Colourism – skin shade prejudice – is a social justice issue for People of Colour globally. Yet, ... more Colourism – skin shade prejudice – is a social justice issue for People of Colour globally. Yet, there has been no major sociological study that explores colourism in the UK. Addressing this gap, we draw on nine in-depth qualitative interviews with Black and Mixed-Race heterosexual men living in England that formed part of a larger study of colourism. Using reflexive thematic analysis through an intersectional feminist lens, we argue that colourism is gendered. We found that Black men both experience colourism and perpetuate it by teasing male peers and favouring women with light skin. Our analysis generated three themes: (1) navigating colourism as part of growing up; (2) skin shade paradoxes for Black and Mixed-Race men; and (3) colourism and desirability through the Black male gaze. This research provides a nuanced exploration of colourism from Black and Mixed-Race men’s perspectives. It underscores the significance of colourism in the UK.
This paper takes up Avtar Brah's (1999) invitation to write back to the issues she raises in ... more This paper takes up Avtar Brah's (1999) invitation to write back to the issues she raises in her mapping of the production of gendered, classed and racialised subjectivities in west London. It addresses two topics that, together, illuminate racialised and gendered interpellation and psychosocial processes. The paper is divided into two main sections. The first draws on empirical research on the transition to motherhood conducted in east London to consider one mother's experience of giving birth in the local maternity hospital. The maternity ward constituted a site where racialised difference became salient, leading her to construct her maternal identity by asserting her difference from Bangladeshi mothers and so self-racialising, as well as ‘othering’ Bangladeshi mothers. The paper analyses the ways in which her biography may help to explain why her experience of the maternity hospital interpellates her into racialised positioning. The second section focuses on media respons...
Sarah as the director may only be one author in the film but she has authority over whose stories... more Sarah as the director may only be one author in the film but she has authority over whose stories are told. She is a somewhat shadowy character in the film, at once central to the unfolding of the stories and somehow removed as the person on the other side of the camera. We hear her voice asking questions and narrating email correspondence and watch as she directs her interviewees, most memorably Michael’s – the man who Sarah continues to call her father – narration of his story, the only one that has been written down from start to finish and that (as far as the viewer sees) is recorded in a professional recording studio. Sarah’s authority is brought to the viewer’s attention by Michael towards the end of the film as he points out that from the reels of footage of each interview, along with the painstakingly re-enacted memories filmed on a vintage Super-8 camera, she will have to put together a story. The final edit will be hers. That Sarah chooses to leave her father’s insightful reference to this editing shows that she knows this – and she wants the viewer to know that she knows it. In this sense, despite the many stories told, the film is her story. As a PhD researcher in the process of sifting through the vast volume of data that I have amassed – and am yet to amass – in the process of producing a coherent and meaningful argument (or story) for my PhD, I am faced with a similar challenge and responsibility. Which of the many stories told and the many individuals who have told them will be foregrounded in my own selection and editing for my thesis? And how will these stories shape my own understanding of what my PhD is about? If a participant asked me what my PhD was ‘really about’, what would I say to them? How would they themselves and the way they ask the question shape my response? Researching other people’s lives is a co-constructive process, as narrative researchers engaging with memories, identities and the construction and reconstruction of these in dialogue with different audiences – including the researcher – do well to acknowledge. Unlike Sarah I am not the protagonist of the stories that my participants tell, yet my very presence at their telling shapes these, and I have the authority to choose how they get retold in my PhD thesis. So what is Stories We Tell ‘really’ about? To me it is ‘about’ a lot of things but most powerfully about authorship and authority. As Jerome Bruner and others have memorably pointed out, human beings are homo narrans, story tellers by nature, and in this sense we are all authors working with the people, objects and places around us to make sense of our lives. This film uses a powerful family history to show this and as a viewer, I believed in the film; not for all its clever editing and ‘archival’ footage but for the emotions invested in the telling of the stories by the authors involved. So beyond making art or making money, what this film may be about for Sarah and the many authors involved is making sense.
While Palestine is one of the most contested areas of the world, this thesis argues that the comp... more While Palestine is one of the most contested areas of the world, this thesis argues that the complexities of Palestinian narratives are rarely fully heard. It documents how Palestinian university students narrate their lives under occupation for a foreign audience, arguing that motivations for participating in the research affected the narratives shared. Some argued that they were resisting the illegal Israeli occupation by taking part and sharing stories designed to encourage an international audience to oppose it. Others condemned foreign intervention and constructed Muslim resistance as essential for Palestinian liberation. The thesis shows how participants constructed place in the interviews in ways that strengthened the messages they sought to convey and it explores the precarity in their accounts of how they negotiate the threat of imprisonment and death at the hands of the Israeli army. It argues that participants drew on historical claims to Palestine to emphasise their belo...
This article examines the effect of ‘War on Terror’ discourses on the ways in which young Somali ... more This article examines the effect of ‘War on Terror’ discourses on the ways in which young Somali Muslim women negotiate hierarchies of belonging in Britain. It begins by considering how discourses of the ‘War on Terror’ have helped to legitimize Islamophobia and to exclude Muslims from belonging to the nation. The main part of the article draws on the findings of a study of Somali young women in a London college. It argues that while young Somali women in London construct themselves as unaffected by Islamophobia, their efforts to establish themselves as ‘cool’ by forging ‘new Muslim identities’ and ‘new ethnicities’ are driven by their positioning low down in the local hierarchies of belonging as a result of Islamophobia and racism.
