Black Heritage Research Articles

On the Boundaries of Race

Socially constructed race groups have boundaries that define their membership. I study temporal trends and group-specific patterns in race and ancestry responses provided for children of interracial marriages. Common responses indicate contemporary definitions of race groups (and perhaps emerging groups); uncommon responses reveal socially defined limits of race group membership. I leverage dense, nonpublic, Census Bureau data from 1960 to 2010 to do this and include a more diverse set of families, a longer time span, and more accurate estimates than prior research. I find that the location of race group boundaries varies over time and across 11 distinct family types. Since mixed-heritage responses became possible in 1980, they have been common in most groups. Part Asians have almost always been reported as multiracial or mixed ancestry. A number of (non-Asian) mixed-heritage children are described as monoracial on the census form, particularly children with American Indian heritage. Over time, part whites are decreasingly reported as monoracially white (white race with no nonwhite ancestry). Black heritage is reported for part blacks, but monoracial black responses became nonmodal by 1980. Part Pacific Islanders show similarities to part Asians and part American Indians. Given the predominance of multiracial and mixed-ancestry Asian responses since 1980, Asian multiracial may be an emerging socially recognized race category. Black multiracial shows a similar pattern. Monoracial responses (especially common among white–American Indians and black–American Indians) create important but hard-to-measure complexity in groups’ compositions.

Biracial Identity Part 2: Tips for Working With Biracial Families

Hypodescent is a way of categorizing multiracial individuals such that they are defined by their minority racial heritage, no matter how small a percentage of their genetic makeup is associated with that racial group. By that definition, anyone with even 1% of black heritage is deemed black, which prior to the abolishment of slavery meant enslavement, stripping of one’s identity, and, in the era of Jim Crow laws, de facto loss of the right to vote and restriction from many public facilities. Hypodescent no longer dominates how we view multiracial identity, which has allowed biracial/multiracial individuals to have more identity options available. With so many options available, it is inevitable that many biracial individuals will struggle with identity development. This is particularly true for those whose external appearance is more monoracial, like me. Although technically biracial (half black, half white), I have green eyes, blond hair, and fair skin. Although many biracial children will not have identity development issues, we all have to handle issues ranging from minor stares to more serious issues such as being called and treated as an imposter. This is particularly relevant for child psychiatrists, as we are now in the era of the biracial baby boom, and multicultural children are the fastest-growing youth group in the country (an increase by 50% since 2010).1

The Experience of Antiretroviral Treatment for Black West African Women who are HIV Positive and Living in London: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) offers a powerful intervention in HIV but effectiveness can be compromised by inadequate adherence. This paper is a detailed examination of the experience of medication in a purposively selected group of people living with HIV. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 HIV positive, West African women of black heritage living in London, UK. This group was of interest since it is the second largest group affected by HIV in the UK. Interviews were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis, an idiographic, experiential, qualitative approach. The paper details the women's negative experience of treatment. ART can be considered difficult and unrelenting and may be disconnected from the women's sense of health or illness. Participants' social context often exacerbated the difficulties. Some reported an improvement in their feelings about the medication over time. These findings point to some intrinsic and social motivators which could act as spurs to adherence.

One Ever Feels His Twoness: Understanding the Service and Rhetoric of Barack Obama

