African American Identity Research Articles

Two Trains Running Oyununda Hayatta Kalma Mücadelesi

August Wilson’s play, Two Trains Running is the seventh play of his Century Cycle which chronicles black people’s experiences in American society. Since the structure and dynamics of each society are distinctive, the experiences of individuals belonging to that society are naturally shaped by these factors. The complicated relationship between societal norms, values, and power structures play a pivotal role in shaping the individual and collective experiences in society. In that respect, the social practices of black people in American society are notably outstanding as they have been subjected to slavery and segregation through systematic racism. Ideologically, racism has been used as a strategic tool to control the black people, who were pushed out of social boundaries because of their skin color and to sustain the white dominance for economic and politic reasons. Significantly, black authors have tried to be the voice of the oppressed black people on the literary arena and considered the theater as a way of resistance. Based on the societal awareness aroused by black authors, this study analyzes the struggle of black people in Wilson’s Two Trains Running. Drawing attention to the significant fact that black people are the members of the white society with their loyalty to their own cultural values and their African-American identity, Wilson is an antiracist playwright. Relatedly, the central focus of this study is the ways of coping with the unequal, unfair and discriminative practices of the white supremacy.

Healing of Wounds, Return of the Soul -----A Study of the African Diaspora in Toni Morrison's "Beloved" from the Perspective of Postcolonial Theory

In the 1990s, there was a big explosion in diaspora literature, and black literature became more active in academia. Beloved, one of the historical trilogy of African American writer Tony Morrison. This paper will use the research methods of "text reading" and "thematic content analysis" to analyze and explain the diaspora of the novel " Beloved". Especially the shaping of characters in the novel and the exploration of African-American identity, in the pursuit of the origin of the lack of identity and the exploration of the return of identitythat is, the hybridization of identity. And from the post-colonial theory to be analyzed. It is not difficult for us to find that only by loving ourselves and actively integrating into the black community can we face the ghost of history, rediscover the meaning of history to reality, smash the unspeakable otherness attached to the past, and embark on the road of gaining the status of subjectivity.

Nancy Prince: Strategic (Re)mappings through Travel and Text

Growing up in extreme poverty in Massachusetts, Nancy Gardner Prince (1799–1859) experienced migrancy and dislocation from an early age. In 1824, she emigrated to Russia for nearly a decade, and later emigrated to Jamaica for a brief period. As an African American author who journeyed widely in the United States and abroad, Prince’s writings reveal the racial discrimination and regulation that she endured while traveling in the US, as well as the impact that such restrictions on her freedom of movement had on her conceptions of racial kinship and national belonging. This essay approaches the regulation of Black mobility as a crucial site of racial dominance, subordination, and exclusion, and theorizes that Prince’s writings strategically remap the racially uneven conditions that she experienced on her journeys to articulate a counternarrative of Black citizenship and belonging in the US. Prince not only flips the script by publicly exposing racist conveyance operators, her autobiography also forms a counterarchive that records her ancestors’ oral histories of dispossession and US patriotism. Through close readings and attention to her revisions, we see that Prince’s engagements with territorial concepts such as “country” and “place” contemplate the tensions inherent in African American identity during the antebellum nineteenth century, as they disclose the complex negotiations that shaped her travels and texts.

Black Assimilationism in Neoliberal Globalization

This article, using Mocombeian phenomenological structural theory, argues that since their arrival on North American soil, the constitution of black American identity has been the product of their relations to the means and mode of production within the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism. As such, black Americans, and this includes the so-called black radical tradition, have never been agents in the constitution of their own identities. They have always been and remain (reactionary) pawns of capital seeking, dialectically or negative dialectically, to assimilate in the American social structure. Their assimilation takes place within the social practices of two social class language games (the black bourgeoisie and the underclass) that were historically constituted by different ideological apparatuses, the church and education on the one hand and the streets, prisons, and the athletic and entertainment industries on the other, respectively, of the global capitalist racial-class structure of inequality under American hegemony, which replaced African ideological apparatuses as found in Haiti, for example. Contemporarily, given both groups’ overrepresentation in the ideological superstructures of the American empire, they, antagonistically, have become the bearers of ideological and linguistic domination for all black youth the world-over, especially in the United Kingdom, which have tremendous consequences for their assimilation process. Under the assimilationist imperatives of the black bourgeoisie, the aim is integration and assimilation along the lines of traditional white Protestant agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism with an emphasis on bourgeois prosperity, the black nuclear family, entrepreneurialism, and individualism. Conversely, the black underclass seeks integration and assimilation through the pathologies of their structural differentiation within the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism with an emphasis on identity politics, glorification of the self, wealth via sports and entertainment, and the communal thinking of the street life as the basis of black identity and culture.

