Digital Commons Network^™

Beyond Bakke: Explaining The Anti-Affirmative Action Movement Of The 1990s, Austin Brayley

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

America's long history of racism testifies that despite major reform efforts, American society is not yet egalitarian. Minority racial and ethnic groups emain underrepresented in a number of professional fields such as law, medicine, white-collar business and instructors of higher education. Americans today cannot deny their heritage of discrimination based on race or nationality. In the past, the white majority has denied racial minorities' equal access to these prestigious fields, either through legislation, court rulings or overt resistance.

Race, Gender, Sexuality, And The Pursuit Of Modernity: British Biopower And Female Sexuality In Domestic And Colonial Practice, Alana Tomas

The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History

This paper explores how female sexuality became a primary site for the exercise of British biopolitical regulation as illustrated both in colonial Hong Kong and Singapore and in domestic practice. The application of biopolitical regulation on the subject of female sexuality was based on a discursive production making indissociable the success of the imperial project and the survival of the imperial race and the control of the female body. This discursive production mobilized intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality through the Victorian cult of domesticity, resulting in a racialization of female sexuality with implications transcending the permeable frontier between …

Reimagining The Theory Of Necropolitics In A Modern Lens: Hate Crimes And Violence, Salma Ahmed Abdulmagied Gheita

Future Journal of Social Science

This research paper is testing the validity of the Necropolitics theory and how we can reintroduce its definitions in a modern lens. Though the theory of Necropolitics is extreme and historically was a terminology and paradigm that was used towards more catastrophic and traumatizing events. The main argument that this paper is discussing is how did the idea of Necropolitics evolved into a more institutional, systematic, and legalized manors of exclusion. This is made through critical discourse analysis of the text presented on the term Necropolitics to highlight on the history of this term and what it stood for in …

Controlling Death: Exploring The Discourse Of Suicide In Antebellum America, Austin Tyrrell

The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History

Suicide amongst slaves in antebellum America occurred frequently enough that systems of control were put in place by slave owners to limit their occurrence. Meanwhile, abolitionists used instances of slave suicide to evoke sympathy and advance their cause. This article explores how and why conceptualizations of white and black suicide differed. In doing so, it argues that contemporary discourse about slave suicide was intentionally used to shape racist perceptions as a means of maintaining control over slaves and the institution of slavery alike.

Creating The Cultural “Other”: Ableism, Racism, And Imperialism In The 19th And 20th Centuries, Stephanie Baskin

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

This project argues that disability and physical difference were simultaneously both sensationalized and hidden in the United States and the United Kingdom, while also being overemphasized in non-Western countries, with the intention of evoking either revulsion, a sense of racial superiority, or pity, all of which was used as justification for Western imperialism. In order to make this argument, the project looks at varying attitudes and actions toward the disabled, physically different, and visibly ill in the U.K. and U.S.A., as well as the varying attitudes and actions toward the disabled, physically different, and visibly ill in the broader imperial …

Legacies Of Slavery And Their Enduring Harms, Scherto R. Gill

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article provides a much needed inquiry into the legacy of slavery from an interdisciplinary perspective, including the historical, socioeconomic, political, and the epistemic. It makes an important distinction between the legacy of slavery and its persisting damages. By investigating this legacy’s effects on peoples, communities, and societies, it highlights the imperative of situating the pains and sufferings of historical traumas within contemporary structural oppression and institutional discrimination that have perpetuated these harms. The article consists of four sections: it first outlines the legacy of slavery, comprised in instrumentalizing black bodies for economic gains, employing political aggression to colonize both …

A Dance Of Shadows And Fires: Conceptual And Practical Challenges Of Intergenerational Healing After Mass Atrocity, Brandon Hamber, Ingrid Palmary

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The legacy of mass atrocity—including colonialism, slavery or specific manifestations such as apartheid—continue long after their demise. Applying a temporal intergenerational lens adds complications. We argue that mass atrocity creates for subsequent generations a deep psychological rupture akin to witnessing past atrocities. This creates a moral liability in the present. Healing is a process dependent on the authenticity (evident in discourse and action) with which we address contemporary problems. A further overriding task is to open social and political space for divergent voices. Acknowledgement of mass atrocity requires more than one-off events or institutional responses (the grand apology, the truth …

Fools’ Gold: Racism, Social Mobility, And Native Americans During The Gold Rush, Natasha Stange

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

By the mid-1850s, more than 300,000 individuals had migrated to California, as the discovery of gold tempted many to abandon their poor working and living conditions for the chance to “strike it rich” out west. Often considered the dawn of a new era with boundless opportunities and riches for anyone, the rapid, widespread transcontinental migration spurred by the Gold Rush replicated and exacerbated pre-existing societal issues—namely racism, mistreatment of Indians, and unequal economic opportunity—in the United States. Racism, maltreatment of Native Americans, and unequal economic opportunity are all problems that have plagued American society from its inception. By failing to …

Media, Criminal Injustice, And The Black Freedom Struggle, Erin G. Turner

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Since the mid-20^th century, media outlets have driven publicity for newsworthy events and shaped content for their receptive audiences. Commonly, massive movements seek publicity to attract attention and participation for protests, demonstrations, slogans, and unfortunate events. For instance, the black freedom struggle of the 1950s through the 1970s took advantage of their traumatic narratives of oppression to attract national and international attention. Many African Americans who experienced dastardly components of a racist criminal justice system were, in turn, earning respect and power from their freedom-seeking counterparts by commodifying the emotion that fueled black liberation efforts.[i] Media, therefore, became …

Rethinking Race In The 21st Century, A New Approach For Future World-Making: Looking Back To Move Forward, Dylan Tarleton

