scholarly journals Imagining a Mestiza-Self Through the Double-Consciousness Trope

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 2510-2518
Author(s):  
Regina Sanders
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
The United States ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Internalized Racism ◽  
Mixed Race Identity ◽  
Black And White ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Race Identity

This paper is a comparative study between two African-American novels: Caucasia by Danzy Senna (1998) and Quicksand by Lenna Larsen(1928). It specifically discusses how their respective mixed-race protagonist re-appropriates the double-consciousness trope –a term originally coined by African-American scholar W. E. Du Bois to describe the existence of blacks in the United States. More specifically, I argue that Danzy Senna’s novel Caucasia transcends traditional notions of mixed-race identity found in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. First, I establish that Helga, the mulatta protagonist of Quicksand is constructed to play the version of the double-consciousness which assumes that mixed people (black and white) in United States live with internalized racism. Next, I demonstrate that Caucasia challenges Quicksand by providing us with a mulatta protagonist who re-appropriates the notions of double-consciousness by making it instrumental to her own survival and birth-right to be mixed.

Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics, Manning Marable, Second Edition, London: Verso, 2009

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-221
Author(s):  
Paul M. Heideman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
African American Politics ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Transformative Politics

AbstractThe new edition of Manning Marable’sBeyond Black and Whiteseeks to explain the course of black politics in the United States over the last thirty years. Marable argues that this history shows the failure of liberal and nationalist politics to address the problems facing black Americans. Though Marable attempts to chart a course beyond these ideologies, his alternative of ‘transformative politics’, shorn of the revolutionary Marxism that defined his earlier writings, is no more capable of confronting racial inequality than the strategies it seeks to replace.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study: Anxiety as an Impact of Slavery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Bhakti Satrio Nugroho
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
Psychological Element ◽  
American Society

This paper discusses the anxiety as an impact of slavery reflected in two outstanding African-American novels: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!. These novels are set in around the slavery period which shows how cruel and brutal slavery practices in the United States. The plots consist of some traditions and beliefs among White and African-American which have emerged since the antebellum period. By using a comparative approach, this paper focuses on the types of anxiety mentioned by Sigmund Freud. The analysis shows that both neurotic and moral anxieties play a pivotal psychological element throughout the intense “black-white” binary narratives. In this case, Toni Morrison’s Beloved consists of neurotic anxiety in the form of trauma experienced by Sethe and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! consist of moral anxiety in the form of shame for having Negro bloodline in aristocrat Southern plantation culture. Both novels show that slavery, whether it stands as a tradition or as an economic value, has significantly shaped the direction of American society.

“We Are Negroes!”

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-37
Author(s):  
Brandon R. Byrd
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Black Schools ◽  
Black And White

This essay examines the ideas and activism of a woman calling herself Madame Parque, who traveled across the United States giving lectures to black and white audiences during the 1870s. Claiming to be a well-educated, multilingual, and mixed-race Haitian educator, Parque spoke at courthouses, black churches, and black schools throughout the United States, mocking racism and sexism and celebrating Afro-diasporic history and black identity. The woman who presented herself as a Haitian named Madame Parque emboldened African Americans striving for meaningful freedom and prodded white Americans to develop more enlightened perspectives about black people. Her story captures the dynamic ways in which black women influenced the directions of black thought in the postemancipation United States.

Double Consciousness and an African American Enclave

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen R. Fellows
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
The Us

Fleeing a tremendous rise in racial tensions and an American nationality increasingly defined by whiteness, a small group of free blacks fled the US for the island nation of Haiti in 1824 and settled in what is now Samaná, Dominican Republic. The descendants of the original settlers continued to self-identify as both “American” and “black” until the most recent generations. This chapter will focus on issues of communal identity within the globally connected Caribbean, with special attention paid to intersection of race and nationality. Oral historical and archival data will reveal how the American community in Samaná continuously negotiated the “double consciousness” of their African-American identity in a place influenced first by the black Republic of Haiti and later the white, Hispanic, and Catholic nationalism of the Dominican Republic; similar to many Caribbean communities the United States has also played an important role in the development, maintenance, and dissolution of this communal identity.

How Mixed Race Is Not Constructed

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Zack
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Race ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Mixed Race Identity ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Race Identity ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
Sense Of Justice

American racial identities change over time and place, as all social constructions do, but they are also stable in historical and generational ways, because people in the same family are usually the same race. This is not the case for mixed race, particularly mixed black and white (MBW). People in mixed-race families belong to different races. Motives from self-interest, to lack of racial solidarity, to a sense of justice could motivate choosing mixed-race identity. Passing for the race others think one is not, and conforming or not, to norms for racial identities raise social and moral questions for members of the unconstructed racial group of mixed-race Americans.

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.

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