Brown identity

Last updated

Brown identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a brown person and as relating to being brown. The identity is subject to multiple contexts, as a part of media reporting or academic research, particularly in Asia, and the Western World.

Contents

Background

Brown identity has been explored academically and both discussed and reported in a wide variety of contexts, being both an indigenous and diasporic concept, [1] as well as a pluralistic phenomenon with overlapping, separate, and competing sub-factors. [2] University of New Mexico's Vinay Harpalani has explored the concept in depth, observing that despite variance of skin tone, whether darker or lighter, skin color gradation normally "does not appear to play a major role for South Asian Americans claiming a Brown identity". Despite some identification outside binaries of color, Harpalani has demonstrated how the identity does allow a distinction between certain white and black identities: [3]

For South Asian Americans, claiming Brownness allows them to establish a separate racial identity for themselves—one that is independent of White and Black Americans, but parallels those groups by employing a color-designated identity.

Dr Kumarini Silva has theorized how brownness and brown identity has, at times, even served as a cultural distraction from black-white race relations in the United States. [4] Alternatively, co-authored by several academics with a range of ethnic minority backgrounds, assistant professor Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui has explored Arab Americans' connection to brown identity, theorizing how "a Black/White binary" can result in erasure of brownness and racial homelessness for brown people. [5] In this regard, 2019 research by Sten Pultz Moslund - an associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark - identified separate and distinct black and brown identities emerging in the United Kingdom; observing the societal expression of cultural difference to the white majority by black Britons and Asian Britons since 2000. [6]

History

Since spring 2014, Ontario Human Rights Commission director Raj Dhir has presented the Understanding Anti-Brown Racism workshop, including at institutions such as Humber College. Dhir has proposed that brown identity may be a unique phenomenon for brown Canadians, partially resulting in distinct forms of discrimination not experienced by other minority groups. [7] In 2014, Danielle Sandhu discussed the concept in Theorizing Brown Identity. Sandhu, a former president of the University of Toronto Students' Union, analyzed the utility of brown identity by South Asian Canadians, and the identity's intersection with black identity; whether its expression supported or hindered the distinct separate identity of black people. [8] [9]

In 2017, Canadian writer Naben Ruthnum suggested that brown identity was at risk of being "shaped by outside perception, by the imagination that the majority imposes upon us". [10] Ruthnum's writing and research into the phenomenon, which he associates with South Asian food and culture, [11] has been reviewed and explored in Canadian media. [12] [10]

In 2018, discussing his experiences as a British Asian, former featherweight world champion Naseem Hamed discussed the shift in brown identity and representations that occurred in Britain, during the years that followed the 9/11 attacks. [13] Also of West Asian heritage, Dr Tufool Al-Nuaimi, an associate professor at Imperial College London, has discussed the experience of being a Saudi American in the post-9/11 United States, detailing how some "Arabs hid their brown identities behind bleached hair and blue contact lenses." [14] American Psychological Association fellow, professor Sunil Bhatia has detailed, in his Citizenship and Migrant Identity in the Post 9/11 Era, how during this period Sikh American males suffered discrimination, as their brown identity came under scrutiny by government and media alike. [15]

Actress Freida Pinto has spoken of the importance of the identity to her with the context of Hollywood, and how racial inclusivity in the industry should be meaningful, rather than what she described as token. [16] In 2019, musician Sarathy Korwar's pluralistic view on the identity, within a spectrum of South Asian ethnicities, was reported in Indian media. [17]

Academic research

In 2012, Douglas College's Widyarini Sumartojo published research which proposed how, in an analysis of South Asian Canadians respondents, adoption of brown identity was somewhat of a counter to modern multiculturalism discourse, in that it appeared to "re-inscribe race onto multiculturalism". [18] In Ayla Raza's 2014 "Negotiating "Brown": Youth Identity Formations in The Greater Toronto Area thesis, the academic demonstrated some test participants' bias toward perceiving only those of South Asian heritage as being brown, or possessing "an authentic "Brown" identity". [19]

In 2016, University of North Carolina's Kumarini Silva proposed how a changing understanding of brown identity had occurred in the early 2000s. [20] Her book Brown Threat explores how the identity evolved into more than a political, cultural or ethnic identifier, and into an increasingly hegemonic phenomenon in the context of the Western world. [21]

See also

Related Research Articles

Color blindness is a term that has been used by justices of the United States Supreme Court in several opinions relating to racial equality and social equity, particularly in public education. The term metaphorically references the medical phenomenon of color blindness.

