Veit Erlmann
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195123678
- eISBN:
- 9780199868797
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195123678.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
How do Western images of Africa and African representations of the West mirror one another? This book examines the complex issues involved in the making of modern identities in Africa, Europe, and ...
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How do Western images of Africa and African representations of the West mirror one another? This book examines the complex issues involved in the making of modern identities in Africa, Europe, and the US via a study of two striking episodes in the history of black South African music. The first is a pair of tours of two black South African choirs in England and America in the early 1890s; the second is a series of engagements with the international music industry as experienced by the premier choral group, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, after the release of Paul Simon's celebrated Graceland album in 1986.Less
How do Western images of Africa and African representations of the West mirror one another? This book examines the complex issues involved in the making of modern identities in Africa, Europe, and the US via a study of two striking episodes in the history of black South African music. The first is a pair of tours of two black South African choirs in England and America in the early 1890s; the second is a series of engagements with the international music industry as experienced by the premier choral group, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, after the release of Paul Simon's celebrated Graceland album in 1986.
OWEN WHITE
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198208198
- eISBN:
- 9780191677946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208198.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter deals with the attitudes of black Africans towards mÉtis and the point of view of mÉtis themselves. It analyses the quest of mÉtis for some viable sense of identity in a racially divided ...
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This chapter deals with the attitudes of black Africans towards mÉtis and the point of view of mÉtis themselves. It analyses the quest of mÉtis for some viable sense of identity in a racially divided colonial society with the help of case studies of individuals and by describing the activities of voluntary associations set up by them in French West Africa from the 1930s.Less
This chapter deals with the attitudes of black Africans towards mÉtis and the point of view of mÉtis themselves. It analyses the quest of mÉtis for some viable sense of identity in a racially divided colonial society with the help of case studies of individuals and by describing the activities of voluntary associations set up by them in French West Africa from the 1930s.
Elizabeth Todd-Breland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646589
- eISBN:
- 9781469647173
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646589.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter examines Black educators’ growth from an insurgent group of teachers in the 1960s into a powerful political base of the coalition that elected the first Black mayor of Chicago in 1983. ...
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This chapter examines Black educators’ growth from an insurgent group of teachers in the 1960s into a powerful political base of the coalition that elected the first Black mayor of Chicago in 1983. In the 1960s, Black teachers—frustrated with the inadequate conditions in schools serving Black children and their marginalized role in the schools and teachers union—protested the union and considered creating an alternative Black teachers’ union. Educators like Lillie Peoples, of Operation Breadbasket’s Teachers Division, challenged the racist policies of the union and Board of Education while embracing a self-determinist politics of Black achievement that critiqued racial liberalism. Race and gender shaped Black women educators’ professional lives and political activism, as Black women teachers were never adequately recognized for their integral leadership in these movements. By the 1980s, internal and external pressures on the union and Board of Education resulted in a significant increase in the proportion of Black employees in the school system. Black teachers served as anchors of communities, caretakers of children, and a relatively stable Black urban middle-class labor force through their employment in the public sector during a time of deindustrialization. Black educators transformed Black communities and Black political power in the city.Less
This chapter examines Black educators’ growth from an insurgent group of teachers in the 1960s into a powerful political base of the coalition that elected the first Black mayor of Chicago in 1983. In the 1960s, Black teachers—frustrated with the inadequate conditions in schools serving Black children and their marginalized role in the schools and teachers union—protested the union and considered creating an alternative Black teachers’ union. Educators like Lillie Peoples, of Operation Breadbasket’s Teachers Division, challenged the racist policies of the union and Board of Education while embracing a self-determinist politics of Black achievement that critiqued racial liberalism. Race and gender shaped Black women educators’ professional lives and political activism, as Black women teachers were never adequately recognized for their integral leadership in these movements. By the 1980s, internal and external pressures on the union and Board of Education resulted in a significant increase in the proportion of Black employees in the school system. Black teachers served as anchors of communities, caretakers of children, and a relatively stable Black urban middle-class labor force through their employment in the public sector during a time of deindustrialization. Black educators transformed Black communities and Black political power in the city.
