Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Growing Ethnopolitical Conflict And The Challenge Of "One" Nigeria: Politics Of State Building In A Multiethnic Society, 1960-2010, Ali Simon Yusufu Bagaji

Ali Simon Yusufu Bagaji

Since October 1, 1960 when Nigeria attained political independence, it has being witnessing a steady growth of ethnopolitical and religious crises in its body politics. The central concern of this paper is that, ethnopolitical conflicts are posing great challenge to Nigeria’s unity, sovereignty and legitimacy that may lead to its consequential collapse. The worry of this paper is that, rather than diminishing after over five decades of political independence, ethnopolitical conflict has since the 1990s not only become more ferocious and alarming, but are also shifting from ethnic accommodation to ethnic self-determination. This paper is part of an ongoing PhD …

Walking In Another’S Skin: Failure Of Empathy In To Kill A Mockingbird, Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Empathy — how it is discussed and deployed by both the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird and by the author, Lee — is a useful lens to view the depictions of racial injustice in the novel because empathy is the moral fulcrum on which the narrative turns. In this essay, I argue that To Kill a Mockingbird fails to aptly demonstrate the practice of cross-racial empathy. As a consequence, readers cannot empathize with the (largely silent) black characters of the novel. In order to examine the concept of empathy, I have developed a critical framework derived from rhetorician Kenneth …

“The New Nadir: The Contemporary Black Racial Formation,” In Special Issue, “Black Political Economy.”, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

"THE NEW NADIR: The Political Economy of the Contemporary Black Racial Formation" explores how the transformation to financialized global racial capitalism has structured the lives of contemporary African Americans. My main thesis is that the transformation to a new capitalist accumulation structure has reversed or mitigated most of the socioeco- nomic, but not the political gains achieved by the civil rights and Black Power movements.

Women-Space, Power And The Sacred In Afro-Brazilian Culture, Cheryl Sterling

Cheryl Sterling

This article places Afro-Brazilian women in the midst of the discourse of globalization, in light of its impact on marginalizing women of color, economically, politically, and culturally. It extends the concept of globalizing discourses to the history of enslavement and the racialist policies in Brazilian society, as seen in its policy of embranquecimento and the myth of Brazil as a racial democracy. The article then analyzes the historic and present day role of Afro-Brazilian women in the religious tradition of Candomblé, focusing on one public festival in particular, the festa for the Yoruba-based orixá, Obaluaye, in Salvador da Bahia. It …

The Unintended Consequences Of Low H-1b Visa Caps: Brain Blocking, Brain Diversion, And Racial Discrimination Against Asian Technology Professionals, Jeffrey L. Gower

Jeffrey L Gower

American business interests face increasing difficulties as they attempt to compete against global technology-based industries. As the U.S. educational system produces interests face increasing difficulties as they attempt to compete fewer technology workers, many firms look to foreign countries such as India, China, or other Asian countries that have an abundance of skilled professionals. The U.S. Congress created the H-1B visa program in 1990 for educated skilled foreign workers, and manipulated the yearly cap on several occasions. Limits were as high as 195,000 as recently as 2003, but were reduced to 65,000 by 2009. The result of placing a low …

Black Student Leaders: The Influence Of Social Climate In Student Organizations, Cameron C. Beatty, Antonio A. Bush, Eliza E. Erxleben, Tomika L. Ferguson, Autumn T. Harrell, Wanna K. Sahachartsiri

Cameron C. Beatty, Ph.D.

The social climate of student organizations can alter a student’s perception of their influence upon the organization. This study examines Black student leaders’ perceptions of social climate of campus governing boards at a predominantly White institution (PWI). Black students’ experiences were investigated using Moos’s (1979, 1987) social climate dimensions. Implications and recommendations for student affairs professionals advising Black student leaders are detailed based on three salient themes: mission and direction, relationships, and mutual impact.

