No Strings Attached: Philanthropy, Race, and Donor Control From Black Power to Black Lives Matter

This article examines a moment of crisis and experimentation in philanthropy from the late 1960s to analyze how race shapes philanthropy. Specifically, it considers two giving circles in Boston launched as a linked funding initiative to address economic and racial inequality: (a) a group of wealthy, White suburbanites who started the Fund for Urban Negro Development to direct donations with “no strings attached” to the other, (b) the Boston Black United Front Foundation, an entity started by Black power activists in the city. Using archival records of the two groups, I analyze their efforts to decouple hierarchies of race and giving in funder–grantee relationships, and connect scholarship on African American history and philanthropy to that on donor control. I frame the notion of “no strings attached” giving as relative and shaped by positioning and identity in ways that produce multiple understandings of the material and abstract “strings” of philanthropy.

The Story of Violence in America

American history is characterized by its exceptional levels of violence. It was founded by colonial occupation and sustained by an economy of enslaved people who were emancipated by a Civil War with casualties rivaling any conflict of nineteenth-century Western Europe. Collective violence continued against African Americans following Reconstruction, and high levels of lethal violence emerged in American cities in the twentieth-century postwar period. What explains America's violent exceptionalism? How has structural violence against African Americans become ingrained in American culture and society? How has it been codified by law, or supported politically? Can we rectify and heal from our violent past?

Le Postmoderne et la « Visibilite » des « Invisibles » : Cas des « Native Americans » dans « This Land » de Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Cet article vise à montrer comment dans la philosophie postmoderne et avec le postmoderne, les « native americans » qui étaient « invisibles » dans la période de l’Eurocentrisme sont passés d’une « invisibilité » à une visibilité véritable. Puisque désormais ils ont droit à la parole et donc ils disent leur part de vérité sur l’histoire des États-Unis et sur leurs propres histoires à eux telle que vécues avec les euro-américains. A travers donc les théories de la déconstruction et de l’historicisme, l’étude a fait remarquer que les « native americans » ont une visibilité dans le monde postmoderne et plus précisément aux États-Unis à travers une visibilité liée à la réclamation de leurs terres, à travers une visibilité liée à la réécriture de l’histoire américaine, d’une part à enseigner sur eux et d’autre part à enseigner sur l’origine des États-Unis ; et enfin à travers une visibilité liée à la restauration et la restitution de leur héritage culturel, cet héritage culturel que les survivants des génocides possèdent et font rayonné. Il faut par ailleurs ajouter que ce passage du statut d’invisibles à la visibilité à trois niveaux (réclamation de leurs terres, réécriture de l’histoire américaine, restauration et restitution de leur héritage culturel) marque un tournant décisif dans la vie des États-Unis et c’est à juste titre que Joe Biden, le Président américain a choisi novembre 2021 pour célébrer l’héritage des «Native Americans». This article aims to show how in postmodern philosophy and with the postmodern, "native americans" who were "invisible" in the period of Eurocentrism went from "invisibility" to true visibility. Since now they have the right to speak and therefore they can tell their share of the truth about the history of the United States and their own stories as they used to live them since their contact with Euro-Americans. So through the theories of deconstruction and historicism, this study pointed out that “native americans” have visibility in the postmodern world and more precisely in the contemporary United States through a visibility linked to the claim of their lands, through a visibility linked to the rewriting of American history, on the one hand that taught about them and on the other hand that taught about the origin of the United States; and finally through a visibility linked to the restoration and restitution of their cultural heritage, this cultural heritage that the survivors of genocides possess and promote proudly. It should also be added that this passage from the status of invisibility to visibility at three levels (claim of their lands, rewriting of American history, restoration and restitution of their cultural heritage) indicates a decisive turning point in the history of the United States and it is with good reason that Joe Biden, the American President, declared November 2021 to celebrate Native American Heritage.

Representation and the problem of bibliographic imagination on Wikipedia

Purpose The astonishing thing about Wikipedia is that despite the way it is produced, the product is as good as it is and not far worse. But this is no reason for complacency. As others have documented, Wikipedia has representational blind spots, produced by the nature of its editorial community and their discursive conventions. This article wishes to look at the potential effect of sources on certain of these blind spots.Design/methodology/approach The author used an extended example, the Wikipedia article on the Philippine–American War, to illustrate the unfortunate effects that accompany a lack of attention to the kind of sources used to produce narratives for the online encyclopaedia. The Philippine–American War article was chosen because of its importance to American history. The war brought to the fore a debate over the future of the USA and the legitimacy of a republic acquiring overseas colonies. It remains controversial today, making it essential that its representation on Wikipedia is soundly constructed.Findings Inattention to sources (a lack of bibliographical imagination) produces representational anomalies. Certain sources are privileged when they should not be and others are ignored or considered as sub-standard. Overall, the epistemological boundaries of the article in terms of what the editorial community considers reliable and what the community of scholars producing knowledge about the war think as reliable do not overlap to the extent that they should. The resulting narrative is therefore less rich than it otherwise could be.Originality/value While there exists a growing literature on the representational blind spots of Wikipedia (gender, class, geographical region and so on), the focus has been on the composition of the demographics of the editorial community. But equally important to the problem of representation are the sources used by that community. Much literature has been written that seeks to portray the social world of the marginalized, but it is not used on Wikipedia, despite it easily meeting the criteria for reliability set by the Wikipedia community. This is a tragic oversight that makes Wikipedia's aim to be a repository for the knowledge of the world, a laudable goal to strive for, even if in reality unobtainable, even harder to achieve than ever.

Why and How Should We Teach Asian American History?

This synopsis of an interview conducted on March 12, 2021 reflects an interview conducted by Sohyun An and Ritu Radhakrishnan with Dr. Erika Lee, Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota. This interview took place during a time of extreme violence perpetrated against the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Our conversation was subdued and anxious. However, we recognized the importance of Dr. Lee's scholarship and knowledge in framing this special issue. Our focus during this interview was to provide a context for how Asian Americans are experiencing current events and how these events have been informed by history. As a result, Dr. Lee offers a perspective on why and how we should teach Asian American history.

Moving Asian American History from the Margins to the Middle in Elementary Social Studies Classrooms

This article describes how three Asian American elementary teachers in Texas reflected on the absence of Asian American histories in their own educational experiences, which later inspired them to teach Asian American histories in their classrooms. The teachers’ lessons about Asian American history required them to first (re)define the term Asian American with their students, and the teachers also (re)defined what it meant to be American. Ultimately, they promoted cultural citizenship, which is more inclusive and critical than traditional forms of citizenship that are defined by individual acts like voting and following rules. Cultural citizenship promotes difference as a resource; emphasizes the need to respect and humanize others; includes the voices, experiences, and perspectives of People of Color; and emphasizes human rights and agency. Asian American children’s literature was an essential tool in disrupting exclusionary histories and notions of citizenship as equal to whiteness, and the teachers' work demonstrates how educators can move Asian Americans from the margins to the middle of social studies instruction to support better teaching of U.S. history and democracy.