"The everyday response to racism"

"GAZETTE: Your work examines the experience of blacks in New York and Rio, and of several minority groups in Tel Aviv. How does the experience of African-Americans compare with the other groups?

LAMONT: The big difference is that African-Americans have at their disposal extensive cultural tools that tell them that, in the American context, racism is wrong and that they are entitled to fair treatment. The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement has had a huge impact in empowering African-Americans to confront [instances of racism]. In Brazil, there’s far more hesitation about confronting. Also, African-Americans have a very strong identity as a group. They put their racial identity above their national identity, which is not the case in Brazil.

We’re able to show that African-Americans confront [racism] much more readily, and they feel legitimate in confronting. Ethiopian Jews, another group that we studied, are recent immigrants to Israel. They want to be assimilated, so they don’t have as confrontational a stance. Arab Palestinians are extremely excluded — they know that they are perceived as “the enemy within,” as allies to the Palestinians — and therefore they’re much more likely to confront. Their expectations about having full citizenship, about being included in Israel, are very, very low. So they’re also less likely to say they feel ignored or misunderstood because they don’t expect to be understood...

MORAES SILVA: There were very few systematic comparisons of how racism and discrimination were actually experienced in those societies. I think we are making a really big contribution by linking the macro-historical perspective and the role of institutions, cultural repertoires, and legal aspects with experiences, and showing how the comparison is much more complex than what’s usually assumed. The experience is very different, and they have different ways to deal with it.

The second big contribution is to think about victims of racism and discrimination as not passive, but active and dealing with the thing, interpreting it, and finding very creative ways to handle it."

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/the-everyday-response-to-racism/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12.12.2016%20%281%29

Related: something on developing race identity; losing friends talking about race

FB: An interview with two scholar who study the experience of anti-black racism in different countries (here, they discuss the US, Brazil, and Israel) "A lot of this is sharing experiences as a means to gain social resilience and to objectify that this experience was racism — “Look at what happened to me” — and then having confirmation from others. Now that we define reality in the same way, let’s move forward. This solidarity in joint definition is really important...

African-Americans who are confronting are doing things right. Through these everyday exchanges, things change."