African American Dreams

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. White
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Free African Americans

The experience of slavery had an indelible effect on the dreams of black Americans. Some slaves dreamt of escape, or of loved ones who had been sold away. Former slaves sometimes had vivid dreams of being returned into slavery. Whether slave or free, African Americans often looked to their dreams as signs from God or as confirmation of their conversion to Christianity. White Americans tended to look down on African American dream practices as superstitious, but in fact, white and black Americans had a shared dream culture that stretched back into the colonial era.

scholarly journals Jim Crow Downunder? African American Encounters with White Australia, 1942––1945

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Brawley ◽  
Chris Dixon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
White Americans ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The American South ◽  
The U.S

Between 1941 and 1945, as the U.S. military machine sent millions of Americans——and American culture——around the world, several thousand African Americans spent time in Australia. Armed with little knowledge of Australian racial values and practices, black Americans encoutered a nation whose long-standing commitment to the principle of "White Australia" appeared to rest comfortably with the segregative policies commonly associated with the American South. Nonetheless, while African Americans did encounter racism and discrimination——practices often encouraged by the white Americans who were also stationed in Australia during the war——there is compelling evidence that their experiences were not always negative. Indeed, for many black Americans, Australians' apparent open-mindedness and racial views of white Britons and others with whom African Americans came into contact during the war. Making use of U.S. Army censors' reports and paying attention to black Americans' views of their experiences in Australia, this article not only casts light on an aspect of American-Australian relations that has hitherto recieved scant scholarly attention and reveals something about the African American experience, but also offers insights into race relations within the U.S. armed forces.

scholarly journals Understanding Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Rejection of Hope

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 22-30
Author(s):  
Maanvi Dhillon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Black American ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Work First

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me is written as a letter to his son, but serves many roles: a collection of personal experiences as an African American man, a history of black people’s exploitation and oppression in America, and advice for navigating the country and its historical, systematic, expansive and deeply embeddedd racism. Readers and critics have noted the pessimism of the work, as Coates writes pragmatically and coldly with no optimism about the potential to end the racist oppression of black Americans. This essay analyzes Coates’ rejection of hope by parsing through the audiences he addresses and the respective messages underlying his work. First, the essay considers how Coates urges readers to think critically about the hopeful narrative of the American Dream and see how it obscures the racism underlying and determining both white Americans’ economic, political and social successes, as well as the struggles and cyclic obstacles afflicting black American communities. Using literary analysis, the essay argues that Coates’ rebuke of the American dream is meant to be addressed towards white Americans, as they are more susceptible to accepting its tempting and convenient narrative. Coates provides his son and the black American community with a different critique of hope; he shows the futility of maintaining optimism about the achievement of racial equality when that outcome depends on their nation and white peers who demonstrate no interest in ending the racist structures and systems that privilege them. Coates’ argument is clarified in the essay by framing it as a form of literary theorist Lauren Berlant’s conception of cruel optimism. Ultimately, by exploring the nuance in Coates’ pessimistic work, the essay reveals how Coates’ rejection of hope is both an effective message in addressing his various audiences and a justified sentiment, particularly given the high cost of holding on to hope for black Americans.

Emancipation and Free African Americans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Archer
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African Descent ◽  
American Population ◽  
African American Population ◽  
Free African Americans

Except in parts of Rhode Island and Connecticut, slavery was a peripheral institution, and throughout New England during and after the Revolution there was widespread support to emancipate slaves. Some of the states enacted emancipation laws that theoretically allowed slavery to continue almost indefinitely, and slavery remained on the books as late as 1857 in New Hampshire. Although the laws gradually abolished slavery and although the pace was painfully slow for those still enslaved, the predominant dynamic for New England society was the sudden emergence of a substantial, free African American population. What developed was an even more virulent racism and a Jim Crow environment. The last part of the chapter is an analysis of where African Americans lived as of 1830 and the connection between racism and concentrations of people of African descent.

Crispus Attucks Meets Jim Crow

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitch Kachun
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Community Organizations ◽  
White Americans ◽  
High Regard ◽  
American Memory ◽  
History Books

As Jim Crow segregation came to define black Americans’ place in the nation by the end of the nineteenth century, American memory also became largely segregated. African Americans continued to hold Attucks in high regard, but his name was invoked far less frequently in mainstream popular culture and historical scholarship. As white America all but abandoned its concern for the basic welfare and rights of black citizens, a black hero like Crispus Attucks had little chance to enter the heroic pantheon of the nation. School textbooks, mainstream popular culture, and white Americans in general virtually erased Attucks from the story of the American Revolution. African Americans kept his memory alive in history books, public commemorations, and memorial acts like the naming of children and community organizations.

