Interview: Intersectionality and Identity Politics

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

In September 2017, writer and social justice coordinator with the American Humanist Association, Sincere Kirabo, interviewed me about misunderstandings of intersectionality and the problems with the term “identity politics.” He writes:

…White identity politics go “undetected,” as we’re socialised to regard the sustaining of dominant culture as “what is expected” or “the way things ought to be.”

Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos, sociologist with Swinburne University, echoes this sentiment, stating:

‘If the phrase has any value at all — and it really doesn’t — “identity politics” calls attention to the ways that people from majority groups, especially White people, do not “see” how their identities are governed by politics.
This is how Whiteness works: White culture is embedded into all fields of public life, from education, to the media, to science, to religion and beyond. White culture is constructed as the norm, so it becomes the taken-for-granted ideal with which other cultures are judged against by White people.

‘Hence, White people do not recognise how their race shapes their understanding of politics, and their relationships with minority groups.’ Continue reading Interview: Intersectionality and Identity Politics

Ethnocentrism of Baby Names

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos
An Asian woman and Black man play with two Asian babies

The popular culture website, Popsugar, published an article calling non-Anglo names “quirky.” This is one example among many where Anglo-Saxon languages and Western cultures are seen as the universal norm used to judge all other cultures (in sociology, this is known as “ethnocentrism”).

Continue reading Ethnocentrism of Baby Names

Anti-Indigenous Racism by Other People of Colour

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos
People at a protest hold signs that that #BLM Aboriginal Lives Matter

In July 2017, a young family tried to get a taxi after they marched for NAIDOC Week, a week of events recognising the cultures, languages and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, in Naarm (Melbourne). Five cab drivers refused to take them, making up the same excuse that they had just dropped someone off, or that they were waiting for another passenger, only to drive off alone. It is illegal to refuse a fare. The two drivers in the video shared below are non-Indigenous people of colour.

Continue reading Anti-Indigenous Racism by Other People of Colour

Indigenous Sociology for Social Impact

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

The history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice activism to destabilise and overcome colonial practices in Australia began with the British invasion in 1788 and has continued to the present-day. These acts of social and political organisation have strong sociological resonance that should centrally inform sociological inquiry in Australia. Yet Indigenous knowledges are peripheral to the discipline of sociology. This post is the first in a series exploring ways to decolonise sociology, through the leadership of Associate Professor Kathleen Butler, sociologist and Aboriginal woman belonging to the Bundjalung and Worimi peoples of coastal New South Wales.

To redress the problematic racial dynamics of sociological theory and practice, Associate Professor Butler convened the first Indigenous Sociology for Social Impact Workshop at the University of Newcastle, Ourimbah campus, on Darkinjung land. Held on 27-28 October 2016, Professor Butler invited Indigenous and non-Indigenous sociologists from different parts of Australia to consider gaps and opportunities in addressing the ongoing impact of colonialism in our theories, methods and practice.

Today’s post places the workshop in historic context and summarises the discussion. I also include reflections by Associate Professor Butler about the outcomes from the workshop. I end with a set of questions that emerged from the workshop that we should now face as a discipline in order to centre Indigenous knowledges and methods in sociology.

https://twitter.com/OtherSociology/status/791441601570627585

Continue reading Indigenous Sociology for Social Impact

Woodpeckers

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos
A woodpecker on a tree hangs from a perfect hole. It has a red head, white breast, and black and white body

Another Cine Latino film: Woodpeckers (Carpinteros). Unsettling but excellent Dominican film entirely focused on Afro-Latino characters. Julián (Jean Jean) is awaiting sentencing when he’s put into one of the “less hellish” prisons in Najayo. That is to say, an overcrowded, filthy and violent place where many prisoners sleep on the concrete floor. Julián is second generation Haitian-Dominican. In a terse exchange with his brother, we learn he is an entrepreneurial “low level” criminal who doesn’t want to be locked into a low-paid menial job.

Continue reading Woodpeckers