Race-based trauma and post-traumatic growth through identity transformation.

Race-based trauma has been linked to multiple adverse health and mental health outcomes, including hypertension, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression. While the possibility of post-traumatic growth (PTG) has been investigated following other types of trauma, relatively less work has been done on PTG following race-based trauma. In this article, we present a theoretical framework integrating three areas of research: race-based trauma, PTG, and racial identity narratives. Based on the work on Black and Asian American identity and integrating theory and research on historical trauma and PTG, this framework posits that the transformation of externally imposed narratives into more authentic, internally generated ones can serve as an important influence that sparks PTG after racial trauma. Based on this framework, strategies and tools that enact the cognitive processes of PTG, including writing and storytelling, are suggested as ways to promote post-trauma growth in response to racial trauma.

Thematic analysis of in-group and out-group debates in an online right-wing extremist community

The resurgence of Right-Wing Extremism (RWE) has become a cause for concern in Western countries during the 21st century. An increase in white nationalist sentiment in recent years has provided impetus to understand the contemporary drivers of far-right ideology. This study examines in-group and out-group debates on Stormfront.org, which is the largest and oldest online community dedicated to white nationalism and extreme right-wing political views. It used a dataset of approximately 1m posts collected from the open Opposing Views forum on Stormfront from the period 2001 to 2020 to create a corpus of over 195m words for thematic analysis. A Natural Language Processing (NLP) model was used to analyze the corpus, and a supervised phrase mining algorithm was used to identify key topics in the debate. The study finds that key issues being debated between in-group and out-group members of the Stormfront online community relate to perceptions of white identity, African American identity, racial issues, conservative political issues, and the history and politics of the United States. These findings highlight the issues of mutual importance to in-group and out-group members and identify opportunities for further research into the ideology of online RWE communities.

A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN SEPARATISM IN THE UNITED STATES

This article analyzes the history of the development of the phenomenon of radical African-American movements classified as separatist. The roots of the phenomenon go back to the abolitionist movement of the mid-19th century, but most of these movements appeared in the USA in the 1920s - 1960s, after the migration of African Americans from the southern states, referred to the «black belt» to the industrialized states of the North and their concentration in ethnically homogeneous ghettos of large cities with a disadvantaged socio-economic situation. Irredentist movements that appealed to the construction of African-American identity based on ethnic and cultural nationalism, such as «Back to Africa», which aimed at universal immigration of blacks from the United States, and interpreting the religion «Nation of Islam», gained particular popularity. Separatist movements acted as a radical alternative to the Civil Rights Movement, and the figure of activist Malcolm X, who came out of the Nation of Islam, became a counterweight to Martin Luther King. With the development of the anti-colonial movement in third world countries, organizations such as the Black Panthers and the Republic of New Africa turned to the right of nations to self-determination and left-wing anti-imperialist rhetoric. The activities of other organizations, for example, the Black Liberation Army, can be characterized as terrorist. Later organizations, such as the New Black Panther Party, are often characterized by experts as «hate groups». Although with the success of the integration policy, the popularity of separatist demands has fallen, the actions of African-American nationalist organizations in the conditions of polarization of modern American politics indicate that the forms of struggle of the African-American community for political independence in the future are not exhausted.