One Ever Feels His Twoness: Understanding the Service and Rhetoric of Barack Obama Marne L. Campbell (bio) Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship. By Robert E. Terrill. Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press. 2015. The Size of Others’ Burdens: Barack Obama, Jane Addams, and the Politics of Helping Others. By Erik Schneiderhan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2015. “It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks in on it in an amused contempt and pity.” —W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903. W.E.B. Du Bois writes in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) that African Americans are born with a sort of second-sight for which to understand their position in the world, but particularly in American society. He understood, mostly by his [End Page 65] own experiences as a black man working in the south at the beginning of the twentieth century, and as a trained scholar in history and sociology, that African Americans had the ability to see themselves not only as themselves, but also as outsiders (specifically white people) did. This occurs to him as a result of white people constantly asking him how it felt to be a problem. Du Bois uses his first essay, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” to explain the danger in maintaining a racial divide in the United States. He immediately draws the reader into the strivings of black American identity. At the heart of this is the peculiar position black people are in, which, in turn, gives them this double consciousness. Du Bois writes, “One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (Du Bois, p. 215). Historian David Levering Lewis points out that this was a profoundly radical idea at the time. While Du Bois did not invent double consciousness, his understanding of the concept put him a decade ahead of his time; he might actually have been a century ahead (Levering Lewis, p. 196). Du Bois believed that African Americans were, “longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self” (Du Bois, p. 215), without compromising their black heritage. He explained, “he simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed in his face” (Du Bois, p. 215). This marks the start of Du Bois outlining the need for African Americans to gain full equality, which he outlines in his third chapter when he criticizes other black leaders, especially Booker T. Washington, for not pursuing an agenda that includes civic equality. W.E.B. Du Bois was unwavering in his insistence of black equality. He understood that black people had been denied rights and, thereby, denied citizenship, insisting that black people demand the right to vote, civil equality, and education. He says, “The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a symbol of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty which war had partially endowed him” (Du Bois, p. 217). For Du Bois, full equality under the law, and educational opportunities, were only the beginning. He did this not only though his own teaching, but other pursuits like the American Negro Academy, which he co-founded in 1897 in Washington, DC. Its purpose was to promote academic study of African Americans, especially by publishing scholarly works in the field. He also began organizing and co-founded the Niagara Movement in 1905 and the NAACP in 1909, where he edited the organization’s publication, The Crisis Magazine. Du Bois offers a good backdrop for understanding Barack Obama, and his rise to the highest political position in America. Understanding Du Bois will also allow us to better frame Barack Obama’s rhetoric, his identity, and his...

Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare by Teresa S. Moyer

Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare by Teresa S. Moyer

Dancing with the Orixás

This article explores how the body and dance play a central role in the transnationalization of Candomblé among Afro-descendant people and increasingly for white Europeans by creating a platform for negotiating a transatlantic black heritage. It examines how an Afro-Brazilian artist and Candomblé priest in Berlin disseminate religious practices and worldviews through the transnational Afro-Brazilian dance and music scene, such as during the annual presence of Afoxé – also known as ‘Candomblé performed on the streets’ – during the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin. It is an example of how an Afro-Brazilian religion has become a central element in re-creating an idea of “Africa” in Europe that is part of a longer history of the circulation of black artists and practitioners of Candomblé between West Africa, Europe and Latin America, and the resulting creation of transnational artistic-religious networks.

Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare. Teresa S. Moyer. gainesville:university press of florida, 2015. 217pp.

Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare. Teresa S. Moyer. gainesville:<scp>university press of florida</scp>, 2015. 217<scp>pp</scp>.

Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare (Moyer)

This work is a book review considering the title Ancestors of Worthy Life: Plantation Slavery and Black Heritage at Mount Clare by Teresa S. Moyer.

Ancestors of worthy life: plantation slavery and black heritage at Mount Clare

Ancestors of worthy life: plantation slavery and black heritage at Mount Clare

Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory, by Lynnell L. Thomas

Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory, by Lynell L. Thomas. Durham, Duke University Press, 2014. xii, 272 pp. $24.95 US (paperback) In this crisply written account, Lynell Thomas provides a fascinating exploration of tourism in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina. The tourist geography was especially apparent in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when it steered tourists and consumers to heavily policed tourist zones and restricted or discouraged access to nontourist black neighbourhoods that were automatically presumed to be risky, unsafe, or violent (p. 2). Before and after Hurricane Katrina many commercial guides offered tourists a selective and occasionally false New Orleans historical narrative. Commercial guides and tourist literature focused on the city's colonial historical connections with Europe. At the same time, however, mainstream commercial guides softened or omitted the histories of those of African origin who lived under French, Spanish, and American slave regimes. Even when mainstream tour operators acknowledged Africans' existence in early New Orleans, they did so in narratives highlighting the multicultural city. In her account of one company's year 2000 historical narrative, Thomas notes that guides spoke of Africans' roles in the building of New Orleans, but claimed that they lived in a racially exceptional city. Guides particularly emphasized the importance of the Creole in the city's history. The company's definition of Creole acknowledged the centrality of West African culture, but also described Creoles as an influential elite class without mention of poor or enslaved Creoles. While the tour company included black in its narrative, the company's failure to vindicate and empower its black characters was apparent (p. 81). Thomas found for example, that guides told the story of a New Orleans' slave named Toussaint without mentioning Toussaint Louverture, whose leadership in a slave revolution contributed to the establishment of the first free black nation in the Caribbean in 1804. Naming an enslaved child Toussaint in a slave society was a significant statement of identity and an act of resistance. Some New Orleans tour companies offered counternarratives to the selective and occasionally fictitious historical accounts Thomas describes in her third chapter. Thomas begins her fourth chapter with a description of the origins of the black heritage movement in New Orleans which emerged simultaneously with the modem civil rights and Black Power movements. Black business and civic leaders established an organization in 1986 and the Greater New Orleans Black Tourism Network (GNOBTN) in 1990. Thomas argues that the GNOBTN challenged the mainstream New Orleans tourism image. …

