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Fleet, James, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

The Fleet family moved to the Patterson Houses in the Bronx in the fall of 1956 from Harlem. He says growing up there provided for a very healthy and nurturing childhood. His father, Bittie Fleet a noted jazz musician, abandoned his music career in the early 1950’s to work in a department store, while his mother stayed at home with the children.

He had been aware of his father’s jazz career from an early age. He learned to play on his own, without lessons of any form. His claim to fame is that he was the person who influenced Charlie …

Brath, Elombe, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewers: Mark Naison, Maxine Gordon

Interviewee: Elombe Brath

Date of interview: 21 June, 2005

Summarized by: Craig Teal, 26 March 2007

Elombe Brath is a longtime political activist in New York City who is one of the founders of the Jazz Arts Society and was active in organizing some of the first cultural pageants in New York City in the 1960s. Born on September 30, 1936 in Brooklyn, Elombe grew up in Harlem and in Hunt’s Point on 751 Kelly Street between Longwood Avenue and 156^th Street. His family moved into a crossroads area of the Bronx that was …

Where Do White People Come From? A Foucaultian Critique Of Whiteness Studies, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

Over the past 15 years we have seen the rise of a field of inquiry known as Whiteness Studies. Two of its major tenets are (1) that white identity is socially constructed and functions as a racial norm and (2) that those who occupy the position of white subjectivity exercise ‘white privilege’, which is oppressive to non-whites. However, despite their ubiquitous use of the term ‘norm’, Whiteness Studies theorists rarely give any detailed account of how whiteness serves to normalize. A case is made here that we can only understand how whiteness normalizes if we place the development of white …