The Urgency Of Building Oromo National Consensus, Asafa Jalata

Asafa Jalata

First, the paper explains how some political achievements without strong organizational and institutional structures have increased political crises in the Oromo national movement. Second, it identifies and explores external and internal factors that have hampered the development of the Oromo national consensus. Third, it suggests what Oromo activists and political organizations should do to overcome their ideological and political weaknesses and political ineptness to develop a national declaration that will be the central guiding principle of the Oromo national movement for human liberation and sovereignty in Oromia and beyond.

Urban Centers In Oromia: Consequences Of Spatial Concentration Of Power In Multinational Ethiopia, Asafa Jalata

Asafa Jalata

This paper examines the essence and characteristics of cities and urban centers in Oromia and the major consequences of the centralization and spatial concentration of Habasha (Amhara-Tigray) political power in a multinational Ethiopia. It speci!cally demonstrates how the integration of indigenous Oromo towns into the Ethiopian colonial structure and the formation of garrison and non-garrison cities and towns in Oromia consolidated Habasha political domination over the Oromo people. Ethiopian colonial structure limited the access of Oromo urban residents, who are a minority in their own cities and towns, to institutions and opportunities, such as employment, education, health, mass media and …

The Tigrayan-Led The Ethiopian State, Repression, Terrorism, And Gross Human Rights Violations In Oromia And Ethiopia, Asafa Jalata

Asafa Jalata

The Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government has engaged in state terrorism and genocide with the support of global powers, including the US, countries of emerging economy like China and India, global institutions like the World Bank and the IMF; it has massacred, assassinated, imprisoned, and tortured millions of Oromos and members other colonized peoples. Millions of Oromos have been also evicted and replaced by thugs and thieves who have no morality and conscience.

Problematic Conceptualizations: Allies In Teacher Education For Social Justice, Vonzell Agosto

Vonzell Agosto

This review of the literature on the concept ally and ally identity development was inspired by a qualitative study exploring the identities and social justice values of prospective teachers of color. Although the participants in the original study never used the term ally, their narratives inspired me to characterize them as allies in the struggle for social justice education. However, a review of the literature on allies, as analyzed through critical race theory and critical discourse analysis, revealed emerging conceptualizations of ally as incongruent with minority identities as they position people of color at the periphery of this social justice …

Slave Landscapes Of The Carolina Low Country: What The Documents Reveal, Elizabeth Brabec

Elizabeth Brabec

Although much has been written about slave life in the antebellum south, comparatively little is understood about the physical setting of slave communities and their day-to-day life. Due to the lack of written documentation and few sketches, paintings or other images, the documentation of the physical setting of slave life is more difficult to compile than that of the plantation owners or even indentured servants. By completing a structured analysis of existing documentary evidence for a specific region of the South, the low country of South Carolina, the myths and realities of slave life in this region can be clarified. …

Border Physician: The Life Of Lawrence A. Nixon, 1883-1966, Will Guzmán

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation centers on the life of Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon, an African American physician and civil rights activist who lived in El Paso, Texas from 1910 until his death in 1966. Born in Marshall, Texas in 1883, Lawrence Nixon graduated from Wiley College in 1902 and Meharry Medical College in 1906. He then established a medical office in Cameron, Texas in 1907, but due to the racial climate and violence of central Texas he moved west to El Paso in hopes of a better life.

Although several historians have mentioned Dr. Nixon in their works, they have tended to …

The Literary Fictioning Of John Gregory Bourke's Imperial Nostalgia, Toni K. Mcnair

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nineteenth-century Army Captain and American ethnographer John Gregory Bourke (b. 1846 - d. 1896) meticulously described and documented a vast amount of information on military life, geography, ecology, and people on both sides of the Mexican-American border, offering observations and opinions of American, Mexican, Mexican-American, Apache, Pueblo, Zuni and Plains Indian cultures. Because of his ethnographic studies of Mexican-Americans along the Rio Grande, cultural studies scholars, José E. Limón and José David Saldí­var have identified John Gregory Bourke as complicit in the U.S. government's imperialist project. Referring to Renato Rosaldo's anthropological theory of imperialist nostalgia, These authors declare Bourke's work …

Engaged Pedagogy And Critical Race Feminism, Theodorea Berry

Faculty Publications

The article describes the engaged pedagogy of cultural critic and scholar bell hooks in the context of the experiences that the author gained from a group of African American pre-service teachers in a social foundations course. It provides an overview of critical race feminism, which acknowledges the importance of storytelling and addresses the intersections of gender and race, and explains its significance to preparing African American pre-service teachers. It concludes with a discourse on engaged pedagogy from a critical feminist perspective which enables teacher educators to support the lived experiences of students who are socially marginalized.

