Luis Escobedo

The focus on experience in the process of collective identification highlights the individual peculiarities of those grouped or categorized together under a certain name. This chapter considers that just as one’s individual idiosyncrasy can be highlighted at the experiential level, so can their gaze encapsulate and combine a multitude of ways of seeing the world, including conflicting ones, resulting from a multilayered social interaction across time and space, a gaze being understood here as composite, or refractive. This chapter discusses how the refractive gaze functions in the eye of a non-Roma researcher studying Roma-related issues, claiming that “non-Roma,” as a nominal category denoting power and domination, does not always do justice to the classification of the former. The chapter engages with the experiences of racial categorization lived by its author to illustrate how racial categories can shape a person’s identification, gaze, life, and career, including their interest in studying Roma/non-Roma relations. It also fulfills the purpose of questioning the non-Roma researcher who aims to contribute, among others, to the field of Romani Studies. Finally, it opens the possibility of forming new identifications and boundaries, guiding a more just and ethical research practice, and imagining other ways of co-constructing Roma/non-Roma social and political identifications, common global struggles, or collective wills.

For minority employees at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the organisation has enriched their careers, while offering equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) measures to mitigate some of the issues affecting them. However, the way they belong to BAS remains impacted by the structural and everyday practices that shape their lives through identity processes. In light of BAS' ambition to enhance Antarctic science opportunities to underrepresented groups, this study engages with the lived experiences and perspectives of minority BAS employees at their workplace. We argue that while they experience and perceive rejection, discrimination and exclusion, these practices are tangled up in the dominant and majority group's internal identification processes rather than by the isolated and deliberate action of its members. Those who are part of the "unmarked" dominant group have, from an early age, internalised national, ethnic, gender, and other forms of belonging and continue to engage in new boundary demarcation in the present. In this way, it is in their contact with non-members, that the boundaries between the "marked" and "unmarked" come to the fore, even when the intention of the dominant group may be to erode such boundaries.

Despite my-5 prescription glasses, I have never been shortsighted in the face of racism. This is not because I might be enlightened. I just had no chance. The fact is that a pair of eyes is no requirement to understand it. Racism first hurts the heart, the mind, one's life and experience.

This essay is a part of our "Crosstalk" series featuring stories from graduate students of color. Read more in our special issue, "Crosstalk: Graduate Students of Color Reflect on Lessons Lived and Learned in the Academy," now available in hardcopy and on Project MUSE and JSTOR.

Read essay here: https://womengenderandfamilies.ku.edu/uncategorized/crosstalk/racially-othered-nationally-selved/

Recommended citation:
Escobedo, Luis. "Racially 'Othered,' Nationally 'Selved': The Identification Struggles of a Foreign Doctoral Student in Poland." Crosstalk: Graduate Students of Color Reflect on Lessons Lived and Learned in the Academy. Women, Gender, and Families of Color (blog), May 20, 2021, https://womengenderandfamilies.ku.edu/uncategorized/crosstalk/racially-othered-nationally-selved/

This blog post is about how individuals are categorised as they move across social geographies of race, and how they claim their individuality in the process. See full post here: https://mmblatinamerica.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2020/09/10/northwards-across-social-geographies-of-race/

This one goes out to all the immigrants who have ever struggled with their official migration. The following is a pain-staking story some of us will be all too familiar with.

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Drawing upon Paulo Drinot's works on how racialized assumptions have been central to the transition toward industrialization, and neoliberalism in early 20 th-, and early 21 st-century Peru, respectively, this monograph analyses how contemporary powerful state agents efficiently naturalize whiteness among Peruvians by equating it with progress and constructing the non-core group as a racialized " Other " , in and through the articulation of language and meaning. I claim that direct, naked, and offensive anti-communist and anti-indigenous language is not the only, or the most efficient, way in which an antagonism is constructed in contemporary Peru. By understanding how whiteness operates in political rhetoric, we will be able to visualize more clearly how even the most common, widely accepted, and allegedly inoffensive expressions can be effective in the construction of racial antagonisms. In order to accomplish these objectives and support these claims, I will engage Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's theory of discourse.

Throughout the Republican era, the Peruvian State and élites have envisioned and endeavoured the construction of a Western, European, urban, Coastal, Limeño, Creole, ‘white’ nation. This vision has contrasted with the idea of an Andean, rural, Serrano (people from the mountains), Amazonian, indigenous, ‘non-white’ Peru. In turn, given the fact that the latter does not match the idea of a nation of industry and progress, its components are still undergoing a process of transformation, isolation, exclusion or elimination. This situation in contemporary Peru is then the reflection of a racialized idea of Western nation, an idea that today is performed by the majority of Peruvians. Through the review of statistical sources and social indicators, the review of modernist theories of nation and nationalism, the historiographical analysis on the establishment of sovereign Hispanic-American States, and the sociological, comparative and discourse analysis of the Latin American novel, we support the following hypotheses. First, that racism in Peru, as it occurs today, arises within the nation-building process. Second, that racism in Peru, as it occurs today, is developed more as a feeling and expression of anxiety and frustration borne by many Peruvians who perceive certain cultural or ethnic factors as obstacles in the construction of ideal national citizens. Finally, that, even though Peru defines itself as diverse, turning to elements perceived as the legacy and contribution of non-hegemonic cultures, many of those elements exist only as traces (French for ‘traces’) and not as essential pillars in the construction of a diverse Peruvian nation.

A lo largo de la época republicana, el Estado y las élites peruanas han imaginado y buscado construir una nación occidental, europea, urbana, costeña, limeña, criolla, ‘blanca’, en contraposición a un Perú andino, rural, serrano, amazónico, indígena, ‘no blanco’. Los segundos elementos, al no corresponder a la idea de nación industrial y de progreso, aún están pasando por un proceso de transformación, aislamiento, exclusión o eliminación. La situación del Perú contemporáneo es entonces el reflejo de una idea racializada de nación occidental, idea que hoy en día es practicada por la gran mayoría de peruanas y peruanos. A través de la revisión de fuentes estadísticas e indicadores sociales, de la revisión de teorías modernistas de nación y nacionalismo, del análisis historiográfico sobre la formación de estados hispanoamericanos soberanos, y del análisis sociológico, comparativo y del discurso de la novela latinoamericana, sustentamos, en primer lugar, que el racismo en el Perú, como ocurre hoy en día, se gesta dentro del proceso de construcción nacional. En segundo lugar, que el racismo se desarrolla más como sentimiento y expresión de la ansiedad y la frustración de muchas peruanas y peruanos que perciben ciertos factores culturales o étnicos como obstáculos en la construcción de ciudadanas y ciudadanos nacionales ideales. Finalmente, que, si bien el Perú se define como diverso, recurriendo a elementos percibidos como contribuciones de culturas no hegemónicas, muchos de estos elementos existen sólo a manera de ‘traces’ (francés para ‘rastros’) y no como pilares en la construcción de una nación peruana diversa.