Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2022. “Sexualized Othering in Multiracial Women’s Experiences with Sex and Romance” pp. 224-232 in INTRODUCING THE NEW SEXUALITY STUDIES, 4TH EDITION, edited by NANCY L. FISCHER, LAUREL WESTBROOK and STVEN SEIDMAN. ROUTLEDGE.
The phenomenon of sexual racism, in which sexual and romantic appeal of an individual is informed by racial understandings of sexuality that perpetuate social inequality, has been a significant topic of study in research on online dating. This chapter explores the ways that sex – as an activity – and sexuality – as perceived by potential and actual romantic partners – shows up in 41 in-depth interviews with self-identified multiracial and multiethnic women (N = 30) and white men (N = 11) about their on–line and off–line dating experiences, particularly interracial romantic and/or sexual experiences. Specifically, the chapter extends the concept of sexualized othering to understand how some people navigate online dating websites and apps, how they feel about their bodies, and whether they describe a willingness to date across racial and ethnic boundaries.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2022. “Negotiating Intimacy via Dating Websites and Apps: Digital Media in Everyday Life” pp 241-268 in THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF DIGITAL MEDIA SOCIOLOGY, edited by Deana A. Rohlinger and Sara Sobieraj. Oxford University Press.
Since the early 2000s, researchers have illustrated the primacy of online spaces for people to find platonic, sexual, and/or romantic intimacy. Online dating has increasingly become among the most common ways for couples of all sexual orientations—particularly heterosexuals and gay men—to meet in the United States. As the study of online and offline intimacy moves forward, it is necessary not only to assess the effects of political contexts and discrimination but to consider how marginalized groups like queer women, trans and nonbinary people, fat, and/or disabled people rely on and navigate these spaces in their efforts to fulfill their sexual lives and find romance. This article provides an overview of existing sociological research on online dating to illuminate the ways dating websites/apps are shaping contemporary relationship formation along the axes of race, gender, class, and sexuality, while also noting avenues for new research trajectories.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal, Andrea miller, AND J. E. Sumerau (EDS). 2021. “Introduction to the special issue: teaching sexualities.” Teaching Sexualities SPECIAL ISSUE, Teaching Sociology, 49(3); 217-314.
In this special issue, we endeavor to encourage the consideration of the importance of sex and sexualities in all domains of social and sociological life, particularly through a collection of articles that both (1) highlight innovative strategies for teaching sexualities and (2) complement, rather than replicate, other recent collections geared toward teaching and studying sexualities sociologically. This issue draws inspiration from prior work concerning the negotiation of sexual topics and coming out in classrooms; strategies for teaching sexual media and politics; teaching about the relationships between gendered symbols, embodiment, and homophobia; strategies for understanding the impact of sexualization on girls and women; and the use of community-based research techniques in sexualities instruction, among other topics.
SCHROCK, DOUGLAS, Shantel Gabrieal BUGGS, BERTAN BUYUKOZTURK, KRISTEN ERICHSEN, AND ANDRE IVEY. 2021. “SIGNIFYING AGGRIEVED WHITE SELVES: TRUMP SUPPORTERS’ RACIAL IDENTITY WORK.”Sociology of Race and Ethnicity,8(1); 114-128.
Based on 29 in-depth interviews during the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we examine how Trump supporters engaged in a form of identity work that we call signifying aggrieved white selves. Taking an interactionist approach, we demonstrate how they used racial discourse and emotional communication to engage in three distinct forms of racial identity work: (1) othering racialized freeloaders, (2) criminalizing racialized others, and (3) discrediting racialized dissenters. Our study contributes to research on racial discourse and emotions and research on race and the 2016 presidential election, which emphasize linguistic or cultural frames and/or subjectivity rather than the dramatization of racial selfhood. We propose that signifying aggrieved white selfhood is a generic process and that racial identity work is a useful lens for analyzing how a foundational concept of critical race theory—namely, that race is a social construct—is reproduced in everyday life.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2021. “When post-racialism fails: Meghan Markle and the limits of symbolism.” Race, Royalty and Meghan Markle: Elites, Inequalities and a Woman in the Public Eye special issue. women’s studies international forum, 86.
