Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 26 of 26
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Latinos, African Americans And The Coalitional Case For A Federal Jobs Program, Alan A. Aja, William Darity Jr., Darrick Hamilton
Latinos, African Americans And The Coalitional Case For A Federal Jobs Program, Alan A. Aja, William Darity Jr., Darrick Hamilton
Ethnic Studies Review
In the late 1970s, amidst growing unemployment in black and Latino communities, the newly-formed Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) supported the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in its call for full employment in the run up to the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1 978. Never fully implemented, the act has been de facto an unfunded mandate for close to 40 years. Only recently has it been resurrected by a handful of lawmakers, while both discussion and support for a national jobs program has begun to gain steam in the media and the general public. With support from labor market research …
Scarlet-Letter Politics: The Rhetoric Of Shame In The Campaign To Unseat President Barack Hussein Obama, Myra Mendible
Scarlet-Letter Politics: The Rhetoric Of Shame In The Campaign To Unseat President Barack Hussein Obama, Myra Mendible
Ethnic Studies Review
This essay considers the politics of racial shaming as deployed against Barack Obama, arguing that it targeted "black" and "foreign" bodies as threats to the "American" body politic.
Trey Ellis's Platitudes: Redefining Black Voices, Quan Manh Ha
Trey Ellis's Platitudes: Redefining Black Voices, Quan Manh Ha
Ethnic Studies Review
Trey Ellis has emerged as a prominent African American writer of the late-twentieth century, despite the small number of his published works. "The New Black Aesthetic," an essay that he first published in CaUaloo in 1989, one year after the publication of his first novel, Platitudes, stands as a manifesto that defines and articulates his perspective on the emerging black literary voices and culture of the time, and on "the future of African American artistic expression" in the postmodern era.1 According to Eric Lott, Ellis's novel parodies the literary and cultural conflict between such male experimental writers as lshmael Reed …
Black Mayors In Non-Majority Black (Medium Sized) Cities: Universalizing The Interests Of Blacks, Ravi K. Perry
Black Mayors In Non-Majority Black (Medium Sized) Cities: Universalizing The Interests Of Blacks, Ravi K. Perry
Ethnic Studies Review
The nature of political representation of Black constituents' interests from their elected Black representatives is changing in the twentyfirst century. Increasingly, African Americans are being elected to political offices where the majority of their constituents are not African American. Previous research on this question tended to characterize Black politicians' efforts to represent their Black constituents' interests in two frames: deracialized or racialized (McCormick and Jones 1993; Cruse 1990). However, the advent of the twenty-first century has exhausted the utility ofthat polarization. Black politicians no longer find explicit racial appeals appropriate for their electoral goals, given the changing demographic environment, and …
"I'Ll Rise": Rememory, Hope And The Creation Of A New Public Sphere In Ben Harper's Music, Delphine Gras
"I'Ll Rise": Rememory, Hope And The Creation Of A New Public Sphere In Ben Harper's Music, Delphine Gras
Ethnic Studies Review
Recent studies about resistance music in the United States primarily focus on the hip-hop movement. However, it does not offer the only musical discourse contesting contemporary injustices. Even though the debate about hip-hop is a crucial one that deserves full attention, it seems necessary to widen the current conversation on music to take into account a wider array of musical genres and artists. This will in turn allow us to see the revolutionary power of music in its full force. In the United States, black music, from the Spirituals to Rhythm and Blues, has undeniably been a potent agent for …
[Review Of] Thompson Iii, J. Phillip. Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, And The Call For A Deep Democracy, Ricky Green
Ethnic Studies Review
In Double Trouble, Thompson wrestles with the conflict of the viability of Black elected officials successfully leading major U.S. cities and remaining accountable to the "Black poor." Thompson asserts the strategy of deep pluralism... "how marginal groups are to achieve power in competitive struggles with other groups while still striving for a politics of common good."1 The work provides a wealth of knowledge concerning inner city politics since the civil rights movement and deftly outlines the problems, such as white flight, federal dispersion of funds, and the depoliticizing of grassroots organizing, that have developed for Black mayors and working class …
[Review Of] Mark Christian Thompson. Black Fascisms: African American Literature And Culture Between The Wars, Bill Lyne
Ethnic Studies Review
In How Bigger Was Born, Richard Wright described the political choice available to young black men like Bigger Thomas as being between communism and fascism. A plethora of recent scholarship from critics like Barbara Foley, James Smethurst, and William Maxwell has articulated the complex relationship between black and red in the first half of the twentieth century. Mark Christian Thompson's Black Fascisms begins to explore the other half of Wright's binary, tracing the uses of fascist ideology in the work of Marcus Garvey, George S. Schuyler, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright.
