Black Inequality Research Articles

IMPORTANT IMPROVEMENTS TOWARD EQUITY IN PROSTATE CANCER SURVIVAL BETWEEN WHITE AND BLACK MEN

Abstract Prostate cancer survival is significantly influenced by tumor stage, age, and marital status at diagnosis. There is also evidence that cases diagnosed prior to age 40 and after age 80 years have a poorer prognosis. While Blacks have historically had lower prostate cancer survival than whites, it is not clear whether this difference still exists and if it varies across the levels of tumor stage, age, or marital status at diagnosis. These issues are addressed in this study. Analyses are based on Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data to obtain 5-year relative survival (5-YRS) estimates. Cases reflect 2000-2015 and follow-up extends through 2020. Over the study period 5-YRS decreased for Whites and increased for blacks, such that by 2015 the 5-YRS was about the same between races. Multiple regression models with race, age, and marital status simultaneously estimated showed that 5-YRS in Whites versus Blacks was not significantly different for local/regional stage or distant stage. 5-YRS in married (or living with a partner) was 3.02 higher for local/regional stage but not significant for distant stage. 5-YRS was significantly lower in the age groups < 40 and ≥80 for local/regional stage but were highest in the age group < 40 and significantly fell with older age for distant stage. Race did not modify the relationship between 5-YRS and tumor stage, age, or marital status at diagnosis. Thus, while tumor stage, age, and marital status at diagnosis are important predictors of 5-YRS for prostate cancer, White and Black inequality no longer exists.

Standard-Bearers of Equality: America’s First Abolition Movement

Standard-Bearers of Equality: America’s First Abolition Movement

Standard-Bearers of Equality: America's First Abolition Movement by Paul J. Polgar

Reviewed by: Standard-Bearers of Equality: America's First Abolition Movement by Paul J. Polgar Richard Newman (bio) Abolitionism, Black abolishionists, Slavery, Antislavery, African American history Standard-Bearers of Equality: America's First Abolition Movement. By Paul J. Polgar. (Chapel Hill: The Omohundro Institute and the University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 342. Cloth, $39.95; ebook $29.99.) In Standard Bearers of Equality, Paul Polgar challenges scholars to reframe their very understanding of early abolitionism in the United States. Focusing on "first movement" activists between the 1770s and 1820s, he argues that Black as well as white reformers shaped an egalitarian vision of American society that remains powerful centuries later. Indeed, as he concludes, while early activists failed to slay slavery nationally and end white prejudice in the North, "the most enduring legacy of America's first abolition movement was its abiding faith that a world free from black oppression and inequality was possible" (325). Full of insightful analysis and bracingly written, this is a bold book to reckon with. Yet Polgar also pushes early abolitionist radicalism too far, raising key questions about the first movement's ultimate impact on American and Atlantic society. Polgar's study comes at a key moment for abolitionist historiography. On the one hand, much recent work focuses on African American struggles for justice before the Civil War. Books by Martha Jones, Christopher Bonner, and Kellie Carter Jackson have pictured Black activists as the center of a decades-long movement for immediate abolition, birthright citizenship, and civic equality. On the other hand, the Caribbean turn in Atlantic studies—including seminal work by Laurent Dubois, Vincent [End Page 299] Brown, and Ed Rugemer, among others—has focused increasing attention on the impact of slave rebellion on emancipation movements and laws between the 1760s and 1830s. In both cases, early American abolitionists have been pushed to the margins of Atlantic reform. Even the legendary David Brion Davis, whose early work focused on the power of Anglo American abolitionism before 1820, later saw Caribbean slave rebellion—which resulted in immediate freedom for hundreds of thousands of enslaved people—and the advent of the Black republic of Haiti as the keys to understanding Atlantic society's "first emancipations" (see The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation, 45). So just what did early abolitionists do? Polgar takes on this question with gusto and verve. As he puts it, while "the racially progressive origins of American abolitionism" have been "buried" by recent scholars, it is clear that early activists offered a "reform blueprint" that made universal freedom and racial equality essential goals of modern democratic society (7–8). First movement reformers sought to strip slavery of its legal, constitutional, and political protections where they could, especially in the U.S. North. "In so doing, they built a reform agenda" that was also "premised on the eventual overturning of Black degradation" as an organizing principle across American society (7). For Polgar, the long march to Black freedom begins with first movement abolitionists. Idealists as well pragmatists, early abolitionists argued that changing African Americans' circumstances would shift racial destinies in the United States. Deploying new understandings of societal environmentalism, early abolitionists "pinned Black inequality on the circumstances of slavery"—their oppressive environment—and "not [on] the inner character of people of color," as many anti-abolitionists did (133). By rejecting the concept of innate Black inferiority, early abolitionists imagined a world defined by human equality rather than slavery. The first steps toward building that world occurred in the U.S. North, where early abolitionists secured gradual emancipation laws that would take effect over several decades. But first movement activists also vigorously prosecuted masters who violated these laws, often winning outright freedom for some African Americans. Polgar shows that white abolitionists in Pennsylvania and New York brought forth 520 cases of illegal enslavement over the span of a decade, enjoying an 84 percent success rate. In Pennsylvania abolitionist complaints also persuaded the state government to close slave-trading loopholes in the gradual abolition act of 1780. By enforcing and even expanding statutory abolition, first movement [End Page 300] activists made clear to slaveholders and others that they would remain vigilant...

