The Politics of Empowerment. By Robert Weissberg. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. 272p. $50.00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 837-838 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Resources ◽  
The 1960S

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s produced strong pressure on all levels of government to give “power to the people.” This urgent demand came not only from radical activists in the streets but also from the halls of academia, where scholars churned out a massive volume of studies encompassing detailed recommendations for filling the power vacuum between authoritative public and private decision makers and disadvantaged citizens whose lack of sufficient economic and political resources condemned them to the bottom rungs of the American social order. Although most of these studies were considered positive and progressive, they were not without their detractors. The most searing critique of “bottom up” schemes for empowering the disadvantaged has come from the pen of Robert Weissberg in his book, The Politics of Empowerment.

scholarly journals Politics and the Academic Social Scientist; The Record of Talcott Parsons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Lidz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
Political Views ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThe decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons’ major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the Joseph McCarthy movement in American politics. In the 1960s, he contributed supportive essays to the Civil Rights movement. Later in the decade and in the 1970s, he contributed to the protection of academic freedoms while also proposing accommodations to the demands of the student movement for more “relevant” teaching and greater participation in university governance. Throughout his career, he taught and worked closely with students of various political views and sought to protect their rights of freedom of political expression.

Racial Realities

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Natsu Taylor Saito
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Empowerment ◽  
American Indian Movement ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, global decolonization and the civil rights movement inspired hope for structural change in the United States, but more than fifty years later, racial disparities in income and wealth, education, employment, health, housing, and incarceration remain entrenched. In addition, we have seen a resurgence of overt White supremacy following the election of President Trump. This chapter considers the potential of movements like Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock water protectors in light of the experiences of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and other efforts at community empowerment in the “long sixties.”

Introduction

Troublemakers ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kathryn Schumaker
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The introductionexplains how and why student protest became common in the United States in the late 1960s and places these protests in the context of shifts in the history of education and in broader social movements, including the civil rights movement, the Chicano Movement, and black power activism. The introduction also situates students’ rights within the context of children’s rights more broadly, explaining the legal principles that justified age discrimination and excluded children and students from the basic protections of American constitutional law. The introduction identifies the two decades between the 1960s and 1980s as a constitutional moment that revolutionized the relationship of students to the state. It also connects students’ rights litigation to the issue of school desegregation and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.

Folktales and Civil Rights

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Real World ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
The Real ◽  
Real World Applications ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Brer Rabbit

This chapter examines African American folktales that teach the importance of strategic thinking and argues that they informed the tactics of the 1960s civil rights movement. It analyzes a number of stories where characters who do not think strategically are mocked and punished by events while revered figures skillfully anticipate others' future actions. It starts with the tale of a new slave who asks his master why he does nothing while the slave has to work all the time, even as he demonstrates his own strategic understanding. It then considers the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, along with “Malitis,” which tackles the problem of how the slaves could keep the meat and eat it openly. These and other folktales teach how inferiors can exploit the cluelessness of status-obsessed superiors, a strategy that can come in handy. The chapter also discusses the real-world applications of these folktales' insights.

The Postblack Ethos in “Texts Out of Time”: Rosa Parks and the African American Freedom Struggle in Cultural Memory

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Bunch Davis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
African American Identity ◽  
The 1960S

This book challenges the cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle era that hinges on a master narrative focused on the “heroic period” of the Civil Rights Movement. It argues that this narrative limits the representation of African American identity within the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest leadership in the segregated South and casts Malcolm X's advocacy of black nationalism and the ensuing Black Power/Arts Movement as undermining civil rights advances. Through an analysis of five case studies of African American identity staged in plays between 1959 and 1969, the book instead offers representations that engage, critique, and revise racial uplift ideology and reimagine the Black Arts Movement's sometimes proscriptive notions of black authenticity as a condition of black identity and cultural production. It also posits a postblack ethos as the means by which these representations construct their counternarratives to cultural memory and broadens narrow constructions of African American identity shaping racial discourse in the U.S. public sphere of the 1960s.

The Turning Point

2019 ◽  
pp. 301-352
Author(s):  
Steven K. Green
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The Public ◽  
Education Legislation ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines the various events that undermined the public support for church–state separation in the 1960s. It considers the impact of Vatican II, of ecumenism, of the civil rights movement, and of federal social welfare and education legislation on Protestant attitudes. All of these events encouraged Protestants and Catholics to find common ground in working for the greater societal good. These events also suggested a model of church-state cooperation rather than one of separation. The chapter then segues to consider the various church–state cases before the Supreme Court between 1968 and 1975 in which the justices began to step back from applying a strict separationist approach to church–state controversies.

Binding consumption

2015 ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Alexander Joel Eastman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Black Press ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
History Of

Dozens of newspapers written and edited by people of color flourished in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Cuba. Through an analysis of black press periodicals representative of the main political tendencies between 1879 and 1886 this article examines the economic and socio-political contexts in which the black press operated and demonstrates how Cubans of color successfully carved out a space in the market of newspaper consumption. By examining the economic forces determining circulation and readership of these periodicals, it argues that black Cubans actively negotiated the public spheres of journalism and the marketplace, becoming empowered consumers and creators of information and economic value. This article foreground debates within the black press in order to analyze the history of the Cuban civil rights movement through the perspectives of people of color and to destabilize the notion of black political homogeneity. Black journalists and leaders with national and royalist affiliations vied for political positioning and debated over how to represent the people and the struggles of the raza de color.

“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”: Nina Simone and the Redefining of the Freedom Song of the 1960s

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAMMY L. KERNODLE
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Black Freedom Movement ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
New Type ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Nina Simone ◽  
Important Shift

AbstractThis article explores the work of pianist/vocalist Nina Simone as the catalyst for a new type of freedom song in the black freedom movement during the 1960s. It examines the lyrical content and structure of Simone's music, which reflects the rhetorical and geographical shift of the transition from King's nonviolent, southern-based civil rights movement of the late 1950s to the mid-1960s to the militant black power nationalist movement of the late 1960s. Curtis Mayfield's Chicago soul style is also referenced as marking an important shift in mid-1960s R&B, which had largely avoided overt political statements.

Politics as Victimhood, Victimhood as Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 552-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Horwitz
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract:The victim has become among the most important identity positions in American politics. Victimhood is now a pivotal means by which individuals and groups see themselves and constitute themselves as political actors. Indeed, victimhood seems to have become a status that must be established before political claims can be advanced. Victimhood embodies the assertion that an individual or group has suffered wrongs that must be requited. What seems new is that wounded groups assert a self-righteous claim that they stand for something larger than their particular injury. The article explores how and why victimhood has become such a powerful theme in American politics. It suggests that victimhood as politics emerged from the contentious politics of the 1960s, specifically the civil rights movement and its aftermath. Key factors include the reaction to the minority rights and women’s movements, as well as internal dynamicswithinthe rights movements.

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