Forces Of Racism Research Articles

Ambiguous interventions: The social consequences of assistance in the field

This article examines how race, gender, and generation influence ethnographers’ ethical decision-making in the field. We consider how decisions to intervene engage these complex variables, which are both cultural and historical constructs as well as lived experiences that researchers and interlocutors differently embody over time. We discuss this from the vantage point of postcolonial communities in South Africa’s Eastern Cape and eSwatini, where we have done fieldwork for over a decade. Our examples highlight researchers’ involvement in crises surrounding rites of passage. When rites went wrong, conflicting forces of race, gender, and generation both confounded our interlocutors’ abilities to define who they might become as well as challenged our own efforts to support them in social and material ways. We argue that “interventions” in fieldwork are intrinsically multidirectional and ethically ambiguous; this ambiguity is an epistemic and practical force that ethnographers must make explicit to realize potentialities for “otherwise” worlds.

Resisting “Law and Order” in California: Howard Moore Jr., Angela Davis, and the Politics of Prison Radicalism

Resisting “Law and Order” in California: Howard Moore Jr., Angela Davis, and the Politics of Prison Radicalism

Slavery and Biopolitics: Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom as Biopolitical Theory

Abstract This article calls for an extension of biopolitical theory through an examination of how Frederick Douglass supplements biopolitical theory with a map of the modalities of political subjugation circumscribing black bodies during the era of slavery. I aim to articulate Douglass's theoretically rich account of biopolitics in his My Bondage and My Freedom and provide a more comprehensive approach to the rise of modern power in a manner accounting for race, racism, and plantation slavery. The gsoal, then, is to not sprinkle references to theorists of biopolitics—Agamben, Foucault, and Esposito—who have guided much of the critical scholarship, but to point out the lack of attention paid to the institution of slavery and the political forces of race and racism within biopolitical theory. This article puts pressure on the dominant categories driving biopolitical theory and discloses how Douglass offers a comprehensive account of the intersections between slaves as bare life and political power, and demonstrates how slavery was central to the formation of modern forms of power.

The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Reviewed by: The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction by Mark Wahlgren Summers Margaret M. Storey The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction. Mark Wahlgren Summers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-4696-1757-2, 528pp., cloth, $40.00. The old quip that the Confederacy died of states’ rights seems to have a new counterpart—that Reconstruction died of republicanism. Mark Summers’s The Ordeal of the Reunion is one of the latest works to explore white northerners’ discomfort with the “anti-republican” nature of Reconstruction—especially the disfranchisement of large numbers of southern whites and the quite limited military occupation of parts of the South after 1867. But Summers is equally interested in exploring how contemporaries perceived the vagaries of postwar politics—political and business corruption, the conquest of Indians in the West, the evolution of political parties, reform movements—as part and parcel of the world the war had made, for good and for ill. He seeks to explain why “so many Americans had mixed feelings about the extraordinary uses of government power in peacetime, and how far the Reconstruction process itself added to the very reasonable feeling that something had gone badly wrong somewhere” (5). Summers asks us not to measure Reconstruction’s achievements through the eyes of Wendell Phillips or Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionists, for whom the postwar period was a failure. Likewise, he warns that our own perspective, 150 years on, is inadequate to appreciate what the majority of white northerners would have listed as the goals of Reconstruction in 1865: “to bring the nation back together and this time for good, to banish the prospect of future war, to break the power of the former slave states to menace or overawe the majority, to end slavery and give that freedom more than a nominal meaning—and all this without sacrificing the basic political framework that had made the Union special, where, under a national government supreme in matters of national import, the states would keep a wide array of powers and responsibilities exclusive to themselves” (396). According to that yardstick, Reconstruction was a success. This approach has its merits, and Summers’s chronological narrative covers considerable geographical and topical ground to bring the worldview of the broad Northern middle to life. The book is dense with details—many rich and interesting, others less effective—but certain sections are particularly successful. One such is the chapter titled “Conquered Provinces,” in which Summers shows the ways the federal government exercised almost unfettered power against resisting Indians in the trans-Mississippi West at the same moment it leaned toward restraint in acting against former rebels in the South. Here, Summers also deftly demonstrates why this level of control of the West, with the government’s astonishing ability to exploit the region’s wealth and resources and settle loyal whites in new territories, made dominating the South politically increasingly less important to many Republicans. “Every new state admitted in the West had a better than even chance of going Republican, and the territories, settled as rapidly as they were by nonsoutherners, promised that prospect further out of reach” (203). The South, both as a place of business and political power, grew less and less important to party success because of the conquest of the West. [End Page 345] Summers is also apt in his discussion of the failure of imagination that plagued moderate Republicans, whom he describes as not “out to betray Reconstruction” in 1868–69, when they made common cause with former Confederates in the South. Instead, they aimed to “shore it up, emphasizing its inclusiveness as well as its commitment to full legal equality” (159). Summers of course acknowledges that this was “fantasy,” but he is careful to show how the fantasy was constructed, and why moderates had such faith in their conciliatory project (167). Summers claims to be relatively disinterested in exploring the “forces of racism and class privilege, both undeniable, in undermining the North’s commitment to equal rights”—these have been treated well, he explains, and moreover, they may be overshadowing our complete understanding of what happened (5). But the story...