Elizabeth Todd-Breland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646589
- eISBN:
- 9781469647173
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646589.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter analyzes the racial politics of Mayor Harold Washington’s election, his education summit, and the supporters and critics of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Harold Washington’s ...
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This chapter analyzes the racial politics of Mayor Harold Washington’s election, his education summit, and the supporters and critics of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Harold Washington’s election as the first Black mayor of Chicago in 1983 was heralded by many as the ultimate attainment of Black Power and the success of the local Black Freedom Movement. His electoral victory was grounded in years of grassroots struggle by Black organizers fighting for integration, community control, and Black empowerment. While historians have largely considered the 1980s as a product of the political triumph of conservatism and the “Reagan revolution,” in Chicago a Black-led, urban, antimachine, progressive coalitional politics led to Washington’s electoral victory. The disparate programmatic and ideological camps detailed in previous chapters (desegregation activists, community control organizers, founders of independent Black institutions, Black educators) staked claims in Mayor Washington and his political organization. The politics of Washington’s education reform summits, however, exposed the fractures within this political coalition. The interracial and intraracial struggles over school reform in Chicago during the 1980s reveal the tensions between a politics of racial representation and a politics of progressive transformation and prefigure the increased privatization of public education in the decades that followed.Less
This chapter analyzes the racial politics of Mayor Harold Washington’s election, his education summit, and the supporters and critics of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Harold Washington’s election as the first Black mayor of Chicago in 1983 was heralded by many as the ultimate attainment of Black Power and the success of the local Black Freedom Movement. His electoral victory was grounded in years of grassroots struggle by Black organizers fighting for integration, community control, and Black empowerment. While historians have largely considered the 1980s as a product of the political triumph of conservatism and the “Reagan revolution,” in Chicago a Black-led, urban, antimachine, progressive coalitional politics led to Washington’s electoral victory. The disparate programmatic and ideological camps detailed in previous chapters (desegregation activists, community control organizers, founders of independent Black institutions, Black educators) staked claims in Mayor Washington and his political organization. The politics of Washington’s education reform summits, however, exposed the fractures within this political coalition. The interracial and intraracial struggles over school reform in Chicago during the 1980s reveal the tensions between a politics of racial representation and a politics of progressive transformation and prefigure the increased privatization of public education in the decades that followed.
Kenneth Prewitt
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157030
- eISBN:
- 9781400846795
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157030.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter discusses how there were four national statistical races as of the twentieth century: European White, African Black, American Indian Red, and Asian Yellow. They were put to policy work ...
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This chapter discusses how there were four national statistical races as of the twentieth century: European White, African Black, American Indian Red, and Asian Yellow. They were put to policy work in restricting immigration in the 1920s and for racial segregation more generally until the civil rights challenge dramatically arrived in the 1960s. The chapter traces how a policy instrument used to politically, economically, and socially exclude since the nation's founding made a 180-degree turn and was used to include the racial groups historically sent to the back of the bus—both literally and figuratively. It is a story of how proactive policies of racial justice were shaped with racial statistics never intended for the policy uses to which they were put.Less
This chapter discusses how there were four national statistical races as of the twentieth century: European White, African Black, American Indian Red, and Asian Yellow. They were put to policy work in restricting immigration in the 1920s and for racial segregation more generally until the civil rights challenge dramatically arrived in the 1960s. The chapter traces how a policy instrument used to politically, economically, and socially exclude since the nation's founding made a 180-degree turn and was used to include the racial groups historically sent to the back of the bus—both literally and figuratively. It is a story of how proactive policies of racial justice were shaped with racial statistics never intended for the policy uses to which they were put.
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226451886
- eISBN:
- 9780226451909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226451909.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
This chapter considers the role of television in further breaking down the absence of Black South Africans under the States of Emergency in the mid-and late 1980s, paying particular attention to the ...
