'The Whitening Process Model' and 'Combating Hate?'
When:
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Venue:
Online
We have two papers:
a)"The Whitening Process Model: Forging an Allyship Praxis for Descendants of Southeastern European Immigrants in the United States." Yiorgo Topalidis (University of Florida) and b) "Combating Hate? Revisiting s. 718.2(a)(i) of Canada’s Criminal Code”, Sophie Liu (University of British Columbia)
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PAPER ONE: Yiorgo Topalidis, 'The Whitening Process Model: Forging an Allyship Praxis for Descendants of Southeastern European Immigrants in the United States'.
This study contributes to scholarship about the social construction of racial identity and its social memory. This contribution expands Golash-Boza’s (2015) conceptual model of Race and Racisms by incorporating a Whitening Process (WP) model. The WP model connects elements from racial formation theory, Whiteness studies, and Social Memory theory to show how White-supremacist discourses about a Southeastern European immigrant group, the Ottoman Greeks, were constructed, utilized, remembered, and forgotten. To test the WP model's elements, this study employs a mixed-method approach. The approach consists of three distinct data samples and methodologies. First is the analysis of newspaper articles and books by opinion-makers that addressed Ottoman Greek immigrant identity construction. Second is the statistical analysis of archival data collected from ship passenger lists that included the documentation of national and racial classification (n=2046). This analysis presents the contribution made by the US Immigration Bureau to Ottoman Greek immigrant identity construction. The final data set and methodology is the coding of in-depth semi-structured interviews with 36 descendants of Ottoman Greek immigrants. The analysis of this data assesses the impact that the White-supremacist discourse had on their ancestors’ racial identity claims through the descendants’ recollections. The study's broader objective is two-fold. First is the forging of social solidarity between descendants of Southeastern European immigrants writ-large, African Americans, and recent immigrants from Central and South American within an antiracist framework. And second, is the dissociation of White-supremacist Whiteness from Whiteness.
PAPER TWO: Sophie Liu, 'Combating Hate? Revisiting s. 718.2(a)(i) of Canada’s Criminal Code'
In Canada, an offender cannot be charged with a “hate crime” under the Criminal Code. Rather, hate can only be considered an aggravating factor at sentencing if the courts believe “that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression, or on any other similar factor” (subparagraph 718.2(a)(i) of the Criminal Code of Canada). Drawing on extensive archival and documentary research, in this paper, I trace the emergence of “hate crime” discourse in Canada. I do so by identifying the social issues that Canada was facing in the 1990s, which reflected the public’s concern for hate crimes. I argue that s. 718.2(a)(i) was a response to a fusion of highly complex problems: recession, unemployment, the perceived influx of immigrants, and racial tensions. While s. 718.2(a)(i) won enthusiastic support from both grassroots activists and human-rights lawyers, it does not do much to address hate. It punishes acts already punishable under other criminal statutes and does not create any new offences. It also puts more power in the hands of the justice system, which may worsen the already complicated relationship between minority communities and law enforcement agencies. I contend that s. 718.2(a)(i) is not about combating hate; it is about appealing to the political motivations of activists and does not address larger systemic problems. The debate over s. 718.2(a)(i) may also have pushed progressives onto the conservative “tough-on-crime” bandwagon.
Contact name:
Katy Pettit
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Sophie Liu
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Sophie X. Liu is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at University of British Columbia researching barriers to the integration of visible minorities in the Northern American context. She draws on experimental, ethnographic, and archival methods to explore legal and policy responses to immigration, and attitudes of native-born populations toward immigrants and immigration. Currently, she is working on two projects in Canada: (1) the criminalization of hate-motivated violence; and (2) why hate-motivated violence go under-reported, with a focus on the role of gender in victims’ decision-making processes.
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Yiorgo Topalidis
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Yiorgo Topalidis holds masters degrees in Microbiology and History from the University of Connecticut and Southern Connecticut State University, respectively. He is currently a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida. Yiorgo is a Tedder and Rothman Fellow for the 2021 – 2022 academic year. His field of research is Historical Sociology. Yiorgo's research interests are white identity construction, contestation, and transgenerational memory transfer. He is currently composing his dissertation which proposes the Whitening Process Model as an epistemological framework. The study employs mixed methods to examine Ottoman Greek immigrant identity construction in an early 20th-century US context. Yiorgo's research interlaces with scholarship that attempts to deconstruct whiteness and the correlations between whiteness and white supremacy.