African-descended People Research Articles

Introduction: New Black Power Studies: National, International, and Transnational Perspectives

movement for represented in many ways a new phase in the black freedom struggle in the United States and other parts of the African world. And whereas the campaigns in the United States to end legal segregation and to advance black civil rights have been the subject of scholarly analysis for several decades, Black Power Studies is an emerging subfield in African and African American Studies and in the history of the African Diaspora. And even at this early stage of scholarly research and interpretation, certain themes and trends have emerged in the examination of the Black Power Movement (BPM), especially regarding continuities and discontinuities with earlier social, political, and cultural movements among African-descended people. This Special Issue of Journal of African American History presents Black Power which document those characteristics shared with earlier black social movements as well as those organizations, activities, and leaders who arrived on the political and cultural scene only in the late 1960s and 1970s. (1) Scholars have already described the preoccupation with Africa and African affairs on the part of Black Power groups such as Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity, Maulana Karenga's US Organization, the Republic of New Africa; the advocates for the creation of Black Studies programs; and Stokely Carmichael and other Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members in the late 1960s. (2) Fanon Che Wilkins in his essay The Making of Black Internationalists: SNCC and Africa Before the Launching of Black Power, 1960-1965 presents a well-documented account of the relations between the black student activists and Africa in the 1960s. James Forman, who served as SNCC Executive Secretary beginning in early 1961, had been involved in African Studies from his undergraduate years when he studied with social scientist St. Clair Drake at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Forman established the connections between SNCC and the Pan African Students Organization in the Americas and other international student organizations, and coordinated joint protests and other activities with African students and diplomats in the United States. 1964 trip of eleven SNCC members to Africa solidified the relationships between the newly independent African nations and African Americans, and laid the groundwork for increased international activities in the Black Power era in the late 1960s. Black Power era witnessed not only a cultural and artistic revolution among African-descended people in various parts of the world, but also the appearance of a wide variety of new black publications, including Black Scholar, First World (magazine), Journal of Black Studies, and Review of Black Political Economy, founded in 1970 by economist Robert S. Browne. (3) In her essay An African-Vietnamese American: Robert S. Browne, the Antiwar Movement, and the Personal/Political Dimensions of Black Internationalism, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu examines the unique internationalist perspective that Browne brought to the movement for Black Power. Browne not only lived and worked in Southeast Asia for the U.S. government in the 1950s, he also married a woman of Vietnamese and Chinese ancestry. When nationwide protests erupted in the late 1960s over the U.S. war in Vietnam, Browne emerged as the authentic African Vietnamese voice in numerous antiwar campaigns and protests. Wu documents Browne's activities in support of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam long before that stance was taken by other civil rights and Black Power leaders and organizations. As Browne pointed out, I was the one Black who had been connected with [the antiwar] movement before prominent Blacks like Martin Luther King, Julian Bond, and Dick Gregory eventually spoke out. movement for Black Power emerged in the United States in 1966 and eventually spread internationally to the Caribbean and South America, and in South Africa with the launching of the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steven Biko. …

The Ancient African Past and the Field of Africana Studies

The ancient African past refers to deeds and events of African peoples documented or narrated through oral or written traditions or other means from the time of human beginnings until the modern period. Africana studies is a transdisciplinary field of study pertaining to intellectual traditions and practices of African and African-descended peoples. The ancient African past is valued in the field of Africana studies. The value given to ancient Africa within the field may serve as a critical conceptual challenge to the colonial history of Africa. This article calls for an Africana philosophy of history, that is, a vision and interpretive scheme to critically reflect on the historical field of concerns. It seeks an intellectual endeavor to recapture historical spaces, thereby leading not only to autonomous readings of ancient African history but also to engaging in the development of explanatory paradigms for the field.

From the Psychology of Race to the Issue of Skin Color for People of African Descent

In the aftermath of Western domination, the significance of skin color among peoples of African descent has been trivialized. Regrettably, research by psychologists the world over emphasizes race in the study of human social conditions. Despite the fact that race is increasingly irrelevant, Western psychologists continually adhere to it and are at a severe disadvantage. Oblivious to the implications of skin color, their attempts to comprehend stereotypes, discrimination, and various issues attributed to race vis-a-vis African peoples is an exercise in futility. It is not compulsory to discard Western perspectives at the expense of social fact, but psychologists should familiarize themselves with African perspectives as a critical point of reference to the social issues of African-descended people. Sustaining the integrity and prestige of the profession will require concepts and a perspective less confined to Western domination.

Do Sociocultural Factors Predict Suicidality Among Persons of African Descent Living in the U.S.?

Given that researchers have found increased risk for suicidality and other psychiatric problems among acculturated individuals, we predicted similar results for African-descended people living in the U.S. We surveyed a community sample of 423 adult men and women of African descent to determine acculturation's relationship to Black suicide. Participants completed the African American Acculturation Scale, the Multi-Dimensional Support Scale, and a subscale of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale. Suicidal ideation and history of suicide attempt were defined as a “yes” response to the questions, “have you ever considered taking your own life?” and “have you ever attempted to take your own life?” We found that religious well-being (not acculturation) was predictive of both suicidal ideation and history of suicide attempt.