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction

Between Protest and Politics

Abstract This article examines the official Black Lives Matter Movement (the Black Lives Matter Global Network) as a point of departure to argue that Black Lives Matter (BLM) in general expands our epistemological framework for thinking about black freedom movements, black freedom dreams, and black freedom strategies. By analyzing the movement’s explicit refusal to be likened to civil rights movement organizations as a concurrent attack against intraracial sexism, heterosexism, and transphobia, the article insists that BLM deprivileges heteronormativity to show that black freedom dreams must include gender and sexual liberation. By considering BLM’s rejection of capitalism as a broader critique of neoliberalism’s forceful role in maintaining black dispossession, the author posits that BLM desires to disrupt the state’s tendency to use the black middle class to enact, enforce, and reinforce an economic order that relies upon race and racism to codify and cement black inequality. Finally, the author posits that the movement’s tactics and goals provide a framework through which to enact short-term change, while pushing to dismantle the larger system of antiblack racism that is refracted through global capitalism.

From #BlackLivesmatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Reviewed by: From #BlackLivesmatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Adam Szetela FROM #BlackLivesMatter TO BLACK LIBERATION. By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 2016. Similar to Herbert Marcuse's An Essay on Liberation (1969), Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's latest contribution is a timely and much needed intervention. Both intellectually rigorous and accessible, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation is a historical exposition of the conditions that contributed to the reemergence of Black radicalism in the United States. It is also a persuasive case that #BLM's fight against racism must also be a fight against capitalism. In chapter one, Taylor looks at the mutually reinforcing ideas of American exceptionalism and "culture of poverty." Through a meticulous analysis of public policy and political rhetoric, she explains that the manufactured connection between Black poverty and Black culture allows conservatives and liberals to portray America as a country where anyone can make it. The oppression experienced by Blacks is imagined as a failure of the Black family and Black role models, not a failure of the state. This absolves the federal government from intervening through social welfare. In chapter two, Taylor locates the emergence of "colorblindness" as a reactionary political theory. For Taylor, this "ideological tool, initially wielded by conservatives in the Nixon era to resist the growing acceptance of 'institutional racism' as the central explanation for Black inequality," denies structural racism and perpetuates a politics that blames Blacks for their own suffering (17–18). With a careful attention to Black history, [End Page 114] Taylor looks at the ways that this narrative became dominant in the late 1960s after the decline of the radical Black power movements. Chapter three, "Black Faces in High Places," makes the convincing case that more Black people in positions of power will do nothing to alleviate the institutional racism that permeates America. As she historicizes the rise of Black politicians, police chiefs, and elites Taylor evinces the reality that this "progress" has not blunted mass incarceration, police brutality, the destruction of public housing, and other areas where Black Americans suffer disproportionality. Chapter four elaborates the specifics of "The Double Standard of Justice" that exists in America. While chapter five, "Barack Obama: The End of an Illusion" builds on chapter three with an