This essay responds to the contemporary discourse around race, gender, and class, among other factors, that informs current understandings of Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex. This essay lends particular focus to arguments, concerns, and insights raised by other authors in this special issue in addition to recent media interviews involving the Duchess.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal, Jennifer Patrice Sims, and Rory Kramer. 2020. “Rejecting white distraction: a critique of the white logic and white methods in academic publishing.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(8); 1384-1392.
This critical reply engages in a critique of the prominence of “white logic” and “white methods” (Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva 2008) in academic publishing. We assess how the construction and proliferation of white knowledge(s) shapes analysis and interpretation, argumentation, peer review, and ultimately, publication. We call for a rejection of what we name “white distraction” and encourage the academic community to move toward more inclusive and decolonial modes of thinking, reviewing, and publishing.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2020. “(Dis)Owning Exotic: Navigating Race, Intimacy, and Trans Identity.” Transgender Studies special issue. Sociological Inquiry, 90(2); 249-270.
Despite societal shifts making the United States more inclusive, particularly among younger people, transgender people and people of color remain populations that have labels like “exotic” or “taboo” associated with them. This article explores the racialized dating experiences of an immigrant trans woman of color who uses online dating platforms to facilitate her dating life in Texas. Given that the existing literature on trans people tends to focus on identity development, health concerns, or questions of legality and policy in arenas such as the workplace and in education, there is still limited research on the romantic and sexual lives of trans people. In fact, much of the growing research on trans relationships focuses either on couples where one partner transitioned and the couple maintained a relationship or studies lumping trans experiences under an LGBT umbrella. Using an intersectional theoretical approach, this case-study unpacks how race, racism, and transphobia, as well as internalized racial and gender logics, work in tandem to shape desirability and date-ability.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2019. “Color, Culture, or Cousin?: Multiracial Americans and Framing Boundaries in Interracial Relationships.”Journal of Marriage & Family, 81(5); 1221-1236.
Utilizing in-depth interviews with self-identified multiracial women (N = 30) who used online dating platforms to facilitate their dating lives in Central Texas, I analyze how some multiracial people – the “products” of interracial relationships – conceptualize what counts as an interracial relationship and how they discuss the circumstances that influence these definitions. This research expands on arguments that note the added complexity expanding multiracial populations contribute to dating and marriage market conditions, as well as the limited research on how multiracial people perceive interraciality. By framing their relationships through lenses centered around skin color, cultural difference, and “familiarity” in terms of seeing potential partners as similar to male family members, these multiracial women illustrate varied and overlapping means of describing their intimate relationships, providing additional nuance to sociological understandings of shifts in preferences and norms around partner choice across racial/ethnic lines and opening up opportunities to continue exploration of the impact of racial inequality on partner choice.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. and Ryessia Jones Russell. 2019. “The Power of Whiteness: Disciplining Olivia Pope” pp 87-110 in Gladiators in Suits: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Representation in Scandal, edited by Kimberly Moffitt, Simone Puff, and Ron Jackson. Syracuse University Press.
While much of the discussion regarding race and gender in Scandal is reserved for its portrayal of interracial relationships – specifically the sexual relationship triangle between Olivia Pope, President Fitzgerald Grant, and Jake Ballard – the majority of Olivia’s interactions are informed by, and enacted through, whiteness. Olivia has relationships with White men, wears the “white hat,” associates mostly with White colleagues, and consistently uses her resources to save the careers and lives of White political figures. This essay explores the ways in which whiteness emerges in the television show, Scandal, a scripted show created by Shonda Rhimes and starring Kerry Washington, both Black women. More specifically, this chapter reveals how whiteness is utilized as a mechanism for policing and disciplining the Black female body, specifically through an analysis of Olivia’s relationships with Fitz, Jake, Mellie Grant, Abby Whelan, and Olivia’s father, Rowan (Eli) Pope. All of these relationships utilize whiteness in a different way; thus, we will use them as a means of exploring three forms of discipline: (a) sexual discipline, (b) familial/child discipline, and (c) gender discipline. Though none of these forms of discipline are mutually exclusive – as all of them are sexualized, racialized, classed, and gendered – by breaking these disciplinary forms into categories, we can focus on particular aspects of Olivia’s relationships and how they work to constrain her behavior, her body, and her identity, as well as how those constraints might be translated onto the bodies of the Black women who comprise the major part of the show’s audience.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2017. “Does (mixed-)race matter? The role of race in interracial sex, dating, and marriage.” Sociology Compass, 11(11).