The construction and representation of race and ethnicity in the Caribbean and the world

The definition and evolution of the categories of race and ethnicity have long been debated among historians and scholars of social anthropology. This book examines how the meanings and values of race and ethnicity have been constructed historically and how they are represented symbolically, with particular focus on the Caribbean Mervyn Alleyne examines the historical development of these categories in Europe, in Asia and in Africa and then proceeds to an in-depth analysis of the Caribbean, with a focus on Puerto Rico, Martinique and Jamaica as three different modalities of race and ethnicity and three different colonial systems. Through a unique approach grounded in linguistic, ethnographic and historic analysis, Alleyne draws on a wide array of evidence to ultimately oppose the widely held notion that racial antagonism against black people is the consequence of New World slavery in the period following the discovery of the Americas in the late fifteenth century. Of particular interest to academic audiences in history, linguistics, African American and ethnic studies, sociology and anthropology, this book also appeals to general readers interested in issues of race, ethnicity, and the historical experience of Africans and African-descended peoples.

Brain size, IQ, and racial-group differences: Evidence from musculoskeletal traits

A review of the world literature on brain size and IQ by Rushton [Rushton, J. P. (1995). Race, evolution, and behavior: a life history perspective. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction] found that African-descended people (Blacks) average cranial capacities of 1267 cm 3, European-descended people (Whites) 1347 cm 3, and East Asian-descended people (East Asians) 1364 cm 3. These brain size differences, containing millions of brain cells and hundreds of millions of synapses, were hypothesized to underlie the race differences on IQ tests, in which Blacks average an IQ of 85, Whites 100, and East Asians 106. The validity of the race differences in brain size, however, continues to be disputed. In the present study, the race differences in brain size are correlated with 37 musculoskeletal variables shown in standard evolutionary textbooks to change systematically with increments in brain size. The 37 variables include cranial traits (such as jaw size and shape, tooth size and shape, muscle attachment sites, and orbital bone indentations), and postcranial traits (such as pelvic width, thighbone curvature, and knee joint surface area). Across the three populations, the “ecological correlations” [Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor. Westport, CT: Praeger] between brain size and the 37 morphological traits averaged a remarkable r = .94; ρ = .94. If the races did not differ in brain size, these correlations could not have been found. It must be concluded that the race differences in average brain size are securely established. As such, brain size-related variables provide the most likely biological mediators of the race differences in intelligence.

The New Black Intellectual History

Mia Bay's The White Image in the Black Mind is a timely contribution to our understandings of the African-American past, with the potential to catalyze something we might call the new black intellectual history. The muchvenerated spirit of the old hovers nearby, as indicated by the book's title. Students of nineteenth-century race relations are familiar with George Frederickson's path-breaking The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (1971); here we have the reverse. There is much to recommend this approach. Studies of race in institutional and community life have long shifted their focus to African Americans themselves, and recent work has done much to recast our understandings of gender and class in nineteenth-century black life. Intellectual history has tended to lag behind. If social historians are truly to comprehend the role of African-descended people in American history, they must grant as much import to the thinking of those people as to the thinking of those who oppressed them. White racial thought has long been an important consideration in studies of race and has been recently invigorated by studies of whiteness. Our understandings of the process of racial construction will remain impoverished, however, should we fail to consider this process among the targets of white supremacy's hostility. If The White Image in the Black Mind is to rise above the conceit of its title, however, it must also open up the history of race in new ways. One suspects that the book must be about more than the white image in the black mind, but about the nature of race itself. Here, the results are promising, if perhaps not fully realized. The first three chapters are concerned with black ethnology in the nineteenth century. Educated black thinkers responded to a shifting constellation of racial ideas increasingly dedicated to placing African-descended people among the lowest ranks of the human family, if not actually below it. From the ambivalent racial environmentalism of Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, American racial thought descended into arguments for

A Black feminist-inspired archaeology?

Archaeology has undergone a transition over the past two decades with the emergence of feminist discourses, and the mapping of women onto archaeological pasts. Yet Black feminist theorizing remains largely external to archaeological theory and practice, even though African-descended peoples constitute a considerable portion of the groups currently researched in the US and the Caribbean. It is a wonder that this is so, given the impressive body of literature that Black feminists have produced over the years regarding a range of topics relating to African-American experiences. I believe that Black feminist scholarship provides potential models for framing questions of difference and inequality, and for critiquing the sociopolitics of archaeology, particularly where raced and gendered representations of the past are concerned.

