James M. Thomas

The racial formation of medieval Jews: a challenge to the field

Abstract Social science discourse on race and racism has limited itself through processes of periodization and temporal constructions of racial differences, and recent scholars continue to posit race and racism as effects of modernity rather than investigating its development prior to modernity. This article looks to present a challenge to contemporary understandings of the phenomena of race and racism through a historical investigation of Jews relationship to medieval Christendom. Through the framework of racial formation (Omi and Winant [1986] 1994) I look to show how race as a marker of both corporeal difference and socio-political consequence was formulated over time through a rearticulation of Church doctrine which first positioned the inferiority of the Jew within their religious practices, to one which located their inferiority as inherently part of their soul and manifest upon their bodies – from fixable through conversion to incurable and diseased.

Oh, you're racist? I've got a cure for that!

It has recently been discovered that the beta blocker drug, propranolol, can potentially reduce implicit racial bias among its users. By acting upon the affective conditions associated with implicit racial bias functioning at the non-conscious and pre-conscious levels, researchers have expressed excitement about the potential of propranolol and similar drugs to decrease implicit racial attitudes, and, thus, potentially decrease racism. This study and others like it not only provide indications of an affective component to modern-day racism, but, more importantly, an epistemological shift in the meaning of racism within academia from a social and cultural problem to a medical problem. In this article, we examine this shift in academic discourse towards a pathologization of racism and the implications of this on the sociological study of race and racism.

Affect and the sociology of race: A program for critical inquiry

Theorizing the centrality of race remains a key issue within the social sciences. However, an examination of four programs that dominate critical inquiry, particularly in the US context – Racial Formation Theory; Systemic Racism; Color-Blind Racism; and Critical Race Theory – reveal two key problems: a reductivist account of the role of culture in the production of race and racism and the essentializing of the political identity of racial Others. This article, then, considers a different paradigm for the study of race – an affective program. Two components of an affective program identified in this article are: (a) a more dynamic account of culture, opening up the realm of the discursive to more than just signification and representation, but also expression; and (b) locating the possibilities of racial politics as matters of racialized and anti-racist practices rather than matters of racial identity.

The symbolic lynching of James Meredith: a visual analysis and collective counter narrative to racial domination

The hanging of a noose on the University of Mississippi’s statue of civil rights pioneer James Meredith in February 2014 was framed by university administrators as the act of a few deviant white students, but our analysis suggests otherwise. A historical review shows the university’s long-standing resistance to meaningful change and a continuing lack of transparency following racist incidents. Visual analysis shows that the university remains saturated with monuments, place names, and other symbols of racial dominance. Narratives of marginalized people on campus, including some of the authors, reveal the corrosive effects of normalized white supremacy. The authors’ analysis suggests that, instead of an aberration, the noosing aligned the statue with the prevailing symbolic environment. This study builds bridges between sociological analysis and critical race theory and demonstrates the importance of group processes in understanding and responding to racist incidents on campuses.