Desire and disaster in New Orleans: tourism, race, and historical memory

Most of the narratives packaged for New Orleans's many tourists cultivate a desire for black culture—jazz, cuisine, dance—while simultaneously targeting black people and their communities as sources and sites of political, social, and natural disaster. In this timely book, the Americanist and New Orleans native Lynnell L. Thomas delves into the relationship between tourism, cultural production, and racial politics. She carefully interprets the racial narratives embedded in tourism websites, travel guides, business periodicals, and newspapers; the thoughts of tour guides and owners; and the stories told on bus and walking tours as they were conducted both before and after Katrina. She describes how, with varying degrees of success, African American tour guides, tour owners, and tourism industry officials have used their own black heritage tours and tourism-focused businesses to challenge exclusionary tourist representations. Taking readers from the Lower Ninth Ward to the White House, Thomas highlights the ways that popular culture and public policy converge to create a mythology of racial harmony that masks a long history of racial inequality and structural inequity.

Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory by Lynnell L. Thomas (review)

Reviewed by: Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory by Lynnell L. Thomas Yuya Kiuchi DESIRE AND DISASTER IN NEW ORLEANS: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory. By Lynnell L. Thomas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2014. Lynnell Thomas, native of New Orleans and an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, demonstrates how tourism contributed to one-sided and often distorted popular memories about New Orleans. On the one hand, New Orleans is a very popular tourist destination. It is a place of “desire.” Many tourists from all over the U.S. visit the city looking for African-American culture including music and food. On the other hand, it is also a city characterized by “disaster,” not just because of Hurricane Katrina, but also because of racism and politics. Commonly, New Orleans is viewed as a city that has overcome various hurdles and now welcomes visitors from all over the U.S. and the world. Thomas suggests, however, that such a view on New Orleans is far from its reality. The city’s history of tourism has not been simple. Thomas explores this gap between “desire” (what tourists see) and “disaster” (what tourists do not see) by examining the ways in which African American tour guides, tour owners, and the tourism industry used their own Black heritage to reveal the reality of New Orleans. In other words, the book records how African American heritage tourism enabled more accurate remembering of the city’s history, interpretation of its racial and cultural dynamics, and establishment of “a blueprint for reenvisioning New Orleans’s future (25). To provide historical contexts, Thomas outlines the recent history of New Orleans tourism. Although she recognizes the positive role that tourism played in New Orleans and for its African American population, especially after the civil rights period, she is critical of the negative impact it had on the city’s Black population. As New Orleans became a popular tourist destination, African-American culture such as jazz music, parades, voodoo ceremonies, and creole cuisine were turned into objects of consumption. Additionally, many Black tourism workers were often confined to low-paying jobs. Although such a narrative about gentrification and commodification of African American culture that mostly benefits non-Black businesses is common outside of New Orleans, Thomas’s work provides valuable and little-documented evidence of African-American heritage tours resisting the mainstream tourism industry and discourse while simultaneously “craft[ing] counternarratives to the city’s racialized mythology” (12). For Thomas, New Orleans is not only a popular tourist destination, but is a place where popular memories and public policies are discussed and formulated. In other words, for many African Americans, tourism has become a political tool to showcase their Black heritage and to create the future of the city based on proper historical memories. In the process of revealing the intricate relationship between “desire” and “disaster,” Thomas touches upon various facets of the city’s history. For example, commodification and consumption of African American culture that was often problematic in itself also enhanced the tourism industry’s interests in Black culture, leading to the increased African-American cultural representation in New Orleans. It eventually translated to the rise of Black political agency. Furthermore, African American guides utilized their own racial and ethnic background in their tours by showing parts of New Orleans that mainstream tour guides intentionally or unintentionally miss or ignore. Thomas’s case study [End Page 114] about Le Monde Creole French Quarter Courtyards Tour also reflects similar revisionist efforts to recognize the city’s pluralistic ethnic background. Since 2005, much has been written about New Orleans. Michael Eric Dyson’s Come Hell or High Water (2006), Keith Wailoo and Karen O’Neill’s Katrina’s Imprint (2010), and others have captured the racial dynamics of the city suffering from the consequence of the disaster. Spike Lee’s documentary, When the Levees Broke (2006) also recorded the lives of New Orleans’s residents. Desire and Disaster is a significant addition to these works on the city and its African American residents. First, it reminds its readers that the city’s recovery was not an equal process. Many...