Signing And Signifyin': Negotiating Deaf And African American Identities, Heather D. Clark
Signing And Signifyin': Negotiating Deaf And African American Identities, Heather D. Clark
Ethnic Studies Review
For individuals who are both African American and Deaf finding a place to belong is a process of navigating their many cultural identities. In this paper I explore the following questions: where do individuals who are African American and Deaf find and make community? To which communities do they perceive they belong? Is their primary identity African American, Deaf or something else? Does belonging to one community negate membership in another? Does the presence of African American Deaf individuals have an impact on either community or are they forced to create an entirely new one for themselves?
Middle Passage To Freedom: Black Atlantic Consciousness In Charles Johnson's Middle Passage And S. I. Martin's Incomparable World, Robert Nowatzki
Middle Passage To Freedom: Black Atlantic Consciousness In Charles Johnson's Middle Passage And S. I. Martin's Incomparable World, Robert Nowatzki
Ethnic Studies Review
Charles Johnson's novel, Middle Passage, and S.I. Martin's novel, Incomparable World, illustrate through mobile, culturally hybrid protagonists Paul Gilroy's notion of Black Atlantic consciousness, which is based on cultural hybridity and physical mobility across the Atlantic between Europe and Africa, America and the Caribbean. I argue that both novels blur the line between freedom and slavery, between oppressed and oppressor, and disrupt the links between blackness and slavery, between mobility and freedom. In both novels the diasporic Black Atlantic experiences privilege masculinity, since neither novel includes black women who can experience the mobility that the male protagonists do.
Chinatown Black Tigers: Black Masculinity And Chinese Heroism In Frank Chin's Gunga Din Highway, Crystal S. Anderson
Chinatown Black Tigers: Black Masculinity And Chinese Heroism In Frank Chin's Gunga Din Highway, Crystal S. Anderson
Ethnic Studies Review
Images of ominous villains and asexual heroes in literature and mainstream American culture tend to relegate Asian American men to limited expressions of masculinity. These emasculating images deny Asian American men elements of traditional masculinity, including agency and strength. Many recognize the efforts of Frank Chin, a Chinese American novelist, to confront, expose, and revise such images by relying on a tradition of Chinese heroism. In Gunga Din Highway (1994), however, Chin creates an Asian American masculinity based on elements of both the Chinese heroic tradition and a distinct brand of African American masculinity manifested in the work of Ishmael …
[Review Of] Teodros Kiros, Ed. Explorations In African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics, Ashton Wesley Welch
[Review Of] Teodros Kiros, Ed. Explorations In African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics, Ashton Wesley Welch
Ethnic Studies Review
Explorations in African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics is a collection of ten essays written both by newcomers and by well-known African philosophers. Most of the authors are currently teaching in American universities. It is part of the growing literature that cements African philosophy as an integral part of the discipline of philosophy while charting new venues for the field. The objective of this book is to illustrate that African philosophy can serve African people as a moralactivity guided by the principles of practical reason in addressing the underlying problems of African economic, political, and social institutions. Teodros Kiros, the …
Using African American Perspectives To Promote A More Inclusive Understanding Of Human Communication Theory, Jim Schnell
Using African American Perspectives To Promote A More Inclusive Understanding Of Human Communication Theory, Jim Schnell
Ethnic Studies Review
This article addresses the use of African American perspectives as a means of promoting a more inclusive understanding of human communication theory. It describes contributions by African American scholars as they relate to providing a framework for inclusion of other under represented cultures in U.S. society (i.e. Asian American, Latino American, etc.). This objective is becoming more and more relevant because of the increased percentage of U.S. citizens who are of non-European origin. Common sense supports the position that an inclusive curriculum, representative of the many cultural groups that compose the U.S., will appeal to the diverse audience educated in …
Distinctive Features Of The African-American Family: Debunking The Myth Of The Deficit Model, David L. Briscoe
Distinctive Features Of The African-American Family: Debunking The Myth Of The Deficit Model, David L. Briscoe
Ethnic Studies Review
Throughout the 1900's, social scientists have debated the question of whether the African American family is an adaptative social system or whether it is pathological, perpetuating its poverty over the generations. This article examines the holistic perspective as the preeminent comprehensive approach in studying the African American family and provides empirical evidence of distinctive features of the African American family in support of the adaptation argument. The adaptation/deficit debate will probably continue as long as the scientific community fails to fully acknowledge and make the most of theoretical constructs that are holistic in principle and design.