“The Fierce Urgency of Now”: The Ecological Legacy of King’s Social Ethics

This essay offers a constructive, ecological extension of Martin Luther King Jr.’s social ethics using a phrase from Henry David Thoreau’s classic, Walden , that King often used: “improved means to an unimproved end.” King argued that this Thoreauvian theme “summarized” modern life; in particular, he employed this idea to address the systemic, interconnected forces of racism, materialism, and militarism. This essay argues that King’s work is fertile ground for the cultivation of an ecological ethic capable of resisting the logic of commodification of the West.

“The City Too Busy to Care”: The Atlanta Youth Murders and the Southern Past, 1979–81

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Atlanta: Long seen as the robustly optimistic capital of the New South. Throughout its regions racial troubles, Atlanta always seemed a healthy, bustling citadel of good sense and goodwill, offering its own unique prospect for racial reconciliation in the South. But now, this brave center of the Sunbelt has been touched by a shadow--a mindless evil loose in its midst, executing its children with a cruel and systematic regularity. What does it mean a like Atlanta when it finds something like this happening it? --Marshall Frady, ABC World News Tonight, February 27, 1981 (1) On May 25, 1981, an estimated three thousand people convened at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., protest the slayings of black Atlanta youths. Rally organizers framed the demonstration as part of the March on Washington tradition. Promotional materials urged attendees to help pave the way living A reality that once was A dream, evoking Martin Luther King Jr.'s canonical 1963 speech. Therein King had shared his vision for a society in which his and other children could transcend the racial prejudice that negated the American precepts of freedom and equity. Eighteen years later, speakers at the Atlanta rally seemed less hopeful and more fearful for their children. Across this country our children are being killed in many ways, Camille Bell, a victim's mother, lamented. And our future is being wiped out. (2) From 1979 1981, the of Atlanta reeled as nearly thirty of its young, black, and poor residents were abducted and murdered. These slayings aggravated long-held black anxieties about racial violence, white hegemony, and the African American future. They also undermined Atlanta's image as a space of racial moderation and economic progress in an otherwise retrograde region. For nearly two years, the death toll mounted as the struggled determine who was preying on its black children, adolescents, and young adults. (3) Just as racial unrest seemed destined erupt in the spring of 1981, Atlanta investigators apprehended a twenty-three year old African American man named Wayne B. Williams in connection with two of the murders. The following year, Williams was convicted of the two killings, and officials implicated him in nearly all of the others. In effect, the case had been closed, and Atlanta had been vindicated. This article argues that the southern past shaped public perceptions of and community responses the Atlanta youth murders, which in turn dented Atlanta's reputation as a New South, postracial, and post-civil city. Poor black Atlantans and those within the city's biracial power structure developed fundamentally different approaches addressing the killings. Many African Americans conceived of the slayings as an attempt unmake the Civil Rights Movement. As black Atlantans mobilized against the forces of racism and indifference the crisis, they built on well-worn southern movement strategies that stressed consciousness raising, community protection, civic engagement, and a populist posture against both black and white elites. The city's biracial political and economic establishment took a different tack--downplaying the racial dimensions of the killings, drafting contingency plans prevent any potential civil unrest related the murders, securing the assistance of the private sector in alleviating local anxieties, and striving preserve Atlanta's image as the city too busy hate. (4) Observers outside of Atlanta generally understood the slayings as inconsonant with the city's moderate reputation yet consistent with the South's troubled racial past. These divergent yet imbricated reactions revealed inter- and intraracial contestations over Atlanta's meanings in regional, national, and global contexts. For many, the killings called into question the very gains of the classical civil rights struggle, demonstrated the endurance of Jim Crow violence, and challenged the city's position as an exceptional southern space. …

