History Commons^™

The Obama Effect: A Radical Rorschach Test, Jill Gill

Jill K. Gill

Watching Barack Obama’s presidential victory in November 2008, nearly every observer seemed to grasp the historic importance of the moment. Our nation, born amid ideals of human equality while economically tethered to black slavery—and then for a century more to federally-condoned, nationwide discrimination—had just elected its first black commander in chief. Clearly, America had taken another huge stride toward living out the meaning of its creed. After all, Obama unexpectedly beat Hillary Clinton in very white states like Idaho and Iowa to win his party’s nomination. Then he picked up some unlikely victories within the former Confederacy, namely Virginia, Florida …

The Obama Effect: A Radical Rorschach Test, Jill Gill

Jill K. Gill

Watching Barack Obama’s presidential victory in November 2008, nearly every observer seemed to grasp the historic importance of the moment. Our nation, born amid ideals of human equality while economically tethered to black slavery—and then for a century more to federally-condoned, nationwide discrimination—had just elected its first black commander in chief. Clearly, America had taken another huge stride toward living out the meaning of its creed. After all, Obama unexpectedly beat Hillary Clinton in very white states like Idaho and Iowa to win his party’s nomination. Then he picked up some unlikely victories within the former Confederacy, namely Virginia, Florida …

Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Willie Morris was in many ways larger than life. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Yazoo City, Mississippi at the age of six months. He attended and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where his scathing editorials against racism in the South earned him the hatred of university officials. After graduation, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. He would join Harper’s Magazine in 1963, rising to become the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history. He remained at this post until 1971 when he resigned amid dropping ad sales and a lack of …

In The Jungle Of Cities [Review Of The Book Harold Washington And The Neighborhoods: Progressive City Reform In Chicago, 1983-1987], Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] At first glance such a spatial transformation of work may seem positive, as indeed it was for the largely white work force that left the city and staffed these new positions. But left behind geographically, economically, and socially were the largely black (and to a lesser extent, Mexican) working-class residents. It was at this juncture, with jobs disappearing and the urban social structure fragmented, that black Chicago, symbolized in the person of Harold Washington, finally assumed political power. In Harold Washington and the Neighborhoods, editors Pierre Clavel and Wim Wiewel have collected a group of essays that examine the …

“'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives", Lynnell L. Thomas

Lynnell Thomas

This article explores the emergent post-Katrina tourism narrative and its ambivalent racialization of the city. Tourism officials are compelled to acknowledge a New Orleans outside the traditional tourist boundaries – primarily black, often poor, and still largely neglected by the city and national governments. On the other hand, tourism promoters do not relinquish (and do not allow tourists to relinquish) the myths of racial exoticism and white supremacist desire for a construction of blacks as artistically talented but socially inferior.

Ethnicity, Race, And Nationalism, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

This article traces the contours of a comparative, global, crossdisciplinary, and multiparadigmatic field that construes ethnicity, race, and nationhood as a single integrated family of forms of cultural understanding, social organization, and political contestation. It then reviews a set of diverse yet related efforts to study the way ethnicity, race, and nation work in social, cultural, and political life without treating ethnic groups, races, or nations as substantial entities, or even taking such groups as units of analysis at all.

Yick Wo Re-Revisited: Nonblack Nonwhites And Fourteenth Amendment History, Thomas W. Joo

Thomas W Joo

The 1886 Supreme Court case Yick Wo v. Hopkins is often viewed as a precursor of the racial civil rights era represented by Brown v. Board of Education. In fact, the case was primarily about economic rights. In a new article, Unexplainable on Grounds of Race: Doubts About Yick Wo, forthcoming in the Illinois Law Review, Professor Gabriel Chin argues that Yick Wo "is not a race case at all." I argue that it is a "race case" because the Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment to vindicate economic rights necessarily entangled economic rights with race--in an ultimately pernicious way. …

Race, Empire And Liberalism: Interpreting John Crawfurd’S History Of The Indian Archipelago, Gareth Knapman

Gareth Knapman

No abstract provided.

Black, Mulatto And Light Skin: Reinterpreting Race, Ethnicity And Class In Caribbean Diasporic Communities, Marc E. Prou

Marc E. Prou

In recent years, Caribbeanists of different academic specialization and intellectual orientation have demonstrated a renewed interest in the unholy trinity of race, class and ethnic matters. the renewed interest has reflected a continued, but rather an unsystematic attempt to account for the social characteristics of race, ethnicity, gender and class among Caribbean people, both at home and abroad. The current ethnic power relationships manisfested by the unequal distribution of wealth in Caribbean diasporic communities is the direct result of colonialist influence on race through exploitative practices of the plantocracy and selective immigration to create a Caribbean middle class.

Beyond 'Identity', Rogers Brubaker, Frederick Cooper

Rogers Brubaker

No abstract provided.

Are Asians Black?: The Asian-American Civil Rights Agenda And The Contemporary Significance Of The Black/White Paradigm, Janine Young Kim

Janine Kim