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This study examines the character of racism as a social relation. As such, racism is continuously produced and modified, not only culturally and ideologically but also in social interaction. Understanding racism and its repercussions demands close investigation of all the processes involved. An instructive example is an incident that unfolded in the early 1910s in Broome, Western Australia. The exemption from immigration restriction of a Japanese doctor raised tempers at a time when the nationwide aspiration for a racially homogeneous society determined political and social attitudes, and 'whiteness' was a crucial element of Australianness. The possibility of admitting a Japanese professional to a town that was already suspected of race chaos fuelled debates about the question of 'coloured labour' and the 'yellow peril', while challenging the unambiguousness of class and race boundaries. The influence and wealth of some Japanese, the indispensable position of their compatriots in the pearling industry, and the skills and reputation of their doctor, supplemented with the distinct racial pride of the whole Japanese community, proved to massively impede and disrupt the unrestricted implementation of white supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates that the science fiction’s visions of the future are not exempt from problems of rasism even when openly opposed it. Film and TV Star Trek production is commonly regarded as a significant example of courageous and effective intervention of mass culture on the widespread racial prejudices legitimized by the public policy. Subsequent interpretations, however, in its ‘emancipatory text’ finds smuggled recurrences of the same racial discourse against which it acted, whether it concerns other ‘races’ on Earth or space aliens. A fair interpretation would have to conclude that the white male norm requires effort of its ‘deconstruction’ that would be more extensive then involvement in the program the non-white characters - if we do not want to extend his exclusive and discriminatory rule, in mitigated or disguised form, to the galaxy.

This article explores ‘whiteness’, ‘illegitimacy’ and migration in Jean Rhys's novelWide Sargasso Seaand Honor Ford-Smith's short story ‘Grandma's Estate’. Each writer responds to Charlotte Bronte's construction of the ‘mad Creole woman’ in order to writer her own, more complex account of race and class in the Caribbean. The article argues that Rhys and Ford-Smith represent ‘outside’ children in their respective texts as a way of showing how ‘whiteness’ underpinned colour/class hierarchies in the colonial Caribbean. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

South Africans of Portuguese descent probably constitute ten to fifteen per cent of the white South African population. Yet it is a remarkably under-researched population. This article attempts to lay out a research agenda to address this large historiographical gap. It begins with an overview of the sparse literature on Portuguese immigrants and then provides a basic narrative of three discernible waves of migration from the late nineteenth century until the late 1970s. The first and longest wave involved impoverished citizens of the island of Madeira. The second involved more skilled mainlanders from about 1940-1980, most coming in the 1960s and 1970s. The final wave involved Mozambican and Angolan ex-colonial refugees. The paper suggest several areas of possible historical research on Portuguese-South Africans: the degree of their coherence as a 'community'; their generational continuity and discontinuity; and in general, the nature of transnational hybridised identity in its racial, religious and political dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers some of the ways in which black gay men are marginalised within the queer community and have limited 'visibility' in mainstream queer visual culture. The formation of a minority within a minority (or the 'other' Other) is ultimately what the article sets out to expose. Thus, we argue that images of black gay men are far less ubiquitous than, for example, those of white, male and middle-class gay men. In order to illustrate this, a purposive sample from the South African gay men's lifestyle magazine Gay Pages is considered and critiqued. We argue that the visual mode of Gay Pages gives the impression of promoting a hegemonic gay male identity. This identity appears to be 'natural', but is in fact one-sided and stereotypical, as are most cultural constructions and representations. The narrow and limited representation of gay men endorses an exclusive, homogenous and inaccurate portrait of the queer constituency (in the minds of heterosexual and gay South Africans alike) and suggests the question that leads this investigation: If 'belonging' is articulated through the consumption of queer culture, what then of those queers who do not fit the 'mould' standardised by mainstream gay print media? This exploration of queer visual media deals not only with that which is frequently represented (white homomasculinity), but also, more significantly, with that which is not (black homomasculinity). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant discourses in the United States paint the acts of prisoner 'abuse' committed by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib in 2003 as either the obscene but exceptional example of some low-ranking soldiers gone mad, or as the direct result of the suspension of the rule of law in the global 'war on terror'. Alternatively, feminist theorist Barbara Ehrenreich suggests that the pictures depicting female soldiers torturing prisoners are both horrifying and a sign of 'gender equality'. This article departs from all three of these positions. I argue that the micro-level violences shown in the Abu Ghraib pictures are neither just aberrations nor a sign of gender equality. Rather they follow a pre-constructed heterosexed, racialized and gendered script that is firmly grounded in the colonial desires and practices of the larger social order and that underpins the hegemonic 'save civilization itself'-fantasy of the 'war on terror'. I explore how the participation of some of the US Empire's internal Others, namely White western women, may disrupt some of the social processes of normalization underpinning this colonial fantasy, but nevertheless serves to re/produce the identity and hegemony of the US Empire and its heterosexed, racialized and classed World (Dis)Order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the `forced inclusion' of the Irish within a `myth of homogeneity' which developed in Britain from the 1950s onwards. in particular, it explains the complex reasons for exclusion of the Irish from the immigration controls introduced in the 1962 Commonwealth immigrants Act. Further, the article challenges the notion that this exclusion of the Irish from the 1962 legislation was primarily due to their `whiteness'. It explores the significance of Northern Ireland's location in the United Kingdom for British policies in relation to citizens of the Irish Republic. The article ends by arguing that `forced inclusion' within a national collectivity is no necessary protection against racialization, problematization and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a research that examines the extent race creates the boundaries of American national identity. An objective of this research was to identify commonalities that bind the nation together, and the ways in which they are implicated in race. Americans have varying interpretations on what binds them into a national community. Although respondents' meanings and attachments to the cultural stuff are sometimes contradictory and divergent, they still identify themselves as American. This research is focused on how whiteness is negotiated by different racial and ethnic groups. To explore this, fieldwork was conducted in the U.S. between July 2000 to August 2001. It was centered in a particular area along the California central coast. The research was designed to examine the implication of whiteness in taken-for-granted notions of American identity. In order to acquire data on how a sense of American-ness and racism may intertwine, the author decided it was necessary to be less than completely open about my intentions.