examination of Obama's failure to address "critical issues facing African Americans" (19). Chapters six and seven look at the rise of #BLM under the first Black president as a sign that Black Americans are again embracing "institutional racism" as a schematic for understanding reality. They are also engaging in forms of activism that diverge from party politics. A central strength of #BlackLivesMatter is Taylor's meticulous demystification of the meritocratic myth that pervades American culture and politics. Like Michelle Alexander and Cedric Johnson, she utilizes demographic statistics, rhetorical analysis, and comparative-historical analysis to illuminate the new guises of institutional racism. Most importantly, she targets not just conservative politicians, but liberals like Obama and Al Sharpton who propagandize American exceptionalism, "culture of poverty" narratives, and meagre reformist policies that can be assimilated into a political-economy of racism and class privilege. Taylor's intelligent rebuke of prominent antiracist author Tim Wise alone makes her book worth reading. Ultimately, Taylor makes a compelling final argument that antiracist movements must also be socialist. Capitalism is a system that disproportionality exploits minorities, but it is also a system that exploits people of all races and ethnicities. For Taylor, police are the repressive state apparatus that recreates class power as it systematically disem-powers and persecutes the poor. As Black Americans are overrepresented among the poorer classes, it is unsurprising that they are disproportionality targeted at a higher rate than whites. Yet, while it is important to recognize these disparities, such differences do "not say much about who benefits from the inequality of our society" (212). For Taylor, a political-economy built on slavery, mass incarceration, the destruction of the social welfare state, and wage slavery—"the pivot around which all other inequalities and oppressions turn" (206)—will not be disrupted by Black elites who represent the interests of the ruling class. It will only be challenged by an intersectional politics that sees Black liberation as part...

Linking Racial Composition, Black–White Inequality, and Regional Difference: The Role of Migration

ABSTRACTThe percent black–inequality relationship and the unique position of the South have been cornerstones of research on U.S. racial inequality. Using an innovative methodological approach, I address how migration contributes to our understanding of the percent black–inequality relationship. I find that the educationally selective migration of blacks and whites significantly contributes to the percent black–inequality relationship via compositional changes. However, any explanatory power is limited to the non-South. Migration plays a role in understanding this relationship, yet processes related to black population concentration still generate black disadvantage anew, particularly within the South.

Protesting Black Inequality: A Commentary on the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter

ABSTRACTUsing the theoretical scaffold of the relative deprivation theory, we present a commentary that delineates: (a) the 4 stages of social movements (e.g., emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization, and decline) and (b) sociopolitical and ethno-generational leadership, networks, narratives and tactics of the Civil Rights Movement compared with the Black Lives Matter. We provide a commentary on the 2 social movements’ precipitating events during the emergence and coalescence stages. Also, the social-psychological pressures of mainstream social justice protest during the bureaucratization and decline stages are explored to highlight the emotional toil that threaten social movements and the lives of its leaders.

Young Elite Asian Americans and the Model Minority Stereotype: The Nativity Effect