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This chapter considers the role of television in further breaking down the absence of Black South Africans under the States of Emergency in the mid-and late 1980s, paying particular attention to the third fence post: the overwhelming popularity of The Cosby Show among White South Africans. Ethnographic research shows that the SABC's version of current events during the States of Emergency was widely viewed as untrustworthy by Black and White South Africans alike. While Black South Africans lived the States of Emergency in an immediate and visceral way, White South Africans turned away from television news to make sense of their world. One of the places they turned, in extremely large numbers, was The Cosby Show. Through transnational media flows in general and particularly The Cosby Show, White South Africans were able to appropriate the language and attitude of “racial tolerance” in the United States while simultaneously conceptualizing a profound difference between Black Americans and Black South Africans. While this often led to apartheid apologetics, the shift from a biological to a cultural foundation for racial domination made formal apartheid increasingly difficult to maintain.Less
This chapter considers the role of television in further breaking down the absence of Black South Africans under the States of Emergency in the mid-and late 1980s, paying particular attention to the third fence post: the overwhelming popularity of The Cosby Show among White South Africans. Ethnographic research shows that the SABC's version of current events during the States of Emergency was widely viewed as untrustworthy by Black and White South Africans alike. While Black South Africans lived the States of Emergency in an immediate and visceral way, White South Africans turned away from television news to make sense of their world. One of the places they turned, in extremely large numbers, was The Cosby Show. Through transnational media flows in general and particularly The Cosby Show, White South Africans were able to appropriate the language and attitude of “racial tolerance” in the United States while simultaneously conceptualizing a profound difference between Black Americans and Black South Africans. While this often led to apartheid apologetics, the shift from a biological to a cultural foundation for racial domination made formal apartheid increasingly difficult to maintain.
Tunde Adeleke
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604732931
- eISBN:
- 9781604732948
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604732931.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. ...
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Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. This is especially true of Afrocentric scholars and supporters who use Africa to construct and validate a monolithic, racial, and culturally essentialist worldview. Publications by Afrocentric scholars such as Molefi Asante, Marimba Ani, Maulana Karenga, and the late John Henrik Clarke have emphasized the centrality of Africa to the construction of Afrocentric essentialism. In the last fifteen years, however, countervailing critical scholarship has challenged essentialist interpretations of Diaspora history. Critics such as Stephen Howe, Yaacov Shavit, and Clarence Walker have questioned and refuted the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of Afrocentric essentialist ideology. This book deconstructs Afrocentric essentialism by illuminating and interrogating the problematic situation of Africa as the foundation of a racialized worldwide African Diaspora. It attempts to fill an intellectual gap by analyzing the contradictions in representations of Afrocentrism in Africa. These include multiple, conflicting, and ambivalent portraits of Africa; the use of the continent as a global, unifying identity for all blacks; the de-emphasizing and nullification of New World acculturation; and the ahistoristic construction of a monolithic African Diaspora worldwide.Less
Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. This is especially true of Afrocentric scholars and supporters who use Africa to construct and validate a monolithic, racial, and culturally essentialist worldview. Publications by Afrocentric scholars such as Molefi Asante, Marimba Ani, Maulana Karenga, and the late John Henrik Clarke have emphasized the centrality of Africa to the construction of Afrocentric essentialism. In the last fifteen years, however, countervailing critical scholarship has challenged essentialist interpretations of Diaspora history. Critics such as Stephen Howe, Yaacov Shavit, and Clarence Walker have questioned and refuted the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of Afrocentric essentialist ideology. This book deconstructs Afrocentric essentialism by illuminating and interrogating the problematic situation of Africa as the foundation of a racialized worldwide African Diaspora. It attempts to fill an intellectual gap by analyzing the contradictions in representations of Afrocentrism in Africa. These include multiple, conflicting, and ambivalent portraits of Africa; the use of the continent as a global, unifying identity for all blacks; the de-emphasizing and nullification of New World acculturation; and the ahistoristic construction of a monolithic African Diaspora worldwide.
Stéphane Robolin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039478
- eISBN:
- 9780252097584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039478.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter considers the outcomes of some interactions among black South African and African American writers discussed in preceding chapters, but “updated” here in the context of the 1980s. It ...
