Looking at it today, it is hard to believe that the now-concrete river bed was once one of the region’s most important rivers. The Los Angeles River was once framed by wide wetlands, forests of oak trees, and was critical in supporting indigenous, Mexican, Spanish, and early Anglo populations. At first glance, many parts of the Los Angeles River look nothing like a river at all. Belying the river’s historical importance, the river today looks far more like a highway than a naturally occurring body of water. While its current appearance may not reflect its centrality in the city’s history, the Los Angeles River is the reason why Los Angeles is located where it is today.

This thesis draws from ten semi-structured interviews with multiracial men in Toronto, Canada. It is an exploratory study that examines how participants experience race, masculinities and identities. Multiracial identities challenge popular notions of racial categories and expose social processes of racialization and the shifting nature of social identities. I explore how gender impacts participants’ experiences of multiple, fluid or shifting racial identities, and the importance of context in determining how they identify themselves. Participants also discussed the impact of multiculturalism and their understandings of racism in Canada. There were differences in the experiences of Black multiracial men and non-Black multiracial men in terms of how gender and race impact their lives. These differences imply that the colour line in Canada is shifting and that categories like ‘whiteness’ are being redefined. Analyses of these topics are taken up from an anti-racist and critical mixed race studies perspective.

Through Foucault’s genealogy and ethics of the self, I examine the experiences of Asian teacher candidates in the K-12 Canadian school system and how those experiences influence what teaching means for them. I look at the connections between race, the body and education and ask, how do the embodied experiences of racialized students inform the formation of the racialized teacher candidate? In my study I reveal that discourses of racism and discrimination are embodied and constitute racialized subjectivity. Through using individual interviews and a focus group, I listen to the narratives of my participants as they recount experiences in education. These stories and my analysis have important implications for educators, scholars, researchers and policy-makers interested in race, the body and education as well as concerns of diversifying the teaching personnel and transforming curriculum.

Through Foucault’s genealogy and ethics of the self, I examine the experiences of Asian teacher candidates in the K-12 Canadian school system and how those experiences influence what teaching means for them. I look at the connections between race, the body and education and ask, how do the embodied experiences of racialized students inform the formation of the racialized teacher candidate? In my study I reveal that discourses of racism and discrimination are embodied and constitute racialized subjectivity. Through using individual interviews and a focus group, I listen to the narratives of my participants as they recount experiences in education. These stories and my analysis have important implications for educators, scholars, researchers and policy-makers interested in race, the body and education as well as concerns of diversifying the teaching personnel and transforming curriculum.

This thesis draws from ten semi-structured interviews with multiracial men in Toronto, Canada. It is an exploratory study that examines how participants experience race, masculinities and identities. Multiracial identities challenge popular notions of racial categories and expose social processes of racialization and the shifting nature of social identities. I explore how gender impacts participants’ experiences of multiple, fluid or shifting racial identities, and the importance of context in determining how they identify themselves. Participants also discussed the impact of multiculturalism and their understandings of racism in Canada. There were differences in the experiences of Black multiracial men and non-Black multiracial men in terms of how gender and race impact their lives. These differences imply that the colour line in Canada is shifting and that categories like ‘whiteness’ are being redefined. Analyses of these topics are taken up from an anti-racist and critical mixed race studies perspective.

We have, after three years of studying at Södertörns University Collage, experienced that there is great division in the classroom between students of foreign origin and ethnically Swedish students. How the students choose to place themselves in the classroom form a pattern on the basis of students’ outer shells. The aim of this study is to understand what impact the student’s social orders has on the position they choose in the classroom. We have done a qualitative study where we have observed different classrooms at Södertörns University College, and also interviewed some students. The results have particularly shown that the students' divisions in the classroom arise from the student’s previous experience with individuals and the student’s solidarity that they feel with their own group. The results have also shown that this pattern that occurs in the classroom is a reproduction of the pattern found in the larger social space, the society. / Efter tre års studier på Södertörns högskola har vi som studenter upplevt att det finns en stor uppdelning i klassrummen mellan studenter med utländsk bakgrund och etniskt svenska studenter. Deras placeringar i klassrummet bildar ett mönster utifrån studenternas yttre skal. Syftet med studien är att förstå vilken effekt studenternas sociala ordning har på hur de kommer att placera sig i klassrummet. Vi har använt oss av en kvalitativ studie där vi främst har observerat olika klassrum på Södertörns högskola och även intervjuat några studenter. Resultaten har bl.a. visat att studenternas uppdelning i klassrummet uppstår utifrån studenternas tidigare erfarenheter med individer och utifrån en viss gemenskap de känner med sin egen grupp. Resultaten har även visat att detta mönster som uppstår i klassrummet är en reproduktion av mönstret som finns i det större sociala rummet, nämligen samhället. Nyckelord: Klassrummet, sociala rum, rasifiering, etnicitet, beslutstagande,

