AFRICA IS COMING TO THE CAPE*

ABSTRACT. At the southern tip of Africa, culmination of one of the world'sgreat population shifts is there for the witnessing: a southward movement of Bantu‐speaking Black Africans, previously stalled in South Africa'sEastern Cape first by climatic factors and later by European‐imposed racial segregation. Cape Town, throughout its demographic history a “Coloured” and “White” city, is now Africanizing. Liberation from apartheid has brought rapid African influx, and the metropolitan population has more than doubled in less than twenty years. Sociocultural tensions and sociocultural possibilities ensue.     

Burning issues: Whiteness, rurality and the politics of difference

In the past decade geographers have critiqued the exclusivity of idyllic representations of rurality and sought to explore the diverse experiences of Other social groups in the countryside. This paper builds upon that small but significant strand of research which has highlighted the whiteness of representations of rurality and the consequences of this for racialised minorities. These debates have been crucially important in forwarding our understanding of racially-exclusive constructions of idyllic country living; however, it is important that academics neither assume that such ideas are forever fixed, nor that they affect all minority ethnic groups in the same ways. This paper takes both the potential power and frailty of these ideas seriously, as it examines how the concepts of race, racism and rurality are deployed by different commentators as they debate the place of one specific minority ethnic group in the English countryside. The route taken into this is a consideration of print-media reporting of events in Firle, Sussex, where, in 2003, some white rural residents symbolically purged their village of Gypsy-Travellers by burning a mock caravan complete with effigies at their annual bonfire celebrations. In conclusion, the paper challenges the relative lack of attention to these issues within the white-dominated discipline of geography, and argues that it is imperative to trace the dynamic ways in which the whiteness of idyllic understandings of the rural are reinforced and challenged through contemporary social practice.     

THE GEOPOLITICS OF EUGENICS AND THE EXCLUSION OF PHILIPPINE IMMIGRANTS FROM THE UNITED STATES

ABSTRACT. From 1898 to 1936, Philippine immigrants were routinely excluded from the United States, where incipient practices of eugenic “science” and geopolitics were informing social policy. Concomitant with emergent theories of evolution, a geopolitically informed eugenics forewarned of possible racial competition and societal degeneration. Immigration legislation emerged as an effective social policy to exclude perceived undesirable, and racially distinct, immigrant groups, ostensibly to protect race and state.     

Tracking the Settlement of North African Immigrants: speculations on the social and cultural impacts of a newly arrived immigrant group

In the past five years Australia has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of North African arrivals. The majority of North African arrivals for the past 4 years have arrived as humanitarian entrants. This migration stream reflected a shift in the regional focus of the humanitarian program towards Africa. The majority of North African arrivals since 2000–01 have been from Sudan. The States of New South Wales and Victoria received the highest proportions of these arrivals. Key issues, and important research topics for social scientists, are at least threefold. First, the domestic politics and international geopolitics of this humanitarian flow need critical analysis. Second, the suitability of settlement services needs to be assessed. Specifically, the effects and merit of privatising service provision to these refugees requires rigorous scholarly assessment. Finally, more needs to be known about the cultural adaptation of this group, especially youth. Research into the experiences of racism and, relatedly, the existence and appropriateness of anti-racism initiatives is required.     