Supporting Tourism Business in Nigeria via Integrated Marketing

Tourism in Nigeria could be a big business; however, the nation has not capitalized on it. When 30 black mayors from American cities came to Lagos for the Black Heritage Festival, a carnival parade followed by some traditional culture and a visit to Badagry, a former slave-exporting port; the then governor of Lagos State, appealed to the mayors for advice on how to attract American tourists. Nigeria is considered the largest black nation in the world, with the total population at 170,123,740 (million) people last recorded in July 2012 (Indexmundi. Com, 2012) and 250 languages; she is rich in oil, gas, and other natural resources such as gold, diamond, animal games, tropical rain forests, savannah grasslands, mangrove swamps and the shale savannah near the Sahara, and diverse culture. Being strategically located at the end of eastern part of West Africa, she is equally rich in tourism; nevertheless, the tourism industry in Nigeria is experiencing no growth, because of some fundamental problems. Therefore, this paper is to offer possible business (marketing) solutions on how tourism could be promoted in this nation, so as to have an impact on the economy.

The perception of Africa by African Americans in the predominantly black community of East St. Louis, Illinois, USA

The dominant image of Africa in the colonial discourses of Western explorers has been persistently negative, stereotypical, and demeaning. The unauthenticated negative images are the largest influencer of Western perception of Africa because as long as the misrepresentation lingers on in Western media and film, the dominant white attitude toward African Americans as inferior could be rationalized and sustained. Moreover the real impact of such misrepresentations on how African Americans see and relate to their ancestral homeland remains grossly under studied. Through purposive sampling, this study interviewed 55 East St. Louis African Americans on the meaning of Africa to them. The results show that they had very positive perceptions of Africa and prided themselves as Africans despite centuries of negative Western portrayal of the continent. Their most important positive images included: Africa as the ancestral home of black people, African festivals and attire, African history and traditions, and African spirituality and belief systems. Through factor analysis, seven underlying dimensions that structure how African Americans construct their perceptions of Africa emerged – including: their Black African heritage, their fantasy of going back to Africa, their inerasable African identity, Connecting Africa to the world, African heroes, keeping the Black pride alive, and the failed stereotypic portrayal of Africa over the centuries.

Biracial – Black? A Survey of Language Use and Attitudes in Poland and Germany

The paper deals with the construction of race from the perspective of cognitive sociolinguistics. The focus is upon the perception of mixed-race people of black and white heritage in Poland and Germany compared to the USA, and its reflection in language use. The study clarifies in how far a socially marked perception of biracial people applies in these countries with very small population of black ancestry. Among other things, the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama is used to investigate the occurrence in both countries of mental colouring of biracial people. The paper also reflects the language debate on political correctness of the press language, sparked off by the presidential campaign and its media coverage. It presents claims and arguments by proponents of various solutions regarding referring to biracial people, and paradoxes showing up in the relationship between language use and ideological positions when the race issue is at stake.

Courageous Conversations about Race

This personal reflection explores the role of counter-narratives and courageous conversations in the elementary curriculum. It explores how the intentionality of Black Heritage Day at the Folk Arts–Cultural Treasures Charter School and its curriculum guides students and teachers in exploring issues of race, culture, and history.