Marx, Hegel and Dialectical Method

I. Lessac: voice theonst m d teacher; ~exandet : movement me~tist and teacher; Grotowski: actingdirecting theorist and te&w Ar(bud: theatre meorist who d e v w notion of Theatre of Cnrenu; Eric Bentley: theatre critic. author. lectufer: Wac& Mountain College: locatim of early theatre experimentalare; Rdculous Theatre: New Yorkbsed. hghly skiled. extremdy bizsne theatre troupe. 2. ReheaMlsandp~ormancesthe~areknetwithworkinpcontradictims. Unlike painting. sculpture. and even aspecls of music. theme rw i res its workers to create in an intenseby socialized atmosphere. Actors must interact with each other as a prerequisite to discovery of character rdationshps. Directors must be able to guide m d inspire the ensemble work. Designers musl anend to the needs ofthe productionas wcrllastoheirowncreativeviSion.Theactualperformsnceisan exlension of this complex and ohen highly volatile process. Not only must ail productionpersornelworktogelher. buttheymustmakemeworkvilalandheshfa each new audience. Yet the egotistical Hame of theatre draws many precious and selfenzentered persons who labor to make theatre serve themselves. As workers acting oul ruling class ideobgy in theatre form, Lhey seek the few super-individuakstar positions which capttakst culture h M s to be the supreme humsn achievement This abundance of megalomania. even among skilled workers, leads to panv mrrpeliiveness during work sessions and, when combined wih the fierce compliiieness lor pbs. ohen makes for unbearable interpersonal relationships in a business that is fundamentally grounded in those relationships. I would be wrong to level such accusations at (111 theatre workers. Numenxrs people do astonishingly fine and selfless work in boch established and n m astatdished theatre. It is. in fact. as much for these dedicated people q f o r new audiences that we need revolutionary change in the theatre. 3. The Provisional Theatre is a Los Angeles-based peoples theatre troupe which has developed over the last ten years into a powerful faca for akmWive views of -can pohtics and history. Their most recent produdion. Voi# ol the People. Parts I and /I. has toured across the munlry dramatiziig the Life not of rufingdass fgures. but of the people and h d r struggles. m e Free Southem Theatre is a theatre which gtew out of the mil Rights movement in Mi9da?@~i in 1963. It is an all-black company which seeks out Ma& audiences in an ongang effort to lows on the needs of a stntggfing peopce. M n g to John ONeal. a a-fouder d the company. We collective mandate d the Ma& mmuni ty stands ahve any individual interest (New Yo& Tlmer, February 22. 1975). The Teatro Campesino is a Chicano theatre trwpe which formed alongside the United Farm Workers. Their IONS is the struggle of Chicano people in the U.S. generally and in field wotk particularly. In Portland. the Family Circus has emerged as a cntic of social opprsssionusing cwnedyand melodramaascock foreducating audiences. Women inthetrwpealsop~ormstrwlgworksdeahngwithwomenstiberationaspartof the companys repertoire. tittle Rags K one of the mst internatiinaily political of contemporary peoples theatres with their focus on p o M i i n y committed audiences. workers. and cdlege campuses. Recent aeations include Tanie (about Tamara Bunke. who fought with the Cubn revolulion and with Che Guevara in Bohia). Fanshen (a theatricalization of the novel about Chinas revolution by Wtlfiam Hinton). and The Furies ol Mother JMes and Amendle (meaning power. aban the slluggle in South Africa). their most recent work5. The San Franciscu M i Troupe is probably the best known of radical peoples theatre troupes. With its beginnings in the late 50s. this trwpe has used comedy as a method of bringing audenoes into wntad with political struggles. Their most recent piece. False Romlu8. demonstrates the relationship between the Spanish knecican war and wodws in strke wnditims in Colorado coel mines. It is a larger. more complicsled piece that uses serious as well as mmic development 4. The queston mght be asked: M a t would a peoples theatre acttalky look like in practice? Since there are numerws such trwpes wrrentiy work i i today. these are the best sources for understanding spceific examples of popilar theatre. I enaxrage people to seek an these groups lor both prwressive @tics and sc4d enterlainmenl. Yet generahag about the likely eppearsnce of a popular theatre pieca is dHiculI. Ail those mentioned in this Sudy. plus m n y Omen. have very dislsnct quahtii and porri~al interests, as varied as me quaibes intecasts of the audiences they reach. But we can dscem a few salient features, not the least of v r h i wwM be free performenoes cutdoors or indoors. or lowcost Wets for indoor performsncas. Passing the hat is a m m o n practice. Poprlsr h a t r e pra senwions will mwt likely be very spare technicaly with lilik or m need for sek and Eghcing. VwHy. the stage is &en colorful with co6tumes. props, and set piecss lending a bdght vilcility. Music and origmal or tnditional songs wil be m a t to created pieces. Pemrnel will learn to be multi-skilled. all taking act%. music, and management responsibilities. Group criticism and self-cnticiim are hallmarks ol this kind of theatre. Cornecly is widely in evidence. thwgh as troupes develop. mae serious treatment of topics also seem to develop as audiences gain confidence in Uw troupes class stand. Plays will deal with both historical end mntemporary matters. Audiences will be multi-aged. multi-racial. and represent boM petit bwrgeois and working class people. Audience!stege relalionshps vary horn the traditional passive specta:or!active stage to the popular theatres hilltorim1 and uniqveadivesp~torswhoareweko~tomntributeopenlytothetheatreevmt by booing. cheering. applauding. hisslng. singing. and engaging in irrpromptu conversations MARX, HEGEL AND DIALECTICAL METHOD James Thomas

