J Beaman
Biographic Data
| ID | 20485 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Beaman |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Beaman |
| SIGNATURE | BEAMAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1645-0968 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 300 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Higher Education as a Danger Zone
On one of my favorite podcasts, Code Switch on NPR, co-host Gene Demby has a catchphrase: “Housing discrimination in everything.” This comes up in episodes dealing with wealth, with education, with policing, and so on. His intelligent and somewhat pithy saying serves to remind the audience of the interconnections of housing discrimination—and therefore racism—with any form of inequality in the United States. I thought of this phrase and this podc…
Studying race and racism – here, there, and everywhere
In this article, we reflect on the future of ethnic and racial studies within the discipline of sociology. We argue that theories in the sociology of race are currently marred by methodological nationalism, often treating racial structures, meanings, and ideologies as nationally bound phenomena. By contrast, we argue that the sociology of race ought to embrace a comparative-relational approach. We illustrate how this comparative-relational approa…
Beyond antiracism
Ain’t I a Migrant
In the wake of recent interventions to better connect the subfields of international migration and race and ethnicity through a sociology of racialized immigration, we push this further by arguing for the necessity of a global Blackness perspective on global migration. Such a focus does not just reflect the role of race in the dynamics of migration, and vice versa, but more importantly shifts assumptions about this relationship. So, it is not eno…
Migration Studies and Colonialism
The race for theory part II
Racial progress amid global state violence
In this review, I adapt Meer’s analysis of permanent racial injustice in the Global North to the United States and France, specifically focusing on incidents of police violence against Black populations including the 1992 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the 2017 beating of Théo Luhaka in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France, and the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. I discuss how ideas of forward racial progress permeate the framing of these …
George Floyd across Europe, or Europe’s George Floyds
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/world/europe/france-riots-nahel-shooting.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&module=&state=default®ion=footer&context=breakout_link_back_to_briefing.2 https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/mineur-tue-a-nanterre-macron-evoque-un-acte-inexplicable-et-inexcusable-28-06-2023-2526553_20.php#11.3 https://slate.com/cover-stories/2017/01/…
Black Lives Matter and the new wave of anti-racist mobilizations in Europe
This Special Issue investigates the European Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that followed the protests in the USA against police brutality in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in May 2020. It takes an interdisciplinary theoretical perspective, interested in cultural and political contexts and the mechanism of how street protests and social movements influence public debates. It shows in various dimensions how the BLM mobilisation transfo…
The Moral Panic of Islamo-gauchisme in Service of a Colorblind Approach to Racism
This essay frames Islamo-gauchisme as a moral panic and discusses how, why, and when it emerged as such in France, its relationship with critical race theory (a moral panic in the U.S.), and the broader societal implications of Islamo-gauchisme as a moral panic. More precisely, we discuss how and why Islamo-gauchisme entered the zeitgeist and why this moral panic is so dangerous. We demonstrate that this reinforces the colorblind hegemonic unders…
From cultural citizenship to suspect citizenship
Based on past and current ethnographic research and interviews with ethnic minorities in the Parisian metropolitan region, I argue that despite France’s colorblind and Republican ethos, France’s “visible minorities” function under a “suspect citizenship” in which their full societal belonging is never granted. I focus on the growing problem of state violence against ethnic minorities which reveals how France is creating a “bright boundary” (Alba …
On the Relevance of Global Black Solidarities
Responses
In this article, Jean Beaman examines Rawls and Duck's analysis of the interaction order and tacit racism in the French context. And Martijn de Koning is dedicated to the question »If Islamophobia is almost undetectable as a mode of racism, do other ways of thinking and/or opposing anti-Muslim racism then become deviant and abnormal
Black Feminism and Transnational Solidarity
On the basis of about three years of ethnographic research, including interviews with activists, I discuss the role of black feminist activism and transnational solidarity in the movement against police violence, and the resonance of Black Lives Matter in France. I focus on how men of Black and Maghrebin origin are predominately killed at the hands of police, and how women of Black and Maghrebin origin women, including Assa Traoré and Ramata Dien…
Racial Gaslighting in a Non-Racial France
Based on ethnographic research in the Parisian metropolitan region, I use the term racial gaslighting (Davis and Ernest 2019) as an analytic to understand racism and anti-racism in France. Specifically, I focus on mobilization against police violence towards Black and Maghrebin-origin individuals and how activists have to mount anti-racist struggle in a non-racial and anti-racial society. This includes challenges that racism is a concept imported…
The U.S./France Contrast Frame and Black Lives Matter in France
