Improve Race Relations Research Articles

Religion and race relations in America: Focusing on Christian Evangenicals

Religion and race relations in America: Focusing on Christian Evangenicals Since the second half of the 20th century, several movements based on religion have developed in American society to improve race relations. These include the “racial reconciliation” movement, the “social justice” movement, the “civil disobedience” represented by Jim Wallis, and the “multiracial congregation” movement. Here, Kazunobu Horiuchi explores how several movements based on religion have developed in American society to improve race relations.

Reenvisioning Richmond's Past: Race, Reconciliation, and Public History in the Modern South, 1990–Present

Reenvisioning Richmond's Past:Race, Reconciliation, and Public History in the Modern South, 1990–Present Marvin T. Chiles (bio) Richmond, Virginia, is more than the former Confederate capital: it is a city seeking to end its complicity with American racism. Nothing encapsulates Richmond's desire for an inclusive multiracial identity better than the movement to withdraw Confederate monuments from the southern landscape. After national tragedies in Charleston, South Carolina (2015), and Charlottesville, Virginia (2017), southern cities both large and small removed statues that honored Confederate heroes.1 Richmond half-heartedly joined this movement in the summer of 2017, when Mayor Levar M. Stoney's ad hoc commission considered the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue, along with the reinterpretation of other Confederate relics, on the city's famous Monument Avenue. Yet, as statues came down in New Orleans, Baltimore, Austin, Texas, and Durham, North Carolina, by the fall of 2017 Richmonders had not reinterpreted [End Page 707] or expelled any Lost Cause statues from their public sphere.2 The social unrest stemming from the police killing of Black Minneapolis man George Floyd in the summer of 2020, however, compelled the nine members of the Richmond city council to vote unanimously for the removal of the Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. Mayor Stoney carried out most of that plan by defying a court injunction and removing the statue of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson in July 2020. Soon all of these once hallowed, now controversial relics lay tarnished with spray paint in a water treatment facility just outside the city. By the summer of 2020, support for removing every Confederate statue from the avenue was bipartisan and biracial, whereas just a few years before, removals were nearly unfathomable.3 This seismic shift in public thought appears on the surface to have been a knee-jerk reaction to national events—a desire to put Richmond in line with the rest of the South and the nation, as many viewed monument removal as a major step to stem the uptick in white supremacist violence since the Barack Obama presidency.4 However, this article argues that Richmond's removal of Confederate monuments began in the early 1990s, when a neighborhood organization, the museum community, and business elites aligned on using public history to rid Richmond of its racist identity. This essay examines archival papers, public records, interviews, and newspapers of the formerly arch-conservative city of Richmond to [End Page 708] better understand the more recent removal of Confederate monuments. In the process, it argues that the 2020 removals were rooted in previous efforts to divorce the city from its racist heritage. This story begins not on Monument Avenue but in the Near West End Carillon neighborhood. Here, in the early 1990s, a biracial organization called Hope in the Cities (HIC), with the help of the museum community and Black grassroots organizations, used Richmond's history with slavery to address the persistence of de facto segregation. It marked the first time since the modern civil rights movement that progressive organizations dominated public discussions about race relations and public identity in Richmond. Business and political elites had unsuccessfully used urban revitalization to reshape Richmond's identity and improve race relations in the 1970s and 1980s; however, they had been more concerned with healing the economy than with mending social divides between Black and white city residents.5 Neighborhood groups, grassroots organizations, and the museum community coordinated efforts to place Black history in Richmond's public history mainstream, making the city's public history movement a part of a national reckoning on race in the 1990s. Richmond showcased its evolving race relations and progressive public history shift with the Healing the Heart of America conference in 1993 and the erection of the Arthur Ashe statue on Monument Avenue in 1996. Both events thrust Richmond into the national spotlight, as urban leaders across the country not only attended the conference and celebrated the Ashe statue, but also asked HIC to help them use inclusive public history narratives to solve racial issues in their own cities. As Richmond moved into the twenty-first century—a time thought to be witnessing the flowering of multiculturalism in America...

“We Matter”: Cultural Significance of a Counter-Narrative Black Public Affairs Program

ABSTRACT Awareness is believed to be the longest-running locally-produced African American public affairs show in the country. Through thirteen oral history interviews and archival documents, this article examines how African American public affairs shows, like Awareness, played an integral role in the civil rights movement by presenting a counter-narrative to what was seen on mainstream news. Through this counter-narrative, Awareness had the unique ability to elevate the conversation beyond protests and demonstrations, and deeply discuss issues that could potentially alter the Southern mind-set of Blacks and improve race relations in the South. As the show approached its 50th anniversary, this article covers the launching of the show as well as reflections of those involved in this milestone.

