Download or read book Africans Are Not Black written by Kwesi Tsri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africans are not literally black, yet they are called black. Why? This book explores the genesis and evolution of the description of Africans as black, the consequences of this practice, and how it contributes to the denigration (blackening) and dehumanisation of Africans. It uses this analysis to advance a case for abandoning the use of the term ‘black’ to describe and categorise Africans. Mainstream discussions of the history of European racism have generally neglected the role of black and white colour symbolisms in sustaining the supposed superiority of those labelled white over those labelled black. This work redresses that neglect, by tracing the genesis of the conception of Africans as black in ancient Greece and its continued employment in early Christian writings, followed by an original, close analysis of how this use is replicated in three key representative texts: Shakespeare's Othello, the translation of the Bible into the African language Ewe, and a book by the influential Ghanaian religious leader, Mensa Otabil. It concludes by directly addressing the argument that ‘black’ can be turned into a positive concept, demonstrating the failure of this approach to deal with the real problems raised by imposing the term ‘black’ on its human referents.
Download or read book Black Africans in Renaissance Europe written by Thomas Foster Earle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-05-26 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly original book opens up the almost entirely neglected area of the black African presence in Western Europe during the Renaissance. Covering history, literature, art history and anthropology, it investigates a whole range of black African experience and representation across Renaissance Europe, from various types of slavery to black musicians and dancers, from real and symbolic Africans at court to the views of the Catholic Church, and from writers of African descent to Black African criminality. Their findings demonstrate the variety and complexity of black African life in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe, and how it was affected by firmly held preconceptions relating to the African continent and its inhabitants, reinforced by Renaissance ideas and conditions. Of enormous importance both for European and American history, this book mixes empirical material and theoretical approaches, and addresses such issues as stereotypes, changing black African identity, and cultural representation in art and literature.
Download or read book Blacks in Antiquity written by Frank M. Snowden and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigates the participation of black Africans, usually referred to as "Ethiopians," by the Greek and Romans, in classical civilization, concluding that they were accepted by pagans and Christians without prejudice.
Download or read book African Americans and Africa written by Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the complex relationship between African Americans and the African continent What is an “African American” and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States’ first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This book provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas. The diversity of African American identities through relationships with region, ethnicity, slavery, and immigration are all examined to investigate questions fundamental to the study of African American history and culture.
Download or read book The Hidden Cost of Being African American written by Thomas M. Shapiro and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past three decades, racial prejudice in America has declined significantly and many African American families have seen a steady rise in employment and annual income. But alongside these encouraging signs, Thomas Shapiro argues in The Hidden Cost of Being African American, fundamental levels of racial inequality persist, particularly in the area of asset accumulation--inheritance, savings accounts, stocks, bonds, home equity, and other investments-. Shapiro reveals how the lack of these family assets along with continuing racial discrimination in crucial areas like homeownership dramatically impact the everyday lives of many black families, reversing gains earned in schools and on jobs, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty in which far too many find themselves trapped. Shapiro uses a combination of in-depth interviews with almost 200 families from Los Angeles, Boston, and St. Louis, and national survey data with 10,000 families to show how racial inequality is transmitted across generations. We see how those families with private wealth are able to move up from generation to generation, relocating to safer communities with better schools and passing along the accompanying advantages to their children. At the same time those without significant wealth remain trapped in communities that don't allow them to move up, no matter how hard they work. Shapiro challenges white middle class families to consider how the privileges that wealth brings not only improve their own chances but also hold back people who don't have them. This "wealthfare" is a legacy of inequality that, if unchanged, will project social injustice far into the future. Showing that over half of black families fall below the asset poverty line at the beginning of the new century, The Hidden Cost of Being African American will challenge all Americans to reconsider what must be done to end racial inequality.
Download or read book Why I m No Longer Talking to White People About Race written by Reni Eddo-Lodge and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Every voice raised against racism chips away at its power. We can't afford to stay silent. This book is an attempt to speak' The book that sparked a national conversation. Exploring everything from eradicated black history to the inextricable link between class and race, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race is the essential handbook for anyone who wants to understand race relations in Britain today. THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS NON-FICTION NARRATIVE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 FOYLES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BLACKWELL'S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE JHALAK PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR A BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD
Download or read book Proudly We Can Be Africans written by James H. Meriwether and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-01-05 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mid-twentieth century witnessed nations across Africa fighting for their independence from colonial forces. By examining black Americans' attitudes toward and responses to these liberation struggles, James Meriwether probes the shifting meaning of Africa in the intellectual, political, and social lives of African Americans. Paying particular attention to such important figures and organizations as W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and the NAACP, Meriwether incisively utilizes the black press, personal correspondence, and oral histories to render a remarkably nuanced and diverse portrait of African American opinion. Meriwether builds the book around seminal episodes in modern African history, including nonviolent protests against apartheid in South Africa, the Mau Mau war in Kenya, Ghana's drive for independence under Kwame Nkrumah, and Patrice Lumumba's murder in the Congo. Viewing these events within the context of their own changing lives, especially in regard to the U.S. civil rights struggle, African Americans have continually reconsidered their relationship to contemporary Africa and vigorously debated how best to translate their concerns into action in the international arena. Grounded in black Americans' encounters with Africa, this transnational history sits astride the leading issues of the twentieth century: race, civil rights, anticolonialism, and the intersections of domestic race relations and U.S. foreign relations.
