African American Studies Commons^™

Ferguson, The Black Radical Tradition And The Path Forward, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

Can't you feel it? Feel the temperature dropping? Feel the icy winds blowing? It’s winter in America. Spring and fall seem to have enveloped summer. The chill comes sooner and lasts longer. It’s winter in America. There’s a blizzard coming. The first frost has already fallen, in Ferguson, Missouri, of all places. Ferguson has ripped the veil off. It is now clear for the world to see how the U.S. plans to deal with its black internal colony.

It’s getting dark; it’s nearly midnight. Yes, repressive episodes will continue to increase in frequency and grow in intensity. It’s nearly midnight. …

Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn

Wilson R. Huhn

People have a fundamental need to think of themselves as “good people.” To achieve this we tell each other stories – we create myths – about ourselves and our society. These myths may be true or they may be false. The more discordant a myth is with reality, the more difficult it is to convince people to embrace it. In such cases to sustain the illusion of truth it may be necessary to develop an entire mythology – an integrated web of mutually supporting stories. This paper explores the system of myths that sustained the institution of slavery in the …

Teaching “Segregation” And The Black Liberation Movement In The Age Of Obama, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

Soul/R&B legend, Wilson Pickett was nominated for a Grammy in 1999 for the song “It’s Harder Now.” Pickett’s soul classic resonates with me in part because I find teaching African American history “harder now.” It is especially difficult to teach the sociohistorical period known variously as “the age of Jim Crow” or “Segregation.” Students don’t see the segregated South of the post World War II era as harrowing as Slavery or as rancorous as the Nadir, 1877-1923. Why is teaching African American history to this generation of college students such a difficult task? Why is the era of “Segregation” and …

“Race And The Liberal Imagination: The Representation Of African Americans In To Kill A Mockingbird.”, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

Written during the summer of 1959 and published fifty years ago day, To Kill a Mockingbird is perhaps the most insightful and prescient work of fiction on race in America—Black and white--written by a white author at its time. It is part of what cultural critics describe as the racial liberalism of the 1950s. Though uneven in its depiction of African Americans and the Black community and perhaps not fully cognizant of the thread of resistance that though tattered runs throughout the African American sociohistorical experience, it nonetheless offers a humanistic portrayal of Black people. In my remarks, I will …

Lincoln: Yesterday And Today, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

No abstract provided.

“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.

John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Detroit & The Path To Freedom, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

No abstract provided.

Black Audiences, Blaxploitation And Kung Fu Films, And Challenges To White Celluloid Masculinity, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

The roots of African Americans’ attraction to kung fu films are deeply embed- ded in their sociohistorical experiences. Simply put, it is a product of blacks’ political and cultural resistance to racial oppression. Although “repression breeds resistance,” opposing oppression is never simple; it is always varied and complex. Resistance is as likely to include cross-cutting strategies and discourses as mutually reinforcing ones. Two different but overlapping ideo- logical discourses, Pan-Africanism and Black Internationalism, help explain African Americans’ fascination with kung fu films. Pan-Africanists view the diverse dispersed peoples of African descent as one family. And perhaps, more importantly, they locate …

“The 'Long Movement' As Vampire: Temporal And Spatial Fallacies In Recent Black Freedom Studies.”, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua, Clarence E. Lang

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

Over the past three decades, scholarship on postwar African American social movements became a mature, well-rounded area of study with different interpretative schools and conflicting theoretical frameworks.' However, recently, the complexity generated by clashing interpretations has eroded as a new paradigm has become hegemonic. Since the publication of Freedom North by Jeanne F. Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, the "Long Movement" has emerged as the dominant theoretical interpretation of the modem "Civil Rights" and "Black Power" movements. The Long Movement interpretative framework consists of four interrelated conceptualizations that challenge the previous interpretations of black freedom movements. The four propositions are: (1) …

Race, Roots, & Resistance: Revisiting Black Power, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

Conference on Black Power

“Slavery, Racist Violence, American Apartheid: The Case For Reparations.”, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

LIKE THE PROVERBIAL COMET, over the last year the demand for reparations has blazed across the political skyline. Few current issues burn as brightly among African Americans. The movement's surging growth has predictably provoked renewed opposition. Recently critiques of the escalating reparations movement have come from two very different sources: Adolph L. Reed, Jr., a justly-respected African American radical, and David Horowitz, an unrespected neoconservative ideologue. This paper has three interconnected objectives: (1) to explicate Reed's and Horowitz's arguments; (2) to contextualize their arguments; and (3) to suggest an alternative reading of the reparations movement. The first, explication of their …

“‘A Warlike Demonstration': Legalism, Violent Self-Help And Electoral Politics, In Decatur, Illinois, 1894-1898.”., Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

This project addresses the limitations of previous lynching research. It explores the racial-class struggle unleashed in Decatur, Illinois, a middle-sized northern industrial town, after the lynching of Samuel J. Bush in 1893. This work examines Bush’s efforts to save his own life and his commentary on his accuser. Thus, I treat him as an active agent rather than as a passive victim. Moreover, by examining the black community’s social networks, institutional structures, and leadership, I provide a detailed analysis of its racial-class capacities. By focusing on the organizing activities of the black community, this case study explores a wider range …

"No Piece, No Peace": Class Contradictions In The Resurging Black Freedom Movement, Sundiata K. Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

In the shadow of the St. Louis Arch (commemorating "western expansion"), the Black Freedom Movement is being forced forward by the dynamic interaction between racial commonalities and class contradictions. Two things are important about the I-70 demonstrations? First, tactically by pushing contemporary protest beyond symbolic demonstrations this entrepreneur-led coalition has rehabilitated the march as a militant offensive weapon. Second, from the perspective of the Black working class and poor, the current settlement seems a sellout. The agreement highlights the need for poor and working class Blacks to pursue their own class interests. The I-70 actions deserved united Black community support, …

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …