On Native Ground: Transnationalism, Frederick Douglass, and “The Heroic Slave”

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivy G. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Black Diaspora ◽  
The Bahamas ◽  
Political Citizenship ◽  
National Affiliation ◽  
Cultural Belonging ◽  
Affective System

Beginning with a reconsideration of the symbolic ending of “The Heroic Slave,” where Madison Washington and his compatriots find themselves in the Bahamas and not the United States, this article works through Frederick Douglass's understanding of national affiliation. Taking two specific problems in his imagination–the rhetoric of democracy and transnationalism–I reassess the concept of national affiliation for African Americans when political citizenship is denied. Through its protagonist, Washington, who is thoroughly versed in the vocabulary of United States nationalism, “The Heroic Slave” discloses the incongruence between the rhetoric of nationalism and its materialization as a failure of democratic enactment. The text also intimates Douglass's increasing recognition of transnationalism as an affective system of imagined belonging based on either a shared belief (in democracy) or racial contingency. By deterritorializing cultural belonging, “The Heroic Slave” depicts the liminal position of African Americans, suspended between the nation-state and the black diaspora. (IGW)

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Free African Americans

“I am unable to travel in any part of this country without calling forth illustrations of the dark spirit of slavery at every step.”1 The words of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, written in 1852, were literal. He meant not only that slavery infiltrated every aspect of American life but also that traveling was hard. From at least the 1810s and until the Civil War, free African Americans in the antebellum North confronted obstacles to their mobility, including racial segregation in public space. It was difficult for a person of color to walk across town without being harassed, but the vehicles of public transportation—stagecoaches, steamships, and railroads—emerged as one of the most notorious spaces for antiblack aggression. Even so, when Douglass voiced his complaint, segregation was not yet the law of the land. It was not until the 1860s that southern states passed segregation laws, and it was not until 1896 that the federal government institutionalized “separate but equal” legislation in the United States....

The Shadows of the Past and the Work of the Future: Frederick Douglass's Temporal Theory of Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Nathan Pippenger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
The Past ◽  
Temporal Continuity ◽  
The Future ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Specific Orientation

Abstract Throughout his career, Frederick Douglass linked the achievement of an egalitarian, multiracial democracy to Americans’ perception of their collective past and future. In so doing, I argue, Douglass developed a distinctive, temporal account of democratic peoplehood. For Douglass, temporal continuity lent force and content to demands for equality—demands which would succeed only if the whole demos cultivated a specific orientation to its collective past, present, and future. Douglass offers a productive contrast to contemporary democratic theory, which often misses the importance of temporality suggested by his account and thereby risks surrendering its powerful egalitarian resources. Moreover, temporality provides a new lens on what many interpreters see as an episode of inconsistency in Douglass's thought: his brief, quickly abandoned contemplation of colonization proposals in the spring of 1861. Ultimately, Douglass turned to temporality in order to decide whether democracy for African Americans required affiliation with, or disaffiliation from, the United States.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Patricia de Santana Pinho
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Diaspora ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Roots Tourism ◽  
Diasporic Identities

The introduction explains the three central issues in light of which African American roots tourism in Brazil is examined: 1) The construction of diasporic identities through tourism, and how national and racial identities may contradict one another; 2) Roots tourism as a means for transnational black solidarity; 3) The geopolitics of the black diaspora since African Americans interact with Afro-Brazilians simultaneously as co-participants in the African diaspora and as citizens of the United States. The introduction also discusses the theoretical frameworks adopted in the book and the applicability of cultural studies and post-structuralism to study tourism discourses and practices, as well as the challenges of carrying out ethnographic research on tourists, subjects that are defined as being “on the move.”

Decision Time

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-100
Author(s):  
Brian Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Decision Time ◽  
The Us

This chapter covers the months when US officials first authorized black enlistment on a large scale. This forced black men to decide whether they wanted to fight for the United States, and immediate-enlistment advocates had to combat fierce resistance from those who argued that the US had not yet done enough to convince black men to enlist. Prominent black Northerners like Frederick Douglass became government recruiters, and they explained why it made sense for black men to fight for the United States. This chapter covers the factors that black men had to consider when they decided whether or not to enlist, the reasons why the debate over service faded in late summer of 1863, and the reasons why African Americans saw in the Civil War a chance to “re-found” the United States. This chapter also pays attention to the importance of the opinion on black citizenship issued in late 1862 by Attorney General Edward Bates.

Questions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Michael J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The U.S

We have investigated the differences in support for the U.S. Supreme Court among black, Hispanic, and white Americans, catalogued the variation in African Americans’ group attachments and experiences with legal authorities, and examined how those latter two factors shape individuals’ support for the U.S. Supreme Court, that Court’s decisions, and for their local legal system. We take this opportunity to weave our findings together, taking stock of what we have learned from our analyses and what seem like fruitful paths for future research. In the process, we revisit Positivity Theory. We present a modified version of the theory that we hope will guide future inquiry on public support for courts, both in the United States and abroad.