The term "person of color" is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the United States; however, since the 2010s, it has been adopted elsewhere in the Anglosphere, including relatively limited usage in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and Singapore.

White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Critical race theory</span> Intellectual movement and framework

Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination – by social and civil-rights scholars and activists – of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Goals include challenging all mainstream and "alternative" views of racism and racial justice, including conservative, liberal, and progressive. The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming people.

Interracial adoption refers to the act of placing a child of one racial or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another racial or ethnic group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multiracialism</span> Existence of multiple racial groups within a single country

Multiracialism is a conceptual framework used to theorize and interpret identity formation in global multiracial populations. Multiracialism explores the tendency for multiracial individuals to identify with a third category of 'mixed-ness' as opposed to being a fully accepted member of multiple, or any, racial group(s). As an analytical tool, multiracialism strives to emphasize that societies are increasingly composed of multiracial individuals, warranting a broader recognition of those who do not fit into a society's clear-cut notions of race. Additionally, multiracialism also focuses on what identity formation means in the context of oppressive histories and cultural erasure.

The racial classification of Indian Americans has varied over the years and across institutions. Originally, neither the courts nor the census bureau classified Indian Americans as a race because there were only negligible numbers of Indian immigrants in the United States. Early Indian Americans were often denied their civil rights, leading to close affiliations with African Americans. For most of America's early history, the government only recognized two racial classifications, white or colored. Due to immigration laws of the time, those deemed colored were often stripped of their American citizenship or denied the ability to become citizens. For these reasons, various South Asians in America took the government to court to try and be considered white instead of colored. After advocacy from the Indian American community, the racial category of Asian Indian was finally introduced on the 1980 Census.

Brown is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a light to moderate brown complexion.

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 whites are consistently ranked above people of color." These definitions encompass a wide range of instances, including, but not limited to, belief in negative stereotypes, adaptations to white cultural standards, and thinking that supports the status quo.

Panethnicity is a political neologism used to group various ethnic groups together based on their related cultural origins; geographic, linguistic, religious, or 'racial' similarities are often used alone or in combination to draw panethnic boundaries. The term panethnic was used extensively during mid-twentieth century anti-colonial/national liberation movements. In the United States, Yen Le Espiritu popularized the term and coined the nominal term panethnicity in reference to Asian Americans, a racial category composed of disparate peoples having in common only their origin in the continent of Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black–brown unity</span> Ideology calling for unity among racialized people

Black-brown unity, variations include black-brown-unity[4][5] and black-brown-red unity,[6] is a racial-political ideology which initially developed among black scholars, writers, and activists who pushed for global activist associations between black people and brown people ,and Indigenous peoples of the Americas to unify against white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and, in some cases, European conceptualizations of masculinity, which were recognized as interrelated in maintaining white racial privilege and power over people of color globally.[7][8]

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean ethnic nationalism</span> Form of nationalism centered around the shared cultural identity of Korean people

Korean ethnic nationalism, is a political ideology and a form of ethnic and racial identity that is widely prevalent by the Korean people in Korea, particularly in South Korea. It is based on the belief that Koreans form a nation, and an ethnic group. It is centered on the notion of the minjok, a term that had been coined in Imperial Japan ("minzoku") in the early Meiji period. Minjok has been translated as "nation", "people", "ethnic group", "race", and "race-nation".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of race and ethnic relations</span> Field of study

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.

Racism is a concern for many in the Western lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities, with members of racial, ethnic, and national minorities reporting having faced discrimination from other LGBT people.

