Transcending the Veil

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-228
Author(s):  
Natasha V. Christie ◽  
Shannon B. O’brien
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Color Blind ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Rights Issues ◽  
Selection Of

This work examines how Barack Obama’s speeches and remarks used various rhetorical techniques to strategically maneuver his rhetoric to address racial issues and represent African American concerns. The results of a content analysis of a selection of Obama’s speeches and remarks confirm that Obama and his speechwriters favored the use of statements of color-blind universalism. However, when making certain remarks regarding civil rights issues or perceived racial issues, the pattern shifted, presenting a rare glimpse of the unbalanced representation of African American concerns. These findings suggest that Barack Obama’s speeches and remarks performed double-consciousness; they used universal, balanced, and targeted universalism rhetorical techniques as a genuine, congruent political style for representing African American concerns as a “raced” politician.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuire Valkeakari
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black History ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Thematic Approach ◽  
Caribbean Writers

The introduction articulates this book’s four main arguments. First, as the selected novelists reimagine the lives of uprooted groups and individuals in various stages and settings of black history, they actively contribute to the ongoing transnational formation of black diasporic identity. Second, these novelists frequently evoke (some quite subtly) slavery and colonial modernity. Their allusions to the Middle Passage and enslavement speak to the choices that they make while participating in the continuing construction of black diasporic identity—regardless of whether they belong to the civil-rights generation of African American novelists or to the cultural-nationalist generation of Caribbean authors or to a later generation of contemporary transnational British, Canadian, American, and Caribbean writers. Third, as this book’s chapter on black soldiers’ wartime experiences abroad demonstrates, much can be gained through a dually focused thematic approach that both examines black novelists’ representations of diaspora and explores their depictions of more temporarily and loosely understood experiences of displacement or dislocation. Fourth, the novels discussed in this book portray a “diasporic double consciousness.” This term refers to the dislocated/relocated protagonists’ sense of not belonging and their simultaneous yearning to experience fulfilling human connection and communion in a place they could call “home.”

Du Bois and James at Harvard: The Challenges of Fraternal Pairings and Racial Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 352-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saladin Ambar
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
William James ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article seeks to illuminate the relationship between two of the most important figures in American political thought: the pragmatist philosopher William James, and the pioneering civil rights leader and intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois. As Harvard's first African American PhD, Du Bois was a critical figure in theorizing about race and identity. His innovative take on double consciousness has often been attributed to his contact with James who was one of Du Bois's most critical graduate professors at Harvard. But beyond the view of the two thinkers as intellectual collaborators, is the fraught history of liberal racial fraternal pairing and its role in shaping national identity. This article examines Du Bois and James's relationship in the context of that history, one marked by troubled associations between friendship and race.

Color-Blind Conservatism and the Great White Switch

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sid Bedingfield
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
New Rhetoric ◽  
Political Clout ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Color Blind

This chapter details the effort by former segregationist editors to unite whites against rising black political clout after passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The editors at the state’s two largest newspaper, Thomas R. Waring Jr. at the News & Courier in Charleston and William D. Workman Jr., at The State in Columbia, helped develop a rhetoric of “color-blind conservatism” to undermine black political activism. The new rhetoric accepted the end of segregation and legal equality for blacks in the South, but declared that racial issues should no longer be an acceptable topic for political debate. It identified blacks as special pleaders seeking aid from government that they did not deserve.

Solving Problems by Protecting an Identity

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-127
Author(s):  
Paul Lichterman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Group ◽  
The People ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
Rights Issues

This chapter follows the action in scenes from the earlier phase of the Tenants of South Los Angeles's antidisplacement campaign. When advocates style themselves as a community of identity, they give themselves a distinctive dilemma. Their style of action, with its emphasis on a distinct, subordinated community, entangles them with different social realities from the ones immediately salient to a community of interest. The central dilemma for a community of identity is to balance strategies that are from the people most central to “the community” and those crafted by advocates for the community. The community of identity is a cultural reality of its own, with its own influence on how activists make claims and build relationships around claims. It generates distinct ways of talking and feeling. The chapter ends with scenes from Los Angeles People's Organization, a predominantly African American group that pursued housing and civil rights issues in the same style of interaction.

Black Memphians and New Frontiers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gritter
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
African American Leaders ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Rights Issues ◽  
Subsequent Administration

This essay explores the relationship between black Memphians and John F. Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency in 1960 and his subsequent administration. Drawing on archival research in Memphis and at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, as well as oral histories, this essay shows that blacks in Memphis played a crucial role in the presidential campaign, so much so that precinct leaders received invitations to the inauguration. (Unlike in most southern areas, African Americans could vote in Memphis.) Two key African American leaders in Memphis, Russell B. Sugarmon Jr. and A. W. Willis Jr., loom particularly large in this story because of their role in the development of the Shelby County Democratic Club and because they kept in touch with the Kennedy administration about civil rights issues in Memphis. Their local activism had national ramifications.

Conditional Representation: Presidential Rhetoric, Public Opinion, and the Representation of African American Interests

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatishe M. Nteta ◽  
Jesse H. Rhodes ◽  
Melinda R. Tarsi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Presidential Rhetoric ◽  
Quantitative Content Analysis ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
White Voters

AbstractConventional theories of presidential representation suggest that presidents avoid courting African Americans for fear of alienating white voters, leading to the underrepresentation of “black interests.” We argue that presidential representation of black interests is conditional: when (1) African Americans prioritize issues other than economic redistribution and civil rights and (2) when these priorities overlap with those of whites, presidents should provide considerable representation of those interests. We test our theory using two new sources of data: a dataset of black and white perceptions of the US's most important problem between 1968 and 2012; and a quantitative content analysis of over 200 major presidential speeches from 1969-2012. We find that presidents provide substantial representation of black interests, but only when these interests center on non-racialized concerns and overlap with the priorities of whites. We also find that presidential priorities are often independent of the chief concerns of both African Americans and whites.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document