Black Internationalism, Anticommunism, and the Prison

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Black Internationalism ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
White Settler Colonialism ◽  
Global Language

Chapters 5 and 6 both document how African Americans and black South Africans established the prison as a key site of black international protest in the 1950s. Specifically, chapter 5 examines how anticommunism operated as a global language that was employed to bolster white supremacy and limit black protest. However, this section of the book also demonstrates how black activists responded to their arrest and imprisonment by strategically connected white settler colonialism in southern Africa to racism in America. This resulted in political prisoners on both sides of the Atlantic being configured as icons of resistance, heroic figures through which black international solidarities were launched and maintained.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
State Power ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Black Internationalism ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
Direct Support ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Economic Ties

This concluding chapter argues that African Americans were part of a broad and multifaceted effort to isolate South Africa in the global political arena. By repeatedly attempting to offer direct support to African liberation movements and calling for America to renounce its political and economic ties with the National Party, their actions made life difficult for white politicians in ways that that would continue to inform the global anti-apartheid movement beyond the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. This argument is not meant to downplay the disruptive influence that anticommunism had on black protest. Rather, it is designed to shift the focus onto the ways in which black activists, with different political visions, responded to state power. Finally, given the broad response of African Americans to the anti-apartheid movement, this concluding chapter suggests that we might need to move towards a more expansive definition of black internationalism – one that accounts for the anticolonial political agenda and transnational solidarities forges by both African American leftists and liberals.

Crossing the Black Atlantic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
South African ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
State Repression ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
The U.S

This chapter explores how trans-Atlantic travel provided an important avenue through which black activists related to one another’s struggles. It also demonstrates how the U.S. and South African governments worked to regulate and restrict transnational black travel during the early Cold War. Focusing in on the lesser-known transatlantic journeys of Canada Lee, Sidney Poitier, and Z. K. and Frieda Matthews, the chapter argues that these individuals acted as important cultural translators that physically connected the struggle against racism in both countries. Finally, by tracing the international opposition to the removal of Paul Robeson’s passport, the chapter shows how experiences of state repression could be negotiated in ways that further strengthened bonds of solidarity between African Americans and black South Africans.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Cold War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans

This chapter provides an overview of racial politics in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s. It traces how African Americans and black South Africans have historically configured their struggles as being interconnected, while documenting how anticommunism limited opportunities for transnational black activism between both countries during the early Cold War.

scholarly journals Estimating Glomerular Filtration Rate in Black South Africans by Use of the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease and Cockcroft-Gault Equations

2008 ◽  
Vol 54 (7) ◽  
pp. 1197-1202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrick E van Deventer ◽  
Jaya A George ◽  
Janice E Paiker ◽  
Piet J Becker ◽  
Ivor J Katz
Keyword(s):  
Glomerular Filtration Rate ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Renal Disease ◽  
Glomerular Filtration ◽  
Filtration Rate ◽  
Estimated Gfr ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Mdrd Equation ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
Measured Gfr

Abstract Background: The 4-variable Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (4-v MDRD) and Cockcroft-Gault (CG) equations are commonly used for estimating glomerular filtration rate (GFR); however, neither of these equations has been validated in an indigenous African population. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of the 4-v MDRD and CG equations for estimating GFR in black South Africans against measured GFR and to assess the appropriateness for the local population of the ethnicity factor established for African Americans in the 4-v MDRD equation. Methods: We enrolled 100 patients in the study. The plasma clearance of chromium-51–EDTA (51Cr-EDTA) was used to measure GFR, and serum creatinine was measured using an isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS) traceable assay. We estimated GFR using both the reexpressed 4-v MDRD and CG equations and compared it to measured GFR using 4 modalities: correlation coefficient, weighted Deming regression analysis, percentage bias, and proportion of estimated GFR within 30% of measured GFR (P30). Results: The Spearman correlation coefficient between measured and estimated GFR for both equations was similar (4-v MDRD R2 = 0.80 and CG R2 = 0.79). Using the 4-v MDRD equation with the ethnicity factor of 1.212 as established for African Americans resulted in a median positive bias of 13.1 (95% CI 5.5 to 18.3) mL/min/1.73 m2. Without the ethnicity factor, median bias was 1.9 (95% CI −0.8 to 4.5) mL/min/1.73 m2. Conclusions: The 4-v MDRD equation, without the ethnicity factor of 1.212, can be used for estimating GFR in black South Africans.

Winning Our Freedoms Together

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
South African ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
South Africans ◽  
International Activism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

In this transnational account of black protest, Nicholas Grant examines how African Americans engaged with, supported, and were inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. Bringing black activism into conversation with the foreign policy of both the U.S. and South African governments, this study questions the dominant perception that U.S.-centered anticommunism decimated black international activism. Instead, by tracing the considerable amount of time, money, and effort the state invested into responding to black international criticism, Grant outlines the extent to which the U.S. and South African governments were forced to reshape and occasionally reconsider their racial policies in the Cold War world. This study shows how African Americans and black South Africans navigated transnationally organized state repression in ways that challenged white supremacy on both sides of the Atlantic. The political and cultural ties that they forged during the 1940s and 1950s are testament to the insistence of black activists in both countries that the struggle against apartheid and Jim Crow were intimately interconnected.

Minority Monopoly in Transition: Recent Policy Shifts of the South African State

1980 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heribert Adam
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
African State ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Real ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
The Government ◽  
Policy Shifts ◽  
Recent Policy

Does Zimbabwe provide the model for the likely transformation of white minority rule in the industrial heart of Southern Africa? With their morale boosted, the expectations of many black South Africans have been raised. Likewise many outside commentators predict the inevitable downfall of the white bastion along similar lines of escalating military confrontation after the last buffer state but Namibia has gone. Even Nationalist newspapers draw the lessons by admonishing the Government to pay attention to the ‘real leaders’ of the subordinates instead of unrepresentative collaborators. The Afrikaner political leadership uses the Rhodesian example to drum home its message of ‘adapt or die’ to a bewildered electorate.

NIDDM in African-Americans and Black South Africans: Many Similarities but Some Important Differences

Diabetes Care ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 1451-1452 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. I. Joffe ◽  
J. R. Wing ◽  
M. Zouvanis ◽  
A. Pieterse ◽  
H. C. Seftel
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans

Up from Slavery and Down with Apartheid! African Americans and Black South Africans against the Global Color Line

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-329
Author(s):  
ROBERT TRENT VINSON
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
South African ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Color Line ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Transatlantic History ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Martin Luther King

Across the twentieth century, black South Africans often drew inspiration from African American progress. This transatlantic history informed the global antiapartheid struggle, animated by international human rights norms, of Martin Luther King Jr., his fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner the South African leader Albert Luthuli, and the African American tennis star Arthur Ashe. While tracing the travels of African Americans and Africans “going South,” this article centers Africa and Africans, thereby redressing gaps in black Atlantic and African diaspora scholarship.

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