Colourism – skin shade prejudice – is a social justice issue for People of Colour globally. Yet, ... more Colourism – skin shade prejudice – is a social justice issue for People of Colour globally. Yet, there has been no major sociological study that explores colourism in the UK. Addressing this gap, we draw on nine in-depth qualitative interviews with Black and Mixed-Race heterosexual men living in England that formed part of a larger study of colourism. Using reflexive thematic analysis through an intersectional feminist lens, we argue that colourism is gendered. We found that Black men both experience colourism and perpetuate it by teasing male peers and favouring women with light skin. Our analysis generated three themes: (1) navigating colourism as part of growing up; (2) skin shade paradoxes for Black and Mixed-Race men; and (3) colourism and desirability through the Black male gaze. This research provides a nuanced exploration of colourism from Black and Mixed-Race men’s perspectives. It underscores the significance of colourism in the UK.
This paper takes up Avtar Brah's (1999) invitation to write back to the issues she raises in ... more This paper takes up Avtar Brah's (1999) invitation to write back to the issues she raises in her mapping of the production of gendered, classed and racialised subjectivities in west London. It addresses two topics that, together, illuminate racialised and gendered interpellation and psychosocial processes. The paper is divided into two main sections. The first draws on empirical research on the transition to motherhood conducted in east London to consider one mother's experience of giving birth in the local maternity hospital. The maternity ward constituted a site where racialised difference became salient, leading her to construct her maternal identity by asserting her difference from Bangladeshi mothers and so self-racialising, as well as ‘othering’ Bangladeshi mothers. The paper analyses the ways in which her biography may help to explain why her experience of the maternity hospital interpellates her into racialised positioning. The second section focuses on media respons...
Sarah as the director may only be one author in the film but she has authority over whose stories... more Sarah as the director may only be one author in the film but she has authority over whose stories are told. She is a somewhat shadowy character in the film, at once central to the unfolding of the stories and somehow removed as the person on the other side of the camera. We hear her voice asking questions and narrating email correspondence and watch as she directs her interviewees, most memorably Michael’s – the man who Sarah continues to call her father – narration of his story, the only one that has been written down from start to finish and that (as far as the viewer sees) is recorded in a professional recording studio. Sarah’s authority is brought to the viewer’s attention by Michael towards the end of the film as he points out that from the reels of footage of each interview, along with the painstakingly re-enacted memories filmed on a vintage Super-8 camera, she will have to put together a story. The final edit will be hers. That Sarah chooses to leave her father’s insightful reference to this editing shows that she knows this – and she wants the viewer to know that she knows it. In this sense, despite the many stories told, the film is her story. As a PhD researcher in the process of sifting through the vast volume of data that I have amassed – and am yet to amass – in the process of producing a coherent and meaningful argument (or story) for my PhD, I am faced with a similar challenge and responsibility. Which of the many stories told and the many individuals who have told them will be foregrounded in my own selection and editing for my thesis? And how will these stories shape my own understanding of what my PhD is about? If a participant asked me what my PhD was ‘really about’, what would I say to them? How would they themselves and the way they ask the question shape my response? Researching other people’s lives is a co-constructive process, as narrative researchers engaging with memories, identities and the construction and reconstruction of these in dialogue with different audiences – including the researcher – do well to acknowledge. Unlike Sarah I am not the protagonist of the stories that my participants tell, yet my very presence at their telling shapes these, and I have the authority to choose how they get retold in my PhD thesis. So what is Stories We Tell ‘really’ about? To me it is ‘about’ a lot of things but most powerfully about authorship and authority. As Jerome Bruner and others have memorably pointed out, human beings are homo narrans, story tellers by nature, and in this sense we are all authors working with the people, objects and places around us to make sense of our lives. This film uses a powerful family history to show this and as a viewer, I believed in the film; not for all its clever editing and ‘archival’ footage but for the emotions invested in the telling of the stories by the authors involved. So beyond making art or making money, what this film may be about for Sarah and the many authors involved is making sense.
While Palestine is one of the most contested areas of the world, this thesis argues that the comp... more While Palestine is one of the most contested areas of the world, this thesis argues that the complexities of Palestinian narratives are rarely fully heard. It documents how Palestinian university students narrate their lives under occupation for a foreign audience, arguing that motivations for participating in the research affected the narratives shared. Some argued that they were resisting the illegal Israeli occupation by taking part and sharing stories designed to encourage an international audience to oppose it. Others condemned foreign intervention and constructed Muslim resistance as essential for Palestinian liberation. The thesis shows how participants constructed place in the interviews in ways that strengthened the messages they sought to convey and it explores the precarity in their accounts of how they negotiate the threat of imprisonment and death at the hands of the Israeli army. It argues that participants drew on historical claims to Palestine to emphasise their belo...
This article examines the effect of ‘War on Terror’ discourses on the ways in which young Somali ... more This article examines the effect of ‘War on Terror’ discourses on the ways in which young Somali Muslim women negotiate hierarchies of belonging in Britain. It begins by considering how discourses of the ‘War on Terror’ have helped to legitimize Islamophobia and to exclude Muslims from belonging to the nation. The main part of the article draws on the findings of a study of Somali young women in a London college. It argues that while young Somali women in London construct themselves as unaffected by Islamophobia, their efforts to establish themselves as ‘cool’ by forging ‘new Muslim identities’ and ‘new ethnicities’ are driven by their positioning low down in the local hierarchies of belonging as a result of Islamophobia and racism.
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Papers by Aisha Phoenix