likely to be perceived as competent. Application issues center on the desirability for increased attention to practical uses of researched-based theory. We suggest that accounts of positive exemplars – those who are widely perceived to be competent in specific intercultural encounters and relationships – would be a welcome and useful addition to the ICC literature.     

Muslims and others: anecdotes,fragments, and uncertainties of evidence

Abstract

Against the intensified communalization of civil society and the emergence of new modes of racism in contemporary India, this essay juxtaposes different histories of the Other through critical insights into the construction and demonization of the Indian Muslim. Working through anecdotes and fragments, bits and pieces of history, this disjunctive discourse on the Other attempts to trouble liberal assumptions of cultural identity by calling attention to the uncertainties of evidence by which ethnic identities are politicized in diverse ways. While critiquing the exclusionary mode of 'othering', the essay also calls attention to more internalized modes of disidentification and the double-edged benefits of political identity for the underprivileged and dispossessed, whose own assertions of the self invariably complicate official identitarian constructions. The enigmas of the self are perhaps most vivid in the brutal evidence of genocide, where the apparent 'dead certainty' of killing the Other has been interpreted as a means of making 'persons out of bodies' (Arjun Appadurai). Countering this position, the essay argues that ethnic violence is facilitated by the 'dead certainty' of (in)justice, reinforced by the 'banality of violence' legitimized through state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.