The Obama Coalition

Black Feelings ◽

10.14325/mississippi/9781496827944.003.0007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 143-164

Author(s):

Lisa M. Corrigan

Keyword(s):

Civil Rights ◽

Political Discourse ◽

Black Power ◽

Barack Obama ◽

Law And Order ◽

Change Over Time ◽

Racial Liberalism ◽

Black President ◽

Over Time

While the tensions between white hope and black despair were a dynamic that characterized politics in the Long Sixties, their structure is recursive. That is, the (positive and negative racial) feelings that undergird racial liberalism did not stop emerging and receding after law and order campaigns destroyed civil rights and Black Power organizing in the mid-70s. Nowhere is this clearer than in the entrance and disappearance of the so-called “Obama coalition” in 2008 to elect Barack Obama as the first biracial/black president in U.S. history. In considering how hope continues to be inextricably linked to rage, contempt, and despair, this brief conclusion considers hope as an ironic discourse of liberalism, particularly as it is racialized. The birth of Afro- pessimism as a coterminous discourse with what we now call the “post-racial” Obama coalition is important because it demonstrates how black feelings in the Long Sixties continue to shape national political discourse, demonstrating how affective politics are iterative as well as how they change over time.

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Black Power and Black Theology in Cairo, Illinois

10.5406/illinois/9780252039997.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Kerry L. Pimblott

Keyword(s):

Civil Rights ◽

Black Church ◽

Black Power ◽

Black Theology ◽

Economic Conditions ◽

Black Freedom Struggle ◽

Freedom Struggle ◽

Black Freedom ◽

Moral Suasion ◽

Over Time

This chapter argues that the thesis of Black Power's de-Christianization must be tested on the ground, with scholars paying attention to local struggles as they evolved over time, and in response to changing social and economic conditions. It follows the religious contours of Cairo's black freedom struggle from the 1950s to the 1970s to illustrate that while Black Power's reliance upon the black church was consistent with earlier campaigns, the United Front's theology nevertheless reflected a significant departure from the established Civil Rights credo. Whereas civil rights leaders expressed a firm belief in the redemptive power of Christian nonviolence and moral suasion to topple the walls of segregation, Cairo's Black Power advocates were less optimistic.

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“Wake up brothers and sisters”

Steeped in the Blood of Racism ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190215378.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 45-70

Author(s):

Nancy K. Bristow

Keyword(s):

Law Enforcement ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Black Power ◽

Student Activism ◽

Racial Consciousness ◽

Antiwar Movement ◽

Law And Order ◽

Richard Nixon ◽

Brothers And Sisters

Chapter 2 explores the convergence of forces that led to the 1970 shootings at Jackson State, beginning with the shooting of local activist Benjamin Brown in 1967 and then the tensions between conservatism and reform on campus from 1967 to 1970. Even as a new racial consciousness emerged on the campus after the ascension of John Peoples to the presidency, Jackson State remained largely isolated from the growing antiwar and student activism on campuses nationwide. Civil rights gains, student activism, the antiwar movement, urban rebellions, and the growing appeal of Black Power, though, had produced near-hysteria among white Mississippians and a broader backlash in white communities nationwide, a mood President Richard Nixon tapped into with his Southern Strategy and his deployment of racially veiled law and order rhetoric. In such a context, law enforcement in Jackson felt empowered to answer even limited unrest on the campus with force.

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Feeling Riots

Black Feelings ◽

10.14325/mississippi/9781496827944.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 75-100

Author(s):

Lisa M. Corrigan

Keyword(s):

Civil Rights ◽

Political Liberalism ◽

The United States ◽

War On Poverty ◽

Law And Order ◽

Race Riots ◽

Racial Liberalism ◽

War On Crime ◽

Urban Rebellion ◽

Black Equality

This chapter reflects upon the multiple interpretations of major urban rebellions in the United States between 1964-1969 to understand how descriptions of the major race riots, especially the metaphor of the powderkeg, created and reflected racialized political feelings where hopelessness replaced hope as the emotional framework for racial liberalism and as the possibility of integration ebbed. The assassinations of John Kennedy and, later, Malcolm X, along with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 evacuated black hope from political liberalism and replaced it with different political emotions, including rage, frustration, and fear. Blacks feared white terrorism and whites feared blacks. This impasse augmented the hopelessness and anger that undergirded riots. It prompted the passage of the 1967 DC Crime Bill and helped undermine the 1968 Civil Rights Bill as protest was elided with crime in news accounts and in public policy, effectively mystifying the context and content of urban rebellion. As the War on Poverty transformed into the War on Crime, feelings became a major rhetorical vector of policy discussions about urban rebellion. Law and order rhetoric reasserted white statism as the only permissible loyalty and effectively harnessed white anxiety and anger towards ending any possibility of black equality through the law.

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Towards a System of Sympathetic Law

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198768586.003.0015 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bastian Ronge

Keyword(s):

Adam Smith ◽

Emotional Reactions ◽

Moral Judgments ◽

Common Language ◽

Law And Order ◽

Change Over Time ◽

The Real ◽

Moral Sensibility ◽

Sentimental Education ◽

Over Time

This chapter argues that Adam Smith shows us that the original and last foundation of law and order is the practice of making moral judgments—our emotional reactions to injustice and suffering we observe. The real substance of law is our moral sensibility and affectivity; a substance, which turns out to be highly contingent, since it is shaped by various socio-historical, cultural, and subjective conditions that change over time. Therefore, the question of internationalization or even universalization of rights is not a matter of careful reasoning and convincing argumentation; it is a matter of Sentimental Education. It depends on our ability to push the limits of sympathy and to establish a common language of emotions which allows us to treat even strangers as if they were fellow citizens.

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