A theory of corporate responsibility to race (CRR): communication and racial justice in public relations

ABSTRACT This article introduces the theory of the corporate responsibility to race (CRR). It holds that corporations should communicate in ways that advocate for racial justice, attempt to improve race relations, and support achieving a more equitable and harmonious society. Corporations have this responsibility to race because they have historically perpetuated and profited from racial oppression, making corporations contributors to, and benefactors of, racial injustice. However, recently corporations have been using their platforms to speak against racial injustice in an effort to improve race relations. CRR theory provides a new way to readily identify, understand, contextualize, theorize and analyze corporate communication about race. Although CRR emerges from a Unites States perspective, and as a public relations concept, it has global applications in any place where racial difference leads to oppression, and it has analytical value in any field where organizational resources can be leveraged to fight oppression.

Sister Mary Dennis Donovan, Catholic Action, and Human Relations in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in the 1940s through the 1970s

In 1944, Sister Mary Dennis Donovan, CSJ, embarked on the task of developing a Christian Social Living (CSL) curriculum for middle school students as envisioned by the Pittsburgh diocesan school superintendent Father Thomas Quigley. Drawing upon her upbringing in a socially conscious household in a Western Pennsylvanian steel mill town, she saw her work culminate in the publication of the co-authored textbook The Christian Citizen, which brought the principles of CSL into many classrooms in the United States. Her CSL work in the 1940s through the early 1960s provided middle school students with the tools to carry out Catholic Action. As Catholic Action was evolving within the post-conciliar church in the mid-1960s, Sister Mary Dennis co-authored a new textbook, The Responsible Citizen, and created a program of educating the laity of all faiths on race relations. As part of an initiative to improve race relations, the Pittsburgh diocese adopted this Catholic Action program and, subsequently, hired her to implement it. By the 1970s, her work had broadened to human relations. This article examines the contributions of this woman religious to Catholic Action and human relations in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, from the late 1940s through the early 1970s.

Federal Urban Renewal in Three Small Texas Cities: A Mixed Legacy

When it comes to the federal urban renewal program, Texas has often been dismissed as a conservative state since large cities like Dallas and Houston refused to participate. But a closer look at Texas shows that smaller cities such as Lubbock, Waco, and Grand Prairie did indeed embrace the program. Unlike northern cities which employed urban renewal to retard decline, these Texas cities embraced it to promote growth and to improve race relations. Because of segregation, blacks had few standard neighborhoods to reside in and civic leaders saw new opportunities to better black living conditions offered by urban renewal.

A National Conversation About Race? Political Discussion Across Lines of Racial and Partisan Difference

AbstractDialogue about race-based topics is essential to combat prejudice, foster mutual understanding, and improve race relations. This study describes the extent to which political conversations—especially those about race-related topics—are taking place within and across racial and political groups. This national survey with a Black oversample found racially diverse discussion networks to be more likely among Blacks than Whites, but politically diverse networks to be more likely among Whites than Blacks. Blacks were more likely than Whites to talk about race-related topics such as police treatment of Blacks (and less likely about several topics not explicitly tied to race), but by no means did Whites entirely avoid race-related topics, even in their same-race discussions. Moreover, there was evidence that discussion in cross-race dyads affected the mix of topics Whites and Blacks discussed, revealing the potential for cross-race interaction to alter political agendas. Rather than being less likely to talk about police treatment of Blacks with Blacks, Whites were more likely to discuss this topic when in mixed-race dyads, while Blacks talked about it less often with Whites than with other Blacks. Findings are discussed in the context of political disagreement and intergroup contact theory.

Corporate Personhood and the Corporate Responsibility to Race

Often overlooked in studies of the corporation is the recognition that the modern corporate form and its power are rooted in the issue of race, and more specifically, in racial oppression. The racialized roots of the corporation become exposed when we acknowledge the significance of slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment to the evolution of the corporate form along with the discriminatory role corporations have traditionally played in shaping race relations in the U.S. This article draws upon several theoretical perspectives, primarily critical race theory, management theory, legal studies, diversity management, and corporate social responsibility to introduce the corporate responsibility to race concept and establish it as a new basis for understanding why corporate persons have a responsibility for improving race relations.

Small Steps on the Long Journey to Equality: A Timeline of Post-Legislation Civil Rights Struggles in Portland

Leanne Serbulo presented a timeline of civil rights struggles in Portland, Oregon, at a public history roundtable at the Oregon Historical Society commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In this record of her presentation, Serbulo documents milestones in dismantling racial discrimination between 1949 and 1990. For this timeline, Serbulo researched Metropolitan Human Relations Commission (MHRC) records held at the Portland City Archives and traces how the commission navigated the process of improving race relations in the city and Multnomah County. As Serbulo argues, “civil rights legislation was simply the first step in a long and unfinished journey toward equality.” As the timeline shows, dismantling racial discrimination occurred primarily in public agencies during that time period, as “MHRC and other civil rights organizations had little influence over the myriad of diffuse transactions in the housing market, and the public agencies that were empowered to regulate those markets were reluctant to aggressively police the private housing industry.”

From ignorance to intolerance: Perceived intentionality of racial discrimination shapes preferences for colorblindness versus multiculturalism

Colorblindness and multiculturalism offer divergent prescriptions for reducing racial tensions. Colorblindness encourages looking beyond racial differences, whereas multiculturalism encourages recognizing them. We introduce a new construct, perceived intentionality of racial discrimination (PIRD)—individuals' beliefs about how intentional discrimination is—to help explain when and why colorblindness versus multiculturalism will be preferred, and potentially more effective, for improving race relations. We first establish the distinctiveness of the PIRD construct and assess its stability over time and across intergroup contexts (Studies 1–2). We then observe that greater PIRD predicts beliefs that colorblindness versus multiculturalism will improve race relations (Studies 2–5), in part because unintentional (versus intentional) discrimination is perceived to stem from ignorance and misunderstanding versus knowingly treating racial groups unequally (Studies 4, 5b). Evidence also suggests that PIRD may shape the actual merits of colorblindness and multiculturalism for improving race relations via encouraging donations (Study 6), positive interracial interaction intentions (Study 7), and comfort with discussing race following the widely-publicized shooting of a Black teen (Study 8). Taken together, our empirical findings demonstrate the usefulness of PIRD for understanding, predicting, and influencing individuals' preferences for colorblindness versus multiculturalism.

Editor’s Preface

Editor’s Preface Anita Mannur In 2016 something rather remarkable happened in the literary world. Vietnamese American Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his debut novel, The Sympathizer. Around the same time, The Vegetarian, a novel written by the South Korean Han Kang and translated by Deborah Smith won the Man Booker International Prize. The latter prize, not to be confused with the Man Booker Prize, was established in 2005 and biennially rewards an author for a body of work originally written in any language as long as it is widely available in English. Though Asians and Asian Americans have won these awards, as well as the Booker Prize, in years past (recall the success of Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Aravind Adiga), something markedly different was at play in 2016 when these books were announced as winners. Their successes, though an evolving phenomenon, were not exclusively national phenomena. Media outlets and bloggers from around the world have reviewed both novels. In London, where I spent six weeks this summer, bookstore employees at Waterstones, London Review of Books, and Foyles all told me that these two titles were flying of the shelves. I myself got so caught up in “Vegetarian Sympathizer” fever, I purchased British editions of the books for my own collection. But most intriguingly, people are talking about these novels. Literature in translation, narratives about the refugee experience, a war story, stories about embodiment and violence by people of color are being read by the lay public. At a political and social moment when xenophobia seems at an all-time high, there is some solace one can take in knowing that fiction is providing alternative worldviews and that readers are hungry for more works like this. I am not so naïve as to extrapolate this as a sign [End Page v] of improving race relations or better transnational understanding; rather I wish to begin with this to think about the possible links across nations and borders that these works foreground. In particular, if we think of the art of collaboration as a driving force, what might our versions of Asian American studies at the end of eight years of an Obama presidency look like? The articles gathered in this issue are among the first under my editorship to decenter the United States within Asian American studies. Like the aforementioned novels and their networks of collaboration and circulation, the subjects of study in each article rest uneasily within narrow visions of any kind of national space. Robert Diaz considers queer Filipino cultural production in Canada, examining how queer diasporic migrants subtend the hierarchizing practices of Canadian multiculturalism and settler colonialism. He argues that artists like Julius Manapul and events like Miss Gay Philippines Canada enact utopic pursuits through cultural practices that create new possibilities for imagining collectivity, community, and belonging in Canada, beyond the pluralist narratives of diversity often maintained by the state. Sanae Nakatani considers how Nisei architects participated in major building projects in the mid-twentieth century. Noting that in the 1950s, Nisei architect Minoru Yamasaki designed a new U.S. consulate building in Kobe, and Isamu Noguchi created the Japanese garden for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, these Nisei cultural producers combined Japanese visual elements with modernist aesthetics in their works to signal their capability as a translator between the East and the West. Kareem Khubchandani considers the indie film Loins of Punjab as an exceptional representation of interracial desire in South Asian diasporic cultural production. Beyond the novelty of their representation, Khubchandani asserts that the film deploys a variety of black and South Asian performance styles to critique normative and disciplinary systems. Kristina Vassil’s article contributes to the burgeoning study of transnational texts written in languages other than English by providing a case study of Hosaka Ki’ichi’s The America That I See (1913–14), written as a sequel to Natsume Sōseki’s famous I Am a Cat (1905–6). Finally, Stephen Suh examines representations of Koreatown provided by three contemporary television/web programs: Ktown Cowboys (2009), K-Town (2012–13), and Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013). In so doing he considers how a...

