Problem Of Race In America Research Articles

Tobin Miller Shearer, Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Pp. 248. $35.00 (cloth).

Tobin Miller Shearer, <i>Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America</i>. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Pp. 248. $35.00 (cloth).

The Role of Malcolm X's Speeches in Solidifying his Autobiography

This paper demonstrates how a literary text can be approached through a linguistic framework to enhance one’s reading and interpretation of it. It aims at examining the power of The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by analyzing the narrator’s description of his early speeches. I draw upon the appraisal framework, and I focus on Malcolm’s utilization of affect, judgment, and appreciation in a number of his speeches that he reported in the book. In those speeches, Malcolm adopts resources from the appraisal framework to align his audience with his position. His performance of affective stance to construct the entire problem of race in America contributed to the success of his book for more than 50 years since its publication.

Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America

Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America

Tobin Miller Shearer. Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America.

Tobin Miller Shearer. Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America.

Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America by Tobin Miller Shearer

Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America by Tobin Miller Shearer

The “alien spirit” of relativity

The Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin has once again exposed the unresolved problem of race in America. Particularly telling were the comments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia. Roberts asked, “What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?” And Scalia said, “Most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas.” In case that was not sufficiently inflammatory, he continued unfazed: “They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re … being pushed ahead in … classes that are too … fast for them.”What Roberts has overlooked is that many of the most brilliant physicists, particularly the theorists, have been outsiders, at least in thought. Their “minority” perspective played a critical role in their success. In physics research, being an outsider can be an advantage when seeking answers to unsolved problems. Of course, being an ethnic or racial minority does not automatically make one a minority thinker. But it does come with unique experiences that could yield remarkable success in research.The value of outsider thinking is quite clear when one considers how physics advances. For the most part, undergraduate physics education focuses on a codified set of solved problems. Research, on the other hand, exposes students to the unknown. The skills to excel at the latter have little to do with those required for whizzing through the former. Physics departments are replete with examples of problem-set whizzes who floundered in research. The ability to come up with new ideas that inform unsolved problems is a key factor in determining success in research.The building blocks of modern physics as we know it—quantum mechanics, field theory, and general relativity, for example—all arose from individuals who stepped outside the established line of reasoning. That spirit is exemplified by Howard Georgi and Sheldon Glashow in their immensely influential 1974 grand unification paper, which contains the disclaimer, “Our hypotheses may be wrong and our speculations idle, but the uniqueness and simplicity of our scheme are reasons enough that it be taken seriously.” Such a frank admission of the risk involved in doing physics is rare.A key element that determines a person’s ability to make such leaps is the comfort level with being different—even iconoclastic. Minorities are by definition outside the majority culture. Hence, taking risks that would set us further apart from our peers does not feel unnatural. That is, it is easiest to go against the grain when you are not part of the grain!The outsider status can be used as a great motivating factor to beat the system. Consider, for example, the 1965 physics Nobel laureate and boyhood genius Julian Schwinger. The jacket of Schwinger’s 1970 book Particles, Sources, and Fields (Addison-Wesley) begins with the quip, “If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em.” Clearly his outsider status was heartfelt. The 1905 physics Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard, well-known as an anti-Semite, denounced relativity as being derived from an “alien spirit” and dubbed the whole of Albert Einstein’s work as part of a “Jewish fraud.” Undoubtedly what Lenard recognized, in a through-the-looking-glass way, is that Einstein’s minority or outsider status may have been the very thing that enabled him to construct the most brilliant and important theory in physics to date. The “alien spirit” that catalyzed Einstein’s derivation of relativity may be the very same outside-the-box mindset that illuminates the thinking of at least some minority theoretical physicists today.So to answer Roberts’s question, central to advancing physics is the ability to be an outsider. For minority physicists, a tendency toward outsider thinking is not fabricated. It is part of who we are, and it is the very thing that is unique to our experience.It’s now 2016, and we have a black president, yet those uninformed comments come from people who are supposed to be the top legal minds in the country. At the very center of what should be a prudent, deliberate consideration of delicate legal matters that affect millions of lives, we find instead insensitive stereotypes that can only detract from the ultimate goal of justice.© 2016 American Institute of Physics.

