Drawing cartoon faces - a functional imaging study of the cognitive neuroscience of drawing

We report a functional imaging study of drawing cartoon faces. Normal, untrained participants were scanned while viewing simple black and white cartoon line-drawings of human faces, retaining them for a short memory interval, and then drawing them without vision of their hand or the paper. Specific encoding and retention of information about the faces was tested for by contrasting these two stages (with display of cartoon faces) against the exploration and retention of random dot stimuli. Drawing was contrasted between conditions in which only memory of a previously viewed face was available versus a condition in which both memory and simultaneous viewing of the cartoon was possible, and versus drawing of a new, previously unseen, face. We show that the encoding of cartoon faces powerfully activates the face sensitive areas of the lateral occipital cortex and the fusiform gyrus, but there is no significant activation in these areas during the retention interval. Activity in both areas was also high when drawing the displayed cartoons. Drawing from memory activates areas in posterior parietal cortex and frontal areas. This activity is consistent with the encoding and retention of the spatial information about the face to be drawn as a visuo-motor action plan, either representing a series of targets for ocular fixation or as spatial targets for the drawing actio

Feeling Racial Pride in the Mode of Frederick Douglass

Drawing on Frederick Douglass’s arguments about racial pride, I develop and defend an account of feeling racial pride that centers on resisting racialized oppression. Such pride is racially ecumenical in that it does not imply partiality towards one’s own racial group. I argue that it can both accurately represent its intentional object and be intrinsically and extrinsically valuable to experience. It follows, I argue, that there is, under certain conditions, a morally unproblematic, and plausibly valuable, kind of racial pride available to white people, though one that could hardly differ more from what is generally meant by “white pride.

Ecological Crisis, or “Intersex Panic,” as Answer of the Real?

Drawing upon Cal’s eventual metamorphosis into “The [white] Man” in Middlesex, and an examination of the Real of ecological crisis, Hsu explores the intersection of environmental racism, climate change denial, and intersex discrimination in order to advocate for a renewed awareness of ecological interdependency and the need for self-determination of people of colour in ecological and environmental justice discourses

Drawing the Line: How African, Caribbean and White British Women Live Out Psychologically Abusive Experiences

The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Violence Against Women, 19 (9):1104-32, Sept 2013 by SAGE Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. © The Author(s) 2013. The online version of this article can be found at: http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/19/9/110

Election Law and White Identity Politics

The role of race in American politics looms large in several election law doctrines. Regrettably, though, these doctrines’ analyses of race, racial identity, and the relationships between race and politics often lack sophistication, historical context, or foresight. The political status quo is treated as race-neutral, when in fact it is anything but. Specifically, the doctrines rely upon sanguine theories of democracy uncorrupted by white identity–based political calculations, while in fact such calculations, made on the part of both voters and political parties, are pervasive. In this Article, I appraise the doctrine pertaining to majority-minority voting districts, racial gerrymandering doctrine, the doctrine governing ballot access disputes, and campaign finance doctrine through the lens of white identity politics. Drawing from research in political science, sociology, and history, I argue that these doctrines are blighted by what I identify as “racial blind spots” that are inconsonant with political reality. Given the role that courts play in enunciating these doctrines, their failure to meaningfully engage with the significance of white identity politics renders their governing frameworks and remedial prescriptions inapt. The Article concludes by offering a number of suggestions, both doctrinal and legislative, for how to mitigate white identity politics

Racism as Self-Love

In the United States today, much interpersonal racism is driven by corrupt forms of self-preservation. Drawing from Jean- Jacques Rousseau, I refer to this as self-love racism. The byproduct of socially-induced racial anxieties and perceived threats to one’s physical or social wellbeing, self-love racism is the protective attachment to the racialized dimensions of one’s social status, wealth, privilege, and/or identity. Examples include police officer related shootings of unarmed Black Americans, anti-immigrant sentiment, and the resurgence of unabashed white supremacy. This form of racism is defined less by the introduction of racism into the world and more on the perpetuation of racially unjust socioeconomic and political structures. My theory, therefore, works at the intersection of the interpersonal and structural by offering an account of moral complacency in racist social structures. My goal is to reorient the directionality of philosophical work on racism by questioning the sense of innocence at the core of white ways-of-being

Habits of whiteness in the neighborhood: a critical race analysis of urban ministry paradigms

Recent decades have seen an increased interest among predominantly white, middle-class evangelicals in church planting and organizing ministries in urban centers, often in racially diverse neighborhoods undergoing the process of gentrification. This thesis will analyze the phenomenon of white urban ministry through the lens of critical whiteness studies and psychoanalytic theory, drawing on Shannon Sullivan's notion of whiteness as unconscious habit characterized by ontological expansiveness. I propose that sincere efforts on the part of white urban ministry practitioners to form and nurture diverse communities rooted in place are impeded by habitual modes of relationship to place formed in predominantly white contexts, which reproduce, however unintentionally, patterns of white supremacy and displacement of people of color. The thesis begins with a survey of print and online sources including accounts by white urban ministry practitioners and critiques of their models. I then address the theological and affective motives and rationales for these models, and examine their relationship to wider social patterns of gentrification. Next I will analyze these patterns in light of the work of critical theorists on whiteness, focusing on the nature of white relationship to place shaped by centuries of colonialism. Developmental psychology will then be employed to account for white habit formation, drawing upon Kohut's account of the development of grandiosity. I conclude by calling for a paradigmatic shift toward de-centering whiteness, drawing upon theological and psychological resources to transform white relationship to place into one of respect and deference to diverse ways of being

[Review of] Yanick St. Jean and Joe R. Feagin. Double Burden: Black Women and Everyday Racism

The women interviewed in Double Burden share personal accounts of what it is like to be black and female in the contemporary United States. Drawing on over two hundred interviews with middle-class, well-educated black women, Yannick St. Jean and Joe R. Feagin present a collective memory of the misrepresentation of black women in our history, as well as individual experiences and triumphs. Through excerpts of personal narratives on topics including career, work, physical appearance, media representation, relationships with white women, and motherhood, the women recount experiences dealing with everyday racism, the denigrating social messages about their beauty, self-worth, sexuality, intelligence, and drive