Download or read book Is Marriage for White People written by Ralph Richard Banks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished Stanford law professor examines the steep decline in marriage rates among the African American middle class, and offers a paradoxical-nearly incendiary-solution. Black women are three times as likely as white women to never marry. That sobering statistic reflects a broader reality: African Americans are the most unmarried people in our nation, and contrary to public perception the racial gap in marriage is not confined to women or the poor. Black men, particularly the most successful and affluent, are less likely to marry than their white counterparts. College educated black women are twice as likely as their white peers never to marry. Is Marriage for White People? is the first book to illuminate the many facets of the African American marriage decline and its implications for American society. The book explains the social and economic forces that have undermined marriage for African Americans and that shape everyone's lives. It distills the best available research to trace the black marriage decline's far reaching consequences, including the disproportionate likelihood of abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, single parenthood, same sex relationships, polygamous relationships, and celibacy among black women. This book centers on the experiences not of men or of the poor but of those black women who have surged ahead, even as black men have fallen behind. Theirs is a story that has not been told. Empirical evidence documents its social significance, but its meaning emerges through stories drawn from the lives of women across the nation. Is Marriage for White People? frames the stark predicament that millions of black women now face: marry down or marry out. At the core of the inquiry is a paradox substantiated by evidence and experience alike: If more black women married white men, then more black men and women would marry each other. This book not only sits at the intersection of two large and well- established markets-race and marriage-it responds to yearnings that are widespread and deep in American society. The African American marriage decline is a secret in plain view about which people want to know more, intertwining as it does two of the most vexing issues in contemporary society. The fact that the most prominent family in our nation is now an African American couple only intensifies the interest, and the market. A book that entertains as it informs, Is Marriage for White People? will be the definitive guide to one of the most monumental social developments of the past half century.
Download or read book Not White Enough Not Black Enough written by Mohamed Adhikari and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of Colouredness—being neither white nor black—has been pivotal to the brand of racial thinking particular to South African society. The nature of Coloured identity and its heritage of oppression has always been a matter of intense political and ideological contestation. Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community is the first systematic study of Coloured identity, its history, and its relevance to South African national life. Mohamed Adhikari engages with the debates and controversies thrown up by the identity’s troubled existence and challenges much of the conventional wisdom associated with it. A combination of wide-ranging thematic analyses and detailed case studies illustrates how Colouredness functioned as a social identity from the time of its emergence in the late nineteenth century through its adaptation to the postapartheid environment. Adhikari demonstrates how the interplay of marginality, racial hierarchy, assimilationist aspirations, negative racial stereotyping, class divisions, and ideological conflicts helped mold people’s sense of Colouredness over the past century. Knowledge of this history, and of the social and political dynamic that informed the articulation of a separate Coloured identity, is vital to an understanding of present-day complexities in South Africa.
Download or read book Black Jews in Africa and the Americas written by Tudor Parfitt and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-04 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Jews in Africa and the Americas tells the fascinating story of how the Ashanti, Tutsi, Igbo, Zulu, Beta Israel, Maasai, and many other African peoples came to think of themselves as descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel. Pursuing medieval and modern European race narratives over a millennium in which not only were Jews cast as black but black Africans were cast as Jews, Tudor Parfitt reveals a complex history of the interaction between religious and racial labels and their political uses. For centuries, colonialists, travelers, and missionaries, in an attempt to explain and understand the strange people they encountered on the colonial frontier, labeled an astonishing array of African tribes, languages, and cultures as Hebrew, Jewish, or Israelite. Africans themselves came to adopt these identities as their own, invoking their shared histories of oppression, imagined blood-lines, and common traditional practices as proof of a racial relationship to Jews. Beginning in the post-slavery era, contacts between black Jews in America and their counterparts in Africa created powerful and ever-growing networks of black Jews who struggled against racism and colonialism. A community whose claims are denied by many, black Jews have developed a strong sense of who they are as a unique people. In Parfitt’s telling, forces of prejudice and the desire for new racial, redemptive identities converge, illuminating Jewish and black history alike in novel and unexplored ways.