ON THE ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH FOR LIFE: THE CREATION OF THE POST‐RACIAL ERA

ABSTRACTThis article takes the Nietzschean dictum that history must “serve life” as a point of departure for an analysis of the American institution of Black History Month. Many continue to place great faith in the power of historical education to solve problems of race in America. Against this common‐sense view, this article argues that the excessive historicization of the problem of racism is at least as oppressive as forgetting. The black history propagated during this month has mostly been a celebration that it is history and thus a thing of the past. The article makes the claim that it is precisely a surfeit of black history that has encouraged the view that racism is vanishing in the river of time. The constant demand to view American racism through a historical frame has led to the perception that racism is a problem that must be historically transcended rather than solved. In other words, it is through the widespread dissemination of black history during Black History Month and elsewhere that the historical category of the post‐racial era has been constituted. The postracial era is not, as is so often claimed, a denial of historical context. On the contrary, it is an assertion that the horrors of racist discrimination were once real but are now over and done with.

Title VII as Precedent: Past and Prologue for Future Legislation

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after nearly 90 years in which it enacted no major civil rights legislation. The 1964 Act stood out then - as it stands out now - as Congress acting at its best rather than its worst. It confronted the historic problem of race in America, it overcame partisan divisions and sectional obstruction, and it acted to enforce constitutional principles. This is not to say that sponsors of the legislation made no compromises in the 1964 Act. On the contrary, they had to do so, particularly in the Senate, to obtain the two-thirds majority then needed to close off debate and end a filibuster. The resulting legislation, compromises and all, then became the foundation for all employment discrimination law, providing the template for prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of age and disability. Even more remarkably, the legislation was consistently extended and reinforced, often over the narrowing interpretations imposed by the Supreme Court. Long after the Civil Rights Era had ended, Congress continued to pass expansive and progressive legislation, with virtually no examples to the contrary. The few restrictive or qualifying provisions that Congress enacted invariably came as compromises, like those in the 1964 Act, added in order to pass expanded prohibitions against discrimination. This article recounts this pattern of legislation, the role that Title VII played in it, and possible explanations for it. These explanations, like those for passage of the 1964 Act, extend over a wide range: from the simple selection effect of noticing only the statutes that are passed rather than those that fail, to an unholy alliance between plaintiffs’ lawyers and big business, to the moral and ideological force of the principle against discrimination.

One Dream: Barack Obama, Race, and the American Dream

This essay examines the way in which Barack Obama, in his "More Perfect Union" address, dealt with the Rev. Wright controversy and confronted issues of race. We argue that Obama, faced with a controversy that jeopardized his candidacy, first explained the anger of both white and black Americans and then linked the problems of race in America to the American Dream, arguing that only by making that dream available to all citizens could those problems be remedied. We then draw implications for both dream narratives and for Obama's political discourse.

One Dream: Barack Obama, Race, and the American Dream

Abstract This essay examines the way in which Barack Obama, in his "More Perfect Union" address, dealt with the Rev. Wright controversy and confronted issues of race. We argue that Obama, faced with a controversy that jeopardized his candidacy, first explained the anger of both white and black Americans and then linked the problems of race in America to the American Dream, arguing that only by making that dream available to all citizens could those problems be remedied. We then draw implications for both dream narratives and for Obama’s political discourse.

