(Net)roots of Belonging: Contemporary Discourses of (In)valuability and Post-Racial Citizenship in the United States

Indexing neoliberal ideology and political identities in a racially diverse business community

“…Overall, this analysis illustrates intersections between political stances and other identities (Gordon, 2004) through showing that taking neoliberal stances constitutes normative professional identities in this community and how taking neoliberal stances is more difficult for racial minorities or those who talk about supporting racial minority businesses. Thus, this study illustrates the ways that structural inequalities among White and racial minority groups perpetuated by neoliberal ideology (Couldry, 2010; Enck-Wanzer, 2011; Morrissey, 2015) are visible in the everyday talk of White and racial minority people in the business community. While White, upper class people have the privilege of being able to ignore the inequalities created by neoliberal ideology, minorities do not because neoliberal ideology hinders their daily business practices and is often in tension with their racial minority professional identity.…”

“…These grants resulted from affirmative action policies created to correct past discrimination faced by minorities and women in businesses. Orienting to race as a relevant social category connected to inequality challenges racial neoliberal ideology (Enck-Wanzer, 2011; Morrissey, 2015), which posits that racial inequality no longer exists, and therefore that people should speak of themselves as individuals and should discuss inequality as a result of individual failure. Under this logic, ‘programs designed to remedy racism (affirmative action, social services, desegregation, etc.…”

“…Through using the pronoun ‘you’, Ed constructs corporations as no longer interested in supporting minority groups but rather individual businesses that might bring a corporation profits in the future. The way Ed refers to the corporate partners indexes corporations’ racial neoliberal stance on appropriate relationships between race, government and capital (Morrissey, 2015). Giving money to minority businesses solely because minorities and women faced past (or current) disadvantages is not a viable reason for corporations to support diversity, and many in the corporate community do not believe that there is still racial and gender inequality among businesses.…”

“…Because chambers of commerce are involved in both business and politics, many chamber member interactions take a neoliberal stance when discussing government–business relations and position neoliberal ideology as constituting normative professional identities. However, racial minority members of these chambers of commerce and the broader Texas business community manage tensions between valuing racial diversity and promoting neoliberal ideology which values individualism and posits that race no longer matters because racial inequality does not exist (Enck-Wanzer, 2011; Morrissey, 2015). Thus, the way participants align with neoliberal ideology tends to intersect with the ways they construct their professional and racial identities.…”

Negotiating the “Closet” in U.S. Academia: Foreign Scholars on the Job Market

“…Indeed, the ability to successfully pass is contingent upon the invisibility of the identity that individuals are seeking to closet (Clair et al, 2005). Because the normative regime of Whiteness equates “Americanness” with White individuals and native English speakers (Morrissey, 2015), foreign scholars who are White, Anglo-Saxon, and who speak with an accent interpreted as “American” can be expected to be more successful at closeting their immigration status than people of color who speak in a way that is not commonly understood as “American.” Indeed, many scholars explicitly recognized how the intersections of their different identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, native language, and national origin) shaped the extent to which they are—or are not—perceived as foreign. As one White Canadian scholar whose native language is English stated, “I was very cognizant of the fact that nobody that I was talking to was wondering: is this person legal?…”