Re-articulating critical awareness about racism in public discourse: changing one’s mind on the Black Pete debates in the Netherlands

Large-scale social and political debates can be understood as dynamic and inter-discursive networks in which a multiplicity of subject positions are being activated, challenged and negotiated in attempts to fix the meanings that shape our daily lives. They take place across a multiplicity of speech events and media and are often marked by a great deal of repetition and reiteration. This results in a high degree of predictability that becomes especially obvious in debates that concern issues of diversity and migration. As a case in point, we can take a look at the debates surrounding the folklo... Mehr ...