The Obama Factor: The Impact of the 2008 Presidential Election on Future Voting Rights Litigation

Some commentators have begun pointing to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential victory as singular evidence that we have overcome and resolved the problem of race in America. In particular, some have suggested that his victory marks the beginning of a post-racial era in which race bears less significance or consequence. In this Article, I focus on a particular aspect of this ongoing debate - the presence of racially polarized voting in the 2008 presidential election cycle. The commentary surrounding Obama's electoral success provides some insights into prevailing attitudes about the pace of racial progress. However, there is a more immediate and pragmatic issue for those who study and litigate vote dilution claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: the probative value of the 2008 presidential contest on future efforts to measure racially polarized voting -- one of the critical pieces of evidence that plaintiffs must offer to support traditional vote dilution claims. Here, I offer some preliminary observations regarding the implications of Obama's electoral success for voting rights litigants and find that no overarching conclusions about racially polarized voting can be drawn from it. Initial analysis of the 2008 presidential election outcome reveals a mixed pattern of racially polarized voting in some jurisdictions and significant cross-racial coalition building in others. Notably, exit polling results from the November 2008 general election reveal stark racial polarization in the Deep South states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina alongside exceptionally high levels of white crossover voting in the New England states of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine. While Obama's victory most certainly represents significant progress in the ongoing effort to achieve political equality, courts should hesitate to substitute Obama's electoral success for a more careful assessment and localized inquiry that can help accurately determine whether racially polarized voting persists in a particular jurisdiction.

White Shame

If we should watch a city coming into being in speech, I said, we also see its justice coming into being, and its injustice? Probably, he said. When this has been done, can we hope to see what we're looking for more easily? Far more easily. Is it resolved that we must try to carry this out? I suppose it's no small job, so consider Plato, Republic1 The Problem is under consideration here: the problem of those children of history who created the situation of and therefore bear responsibility for it. Joel Kavel White Racism: A Psychohistory2 Shame is directly about the self. In guilt, however, it is not the self but the act that is the central focus of negative evaluation.3 Discourse about race and in the United States includes a concept of white guilt but no concept of white shame. This reveals much about white moral psychologies and problems of race in America.4 In this essay I argue that whiteness operates with an impoverished concept of responsibility that overemphasizes guilt and underemphasizes moral shame.5 In contrast, I argue for a concept of responsibiUty that values both guilt and shame. I explore some of the impUcations of my analysis for race relations in America. I would like it to be clear from the start that I am not asking white people to feel more shame. Moral shame, in itself, is not especially praiseworthy. However shame can motivate us to try to reconnect, to work for forgiveness and reconciliation. It can arouse justified anger, which works to correct injustices, or to see them corrected. Appropriate moral shame, and a desire to avoid this negative emotion, can therefore motivate us in valuable ways. Typically, it is this motivation and the action it produces that are valuable, not the emotion itself. In other words, we need not waUow in moral shame. But of course shame, even moral shame, can have bad results. It can drive us apart. It can lead to dissociation. It can engender vicious anger. It can evoke narcissistic rage. AU of this is more likely for people with poorly integrated psychologies. I do think that better integrated moral psychologies could lead to better integrated communities, and conversely. But my primary aim in this paper is to advance our understanding of aspects of mainstream white moral psychology, the preoccupation with guUt, and how this bears on race relations in America. Political Philosophy and Moral Psychology Tommie Shelby argues that philosophical analyses of should focus on the political reality. For Shelby, ideology - not individual morality - should be primary in our thinking about racism.6 Lawrence Blum disagrees. According to Blum, in order to preserve the strong condemnatory force of racism we must consider it primarily as a matter of individual immoraUty. Blum defines racism as personal antipathy toward people who are perceived to be of other races. He worries that if we insist on using the term more broadly to refer to an ideology, then racism may devolve into amorally neutral concept of poUtical discourse and lose its meaning as a form of personal immorality.7 Both of these current approaches are flawed. Shelby's view leaves no room for emotion. He conceives of ideology in exclusively cognitive terms, as distortion of belief. As such, his conception of is insensitive to moral psychology. The deficiency in Blum's view is twofold: he makes no room for ideology in his account of and he restricts his account of the role of emotions to the moral psychologies of individual racists - personal antipathy. I explore how ideology and moral psychologies are co-constitutive, and how certain aspects of whiteness are the result. My focus is not on per se, but on aspects of whiteness that reinforce and perpetuate the unsatisfactory state of race in America. I argue that American liberalism and individuaUsm (ideology) form and are formed by moral psychologies that overemphasize guilt, and thus conceive of the responsibility of white people exclusively in terms of their voluntary acts. …

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. By Michael O. Emerson and Smith Christian. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ix + 212 pp. $25.00 cloth.

