African American Studies Commons^™

"The Indeterminacy Of Race: The Dilemma Of Difference In Medicine And Health Care", Jamie P. Ross

Jamie P Ross

The indeterminacy of race:The dilemma of difference in medicine and health careHow can researchers use race, as they do now, to conduct health-care studies when its very definition is in question? The belief that race is a social construct without “biological authenticity” though widely shared across disciplines in social science is not subscribed to by traditional science. Yet with an interdisciplinary approach, the two horns of the social construct/genetics dilemma of race are not mutually exclusive. We can use traditional science to provide a rigorous framework and use a social-science approach so that “invisible” factors are used to adjust the …

Keep Claiming Space!, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

Substantial foreword to the "Hands Up. Don't Shoot!" special issue of CLAJ.

The Militarization Of Prayer In America: White And Native American Spiritual Warfare, Elizabeth Mcalister

Elizabeth McAlister

This article examines how militarism has come to be one of the generative forces of the prayer practices of millions of Christians across the globe. To understand this process, I focus on the articulation between militarization and aggressive forms of prayer, especially the evangelical warfare prayer developed by North Americans since the 1980s. Against the backdrop of the rise in military spending and neoliberal economic policies, spiritual warfare evangelicals have taken on the project of defending the United States on the “spiritual” plane. They have elaborated a complex theology and prayer practice with a highly militarized discourse and set of …

Book Review. 2015. Black Male(D):Peril And Promise In The Education Of African American Males, Felix Kumah-Abiwu

Felix Kumah-Abiwu

No abstract provided.

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

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

The Ferguson rebellion is an inchoate manifestation of the roiling turbulent dark water of African American resistance to white supremacy and capitalist exploitation. Will it become more? Will the young activists become politically conscious and organized? Will the youth whose dogged strength has kept the rebellion alive transform themselves into radicals and their struggle into a battle for power? It’s unclear; therefore, I don’t condemn it. It’s too soon to tell what it means in the flow history. However, professor Ashley Howard reminds us that what’s been called riots are merely the tactics of the most marginal and alienated sectors …

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. …

Shaping Presence: Ida B. Wells’ 1892 Testimony Of The ‘Untold Story’ At New York’S Lyric Hall, Anita August

Anita August

I will examine Wells’ 1892 testimony at Lyric Hall using an interdisciplinary reading from rhetorical theory, legal brief writing, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and historical criticism to illustrate how these bodies of knowledge discursively intersect and interact in articulating the shaping presence of the agent. I will distinguish my notion of a shaping presence in five ways in which it acts as a rhetorical framing of both the agent and her visual and verbal discourse.

Introduction: The War On U.S. Blacks, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

The war on black people seeks to push them back to a role, status, position, and representation more akin to the 1950s, if not the 1890s. There are several fronts in the war on Afro-America. These fronts take the particular form of the social categories of class, gender, and generation. The marginalization of blacks from the labor force, nullification of hard-won civil rights protections, mass race-based incarceration, and the growing resurgence in white supremacy evidenced partly by the mass arming of the U.S. white population signal the existence of a war on black America.

Black Love Bibliography, Stephanie Y. Evans Phd

Stephanie Y. Evans PhD

Clark Atlanta University graduate students in the Spring 2014 Africana Women’s Studies seminar created this “Black Love Bibliography” to share. We are pleased to offer this groundbreaking introduction to a vastly under-defined area of inquiry and discussion.

Focusing on the seminar theme, “researching Black love,” seven students collected citations that informed their final papers about race, gender, and definitions of self-love, intimate love, social love, and altruism or universal love. In a course designed to highlight the history, cultural diversity, contributions, and approaches to Africana Women's Studies, students conducted multi-disciplinary investigations of social sciences and humanities regarding race, gender, and …

An Oblique Blackness: Reading Racial Formation In The Aesthetics Of George Elliott Clarke, Dionne Brand, And Wayde Compton, Jeremy D. Haynes B.A.H.

Jeremy D Haynes B.A.H.

This thesis examines how the poetics of George Elliott Clarke, Dionne Brand and Wayde Compton articulate unique aesthetic voices that are representative of a range of ethnic communities that collectively make-up blackness in Canada. Despite the different backgrounds, geographies, and ethnicities of these authors, blackness in Canada is regularly viewed as a homogeneous community that is most closely tied to the cultural histories of the American South and the Atlantic slave trade. Black Canadians have historically been excluded from the official narratives of the nation, disassociating blackness from Canadian-ness. Epithets such as “African-Canadian” are indicative of the way race distances …

Love In Action: Noting Similarities Between Lynching Then & Anti-Lgbt Violence Now, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

The more I learn about the violence currently plaguing LGBT communities, the more it reminds me of the brutal practice of lynching, which has been the focus my research for the past 15 years. Ultimately, both forms of violence are designed to deny targeted groups recognition as citizens. Relying on my expertise regarding racial violence as well as the data on anti-LGBT attacks collected by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), this essay notes similarities between lynching at the last turn of the century and anti-LGBT violence today. The piece identifies five parallels: 1) the mundane quality of the …

Jim Crow In The Soviet Union, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

An Invitation To Debate: Envisioning An Africa-Centered Perspective, Engaging Sociological Endeavor, Nikitah O. Imani

Nikitah O Imani

No abstract provided.