Post-Slavery? Post-Segregation? Post-Racial? A History of the Impact of Slavery, Segregation, and Racism on the Education of African Americans

2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (14) ◽  
pp. 53-74
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Span
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Educational Experiences ◽  
Source Analysis ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This chapter details how slavery, segregation, and racism impacted the educational experiences of African Americans from the colonial era to the present. It offers a historical overview of the African American educational experience and uses archival data and secondary source analysis to illustrate that America has yet to be a truly post-slavery and post-segregation society, let alone a post-racial society.

The Optics of Liberian Emigration

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-167
Author(s):  
Aston Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Colonization Society ◽  
Fugitive Slave

This chapter explores the life and work of Augustus Washington, the free African American photographer, who envisioned more rights and freedoms than those available in the United States. Anticipating a future in the United States bound by racial restraints, he packed up his successful photography studio in Hartford, Connecticut, and emigrated to Monrovia, Liberia. Washington worked closely with the American Colonization Society to convince black Americans to leave their homeland for Liberia and attempted to provoke viewers of his images to envision the potential of black rights in the United States that he enjoyed in Liberia. Washington’s images promulgating black Liberian political leadership and economic promise abroad offered a vision of freedom that belied a hierarchical, and often oppressive, Liberian society. In the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, his images brought into focus the debates among African Americans about the uncertain, and perhaps imperiled, future of black people in the United States.

African Americans: Practice Interventions

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon E. Moore
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
Teen Pregnancy ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
White Collar ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Female Headed Households ◽  
White Workers ◽  
Wage Earnings

African Americans number about 35 million or 12% of the U.S. population. Their life expectancy is lower than that of White Americans, and despite the educational gains made since mid-1980s, the unemployment gap between African Americans and Whites has increased. Similarly, although the number of African Americans working in white-collar occupations has increased, the disparity in wage earnings between African American and White workers continues. Regardless of social class African Americans are made to be cognizant of their race at all times. Today they are still at risk for social issues such as substance abuse, teen pregnancy, incarceration, poverty, high rates of female headed households, infant mortality that is twice as high as Whites, residential segregation, racism, and discrimination. As daunting as these problems are, the strengths of the African American community have allowed it to thrive even amid arduous circumstances.

scholarly journals The American Dream: Its Echoes and Possibilities in Literary Discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Kalu, Kalu Obasi
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Inaugural Speech ◽  
The Face ◽  
American Society

The American Dream stems from the inaugural speech of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”(1941). The Four Freedoms envisaged an American society where the freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of movement and the rights to life are enshrined, guaranteed, and accommodated. America has been clouded with numerous yearnings from all angles – politics, academic, economic, among other social upheavals for the enthronement of the Four Freedoms. Literary scholars have diminutively expressed the horrors of African Americans in various forms and shades, and have hopefully waited for the day it will be implemented. This paper attempts to relay the horrors, echoes, and possibilities of the American Dream as expressed by literary scholars, and the mass media. It also attempts to unveil the measures the African Americans have tried to live within the face of the horrors that have attained their existence among the White Americans. The possibilities of their struggles to live above subjugations, oppressions, the Jim Crow Laws, and racial discrimination that have rocked the American society for decades are also within the wavelength of this work. 

Living with Lynching

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koritha Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Right ◽  
White Violence

This book demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence. Often available in periodicals, lynching plays were read aloud or acted out by black church members, schoolchildren, and families. This book shows that these community performances and readings presented victims as honorable heads of households being torn from model domestic units by white violence, counter to the dominant discourses that depicted lynching victims as isolated brutes. Examining lynching plays as archival texts that embody broad networks of sociocultural exchange in the lives of black Americans, the author finds that audiences were rehearsing and improvising new ways of enduring in the face of widespread racial terrorism. Images of the black soldier, lawyer, mother, and wife helped readers assure each other that they were upstanding individuals who deserved the right to participate in national culture and politics. These powerful community coping efforts helped African Americans band together and withstand the nation's rejection of them as viable citizens.

Mass Imprisonment and Trust in the Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 651 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Muller ◽  
Daniel Schrage
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Family Member ◽  
Close Friend ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Incarceration Rate ◽  
Mass Imprisonment ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the relationship between two facets of mass imprisonment—its novel comparative and historical scale and its pervasiveness in the lives of African Americans—and surveys respondents’ beliefs about the harshness of the courts, and bias in the courts or among police. Analyses of national survey data show that as states’ incarceration rates increased, so too did the probability that residents believed that courts were too harsh. However, while white Americans’ opinions about the courts were sensitive to changes in the white incarceration rate, African Americans’ opinions were not sensitive to changes in the African American incarceration rate. African American respondents who had been to prison or who had a close friend or family member who had been to prison were more likely to attribute racial disparities in incarceration to police bias and bias in the courts. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible consequences of declining trust in the law for the future of American punishment.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document