[Review Of] James L. Conyers, Jr. Black Lives: Essays In African American Biography, Calvin E. Harris
[Review Of] James L. Conyers, Jr. Black Lives: Essays In African American Biography, Calvin E. Harris
Ethnic Studies Review
These biographical profiles of well-known and not so well-known African Americans are presented from an Afrocentric perspective. At least one essay is about a South African Black, "Bessie Head: The Idealist" by Owen G. Mordaunt. Drawing from the writings of Maulana Karenga, Conyers sets forth the Afrocentric framework as presented in this anthology: The Afro-American national community is in fact a unity-in-itself, a community of people with a common and distinguishing history (kinship in time and space; a common and distinguishing culture (kinship in life changes and activities); and a common and distinguishing collective self-consciousness...(10).
[Review Of] Michéle Lamont, Ed. The Cultural Territories Of Race: Black And White Boundaries, Rainer Spencer
[Review Of] Michéle Lamont, Ed. The Cultural Territories Of Race: Black And White Boundaries, Rainer Spencer
Ethnic Studies Review
The aim of this volume is to illuminate various black and white boundaries in the United States through an examination of the "cultural dimensions of racial inequality." Fourteen essays touch on a wide variety of subjects including African American corporate executives, fast-food workers in Harlem, Afrocentrism, single-parenting, rap music, and feminism, to name only some. The authors of these essays strive to move beyond a static structure versus culture dualism and to instead highlight the theoretical and empirical importance of cultural scripts, all without reducing discussion to the level of "blaming the victim."
[Review Of] Stewart E. Tolnay. The Bottom Rung: African American Family Life On Southern Farms, Clarence Spigner
[Review Of] Stewart E. Tolnay. The Bottom Rung: African American Family Life On Southern Farms, Clarence Spigner
Ethnic Studies Review
Stewart E. Tolnay has a message to deliver. In his excellent historical treatise on the family life of African American sharecroppers he counters current belief that rural Southern blacks who migrated North brought with them a dysfunctional family structure, a view espoused today by scholars as politically disparate as the liberal Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the conservative Charles Murray. Through the use of interview data gathered from the New Dears Federal Writers Project and with statistical analysis of U. S. Census data, Tolnay's seven chapters and epilogue span the years 1910-1940 from the post-Slavery period and the era of Jim …
Ebonics: The Debate Which Never Happened, Barbara Birch
Ebonics: The Debate Which Never Happened, Barbara Birch
Ethnic Studies Review
The thesis of this paper is that no substantive and impartial debate about the pedagogical value of using Ebonics in the classroom could be held in the United States media because America's prescriptive attitude towards Ebonics does not allow fair and objective consideration of the issue. In presenting this theme I will discuss language ideologies in general and prescription in particular as a common attitude towards language. Prescription with respect to Ebonics usually takes the form of language prejudice. I will conclude with an introduction to one area of language planning, status planning, in which language planners try to improve …
[Review Of] Patricia Hill Collins. Fighting Words: Black Women & The Search For Justice, Venetria K. Patton
[Review Of] Patricia Hill Collins. Fighting Words: Black Women & The Search For Justice, Venetria K. Patton
Ethnic Studies Review
Collins' Fighting Words builds on her previous work, Black Feminist Thought, as she explores standpoint theory and "the outsider within" position and their usefulness for Black feminist thought. She structures her analysis by critiquing its effectiveness as critical social theory. For Collins, "Critical social theory constitutes theorizing about the social in defense of economic and social justice." Because African American women and other oppressed groups seek economic and social justice, she posits that their social theories may generate new perspectives on injustice.
[Review Of] John W. Ravage. Black Pioneers: Images Of The Black Experiences On The North American Frontier, Nudie Eugene Williams
[Review Of] John W. Ravage. Black Pioneers: Images Of The Black Experiences On The North American Frontier, Nudie Eugene Williams
Ethnic Studies Review
This scholarly study is a welcome effort to broaden the horizon of what many Americans have come to believe are the true westering experiences. It began with the early western images created in dime store novels and brought to life on the movie screen. The featured settlers, cowboys, outlaws, and other heroes were generally white. In this scenario, the frontier was tamed by strong willed white men while the role of African Americans in the "western United States and Canada and Alaska" was largely ignored (xv).