While research on the model minority stereotype has focused on white American attitudes, much less research has considered the ways in which Asian Americans understand this concept and its implications. Utilizing frameworks from social psychology and critical race theory we hypothesize that young foreign-born Asian Americans will more likely accept the model minority stereotype than native born Asian Americans due to their likely socialization in a context where their ethnic group was dominant. Further we hypothesize that young Asian Americans who accept the model minority stereotype also accept individualistic explanations for black inequality given that the stereotype implicates non-Asian minorities presumed incompetence and lack of effort on lower socioeconomic outcomes. Third, we hypothesize that US-born Asian Americans’ exposure to the racialized climate of the US will make their belief in the stereotype more salient in predicting individualistic attitudes toward black inequality. We employ OLS regression techniques using survey data from the first wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen. We find that the mean level of acceptance to the stereotype does not differ by nativity. However that acceptance, regardless of nativity, is positively associated with individualist explanations for African American inequality. Further, foreign-born status is also linked to anti-black individualist sentiment. When we interact nativity status with belief in the stereotype, we find that foreign-born status is moderated in its effect on individualist beliefs toward African American inequality. Thus, we find that while young foreign-born Asian Americans are more individualistic in their views on racial inequality, native-born acceptance of the stereotype has a more pronounced effect. These findings suggest what we describe as a “choosing sides” logic; acceptance of the model minority stereotype reflects collusion with white dominance at the expense of alienation with other non-white minorities.

The Spoils of War: Money and Humanism in Emmanuel Dongala's Johnny Chien Méchant

Emmanuel Dongala's 2002 novel Johnny Chien Méchant (adapted into a 2008 film of the same name) shows how the history of colonial and post colonial Africa can be reduced to the story of money and its destructive power. One of Francophone Africa's major living novelists with a career spanning 40 years, Dongala takes a humanist perspective on questions of black identity and economic inequality. Emblematic of a recent shift in Francophone African literature, Johnny Chien Méchant combines the carnivalesque descriptions of violence of Congolese writer Sony Labou Tansi's La Vie et Demie (1979) with the compassion and humanism evident in later texts such as Senegalese author Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi (2006). Multiple characters in Dongala's novel—child soldiers, corrupt customs officials, profiteering refugees—become prisoners to greed, suggesting the continuation, in a different form, of the exploitative practices of colonialism. In this article, I show the way in which Dongala's humanism shapes his discussion of money and its role in contemporary conflicts (whether in the African or global context). I argue that Dongala both engages with and subverts afro-pessimist discourses through a nuanced representation of money's role in fomenting violence.

The Rise and Fall of West Virginia’s Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics, 1921–1957

In 1955, Ivanhoe S. Wayne, the director of West Virginia’s Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics, sued the state auditor for unpaid wages. The state contended that the legislature had not approved Wayne’s appointment and that he was entitled neither to the position he claimed nor to the salary prescribed in the West Virginia Code. The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals concurred that the bureau and its director operated at the legislature’s pleasure. 1 Two years later, not long after Governor William Marland lauded West Virginia’s mostly peaceful desegregation of its public schools in his final address to the legislature, a bill to reestablish the provision for the bureau director’s salary died in the state senate’s finance committee. 2 With the bureau slated for quiet termination, Director Bird R. Forney and Field Deputy William L. Spriggs wrote a final report, a shorter and more indignant one than usual. School desegregation, they pointed out, was taking place alongside increasing black unemployment and a dramatic exodus of African Americans from the state. “In the same manner by which the entire people of West Virginia aided and accepted the integration of schools,” they wrote, “so should its officials and civic leaders search with all diligence for ways to eradicate racial and ethnic discriminatory practices, because we search haplessly for work.”3 If integration were to accomplish anything of value for West Virginia’s African Americans, they argued, it would need to be applied beyond the schoolhouse door. Forney and Spriggs exaggerated in their claim that West Virginia’s “entire people” had accepted the desegregation of schools and state-funded institutions. Members of the state’s political establishment, including Governor Marland and School Superintendent W. W. Trent, had placed their allegiance firmly behind the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. For years the bureau’s leaders had worked for black economic advancement in West Virginia without specifically advocating school integration. Now that such integration was being accomplished, the state government seemed indifferent to increasing black economic inequality.

MICHAEL B. KATZ. Why Don't American Cities Burn?

