Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: 1 4 0 • 5 ] Theories and MethodologiesRace and Privilege in Central and Southeast Europe on the Ground and in the Field sunnie rucker-chang On My PositionalityYear after year, when I travel from Ohio to southeast Europe, I gain insights into where I fit in the local racial imaginary.When I travel, my brown skin serves as a soft border demarcating the spaces of colonized and colonizer, black and white, and possible hybridity.Local reactions to me decode the inner workings of a racial regime that provides, or does not provide, space for difference.In France, people speak to me in French.When I am routed through the Netherlands, people speak to me in Dutch, and likewise if, or when, I find myself in Germany, people speak to me in German.Likely because of the afterlives of conquest, violence, forced servitude, and migration, racial boundaries indicate to a group that I belong.Once I board the plane to travel east, however, flight attendants immediately greet me in English and linguistic interactions with strangers begin exclusively in English unless I inform them that I speak their language, which is always met with surprise.In these instances, I am reminded of Dubravka Ugrešić's traveling insights in the early years following Croatia's independence, when Ugrešić "felt on [her] own skin that frontiers really do exist."In this passage, Ugrešić describes the manifest difference between the SUNNIE RUCKER-CHANG is the Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Culture, associate professor of Slavic and east European languages and cultures, and interim chair of African and African American studies at Ohio State University, Columbus.She works on the social construction of race and culture as it relates to privileged and marginalized communities in Europe.
Author: Sunnie Rucker-Chang
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7129407257