Better Than Them: The Unmaking of an Alabama Racist by S. McEachin Otts (review)

Reviewed by: Better Than Them: The Unmaking of an Alabama Racist by S. McEachin Otts A. Blake Denton Better Than Them: The Unmaking of an Alabama Racist. By S. McEachin Otts. Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2014. xll, 158 pp. $23.95. Softcover. ISBN 978-1-60306-343-2. In this poignant, painstakingly candid memoir, S. McEachin “Mac” Otts recounts a conversion from his racist youth. He does so through a series of vignettes, starting with his recollection of the July 16, 1965, civil rights march in his native Greensboro. On that day an enraged eighteen-year-old Otts stood on the street curb wielding a tire iron, ready to defy the perceived threat the peaceful demonstrators posed to his way of life. This dramatic backdrop sets the stage for the rest of the memoir and serves as the crucial focal point of reflection that threads the other narratives together. What follows is a thoughtful examination of the environment that nurtured his preconceived notions about race (particularly his family’s proud, storied antebellum heritage) and the crucial events and interactions with particular individuals that collectively deconstructed his racist disposition gradually over time. Otts’s conversion from racism can best be described as an evolutionary process. It is clear that over the course of his transformation, Otts developed a profound understanding of this multifaceted, perplexing phenomenon that relatively few ever obtain. In an age where our society still largely conceptualizes racism in stark contrasts of black and white, good and bad, racism versus non-racism (when we should view racism as a spectrum with varying shades of gray), Otts astutely recognizes that it is far more complicated than that. In placing his own “turning point” [End Page 375] around the age of twenty–four, Otts explains that this “was not a literal point in time at all. It was more the approximate middle of a curve” (111). Otts reveals the depth of his awareness of the complexity of racism when he highlights perhaps the greatest paradox of all: that people can be both prejudiced and decent human beings in other aspects of their lives (74). While Otts clearly recognizes that there are several causes of racism, the one factor that he believes loomed largest in his racist disposition (and he is convinced the same can be said for many others) was a need to bolster his self-esteem. The descendants of some of antebellum Greensboro’s esteemed and wealthy families, the Otts of the mid-twentieth century had none of their ancestors’ wealth, but clung tenaciously to that nostalgic heritage. This included not only feigning affluence but also judging African Americans as their inferiors. Otts’s grandmother’s chilling words to her young grandson helped form and epitomize his racist disposition: “You are better than them. Don’t forget it” (4). While the psychology of self-esteem is a crucial cause of racism to Otts throughout the book, he does qualify this emphasis by the end of his memoir. Towards the end, Otts analyzes the interviews he held with four Greensboro natives who lived through the Civil Rights movement, two black and two white. Unlike Otts, these individuals have spent most or all of their lives in the area. One point that all four interviewees noted is the effect that chronic rural poverty has had on race relations in the Black Belt, a region where de facto segregation still exists in various aspects of society, including the work force. With the opportunities of mobility (social or physical) being slim to none for the Black Belt’s inhabitants, racism has served as a scapegoat in which both races blame the region’s ills on the other. Noting that he had originally underrated the connection between rural poverty and racism, Otts becomes convinced that this crucial factor must also be taken into consideration. While there is unquestionably something to be said for the affiliation between poor self esteem and bigotry, the relationship between racism and rural poverty may actually be more significant because alleviation of poverty in the Black Belt would go a long way in boosting the self-esteem of all its citizens, which in turn could gradually improve race relations over time. There...