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This chapter considers the outcomes of some interactions among black South African and African American writers discussed in preceding chapters, but “updated” here in the context of the 1980s. It explores how earlier transnational engagements led to a series of subsequent texts and interpersonal relationships as the global antiapartheid movement began to reach its apex. Those works—by Richard Rive, Michelle Cliff, Audre Lorde, and Gwendolyn Brooks—attest to the impress of earlier writers (Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Keorapetse Kgositsile, and Bessie Head) and, by returning us to the matter of cultural influence, point to the considerable role South Africa and its writers played in shaping African American writerly imaginations. Furthermore, it is argued that Cliff's poem “Constructive Engagement” plays with the name of the Reagan-era U.S. foreign policy toward South Africa to powerful effect.Less
This chapter considers the outcomes of some interactions among black South African and African American writers discussed in preceding chapters, but “updated” here in the context of the 1980s. It explores how earlier transnational engagements led to a series of subsequent texts and interpersonal relationships as the global antiapartheid movement began to reach its apex. Those works—by Richard Rive, Michelle Cliff, Audre Lorde, and Gwendolyn Brooks—attest to the impress of earlier writers (Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Keorapetse Kgositsile, and Bessie Head) and, by returning us to the matter of cultural influence, point to the considerable role South Africa and its writers played in shaping African American writerly imaginations. Furthermore, it is argued that Cliff's poem “Constructive Engagement” plays with the name of the Reagan-era U.S. foreign policy toward South Africa to powerful effect.
John Lowney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041334
- eISBN:
- 9780252099939
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041334.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter argues for renewed recognition of Black Chicago Renaissance writer Frank Marshall Davis, whose first collection of poetry, Black Man’s Verse (1935), was widely celebrated for its ...
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This chapter argues for renewed recognition of Black Chicago Renaissance writer Frank Marshall Davis, whose first collection of poetry, Black Man’s Verse (1935), was widely celebrated for its innovative adaptations of African American vernacular forms, including the blues and jazz. Situating Davis within recent scholarly reassessment of the Black Chicago Renaissance, this chapter demonstrates how Davis’s jazz writing, as a journalist, critic, and poet, exemplifies the global orientation of the Black Chicago Renaissance that is becoming increasingly recognized. Davis’s jazz writing is especially important, for the subsequent Black Arts generation as well as for his Popular Front contemporaries, not only because of his development of inventive vernacular forms, but also because of his insistence on the African roots of African American music. In articulating how African musical principles inform jazz, Davis also underscored the international and interracial importance of jazz for black and working-class social progress.Less
This chapter argues for renewed recognition of Black Chicago Renaissance writer Frank Marshall Davis, whose first collection of poetry, Black Man’s Verse (1935), was widely celebrated for its innovative adaptations of African American vernacular forms, including the blues and jazz. Situating Davis within recent scholarly reassessment of the Black Chicago Renaissance, this chapter demonstrates how Davis’s jazz writing, as a journalist, critic, and poet, exemplifies the global orientation of the Black Chicago Renaissance that is becoming increasingly recognized. Davis’s jazz writing is especially important, for the subsequent Black Arts generation as well as for his Popular Front contemporaries, not only because of his development of inventive vernacular forms, but also because of his insistence on the African roots of African American music. In articulating how African musical principles inform jazz, Davis also underscored the international and interracial importance of jazz for black and working-class social progress.
Elizabeth Todd-Breland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646589
- eISBN:
- 9781469647173
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646589.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The introduction outlines the focus, scope, and significance of the book, introducing the Black activists, educators, parents, and students who navigated, challenged, and contributed to the urban ...