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Color blindness, the end of race, and white privilege are but a few phrases that begin to capture the messy confusion of a zeitgeist that is 21^st century discussions on race. At a time when race is such a necessary topic to delve into, it seems that there is a lack of history injected into the conversation. Race becomes an external motor of history, racism pathological and immovable. An unthinking decision. In other words, race and racism, from the standpoint of an organizer or academic in the 21^st century, becomes near impossible to break down and work against. …

Flexibly Fluid & Immutably Innate: Perception, Identity, And The Role Of Choice In Race, Emily Lamm

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Racialized Tax Inequity: Wealth, Racism, And The U.S. System Of Taxation, Palma Joy Strand, Nicholas A. Mirkay

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article describes the connection between wealth inequality and the increasing structural racism in the U.S. tax system since the 1980s. A long-term sociological view (the why) reveals the historical racialization of wealth and a shift in the tax system overall beginning around 1980 to protect and exacerbate wealth inequality, which has been fueled by racial animus and anxiety. A critical tax view (the how) highlights a shift over the same time period at both federal and state levels from taxes on wealth, to taxes on income, and then to taxes on consumption—from greater to less progressivity. Both of these …

The New Debt Peonage In The Era Of Mass Incarceration, Timothy Black, Lacey Caporale

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

In 1867, Congress passed legislation that forbid the practices of debt peonage. However, the law was circumvented after the period of Reconstruction in the south and debt peonage became central to the expansion of southern agriculture through sharecropping and industrialization through convict leasing, practices that forced debtors into new forms of coerced labor. Debt peonage was presumable ended in the 1940s by the Justice Department. But was it? The era of mass incarceration has institutionalized a new form of debt peonage through which racialized poverty is governed, mechanisms of social control are reconstituted, and freedom is circumscribed. In this paper, …

Representations Of Nineteenth Century Mormonism In A Mormon Maid: A Cinematic Analysis, Elisabeth Weagel

Journal of Religion & Film

During the first quarter of the 20th century there was a trend in Hollywood to make films about Mormons. Practices such as polygamy created just the kind of sensationalism that attracted filmmakers (even Thomas Edison contributed with his 1902 film A Trip to Salt Lake). Many of these were B-pictures, but the 1917 film A Mormon Maid stands out because it was produced by a major production company (Paramount) and was backed by top director Cecil B. DeMille. It is often given passing reference, but very little genuine scholarship has been done on the film. A hundred years …

Helpers In A "Heathen" Land?: An Examination Of Missionary Perceptions Of The Cherokees, Andrew C. Nosti

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

This analysis examines writings left behind by missionaries living among the Cherokees in the early nineteenth century to tease out the missionary perceptions of their Indigenous neighbors. This approach includes a heavy emphasis on decoding the white lexicon employed to discuss Native Americans to elucidate the broader cultural/racial intellectualism of the time. The utilization of this approach deconstructs a conventional “friend or foe” binary viewpoint of the missionaries, conversely constructing a greater complexity within the interracial and intercultural dynamics of the Early Republic, thereby providing a more layered and broader understanding of early America and, by extension, America overall.

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2017

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided for the introduction.

Immigrant And Irish Identities In Hand In The Fire And Hamilton's Writing Between 2003 And 2014, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Immigrant and Irish Identities in Hand in the Fire and Hamilton's Writing between 2003 and 2014" Dervila Cooke discusses the intertwining of Irish and immigrant identities. Cooke examines the connection between openness to memory and embracing migrant identities in Hamilton's writing both in the 2010 novel and as a whole. The empathetic and inclusive character of Helen in Hand in the Fire is analyzed in contrast to characters who have repressed memory including the Serbian Vid. Helen's ties to elsewhere, her openness to new influence, and her willingness to engage with traumatic elements of the past (Irish …

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The 1934 Chatham Colored All-Stars: Barnstorming To Championships, Lauren A. Miceli

The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History

This essay looks at the Chatham All-Stars, an all-black baseball team from Chatham, Ontario that won the Ontario Baseball Association championship in 1934. In particular, this essay shall investigate the practice of barnstorming, which was significant in showcasing teams like the All-Stars and increasing their revenues. The essay argues that barnstorming was important in the All-Stars success in the Ontario Baseball Association, and that barnstorming also secured financial opportunities for many of the All-Star players. In addition, barnstorming was important not only to entertain communities at this time, but also to tighten relationships amongst communities. Furthermore, this essay highlights the …

Can Films Speak The Truth? Mathieu Kassovitz’S La Haine (1995) And Philippe Faucon’S La Désintégration (2011), Annie Jouan-Westlund Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

La Haine, (Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) and La Désintégration (Dir. Philippe Faucon, 2011), set in France’s urban periphery, depict the struggle of second and third-generation immigrants growing up in the housing projects and their desire to live like ‘other’ French young people. The analysis offers a comparative study of the films’ reception with a community of viewers made of American students in a Contemporary French Culture course. Following the three paradigms of exclusion (social, racial, and cultural); gender representation; and aestheticism and realism, this study demonstrates that, within certain limits, these cinematic propositions, of similar prophetic nature but different …

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

"American Dream" Or Global Nightmare?, Melanie E. L. Bush

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

In the United States we are witnessing a period of heightened contestation about the parameters of nationalism, patriotism, and loyalty. The oft-heard phrase "Support the Troops" now signifies the desire both to send more soldiers to war and to bring home those already in combat. This "nation of immigrants" has spawned a new generation of "minute-men" to defend national borders while mainstream discourse touts the benefits of "diversity." Dreams of upward mobility present for some during the mid-20th century seem now hazy at best as the proportional income of those at top grows while the rest of the population increasingly …