Institutional Racism Still Has Major Impact on African-American Mental Health

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Full AccessInstitutional Racism Still Has Major Impact on African-American Mental HealthVabren WattsVabren WattsSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:17 Dec 2014https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2014.12b4AbstractTo better serve minority patients, psychiatrists need to understand how institutional racism can lead to negative mental health consequences.At the APA Institute on Psychiatric Services in October, a presidential symposium commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and featured a discussion on the history and current state of African-American mental health. “Today we gather to discuss things that have a spiritual root and are very important as they relate to the optimal functioning of the mind, on an emotional and psychological level, for many APA members and the general public,” said symposium moderator Altha Stewart, M.D., executive director of Just Care Family Network in Memphis. “There are issues related to race, ethnicity, and identity that still need to be addressed 50 years after the passing and signing of the Civil Rights Act … [and] psychiatry definitely has a role” in addressing these issues, she emphasized.“This topic is unique to American history,” said APA President Paul Summergrad, M.D., in welcoming participants. “This is a chance for us to renew a very important dialogue, not end a dialogue.” Summergrad stated that psychiatrists must create more opportunities in which people can feel comfortable to talk about all forms of discrimination, which has plagued and continues to plague people of diverse backgrounds in the United States. The symposium, “Civil Rights Movement and African-American Mental Health,” featured several speakers including psychiatrist Sandra Walker, M.D., an associate clinical professor at the University of Washington. Walker gave an overview of growing up black in Alabama in the 1960s and discussed losing a childhood friend in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 in Birmingham, in which four African-American school girls were killed in an act of racial hatred. Walker also recalled the time when her parents were finally allowed to vote after they “passed”—following several attempts—the Alabama Voter Literacy Test, a once-legal suppression tool that kept many blacks from voting. “Until the FBI came to Macon County, Alabama, to evaluate every voter registration application, my parents could not pass the test … [though] my father was the chair of the English Department at Tuskegee Institute and my mother had a master’s degree in English and was working on a Ph.D.,” Walker said.Donald Williams, M.D., a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Michigan State University, told the audience that “the civil rights movement was not just a movement for African Americans, it was a movement for Catholics, Jewish people, Italians, … and a number of European groups that were considered outsiders to some degree. All passive resistance involved multiethnic and multicultural people,” he said. Williams emphasized that the fight against racial inequality continues as more minority men are being incarcerated and racially profiled—in some situations legally—by police. “Our neighborhoods have become systems where police can feel free to frisk all black males, and these young men can do nothing about it.” Williams stressed that for psychiatrists to provide culturally competent services to specific ethnic and racial groups, it is crucial for them to understand how institutional racism can have a negative impact on the mental health of minority populations. Orlando Lightfoot, M.D., vice chair of community psychiatry at Boston University, stated that as it relates to racism, “there is no perfect solution for such a complex issue.” He said that banishing racial discrimination is a process that may be resolved—or at least come close to being resolved—over an extended period, adding that history has shown that there is no quick fix.Lightfoot suggested that one way to improve race relations in the United States is be open to life experiences from people of other racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds and continue to modify legislative systems and policies that overtly or covertly oppress a particular group of people. He stressed that it will take a concerted effort of all racial groups to achieve this goal, and if it is successful, it has the potential to serve as a blueprint to rid the country of homophobia, sexism, classism, and other prejudices. ■ ISSUES NewArchived

