The thesis suggests the toy-like mask of a white man, ‘Hello, Mr. Gaijin,’ as a site of analysis where the culture of racisms is (re)produced in the specific context of contemporary Japan. Sold as a gig gift in Japan, the mask, consisting of two stickers for blue-eyes and a prominent plastic nose, embodies the popularized image of whiteness in Japan, and presents it as a source of fascination as well as ridicule and mockery. Approaching this mask as an analytical text, I ask: How is race manifested in the Japanese culture? C. W. Mills (1997) suggests that there exists a global system that privileges whites and normalizes their beneficial racial position. This trend is certainly omnipresent in contemporary Japan, where one observes the sense of superiority being affixed to the white body in the frequent use of white models in the media (Creighton, 1997). Yet, how is this theory of white supremacy significantly complicated by the particular representations of whiteness seen in the ‘Hello, Mr. Gaijin’ mask? Through mimicry, the power of whiteness is mocked and commodified into a sleazy toy mask. Critically engaging with these primary questions, the thesis situates the analysis of the ‘Hello, Mr. Gaijin’ mask within the particular history of racialization developed in Japan where the culture of whiteness holds its unique complexity and significance in the society. Drawing largely on the idea of ‘the culture of racisms’ that Goldberg (1993) suggests, the thesis argues that the seemingly contradictory sentiment towards whiteness embodied in the mask presents the key to the holistic understanding of Japan’s particular culture of racisms. Specifically, it analyzes three levels of transformation that the mask presents in embodying the particular culture of racisms: the discursive transformation of whites into gaijin; the temporal physical transformation of the user into Mr. Gaijin; the visual and material transformation of whites into the toy-mask. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2012-08-15 23:36:21.157

This thesis explores the notion of whether or not race is a determining factor in how African-Canadians perceive their subjective well-being. To this end, this study seeks to understand Blacks perception of what constitutes their identity and how they resist against minority consciousness. Also examined are their integration aspirations and the set of strategies they use to claim mobility status in mainstream North American society. The areas explored reflect interviewees' perceptions of the social factors that determine how they view their well-being. The data for this inquiry is gathered from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Data from focus groups, are discussions that I facilitated while working on the Montreal Black Communities Demographic Project. Empirical research is used to support the data at specific points. / Analysis of the data does not support the view that Blacks perceive their well-being as dependent on their status as racialized subjects. Research findings do however show that the social determinant of race has an impact on the strategies Blacks choose to obtain socio-economic status.

This thesis is a study of the gender/sexuality construction in the Winnipeg Beach resort area in the period between 1900 and 1965. I argue that the resort functioned as a venue for the conduct of heterosexual relations in the 20th century and saw the transition between three distinctive systems of courtship during that period. These systems of courtship shaped the social and physical space of the resort area creating three distinctive periods at Winnipeg Beach: the first period lasted from 1900 to approximately 1915; the second from 1915 to the mid 1950s; and the third from the 1950s on. I also argue that the Canadian Pacific Railway company played a distinctive role in the Winnipeg Beach environment by actively promoting the area as a heterosexual contact point. This thesis relies heavily on oral interviews to illustrate how people constructed the Winnipeg Beach environment during the 20th century.

This thesis focuses on the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES), based in Edinburgh, which was funded by the Scottish Executive and Scottish Government to develop several programmes to promote equality in education. Drawing together the disparate approaches to anthropology of organisations, the methodology has included both a focus on a small core group of workers as well as the flow of the materials produced throughout a larger network. Rather than conduct fieldwork at various locations as network or policy studies emphasise, I chose to work for two years with CERES due to their geographic and creational centrality to the ‘mainstreaming equality’ initiative. Beginning at a time when questions of identity in Scotland flourished as a result of devolution, increased immigration and the UK publication of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, the mainstreaming equality projects signify the Scottish Executive’s attempt to uphold its duty of promoting race equality. CERES managed three of the seven funded mainstreaming equality projects. The production of these resources contributes to a campaign through which the Scottish Government has worked to reformulate understandings of what it means to be Scottish. This is achieved by drawing upon the myths of a new and egalitarian Scotland in order to displace the myth that there is no racism in Scotland. Within this context, the research’s central questions revolve around this creation in the stages undertaken at CERES. Examining the Centre’s daily tasks, this research demonstrates that although commissioned to contribute to the same overall initiative, the way in which CERES depicts equality is ultimately very different than the approaches developed within the government. The materials created by CERES, which unlike One Scotland, do not include national symbols, have engaged with the complexities of equality and discrimination more than the media campaigns yet have had a smaller audience. Once the idea is developed it encounters further manipulation, both physical in the case of teaching tools and ideological in working to make the identities included reflect Scotland through statistics and discussions of subjects already embedded in the national curriculum. From the vantage point of the creation process, this ethnography contributes to the anthropology of organisations and highlights the legal and policy negotiations undertaken across various levels of governance.

