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Constructing and using Black cultural capital

Ali Meghji

in Black Middle-Class Britannia: Identities, Repertoires, Cultural Consumption

This chapter looks at Black middle class consumption of ‘Black cultural capital’ – forms of dominant cultural capital mediated through a way that promotes ethnoracial affinity and resistance. I argue ... More

This chapter looks at Black middle class consumption of ‘Black cultural capital’ – forms of dominant cultural capital mediated through a way that promotes ethnoracial affinity and resistance. I argue that participants often decode certain cultural forms as ‘Black cultural capital’ when they fulfil a politics of representation, both challenging the Whiteness of the art world and controlling images of Blackness more generally. Such participants often construe themselves as having the most symbolic mastery over these cultural forms in virtue of being racialised as Black. However, those towards strategic assimilation attempt to use Black cultural capital to foster inter-racial solidarity, while those towards the ethnoracial autonomous identity prefer to keep Black cultural spaces ethnoracially closed.Less

Dual Citizenship in the Hip-Hop Nation: Gender and Authenticity in Black Youth Culture

Oneka LaBennett

in She's Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn

This chapter interrogates the common view that hip-hop culture is largely constituted in misogyny, rampant consumerism, and male violence. West Indian girls pursue a symbolic “dual citizenship” as ... More

This chapter interrogates the common view that hip-hop culture is largely constituted in misogyny, rampant consumerism, and male violence. West Indian girls pursue a symbolic “dual citizenship” as they construct their subjectivities and negotiate dialectic notions of authenticity within hip-hop culture. The girls voice strong preferences for female hip-hop artists and television personalities whom they define as “real.” Their conceptualizations of authenticity are explored in the ways in which cheerleaders at the Flatbush YMCA and youth at BCM interpret American hip-hop and West Indian dancehall music. Although the mainstream versions of both genres rely on sexually explicit lyrical content and debasing portrayals of women, West Indian girls and their mothers apply a double standard, seeing hip-hop as corruptive and dancehall as “positive.” These contradictions perhaps speak to the ways in which Black consumer culture has been demonized in American society.Less

Introduction to the Original Text

Jane Marcus

Jean Mills (ed.)

in Nancy Cunard: Perfect Stranger

Jane Marcus outlines her methodology and focus on Nancy Cunard as a poet, contextualizing Cunard’s involvement in the poetry scene with canonical figures of modernism, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, ... More

Jane Marcus outlines her methodology and focus on Nancy Cunard as a poet, contextualizing Cunard’s involvement in the poetry scene with canonical figures of modernism, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Stephen Spender, and pointing to the ways in which she rejected the dominant aesthetic of her age. She also explores Cunard’s concern with whiteness through the influence of father figures, George Moore and Norman Douglas, from her childhood and young adulthood. Cunard’s engagement with Black culture, the compilation of the Negro Anthology, and her journalism devoted to anti-fascism and leftist political activism as a reporter during the Spanish Civil War and for the African American Associated Press are also considered here.Less

Women Writing Kinship in Chicago’s Black Arts Movement

Carmen L. Phelps

in Visionary Women Writers of Chicago's Black Arts Movement

This chapter discusses the grassroots Black Arts movement of Chicago and specifically looks at the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC). It explains that OBAC was considered as a branch of ... More

This chapter discusses the grassroots Black Arts movement of Chicago and specifically looks at the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC). It explains that OBAC was considered as a branch of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). However, OBAC’s aesthetic was inspired by its own unique, culturally specific objectives through the artistic and entrepreneurial collaborations among important figures and institutions that aimed to support the artistic and progressive culture in Chicago. OBAC’s agenda was influenced by the broader national movement, and its participants collaborated with BAM artists in other cities such as New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia.Less

Immigrant songs: racial politics

Paul Newland

in British films of the 1970s

This chapter explores the ways in which the racial tensions pulling at traditional notions of Britishness during the 1970s are represented in a number of films of the period. Primarily focusing on ... More

This chapter explores the ways in which the racial tensions pulling at traditional notions of Britishness during the 1970s are represented in a number of films of the period. Primarily focusing on Pressure, Black Joy and Babylon, the chapter specifically examines the ways in which black immigrant communities are depicted. Particular attention is paid to the formal, aesthetic qualities of the films, and the ways in which they choose to tell stories about black communities. The chapter concludes with an examination of the ramifications of the endurance of social realist aesthetics across a range of British films of the period.Less

White Houses and Black Print

Eric Gardner

in Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture

This chapter introduces readers to the Civil War–era Christian Recorder, the official newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It examines some of the paper’s intersections with the site ... More

This chapter introduces readers to the Civil War–era Christian Recorder, the official newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It examines some of the paper’s intersections with the site most often considered as the center of the American Civil War era, the Lincoln White House, including a key meeting between Lincoln and Bishop Daniel Payne that is essentially absent from American memory. It uses this comparative exploration to mark the kinds of recovery in which the book engages, and it summarizes the book’s contributions to the study of nineteenth-century African American literature, African American history, and African American culture; debates over print, periodicals, and community; perceptions of Black pasts and historical memory, and the growing nexus of print culture studies and African Americanist inquiry in the study of Black print culture.Less