The Cultural Identity of the Main Character of the Film Green Book

Being an African-American in the United States of America is challenging due to the persistent racism in that country. One of the worst effects of racism is losing someone’s identity. Despite their best efforts, African Americans still struggle to fit into American culture and find acceptance. This study was conducted because of this issue. This research is entitled “The Cultural Identity Analysis of the Main Character “Don Shirley” in the film Green Book”. This study aims to learn more about Don Shirley's struggles with cultural identity and his eventual identity negotiation. This descriptive qualitative research was conducted using Stuart Hall’s theory of identity. This research reveals that Don Shirley initially adopts the identity of a white-cultured guy due to the influence of racism on his thoughts, words, and actions. However, this does not guarantee his acceptance by society. Therefore, he finally embraces himself and negotiates his African-American identity.

Who Are You and What Are You Selling? Creator-Based and Product-Based Racial Cues in Crowdfunding

The display of personal information in crowdfunding campaigns is vital for facilitating trust; however, this information often communicates the racial identity of the fundraiser. We study the relationship between racial cues and crowdfunding success. Using data from more than 100,000 projects gathered from Kickstarter.com, we categorized racial cues as creator-based versus product-based. For each category, we derived racial cues in two different mediums: photo vs. textual. We used propensity score matching to estimate the effects of racial identity across racial groups, categories, and mediums. We found that the category of racial cues is associated with crowdfunding success. Projects with either creator-based or product-based cues of African American identity had lower success rates. In contrast, creator-based cues of Asian identity were associated with lower levels of success whereas product-based cues were associated with increased success. Furthermore, when product-based cues and creator-based cues were misaligned, we found that the outcomes more closely followed those associated with product-based cues, suggesting that backers are more attuned to product attributes. Our results also suggest that racial anonymity correlates with higher success rates, as compared to African American and Asian racial cues. Our study contributes to the understanding of racial identity on digital platforms across multiple contexts, mediums, and racial groups.

Sharpening the Identities of African Churches in Eastern Christianity: A Comparison of Entanglements between Religion and Ethnicity

Although at first sight Eastern Christianity is not associated with Africa, the African continent has shaped the establishment and development of three of the four main Eastern Christian traditions. Through a sociological lens, we examine the identity of the above African churches, focusing on the socio-historical entanglements of their religious and ethnic features. Firstly, we study the identity of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the Eritrean Orthodox Church belonging to Oriental Orthodoxy. We focus on these African churches—and their diasporas in Western countries—as indigenous Christian paths in Africa. Secondly, we examine the identity of Africans and African-Americans within Eastern Orthodoxy. We consider both to have some inculturation issues within the Patriarchate of Alexandria and the development of an African-American component within Orthodoxy in the USA. Thirdly, we analyze the recent establishment and identity formation of African churches belonging to Eastern-rite Catholic Churches. In short, we aim to elaborate an overview of the multiple identities of African churches and one ecclesial community in Eastern Christianity, and to compare diverse sociological entanglements between religious and ethnic traits within them. A fruitful but neglected research subject, these churches’ identities appear to be reciprocally shaped by their own Eastern Christian tradition and ethnic heritage.

An Analysis of the Protagonists’ Psychology in The Piano Lesson from the Perspective of Triple Personality Structure Theory

The Piano Lesson is one of the masterpieces of the famous American playwright August Wilson. This play presents an argument between a sister and brother over whether to sell the family heirloom: a piano, revealing the different attitudes of African Americans toward their history and culture. Focusing on domestic and foreign research perspectives, the author finds that most experts and scholars explore this play in terms of African American identity and ghost images, while few analyze the conflict and reconciliation between the siblings from the perspective of psychoanalysis. This paper focuses on the protagonists’ psychology and explores the inner journey of the siblings from Freud’s triple personality structure theory. The findings show that there is a relationship between their psychological changes and the rationality of the final ownership of the piano in the play, and then reveal that Wilson conveys his attitude toward the cultural heritage of ethnic minorities through the psychological changes of these two main characters, thus provoking thoughts on the heritage of minority cultures. This paper contributes to shedding more light on the nature of the argument between two main characters, Berniece and Boy Willie, and enhancing our understanding of the deep meaning of this play.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 다시 쓰기: 미국 흑인 뮤지컬과 The Wiz Live!