The Power of Naming: The Toponymic Geographies of Commemorated African-Americans

The importance of commemorative place-naming has been the focus of numerous studies that explore the relationship between memory and political representation. Few studies, however, have systematically examined regional geographical patterns of racial minorities in the United States. Using a variety of Internet-based mapping tools, I have collected a data set on the regional variation of the commemoration of thirty famous African-Americans (fifteen men and fifteen women). The research presented here explores how there are regional characteristics associated with where African-Americans are commemorated, particularly pertaining to cities. I also explore the geographic dispersal of these commemorations and whether there is a gender bias in the process of commemoration. Additionally, I focus on the duality of commemorations as an index of both African-American and the dominant white power structures.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: Portable Utopia: Glasgow and the United States 1820–1920. Bernard Aspinwall. Studies in Russian Historical Geography. James H. Bater and R. A. French, eds. Water and Sanitation: Economic and Sociological Perspectives. Peter G. Bourne, ed. Green Politics. Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak. The Southern Cone: Realities of the Authoritarian State. César N. Caviedes. Women in Third World Development. Sue Ellen Charlton. Land Management: New Directions. David Chiddick and Alan Millington, eds. Geography and Ethnic Pluralism. Colin Clarke, David Ley, Ceri Peach, eds. Geomorphological Hazards in Los Angeles. R. U. Cooke. Regional Impacts of United States-Mexico Economic Relations. Alfonso Corona and Lay James Gibson. eds. Patterns of Jobs and Geographic Mobility. Torvald Gerger. Cities and Sickness: Health Care in Urban America. Ann Lennarson Greer and Scott Greer, eds. Neighborhoods: Their Place in Urban Life. Howard W. Hallman. Development and the Rural-Urban Divide. John Harriss and Mick Moore, eds. Patterns of Undocumented Migration: Mexico and the United States. Richard C. Jones, ed. Central Place Theory. Leslie J. King. The Geography of Western Europe: A Socio-economic Survey. Paul L. Knox. Regions and Resources: Strategies for Development. David T. Krisge, Daniel A. Seiver, Oliver S. Goldsmith and Michael J. Scott. Geography of Crowding and Human Response. A Study of Ahmedabad City. K. M. Kulkarni. Haciendo Pueblo. The Development of a Guadalajaran Suburb. Kathleen Logan. The Imperial Lion: Human Dimensions of Wildlife Management in Central Africa. Stewart A. Marks. Water in the Hispanic Southwest: A Social and Legal History, 1550–1850. Michael C. Meyer. Imlil: A Moroccan Mountain Community in Change. James A. Miller. Tourism in Canada: Selected Issues and Options. Peter E. Murphy, ed. David Harvey's Geography. John L. Paterson. Raster Scanning, Processing and Plotting of Cartographic Documents. Donna J. Peuquet and A. Raymond Boyle. The USSR and the Muslim World: Issues in Domestic and Foreign Policy. Yaacov Ro'i, ed. Environmental Perception and Behavior: An Inventory and Prospect. Thomas F. Saarinen, David Seamon, and James L. Sell. Incised channels, Morphology, Dynamics, and Control. Stanley A. Schumm, Michael D. Harvey, and Chester C. Watson. The Gap Between Rich and Poor: Contending Perspectives on the Political Economy of Development. Mitchell A. Seligson, ed. Twentieth-Century Richmond. Planning, Politics and Race. Christopher Silver. Land Conservation and Development: Examples of Land-Use Planning Projects and Programs. F. R. Steiner and H. N. van Lier, eds. Biogeography: Recent Advances and Future Directions. J. A. Taylor, ed. Late Quaternary Environments of the Soviet Union. A. A. Velichko, ed. H. E. Wright, Jr. and C. W. Barnosky, eds.     

The whiteness of gay urban belonging: criminalizing LGBTQ youth of color in queer spaces of care

Chicago’s gay village of Boystown has long been linked with whiteness, and in the past decade, tensions have flared between neighborhood residents and queer and transgender (trans) youth of color, often homeless, who come to Boystown for the many services provided by its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) nonprofit organizations, or queer spaces of care. While scholars have attended to community policing in Boystown through the Take Back Boystown movement, the role of LGBTQ nonprofits has yet to be examined in their role of criminalizing queer and trans youth of color in the neighborhood. Through an autoethnographic approach, this paper explores how several nonprofit organizations in Boystown have adopted policing strategies toward the queer and trans youth of color they serve. I argue that community policing has infiltrated these organizations to further defend and maintain an exclusive gay urban space informed by whiteness, which marks and regulates young, Black masculinities and trans femininities as deviant, untrustworthy, and criminal. Racism diminishes the ability for queer spaces of care to fulfill their mandates of supporting queer and trans youth of color, rendering the neighborhood a space of surveillance and furthering a White gay urban belonging that alienates and criminalizes these youth.     

Coloring the Field: Gender, “Race,” and the Politics of Fieldwork

My experiences combining research and activism within the Japanese-Canadian community reflect a growing concern among feminist and anti-racist scholars with the politics of work among people marginalized by racism and sexism. This concern arises within a context where “other voices” are being heard, but the legitimacy of one individual or group to represent another is being challenged. Such challenges require that essentialism and naturalism be addressed politically and theoretically, a difficult irony given the need to utilize essentialist categories to address the oppressive conditions under which they emerged. To do so, a critical theory of political construction is required.     

“If They Only Knew”: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions

This article takes on the cultural politics of “if they only knew” as it relates to alternative food practice. It draws on surveys and interviews of managers of two kinds of alternative food institutions—farmers' markets and community-supported agriculture—to illustrate the color-blind mentalities and universalizing impulses of alternative food discourse. The ways in which these discourses instantiate whiteness may have a chilling effect on people of color who tend not to participate in these markets proportionate to whites. Minor exclusionary practices may have profound implications for shaping projects of agro-food transformation.