Dissent in the Atlantic World, 1787–1830

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Carté Engel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Church And State ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Population ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
General Role

The very term ‘Dissenter’ became problematic in the United States, following the passing of the First Amendment. The formal separation of Church and state embodied in the First Amendment was followed by the ending of state-level tax support for churches. None of the states established after 1792 had formal religious establishments. Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists accounted for the majority of the American population both at the beginning and end of this period, but this simple fact masks an important compositional shift. While the denominations of Old Dissent declined relatively, Methodism grew quickly, representing a third of the population by 1850. Dissenters thus faced several different challenges. Primary among these were how to understand the idea of ‘denomination’ and also the more general role of institutional religion in a post-establishment society. Concerns about missions, and the positions of women and African Americans are best understood within this context.

Religion, Race, and Humanism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony B. Pinn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unitarian Universalist ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lorraine Hansberry

This chapter explores the history of humanism within African American communities. It positions humanist thinking and humanism-inspired activism as a significant way in which people of African descent in the United States have addressed issues of racial injustice. Beginning with critiques of theism found within the blues, moving through developments such as the literature produced by Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, and others, to political activists such as W. E. B. DuBois and A. Philip Randolph, to organized humanism in the form of African American involvement in the Unitarian Universalist Association, African Americans for Humanism, and so on, this chapter presents the historical and institutional development of African American humanism.

Epic Cruelty: On Post-Pandemic Performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Rick Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
California State University ◽  
The State ◽  
State University ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Disaster Capitalism

As today’s catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic exacerbates ongoing crises, including systemic racism, rising ethno-nationalism, and fossil-fuelled climate change, the neoliberal world that we inhabit is becoming increasingly hostile, particularly for the most vulnerable. Even in the United States, as armed white-supremacist, pro-Trump forces face off against protesters seeking justice for African Americans, the hostility is increasingly palpable, and often frightening. Yet as millions of Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrated after the brutal police killing of George Floyd, the current, intersecting crises – worsened by Trump’s criminalization of anti-racism protesters and his dismissal of science – demand a serious, engaged, response from activists as well as artists. The title of this article is meant to evoke not only the state of the unusually cruel moment through which we are living, but also the very different approaches to performance of both Brecht and Artaud, whose ideas, along with those of others – including Benjamin, Butler, Latour, Mbembe, and Césaire – inform the radical, open-ended, post-pandemic theatre practice proposed in this essay. A critically acclaimed dramatist as well as Professor of English and Playwriting at California State University, Northridge, Mitchell’s published volumes of plays include Disaster Capitalism; or Money Can’t Buy You Love: Three Plays; Brecht in L.A.; and Ventriloquist: Two Plays and Ventriloquial Miscellany. He is the editor of Experimental O’Neill, and is currently at work on a series of post-pandemic plays.

scholarly journals Sickle Cell Trait and Renal Function in Hispanics in the United States: the Northern Manhattan Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole D. Dueker ◽  
David Della-Morte ◽  
Tatjana Rundek ◽  
Ralph L. Sacco ◽  
Susan H. Blanton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Chronic Kidney Disease ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Kidney Disease ◽  
Sickle Cell ◽  
Sickle Cell Trait ◽  
The United States ◽  
Genetic Mutation ◽  
Single Mutation ◽  
Increased Risk

<p class="Pa7">Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is a common hematological disorder among individu­als of African descent in the United States; the disorder results in the production of abnormal hemoglobin. It is caused by homozygosity for a genetic mutation in HBB; rs334. While the presence of a single mutation (sickle cell trait, SCT) has long been considered a benign trait, recent research suggests that SCT is associated with renal dysfunction, including a decrease in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and increased risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in African Americans. It is currently unknown whether similar associations are observed in Hispanics. Therefore, our study aimed to determine if SCT is associated with mean eGFR and CKD in a sample of 340 Dominican Hispanics from the Northern Manhattan Study. Using regression analyses, we tested rs334 for association with eGFR and CKD, adjusting for age and sex. eGFR was estimated using the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration equa­tion and CKD was defined as eGFR &lt; 60 mL/min/1.73 m2. Within our sample, there were 16 individuals with SCT (SCT carriers). We found that SCT carriers had a mean eGFR that was 12.12 mL/min/1.73m2 lower than non-carriers (P=.002). Additionally, SCT carriers had 2.72 times higher odds of CKD compared with non-carriers (P=.09). Taken together, these novel results show that Hispanics with SCT, as found among African Americans with SCT, may also be at increased risk for kidney disease.</p><p class="Pa7"><em>Ethn Dis. </em>2017; 27(1)<strong>:</strong>11-14; doi:10.18865/ed.27.1.11.</p><p class="Pa7"> </p>

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