In this article examining Black Lives Matter in France, we consider how French politicians and others in the public sphere use a U.S./France contrast frame to deny or downplay the existence of systemic racism within France. In so doing, they delegitimize as un-French or as too Americanized those French anti-racist activists who claim that racism in France is systemic and who challenge republican difference-blindness. To demonstrate this, we speci…
France’s Ahmeds and Muslim others
In this article, I use the example of Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim and Algerian-origin police officer who was one of the victims of the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre, as a way to understand how Islamophobia is a form of racism. Based on ethnographic research in Paris and its banlieues with the middle-class segment of the North African second generation, I discuss how they experience ‘collective punishment’ due to their status as both racial and …
Black Middle‐Class Britannia
Towards a Reading of Black Lives Matter in Europe
A Place to Call Home
Towards a global theory of colorblindness
In this article, we apply key tenants of colorblindness, as a racial ideology developed in the United States, to France. In France, colorblindness means more than not seeing how race structures opportunities and outcomes; it also means not acknowledging racial and ethnic categories. Colorblindness arose in a different historical context, for different reasons, and as a product of different mechanisms in France than it did in the United States. We…
Underlying Conditions
Are French people white
Based on ethnographic research of France’s North African second-generation, I bring together literatures on racial formation, whiteness, and race and racism in Europe to discuss how whiteness operates in French society. I discuss how respondents must navigate a supposedly colorblind society in which whiteness is default. Because these individuals are racialized as non-white, they are not seen as French by others. I discuss how they wrestle with d…
Living for the neighbourhood
In this paper, based on qualitative research on the North African second-generation in Paris and the Turkish second-generation in Berlin, we discuss ethnic minorities’ attachment to place and how living in highly diverse cities shape their perceptions and experiences of marginalization and belonging. Even though France and Germany have different state-level approaches to citizenship and belonging, the experiences of marginalization and exclusion …
Black versus European
This chapter discusses how Fanon&s;s thinking about blackness, as over determined from without; inform sociology of race and racism, including how blackness continues to operate as a vessel of otherness across the globe. Black Skin, White Masks (BSWM), Fanon&s;s examination of black identity, is an exemplar for considering the relationship between blackness, race, and colonialism. "The idea of the European excludes those categorically as non-Euro…
Citizen Outsider
While portrayals of immigrants and their descendants in France and throughout Europe often center on burning cars and radical Islam, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France paints a different picture. Through fieldwork and interviews in Paris and its banlieues, Jean Beaman examines middle-class and upwardly mobile children of maghrébin, or North African immigrants. By showing how these individuals are denied cultural citi…
Citizenship as cultural
Traditional notions of citizenship have focused on formal membership, including access to rights, in a national community. More recent scholarship has expanded this definition beyond citizenship as a legal status to focus on struggles for societal inclusion of and justice for marginalized populations, citizenship as both a social and symbolic boundary of exclusion, and post‐colonial and post‐national citizenship. In this article, I review concept…
Towards a global theory of colorblindness
In this article, we apply key tenants of colorblindness, as a racial ideology developed in the United States, to France. In France, colorblindness means more than not seeing how race structures opportunities and outcomes; it also means not acknowledging racial and ethnic categories. Colorblindness arose in a different historical context, for different reasons, and as a product of different mechanisms in France than it did in the United States. We…
Dying from' to 'living with
As French as Anyone Else
Amid growing Islamophobia throughout Europe, Muslims in France have been described as “ethnoracial outsiders” (Bleich 2006, 3–7) and framed as a cultural challenge to the identity of the French republic. Based on ethnographic research of 45 middle class adult children of North African, or Maghrébin, immigrants, I focus on the actual religious practices of this segment of the French Muslim population, the symbolic boundaries around those practices…
Towards a Reading of Black Lives Matter in Europe
The U.S./France Contrast Frame and Black Lives Matter in France
In this article examining Black Lives Matter in France, we consider how French politicians and others in the public sphere use a U.S./France contrast frame to deny or downplay the existence of systemic racism within France. In so doing, they delegitimize as un-French or as too Americanized those French anti-racist activists who claim that racism in France is systemic and who challenge republican difference-blindness. To demonstrate this, we speci…
Underlying Conditions
Living for the neighbourhood
In this paper, based on qualitative research on the North African second-generation in Paris and the Turkish second-generation in Berlin, we discuss ethnic minorities’ attachment to place and how living in highly diverse cities shape their perceptions and experiences of marginalization and belonging. Even though France and Germany have different state-level approaches to citizenship and belonging, the experiences of marginalization and exclusion …
Racial Gaslighting in a Non-Racial France
