Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Black Expressive Art, Resistant Cultural Politics, And The [Re] Performance Of Patriotism, Deborah Elizabeth Whaley

Trotter Review

During World War I, the Boston editor William Monroe Trotter described black American patriotism as a cautious endeavor and America's willingness to participate in the World War while it turned its back on domestic issues as misguided. In an era when freedom bypassed most black women and men within the nation-state of America and in an era of mass lynching in the American South, he proclaimed that black Americans and the U.S. government might refocus their efforts on making the world safer for "Negroes."

Like William Monroe Trotter, the rap group Public Enemy's rap odyssey "Welcome to the Terrordome," from …

Tapping The Wisdom Of Our Ancestors: An Attempt To Recast Vodou And Morality Through The Voice Of Mama Lola And Karen Mccarthy Brown, Claudine Michel

Trotter Review

In this essay, I demonstrate that morality is culture-specific and contextual. To illustrate this point, I focus on Vodou, a religion that has been almost entirely misrepresented in the West, foremost because of its African origins, and that is perceived as having no legitimate basis for morality. I attempt to interpret morality in Vodou by presenting a model of ethics construction based on the true meaning of the religion rather than on the exotica of its myths and ritualizing. My analysis is based on the fact that Haitians seem to have turned to their ancestral religion and to their African …

A Historical Overview Of Poverty Among Blacks In Boston, 1950-1990, Robert C. Hayden

Trotter Review

Like most nineteenth-century residents of Boston, blacks worked hard to maintain their homes and families. Even before the Civil War, both enslaved and free blacks in "freedom's birthplace" worked long and arduous hours. Those who migrated to Boston from the South in the 1800s had come to secure higher wages, mobility, and opportunity for themselves and their families. Boston's black population grew from 2,000 in 1850 to 8,125 in 1890, and to 11,591 by 1900. In 1900, 39 percent of black Bostonians were northern-born (New England, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania), and 53 percent were southern-born.

Residential segregation for …

Commentary, Clyde Taylor

Trotter Review

There's some buzz about Bill O'Reilly's racially ignorant remarks about Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem. But the darling of left-liberal media jokesters, Jon Stewart, had a good time on his Friday, September 21 show, first, at the expense of President Bush, and then at the expense of Nelson Mandela. Blogs are cheerleading the way Stewart caught Bush in another dumb statement — that Nelson Mandela is dead. The only comments I find on the web are kudos for Stewart's bashing of Bush. No mention of Stewart animalizing Mandela with sounds that echo the mumbo-jumbo sneer at nonwhite speech, or of his …

Pastor Brunson's Shofar, Richard Tenorio

Trotter Review

A short story by Richard Tenorio of sibling love and sacrificed ambition, which is set in Roxbury, traditionally the twentieth-century home territory for blacks in Boston. Today, Roxbury is poised on the lip of gentrification, and blacks in Boston are on the move again, seeking home and security and belonging.

Madre Patria (Mother Country): Latino Identity And Rejections Of Blackness, Marta I. Cruz-Janzen

Trotter Review

When I was in third grade, in Puerto Rico, I wanted to be the Virgin Mary for the community Christmas celebration. A teacher promptly informed me that the mother of Christ could not be black. A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes was selected for the role, and I was given the role of a shepherd. In middle school, also in Puerto Rico, I played a house servant for a school play. Only children of black heritage played the slaves and servants. A white student with a painted face portrayed the only significant black character. All the other characters …