As a collection of thoughtful essays about the nature of the American modern city and especially the persistent pattern of concentrated poverty there, this book serves as a useful synthesis for recent policy debate. Going well beyond the topic suggested in his title, Michael B. Katz assesses, among other things, the nature of black inequality and the shift to market-based solutions to urban problems, as well as the reasons why cities have seldom since encountered the widespread civil disturbances that broke out across the United States in the 1960s. Cities no longer burn, but not because their problems have been solved. Rather, Katz argues, the selective incorporation of minorities into local power structures as part of what he calls the management of marginalization as well as draconian measures of social control have dampened collective dissent. Unlike France, which recently witnessed upheavals in suburban ghettos where immigrants without hope are concentrated, the United States has been largely successful in keeping the peace without materially altering place-based disparities in income.

Evangelicalism and the Politics of Reform in Northern Black Thought, 1776–1863 (review)

Reviewed by: Evangelicalism and the Politics of Reform in Northern Black Thought, 1776–1863 Charles Irons (bio) Evangelicalism and the Politics of Reform in Northern Black Thought, 1776–1863. By Rita Roberts. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011. Pp. 261. Cloth, $39.95.) In Evangelicalism and the Politics of Reform in Northern Black Thought, Rita Roberts sets out to explain why so many black northerners in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries identified themselves proudly as “Americans” despite their country’s wretched record on issues of racial justice. She concludes that African American activists and reformers remained committed to the United States because they believed that the Christian God would soon transform the country into a land of hope and opportunity for all. Evangelical northern blacks, she argues, were convinced that “Americans, black and white, would become a new people, distinct from any population in the world, because of their Christian republican faith” (3). African American northerners, in her account, began to lose hope in this millennial vision by the 1850s and started seriously to consider emigration away from white Americans. With the coming of the [End Page 440] Civil War, however, and particularly with Lincoln’s move toward emancipation, they recommitted themselves to the country of their birth. People of color in the antebellum North generated a rich body of literature, which Roberts plumbs for her analysis. She draws extensively on the public record: on periodicals, pamphlets, convention records, and published narratives. The fact that evangelicals authored such a large proportion of African American publications in the antebellum period—and enshrined their hopes for uplift in them—resoundingly supports Roberts’s basic contention about the linkages between evangelicalism and reform (by which Roberts means “abolition, antiracism, and black community development” [3]). However, her decision to limit her use of ecclesiastical sources to denominational newspapers and published sermons constrains her ability to probe fully the connections between evangelicalism and activism. How did activists conceptualize the relationship between their public advocacy for reform and their work within individual congregations? To what extent did church members empower or restrain their activist leaders? On what issues were there the greatest conflicts between rank-and-file members and activist leaders—or among leaders? Roberts may have found answers to these and other questions in church minutes, records from denominational meetings, theological treatises, and other such sources, all of which would have helped to situate her authors in specific faith communities and give more content to their beliefs and practices. What is more, Roberts might have used ecclesiastical sources to develop more fully her understanding of the concept of millennialism. She holds that black evangelicals believed that God would intervene in history to help them transform the United States, but she does not interrogate this belief systematically. In a nice section on David Walker, Roberts notes that black evangelicals by the late 1820s were moving with the Arminian stream of the Second Great Awakening toward what Timothy Fulop has called a more activist “progressive millennialism” (77–83). She does not address the relative weight of the two other varieties of black millennialism that Fulop identifies, however, or wrestle with tough questions about black evangelicals’ understanding of race and millennialism. Laurie Maffl y-Kipp has recently demonstrated how profitable a more aggressive interrogation of the concept can be in Setting Down the Sacred Past (2010), a theologically astute analysis of African American race histories. In a powerful fifth chapter subtitled “The Problem of Race and Black Evangelical Reform,” Roberts surveys the often contradictory strategies through which leading black activists confronted racism in the late antebellum period. In African Americans’ efforts to combat new theories of black inequality, Roberts argues, “reformers placed themselves at a disadvantage [End Page 441] when they shared with promoters of scientific racism a nearly similar standard of civilization and a restricted application of Christianity” (152). For instance, when intellectuals such as New York physician James McCune Smith, who receives central billing in the chapter, used science to refute white claims of racial dominance, they tended to do so in a way that reified the idea of essential racial differences. African American activists’ response to this rhetorical dilemma illustrates Roberts’s thesis...

