Geopolitical Roots and Branches: Identity Label Preferences Among People of African Descent in the United States
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2025-12-01
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In the United States, people of African descent have historically used different labels to express their collective racial identities. Scholars have traced these historical changes over time, which have shifted for various reasons, across different political and social movements, and with changing group dynamics. The purpose of this study was to examine contemporary racial identity label preferences among people of African descent living in the United States and explore the geopolitical roots and branches of those choices. In this study, an online sample of 451 people of African descent completed a survey about their racial identity label preferences and why they selected those labels. We hypothesized that selecting one's racial label for geopolitical reasons (vs. external or accuracy reasons) would predict how people of African descent see themselves (i.e., in terms of race and ancestry), how they perceive the world (i.e., perceptions of American racism), and how they act in the world (i.e., political activism). Overall, selecting one's racial identity label preference for geopolitical reasons was a consistent predictor of our outcomes.
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Iheoma, KO, J Scott and PS Salter (2025). Geopolitical Roots and Branches: Identity Label Preferences Among People of African Descent in the United States. Journal of Social Issues, 81(4). 10.1111/josi.70029 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/33706.
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Phia S Salter
I am a social psychologist who approaches the study of racism and other forms of oppression from cultural psychological and critical race psychology perspectives.
In one line of research, I focus on the bi-directional relationships between collective memory, history, and identity. I am particularly interested in knowledge of critical histories, which focus on historical systems of oppression. People do not typically have firsthand knowledge of foundational historical events; so, cultural repositories of memory like school classrooms, textbooks, museums, and/or national holidays necessarily facilitate our access to the historical past. However, these cultural sites of memory are not neutral or objective accounts of past realities; instead, they are infused with the identity concerns of the past and the present. In one direction, I am interested in how different accounts of the historical past shape our identities, our beliefs, and our actions in the present. Also, I am interested in the other direction, whereby our current beliefs, identities, and cultural practices shape what we ‘know’ about the historical past.
In another line of research, I focus on theorizing racism as a systemic phenomenon embedded in cultural context. Racism, like culture, is embedded in our everyday worlds in both obvious and very subtle ways. Examining how racism is built into the context—perhaps especially the everyday context—can can help us understand its continuing impact. In line with understanding racism as a systemic force, I have also advanced the development of Critical Race Psychology (CRP), which integrates insights from Critical Race Theory and critical perspectives in psychological science. CRP challenges psychologists to examine how social and cultural institutions (including in our own field) both bear the traces of and function to reproduce racialized power structures.
In the classroom, I focus on equipping students with the tools needed to ask and answer difficult questions about race, culture, identity, and justice. My teaching and mentoring practices are meant to create and maintain learning experiences that are inclusive of the different ways people express their identities and experiences in the world. My goal is to facilitate dialogue, critical thinking, and action that empowers students to identify, articulate, and challenge the social inequalities they see.
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