African Literature and the Traditional Arts: Speaking Art, Molding Theory

In the effort--to write the African story in European languages, Africans seem to have written themselves out of a lived African history into an alien and transitional narrative world. Though enabling in its capacity to open up Africa to the international world, that narrative world continues to close itself to Africans focused on a reality invented for the service of an extant colonial imperative. This invented Africa is ridden with questions about language, identity, viable political systems, and others that continue to challenge the African intellectual engaged in the quest for true African freedom from continued Western domination. Most scholars (see Achebe, Morning Yet; Gates, Signifying Monkey; Okpewho) agree that successful engagement of the issues it raises requires both a sustained engagement of African oral traditions to discover its own theories of aesthetics, criticism, and performance as well as the formulation of relevant theories for exploring contemporary African literatures. Predictably, general agreement on the necessity of these projects in the literatures of African-descended peoples has resulted in the initiation of various methods of discovery and inquiry. Notable examples include the works of Wole Soyinka, Nigeria's Nobel Prize laureate, which explore the uses of Yoruba mythology as fictional and literary tools and strategies of engagement for the new literature (Myth, Literature and the African World), and Henry Louis Gates's theory of Signifyin(g) in African American formal literary traditions (The Signifying Monkey), and Abiola Irele's focus on ideology and language (The African Experience in Literature and Ideology). As a result of its history, the assumptions of contemporary African literature continue to depend on the anthropological, insisting that Africans in general and Africanists in particular should rise to the project to (re-)member and re-deploy African thought, African traditions. Further, the political implications of the encounter demand immediate deployment of the artifacts of these archeological endeavors. This essay explores the purposeful use of the oral narrative as a contemporary African literary technique with positive implications for the development of an African literary theory.

African Literature and the Traditional Arts: Speaking Art, Molding Theory

In the effort--to write the African story in European languages, Africans seem to have written themselves out of a lived African history into an alien and transitional narrative world. Though enabling in its capacity to open up Africa to the international world, that narrative world continues to close itself to Africans focused on a reality invented for the service of an extant colonial imperative. This invented Africa is ridden with questions about language, identity, viable political systems, and others that continue to challenge the African intellectual engaged in the quest for true African freedom from continued Western domination. Most scholars (see Achebe, Morning Yet; Gates, Signifying Monkey; Okpewho) agree that successful engagement of the issues it raises requires both a sustained engagement of African oral traditions to discover its own theories of aesthetics, criticism, and performance as well as the formulation of relevant theories for exploring contemporary African literatures. Predictably, general agreement on the necessity of these projects in the literatures of African-descended peoples has resulted in the initiation of various methods of discovery and inquiry. Notable examples include the works of Wole Soyinka, Nigeria's Nobel Prize laureate, which explore the uses of Yoruba mythology as fictional and literary tools and strategies of engagement for the new literature (Myth, Literature and the African World), and Henry Louis Gates's theory of Signifyin(g) in African American formal literary traditions (The Signifying Monkey), and Abiola Irele's focus on ideology and language (The African Experience in Literature and Ideology). As a result of its history, the assumptions of contemporary African literature continue to depend on the anthropological, insisting that Africans in general and Africanists in particular should rise to the project to (re-)member and re-deploy African thought, African traditions. Further, the political implications of the encounter demand immediate deployment of the artifacts of these archeological endeavors. This essay explores the purposeful use of the oral narrative as a contemporary African literary technique with positive implications for the development of an African literary theory.

I Sought My Brother: An Afro-American Reunion

This book chronicles the last days of the purity of what has been for three centuries one of the world's most unusual cultural enclaves.--Alex HaleyThe two scientists made a personal discovery in Suriname.... As a social anthropologist, was fascinated by their story.--Colin M. TurnbullI Sought My Brother is a unique history of a black people living deep within the jungles of South America who not only survived attempts to enslave them but who have triumphed with their original African culture intact. It also provides the only permanent record of a way of life that may soon vanish as new technologies are brought to this remote area.The story of a meeting between Allen Counter, a neurobiologist, David Evans, an electrical engineer, and the African-descended people of the Suriname rain forest was first told in the film, I Sought My Brother, which appeared on National Public Television and in countries throughout the world. Now, in this pictorial essay Counter and Evans condense their experiences over and eight-year period into one long reunion with the bush tribes whose African ancestors escaped into the jungle after being transported to Suriname by 17th-century Dutch slave ships. They were victorious over the colonialists during a century of guerrilla warfare, winning their independence by formal treaties before North Americans won theirs from the British. Since then, they have carried on their traditional way of life with freedom and dignity.The book traces Counter and Evans's discovery of this well-preserved African presence in the New World and their dangerous journey over river waters filled with rapids, rocks, and piranha that took them several hundred miles into the interior and centuries backward in time to thatched-roof villages and an exciting and highly emotional meeting with the Bush Afro-Americans. They are greeted by the headman who asks them if they are still bakra schlaffra, or white man's slaves, and who wants to know if they have won their fight. The battle is still being fought, the authors reply.The text and hundreds of illustrations document their participation in village life--hunting and fishing, childbirth, medical practices, religious rituals, dance, building a house and a canoe--and in unfamiliar, primitive, and holistic customs. In turn, the authors delight their hosts with cassette recordings of Otis Redding, Lightnin' Hopkins, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder, and eventually with their own film of the reunion.