Margaret Beale Spencer is an American psychologist whose work centers on the effects of ethnicity, gender, and race on youth and adolescent development. She currently serves as the Marshall Field IV Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Dr. Spencer's career spans more than 30 years and consists of over 115 published articles and chapters, stemming from work funded by over two-dozen foundations and federal agencies.

Naben Ruthnum is a Canadian writer, who has published work under both his own name and the pen name Nathan Ripley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juliet Hooker</span> Nicaraguan political scientist

Juliet Hooker is a Nicaraguan-born political scientist who currently holds the Royce Family Professorship of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University. She is a political philosopher who focuses on racial justice, the theory of multiculturalism, and the political thought of the Americas.

White defensiveness is a term to describe defensive responses by white people to discussions of societal discrimination, structural racism, and white privilege. The term has been applied to characterize the responses of white people to portrayals of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization, or scholarship on the legacy of those systems in modern society. Academics and historians have identified multiple forms of white defensiveness, including white denial, white diversion, and white fragility, the last of which was popularized by scholar Robin DiAngelo.

Black Male Studies (BMS), also known as Black Men's Studies, Black Masculinist Studies, African American Male Studies, and African American Men's Studies, is an area of study within the interdisciplinary field of Black studies that primarily focuses on the study of Black men and boys. Its research focus includes the study of Black manhood and Black masculinity, and it draws from disciplines such as history, philosophy, and sociology.

"Global majority" is a collective term for ethnic groups which constitute approximately 85 percent of the global population. It has been used as an alternative to terms which are seen as racialized like "ethnic minority" and "person of color" (POC), or more regional terms like "visible minority" in Canada and "Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic" (BAME) in the United Kingdom.