The Wiz (1975) is a unique musical theatre work based on L. Frank Baum’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Although the two works share a similar plot structure, The Wiz has a different racial and ethnic context, as all the characters and most of its creators are African American. This paper analyses The Wiz Live! (2015), a live television adaptation of The Wiz, to explore how this work turned Baum’s novel into a contemporary African American fairy tale. The Wiz Live! enhances the African American identity of The Wiz in various ways. Firstly, the narrative highlights specific topics. For example, The Wiz Live! uses home as a central motive, one that is frequently expressed as the subject of desire in African American literature and in African Americans’ actual lives. In addition, the work dramatically depicts personal and racial liberation. Through this, the characters represent African Americans who move beyond the past of oppression and discrimination to equality and freedom. Secondly, the work inherits the African American popular music used in The Wiz, such as funk and soul, to audibly describe the physicality, spirit, and identity of African Americans. Lastly, the costumes, stage art and choreography in The Wiz Live! imply the cultural aesthetic of Afrofuturism, which evokes a futuristic African American culture and people, thus actively employing modern technology, contexts and media rather than following the example of the original works. The Wiz Live! successfully points the way forward for African American musical theatre in the future.

Consciousness in Toni Morrison's Novel the Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison is the most well-known sophisticated novelist in the history of African American literature. She has been recognised as a strident voice for exploited black people as well as master craftsman of the dominant artistic form. The Bluest Eye is a tragic tale about a young, black girl Pecola and her desire for the bluest eyes, the symbol for her of what it means to be beautiful and therefore worthy in society. It clarifies the damaging impacts of white standards and the importance on the lives of black people. It represents very sad feeling in terms of tragic conditions of blacks in racist America. She investigates the devastating effects of the beauty standards of the dominant culture of the self-image of the African female adolescent. Exploring the complexity of black female experience in white America, Toni Morrison attempts to resolve the contradiction inherent in her African American identity as a black women writer. In the novel The Bluest Eye it shows the terrible consequences for black internalising the values of a white culture that both directly & indirectly rejects them. A close study of the interrelationship of race, gender, and class in the novels of Toni Morrison reveals the emergence of a revolutionary pattern. This paper attempts to find out the trial of the blacks women in search of self-identity in the novel of Toni Morrison.

Janette H. Ok. Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter: Who You Are No Longer

Janette H. Ok. <i>Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter: Who You Are No Longer</i>

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Mid-to-Late Career, Philanthropy, and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Mid-to-Late Career, Philanthropy, and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

The Study of Australian Jazz and the Issue of Methodological Nationalism

The Study of Australian Jazz and the Issue of Methodological Nationalism

MASCULINITY AND BELONGING IN TARELL ALVIN MCCRANEY’S &lt;i&gt;THE BROTHERS SIZE&lt;/i&gt;

This article explores notions of masculinity and belonging in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size. McCraney creates complex characters that problematize collectivist notions of African American identity. Through a raw theater style, syncretic blendings and great linguistic musicality, The Brothers Size interrogates African American masculinity by contrasting the intimate lives of the characters with ideas, patterns and expectations that reduce Black, male existence to racial discourses and conflicts. His dramaturgy rethinks the Black, male character by furthering individuality, interaction and difference.

Navigating multiple identities in the American workplace: Microaggression and the caribbean diaspora

While the issue of microaggressions has been studied for marginalized groups, research on microaggressions directed at Caribbean and Central American immigrants, a population whose identities are merged in the more visible Latinx, African American or Asian-American identities, is rare. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 participants – fourteen immigrants and six American-born adult children of immigrants. This research explores how ethnic and racial identification of black and brown immigrants and their American born children connect to experiences of daily microaggressions in the workplace. The results revealed that due to their intersecting identities they pay a heavy emotional price to assimilate into the workplace. This research has implications for organizations, human resources and organizational development.

Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity

Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity

Doran H. Ross

Doran H. Ross