21st-Century Capitalism, Austerity, and Black Economic Dispossession

The article is an analysis of late capitalism and the nature of Black inequality today given the political economy of late capitalism. As always, the fundamental fact of 21st-century capitalism is profit. Yet the system is in crisis, centered in a crisis of accumulation. Given this, what are the consequences for the Black population in the United States and globally? A number of key questions inform the discussion, centered on the nature of capitalism today. Issues of austerity, neoliberalism, race, gender, and class are interrogated. Then there is the issue of how might the situation be changed. Using the September 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike as an entry point, an initial set of reflections on how might we resist and struggle are articulated, centering some key lessons from the fight for educational justice in Chicago.

The Personal, the Political, and Race

T ¥ ith the election of Barack Obama, newspapers and pundits announced that America had finally moved beyond race, a claim with which many scholars of American race relations strongly disagreed (Barnes 2009; Cho 2009; Hutchings 2009). One clear sign that America is not in some sort of postracial moment is that even now, when the topic is inequality, for many Americans the is also political. Contrary to the pundits' announcement, guided more by hope than by expectation, one of the enduring cleavages in this society is how the state should address issues of inequality. Some favor a more interventionist approach that involves the government stepping in to correct inequality; others feel that the government should not intervene (Hutchings 2009). The difference in these approaches is decidedly political. One of the most direct ways of thinking about how the personal becomes political is the relationship demonstrated in Richard Lempert's Law & Society Association Presidential Address. Lempert's address illuminates the relationship between one's background or experiences and the beliefs that one has come to hold. Lempert begins his address with a few incidents from his past because he says these aspects of his life shaped my commitment to especially black-white equality (p. 431, this issue). We might think of an experience that creates a significant impression on us and thus sets the stage for later ideas about race as a personal, or individual, racial story. Such stories can lead an individual to develop a commitment to equality, and that was the case for Lempert. The origin story in Lempert's address is a complicated one involving his parents' experience of discrimination as Jews. It also involves several encounters of his own with blacks, including one encounter with black inequality (attending the birthday party of the son of his family's domestic) and another with an African Harvard Law School student. Lempert is not alone in telling a origin story.1 Such stories are often used to explain the origins of progressiveness.

Beyond Discrimination: Understanding African American Inequality in the Twenty-First Century

In November 2007, two reports by distinguished research centers turned African American inequality into national news. Their startling and discomfiting data highlighted both the fragility of African American success and the widening fault lines that divide African Americans from each other. Impressive and authoritative as the reports are, they nonetheless remain incomplete because they do not explain how and why African American inequality has changed during the last several decades or the place of gender and publicly supported work in the new black inequality. These omissions matter because adequate and realistic responses to the issues raised by the reports require grasping the sources of the revolutionary changes that have left blacks at once more and less equal. Black inequality no longer results from powerful and interlocking forms of public and private discrimination and oppression. Rather, it is the product of processes beginning with childhood that sort African Americans into more or less favored statuses, differentiating them by class and gender.

Vanguards of the New Negro: African American Veterans and Post-World War I Racial Militancy