Recalling anti-racism

ABSTRACTDespite its many achievements and some remarkable victories against the forces of racism in their variety of forms, it cannot be said that anti-racism has been particularly successful as a social, cultural, and political force. This essay uses Bruno Latour's figure of the ‘recall’ to rethink certain elements of the anti-racist tradition. Latour sees the figure as combining both ‘recalling’ in the sense of remembering, but also ‘recalling’ in the way a company recalls a product when it realises it has some defect. In much the same way, the essay uses the idea of ‘recalling anti-racism’, firstly, in order to stay in touch with anti-racism's ‘founding principles’, to develop a sense of the cumulative gain that has been made throughout its history, and, secondly, in order to critically re-examine how it can be modified and made more efficient.

The Impact of Social Disadvantage on Preconception Health, Illness, and Well-Being: An Intersectional Analysis

To understand how social and structural contexts shape individual risk, vulnerability, and interconception health-related behaviors of African-American women. APPROACH OR DESIGN: A longitudinal ethnographic study was conducted. The study was conducted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The sample included 19 African-American women who were participants in the intervention group of a randomized clinical trial of interconceptional care. Data were collected through interaction with participants over a period of 6 to 12 months. Participant observation , structured and unstructured interviews, and Photovoice were used to obtain data; grounded theory was used for analysis. The analysis was guided by intersectional theory. Social disadvantage influenced health and health care-seeking behaviors of African-American women, and the disadvantage centered on the experience of racism. The authors identify seven experiences grounded in the interactions among the forces of racism, class, gender, and history that may influence women's participation in and the effectiveness of preconception and interconception health care. African-American women's health and wellness behaviors are influenced by an experience of racism structurally embedded and made more virulent by its intersection with class, gender, and history. These intersecting forces create what may be a unique exposure that contributes significantly to the proximal determinants of health inequities for African-American women. Health promotion approaches that focus on the individual as the locus of intervention must concomitantly unravel and address the intertwining structural forces that shape individual circumstance in order to improve women's interconceptional health and to reduce disparities.

Academic Autobiography and Transdisciplinary Crossings in Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Among the White Moon Faces

The growing number of academic autobiographies published in recent years has sparked interesting debates on the nature and function of life writing. We now grapple with the question of the degrees to which autobiographical and professional writing function in conjunction – if we can read autobiographical writing from professional perspectives or, alternatively, to what extent scholarship grows from personal experiences. This approach to the academic autobiography links our notions about processes of self-inscription to the forms of production of historical and cultural knowledge. This essay examines these ideas by reading Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Among the White Moon Faces (1997). Lim's literary and scholarly production superlatively illustrates the development of contemporary perspectives on national identity and language, migration, and homelands. Her work, which includes poetry collections, novels, short stories, academic studies and a memoir – compels readers to engage the interplay between the competing forces of race, ethnicity, gender, and nationality within spaces that embody these conflicts. I argue that a comparative reading of personal and professional narratives invites us to reconsider how, working within specific epistemic contexts, academics like Lim consciously negotiate the intersection between personal history and academic commitment, a vital subtext in their autobiographical performance.

Enduring Issues of HIV/AIDS for People of Color: What Is the Roadmap Ahead?

