 | |
| Author | Sabrina Strings |
|---|---|
| Subject | Sociology |
Publication date | May 2019 |
| ISBN | 9781479819805 |
Fearing the Black Body is a 2019 non-fiction book by American sociologist Sabrina Strings about the history of fatphobia, which Strings argues is rooted in anti-Black racism. It was published by New York University Press under the full title Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. [1] [2]
In Fearing the Black Body, Strings, associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, writes of the history of fatphobia and its intersection with anti-Black racism in Europe and the United States from the sixteenth-century to the present day. Strings explores the influence of various factors in the development of anti-fatness and its connection to racism, including the Atlantic slave trade, Renaissance art, scientific racism, and Protestantism, among others.
Fearing the Black Body was published in May 2019 by NYU Press. [1] The cover features an illustration depicting Sarah Baartman. [3]
Positive reviews of the book were published by Meshell Sturgis in Lateral, [4] Etsuko Taketani in The Journal of American History, [5] and Amelia Earhart Serafine in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History.
In Social Forces , Laura Jennings praised the accessibility of Strings's prose and the depth of her research, but noted that Strings occasionally falsely conflated physically descriptive terms like "obesity" with behavioral terms such as "gluttony." Jennings also noted that Strings's analysis of recent history is less extensive than her analysis of earlier centuries. [6] In the European Journal of Women's Studies , Kathy Davis complimented the book's innovation, readability, and breadth, but expressed her wish that Strings had gone further in her analysis of the epidemiology of obesity as it relates to black women. [7]
The book won the 2020 Sociology of Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award from the American Sociological Association. [8]
Racism is discrimination and prejudice against people based on their race or ethnicity. Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices. The ideology underlying racist practices often assumes that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as inferior or superior. Racist ideology can become manifest in many aspects of social life. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, and related social phenomena. Racism refers to violation of racial equality based on equal opportunities or based on equality of outcomes for different races or ethnicities, also called substantive equality.
Derrick Albert Bell Jr. was an American lawyer, legal scholar, and civil rights activist. Bell first worked for the U.S. Justice Department, then the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he supervised over 300 school desegregation cases in Mississippi.
Anti-Black racism, also called anti-Black sentiment, anti-Blackness, colourphobia or Negrophobia, is characterised by prejudice, collective hatred, and discrimination or extreme aversion towards people who are racialised as Black people, especially those people from sub-Saharan Africa and its diasporas, as well as a loathing of Black culture worldwide. Such sentiment includes, but is not limited to: the attribution of negative characteristics to Black people; the fear, strong dislike or dehumanization of Black men; and the objectification of Black women.
Fat feminism, often associated with "body-positivity", is a social movement that incorporates feminist themes of equality, social justice, and cultural analysis based on the weight of a woman or a non-binary feminine person. This branch of feminism intersects misogyny and sexism with anti-fat bias. Fat feminists advocate body-positive acceptance for all bodies, regardless of their weight, as well as eliminating biases experienced directly or indirectly by fat people. Fat feminists originated during third-wave feminism and is aligned with the fat acceptance movement. A significant portion of body positivity in the third-wave focused on embracing and reclaiming femininity, such as wearing makeup and high heels, even though the second-wave fought against these things. Contemporary western fat feminism works to dismantle oppressive power structures which disproportionately affect fat, queer, non-white, disabled, and other non-hegemonic bodies. It covers a wide range of topics such as diet culture, fat-phobia, representation in media, ableism, and employment discrimination.
Howard Winant is an American sociologist and race theorist. Winant is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Winant is best known for developing the theory of racial formation along with Michael Omi. Winant's research and teachings revolve around race and racism, comparative historical sociology, political sociology, social theory, and human rights.
France Winddance Twine is a Black and Native American sociologist, ethnographer, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker. Twine has conducted field research in Brazil, the UK, and the United States on race, racism, and anti-racism. She has published 11 books and more than 100 articles, review essays, and books on these topics.
Internalized racism is a form of internalized oppression, defined by sociologist Karen D. Pyke as the "internalization of racial oppression by the racially subordinated." In her study The Psychology of Racism, Robin Nicole Johnson emphasizes that internalized racism involves both "conscious and unconscious acceptance of a racial hierarchy in which a presumed superior race are consistently ranked above other races. These definitions encompass a wide range of instances, including, but not limited to, belief in negative stereotypes, adaptations to cultural standards, and thinking that supports the status quo.
