Racism and Confederate Monument Construction: Temporal Regimes Distinguishing the 1900s, 1960s, and Contemporary Decades

The bulk of Confederate monuments were constructed by White southerners in the early 1900s, but some were built much later. Recent research has assessed average relationships across the decades, but comparable evidence for distinct peaks in construction is lacking. My objective is to determine whether the timing of monument construction is connected to unique social contexts, particularly different manifestations of racism. I use multinomial regression analysis and a rich dataset spanning the U.S. South. Results confirm the central role of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), but also suggest stronger attachments to slavery and greater reliance on lynching increase the risk of erecting a monument in the early 1900s. In contrast, the resurgence of construction in the 1960s is unrelated to the presence of a UDC chapter and positively related to the presence of an National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter. Construction in the decades after the 1960s shift again, suggesting the renewed importance of the UDC (in addition to the location of Civil War battles), but no role of racialized dynamics. Results suggest three distinct regimes of Confederate monument construction that broadly reflect the structural racism that dominated the early 1900s; the group threat/countermovement dynamics of the 1960s; and the “colorblind” era of racism associated with contemporary decades. This research contributes to knowledge of the factors associated with Confederate monument construction and provides a foundation for public and academic discussions of how racism is intertwined with these divisive public symbols.

Diversity Committees During The Era of Social Justice

The deaths of George Floyd and other African American men and women in 2020 awakened the consciousness of Americans and social justice advocates across the world. The chants of “Black Lives Matter!” echoed from the streets of Minneapolis – all the way to the shores of Cape Town, South Africa. Immense pressure from protestors and community organizers caused those in education and traditional business sectors to evaluate their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Many organizations responded by releasing statements in support of minoritized groups, often including the hashtags #BLM or #NAACP[i]. However, despite support offered via social media, consumers and social justice advocates demanded more than just words. To that end, many institutions began to establish diversity book clubs, while others created DEI committees, and/or appointed a Chief Diversity Officer to guide DEI initiatives across the institution (Byrd et al., 2021). Constructing and operating a diverse DEI committee presents significant challenges. In addition to the barriers associated with assembling diverse members, there are also methodological constraints as there is a dearth of empirical research within the extant literature that provides guidance in constructing and evaluating the effectiveness of DEI committees. To that end, the purpose of this article is three-fold: (1) to discuss the necessity of DEI committees in higher education and corporate settings; (2) to explain why DEI committees sometimes fail; and (3) to offer some suggestions for addressing ways to improve their overall effectiveness. [i] These are the Twitter designations for Black Lives Matter and The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, respectively.

The Boundaries of Blackness

Chapter 5 examines struggles over inductees’ “proper” racial classification and placement in the segregated World War II–era US military. In millions of cases, classification was routine and uncontroversial. But in hundreds of cases—involving people who identified as everything from American Indian to Moorish American to white—men challenged their official race classification, or their placement in the segregated military, or both. The most heated and consequential of these challenges revolved around the meaning and membership of “colored” (a synonym for “Negro” or black)—not white. “Colored” people were by far the most thoroughly segregated and subjugated descent group in the US military, which meant that their race classification involved not just classification itself, but also assignment to “colored” outfits. Since membership in these outfits carried so many acute disadvantages, the stakes related to the “colored” category were unquestionably highest.

Are Black state legislators more responsive to emails associated with the NAACP versus BLM? A field experiment on Black intragroup politics

We fielded an experiment on a sample of approximately 400 Black state legislators to test whether they would be more responsive to an email that mentioned the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) relative to an email that mentioned Black Lives Matter (BLM). The experiment tested Cohen's theory of secondary marginalization (1999), whereby relatively advantaged members of a marginalized group regulate the behavior, attitudes, and access to resources of less advantaged members of the group. We expected that Black legislators would be less responsive to an email that referenced BLM, an organization that is associated with more marginalized members of the Black community. Contrary to our hypothesis, Black legislators were as responsive to emails referencing inspiration from BLM as they were to emails referencing inspiration from the NAACP. Thus, we do not find any evidence of intragroup discrimination by Black state legislators. To our knowledge, this is the first field experiment to test Cohen's theory of secondary marginalization.1

Uniting for Survival

This chapter documents several brutal clashes between African Americans and the police, which engendered a loose coalition of Black organizations and a number of sympathetic white ministers. It recounts the Rochester cases that garnered significant attention, while police clashes occurred throughout most cities in the postwar era. It also mentions a case where the US Justice Department interceded and another case where the famed Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X joined the protest efforts. The chapter argues that police brutality became a salient issue for a broad cross section of the Black community, which included ministers who cultivated and promoted a unified response. It talks about the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that worked closely with Malcolm X and local Nation of Islam leaders to organize a unity rally, chastising the Rochester branch for consorting with reputed Black separatists.

Gandhi, ‘The Coloured Races’, and the Future of Satyagraha: The View from the African American Press

W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the Crisis, a journal of the ‘darker races’ that was the organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was among the earliest African American intellectuals to take a strong interest in Gandhi. However, the African American press, represented by newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, was as a whole prolific in its representation of the Indian Independence movement. This article, after a detailed consideration of Du Bois’s advocacy of Gandhi’s ideas, analyses the worldview of the African American press and its outlook towards the movement in India. It is argued that a more ecumenical conception of the ‘Global South’ ought to be sensitive to African American history, and I suggest that African American newspapers played a critical role in shaping notions of the solidarity of coloured peoples, pivoting their arguments around the Indian Independence movement and particularly the satyagraha campaigns of Gandhi.

Heads of the Colored People, de Nafissa Thompson-Spires: subjetividades femininas negras em diálogo

Este artigo aborda a literatura afro-americana feminina por meio da coletânea de contos Heads of the Colored People, de Nafissa Thompson-Spires, publicada originalmente em 2018. As narrativas nesse livro, que perpassam questões étnico-raciais, retratam uma multiplicidade de vivências de sujeitos negros nos Estados Unidos na atualidade. Em primeiro lugar, são apresentadas algumas considerações sobre construção de identidades, especialmente em relação a mulheres negras. Em seguida, é proposta uma análise dos contos “Fatima, the Biloquist: A Transformation Story” e “The Body’s Defenses Against Itself” com o objetivo de verificar de que modos se constroem as subjetividades da protagonista Fatima a partir de diálogos consigo mesma e com outras personagens femininas negras.

Confronting Race and Ethnicity: Education and Cultural Identity for Immigrants and Students from Asia

Years ago at graduate school, a fellow student in the American Seminar class asked, “What is the difference between race and ethnicity?” The professor replied, “Asians usually find it hard to distinguish the two.” The student was from an Asian country and the professor did not elaborate the distinction between the concepts. It is no brainer for Americans to tell the difference; however, for people new to American society who have not lived in a racially conscious and divisive society, it is confusing to refer to a minority people as belonging to both a particular race and to a different ethnicity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when millions of immigrants came to America in search of better life and supplied American industries with labor, they were labeled white, yellow, brown, or black. This skin-colored definition of people as different races reflected American racial views of people of different cultures. Even in current mainstream discourse, racial and ethnic minorities are still called people of color or colored people, instead of minorities.