A Most Stirring and Significant Episode: Religion and the Rise and Fall of Prohibition in Black Atlanta, 1865–1887. By H. Paul Thompson Jr. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013. xv + 344 pp. $48.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)A Most Stirring and Significant Episode: Religion and the Rise and Fall of Prohibition in Black Atlanta, 1865-1887 . By H. Paul Thompson , Jr. DeKalb : Northern Illinois University Press , 2013. xv + 344 pp. $48.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesPaul Thompson's work focuses on the prohibition elections held in the city of Atlanta, Georgia in the years 1885 and 1887, and makes a valuable contribution not just to our understanding of the religious and political dimensions of the prohibition movement in the American south, but to our appreciation for the role of race in this movement's growth. As Atlanta re-emerged from the ashes of the Civil War and Sherman's visit, voters enacted, then subsequently retracted, prohibition in the city. Historians of temperance and prohibition in the south have explored this two-year experiment before, but Thompson's study gives us something new and insightful: an examination of the role of Atlanta's booming black population in these two elections. He pays careful attention to the efforts of Atlanta African Americans themselves, as well as to the way that white pro- and anti-prohibitionists sought to attract black votes for their cause.In chapter 1, Thompson explores what he terms the evangelical reform that emerged out of a convergence of revivalism and Republican ideology in the era of the early republic. The theologians who championed evangelistic revivalism in the early 1800s (Dwight, Beecher, Finney, etc.) were also early advocates of temperance, and some of them even had direct bearing on the emergence of temperance sentiment amongst black residents of Atlanta. The founder of the city's first black temperance society was ordained by Finney, for example. Thompson highlights the way in which temperance was a central component of the active Christianity promoted by revivalism as well as an essential virtue of Christian Republicanism.Chapter 2 delves deeper into the influence of this reform nexus upon Atlanta African Americans by looking at the influx of missionaries into post-war Atlanta. The American Missionary Association was committed to the cultural uplift of African Americans in Atlanta and across the south, and temperance became a key part of that uplift. Thompson carefully documents the way in which textbooks, tracts, and missionary activity created significant black support for temperance in the 1860s and 1870s. Chapters 3 and 4 describe how leaders of the black community in Atlanta had, by the 1880s, come to embrace temperance as essential to the improvement of black social and economic conditions. Black-run mutual aid societies and benevolent societies emerged to offer African Americans in Atlanta greater independence from whites, and these societies embraced temperance as an essential virtue and often as a condition for membership.In chapter 5 Thompson examines Atlanta's 1885 prohibition election. He pays particular attention to the arguments used by both drys and wets to attract black support. Supporters of prohibition effectively used themes of racial uplift, improved race relations, and manhood to sway black men to their side. Anti-prohibitionists emphasized the potential economic costs of prohibition to blacks and reminded black voters of the sketchy racial attitudes of leading white prohibitionists. …

From the Sidelines to the Front Lines - Mathew Ahmann Leads American Catholics into the Civil Rights Movement

THE FIFTY YEAR-OLD PHOTO shows twelve men dark suits standing around President John F. Kennedy. The occasion is the White House reception following the 1963 March on Washington. The camera captures Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and then-Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson. Also pictured are the African American labor leader, A. Philip Randolph; Whitney Young, head of the National Urban League; United Auto Workers president, Walter Reuther; and future Congressman John Lewis. But who is the tall, skinny white fellow wearing a bow tie? Few people could identify the mystery man as Mathew Ahmann, executive director of the National Conference for Interracial Justice (NCCIJ).It is said that every person is entitled to fifteen minutes of fame. Ahmann's moment the media spotlight came on August 28,1963, when he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, one of nine speakers delivering brief speeches prior to King's unforgettable Have a Dream oration. This was the public highlight of a career spent mostly the background. Yet, during the 1960s, Ahmann guided the civil rights efforts of the United States' largest religious body and, more than any other individual, brought Roman Catholics from the sidelines to the front lines of the struggle for racial equality.Early YearsMathew Hall Ahmann was born on September 10,1931, to a middle class family St. Cloud, Minnesota. His father, Norbert T. Ahmann, was a dentist and his mother, Clotilde Hall, worked as a nurse before she married. Mathew was educated at St. John's Prep nearby Collegeville where he played drums the band and rose to Eagle the Boy Scouts. The Ahmanns were deeply religious, attending retreats and other religious rites at Saint Johns Abbey Collegeville. According to his wife, Mathew always was compassionate about people who were marginalized.1 One revealing event his youth occurred at a gathering of young people that included Janet, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. During the evening some children began singing an all too ubiquitous anti-Semitic song, oblivious to its possible effect on her. Matt stopped it short no uncertain terms.Mathew enrolled at St. Johns University, his fathers alma mater, 1949. There he was influenced by Emerson Hynes, a popular young sociology professor. also joined the Young Christian Students (YCS), an association of high school and college students who applied the observe, judge, act inquiry method to social issues.2 His friend and YCS associate, Vaile Scott, described Mathew as a serious student: He wasn't a party boy.3 In 1952 Ahmann enrolled the graduate sociology program at the University of Chicago. His brother David recalled: Matt announced he was going on to the University of Chicago the family promptly held a prayer meeting so that Matt wouldn't lose his faith. In fact, he found his faith.4 When not on campus he helped out at the YCS national headquarters. There he met Margaret Cunningham, a Wilmette resident and graduate of the College of St. Teresa Winona, Minnesota, who worked full-time for the Young Christian Students. Much later Matt told his granddaughter, in Chicago I met some of my closest friends, and my wife Margaret.... These were people with whom I shared deep religious interests social justice. Together we worked to improve race relations.5 Matt and Margaret married September of 1954.Chicago during the 1940s and 1950s was the center for Catholic Action, the name given to lay organizations employing the Church's teachings to improve the lives of families, students, workers, the poor, and racial minorities. A trio of dynamic young priests, Daniel Cantwell, William Quinn, and John Egan, guided these programs. Cardinal Samuel Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago, released these men from regular parish duties to work full-time the various Action ministries.6Ahmann withdrew from the University of Chicago without completing his Master's thesis and accepted a social work position with the Cook County Department of Public Aid. …

