TY - JOUR
T1 - When skin talks
T2 - whitening strategies used in higher education*
AU - Kogan, Liuba
AU - Galarza, Francisco
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - This paper aims to identify the ‘whitening’ strategies used by undergraduate students in a developing country with strong levels of ethno-racial discrimination and social mobility. We adopt a critical, constructivist theoretical perspective and a qualitative approach, in the design and analysis, for which we use three instruments: surveys, focus groups and the Q-Methodology. We find that students use several ‘whitening’ strategies (e.g. wearing expensive clothing, improving their diction and managing their bodies) in order to shield against the ethno-racial discrimination they face, and protect from the negative effects it imposes on their personal, academic and employment outcomes. Our findings also reveal that race is redefined in such a way that it involves more than just the skin colour, a process that is enabled by a relatively high degree of social mobility, experienced in the wake of a booming economy.
AB - This paper aims to identify the ‘whitening’ strategies used by undergraduate students in a developing country with strong levels of ethno-racial discrimination and social mobility. We adopt a critical, constructivist theoretical perspective and a qualitative approach, in the design and analysis, for which we use three instruments: surveys, focus groups and the Q-Methodology. We find that students use several ‘whitening’ strategies (e.g. wearing expensive clothing, improving their diction and managing their bodies) in order to shield against the ethno-racial discrimination they face, and protect from the negative effects it imposes on their personal, academic and employment outcomes. Our findings also reveal that race is redefined in such a way that it involves more than just the skin colour, a process that is enabled by a relatively high degree of social mobility, experienced in the wake of a booming economy.
KW - discrimination
KW - Higher education
KW - Latin America
KW - Peru
KW - race
KW - whitening
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139778414&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/23793406.2017.1400895
DO - 10.1080/23793406.2017.1400895
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85139778414
SN - 2379-3406
VL - 2
SP - 77
EP - 91
JO - Whiteness and Education
JF - Whiteness and Education
IS - 2
ER -