The Critique of American Racism in Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley

Written in the light of critical discourse about the social value of literary sympathy and against the backdrop of critical whiteness studies, the article deals with John Steinbeck’s non-fiction book Travels with Charley in Search of America. Framed by an interest in how the writer responded to the racial separation in the United States, the article demonstrates that this work, which is often dismissed as a “charming portrayal of America,” is a serious intervention in all sites of discrimination and domination.

Acknowledging Bias and Pursuing Protections to Support Anti-Racist Developmental Science: Critical Contributions of Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory

American racism is deeply engrained in the nation’s ecology including its chronosystem and contributes to the nation’s unavoidably shared vulnerability. Interrogating an accurate portrayal of the nation’s history is informative for securing anti-racist research. This special issue commentary discusses the role of Spencer’s phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST) as a means of providing an epistemic framing for disentangling and directly addressing the problem of structural racism in the conduct of science. Additionally it demonstrates the efficacy of PVEST and offers conclusions as opportunities for achieving anti-racist scholarship especially significant to adolescents’ well-being and the improved conduct of developmental science.

Black Soldiers in World War II America

The history of the African American military experience in World War II tends to revolve around two central questions: How did World War II and American racism shape the black experience in the American military? And how did black GIs reshape the parameters of their wartime experiences? From the mid-1920s through the Great Depression years of the 1930s, military planners evaluated the performance of black soldiers in World War I while trying to ascertain their presence in future wars. However, quite often their discussions about African American servicemen in the military establishment were deeply moored in the traditions, customs, and practices of American racism, racist stereotypes, and innuendo. Simultaneously, African American leaders and their allies waged a relentless battle to secure the future presence of the uniformed men and women who would serve in the nation’s military. Through their exercise of voting rights, threats of protest demonstration, litigation, and White House lobbying from 1939 through 1942, civil rights advocates and their affiliates managed to obtain some minor concessions from the military establishment. But the military’s stubborn adherence to a policy barring black and white soldiers from serving in the same units continued through the rest of the war. Between 1943 and 1945, black GIs faced white officer hostility, civilian antagonism, and military police brutality while undergoing military training throughout the country. Similarly, African American servicewomen faced systemic racism and sexism in the military during the period. Throughout various stages of the American war effort, black civil rights groups, the press, and their allies mounted the opening salvoes in the battle to protect and defend the wellbeing of black soldiers in uniform. While serving on the battlefields of World War II, fighting African American GIs became foot soldiers in the wider struggles against tyranny abroad. After returning home in 1945, black World War II-era activists such as Daisy Lampkin and Ruby Hurley, and ex-servicemen and women, laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement.

Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony

Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony exposed the deep wounds of American racism at the dawn of the Jim Crow era while serving as a flashpoint in broader debates about the national ideals of freedom and equality. Following several strands of musical thought during the second half of the nineteenth century, this richly textured account of the symphony’s 1893 premiere shows that even the classical concert hall could not remain insulated from the country’s fraught racial politics. The New World Symphony continued to wield extraordinary influence over American classical music culture for decades after its premiere as it became one of the most beloved pieces in the standard orchestral repertoire.

The Historian’s Self-Reflection and American Racism

In March 1997 a distinguished historian, Professor Joel Williamson of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, wrote a self-reflective essay in the Journal of American History ( JAH) in which he examined why he, as a born and bred Southerner, could not see and in fact denied and obviated the existence of lynching in American history. The JAH, with an exemplary psychodynamic introduction by editor David Thelen, persuaded six referees, all distinguished scholars, four white and two African American, to waive their strict confidentiality and publish their reviews. The author published the paper as submitted, with no revisions. This unique view of the workings of the academic publication review process reveals a sharp clash in evaluation between the referees based on race and stance toward the self-reflective intent of the author.