This article traces debates about African American professional football players’ protests during the national anthem. After reviewing over 400 media texts, we found that each side operates from mirrored ethical positions that lead to competing conceptions of patriotism. We use the term “patriarchal patriotism” for people opposed to the protests since they hold that institutions of authority protect citizens, and therefore citizens owe them loyalty and deference. We use “constructive patriotism” for protest supporters since they hold that citizens have an ethical obligation to oppose inequities and work on the nation through protest and dissent. Each position, however, operates as two sides of the same racial–patriotic coin. We argue that the strategic embrace of patriotism by protest proponents limits the radical, transformative potential of the protests by operating on a nationalistic political terrain that suggests the racial state can operate for racial benevolence.
Recent studies of ethnic return migration have explained why (economic, political, and affective) and where (Asia and Europe) this phenomenon has primarily occurred. Of the research available, however, few have examined the manner in which framings and practices of gender impact the experiences of those who participate in these transnational sojourns. This study fills this void by examining how Korean
This article addresses and attempts to reconcile the epistemological divide in recent return migration scholarship (e.g. diasporic return vs. ancestral homeland migration). Relying on interviews conducted with 1.5/2nd-generation Korean American returnees’, this study finds that an orientation toward the Korean peninsula and an abstracted Korean-ness serves as one of the central motivations for their migration to South Korea. I argue that this orientation and cultural affinity toward the Korean peninsula is not proof of a diasporic ontology but rather of a discursive reality promulgated by popular and legal discourses both in South Korea and the United States. Within these discourses, culture and ethnicity are interpreted not as being socially constructed and located but as essential and natural. Whether or not these perspectives hold ontological merit is thus superfluous—the Korean American returnees’ interviewed believe them to be valid and articulate their salience within their own migration narratives. However, this article also finds that possessing an orientation toward a Korean ethnicity and peninsula does not preclude these individuals from eventually negotiating their migratory identities within and against an authentic’ Korean diasporic subjectivity. These findings showcase how Korean American returnees’ both adopt and challenge dominant discourses about ethnicity, nationality, and diaspora through their transnationalism.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.