Some Psychological Implications of Black Struggle

Yet another long, hot summer in 2020 brought to the broader consciousness—in the US and well beyond—what Black folks have known for centuries about the ways in which racial hegemony relies on the acute violence of a police knee on a prone neck and the chronic violence of prisons, prefects, and (public housing) projects (for discussions, see Bulhan 1985; Omi and Winant 2014; Sidanius and Pratto 1999). In their commentary, AK Thompson makes too many important points for us to address in this brief commentary. Thus, as research psychologists with a transdisciplinary social-behavioral approach to protest, resistance, and societal change, we focus on what we see as Thompson’s most psychologically oriented theses: II, III, V, and VI. In sum, we see Thompson as arguing that social movements necessarily include a (more or less latent) threat of violence (II) and that this violence is noticed and suppressed because it challenges (III) the logic (economic, political, and cultural), the ethics, and the formalization (legal, political, and institutional) of racial hegemony (V). In addition, we take Thompson to argue that Black freedom struggles are, and have always been, flexible in means and aims (VI), adjusting strategically to the multifaceted dynamics of oppression and resistance.

“Known To Be Equal to the Management”

Enslaved overseers have largely been neglected in the extant historiography of plantation slavery. At best they have been pushed to the margins of the literature, their numbers and their significance downplayed. Yet, as large plantations diversified over the latter years of the eighteenth century, and as relations between established planters and independently minded and aspirational white overseers became prone to mistrust and friction, many prominent modernizing planters, including both Washington and Jefferson, began to experiment with unfree managers. They often proved to be skilled, dependable and, even under the pressure of the Revolutionary War, resilient. Yet their presence raised serious questions within plantation society too; they challenged white racial hegemony, and their ‘loyalty’ was a conditional and contingent quality. They occupy a unique place in the story of plantation management, one that challenges orthodox conceptions of race and power in the slave South.

Reputation and ‘reputational entrepreneurship’ in the colonial South and early republic: the case of plantation overseers*

Overseers were essential both to the profitability of North American slave plantations and to maintaining white racial hegemony. Yet they and their families were frequently condemned by planters as shiftless, incompetent, dishonest and brutal. Drawing on the sociology of reputation, and in particular the concept of ‘reputational entrepreneurship’, this article argues that the damning claims made by planters, and the responses of overseers and their wives, reveal an ongoing and significant social conflict within white colonial society between wealthy, but insecure, planter ‘patriarchs’ and their free, ambitious and independently minded employees.

RESISTENSI DAN RESPON ETNIK AFRO-AMERIKA ATAS MARJINALISASI ETNIK ANGLO-AMERIKA DALAM PUISI-PUISI KARYA HUGHES

This study aims to describe the forms of and responses to racial hegemony and theAfro-American ethnic group’s self-identity in Hughes’s poems. It employed the qualitativedescriptive approach. The data sources were Hughes’s poems entitled “I, Too, SingAmerica”, “Let America be America Again”, and “Theme for English B”. The data wereanalyzed by means of the postcolonialism theory, enriched by historical, socio-cultural,and political information during the post-civil-war era till 1960s in the United States ofAmerica. The findings are as follows. First, racial hegemony appears in the form of thenegative stereotype of the Afro-American ethnic group. The negative stereotype leadsto the marginalization of the Afro-American ethnic group, reflected by the injusticeand tyranny by the majority ethnic group. Second, responses to racial hegemony aremanifested in the Afro-American ethnic group’s awareness of dignity, self-esteem, andself-confidence as foundations to demand equality and to show their existence amid thewhite people ethnic group’s domination. Third, the pride of ethnic identity is actually apotential to realize Amerian ideals as a nation highly respecting equality and diversityas aspired by the founding fathers.