White Shame/Black Agency

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Ingrid Grant
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
Racial Discourse ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Racial Perspectives ◽  
Black Agency

This chapter examines the role of race in the transformation of the former German enemy into an American friend that took place in the Rhineland occupation zone between 1918 and 1923. It proposes that in the crucible of the occupation zone, dissimilar and heightened American and German understandings and practices of race converged with usual postwar indignities of brutality, revenge, and survival. What emerged was a transformed global pattern of racial perspectives and reconciled alliances. W. E. B. Du Bois named this reorganization of racial discourse “the discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples.” The chapter proposes that another stream of interactions bound Germans and Americans together: they grappled with their perceptions of interior “racialized” enemies, deepened their crafting of white supremacy, and expressed similar interior visions while at work on their world visions.

A Splendid Failure?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijay Phulwani
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Racial Uplift ◽  
Alternative Strategies ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Political Agitation ◽  
The Subject

In this essay, Vijay Phulwani posits that Du Bois uses the language of tragedy in 1935’s Black Reconstruction in America to emphasize the constraints and limitations created by white supremacy and subvert the tragic legend of Reconstruction. Informed by his changing understanding of the role of slaves and freedmen in the Civil War and Reconstruction, Du Bois’s ideas moved from an emphasis on internal racial uplift and external political agitation to a theory of economic separatism and a strategic embrace of segregation. Du Bois returned to the subject of Reconstruction many times throughout his career, using it to rethink and further develop his ideas about the form and content of black politics. Phulwani argues that by continuing to analyze Reconstruction, Du Bois was able to simultaneously narrate its history and model alternative strategies for building black political and economic power.

scholarly journals The Local versus the Global in the history of relativity: The case of Belgium

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Sjang L. ten Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
First World War ◽  
Global History ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions.

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.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Anya P. Foxen
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Translation ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
Definition Of

This introduction presents the argument and general parameters of the subsequent chapters. It argues that modern postural yoga as practiced in popularized contexts (such as gyms and corporate studios) is only tangentially related to premodern Indian yogic traditions. Broadly, it makes the case that the dynamics of cross-cultural translation necessitate that we examine both the original and host context of the concept or practice in question. It then outlines the main areas that must be considered in framing such an argument, specifically the difficulty of defining yoga, the historical role of Orientalism, the definition of “harmonialism,” and the issues surrounding gender, race, class, and white supremacy.

Prejudice, Moral Progress, and Not Being on the Wrong Side of History

2020 ◽  
pp. 127-153
Author(s):  
Linda C. McClain
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Majority Opinion ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Wrong Side ◽  
The Supreme Court

This chapter argues that evaluating the arguments the parties made in Loving v. Virginia (1967), the iconic case in which the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, aids in understanding puzzles about bigotry. Virginia attempted a modern, sociological defense of its racist law. Loving illustrates the role of generational moral progress in constitutional interpretation: laws justified by appeals to nature, God’s plan for the races, and children’s well-being were repudiated as rooted in racial prejudice, intolerance, and white supremacy. The chapter then considers Loving’s crucial (but contested) role in constitutional challenges to bars on same-sex marriage, first analyzing the successful challenge to Virginia’s defense of marriage law. It then analyzes the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, holding that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry; the dissenters argued Loving was inapt. The chapter concludes by discussing the role of moral progress and new insight in constitutional interpretation.

Mormonism and White Supremacy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
American Christianity ◽  
White American ◽  
Mormon History ◽  
Moral Innocence

This book examines the role of white American Christianity in fostering and sustaining white supremacy. It draws from theology, critical race theory, and American religious history to make the argument that predominantly white Christian denominations have served as a venue for establishing white privilege and have conveyed to white believers a sense of moral innocence without requiring moral reckoning with the costs of anti-Black racism. To demonstrate these arguments, the book draws from Mormon history from the 1830s to the present, from an archive that includes speeches, historical documents, theological treatises, Sunday school curricula, and other documents of religious life.

Desirablizing Whiteness: A Discursive Practice in Social Justice Leadership That Entrenches White Supremacy

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 656-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon I. Radd ◽  
Tanetha Jamay Grosland
Keyword(s):  
Urban Education ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Property Value ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
Practical Recommendations

This article conceptualizes “Desirablizing Whiteness” as a discursive practice. Desirablizing Whiteness occurs when equity efforts aim to include racially minoritized students in actions, situations, formats, and settings where they have been absent or underrepresented, and which have been the “property” of Whites. The literature on discourse, discursive practices, and emotions serve to explain the nature of Desirablizing Whiteness as a complicated and contradictory construct. Tenets from critical race theory highlight the fundamentally racist effect of this discursive practice. Because Whiteness’ property value is both tangible and psychic, the presence and role of emotions are key to understanding how Desirablizing Whiteness has a dialectical relationship with human interactions and decision making, ultimately undermining social justice efforts. Practical recommendations for school leaders and scholars concerned with urban education close the article.

scholarly journals Milieu Relevance of Melanin’s Antiviral Effects and Interventions to the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Immune System ◽  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Preventative Treatment ◽  
Dietary Practices ◽  
Antiviral Effects ◽  
The World

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected melanin dominant people, while on the continent of Africa, this novel strain does not appear to have decimated the population. Contrary to many scientific expectations, native Africans on the continent are less impacted compared to the global number of infections in other regions of the world. Therefore, an analysis of the role of melanin and milieu should be assessed by healthcare providers who have a concern for melanin-dominant populations. Questions are raised that Melanin has antiviral effects and there are additional factors derived from comorbidity that impact the susceptibility to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) embedded in institutional racism (aka the system of white supremacy-Milieu). Dietary practices, access to healthcare, lifestyle and genetics can influence the severity of illnesses associated with contracting this virulent coronavirus via intense erratic activation of the immune system among those subjected to a plethora of chronic societal stressors. In summary, this article will address the effects of this crisis on people of African descent and suggest alternative treatments as an intermediary, rather than exclusive reliance on a vaccine as preventative treatment. The relevance of such discourse is critical given America’s medical history, which has fostered profound distrust among her melanin-dominant citizenry.

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