Epilogue: It’s a Different World: The Rise of the Hip-Hop Generation and the Corruption of the Black College Communitas

Jelani M. Favors

in Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism

The epilogue of this book examines the transformations that HBCUs have undergone since the mid 70s to present day. This era coincided with a migration of talented black family and students from black ... More

The epilogue of this book examines the transformations that HBCUs have undergone since the mid 70s to present day. This era coincided with a migration of talented black family and students from black colleges to predominantly white institutions (PWI) as integration opened new doors and opportunities for black Americans. With years of underfunding and limited resources, HBCUs proved unable to match the facilities, infrastructure, and budgets of their PWI counterparts. Nevertheless, black colleges still experienced a cultural renaissance due to an embrace by American pop culture that was deeply influenced by the emerging sound and message of hip-hop. Black college life was dramatized on television and movies screens, and worn as a popular fashion brand by black entertainers and hip hop stars, which led to a fascination and often romanticization of HBCUs. The real challenge confronting black colleges was how to maintain financial solvency and repair a vast array of internal problems that resulted in public relation nightmares, while also continuing in their legacy of producing socially and politically conscious students who were prepared to serve as change agents in the black community.Less

Conclusion: Costumbrista Essays on Blacks: Nineteenth-Century Preconceived Notions of Civility

Rafael Ocasio

in Afro-Cuban Costumbrismo: From Plantations to the Slums

Costumbristas sought to engage in multiple and diverse conversations illustrative of the complex issues of Cuban slavery at the peak of the sugarcane boom, including the impact of Black customs on ... More

Costumbristas sought to engage in multiple and diverse conversations illustrative of the complex issues of Cuban slavery at the peak of the sugarcane boom, including the impact of Black customs on Cuban traditions. The handful of Costumbrista essays about Blacks demonstrate that there were multifaceted sociopolitical components that reflected not only Cuban colonial status but also reaction to laws and regulations pertaining to slavery. Costumbrista literature also attempted to illustrate the development of a hybrid national identity, a “mulattoness.”Less

Willie and the Hand Jive

George Lipsitz

in Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story

This chapter shows how Johnny Otis became one of the most prominent personalities in popular music during the 1950s, making him Southern California’s most distinguishable representative of Black ... More

This chapter shows how Johnny Otis became one of the most prominent personalities in popular music during the 1950s, making him Southern California’s most distinguishable representative of Black music. It begins by detailing Otis’ career as a radio disc jockey. Singer Etta James thought he was a natural at disc jockeying, as could be seen through his passion for music, and fervent language inspired by the African American vernacular. Disc Jockey Tom Reed considered Otis a kindred spirit in the advancement of Black music and artistry. He also admired his political activism and overall promotion of Black culture. The chapter then narrates the events leading to Otis’ release of his biggest hit ever, “Willie and the Hand Jive,” featuring Earl Palmer on drums, Jimmy Nolen on guitars, and Johnny on vocals.Less

The Way We Were: Brazil in the African American Roots Tourist Gaze

Patricia de Santana Pinho

in Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil

This chapter examines the dominant African American roots tourist gaze on Brazil. Contrasting the discourse of the tourists, as expressed in ethnographic interviews, with the representations found in ... More

This chapter examines the dominant African American roots tourist gaze on Brazil. Contrasting the discourse of the tourists, as expressed in ethnographic interviews, with the representations found in various textual and audiovisual sources, such as documentary films, books, newspaper articles, and tourism promotional materials, the chapter examines the three major intersecting tropes that inform and sustain this gaze: the trope of Bahia as a “closer Africa” and a place where African Americans can find their past; the trope of the “happy native,” or the perception that, because Afro-Brazilians supposedly inhabit the African American past, they are imagined to be essentially more culturally fulfilled than African Americans; and the trope of “black evolution,” which defines the “Africanness” of Afro-Brazilians as an earlier stage in the unidirectional path toward a modern form of blackness, one supposedly already reached by African Americans. In this view, Afro-Brazilians enjoy abundant African tradition, but have yet to achieve black modernity, and should therefore look up to African Americans for guidance.Less

Discursive Regimes and Everyday Practices

Jodi Rios

in Black Lives and Spatial Matters: Policing Blackness and Practicing Freedom in Suburban St. Louis

This chapter examines the discursive regimes—the making and unmaking of truth—upon which cultural politics in North St. Louis County relies. The cultural politics of space deploys culture as a ... More