Joe Richard Feagin is an American sociologist and social theorist who has conducted extensive research on racial and gender issues in the United States. He is currently the Ella C. McFadden Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University.
African Americans, and African American males in particular, have an ethnic stereotype in which they are portrayed as dangerous criminals. This stereotype is associated with the fact that African Americans are proportionally over-represented in the numbers of those that are arrested and convicted for committing crimes. It has appeared frequently in American popular culture, reinforcing the negative consequences of systemic racism.
The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of systemic racism, like residential segregation and other complex social processes between different racial and ethnic groups.
Social stigma of obesity is bias or discriminatory behaviors targeted at overweight and obese individuals because of their weight and high body fat percentage. Such social stigmas can span one's entire life as long as excess weight is present, starting from a young age and lasting into adulthood. Studies also indicate overweight and obese individuals experience higher levels of stigma compared to other people. Stigmatization of obesity is usually associated with increased health risks (morbidity) of being overweight or obese and the possibility of a shorter lifespan (mortality).
Georgiann Davis is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico and author of the book Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. Davis formerly held similar positions at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, she writes widely on intersex issues and the sociology of diagnosis.
Anti-African sentiment, Afroscepticism, or Afrophobia is prejudice, hostility, discrimination, or racism towards people and cultures of Africa and of the African diaspora.
Concepts of race and sexuality have interacted in various ways in different historical contexts. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is understood by scientists to be a social construct rather than a biological reality. Human sexuality involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors.
George Dewey Yancy is an American philosopher who is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He is a distinguished Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, one of the college's highest honors. In 2019–20, he was the University of Pennsylvania's Inaugural Provost's Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow. He is the editor for Lexington Books' "Philosophy of Race" book series. He is known for his work in critical whiteness studies, critical philosophy of race, critical phenomenology, and African American philosophy, and has written, edited, or co-edited more than 20 books. In his capacity as an academic scholar and a public intellectual, he has published over 250 combined scholarly articles, chapters, and interviews that have appeared in professional journals, books, and at various news sites.
Jessamyn Stanley is an American yoga teacher and body positivity advocate and writer. She gained recognition through her Instagram posts showing her doing yoga as a "plus-size woman of color," who self-identifies as a "fat femme" and "queer femme." She is the author of the books Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get On the Mat, Love Your Body and Yoke: My Yoga of Self Acceptance.
Mary Romero is an American sociologist. She is Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, with affiliations in African and African American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Asian Pacific American Studies. Before her arrival at ASU in 1995, she taught at University of Oregon, San Francisco State University, and University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Professor Romero holds a bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in Spanish from Regis College in Denver, Colorado. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Colorado. In 2019, she served as the 110th President of the American Sociological Association.
The social stigma of obesity, can be defined as the systemic oppression of and discrimination against people who may be considered overweight, obese, or fat. Fatphobia exists in many forms and presents itself in both institutional and interpersonal circumstances. According to numerous academics, fatphobia or general anti-fat bias is common and pervasive. Fatphobia negatively impacts the attitudes and behaviours of individuals towards those considered to be overweight or obese. Employment, relationships, and medical care are some facets of daily living that are all known to be negatively impacted by fat-phobic rhetoric or anti-fat assumptions. Fatphobia is produced and spread in many ways, including through advertising and popular media such as television shows. According to a number of scholars, television shows in North America both underrepresent and misrepresent fat people which (re)produces fatphobic rhetoric
An anti-fatphobia organization is an organization that works to address the social stigma of obesity. Anti-fatphobia organizations typically define themselves by their desire to end fatphobia in whichever contexts they focus on. Anti-fatphobia organizations in the United States are closely tied to the fat acceptance movement with anti-fatphobia activism in general, which begun around the 1960s. The fat acceptance movement can be described as a movement which centres fat people in order to address the oppression they face in society for being fat. The fat acceptance movement calls for societal recognition of a need for systemic change. Anti-fatphobia organizations often take an intersectional approach, and address how fatness is experienced at varying intersections of identity. In the United States, there are two main anti-fatphobia organizations. These organizations are NOLOSE, or the National Organization of Lesbians of Every Size, and NAAFA, or the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.
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