Book Review: The Abolitionist Imagination

Abolitionist Imagination. By Andrew Delbanco. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-674-6444-7. Pp. xi +205. $24.95. Andrew Delbanco's brief volume Abolitionist Imagination offers civil discourse on the topic of abolitionism as applied, not only to the anti-slavery movement of the nineteenth century, but also to his theory that such movements reflect recurrent American phenomenon (3). Turning to literature as his example, Delbanco explores antebellum American examples from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville to illustrate that abolitionists, contrary to postwar reactions, were seen largely as radical fringe group by many American writers who chose not to champion the cause in their writings. discourse on this topic takes the form of commentaries written by scholars John Stauffer, Manisha Sinha, Darryl Pinckney, and Wilfred M. McClay. Each critical essay offers reaction to Delbanco's thesis from different perspective. Ultimately, as Daniel Carpenter notes in the foreword, The volume becomes reference work on American abolitionism and its meaning (x). Defining abolitionism as a determined minority set out, in the face of long odds, to rid the world of what it regards as patent and entrenched evil, Delbanco argues that it is a persistent impulse in American life, (3) and that, as part of human nature, have not seen the last of it, and probably never will (23). Noting that authors such as Hawthorne did not side with or against the abolitionist movement, posits that antebellum American literature came to be valued for the case it made for compromise and moderation--for the middle ground that vanished as the nation descended into fratricidal war (39). Citing comments by scholars such as Kenneth Lynn, who in the 1960s identified as the gravest moral problem in the nation's history, Delbanco argues that the American literature canon eventually changed because of the successful campaign of the anti-slavery movement. study of literature of the African American experience, believes, grows from the need to face all aspects of this historical period and to do so by looking at the words of the participants of and its aftermath. He cautions against criticizing authors like Hawthorne for their lack of engagement, however, suggesting that we consider our own level of reaction to the oppression in countries that produce many of the United States' consumer items. What moral stand are we taking? asks. John Stauffer's contribution, Fighting the Devil with His Own Fire, delves more deeply into the outlooks of Hawthorne, Henry James, and Lionel Trilling to demonstrate his disagreement with Delbanco's assertion that the writers, like others, viewed the abolitionists as radical element of society and the issue of in their works. Stating that for Hawthorne slavery was comparatively benign institution (63), Stauffer offers numerous examples of the author's unsympathetic views toward blacks and slavery. Of James, writes: Silence was James' preferred mode for improving race relations. Regarding Trilling, one of the most important cultural critics of the twentieth century, Stauffer argues he remained largely silent about the plight of blacks in America (65). Stauffer offers these impressions to counter Delbanco's idea that American writers sought centrist approach to the question of slavery. Additionally Stauffer explores successes of early abolitionists (1780s-1820s), demonstrating that many abolitionists hoped for gradual dissolution of rather than an immediate end to the institution. Arguing again that Delbanco's portrayal of the group as radical and fringe is inaccurate, points out that America's founders---Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin--sought gradual end to the evil without uprooting the social order or their wealth and domestic comforts (68). Ultimately, Stauffer offers Herman Melville as the nineteenth-century American writer who foresaw the problems created by violent disruption of slavery, provocatively stating that if every American had been required to read Moby Dick when it was published in 1851, the Civil War may have been avoided (79). …

Race talk: the psychology of racial dialogues.

Constructive dialogues on race have been proposed as a means to heal racial and ethnic divides, reduce prejudice and misinformation, increase racial literacy, and foster improved race relations. Studies on the psychology of racial dialogues indicate social and academic norms that dictate against race talk between White Americans and persons of color: (a) the politeness protocol, (b) the academic protocol, and (c) the color-blind protocol. These protocols discourage race talk and allow society to enter into a conspiracy of silence regarding the detrimental impact oppression plays on persons of color. Facilitating difficult dialogues on race requires educators to recognize what makes such discussions difficult. For people of color, engaging in race talk exposes them to microaggressions that invalidate and assail their racial/ethnic identities. For Whites, honest discussions are impeded by fears of appearing racist, of realizing their racism, of acknowledging White privilege, and of taking responsibility to combat racism.