This chapter examines the discursive regimes—the making and unmaking of truth—upon which cultural politics in North St. Louis County relies. The cultural politics of space deploys culture as a regulatory discourse to produce spatial imaginaries and social meanings that explain disparity as a “natural consequence” of inferior Black culture. Using a discursively produced cultural politics of suburban citizenship and capitalizing on expectations of suffering in spaces qualified as urban, leaders, administrators, and judges police residents. An emphasis on “good suburban citizens” is clearly part of the politics of truth used by leaders in North St. Louis County to justify state violence. Antiblackness, which is historically dependent on a dialectical construct of civilization and its other, is thus embedded in a localized understanding of citizenship and the terms for belonging. Modern interpretations of good citizenship based on capital accumulation further set the terms for good suburban subjects as functions of self-reliance and consumption that reinforce a self-perpetuating cycle of capitalism. This results in complex and nuanced relationships of race, space, and power that cannot be reduced to simplified readings of economic rationalism, identity politics, or racial imbalances in the police force.Less

Politics and Policing in Pagedale

Jodi Rios

in Black Lives and Spatial Matters: Policing Blackness and Practicing Freedom in Suburban St. Louis

This chapter focuses on the City of Pagedale, which represents an extreme example of how discourses of race and space are deployed in North St. Louis County. City officials in Pagedale pass and ... More

This chapter focuses on the City of Pagedale, which represents an extreme example of how discourses of race and space are deployed in North St. Louis County. City officials in Pagedale pass and enforce ordinances that promote “suburban aesthetics” and white cultural norms, as well as targeting circumstances of poverty and Black culture. They do so using a consistent rhetoric of public safety and property rights, which began soon after the first developments began to appear in this area. Whereas traffic violations make up the vast majority of policing-for-revenue practices in North St. Louis County, Pagedale has historically policed space and property. Pagedale, which made history as the first municipality in the United States to elect an all-Black, all-woman leadership in 1982, troubles many of the popular explanations for the “Ferguson uprisings” and complicates the idea that predatory policing by Black leadership is simply a result of power, greed, or corruption. As the chapter details, the Black women leaders who came into power in the 1980s used visibility to push back against the limits placed on their bodies—as Black and female—yet worked within the terms that had been set by previous administrations and the historical structures of racism and sexism that construct blackness-as-risk.Less

Jim Crow and the Western

Christine Bold

in The Frontier Club: Popular Westerns and Cultural Power, 1880-1924

Chapter Four explores the processes by which Black Westerners were displaced by, and even on occasion transformed into, white heroes in frontier clubmen’s writings. The first case concerns Wister’s ... More

Chapter Four explores the processes by which Black Westerners were displaced by, and even on occasion transformed into, white heroes in frontier clubmen’s writings. The first case concerns Wister’s private encounter with a Black cook and ranch-hand, named Homer, who, the chapter argues, is the model for his fictional character Scipio. The second concerns Roosevelt’s much more public suppression of African American military contributions to the Spanish-American War, especially through the propagation of the white Rough Rider. The third focuses on Remington’s attention to Black soldiers, which produced a particularly conflicted representation of the Cuban campaign. The chapter also documents African American resistance to this erasure, through the creation of a distinctively Black popular culture and forms of cultural memory-making. Publications by Black servicemen, F. Grant Gilmore, Sutton E. Griggs, James Ephraim McGirt, and the Colored Co-operative Publishing Company all foregrounded Black rough riders as figures of racial pride.Less

That’s My Face: African American Reflections on Brazil

Patricia de Santana Pinho

in Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil

This chapter contextualizes African American roots tourism in Brazil both time-wise and space-wise. First, it locates the brief history of African American roots tourism within the longer trajectory ... More

This chapter contextualizes African American roots tourism in Brazil both time-wise and space-wise. First, it locates the brief history of African American roots tourism within the longer trajectory of the meanings of Brazil for African Americans, spanning from the late nineteenth century—when, inspired by fantastical imaginings of Brazil as a “racial paradise,” groups of African Americans attempted to migrate there—to the present-day, when the country has become an important roots tourism destination. Second, the chapter compares representations of Brazil with those of other countries frequently visited by African American roots tourists, placing them within a wider system of meanings that the author defines as the “map of Africanness,” a map that is both spatial and temporal.Less

‘Race Today cannot fail’: black radicalism in the long 1980s

Robin Bunce

in Labour and the Left in the 1980s

The Race Today Collective occupied a unique position on the British left during the 1980s. Inspired by the example of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the thought of radicals such as ... More

The Race Today Collective occupied a unique position on the British left during the 1980s. Inspired by the example of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the thought of radicals such as CLR James and Walter Rodney, and drawing activists from radical organisations such as the Black Panthers and the Black Unity and Freedom Party, the Race Today Collective became the most influential black rights group in Britain in the 1980s. Centred around a magazine, Darcus Howe and the Collective organised some of the most important grassroots campaigns of the decade, bringing black power to housing, industry, policing and the arts. This chapter considers the group’s emergence in the 1970s, the intellectual foundations on which the Collective was built, its distinctive approach to campaigning, its relationship to various ‘white left’ groups, and the different aspects of its work during the 1980s.Less