It is with great pleasure that we write an introduction to this eagerly anticipated special issue that is devoted to challenges and interventions among people of color with HIV/AIDS. Our goal is to provide a window into how social work has contributed to the development of innovative, culturally appropriate prevention and treatment approaches and to the empowerment of people of color. The challenge of addressing HIV/AIDS in the United States remains as multifaceted as the virus. Although there has been an increase in the number of individuals who are tested and screened for HIV and in the number of people who have access to medications (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2006), a treatment regimen or vaccine to prevent or cure HIV/AIDS has not yet been found. The AIDS phenomenon is considered as a set of overlapping, cross-cutting local epidemics, each with its own configuration of risk factors, at-risk populations, incidence, and prevalence. Some of the overarching issues are related to increasingly high rates of poverty, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, and crime. These factors interact to contribute to endangering the quality of life for people of color throughout the world. HIV infection occurs against a backdrop of longstanding sociocultural issues and challenges in affected communities. These challenges include macro forces of racism, sexism, homophobia, and poverty as well as fear and stigma (Cargill, Stone, & Robinson, 2004). These forces fuel not only the high transmission rate, but also the complex array of responses to the virus. The interplay of these factors affects every aspect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic among people of color: prevention, access to health care, mental health support, treatment, treatment adherence, and participation in clinical research. Superimposed on this matrix are the cultural contexts of risk behavior and cultural norms around sexual and other behaviors, including gender roles (Valleroy et al., 2000). On many fronts, the particulars of race, gender, geography, income level, and sexual orientation play powerfully into a person's risk for HIV. In May of 2009, the CDC reported that 63 interventions have been rigorously evaluated and have demonstrated efficacy in reducing HIV, STD incidence, HIV-related risk behaviors, or in pro-rooting safer behaviors. However, in its previously published review of 25 years of AIDS prevention and treatment research (1981 to 2006), the CDC (2006) noted that we are encountering obstacles in diffusing these evidence-based interventions to at-risk populations. At the same time, in an examination of the 25-year legacy of AIDS prevention and treatment published for the National Minority AIDS Council, Fullilove (2006) reported that the most striking issue of this time period is the racial divide of HIV/AIDS. Several factors influence the racial divide of HIV/ AIDS. First, indigent members of African American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American populations may choose to forgo health or other necessities to survive. Thus they may delay medical care, including seeking testing and treatment for HIV/AIDS, in favor of obtaining basic human needs. Second, in the United States, women comprise about 27 percent of HIV infections, up from about 8 percent in 1984. In many countries around the world, women already represent over 50 percent of HIV infections. Rates of sexually transmitted infections among youths and teenage pregnancy have risen over the past several years--both indicators that we may soon see a corresponding rise in HIV infections among both young women and men. And, although generally considered a chronic manageable condition in the United States, HIV continues to be the leading cause of death among African American women ages 25 to 34 years. During the same period, it was the third leading cause of death for black women ages 35 to 44 years and the fourth leading cause of death for Hispanic women ages 35 to 44 years (CDC, 2006). …

"For Posterity": The Personal Audio Recordings of Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong exerted a defining influence on one of the most influential products of the American imagination: jazz. As noted by one of Armstrong's biographers, however, Armstrong's character was buffeted by the forces of racism and commercialism. From the perspective of the archives, Armstrong's reaction to these influences was a form of psychological withdrawal that often coalesced around his interaction with recording technologies. Armstrong developed an intimate relationship with audio recording and relied upon its particular form of capture to shape a posthumous identity that was beyond the distortive influences that shaped his public and commodified image, and that was appreciably honest in its relationship with, to use Armstrong's word, posterity

A Black Feminist Analysis of Responses to War, Racism, and Repression

In March 2003, the US government launched a military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This was one more phase of the US National Security Strategy doctrine that promises militarism, war, and disruption in various sovereign states. These wars abroad and the unprecedented powers of government and police agencies in the USA represent powerful intersections of patriarchal authority, racism, militarism, and elitism. Africana communities have a long history of resisting repression both directly and indirectly related to US foreign policy. Social scientists writing from a black feminist perspective have described how such mutually constructing forces of race, class, gender, and nation have influenced the lives of people of color, women, and the poor in American society and have highlighted the historical and sociological importance of resistance by these oppressed groups. Specifically, this paper addresses ways in which a black feminist analysis and praxis offer useful perspectives on activism concerning issues of peace and justice post 9—11—2001.

Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence

Robert Mugabe was born in 1924, a black man in one of Africa's most defiantly white-dominated nations: Rhodesia. A revolutionary hero who came to prominence as a guerrilla leader in the 1970s, he has been a key player in Southern Africa ever since. For when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, Mugabe became the public face of a hopeful experiment in African independence--but the next twenty-two years would tell a different story.In this evenhanded yet unsparing study, Stephen Chan explains and interprets a freedom fighter turned tyrant, an idealist whose triumph over the forces of racism and colonialism bore bitter fruit. As a chronicler of Mugabe's career, Chan has superb credentials. A firsthand witness to Zimbabwe's struggle for independence and an advisor to the new nation's early post-independence government, he gives us a masterly portrait of Mugabe: his strengths and victories--and, increasingly, his tragic flaws and destructive failures.The author follows Mugabe from his days as a rebel through his electoral victory, his growing influence in African politics, and his unyielding opposition to apartheid. A teacher for twenty years before he took up arms, he led his country to the highest literacy rate in Africa, at 85 percent, and his avowed socialism promised greater equality of wealth in a new, multiracial Zimbabwe.But a darker picture emerged early with the savage crushing of the Matabeleland uprising, the ruthless elimination of political opponents, and growing cronyism and corruption that betrayed Zimbabwe's hopes and wrecked its economy. A disastrous intervention in the Congo War, catastrophic drought, and a raging AIDS epidemic have culminated in national crisis--and a beleaguered president determined to hang onto power at all costs in the face of growing unrest.Chan's tightly argued and rigorous narrative depicts a triumphant nationalist leader who degenerated into a petty despot consumed by hubris and self-righteousness and driven to such desperate measures as seizing white-owned farms, muzzling the press, and unleashing violence on his political opponents. It's a true African tragedy, with a protagonist who came to personify all that he once reviled--at a cost to his country and his continent that will be reckoned for many years to come.Stephen Chan is Professor of International Relations and Dean of Law and Social Sciences, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London. He advised the early government of Zimbabwe and has published many books on the international relations of Southern Africa.

The Health of African American Men

The health of African American men and the role of African American men in the health care system constitute a complex story of historical oppression combined with incredible resilience and dedication. Social forces of racism and discrimination coupled with economic disadvantage have worked against the health of black men for centuries. Yet throughout the history of black people in America, black men and women have been the principal providers of care to one another, relying upon training at segregated yet proud medical institutions of higher learning. African American physicians and scientists have made substantial yet unappreciated contributions to medical science and practice. Still, the health status of African Americans lags behind that of whites, and the health of African American men in particular has reached crisis proportions. Future improvement in the health status of African American men will depend upon improving access to effective medical insurance, eliminating biases in the health care system that alienate black men from health care, increasing the representation of people of color as medical providers, and developing health education approaches that address health risks that are unique to men.

Toward Developmental Multicultural Education: Case Study of the Issues Exchange Activity

