scholarly journals Prioritizing Black Self-Determination: The Last Strident Voice of Twentieth-Century Black Nationalism

Genealogy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Bayyinah S. Jeffries
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Black Nationalist ◽  
The One

Black self-determination, like the movement for civil rights, has long been a struggle on both the national and international stage. From the Black consciousness campaign of South Africa to the Black Power crusades of the United States and Caribbean, and the recent global affirmations of Black Lives Matter, Black nationalist ideology and desires for equity and independence seem ever more significant. While marginal characteristics of Black nationalism clearly persist in the calls for justice and equality, only one voice of twentieth-century Black nationalism remains committed to the full dimensions of the Black nationalist agenda. This essay documents the one leader and movement that has remained committed to a Black nationalist platform as a response to persistent white supremacy. The author reflects on the valuable contributions of twentieth-century Black nationalism and what form, if any, Black nationalism will take when this last Black nationalist movement leader is gone.

A Liberal Defense of Black Nationalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW VALLS
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Black Nationalist ◽  
Post Civil Rights

This article brings together work on liberal political theory and black nationalism in an attempt to both strengthen the case for black nationalism and enrich and extend liberal theory. I begin by arguing that for much of U.S. history, the classical black nationalist case for an independent state finds substantial support in recent liberal theories of secession. In the post–civil rights era, black nationalists in the Black Power movement argued for more limited forms of black autonomy, a position known as “community nationalism.” Community black nationalism makes claims similar to minority nationalist claims for limited self-determination, yet liberal multiculturalists like Will Kymlicka defend the latter while withholding support for black nationalism. I argue that black nationalism raises fundamental issues of justice and that liberal multicultural theory can be extended to support black nationalist claims.

The Contributions of Oscar Halecki to American Historical Scholarship

1976 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-97
Author(s):  
Thaddeus V. Gromada
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New England ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Oil Refineries ◽  
Middle Atlantic ◽  
Steel Mills ◽  
Social Opportunities ◽  
The One

Most of the one and one-half million Poles who immigrated to the United States before World War II were people of rural, Catholic, Slavic stock in search of greater economic and social opportunities. They settled in urban centers primarily in the middle Atlantic, mid-Western, and New England states where they formed communities (Polonias) around the steel mills, coal and iron mines, slaughter houses and meat packing plants, oil refineries, shoe and textile factories, granaries and milling plants. Their labor was an important element in the industrialization of America. They were among the millions of unknown persons from eastern and southern Europe, as Michael Novak put it, “who have strengthened family and neighborhood life in America, and from 1930's to the present have made possible the longest strides in the nation's history in economic matters and civil rights.” Very few scholars and intellectuals, however, could be found among these Polish immigrants. When Polish scholars, intellectuals, or artists emigrated from partitioned Poland, usually after unsuccessful revolutions, they settled in France or some other European country.

Black Nationalism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Newman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Malcolm X ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Black Nationalist

The popular media often illustrate black nationalism with images of Malcolm X and black leather-jacketed, Afro-wearing, armed Black Panthers in the 1960s, and, in later decades, Louis Farrakhan and hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy. Although historians disagree about black nationalism’s composition and origins, they argue that it has a long pedigree in American history, traceable at least to the first half of the 19th century, if not earlier. While men were most often black nationalism’s public exponents, and some emphasized manhood and female subordination, black nationalism also appealed to many black women, some of whom also exercised leadership and organizational skills in its service. Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican, led the first mass black nationalist organization in the United States, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), during the 1920s. Like 19th-century black nationalists, Garvey advocated an independent state for people of African descent, black uplift, and the “civilizing” of Africa. Although not original to him, his emphasis on the right to self-defense, independent black economic development, and pride in African history boosted the UNIA’s popularity. Garvey fell victim to state oppression in the United States, but some former Garveyites joined the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) and probably also the Nation of Islam (NOI), both of which rejected Christianity, identified blacks as Asiatics, and adopted particularist interpretations of Islam. In the 1950s and 1960s, Malcolm X, the charismatic son of Garveyite parents, became the Nation’s chief recruiter. Personal differences with Elijah Muhammad, the Nation’s leader since the 1930s, eventually led to Malcolm X’s departure in 1964. Although he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X’s calls for armed self-defense, self-determination and black pride, and identification with anticolonial struggles heavily influenced Black Power advocates. Some civil rights organizations and workers, who were disillusioned by intransigent white racism and distrustful of white liberals, championed Black Power, which was multifaceted and sometimes more reformist than nationalist. In the early 1990s, polls suggested that black nationalist ideas were more popular than during their supposed heyday in the late 1960s, before internal dissension and state repression undermined many Black Power groups.

scholarly journals War, religion, and white supremacy in comparative perspective: South Africa and the American South

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
R M
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
White American ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
The American South

The southern states of the United States of America and South Africa share a number of analogous historical realities. One of these, which is the main subject of  this article,  is  the way in which the memory of a lost war had fused cultural mythology and religious symbolism to provide a foundation for the formation and maintenance of attitudes of white supremacy in both contexts.  This article seeks to achieve a historical  understanding of the complex interrelationship between the development of cultural identity and Protestant Christianity by  focusing on these issues in the histories of the Afrikaner and the white American Southerner in comparative perspective. 