Urban interventions, memories and conflicts: black heritage and the revitalization of Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone

This paper discusses the creation of an arena for political and moral recognition stirred by the "revitalization" of Rio de Janeiro's Port Zone: the landmarking of Pedra do Sal as a "historic and religious Afro-Brazilian monument" by residents who claimed legal ownership of several properties in the area, affirming that it is an "ethnic territory" and the site is "a remnant quilombo community." The Quilombo of Pedra do Sal became one of the most controversial battles for ethnic recognition in Brazil, because it explored possibilities for broadening the constitutional concept of a quilombo. These possibilities would include, the plea for recognition of an ethnic territory in an urban context; the construction of a history of territorial occupation based on mythological narrative; and a territorial demarcation based on a cultural heritage conceived as the remnant symbol of a generic "black city" and, therefore, without presumed heirs.

Racial Socialization of Biracial Youth: Maternal Messages and Approaches to Address Discrimination

We explored how mothers of biracial youth prepare their children to navigate diverse racial ecologies and experiences of racism and discrimination. A qualitative thematic analysis was used to identify racial socialization messages mothers used and emergent racial socialization approaches. Mothers of biracial youth engaged in the full range of racial socialization discussed in the literature, including cultural, minority, self‐development, egalitarian, and silent racial socialization. These messages varied by the biracial heritage of the youth, such that mothers of biracial youth with Black heritage were more likely to provide self‐development racial socialization messages, whereas mothers of biracial youth without Black heritage were more likely to provide silent racial socialization. On the basis of the array of racial socialization messages mothers delivered, we identified three emergent approaches: promotive, protective, and passive racial socialization.

Sustainable heritage tourism: the Inanda Heritage Route and the 2010 FIFA World Cup

This paper discusses the Inanda Heritage Route (IHR) in Durban on the east coast of South Africa, which was developed in preparation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The IHR comprises five important cultural heritage sites of the black majority, including the Phoenix Settlement established by Mahatma Gandhi in 1904. Forty-one tourists, mostly international soccer fans, were interviewed about their experiences of visiting the route in June/July 2010. The findings are analyzed in relation to issues of sustainability, focusing on a demand-side approach and the challenges of increasing tourist flow and community benefits. A brief literature review illustrates priority issues in the South African understanding of sustainable and “responsible” tourism development, and the question of incorporating neglected black heritage. It is argued that the IHR could become a successful model of sustainable “alternative” tourism, but more community participation is needed both in tourism and in cultural heritage site management to increase the sense of ownership and opportunities for material gains and poverty alleviation. The last section focuses on heritage interpretation at each of the interview sites. It is argued that the interpretation should not primarily be targeted at foreign tourists, but must more strongly be geared towards enticing local people to visit.

Holding a successful Black History Month

If we are to run a classroom in which every child achieves their very best, then we simply must be a classroom in which every child feels valued. You may think that this is stating the obvious. But ensuring that a child feels valued is about much more than encouraging their participation, praising them, and supporting them – both with their gifts and their struggles. It is about valuing them as a whole person, with a culture, a history and, perhaps, a language of their own. In other words, it is about valuing their unique human identity. While a child is growing they need our support in understanding their identity. And when a child is from a minority ethnic group, or they are of mixed heritage where one ethnicity dominates at home or at school, more often than not they will also need support in valuing their full identity. Although we should, of course, make this activity an ongoing priority in our schools and classrooms, Black History Month in October provides the perfect time for us to really focus on our practice in this area. While it originally began as a month in which to learn about and celebrate solely black Caribbean and black African heritage, particularly the positive contributions made by black people, these days schools are widening the scope and using it as an opportunity to teach about a range of non-white British histories and cultures. The importance of doing so cannot be stressed enough, predominantly for two reasons: (a) the vast majority of minority ethnic groups of pupils in the UK are underachieving compared to their majority ethnic peers; and (b) in our globalised world and multicultural society, there has never been a greater need for mutual understanding (not just respect) and the promotion of community cohesion and cooperation. Sounds a little overwhelming? Well, remember, we as teachers can only do so much, so don’t start panicking or beating yourself up about what you are not doing. But there is a lot we can do to improve.