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The introduction outlines the focus, scope, and significance of the book, introducing the Black activists, educators, parents, and students who navigated, challenged, and contributed to the urban political and educational landscape from mid-twentieth century civil rights struggles through the recent corporate reorganization of the public sphere. Black women’s political and intellectual labor powered movements for racial justice and is centered in this discussion of Black politics, social movements, and education reform. The introduction explains how the book presents a different account of Black politics and urban communities in the period after the 1960s by challenging interpretations of urban decline and “urban crisis.” It also explains the historical and contemporary importance of education as a site of struggle that reveals the boundaries of U.S. democracy and changes in the relationship between citizens and the state. The introduction outlines how historical considerations of racial liberalism, the Great Migration, the New Deal, labor, Black protest, machine politics, deindustrialization, the politics of Black achievement, desegregation, self-determination, equity, and education reform inform subsequent chapters.Less
The introduction outlines the focus, scope, and significance of the book, introducing the Black activists, educators, parents, and students who navigated, challenged, and contributed to the urban political and educational landscape from mid-twentieth century civil rights struggles through the recent corporate reorganization of the public sphere. Black women’s political and intellectual labor powered movements for racial justice and is centered in this discussion of Black politics, social movements, and education reform. The introduction explains how the book presents a different account of Black politics and urban communities in the period after the 1960s by challenging interpretations of urban decline and “urban crisis.” It also explains the historical and contemporary importance of education as a site of struggle that reveals the boundaries of U.S. democracy and changes in the relationship between citizens and the state. The introduction outlines how historical considerations of racial liberalism, the Great Migration, the New Deal, labor, Black protest, machine politics, deindustrialization, the politics of Black achievement, desegregation, self-determination, equity, and education reform inform subsequent chapters.
Stéphane Robolin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039478
- eISBN:
- 9780252097584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039478.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the literary relationships between black South Africans and African Americans during the years of South ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the literary relationships between black South Africans and African Americans during the years of South African apartheid (formally, 1948–1994). It offers a literary history informed by spatial and cultural theory. On the one hand, it advances a mode of cultural analysis that foregrounds the geographic in black lives and cultural imaginaries and, in doing so, models a way of reading black South African and African American writing attuned to the relevance of race, space, and place. On the other hand, this study interprets the two literary traditions in relation to one another. Bringing attention to underaccounted-for cultural traffic that has shaped both traditions in the latter half of the twentieth century, it develops a literary history based on defining moments of cross-cultural engagement.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the literary relationships between black South Africans and African Americans during the years of South African apartheid (formally, 1948–1994). It offers a literary history informed by spatial and cultural theory. On the one hand, it advances a mode of cultural analysis that foregrounds the geographic in black lives and cultural imaginaries and, in doing so, models a way of reading black South African and African American writing attuned to the relevance of race, space, and place. On the other hand, this study interprets the two literary traditions in relation to one another. Bringing attention to underaccounted-for cultural traffic that has shaped both traditions in the latter half of the twentieth century, it develops a literary history based on defining moments of cross-cultural engagement.
Jason R. Ambroise and Sabine Broeck
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381724
- eISBN:
- 9781781382257
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381724.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses the book's main themes. This book is organized around the central but critically neglected theme of the role of knowledge and epistemic formations within the context of social ...
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This chapter discusses the book's main themes. This book is organized around the central but critically neglected theme of the role of knowledge and epistemic formations within the context of social movements for human emancipation. It specifically explores this thematic structure within the context of the localized and/or global struggles — both contemporary and historic — of the peoples of Black African and Afro-mixed descent against their forcibly and systemically-imposed subjugated and condemned status over the past five centuries within trans-Atlantic societies of the West. It argues that it is no coincidence that the self-assertions and emancipatory mobilizations by members of this population against their imposed subjugation/condemnation and dehumanization, logically also carried with them critiques of, challenges to, and/or counter-formulations against and beyond the same epistemic formations that coincided with and legitimized Black peoples' imposed abject-status within the various socio-human formations of Western modernity. These critiques, challenges, and/or counter-formulations point towards new ways of ‘knowing’, new ways of ‘being’ human, and/or new conceptions of ‘freedom’ and visions for human emancipation.Less
This chapter discusses the book's main themes. This book is organized around the central but critically neglected theme of the role of knowledge and epistemic formations within the context of social movements for human emancipation. It specifically explores this thematic structure within the context of the localized and/or global struggles — both contemporary and historic — of the peoples of Black African and Afro-mixed descent against their forcibly and systemically-imposed subjugated and condemned status over the past five centuries within trans-Atlantic societies of the West. It argues that it is no coincidence that the self-assertions and emancipatory mobilizations by members of this population against their imposed subjugation/condemnation and dehumanization, logically also carried with them critiques of, challenges to, and/or counter-formulations against and beyond the same epistemic formations that coincided with and legitimized Black peoples' imposed abject-status within the various socio-human formations of Western modernity. These critiques, challenges, and/or counter-formulations point towards new ways of ‘knowing’, new ways of ‘being’ human, and/or new conceptions of ‘freedom’ and visions for human emancipation.
