Not a Problem People

Hurtin' Words ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 205-242
Author(s):  
Ted Ownby
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Family ◽  
Family Reunion ◽  
Habitat For Humanity

This chapter studies several movements in the late 1970s and 1980s that rejected the idea that southern families were facing unique crises. Alex Haley’s popular Roots, several African American memoirists, and the Black Family Reunion all celebrated adaptable, creative families. Habitat for Humanity hoped to improve life for people in poverty without assuming those people’s problems had roots in troubled families. Southern feminist novelists detailed a multiplicity of family styles.

scholarly journals Errant Kinship, Traveling Song: James Baldwin’s Just Above My Head

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-45
Author(s):  
Jenny M. James
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Family ◽  
Fundamental Characteristic ◽  
Familial Relations ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Previous Scholarship

This article considers James Baldwin’s last published novel, Just Above My Head (1979), as the culmination of his exploration of kinship, reflecting on the ways distance and loss characterize African-American familial relations. By analyzing Baldwin’s representation of Hall Montana’s relationship to, and mourning of, his younger brother Arthur, this article argues that JAMH revises the terms of the black family to imagine an alternative, errant kinship that is adoptive, migratory, and sustained through songs of joy and grief. My approach to the novel’s portrayal of kinship is indebted to Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation (1990), in which he defines “errantry” as a fundamental characteristic of diaspora that resists the claustrophobic, filial violence and territorial dispossession that are slavery’s legacies. Baldwin represents errant kinship in JAMH through his inclusion of music and formal experimentation. Departing from previous scholarship that reads JAMH as emblematic of the author’s artistic decline, I interpret the novel’s numerous syntactic and figurative experiments as offering new formal insight into his portrait of brotherly love. Baldwin’s integration of two distinctive leitmotifs, blood and song, is therefore read as a formal gesture toward a more capacious and migratory kinship.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 282-290
Author(s):  
Libra R. Hilde
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Family ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
African American Family ◽  
American Family ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Black Fathers ◽  
The World ◽  
Dominant Narratives

As Americans grapple with the most recent spate of deaths of African American men and women at the hands of the police, we are once again confronting damaging stereotypes about the Black family and Black masculinity rooted in the legacy of slavery. This book explores the masculine hierarchy of slavery that continues to influence current attitudes and shape public policy. Even as the world has changed, attitudes about human hierarchies have remained deeply entrenched. By telling the story of the often quietly heroic efforts that enslaved and free men undertook to be fathers, this book offers a counterpoint to the dominant narratives about the pathology of the African American family and absent Black fathers.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 203-210
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tuuri
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Family ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Government Funding ◽  
National Council ◽  
Leadership Positions ◽  
Grant Funding ◽  
Federal Grant ◽  
Family Reunion ◽  
Significant Support

This conclusion offers a brief overview of the National Council of Negro women (NCNW) from 1980 to the present, looking especially at its changes during the Regan era. After Ronald Regan's election, the NCNW lost a significant proportion of its federal grant funding. NCNW then began to build connections with private businesses through its network of professional black women. One example of this was that in 1986 the NCNW created the Black Family Reunion with significant support from Procter and Gamble. As government funding dried up, NCNW turned inward and began to focus again on broadening opportunities for professional and elite women. Today, NCNW continues to ensure that black women be given educational, political, and economic opportunities and serve in leadership positions in mainstream America.

Urban and Rural African American Female Caregivers' Family Reunion Participation

2005 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 129-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Letha A. Chadiha ◽  
Julie Miller-Cribbs ◽  
Jane Rafferty ◽  
Portia Adams ◽  
Robert Pierce ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American Female ◽  
Family Reunion

Knock, Knock the Hustle: Resisting Commercialism in the African American Family Film

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Britt
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Black Family ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
African American Family ◽  
Lottery Ticket ◽  
American Family ◽  
Value System ◽  
Alternative Sources

This chapter investigates the African American family film for portraits of black family life. Providing an analysis of three commercially-unsuccessful films – Louis C.K. Pootie Tang, Lance Rivera’s The Perfect Holiday, and Erik White’s Lottery Ticket – this chapter explores the means by which these films satirize the “supercapitalist” value system permeating the entertainment industry. These films point to alternative sources of happiness and fulfilment existing outside those provided by material comfort.

Rural-Urban Differences in Black Family Structure

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
HAYWARD DERRICK HORTON ◽  
MELVIN E. THOMAS ◽  
CEDRIC HERRING
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
Black Family ◽  
Community Type ◽  
African American Family ◽  
American Family ◽  
Poverty Status ◽  
Urban Counterpart ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Moynihan Report

The nature and structure of the African American family continues to be a topic of importance in sociology. Since the much-maligned Moynihan report of the 1960s, sociologists have linked Black family structure to persisting disadvantage. However, the overwhelming majority of past studies have focused on the urban Black family. Accordingly, this article employs data from the 1990 Public Use Microdata Samples to compare the rural African American family to its urban counterpart. Results from the logistic regression analysis reveal that for rural Blacks, family structure is less important than community type and race relative to poverty status. These findings suggest a need for a refinement of the underclass debate.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document