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. By Michael O. Emerson and Smith Christian. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ix + 212 pp. $25.00 cloth. - Volume 73 Issue 4

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

Journal Article They Call Him Pastor: Married Men in Charge of Catholic Parishes by Ruth A. Wallace. New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003, 276pp; $19.95 Get access Susan A. Farrell Susan A. Farrell Kingsborough Community College, CUNY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 65, Issue 2, Summer 2004, Pages 187–188, https://doi.org/10.2307/3712407 Published: 01 July 2004

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. Michael O. Emerson , Christian Smith

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsDivided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. Michael O. Emerson , Christian Smith Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 83, Number 3Jul., 2003 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/491395 Views: 7Total views on this site Copyright 2003 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

"Niggers Got a Right to be Dissatisfied": Postmodemism, Race, and Class in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

When August Wilson's play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom debuted in New York's Cort Theatre in the fall of 1984, it was received rather coolly by the critics, but quite warmly by its audiences. Early critical reception pigeonholed the work as an overdone piece on the problems of race in America. John Simon, the reviewer for New York magazine, wrote that what Wilson delivers in the work "is only intermittently drama, more often rousing monologues, and finally more melodramatically didactic than imaginatively satisfying." Simon concluded that, for all its strengths, the play "sorely misses the transformative spark" — he wished the playwright "[b]etter luck next time". Edwin Wilson, writing for The Wall Street Journal, observed that "There is an abundance of atmosphere and banter, and a strong racial statement, but not much of a play." After summarizing the plot, he proclaimed that "The theme of the play is racial injustice" and explained how that theme is executed; but he, like Simon, concluded that "polemics do not make a play". In its 17 October issue, Variety magazine introduced Ma Rainey's Black Bottom as yet another "tragedy of racial bigotry," and suggested that "its technical clumsiness and downbeat story make it a difficult Broadway box office proposition". Such hasty dismissals of Wilson's first Broadway production proved to be shallow and obtuse, as word-of-mouth raves generated a high volume of ticket sales and turned Ma Rainey into "the first hit of the season." The critics took a second look at Wilson and "his powerful play," which according to The New York Times was "reawakening audiences to the wonder and dimensions of drama". The production went on to be nominated for three Tony awards, including one for best play, and it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of the 1984-85 season.

Faulkner on the Color Line: The Later Novels

This study argues that Faulkner's writings about racial matters interrogated rather than validated racial beliefs and that, in the process of questioning own ideology, fictional forms extended reach as an artist. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1950, Faulkner wrote what critics term his later novels. These have been almost uniformly dismissed, with the prevailing view being that as he became a more public figure, fiction became a platform rather than a canvas. Within this context Faulkner on the Color Line redeems the novels in the final phase of career by interpreting them as Faulkner's way of addressing the problem of race in America. They are seen as a series of formal experiments Faulkner deliberately attempted as he examined the various cultural functions of narrative, most particularly those narratives that enforce American racial ideology. The first chapters look at the ways in which the ability to assert oneself verbally informs matters of individual and cultural identity in both the widely studied works of Faulkner's major phase and those in later career. Later chapters focus on the last works, providing detailed readings of Intruder in the Dust, Requiem for a Nun, the Snopes trilogy, A Fable, and The Reivers. The book examines Faulkner as he confronted the vexing questions of race in these novels and assesses the identity of Faulkner as the Nobel Prize winner who claimed on many occasions that he was tired, maybe written out. In decision not to speak in the identity of the black people represented in fiction, in decision to write instead about the complexities of all racial constructions, he produced a host of characters suffering within the rigid protocols on race that had been enforced in America for centuries. As a private, white individual, he could never be other than what he was. Rather than attempt to reconcile Faulkner the public man with the private one, however, this study concludes that through fiction Faulkner the artist questioned himself and came to understand others across the color line.