Based on ethnographic research in the Parisian metropolitan region, I use the term racial gaslighting (Davis and Ernest 2019) as an analytic to understand racism and anti-racism in France. Specifically, I focus on mobilization against police violence towards Black and Maghrebin-origin individuals and how activists have to mount anti-racist struggle in a non-racial and anti-racial society. This includes challenges that racism is a concept imported…
Ain’t I a Migrant
In the wake of recent interventions to better connect the subfields of international migration and race and ethnicity through a sociology of racialized immigration, we push this further by arguing for the necessity of a global Blackness perspective on global migration. Such a focus does not just reflect the role of race in the dynamics of migration, and vice versa, but more importantly shifts assumptions about this relationship. So, it is not eno…
Black Lives Matter and the new wave of anti-racist mobilizations in Europe
This Special Issue investigates the European Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that followed the protests in the USA against police brutality in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in May 2020. It takes an interdisciplinary theoretical perspective, interested in cultural and political contexts and the mechanism of how street protests and social movements influence public debates. It shows in various dimensions how the BLM mobilisation transfo…
The Moral Panic of Islamo-gauchisme in Service of a Colorblind Approach to Racism
This essay frames Islamo-gauchisme as a moral panic and discusses how, why, and when it emerged as such in France, its relationship with critical race theory (a moral panic in the U.S.), and the broader societal implications of Islamo-gauchisme as a moral panic. More precisely, we discuss how and why Islamo-gauchisme entered the zeitgeist and why this moral panic is so dangerous. We demonstrate that this reinforces the colorblind hegemonic unders…
France’s Ahmeds and Muslim others
In this article, I use the example of Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim and Algerian-origin police officer who was one of the victims of the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre, as a way to understand how Islamophobia is a form of racism. Based on ethnographic research in Paris and its banlieues with the middle-class segment of the North African second generation, I discuss how they experience ‘collective punishment’ due to their status as both racial and …
From cultural citizenship to suspect citizenship
Based on past and current ethnographic research and interviews with ethnic minorities in the Parisian metropolitan region, I argue that despite France’s colorblind and Republican ethos, France’s “visible minorities” function under a “suspect citizenship” in which their full societal belonging is never granted. I focus on the growing problem of state violence against ethnic minorities which reveals how France is creating a “bright boundary” (Alba …
Beyond antiracism
The race for theory part II
Migration Studies and Colonialism
The France of the Little-Middles
Dying from' to 'living with
Boundaries of Frenchness
Based on 45 interviews in the Paris metropolitan area, I focus on the middle-class segment of France’s North African second-generation and use the framework of cultural citizenship to explain why these individuals continue to experience symbolic exclusion despite their attainment of a middle-class status. Even though they are successful in terms of professional and educational accomplishments and are assimilated by traditional measures, they none…
Citizenship as cultural
Traditional notions of citizenship have focused on formal membership, including access to rights, in a national community. More recent scholarship has expanded this definition beyond citizenship as a legal status to focus on struggles for societal inclusion of and justice for marginalized populations, citizenship as both a social and symbolic boundary of exclusion, and post‐colonial and post‐national citizenship. In this article, I review concept…
As French as Anyone Else
Amid growing Islamophobia throughout Europe, Muslims in France have been described as “ethnoracial outsiders” (Bleich 2006, 3–7) and framed as a cultural challenge to the identity of the French republic. Based on ethnographic research of 45 middle class adult children of North African, or Maghrébin, immigrants, I focus on the actual religious practices of this segment of the French Muslim population, the symbolic boundaries around those practices…
Citizen Outsider
While portrayals of immigrants and their descendants in France and throughout Europe often center on burning cars and radical Islam, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France paints a different picture. Through fieldwork and interviews in Paris and its banlieues, Jean Beaman examines middle-class and upwardly mobile children of maghrébin, or North African immigrants. By showing how these individuals are denied cultural citi…
Black versus European
This chapter discusses how Fanon&s;s thinking about blackness, as over determined from without; inform sociology of race and racism, including how blackness continues to operate as a vessel of otherness across the globe. Black Skin, White Masks (BSWM), Fanon&s;s examination of black identity, is an exemplar for considering the relationship between blackness, race, and colonialism. "The idea of the European excludes those categorically as non-Euro…
The France of the Little-Middles
Are French people white
Based on ethnographic research of France’s North African second-generation, I bring together literatures on racial formation, whiteness, and race and racism in Europe to discuss how whiteness operates in French society. I discuss how respondents must navigate a supposedly colorblind society in which whiteness is default. Because these individuals are racialized as non-white, they are not seen as French by others. I discuss how they wrestle with d…
Living for the neighbourhood