Monica M. White
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643694
- eISBN:
- 9781469643717
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643694.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In the late 1960s, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural ...
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In the late 1960s, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.Less
In the late 1960s, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.
Lubaina Himid
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381724
- eISBN:
- 9781781382257
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381724.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter seeks to reinvent the genre of contemporary travelogue through a satirical juxtaposition of travel guide material against collaged images representing Black diasporic undercurrents ...
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This chapter seeks to reinvent the genre of contemporary travelogue through a satirical juxtaposition of travel guide material against collaged images representing Black diasporic undercurrents within European metropolitan histories. The reinvention of this genre effects the symbolic re-programming of the genre-specific ‘inner eyes’ of secular Western Man, whose code of ‘race’ rendered invisible the history of Black African and Afro-mixed descent peoples from a metropolitan secular Western memory. The chapter takes the reader through a tour of Paris and London, whereby images of monuments, stately buildings, well-known places, urban parks, and a range of other familiar sites are reinvested, literally painted over, with figurations of Black iconographic artists, political leaders, sports heroes, and intellectuals, as well as visual allusions to silenced and ignored moments of colonial and enslavist violence and Black counter-assertion. This visual re-investment shifts the issue of cognition to the realm of art as a form of epistemic intervention, doing so in this specific case as a challenge to the systemic invisibilization and/or negation of Black lives within a modern Western memory.Less
This chapter seeks to reinvent the genre of contemporary travelogue through a satirical juxtaposition of travel guide material against collaged images representing Black diasporic undercurrents within European metropolitan histories. The reinvention of this genre effects the symbolic re-programming of the genre-specific ‘inner eyes’ of secular Western Man, whose code of ‘race’ rendered invisible the history of Black African and Afro-mixed descent peoples from a metropolitan secular Western memory. The chapter takes the reader through a tour of Paris and London, whereby images of monuments, stately buildings, well-known places, urban parks, and a range of other familiar sites are reinvested, literally painted over, with figurations of Black iconographic artists, political leaders, sports heroes, and intellectuals, as well as visual allusions to silenced and ignored moments of colonial and enslavist violence and Black counter-assertion. This visual re-investment shifts the issue of cognition to the realm of art as a form of epistemic intervention, doing so in this specific case as a challenge to the systemic invisibilization and/or negation of Black lives within a modern Western memory.
Elizabeth Todd-Breland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646589
- eISBN:
- 9781469647173
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646589.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In 2012, Chicago’s school year began with the city’s first teachers’ strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in recent U.S. history. On one side, a union ...
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In 2012, Chicago’s school year began with the city’s first teachers’ strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in recent U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran Black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from Black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party. This book recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. It tells the story of Black education reformers’ community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers’ challenges to a newly assertive teachers’ union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the corporate reorganization of the public sphere during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of Black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.Less
In 2012, Chicago’s school year began with the city’s first teachers’ strike in a quarter century and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in recent U.S. history. On one side, a union leader and veteran Black woman educator drew upon organizing strategies from Black and Latinx communities to demand increased school resources. On the other side, the mayor, backed by the Obama administration, argued that only corporate-style education reform could set the struggling school system aright. The stark differences in positions resonated nationally, challenging the long-standing alliance between teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party. This book recovers the hidden history underlying this battle. It tells the story of Black education reformers’ community-based strategies to improve education beginning during the 1960s, as support for desegregation transformed into community control, experimental schooling models that pre-dated charter schools, and black teachers’ challenges to a newly assertive teachers’ union. This book reveals how these strategies collided with the corporate reorganization of the public sphere during the late twentieth century, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of Black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy.
Alvin B. Tillery
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801448973
- eISBN:
- 9780801461019
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801448973.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on the role that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has played in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa since the 1960s. The pivotal role of the CBC in passing ...
