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This thesis presents an ethnographic study based in the city of Toronto on how ethnic Chinese negotiate their ambivalence towards the category “Chinese-Canadian”, particularly in relation to discourses about race, ethnicity and language. It is the finding of this study that second generation, economically privileged ethnic Chinese women are likely to feel most comfortable with the aforementioned category, in relation to their counterparts. This is because they are most likely to be able to speak Chinese and English, as well as seek out a vocabulary that allows them to make sense of their experience. They are also likely to be most comfortable because, as Chinese is a feminized category, they more easily fit into the mold of what a Chinese person is “supposed” to be like. Ethnic Chinese men, however, are less comfortable with the category and assert their masculinity by engaging in humour driven in racial and ethnic stereotypes.

This masters’ thesis is a case study using an antiracist methodology and critical discourse analysis to analyze a popular blog, ‘Stuff White People Like’ and asks the main research question: How is whiteness represented and understood in the satirical blog, ‘Stuff White People Like’? Grounded in theories of representation, discourse, myth and racialization, the thesis looks at two posts, “#1 Coffee” and “#92 Book Deals” and their user comments to investigate the ways whiteness is defined, understood, produced and negotiated. The blog and the comments reveal important discussions of knowledge production strategies of racialization and racism in popular media. Specifically, these negotiations expose three major registers of whiteness that are continually enacted within the discourses of the blog and the comments. These registers encompass understandings of whiteness as biological superiority and heritage; defining whiteness as a performance of privilege; and whiteness as an enactment of dominance and oppression. Sites of antiracist educational pedagogy are also discussed within this study to reveal the importance of investigating everyday discourses and understandings of race for the future.

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This thesis challenges the common, simplistic understanding of Los Angeles’ Olvera Street as merely a cultural landmark or popular historic site. Instead, I argue that, as a ‘Mexican marketplace’ that is simultaneously presented as historical, Olvera Street has been imbued with substantial power to shape the perception of Latinx culture and identity in Los Angeles. To investigate Olvera Street’s role as a key site in the larger struggle over racial and cultural meaning in the city, I begin with a historical analysis of the social and political contexts of the site’s construction. I then investigate the relationship between Sterling’s original vision for Olvera Street and the way the site is framed, imagined, and physically constructed today. I then examine the potential consequences of the discovery that Olvera Street continues to produce hegemonic ideas about Mexicans and Mexican culture in Los Angeles. Finally, I explore how Olvera Street’s merchants both as individuals and collectively through the Olvera Street Merchants Association Foundation (OSMAF) have substantial power to shape the meanings assigned to Mexican (and more broadly Latinx) identity at Olvera Street.

In the midst of increasing multiracial identification and diversity in the United States, I examine whether White and Black military veterans hold different attitudes toward interracial marriage than those held by their coethnics in the general population. Using the General Social Survey, I examine the likelihood of military members opposing marriage between a close relative and a partner of a race different from the respondent’s own, and whether their views are significantly different from their non-military coethnic counterparts. I use binary logistic regressions to assess whether opposition toward interracial marriage varies by military status and race. Results indicate that Whites are more opposed to interracial marriage than Blacks, and Whites with military service are more likely to oppose than their non-military counterparts. However, there was no difference among Blacks. In addition, age mediates the relationship between veteran status and attitudes among Whites, with younger people showing less opposition.

This thesis aims to explore how identity takes shape within mixed race persons whom have Latin American background, in today’s Sweden, based on four individual in-depth interviews. The central characters in this paper were found through a convenience sample within my circle of acquaintances, due to the limited framework of this thesis. Six themes were found through coding and thematising: questioning Swedishness, invisible camouflage, it is positive to be mixed, internalized racism, to (en)counter racism and nothing to 100 %.  By means of a feminist phenomenological approach, this thesis has shown that being mixed race creates an ethnic insecurity and a contingency in one’s own identity formation, since the experience of being Swedish constantly is questioned based on physical appearance and/or name. However, all of the informants also experienced joy in having several backgrounds; it was seen as empowering, a possibility and a contribution to the generally white Swedishness. In that way the informants’ refusal to conform to the limiting norms of Swedishness, can be seen as a transcendency of the Swedish hegemony and an expansion of what it means to be Swedish. / Esta tesis trata de explorar como la identidad se crea dentro de personas de raza mixta, quienes tienen origen de América Latina, en Suecia hoy, basado en cuatro entrevistas profundas. Las personas centrales en este ensayo los encontré usando una muestra de conveniencia, ya que el esbozo era restringido. Yo conozco a lxs informantes. Seis temas se cristalizaron a través de codificar y tematizar: Suequidad que es dudoso, camuflaje invisible, ser mixto es positivo, racismo internalizado, enfrentar racismo y nada hasta 100 %. Por lo medio de un enfoque fenomenológico feminista, esta tesis ha encontrado que ser raza mixta crea una inseguridad étnica y contingencia en la formación de identidad en ellas, ya que la experiencia de ser suecx constantemente es dudosa basado en apariencia física y/o nombre. Sin embargo, todas lxs informantes también sintieron alegría en tener varios orígenes; era visto como un poder, una posibilidad y una contribución a la suequidad, que en general es blanca. De esa manera el rechazo de adaptarse a las normas de suequidad limitativas de lxs informantes, puede ser visto como una trascendencia de la hegemonía sueca y una expansión de lo que significa ser suecx.

Theodore Parker was one of the leading intellectuals and militant abolitionists of the antebellum era who has been largely overlooked by modern scholars. He was a leading Transcendentalist intellectual and was also one of the most militant leaders of the abolitionist movement. Despite his fervent abolitionism, his writings reveal an attitude that today we would call racist or white supremacist. Some scholars have argued that Parker's motivation for abolishing slavery was to redeem the Anglo-Saxon race from the sin of slavery. I will dispute this claim and explore Parker's true understanding of race. How he could both believe in the supremacy of the white race, and at the same time, militantly oppose African slavery. Parker was influenced by the racial "science" of his era which supported the superiority of the Caucasian race. Conversely he also believed that everyone, including African slaves, had human dignity.