In this paper, based on qualitative research on the North African second-generation in Paris and the Turkish second-generation in Berlin, we discuss ethnic minorities’ attachment to place and how living in highly diverse cities shape their perceptions and experiences of marginalization and belonging. Even though France and Germany have different state-level approaches to citizenship and belonging, the experiences of marginalization and exclusion …
Towards a global theory of colorblindness
In this article, we apply key tenants of colorblindness, as a racial ideology developed in the United States, to France. In France, colorblindness means more than not seeing how race structures opportunities and outcomes; it also means not acknowledging racial and ethnic categories. Colorblindness arose in a different historical context, for different reasons, and as a product of different mechanisms in France than it did in the United States. We…
Underlying Conditions
France’s Ahmeds and Muslim others
In this article, I use the example of Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim and Algerian-origin police officer who was one of the victims of the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre, as a way to understand how Islamophobia is a form of racism. Based on ethnographic research in Paris and its banlieues with the middle-class segment of the North African second generation, I discuss how they experience ‘collective punishment’ due to their status as both racial and …
Black Middle‐Class Britannia
Towards a Reading of Black Lives Matter in Europe
A Place to Call Home
Responses
In this article, Jean Beaman examines Rawls and Duck's analysis of the interaction order and tacit racism in the French context. And Martijn de Koning is dedicated to the question »If Islamophobia is almost undetectable as a mode of racism, do other ways of thinking and/or opposing anti-Muslim racism then become deviant and abnormal
Black Feminism and Transnational Solidarity
On the basis of about three years of ethnographic research, including interviews with activists, I discuss the role of black feminist activism and transnational solidarity in the movement against police violence, and the resonance of Black Lives Matter in France. I focus on how men of Black and Maghrebin origin are predominately killed at the hands of police, and how women of Black and Maghrebin origin women, including Assa Traoré and Ramata Dien…
Racial Gaslighting in a Non-Racial France
Based on ethnographic research in the Parisian metropolitan region, I use the term racial gaslighting (Davis and Ernest 2019) as an analytic to understand racism and anti-racism in France. Specifically, I focus on mobilization against police violence towards Black and Maghrebin-origin individuals and how activists have to mount anti-racist struggle in a non-racial and anti-racial society. This includes challenges that racism is a concept imported…
The U.S./France Contrast Frame and Black Lives Matter in France
In this article examining Black Lives Matter in France, we consider how French politicians and others in the public sphere use a U.S./France contrast frame to deny or downplay the existence of systemic racism within France. In so doing, they delegitimize as un-French or as too Americanized those French anti-racist activists who claim that racism in France is systemic and who challenge republican difference-blindness. To demonstrate this, we speci…
Racial progress amid global state violence
In this review, I adapt Meer’s analysis of permanent racial injustice in the Global North to the United States and France, specifically focusing on incidents of police violence against Black populations including the 1992 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the 2017 beating of Théo Luhaka in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France, and the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. I discuss how ideas of forward racial progress permeate the framing of these …
George Floyd across Europe, or Europe’s George Floyds
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/world/europe/france-riots-nahel-shooting.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&module=&state=default®ion=footer&context=breakout_link_back_to_briefing.2 https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/mineur-tue-a-nanterre-macron-evoque-un-acte-inexplicable-et-inexcusable-28-06-2023-2526553_20.php#11.3 https://slate.com/cover-stories/2017/01/…
Black Lives Matter and the new wave of anti-racist mobilizations in Europe
This Special Issue investigates the European Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that followed the protests in the USA against police brutality in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in May 2020. It takes an interdisciplinary theoretical perspective, interested in cultural and political contexts and the mechanism of how street protests and social movements influence public debates. It shows in various dimensions how the BLM mobilisation transfo…
The Moral Panic of Islamo-gauchisme in Service of a Colorblind Approach to Racism
This essay frames Islamo-gauchisme as a moral panic and discusses how, why, and when it emerged as such in France, its relationship with critical race theory (a moral panic in the U.S.), and the broader societal implications of Islamo-gauchisme as a moral panic. More precisely, we discuss how and why Islamo-gauchisme entered the zeitgeist and why this moral panic is so dangerous. We demonstrate that this reinforces the colorblind hegemonic unders…
From cultural citizenship to suspect citizenship
Based on past and current ethnographic research and interviews with ethnic minorities in the Parisian metropolitan region, I argue that despite France’s colorblind and Republican ethos, France’s “visible minorities” function under a “suspect citizenship” in which their full societal belonging is never granted. I focus on the growing problem of state violence against ethnic minorities which reveals how France is creating a “bright boundary” (Alba …
On the Relevance of Global Black Solidarities
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Gender Studies (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (11 works) · Racism (11 works) · Geography (10 works)