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This chapter focuses on the role that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has played in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa since the 1960s. The pivotal role of the CBC in passing the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) of 1986 in particular places the discussion in this chapter into context. Previous studies tend to view the activism of the CBC on this issue as a function of its deep commitments to striking down the last vestiges of settler colonialism in Africa and to forging ties with the ancestral homeland. The chapter shows that affective ties to black South Africans living under apartheid were an important force motivating the CBC during its long campaign to pass a sanctions bill, and also that strategic calculations about what was expedient on the home front played an even larger role in pushing the CBC to initiate sanctions legislation.Less
This chapter focuses on the role that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has played in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa since the 1960s. The pivotal role of the CBC in passing the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) of 1986 in particular places the discussion in this chapter into context. Previous studies tend to view the activism of the CBC on this issue as a function of its deep commitments to striking down the last vestiges of settler colonialism in Africa and to forging ties with the ancestral homeland. The chapter shows that affective ties to black South Africans living under apartheid were an important force motivating the CBC during its long campaign to pass a sanctions bill, and also that strategic calculations about what was expedient on the home front played an even larger role in pushing the CBC to initiate sanctions legislation.
BERNARD LEWIS
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195053265
- eISBN:
- 9780199854561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195053265.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
The chapter focuses on what Muslim historians said about the various people beyond the frontiers of the Islamic ecumene. In the earliest Arabic references, black Africans were either Habash or Sudan. ...
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The chapter focuses on what Muslim historians said about the various people beyond the frontiers of the Islamic ecumene. In the earliest Arabic references, black Africans were either Habash or Sudan. Habash refers to Ethiopians and their immediate neighbors in the Horn of Africa. Sudan refers to all blacks in general. Some authors distinguish carefully between the different groups of black Africans. The Zanj were the least respected and the Ethiopians were the most respected. The attitude to black Africans was negative. As Muslim power and Islamic religion advanced farther into black Africa, extravagant accounts of African manners and customs became less frequent. A unique letter vividly illustrates how black African Muslims must have felt. The letter was sent by the black king of Bornu to the sultan of Egypt.Less
The chapter focuses on what Muslim historians said about the various people beyond the frontiers of the Islamic ecumene. In the earliest Arabic references, black Africans were either Habash or Sudan. Habash refers to Ethiopians and their immediate neighbors in the Horn of Africa. Sudan refers to all blacks in general. Some authors distinguish carefully between the different groups of black Africans. The Zanj were the least respected and the Ethiopians were the most respected. The attitude to black Africans was negative. As Muslim power and Islamic religion advanced farther into black Africa, extravagant accounts of African manners and customs became less frequent. A unique letter vividly illustrates how black African Muslims must have felt. The letter was sent by the black king of Bornu to the sultan of Egypt.
Jason R. Ambroise and Sabine Broeck (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381724
- eISBN:
- 9781781382257
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381724.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book explores the central but often critically neglected role of knowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for Black ‘freedom’ and emancipation. The collection examines the ...
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This book explores the central but often critically neglected role of knowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for Black ‘freedom’ and emancipation. The collection examines the structural subjugation and condemnation of Black African and Afro-mixed descent peoples globally within the past 500 years of trans-Atlantic societies of Western modernity, doing so in connection to the population's dehumanization and/or invisibilization within various epistemic formations of the West. In turn, the collection foregrounds the extent to which the ending of this imposed subjugation/condemnation has necessarily entailed critiques of, challenges to, and counter-formulations against and beyond knowledge and epistemic formations that have worked to ‘naturalize’ this condition within the West's various socio-human formations. The chapters engage primarily with knowledge formations and practices generated from within the discourse of ‘race’, but also doing so in relation to other intersectional socio-human discourses of Western modernity. They engage as well the critiques, challenges, and counter-formulations put forth by specific individuals, schools, movements, and/or institutions — historic and contemporary — of the Black world. Through these examinations, the contributors either implicitly point towards, or explicitly take part in, the formation of a new kind of critical — but also emancipatory — epistemology.Less
This book explores the central but often critically neglected role of knowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for Black ‘freedom’ and emancipation. The collection examines the structural subjugation and condemnation of Black African and Afro-mixed descent peoples globally within the past 500 years of trans-Atlantic societies of Western modernity, doing so in connection to the population's dehumanization and/or invisibilization within various epistemic formations of the West. In turn, the collection foregrounds the extent to which the ending of this imposed subjugation/condemnation has necessarily entailed critiques of, challenges to, and counter-formulations against and beyond knowledge and epistemic formations that have worked to ‘naturalize’ this condition within the West's various socio-human formations. The chapters engage primarily with knowledge formations and practices generated from within the discourse of ‘race’, but also doing so in relation to other intersectional socio-human discourses of Western modernity. They engage as well the critiques, challenges, and counter-formulations put forth by specific individuals, schools, movements, and/or institutions — historic and contemporary — of the Black world. Through these examinations, the contributors either implicitly point towards, or explicitly take part in, the formation of a new kind of critical — but also emancipatory — epistemology.