References

  1. ↑ Varsha Gowda (August 17, 2019). "Brown and proud". The New Indian Express . Only during her college education did Kumar-Ratta realise that there were many different brown identities. "I met Indians whose parents migrated from East-Africa, but they were Indian and this prompted me to go on a journey of discovery of my identity."
  2. ↑ Philip Labrado (2019). Reconstructing a Brown Identity. Floricanto Press. ISBN   978-1951088057.
  3. ↑ Vinay Harpalani (2015), "To Be White, Black, or Brown? South Asian Americans and the Race-Color Distinction Race-Color Distinction", Global Perspectives on Colorism (Symposium Edition) Issue 4 (Volume 14 ed.), Washington University Global Studies Law Review, p. 632
  4. ↑ Kumarini Silva (2010), Brown: from identity to identification, Routledge, p. 169, The vignette described here ... is not meant to introduce blackness as part of brown identity, but rather to highlight how the particular deployment of brown as identification that is under scrutiny in this issue has in part become a way to evade the discomfort of talking about black/white race relations in the United States.
  5. ↑ Fatima Z. Chrifi Alaoui; Raquel Moreira; Krishna Pattisapu; Salma Shukri; Bernadette M. Calafell (2017). "My Name Is Not Maria/Samira - On the Interchangeability of Brownness in U.S. Pedagogical Contexts". In Sonja M. Brown Givens; Keisha Edwards Tassie (eds.). Underserved Women of Color, Voice, and Resistance: Claiming a Seat at the Table. Lexington Books. p. 32. ISBN   978-1498557269. Passing being forced onto a White body through the dismissal of their Brown identities also challenge identity categories through the development of a similar diasporic consciousnesses that renders them 'homeless' within Brown communities ... how a white body works to erase Brownness in a world captured within a Black/White binary ... My identity as a Brown Arab-American in white body left me feeling displaced and yearning for acceptance.
  6. ↑ Sten Pultz Moslund (2019), "Postmigrant Revisions of Hybridity, Belonging, and Race in Gautam Malkani's Londonstani", A Review of International English Literature (Volume 50 ed.), Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 107, A growing confidence in the representation of black and brown identities and new and heterogeneous ways of being British. Such confidence is apparent in the lack of anxieties about difference and unbelonging that characterize earlier periods of black British and British Asian literature.
  7. ↑ "Understanding Anti-Brown Racism". Humber College. Is there a unique "Brown" identity in Canada? Does being "Brown" expose someone to different and unique forms of racism or discrimination not experienced by Black, Asian or Indigenous people?
  8. ↑ "Community Network: Danielle Sandhu". Canadian Race Relations Foundation. December 17, 2015. Her master's thesis, Theorizing Brown Identity, examines the possibilities and limitations of theorizing Brown identity as an anti-racist and anti-colonial framework ... Sandhu completed her Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto and served three terms on the executive of the University of Toronto Students' Union.
  9. ↑ Danielle Sandhu (2014), "Introduction", Theorizing Brown Identity, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education: University of Toronto, pp. 2–3, Brown identity or Brownness could be mobilized as an essentialist identity among South Asian communities for the purpose of shared anti-racist and anti-colonial resistance. Here Brown identity speaks to the racialized identity of South Asians ... How does Brown identity relate to, support, or hinder the objectives of Black identity?
  10. 1 2 Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite (September 1, 2017). "Review: Naben Ruthnum's Curry explores issues of identity in food and fiction". Globe and Mail .
  11. ↑ Naben Ruthnum (2017). Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race. Coach House Books. ISBN   978-1552453513. The distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity
  12. ↑ Ryan B. Patrick (August 17, 2017). "How Naben Ruthnum uses curry to stir discussion on what it means to be South Asian in Canada". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His book Curry is an engaging and insightful long-form essay that connects the dots between the popular dish and how it functions as shorthand for brown identity in representing the food, culture and social perception of the South Asian diaspora.
  13. ↑ Amna Qureshi (September 6, 2018). "how 2001 changed everything for brown identity". Vice Media.
  14. ↑ Tufool Al-Nuaimi (2005), "Adopting a Different Brown", America's Worst Brown, MIT OpenCourseWare: MIT Press, p. 8
  15. ↑ Sunil Bhatia (2018). "Citizenship and Migrant Identity in the Post 9/11 Era". In Phillip L. Hammack Jr (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0199938735.
  16. ↑ Ankur Pathak (September 14, 2018). "Freida Pinto On Woody Allen, Brown Identity In Hollywood And Why She Hasn't Done A Bollywood Film Yet". Huffington Post .
  17. ↑ Muneef Khan (December 11, 2019). "There is no one brown identity". The New Indian Express . Sarathy Korwar: "A lot of collaborators didn't reside in London but were based in Mumbai, Delhi, Abu Dhabi, etc. The idea of the album was to feature various South Asian voices to drive home the point that there is no one South Asian voice. More importantly, there is no one brown identity"
  18. ↑ Sumartojo, Widyarini (2012), "Conclusion", My kind of Brown": Indo-Canadian youth identity and belonging in Greater Vancouver, Simon Fraser University, p. 117, As a reference to skin colour, "Brown" seems to reflect the importance of race to respondents' identities such that its adoption stands somewhat in contrast to pervading multicultural discourse ... In a sense, the term "Brown" works to re-inscribe race onto multiculturalism
  19. ↑ Ayla Raza (2014), "A Brown Identity: Multi-Layered, Fluid, And Ambiguous", "Negotiating "Brown": Youth Identity Formations in The Greater Toronto Area, University of Toronto, p. 48, Considered him to be "Brown" because he was able to trace his lineage to a country in South Asia. One of the defining features of a "Brown" identity, then, is the ability to trace one's lineage to South Asia. This seems to be the most salient feature of a "Brown identity. "Hence, the theme of an authentic "Brown" identity, or if one is "really Brown"(Participant 1) arose in the interviews.
  20. ↑ Anita Rao; Frank Stasio (December 8, 2016). "Being "Brown" in Post 9/11 America". WUNC (FM) . Silva interweaves her own personal experience with ethnographic research and popular culture analysis to understand how a shifting understanding of "brown" identity shapes the treatment and control of brown bodies in post-9/11 America.
  21. ↑ Kumarini Silva (2016). Brown Threat: Identification in the Security State. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN   978-1517900038. How has the concept changed since 9/11? In the most sustained examination of these questions to date, Kumarini Silva argues that "brown" is no longer conceived of solely as a cultural, ethnic, or political identity.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.