Afrocentric Ideologies And Gendered Resistance In Daughters Of The Dust And Malcolm X: Setting, Scene, And Spectatorship, David Jones
Ethnic Studies Review
This study of scenes from the films Daughters of the Dust and Malcolm X, describes images of myth, gender, and resistance familiar to African-American interpretive communities. Key thematic and technical elements of these films are opposed to familiar Hollywood practices, indicating the directors' effort to address resisting spectators. Both filmmakers, Julie Dash and Spike Lee respectively, chose subjects with an ideological resonance in African-American collective memory: Malcolm X, eulogized by Ossie Davis as "our living black manhood"(i) and the women of the Gullah Sea Islands, a site often celebrated for its authentically African cultural survivals. Both films combine images of …
[Review Of] Lean'tin L. Bracks. Writings On Black Women Of The Diaspora: History, Language, And Identity. Crosscurrents In African American History, Vol I, Helen Lock
Ethnic Studies Review
In her "Preface" to this study, Lean'tin Bracks describes her purpose as being "to describe a model which may provide for today's black woman a means to take control of her destiny by retrieving her Afrocentric legacy from the obscured past" (xi). This model, which she applies through discussions of The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1988), Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982, and Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow (1984), is tripartite: "historical awareness, attention to linguistic pattern, and sensitivity to stereotypes in the dominant culture" (xi).
Black Cowboys In The American West: A Historiographical Review, David Goldstein-Shirley
Black Cowboys In The American West: A Historiographical Review, David Goldstein-Shirley
Ethnic Studies Review
Few subjects in the ethnic experience of the United States are as fraught with mythology and misinformation as black cowboys. Although absent from most classic history texts of the American West, black cowboys probably constituted about a quarter of the working cowboys in the nineteenth century, although q uantitative data to establish a number are lacking. This essay reviews the historiography of black cowboys published during the last half-century, noting how much of it is marred either by glossing over the presence of black cowboys or by credulously repeating estimates of their numbers established by earlier work. The essay speculates …
[Review Of] Wahneema Lubiano, Ed. The House That Race Built: Black Americans, U.S. Terrain, Clarence Spigner
[Review Of] Wahneema Lubiano, Ed. The House That Race Built: Black Americans, U.S. Terrain, Clarence Spigner
Ethnic Studies Review
The House that Race Built is a fascinating account of race and racism upon the terrain of United States' culture in the 1990s. Seventeen scholars, brought together at a Race Matters Conference at Princeton University, produced various essays and were evidently given plenty of leeway by the book's editor, Wahneema Lubiano. Various disciplines of law, history, sociology, fine arts, ethnic studies, literature, divinity, and politics are represented. Contributors addressed issues ranging from homosexuality, affirmative action, O.J. Simpson and religion, to perspectives on work vis-a-vis play, culture, Black Nationalism, whiteness, crime, and the black diaspora. A common denominator, in my view, …
Afrocentrism And The Peopling Of The Americas, Gabriel Haslip-Viera
Afrocentrism And The Peopling Of The Americas, Gabriel Haslip-Viera
Ethnic Studies Review
This essay focuses on a theory of human development that has been promoted aggressively by a group of Afrocentrists in recent years - that the Western Hemisphere was first populated by "Africoids" or "Black" people who came to the Americas by way of Asia and the Bering Straits with little or no change in their physical or racial characteristics. As discussed in this article, the theory has no support in the evidence collected by scientists in various fields. The essay focuses on the basic claims and methods used by the Afrocentrists to support their theory, including their misuse or misinterpretation …
The African-American Intellectual Of The 1920s: Some Sociological Implications Of The Harlem Renaissance, Robert L. Perry, Melvin T. Peters
The African-American Intellectual Of The 1920s: Some Sociological Implications Of The Harlem Renaissance, Robert L. Perry, Melvin T. Peters
Ethnic Studies Review
This paper deals with some of the sociological implications of a major cultural high-water point in the African American experience, the New Negro/Harlem Renaissance. The paper concentrates on the cultural transformations brought about through the intellectual activity of political activists, a multi-genre group of artists, cultural brokers, and businesspersons. The driving-wheel thrust of this era was the reclamation and the invigoration of the traditions of the culture with an emphasis on both the, African and the American aspects, which significantly impacted American and international culture then and throughout the 20th century. This study examines the pre-1920s background, the forms of …
Using African American Perspectives To Promote A More Inclusive Understanding Of Human Communication Theory, Jim Schnell
Using African American Perspectives To Promote A More Inclusive Understanding Of Human Communication Theory, Jim Schnell
Ethnic Studies Review
This article addresses the use of African American Perspectives as a means of promoting a more inclusive understanding of human communication theory. It describes contributions by African American scholars as they relate to providing a framework for inclusion of other under-represented cultures in U.S. society (i.e. Asian American, Latin American, etc.). This objective is becoming more and more relevant because of the increased percentage of U.S. citizens who are of non-European origin. Common sense supports the position that an inclusive curriculum, representative of the many cultural groups that compose the U.S., will appeal to the diverse audience educated in the …