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.

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.

God Can Save Us

Rough Country ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Moral Majority ◽  
Jerry Falwell ◽  
Protestant Denominations

This chapter discusses the emergence of the New Christian Right or simply the Religious Right as a powerful new force in American politics. The rise of the Religious Right has been examined from all angles, and several key factors have been identified. It clearly depended on leadership. The most visible leaders were preacher Jerry Falwell, whose Moral Majority rallies at state capitals had been gaining attention in the late 1970s, and fellow televangelist Pat Robertson, whose popular 700 Club television program included discussions of social and moral topics. Both were canny entrepreneurs who knew how to attract media attention, and there were conservative political operatives eager to enlist their support. There were unifying issues as well, such as opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and promiscuity, and the more general sense that religion was under siege by secularity and humanism. And there were lingering divisions within Protestant denominations and among Catholics over such issues as social activism, the legacies of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, communism, gender equality, the ordination of women, and theology.

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.

Navigating Civil Rights and Black Power Struggles

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
Joe William Trotter
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
Urban League ◽  
National Headquarters ◽  
The 1960S

By the mid-1960s, the political and social terrain on which the Urban League worked had changed dramatically. The Pittsburgh-born children of southern black migrants had come of age and pushed hard against the color line in the city's economy, politics, and institutions. National headquarters and local branches across the country worried about the increasing black nationalist turn in African American politics. But the ULP had helped to establish the postwar groundwork and even models for the fluorescence and even militance of Pittsburgh's Civil Rights and Black Power struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s.

“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.

5. Absurdism, protest, and commitment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
The Cold War

The decades 1960–80 witnessed a seismic shift in modern drama. The rage that came to define, and fuel, much of the drama in the 1960s and 1970s is directed at the audience. ‘Absurdism, protest, and commitment’ shows it is a post-war rage stemming from many sources: the Vietnam War, the Cold War, a feeling of betrayal by government and politicians, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, gay rights, feminism, the growing gap between rich and poor, and ethnic oppression. It is all about denying the audience what it expects of a play, provoking it out of real or perceived complacency, startling, and offending it. The plays of Pinter, Shepard, Beckett, Stoppard, Friel, and Fugard are discussed.

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