If teacher educators are to be successful in offering alternatives to the powerful forces of racism and sexism in today's society . . . [they] must challenge student views as well as urge them to recast their view of reality into problems for critical assessment (Ahlquist, 1991, p. 159). In this article, I explore student readiness for substantive study of multicultural education and the place of role-taking experiences in making the more complex dimensions of multicultural education accessible to teacher education students. I describe Issues Exchange, an activity I use in a graduate course, and how this activity (or activities like it) may serve as a central component of developmental instructional approaches to multicultural teacher education. Challenges in Teaching About Diversity Various scholars have analyzed factors affecting students' understanding and appreciation of multicultural education's more emancipatory goals. Among the factors explored are students' knowledge of diversity in U.S. society, their perceptions of the nature of societal inequities, racist and sexist attitudes and beliefs, and students' overall readiness for the study of multicultural education. Ladson-Billings (1991) analyzed preservice teachers' knowledge about U.S. diversity in a study of their knowledge of civil rights and multicultural education issues and found students lacking knowledge of the most elementary facts of U.S. diversity, thus prompting Ladson-Billings to introduce the concept multicultural illiteracy. She described multicultural illiteracy as the inability to be conversant with basic ideas, issues, personalities, and events that reflect the perspectives and experiences of people other than White, middle-class males (p. 151). She concluded that although prospective teachers must learn more about U.S. diversity, courses based solely on the intellectual understandings of multicultural education (i.e., names, dates) are insufficient. Instead, courses must address the substantive exploration of societal inequities and the social visions multicultural education encompasses (p. 155). King (1991) proposed that liberatory teacher education must incorporate multicultural experiences allowing students to analyze their attitudes and beliefs about the nature and origin of societal inequities. She highlighted the phenomenon of dysconscious racism among teacher education students and its implications for understanding multicultural education: Dysconsciousness is an uncritical habit of mind (including perceptions, attitudes, assumptions and beliefs) that justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the existing order of things as given (p. 135). King contends that dysconscious racism allows many teacher education students to remain oblivious to substantive issues endemic to the study of multicultural education such as origins of sociocultural inequities and effects of White norms and privileges on the perceptions of many White prospective teachers with no exposure to multicultural environments. She suggested that unchallenged dysconscious attitudes allow many beginning teachers to enter classrooms miseducated and largely unprepared to effect substantive change in a system that historically has been inequitable. King (1991) called for forms of pedagogy and counter-knowledge that challenge students' internalized ideologies and subjective identities (p. 134). Bennett, Niggle, and Stage (1989) proposed that the multifaceted nature of multicultural education may present overwhelming challenges for some teacher education students. They suggested that some students' intellectual abilities may limit their capacity to engage in the critical analyses necessary in a substantive study of multicultural education. Furthermore, because of their intellectual level, some students, without interventions, may acquire only superficial understandings of multicultural education. Bennett et al. found that students whose intellectual levels demonstrated the least dualistic orientations (i. …

An Examination of the Relationship Between Race and Gender in an Early Twentieth Century Drama: A Study of Angelina Weld Grimké's Play Rachel

Women playwrights before 1950 were full partners in theatre's protest against conditions for Blacks, whether in form of propaganda, folks plays or historical dramas. They also made unique perspective of Black women's reality a part of that protest. Not until mid-century, however, would their voices reach beyond their communities into highly competitive world of professional theatre.(1) Today when we think of black women playwrights names that come to mind are Ntozake Shange, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, and Adrienne Kennedy. The endeavors and inroads that these women have made and continue to make in drama could not have occurred without struggle and ground breaking works of early black women playwrights such as Angelina Weld Grimke, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, May Miller, Mary Burill, Myrtle Smith Livingston, Ruth Gaines-Shelton, Eulalie Spence, Zora Neale Hurston, and Marita Bonner. These black women playwrights, and several others, published over sixty plays and pageants in addition to writing several unpublished texts.(2) Yet, despite these achievements, black female playwrights of first half of twentieth century have often been overlooked and pushed aside regardless of their contributions to American and black theater. Extreme racial and gender oppression best explains why black female playwright was not recognized prior to 1950. Forces of racism and sexism erected barriers so that blacks, overall, could not achieve any significant status in American drama, and for black women playwriting as a profession was considered a male vocation.(3) Women, on other hand, were encouraged to pursue more acceptable, feminine genres such as poetry or fiction.(4) Being both black and female, therefore, limited black woman's progress as a playwright. Consequently, due to racial and gender barriers, work of black female playwrights was slow to emerge. Prior to Lorraine Hansberry's production of A Raisin in Sun on Broadway in 1959, black women dramatists were slow to evolve because of their limited access to staging their works and because of stereotypes they had to combat. Like their male counterparts, early black female playwrights were writing against stereotypical portrayals of blacks on stage by white playwrights. Commonly for black men, stereotypical images were those of comic buffoon, lazy shiftless Uncle Tom, and savage brute, while for black women there were sexless domineering mammy types, loose trolops, and tragic mulattoes. White-authored productions, such as minstrel shows, helped to enforce these distorted images of black people because they were most popular form of theater in America for nearly a century.(5) Moreover, even when white playwrights attempted to celebrate Negro, their endeavors only ended in reinscribing existing stereotypes. For example, white playwrights such as Eugene O'Neill, William Vaughn Moody, Marc Connelly, and Paul Green, all, at some point, used as their subject matter in an attempt to valorize black people. However, these well-intentioned white representations of black life and black people in drama did no more than reinforce stereotypes already fixed about blacks. Whether savage brute image changed to noble savage in Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones or if Negro themes were expressed in Paul Green's In Abraham's Bosom, the work of many white playwrights did not address experiences of Blacks in any serious way.(6) For this reason, it became important for both black female and male playwrights to re-create or re-invent reality in their plays in order to demystify white stereotypes of blacks. It was work of black women dramatists, however, which captured lives of black people as no white or black male playwright could.(7) They created a reality that brought in dynamic of gender in addition to focus on race in their works. …

Black Women, Sexism and Racism: Black or Antiracist Feminism?