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 …

Belief And Performance, Morrison And Me, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

A chapter discussing the lessons I learned from Toni Morrison's THE BLUEST EYE that continue to guide me. The insights gained from that novel have informed my intellectual work and my ability to navigate the U.S. academy.

Hollywood's White Legal Heroes And The Legacy Of Slave Codes, Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Katie Rose Guest Pryal

This chapter explores the portrayal of black defendants in mainstream legal cinema and draws connections between these portrayals, the legacy of slave codes, and the Supreme Court's rejection of statistical and historical proof of racism in the application of the death penalty. I focus on a sub-genre of legal cinema, what I call the "White Legal Hero" narrative. The typical white legal hero film tells the story of an innocent or otherwise righteous black male defendant facing a capital charge. He is represented by a white male "hero" lawyer who tries to overcome the racist justice system. The failure of …

James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings The Blues For Mister Charlie, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

James Baldwin worked tirelessly to expose the myths that allowed Americans to delude themselves. Scholars have long recognized this as the driving force of his fiction and non-fiction, but this mission was also very much linked to Baldwin's conception of theater. This essay culls Baldwin's theater theory from his non-fiction, especially his seldom-discussed The Devil Finds Work (1976). Baldwin believed that theater could "re-create" people by helping us to re-discover our human connection, and he believed that stage actors could show the way. Baldwin's respect for stage actors develops over time, however. He reaches his conclusions only after realizing—in hindsight—how …

Reconstructing Race: A Discourse-Theoretical Approach To A Normative Politics Of Identity, Andrew Pierce

Andrew J. Pierce

This paper aims to get clear on the normative implications of the idea that race is a “social construction,” not just for political practice in non-ideal societies where racial oppression remains, but in “ideal” (presumably non-racist) societies as well. That is, I pursue the question of whether race and/or racial identity would have any legitimate place in an ideally just society, or to state it another way, whether the concept of race can be extricated from the history of racial oppression from which it arose. The position I defend is a version of what has come to be called a …

Sisters In Motherhood(?): The Politics Of Race And Gender In Lynching Drama, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

Chapter analyzing May Miller's Nails and Thorns, a lynching play not discussed in my book LIVING WITH LYNCHING.

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 …

Performance Review Of By Hands Unknown, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

Performance Review of BY HANDS UNKNOWN, theatrical presentation composed of 7 one-act lynching plays from the 1920s and 1930s.

Diaries Of A Prolific Professor: Undergraduate Research From The James Haskins Collection, Stephanie Y. Evans Phd

Stephanie Y. Evans PhD

Mapping the Haskins Legacy and an Imperative to Train Young Scholars: Race, Region, and Undergraduate Research

It seems unfathomable that someone who has written two hundred books could somehow remain

relatively unknown…unless, of course, the author were Black and from the American South. Further, it is beyond

belief that a university campus where such a prolific author dedicated three decades of teaching would be void

of physical tribute. But such is the case with the legacy of Dr. James Haskins who taught at the University of

Florida between 1977 and his passing in 2005. This collection of undergraduate student research …

“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 …

Should Writers Use They Own English, Vershawn A. Young

Vershawn A Young

This paper argues against critic Stanley Fish's assertion that students should not use dialect in academic writing.

Nah, We Straight: An Argument Against Code-Switching, Vershawn A. Young

Vershawn A Young

Although linguists have traditionally viewed code-switching as the simultaneous use of two language varieties in a single context, scholars and teachers of English have appropriated the term to argue for teaching minority students to monitor their languages and dialects according to context. For advocates of code-switching, teaching students to distinguish between “home language” and “school language” offers a solution to the tug-of-war between standard and nonstandard Englishes. This paper argues that this kind of code-switching may actually facilitate the illiteracy and academic failure that educators seek to eliminate and can promote resistance to Standard English rather than encouraging its use

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

Sundiata K Cha-Jua

No abstract provided.

Can You Really See Through A Squint? Theoretical Underpinnings In The 'Our Sister Killjoy', Cheryl Sterling

Cheryl Sterling

Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy is read as an inversion of the colonial travel narrative, addressing the continued asymmetrical power relations between Europe and Africa. The paper posits Sissie, its focal character, as a site of theoretical transformations, engaging with issues of racial subjectivity, sexuality and political positionality in relation to the neo-colonial African state. It further argues that Aidoo situates a performative self in the text through an interrogatory narrative voice that succeeds in both deforming the novelistic pattern and participating in the critique of Western subjectivity and hegemonic feminist positioning, while inserting a resistant feminist ideology into …

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 …