On 28 July 1919 African American war veteran Harry Haywood, only three months removed from service in United States Army, found himself in midst of a maelstrom of violence and destruction on par with what he had experienced on battlefields of France. The previous day, simmering tensions between black and white residents of Chicago reached a boiling point following stoning and subsequent drowning of young Eugene Williams who had dared to challenge color-line at Lake Michigan's 29th Street beach. As he returned to city following his latest run as a waiter on Michigan Central Railroad, Haywood, formerly a soldier in highly decorated 8th Illinois National Guard (370th Infantry Regiment), learned of riot and feared worst. A white coworker validated his anxiety, cautioning him against entering southside of city because, There's a big race riot going on out there, and already this morning, a couple of colored soldiers were killed coming in unsuspectingly. While most likely rumor, warning punctuated Haywood's disillusionment with facade of American democracy stemming from his battles with systemic racism of U.S. Army and deepened his resolve to actively resist brewing assault on Chicago's black community. After briefly reuniting with his family, Haywood immediately went to 8th Illinois Armory and met with fellow veterans of regiment to prepare a military style defense of their neighborhood from Irish rioters. Stocked with a cache of 1903 Springfield rifles and a browning sub-machine gun procured from armory, Haywood and his comrades established positions in an apartment overlooking 51st Street, and stood ready to utilize their military training in anticipation of an impending evening attack. Haywood recalled similar actions taken throughout South's Black Belt by other groups of African American veterans. (1) Although no ambush occurred, Chicago race riot indelibly transformed Haywood's racial and political consciousness. As he wrote in his autobiography, the war and riots of 'Red Summer' of 1919 left me bitter and frustrated. I felt that I could never again adjust to situation of Black inequality. The warlike nature of American race relations in aftermath of World War I prompted many black veterans to question meaning of their service and seek new strategies for achieving racial justice. After a period of intellectual self-discovery, Haywood joined radical African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a secret paramilitary organization founded by Cyril Briggs, editor of The Crusader, and committed to defense of black people, liberation of Africa, and destruction of global capitalism. Upon its dissolution, he became a member of Communist Party and emerged as one of its most influential black leaders. Racially enlightened and deeply politicized as a result of their experiences, African American veterans like Haywood represented and embodied New Negro of post-World War I era. (2) This essay examines how activism and racial militancy of black veterans fundamentally shaped historical development and ideological diversity of New Negro movement. The New Negro movement, rooted in political consciousness and collective racial identity of black people in communities throughout United States and African Diaspora more broadly, was a product of domestic and global upheavals of World War I and its aftermath. While etymology of term dates to post-Reconstruction era, when a new generation of African Americans sought to distance themselves from slavery and its legacy, vast social, political, and demographic transformations brought about by global conflict made New Negro of war and postwar periods substantively distinct from previous historical epochs. Scholars have examined various factors that gave rise to New Negro, which included black migration, international revolutionary movements, most notably in Russia and Ireland, growth of a radical black press, emergence of a host of new racially militant political organizations, and most significantly a spirit of defiance stemming from disillusioning experience of black support for and military participation in war. …

Black economic power and nation-building in post-apartheid South Africa

This paper evaluates the evolution and the implementation of the ANC government's commitment to fostering a black capitalist class or black economic empowerment (BEE) as a non-racial nation-building strategy. A substantial black bourgeois i.e. and other middle classes begun to emerge over the last decade, contrary to popular perceptions. The legitimating role assigned to the emergent black bourgeoisie by the ANC and the government is, however, threatens to turn the strategy into a nepotistic accumulation. This development is paradoxically threatening to re-racialise the country, widening black inequality gaps, and precluding the rise of a black bourgeoisie with a nurture capitalist agenda. Other equally powerful social groups have begun to challenge the prevailing strategy, compelling the government to explore a more accommodating strategy exemplified by the recent introduction by the government of ‘broad-based economic empowerment’. Should a less patrimonial, less racially and ethnically divisive BEE strategy emerge from this quasi-pluralist power play, such a change holds prospects for the creation of a ‘growth coalition’ capable of sustainable capitalist development and true empowerment of the black majority. That would be a positive development in terms of establishing and consolidating democracy in South Africa.

Structural characteristics of firms and industries and black and white wage inequality in the U.S. economy: 1988

The effects of firm and job characteristics on the wages of blacks and whites are analyzed using data from the 1988 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth [Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1997]. This study focuses on 2,370 full-time private sector employees. The results show that, first, blacks are disproportionately employed in large establishments despite their lower cognitive achievements. Second, blacks do not enjoy significant wage premiums associated with supervisory positions. Third, although the wage gap between blacks and whites is reduced considerably, controlling for education and cognitive skills, the gap increases significantly when structural attributes are included in the wage regressions despite the large wage premiums associated with employment in large establishments.

Setting the Record Straight on the State of Black Inequality in the United States

Setting the Record Straight on the State of Black Inequality in the United States