Though sociologists have long focused on the role of race as a dynamic in romantic and sexual relationships, there is currently limited research on the experiences of mixed-race people and the ways their racial identities may be influencing how people navigate race and/or ethnicity as part of these intimate relationships. Due to the increase in the number of Americans – both in opposite-sex and same-sex relationships – reporting partners of a different race or ethnic background between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, race and intimacy remain at the forefront of mainstream social concerns. However, research exploring how multiracial people – a rapidly growing population – fit in these trends is underrepresented. In this review, I discuss the existing research on race, dating, and marriage, particularly the meanings attached to interracial relationships in an online era. I also assess how recent research has begun to discuss the impact of mixed-race identity on intimate relationships both on- and off-line.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2017. “Dating in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter: Exploring Mixed-race women’s Discourses of Race and Racism.” Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, 3(4); 538-551.
The author explores the discourses and logics that self-identified multiracial and multiethnic female online daters use to explain their own responses to social justice movements around race and racism in the United States. These women mobilize stances on the social movement Black Lives Matter (BLM) as a metric of racial progressiveness, articulating their own political views on race. Furthermore, mixed-black women in particular describe using attitudes toward the BLM movement as a way to vet potential dating partners. The implementation of BLM as a tool in the contemporary dating “toolkit” suggests that the language around, and produced by, social movements (in terms of mainstream media coverage) influences the ways in which some women discuss race, gender, and racism. Using interview data from 30 in-depth interviews, the author shows how mixed-race women navigate racial politics on an interpersonal level during a time when U.S. media and popular culture is focused on issues of racism and state-sanctioned violence. The use of BLM as a rhetorical frame demonstrates how far the logics of colorblindness and antiblackness extend into everyday life and serves as a signifier of where individuals stand on significant social issues. By analyzing the ways multiracial women talk about dating, the author provides a greater understanding of the shifting meanings of race, racism, and the “postracial” in contemporary American society.
* Featured in the “In Brief” section (“How the Fight for Black Lives Colors Dating“) in Contexts.
*Top 10 most downloaded article for Sociology of Race and Ethnicity in 2020 and 2021
Daniels, Jessie, Apryl Williams, and Shantel Buggs (eds). 2017. “Digital media technologies in everyday life.” Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) Special Issue, Information, Communication & Society, 20(7); 947-1023.
The 2017 CITAMS special issue of Information, Communication & Society brings together research that takes us several steps further along the path to understanding the imbrication of digital technologies with the social, the cultural, and the political in a global context. These articles foreground the theoretical and methodological innovation so characteristic of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), including the new focus on media sociology.
Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2017. “‘Your momma is day-glow white’: questioning the politics of racial identity, loyalty, and obligation.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 24(4); 379-397.
This article utilizes discourse analysis and an autoethnographic approach to explore the impact of U.S. racial and ethnic categorization on the experiences of an individual marked as ‘mixed-race’ in terms of individual identity and familial/cultural group loyalty and obligation(s). This essay focuses on an incidence of public policing through the popular social networking platform Facebook, centering on the invocation of racial obligation by white friends and family members. I analyze how racial loyalty is articulated by friends and family members in their posts on my personal Facebook page and how this ‘loyalty’ is used as means of regulating my mixed-race identity performance. This essay aims to understand several things, namely how identity is mediated through the invocation of racial obligation and how tension around identity plays out in the multiracial family.
SHANTEL GABRIEAL BUGGS, Ph.D. 