Racialization, Representation, and Resistance: Black Visual Artists and the Production of Alterity queries the relationship between Black visual representation and Black social and cultural politics. For the past two centuries Black visual artists throughout the African Diaspora have painted, sculpted, and filmed images of blackness inspired, funded, and otherwise supported by progressive patrons and institutions. Largely produced outside of mainstream art worlds, these visual representations focused on Black social and cultural politics and Black alterity more than mainstream tastes or stereotypes. As the coherence of Black social and political movements and resources declined in the late twentieth century, however, commercialization and the mainstream art world had increasing influence on Black visual culture. These changes created intense resistance and debate about the politics of visual representation throughout the Black Atlantic, particularly in the United States, Cuba, and the United Kingdom. Ethnographic observations, interviews, and gallery talks with artists in these three nations, including John Yancey, Vicky Meek, Marcus Akinlana, Kara Walker, Michael Ray Charles, Gloria Rolando, Anissa Cockings, and Andrew Sinclair, along with cultural and historical comparisons, provide fresh insight into the relationship between Black visual representation and contemporary Black social and cultural politics. / text

This study deals with the meanings and conditions of motherhood for some Muslim women in Sweden, the majority of which live in Stockholm. The analysis is based mainly on 16 in-depth interviews with women who self-identify as Muslims. A majority of them were born in Sweden. In this study, motherhood and mothering are defined as intentional care work situated within, and shaped by, specific social, cultural and historical contexts. I examine which gendered, religious and spatial meanings are associated with mothering and Muslim identity in a Swedish transnational context. The analysis shows that religion (for most of the women) constitutes an interpretational frame for motherhood and for how children should be mothered into good Muslims and citizens. The women represent Islam as a facilitating religion by making a distinction between religion and culture. The study also shows how the women approach the problem of maintaining the children’s Muslim identities and their self-esteem in a secularized and islamophobic Swedish context, and how they stress the importance of the child developing a strong inner self. Based on the women’s own experiences of having been singled out as different, they respond to a racist logic associated with certain norms and conceptions about what counts as freedom or oppression. The interviews also reveal a transnational aspect of their mothering in which they consider what other places can offer their children. The thesis shows on the one hand how an authentic Muslim identity is related to ideas about Muslim places and origins; on the other hand it demonstrates how the women’s ambivalent affinities with Sweden, and (what they consider to be) Swedish and Muslim values, destabilize such an unambiguous connection. These ambivalent identifications show how the women’s conditional affinities become relevant for how they speak about motherhood and mothering and for how they relate to questions concerning “the good of the child”.

This report examines the construction of whiteness in Appalachia through a close study of two New Year’s Eve celebrations in a small community in Brasstown, North Carolina. By examining these two celebrations, I draw out questions of race and racialization that have been largely overlooked in the study of Appalachia and illustrate the connections between the construction of a whitewashed Appalachian identity and the construction of an equally pale national identity. This report challenges the idea that Appalachia as a region is “racially innocent” and therefore does not play a role in discussions of race in America. On the contrary, I show that Appalachia’s position as a site of production of a national culture and identity means that in the context of Appalachia, race and racialization demand scrutiny as a means for understanding what “whiteness” is. / text

The novel shows how a young Indo-Guyanese immigrant to the UK is racialized; aspiring to leave behind the "messiness" and confusion of the poverty-stricken immigrant lives he sees around him, he goes to Cambridge. The story is narrated by this character long after, in ways that reveal how this aspiration was assimilative and colonizing, encouraging him to abandon his friends and his roots. His life story makes it clear how different systems of racial categorization work in Guyana and in the UK to violently separate those who might be friends, lovers, and allies.