Stéphane Robolin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039478
- eISBN:
- 9780252097584
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039478.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Part literary history, part cultural study, this book examines the relationships and exchanges between black South African and African American writers who sought to create common ground throughout ...
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Part literary history, part cultural study, this book examines the relationships and exchanges between black South African and African American writers who sought to create common ground throughout the antiapartheid era. The book argues that the authors' geographic imaginations crucially defined their individual interactions and, ultimately, the literary traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Subject to the tyranny of segregation, authors such as Richard Wright, Bessie Head, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Michelle Cliff, and Richard Rive charted their racialized landscapes and invented freer alternative geographies. They crafted rich representations of place to challenge the stark social and spatial arrangements that framed their lives. Those representations, the book contends, also articulated their desires for black transnational belonging and political solidarity. The first book to examine U.S. and South African literary exchanges in spatial terms, it identifies key moments in this understudied history of black cross-cultural exchange, exposing how geography serves as an indispensable means of shaping and reshaping modern racial meaning.Less
Part literary history, part cultural study, this book examines the relationships and exchanges between black South African and African American writers who sought to create common ground throughout the antiapartheid era. The book argues that the authors' geographic imaginations crucially defined their individual interactions and, ultimately, the literary traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Subject to the tyranny of segregation, authors such as Richard Wright, Bessie Head, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Michelle Cliff, and Richard Rive charted their racialized landscapes and invented freer alternative geographies. They crafted rich representations of place to challenge the stark social and spatial arrangements that framed their lives. Those representations, the book contends, also articulated their desires for black transnational belonging and political solidarity. The first book to examine U.S. and South African literary exchanges in spatial terms, it identifies key moments in this understudied history of black cross-cultural exchange, exposing how geography serves as an indispensable means of shaping and reshaping modern racial meaning.
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226451886
- eISBN:
- 9780226451909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226451909.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
This chapter extends the analysis into the period of political negotiations, bookended by the release (in 1990) and the inauguration (in 1994) of Mandela, both major international media events in and ...
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This chapter extends the analysis into the period of political negotiations, bookended by the release (in 1990) and the inauguration (in 1994) of Mandela, both major international media events in and of themselves. As the moment when the structured absence of Black South Africans from political life is overturned and political contestation over maintaining privilege becomes explicit, this fence post represents a crucial turning point in the overall analysis. Contestation around television, particularly control of the SABC, comes to the fore, with a massive increase in both transnational media flows and innovative domestic programming arising simultaneously with an increase in both the scope and magnitude of political violence. Many assumptions of South African social life suddenly opened up for negotiation at the same time that the nation was being reintegrating into international politics and global economies. This period marks both the demise and the reinvention of apartheid in the contexts of democratization and globalization.Less
This chapter extends the analysis into the period of political negotiations, bookended by the release (in 1990) and the inauguration (in 1994) of Mandela, both major international media events in and of themselves. As the moment when the structured absence of Black South Africans from political life is overturned and political contestation over maintaining privilege becomes explicit, this fence post represents a crucial turning point in the overall analysis. Contestation around television, particularly control of the SABC, comes to the fore, with a massive increase in both transnational media flows and innovative domestic programming arising simultaneously with an increase in both the scope and magnitude of political violence. Many assumptions of South African social life suddenly opened up for negotiation at the same time that the nation was being reintegrating into international politics and global economies. This period marks both the demise and the reinvention of apartheid in the contexts of democratization and globalization.