Sexual minority people face a heterosexist society in which they are legally and socially marginalized. Additionally, Black people face a society where racist attitudes and laws persist, one in which they are dehumanized as "other" in relation to Whites. Furthermore, being a Black male means confronting a system where, beginning in elementary school, one is frequently deemed deficient or deviant and penalized by racist practices and policies. Very few studies have examined how Black gay males come to understand their intersecting racial and sexual identities or how they navigate and negotiate life in a White heterosexist society. This dissertation outlines the current state of sexual minority youth with a focus on Black gay males and suggests that more must be done to understand the lived experiences of this community within and beyond the schoolhouse, especially in a city such as Atlanta, which is known as a Black gay mecca and where the Black sexual minority community is visible. It is important to examine how a range of institutional forces, working in tandem with and sometimes against racism and heterosexism, challenge as well as assist Black gay males in forming their identities. The purpose of the study was to gather the life histories of five young Black sexual minority males aged 19-24 in metro-Atlanta. I utilized critical race theory and quare theory, which critique endemic racism and heteronormativity, as a lens to understand their life histories within a larger societal context. By probing how numerous social institutions have influenced young Black male identity formation, including schools, peers, family, church, community-based LGBTQ organizations, and social media, this study presents life histories in a way that provides a more holistic picture of this community. Due to the paucity of research focused on how young Black gay males are productively navigating through life, this study offers a distinct contribution by placing their histories front and center in an attempt to provide a counterstory to deficit-based perspectives. From the participants’ life histories, five factors were found to shape identity formation while navigating the above institutions: racial shelving (bracketing race in majority-Black environments to contend with sexual identity issues); thick skin (increasing ability to face and conquer challenges based on negotiation of past challenges); self-determination (taking the initiative to seek information and relationships to learn about sexual identity, including use of social media); defying/transcending stereotypes (refusing to conform to dominant narratives about Black gay males); and experiential evolution (understanding that experience translates into growth and self-affirmation). All of these factors address the ways in which the participants have come to understand, negotiate, accept, and even embrace their intersecting identities. Additionally, findings are useful because the participants’ life histories have set a foundation for how educators and sexual majority youth can better understand a population facing a racist and heterosexist society and enable new policy interventions to be imagined. Four proposals, which emanate from participants' life experiences, are presented for schools to undertake: incorporating Black gay activists and community members into school culture, providing professional development for teachers on race and heterosexism, developing a comprehensive sex-education curriculum that includes gay students, and implementing a “Who Cares” campaign to mediate peer pressure to conform.

Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001), and Saving Fish from Drowning (2005), is accused of being a “fake” Chinese American writer by radical Chinese American critics such as Frank Chin. I consider Tan’s fictional writing of the experience of Chinese immigrant mothers and their American born daughters to be an experiment in cross-cultural communication. Such communication may be highly personal and subjective to Tan, who claims to write so that her mother can understand her feelings and to remember what she has learned from her Chinese side. I also believe her writings create an opportunity for bi- (or cross-) cultural communication and it matches the concept of harmony in Chinese traditional philosophy. In Chinese scholar Jianjun Zou’s opinion, Tan’s works represent the notion of reconciliation, and that all of these works shall be viewed as a whole is the inspiration of this thesis. Reconciliation in terms of Tan’s works has three parts, which are: (1) the reconciliation between languages; (2) the reconciliation between genders; (3) the reconciliation among generations. The existence of reconciliation proves that Tan’s writing about the Chinese community is multi-dimensional. From my point of view, she should not be simply defined as a stereotype writer whose works can only reinforce the prejudices against the Chinese community and Chinese men. In my opinion, for Chinese American criticism, violation of the women’s right to tell of the oppression from the Chinese traditional family values should not be the solution to the prejudices of the white dominant culture. For Chinese critics in Chinese speaking regions, especially in China, I suggest that we should have a humble attitude towards the Chinese American literature because the “real” and the “fake” are difficult to define, even in the motherland of Chinese culture.

This dissertation examines the emergence of Florida from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the twentieth century through the lenses of Jacksonville, Pensacola, Tampa, and Miami as they became the major economic and social centers within the state. Influenced by Union and Republican ideologies, early immigration tracts promised egalitarian land development rooted in the promise of citrus, diversified agriculture, real-estate, and the promise of tourism. As more northerners came to rely upon cheap black labor to make their dream a reality, the earlier narrative of egalitarianism began to loose ground to the demands for inexpensive labor. The need for quicker and faster conveyance for the new fruits and vegetables also required large land grants to entice railroads to the state, which in turn, threatened the subsistence lifestyle upon which many of the immigrants and farmers depended. As higher land prices pushed poor whites and African Americans deeper into the Florida frontier, unprecedented corporate and railroad land subsidies gobbled up much of the remaining unclaimed lands leading to unprecedented social, economic, and political turmoil across the state. As greater profits via shipping rates, agricultural production, and industrial output came to dominate the political economies of each of the cities, the earlier social and economic needs and desires of farmers and laborers that Republican and northern ideologues tried to protect increasingly lost ground to calls for a two tiered economic and social system that put the monetary needs of Florida’s white citizens, businesses, and corporations over those of its African American and ethnic populations resulting in statewide disenfranchisement, social segregation, and economic stratification that placed whites at the top of the economic ladder with African Americans largely relegated along the bottom rungs of the social and economic order. Although this outcome reflects a regional pattern that swept across much of the South, this work shows that for a brief period of 35 years, Florida offered a unique moment when the state and its cities moved to protect and encourage the individual desires of freedmen, poor whites, laborers and ethnic immigrants to promote and encourage growth, settlement, and development.

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There is no abstract available for this thesis.