Divided by faith: evangelical religion and the problem of race in America

In recent years, the leaders of the American evangelical movement have brought their characteristic passion to the problem of race, notably in the Promise Keepers movement and in reconciliation theology. But the authors of this provocative new study reveal that despite their good intentions, evangelicals may actually be preserving America's racial chasm. In Divided by Faith, Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith probe the grassroots of white evangelical America, through a nationwide telephone survey of 2,000 people, along with 200 face-to-face interviews. The results of their research are surprising. Most white evangelicals, they learned, see no systematic discrimination against blacks; indeed, they deny the existence of any ongoing racial problem in the United States. Many of their subjects blamed the continuing talk of racial conflict on the media, unscrupulous black leaders, and the inability of African Americans to forget the past. What lies behind this perception? Evangelicals, Emerson and Smith write, are not so much actively racist as committed to a theological view of the world that makes it difficult for them to see systematic injustice. The evangelical emphasis on individualism, free will, and personal relationships makes invisible the pervasive injustice that perpetuates inequality between the races. Most racial problems, they told the authors, can be solved by the repentance and conversion of the sinful individuals at fault. Combining a substantial body of evidence with sophisticated analysis and interpretation, Emerson and Smith throw sharp light on the oldest American dilemma. Despite the best intentions of evangelical leaders and some positive trends, the authors conclude that real racial reconciliation remains far over the horizon.

Professional Education of African Americans

Shortly after the turn of this century William E. B. DuBois1 posited that the problem of race in America is that of the color line. It is possible to project without great risk that the problem of America in the coming century will equally be that of the color line. While DuBois' reference was to differences between whites and African Americans, the twenty-first century's reference will expand to include peoples of Africa, Asian races, and Latin American ethnics. Before the mid-twenty-first century, the population of the United States will be composed of whites as a minority. There are significant implications to such demographic reversals, not the least of which is the certain involvement of more non-whites as decision makers and professionals. Race differences in America have contributed greatly to the shaping of the nation's character. Those of European origin, now commonly referred to as white, shared commonality of race but varied in social and cultural background. With the discovery of the New World, whites encountered a new race, now known as Native Americans, which inhabited a territory that would be by the newcomers. The European settlers quickly decided an expanded labor supply was needed to build a new nation in a resource rich land. Europe and the American settlers cooperated in this exploitation of Africa as a source of slaves to perform the tasks so vital for the building of the new nation in America.2 Guided and developed by Christian nations, the African slave trade produced one of the greatest ethical contradictions in human history.3 It was against this backdrop of racial and cultural diversity that public policy was constructed in the newly settled nation.4 By the mid-nineteenth century it was necessary to compose national policy to effectively accommodate the European cultural diversity that grew out of the immigration movement. The young nation had to contend with language, religious, and skill differences that could be exploited to handle the Industrial Revolution. Adam Smith's economic orientation, capitalism, had

Like a Bridge Over Troubled Waters: New Directions and Innovative Voluntary Approaches to Interdistrict School Desegregation

As the kaleidoscopic evolution of the American educational system continues to unfold, its symmetrical patterns reveal that school desegregation is linked inextricably to the problem of race in America. It is obvious that if school desegregation efforts were abandoned, the nation's racial policy would drift most likely towards resegregation. Thus, the effort to renew America's moral and economic strength requires a total commitment to quality integrated education. However, the immorality and inequity of the segregated educational experience has now been solidly established in law and before the courts. The rationale which supports integrated schools is buttressed by compelling evidence showing that Black students' achievement has significantly improved in desegregated schools, that White students' achievement has either improved or stayed the same, and that desegregation plans also improve employment opportunities and housing integration.' As one of society's agencies for bringing about social change, the schools must formulate a firm position to speed the inevitable. It is not an easy task to desegregate a school system, especially