Geographers at Work: race, ethnicity, and youth.

Here are examples of geographic theory and scholarship on this week's themes of race, ethnicity, and youth:

WOU login may be required to access the readings.

• On race: two excerpts from Rashad Shabazz's Spatializing Blackness (2015), the Preface, which talks about his personal experience growing up as a black male in Chicago, and the Introduction, which lays out his theoretical framework and research agenda on race and geography. This work is intersectional in the way that it draws connections between place, race, and gender.
• Also on race: Chapter 1 in Katherine McKittrick's Demonic Grounds (2006), which outlines a theory and language for understanding "black geographies." (You may note that this work is foundational for Shabazz's book).
• For another perspective on race: Jacqueline Housel, "Geographies of whiteness: the active construction of racialized privilege in Buffalo, New York," Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 10, No. 2, March 2009, 132-151.
• On ethnicity: Akram Fouad Katter has written a historical geography of "Syrian" identity and migration to the U.S.: "Becoming 'Syrian' in America: A Global Geography of Ethnicity and Nation," Diaspora 14.2/3 (2005): 299-331. Note how he links this topic to the idea of "imagined communities", which we discussed as part of sense of place and scale.
• And the following article draws intersections between ethnicity and gender, mobility (migration) and economy (capitalism): Elizabeth Sweet, "Locating Latinas in a diverse economies framework: evidence from Chicago," Gender, Place, and Culture, 2016, Vol. 23, No. 1, 55-71.
• On youth: here is an interesting article on how teenagers fit into geographies of youth and children: Susie Weller, "Situating (Young) Teenagers in Geographies of Children and Youth," Children's Geographies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 97-108, April 2006.
• For another perspective on age and geography: Maurizio Antoinetti & Mario Garrett, "Body capital and the geography of aging," Area (2012) 44.3, 364-370.

Comments

[Kamalei P.]

Jacqueline Housel talks about the "Geographies of whiteness: the active construction of racialized privilege in Buffalo, New York," and her story has shown that white privilege is constructed in the microgeographies of everyday spaces. She wrote that, “An examination of the subtle nuances of whiteness and white privilege begins with the lived experiences, meaning-making ‘stories,’ of those who have lost racialized privilege.” Although some claim that we live in an ‘all white world’, I sort of disagree with it. In my opinion it all depends where you grow up, because there can be more of a certain race in one area than there is in another area. I think wherever there is a more dominant race, then that race will be the more privileged race in that area.

[Matt Herbert]

Kamalei, when I went to Thailand a few years ago to visit a hill-tribe people called the "Hmong," I experience both a loss and gain of "white privilege" in different aspects. When buying products (such as bricks for a project we were working on), the locals would charge me 3 to 4 times the amount of the original price if I was there alone. This is because I was seen as the "white man" with a lot of money. In this situation, I experienced a 'loss of privilege' because I was white. However, when it comes to sharing ideas and making decisions as a group, with the local Hmong people, most have the idea that 'white people' are smarter, richer, and therefore "know best." We had to be very careful to not come across this way. It is very easy for people from Western cultures to go to other countries and take control, make decisions, and assert their dominance over another people group. I believe this people say we live in an "all white world."

[Jiayue Wang]

Teenagers and children who grow up in complex geography are more easier to faces race and ethnicity difficulties.The article Situating (Young) Teenagers in Geographies of Children and Youth, focus on teenagers' geographies rests on the contribution that geographers can make to challenging negative stereotypes of teenagers within policy and the media. Researches engaged in developing methods to challenge unequal power relations between adult researchers and young participants,but little focus has been placed on utilizing participants' own constructions of themselves.

[Jeanette Betancourt]

In the reading about Susie Weller, it mentions the meanings for child, teenager, and youth it has good terms for all. I liked how it talked about the meanings in different perspectives and not just one. And it also says that the term teenager is socially and culturally constructed because that makes sense. And I agree when they mentioned how the media throws negative assumptions towards teenagers which is not always true. They should not always talk bad about the things they do but should also mention the good things they do.

[Ana Bautista]

I feel like everything is misinterpreted. I think the moral of this is that people should not judge other people. I know people think they do not think they are being rude, but in reality they are. People should just look at person as a human being. Let everything else come with having a conversation.