Reflections on Racial Capitalism

DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.In my Article Racial Capitalism, I expressed concern about the ongoing process of racial exploitation in which white people and predominantly white institutions derive value from the racial identity of people of color. I see this process as troubling and undesirable. Rendering racial identity a commodity harms people of color in many ways: by treating a deeply-felt aspect of identity as merely another thing to be bought and sold; by giving outsiders a stake in the identities of nonwhite people; and by providing yet another obstacle to improved race relations in America.Since the publication of Racial Capitalism, two events have occurred that relate to the Article’s conclusions. First, the Supreme Court decided Fisher v. University of Texas, which considered the constitutionality of the school’s race-conscious admissions scheme. Second, Professor Richard Ford has responded directly to my Article in the online Forum provided by the Harvard Law Review. My goal in this brief Response, which will also appear in the online Forum, is to consider these two contributions in light of Racial Capitalism.

Racial Inequality and the Social Reconstructionists at Teachers College

Historians of education have probed into the involvement of Reconstructionists' with issues of racial justice and have argued explicitly that while interested in racial problems during the Depression, actually did little to carefully study the role of race or race relations in America. The authors found that many of them were engaged in efforts to address problems of race through education-the education of their own students, of those in other teacher preparation programs, of in-service teachers, and of students in K-12 schools. In addition, Teachers College graduates took on leadership roles at various levels in Black education, extending social reconstructionism to colleges and school districts from Harlem to the South.Keywords: history of education, Teachers College, teacher educationBelieving that the Great Depression had revealed the inadequacy of laissez-faire capitalism, a group of progressive educators known as Social Reconstructionists, argued that schools and teachers should take on activist roles in making necessary progressive social change (Weltman, 2002). Sharing a commitment to equality, they saw schools as sites where citizens would be prepared for a more collective society through the development of a commitment to the common good, public service, and cooperation (Curti, 1959). They believed that the principal task of education was to create an informed and thoughtful public opinion to support the development of a planning economy geared toward meeting the needs of all people (Zeichner & Liston, 1991, p. 26). They argued that schools could help develop a cooperative culture in which people would think first of 'we' rather than 'me' and a multicultural society in which people would think of others as 'us' rather than 'them' (Weltman, 2002, p. 64). They believed these goals could not be realized without deliberate attention to the social, political, and economic setting of the school (James, 1995). That social context included the racial inequality present in the United States.In the 1930s, everywhere in the United States, being born Black made a vast difference in a child's life chances in school and out (Tyack, Lowe, & Hansot, 1984, p. 176). During the Great Depression, in most urban areas, unemployment rates were twice as high among African Americans as for Caucasians (Sundstrom, 2008). Segregated housing, education, and public facilities were supported by law in the South and by tradition in the North. Between 1880 and 1930, 1,200 African Americans were lynched in the Deep South (Stovel, 2001). Realization of the Reconstructionists' agenda-a cooperative, multicultural society, with a democratic socialist economy-seemingly would have dramatically improved the lives of African Americans. Their call for democratic socialist reform and improved race relations represented a departure from the eugenicist and White racist views of many curricularists and educational theorists (Watkins, 1993, p. 332). Historians have concluded; however, that the Reconstructionists were only marginally concerned about racial inequality. One strand of the historiography argues that occasionally in the 1920s and early 1930s, they linked critiques of racial exploitation and discrimination with those of structural and economic features of American life. By the late 1930s and 1940s, their socio-political critique was muted and discussions of the psychological components of racial prejudice dominated the little work they did in that area (Goodenow, 1975; Stack, 2009). Another strand of the historiography identifies the sole focus of their interests as the economic inequality produced by capitalism and omits any reference to their involvement with issues of racial inequality (Bowers, 1969; Cremin, Shannon & Townsend, 1954). In summation, the archival data paints a picture of reformers who, at best, had extremely limited interest in or commitment to studying and remedying racial injustice and, at worst, had none at all. …

Practice note: Responding to civic conflict: Developing intergroup dialogue co‐facilitators

AbstractA large U.S. city (called here, Coastal City), with a liberal milieu and a history of racial and ethnic conflict, was elected several years ago to increase its ability to deal with racial conflict. The city chose the intergroup dialogue (IGD) method. Here we examine IGD and how it differs from some other conflict response approaches—including the program's purpose, design, initial implementation, and lessons learned in this enterprise. This article describes a program to train intergroup dialogue co‐facilitators, engaging a civic process to improve race relations in a large urban setting.