scholarly journals Beyond the Psychological Wage: Du Bois on White Dominion

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ella Myers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The Universe

W.E.B. Du Bois’s reading of whiteness as a “public and psychological wage” is enormously influential. This essay examines another, lesser known facet of Du Bois’s account of racialized identity: his conceptualization of whiteness as dominion. In his 1920–1940 writings, “modern” whiteness appears as a proprietary orientation toward the planet in general and toward “darker peoples” in particular. This “title to the universe” is part of chattel slavery’s uneven afterlife, in which the historical fact of “propertized human life” endures as a racialized ethos of ownership. The essay examines how this “title” is expressed and reinforced in the twentieth century by the Jim Crow system of racial signs in the United States and by violent “colonial aggrandizement” worldwide. The analytic of white dominion, I argue, allows Du Bois to productively link phenomena often regarded as discrete, namely, domestic and global forms of white supremacy and practices of exploitation and dispossession. Ultimately, the entitlement Du Bois associates with whiteness is best understood as a pervasive, taken-for-granted horizon of perception, which facilitates the transaction of the “wage” but is not reducible to it.

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.”

The Congressional Black Caucus and the Closure of NASA’s Satellite Tracking Station at Hartebeesthoek, South Africa

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-180
Author(s):  
Keith Snedegar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Satellite Tracking ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Tracking Station ◽  
Minority Regime ◽  
The Impact

Keith Snedegar explores the impact of the civil rights movement on decisions related to NASA facilities outside the United States. Snedegar maintains that when Charles C. Diggs Jr., one of the founders of the Black Congressional Caucus, visited the NASA satellite tracking station at Hartesbeesthoek, South Africa, in 1971, he discovered a racially segregated facility where technical jobs were reserved for white employees and black Africans essentially performed menial labor. Upon his return to the United States, the Detroit congressman embarked on a two-year struggle, first to improve workplace equity at the tracking station, and later, for the closure of the facility. NASA administration under James Fletcher was largely indifferent to demands for change at the station. It was only after Representative Charles Rangel proposed a reduction in NASA appropriations did the agency announce plans to end its working relationship with the white minority regime of South Africa. NASA’s public statements suggested that a scientific rationale lay behind the station’s eventual closure in 1975, but this episode clearly indicates that NASA was acting only under political pressure, and its management remained largely insensitive to global issues of racial equality.

Selling White Supremacy in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Party ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
Sustained Effort ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces South African foreign policy responses to the civil rights movement in the United States. It explores how the National Party engaged with the racial politics of the Cold War in an attempt legitimize apartheid to an increasingly sceptical global audience. The National Party did not shy away from challenging negative portrayals of apartheid. In the United States, South African diplomatic officials mounted a systematic propaganda campaign to correct “misconceptions” and present the apartheid system in a positive light. Equating black protest with communist subversion, South African diplomats engaged in a deliberate and sustained effort to defend apartheid in the United States.

Prison autobiographical narratives: Making sense of personal and social (racial) transformation

2019 ◽  
pp. 174165901988011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lynn
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The 1960S

This article investigates autobiographical public narratives of people who are, and were, incarcerated during different regimes of injustices in the United States—from the civil rights era to the current era of mass incarceration. People make sense of their experiences with race and racism through time, from a present standpoint of incarceration or freedom, in retrospect via proximate and distant memories of injustices, and toward a vision of the future. I juxtapose mainstream autobiographies from Malcolm X to Shaka Senghor with public blog posts from individuals incarcerated who provide autobiographical accounts to the world. I find that generations of incarcerated people who came of age during the height of the War on Drugs of the 1980s and 1990s project a narrative of a neoliberal subject who has a more individualistic and de-racialized idea of transforming their moral self and community. This contradicts with the way they portray prison as being a conduit for creating communities of racial solidarity and racial consciousness. Highly influenced and inspired by other narratives of radical prisoners of conscience of the 1960s and 1970s who were prone to view their liberation, and of the Black community, through vanquishing White supremacy, the new generation speaks to the color-blind narratives that pervade mainstream society and possible in narrative interventions correctional program.

“Civil Rights” Policy in the United States and the Policy of “Integration” in Europe: Divergent Approaches to a Similar Issue

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gérard Noiriel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
European Economic Community ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
European Continent ◽  
American Case ◽  
The One ◽  
Similar Issue

Comparing European and North American policies with respect to “civil rights” is a difficult exercise for two reasons. First, it is important to emphasize that Europe and the United States are not political entities of a same nature. Granted, the fact that the nations that today comprise Europe are heirs of common history explains in part the similarities in their political behavior and distinguishes them as a group from the “New World.” Yet in the American case, despite the country's federalist structure and the existence of fifty states within the Union, we are dealing with a single nation, endowed with a central government capable of generating policies that are valid throughout the territory. Such is not the case with Europe. As is well known, the European continent is divided into two sharply contrasted spheres. On the one hand, there is the East, thrown into confusion by the devastation of communism and mired in a profound economic crisis. On the other hand, there is the West, comprised of nations that share a level of economic prosperity comparable to that of the United States but which do not form a single political entity. At present, the European Economic Community includes only twelve European states; the remaining countries, such as Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria, have yet to become members. In this essay, the question of “civil rights” will be examined specifically in light of those countries that already belong to the EEC.

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