THE “SICK” RACIST

Since the early 1960s, there has been a movement among activists, scholars, and policymakers to redefine racism as a psychopathological condition, identifiable and treatable through psychotherapeutic and pharmacological interventions. This development reflects, and is reflected by, the popular framing among mass media and ordinary social actors of racism and racist events as individual pathology rather than as a social problem. This shifting perspective on racism, from a social problem and a system to an individual pathology, has increasingly become a part of academic and psychiatric discourse since Jim Crow. In this article, we have two aims: first, to trace the emergence of “psychopathological racism”; second, to illustrate the relationship between “psychopathological racism” and “colorblind racism” in the post-Civil Rights era. We argue that the psychopathological view of racism compliments colorblindness in that larger structural issues are dismissed in favor of individual pathos. Furthermore, psychopathological explanations for racism dismiss socio-political contexts, eschewing the contributions of well over fifty years of social scientific research in the process.

The Rebirth of the U.S.-Mexico Border Latina/o Enforcement Agents and the Changing Politics of Racial Power

Law enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border region has significantly changed since the 1970s. Currently, Latinas/os make up more than half of the agents who patrol the southern border region. The Texas Lower Rio Grande Valley, in particular, has transformed from a predominantly Anglo police establishment to one with a heavy presence of Mexican American agents within local and federal agencies. Though responsible for managing the flows of bodies, narcotics, and would-be terrorists from illegally crossing into the United States, the institutional and social vestiges of this region’s racialized past continues to inform practices of agents in the field, including those of Mexican American descent. In this article, we draw from ethnographic fieldwork, participant observations, and in-depth qualitative interviews with enforcement agents situated in the Texas Lower Rio Grande Valley to investigate what we describe as a phenomenology of racial power among enforcement agents, or the tethering of power, subjectivity, and embodied racialized practices in their day-to-day lives.

Laugh through it: Assembling difference in an American stand-up comedy club

Through an examination of a Midwestern professional comedy club, this article theorizes stand-up comedy as part of the broader affective-cultural assemblage that is nightlife entertainment. Using the Deleuzian notion of assemblage, this analysis builds on poststructural accounts of the dynamic and transient properties of culture, and the relationship between space, culture, and affect. As a specific affective-cultural assemblage, stand-up comedy operates as both constrainer and enabler of racial and heteronormative order through the bringing together of a variety of diverse logics and practices. I argue that stand-up comedy should no longer be thought of strictly in discursive or symbolic-interactionist terms that over-determine the roles of particular agents (i.e. comics). Instead, when described as emergent, transient, and fundamentally affective, stand-up comedy and other cultural forms can be seen for their openness and multiplicity, both contributing to racial and heteronormative order as well as upending it.

Diversity Regimes and Racial Inequality: A Case Study of Diversity University:

Despite record investment in diversity infrastructure, racial inequality persists in higher education. This article examines, through a case study of diversity’s articulation process, how diversity is defined, organized, and implemented within an American public flagship university. My findings reveal what I characterize as a diversity regime: a set of meanings and practices that institutionalizes a benign commitment to diversity, and in doing so obscures, entrenches, and even intensifies existing racial inequality by failing to make fundamental changes in how power, resources, and opportunities are distributed. My concept of a diversity regime helps explain how and why organizational commitments to multiculturalism and diversity often fall short in practice. The concept of a diversity regime also helps us better understand the underlying processes that perpetuate racial inequality.

The Economization of Diversity

Through a case study of an ongoing diversity initiative at Diversity University (DU), a public, flagship university in the U.S. South, the author’s research advances understanding of the discursive relationship between neoliberalism and contemporary racial ideology. As part of a larger ethnographic project, the author draws on more than ten years worth of diversity discourse at DU to illuminate diversity’s economization: the process whereby specific formations of economic values, practices, and metrics are extended toward diversity as justification for DU’s efforts. The analysis responds to three questions: (1) How is diversity economized by the organization? (2) How is this economization articulated through organizational discourse on diversity? and (3) How does the economization of diversity potentially reconfigure race and racial subjectivities? The findings reveal three interrelated processes that facilitate diversity’s economization: diversity as investment, diversity metrics, and diversity as affective labor. Together these processes congeal and convert multicultural principles and practices into economic ones. Consequently, diversity’s economization recasts nonwhite racial subjectivity as human capital for DU and its white publics, minimizing and entrenching existing racial inequality in the process.