The Obama Effect On American Discourse About Racial Identity: Dreams From My Father (And Mother), Barack Obama's Search For Self, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Joseph Curl reported that the Obama organization "would not answer when asked why the biracial candidate calls himself black," replying only that the question didn't "seem especially topical." Biracial ancestry and racial identity are still sensitive subjects in the United States, not suitable for sound bites. But they are perfect topics for the introspective musings of an autobiography, and Barack Obama must have thought he had answered this question in depth in Dreams from My Father (1995). In his introduction, Obama hesitates to use the term "autobiography" because it connotes, he says, "a certain closure"; …

Invisible Dread, From Twisted: The Dreadlock Chronicles, Bertram D. Ashe

English Faculty Publications

This excerpt traces the issues and process surrounding the dreadlocking of an Afri­can-American professor's hair. The personal history leading up to the decision to grow locks is briefly addressed, as is the experience of getting twisted for the first time and some reactions to the new hairstyle. Twisted discusses issues of cultural authenticity and academic nonconformity. It examines dreadlocks as a pathway to explore black identity, but in opposing ways: the act of locking ones hair does dis­play unconventional blackness - but it also participates in a preexisting black style. To what extent, the excerpt asks, can the adoption of …

‘Broken Brotherhood: The Rise And Fall Of The National Afro-American Council,’ By Benjamin R. Justesen, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

The dominance of Booker T. Washington and the loyalty of most African Americans to the Republican Party are often mistaken as markers of black political unanimity at the turn of the twentieth century. Even worse, they are assumed to stand for the whole of African American political life. Benjamin R. Justesen’s story of the struggles to establish and sustain the National Afro-American Council should serve as an important reminder of the tensions, diversity, and energy within black politics in this period. The reminder is so important, and so potential productive, that one wishes that Broken Brotherhood: The Rise and Fall …

Landscapes Of Removal And Resistance: Edwin James's Nineteenth-Century Cross-Cultural Collaborations, Kyhl Lyndgaard

Great Plains Quarterly

The life of Edwin James (1797-1861) is bookended by the Lewis and Clark expedition (1803-6) and the Civil War (1861-65). James's work engaged key national concerns of western exploration, natural history, Native American relocation, and slavery. His principled stands for preservation of lands and animals in the Trans-Mississippi West and his opposition to Indian relocation should be celebrated today, yet his legacy does not fit neatly into established literary or historical categories. One reason for James's obscurity is his willingness to collaborate. Both of his major works, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains (1823) and A …

"This Must Have Been A Grand Sight": George Bent And The Battle Of Platte Bridge, Steven C. Haack

Great Plains Quarterly

The Battle of Platte Bridge, July 26, 1865, is a noteworthy event in the annals of the American Indian Wars. An alliance of Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapahoe, numbering in excess of 2,000 warriors, traveled three days to a specific military objective, an undertaking unusual both in terms of its magnitude and its level of organization. The battle is also of interest because we have a detailed description of the event written from the Native American viewpoint. This description comes in the form of a number of letters written to George Hyde by Southern Cheyenne George Bent. George Bent, son of …

Multiplexing Racial And Ethnic Planes: Chinese American Politics In Globalized Immigrant Suburbs, James Lai

Ethnic Studies

Contemporary American suburbs offer critical insights into the multiple planes of racial and ethnic consciousness and community formations that shape new Chinese American political agendas. In a 2009 Amerasia Journal article entitled "A New Gateway: Asian American Political Power in the 21st Century," I examined the importance of location for understanding the ability of Asian American communities to attain and sustain elected representation. Like real estate, location matters in explaining the political question of "where" Asian Americans are winning elected representation in American politics. That article's thesis was that, rather than focusing solely on metropolitan gateways that had been central …