Tobago to be exact - I am concerned about the apparent polarization of feminism into 'black' and 'white' in both Britain and the USA, given that, as an ideology and a political practice concerned with the oppression of women, feminism still has to struggle to achieve and maintain legitimacy. It has been argued that racism in these societies, including its existence within the women's movement itself, is responsible for this polarization. We in the Caribbean are no strangers to racism, having experienced some of its most extreme manifestations during slavery and for some time after its abolition. However, given the numerical advantage of persons of African descent in the region, it has been possible since the end of colonial rule, and particularly since the 1970s, to weaken the force of racism. White men (both local and foreign) may still control the economies of the region but black men have achieved political power and do exercise considerable control over the public sector. To the extent, then, that power changed hands, it went from white men to black men; women did not feature in the equation. Caribbean women, therefore, have not found it necessary to differentiate feminism into 'black' and 'white', and the five-year old Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA) does in fact attest to this. The women's movement in the region thus comprises women of different 'races' and backgrounds, with divisions, where these exist, emanating from ideological differences rather than racial antagonisms. I can well appreciate that racism must be a potent force for black people in both Britain and the USA where, numerically speaking, they constitute a minority. I can empathize, too, with the plight of black women in these societies, caught as they are between racism on the one

Science, Technology and Black Community Development

Some may consider it odd to find included on the agenda of Black people a topic such as that being presented in this article. Some may ask what does science and technology have to do with Black survival and progress? What do they have to do with urban areas? It is my purpose today to explore the thesis that scientific breakthroughs and technological developments affect Black Americans in very profound, pervasive and substantial manners. So much so that I would argue that without examining and being aware of these various developments, Black Americans risk being subjugated to the vicissitudes of scientific and technological forces which are as oppressive, demeaning and domineering as are the socioeconomic and political forces of racism and exploitation. I would further maintain that we

Equal Educational Opportunity and Quality Education

This article presents a reconceptualization of the role of culture in the attainment of equality of educational opportunity, and a discussion of how the use of culture in education can be a vehicle of either liberation or oppression. It shifts the focus of educational problem solving from that of victim analysis or the analysis of minority deficits to an examination of the forces of racism and oppression as they have been and are reflected in education. The use of culture as a tool for liberation is discussed.

The Intellectual Subsociety Hypothesis: an Empirical Test

IN A RECENT book on ethnic communality in America, Milton Gordon outlined an intellectual subsociety hypothesis in which it was argued that in the United States do not fit the contours of the sociological mold cast by the forces of race, religion, and national origin in contemporary group life. It was contended that intellectuals in the United States interact in such patterned ways as to form at least the elementary structure of a subsociety of their own, and ... this subsociety is the only one in American life in which people of different ethnic backgrounds interact in primary group relations with considerable frequency and with relative comfort and ease.1 Stated otherwise, often find life within the ethnic fold unsatisfactory and transcend the boundaries of their respective ethnic groups to form a collectively transethnic subsociety.2 Thus, it is hypothesized that there is emerging in this country a social stratum of intellectuals, a stratum within which ethnic backgrounds are superseded and in which, consequently, no marked ethnic divisions (unlike other strata with their ethnic subgroups) are revealed. This ethnically neutral subsociety may not, of course, embrace all intellectuals. Some may prefer ethnic solidarity, albeit with other of a similar ethnic background. The impetus for an ethnically undivided substructure of is provided by shared interests of such intensity as to overcome background variables: . . in the situation of men and women coming together, because of an overriding common interest in ideas, the creative arts, and mutual professional concerns, we find the classic sociological enemy of ethnic parochialism.3 Involvement in the realm of ideas becomes the pivot of commonality rather than ancestry or socioreligious heritage.