Download or read book Why I m No Longer Talking to Nigerians about Race written by Panashe Chigumadzi and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-17 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Blacks and Blackness in Central America written by Lowell Gudmundson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the earliest Africans to arrive in the Americas came to Central America with Spanish colonists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and people of African descent constituted the majority of nonindigenous populations in the region long thereafter. Yet in the development of national identities and historical consciousness, Central American nations have often countenanced widespread practices of social, political, and regional exclusion of blacks. The postcolonial development of mestizo or mixed-race ideologies of national identity have systematically downplayed African ancestry and social and political involvement in favor of Spanish and Indian heritage and contributions. In addition, a powerful sense of place and belonging has led many peoples of African descent in Central America to identify themselves as something other than African American, reinforcing the tendency of local and foreign scholars to see Central America as peripheral to the African diaspora in the Americas. The essays in this collection begin to recover the forgotten and downplayed histories of blacks in Central America, demonstrating the centrality of African Americans to the region’s history from the earliest colonial times to the present. They reveal how modern nationalist attempts to define mixed-race majorities as “Indo-Hispanic,” or as anything but African American, clash with the historical record of the first region of the Americas in which African Americans not only gained the right to vote but repeatedly held high office, including the presidency, following independence from Spain in 1821. Contributors. Rina Cáceres Gómez, Lowell Gudmundson, Ronald Harpelle, Juliet Hooker, Catherine Komisaruk, Russell Lohse, Paul Lokken, Mauricio Meléndez Obando, Karl H. Offen, Lara Putnam, Justin Wolfe
Download or read book The Ethnic Project written by Vilna Bashi Treitler and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the racial-ethnic history of the United States and the perpetuation of racial hierarchy. Race is a known fiction—there is no genetic marker that indicates someone’s race—yet the social stigma of race endures. In the United States, ethnicity is often positioned as a counterweight to race, and we celebrate our various hyphenated-American identities. But Vilna Bashi Treitler argues that we do so at a high cost: ethnic thinking simply perpetuates an underlying racism. In The Ethnic Project, Bashi Treitler considers the ethnic history of the United States from the arrival of the English in North America through to the present day. Tracing the histories of immigrant and indigenous groups—Irish, Chinese, Italians, Jews, Native Americans, Mexicans, Afro-Caribbeans, and African Americans—she shows how each negotiates America’s racial hierarchy, aiming to distance themselves from the bottom and align with the groups already at the top. But in pursuing these “ethnic projects” these groups implicitly accept and perpetuate a racial hierarchy, shoring up rather than dismantling race and racism. Ultimately, The Ethnic Project shows how dangerous ethnic thinking can be in a society that has not let go of racial thinking. Praise for The Ethnic Project “An outstanding work that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the past and present racial history of the United States. The book is very well written (Bashi Treitler’s prose is a delight to read) and meticulously researched . . . . The Ethnic Project should definitely be part of the conversation as we press forward with the task of understanding race in the United States.” —Ashley “Woody” Doane, American Journal of Sociology “Treitler offers a succinct history and diagnosis of racial grouping in the U.S., from the nation’s origin to the contemporary moment . . . . The text has solid promise as an introductory ethnic studies course reading . . . . Highly recommended.” —N. B. Barnd, CHOICE “With her ingenious concept of ‘ethnic projects,’ Vilna Bashi Treitler brings a new optic to the study of race . . . . [and] provides an authoritative answer to those who ask the tired question, ‘We made it, why haven’t they?’” —Stephen Steinberg, author of Race Relations: A Critique “Treitler masterfully weaves race and ethnicity into a single historical narrative that reveals the ugly reality of exploitation and stratification that has always undergirded American society.” —Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University
Download or read book Faces of Perfect Ebony written by Catherine Molineux and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-02 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though blacks were not often seen on the streets of seventeenth-century London, they were already capturing the British imagination. For two hundred years, as Britain shipped over three million Africans to the New World, popular images of blacks as slaves and servants proliferated in London art, both highbrow and low. Catherine Molineux assembles a surprising array of sources in her exploration of this emerging black presence, from shop signs, tea trays, trading cards, board games, playing cards, and song ballads to more familiar objects such as William Hogarth's graphic satires. By idealizing black servitude and obscuring the brutalities of slavery, these images of black people became symbols of empire to a general populace that had little contact with the realities of slave life in the distant Americas and Caribbean. The earliest images advertised the opulence of the British Empire by depicting black slaves and servants as minor, exotic characters who gazed adoringly at their masters. Later images showed Britons and Africans in friendly gatherings, smoking tobacco together, for example. By 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade and thousands of people of African descent were living in London as free men and women, depictions of black laborers in local coffee houses, taverns, or kitchens took center stage. Molineux's well-crafted account provides rich evidence for the role that human traffic played in the popular consciousness and culture of Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and deepens our understanding of how Britons imagined their burgeoning empire.
Download or read book African People in World History written by John Henrik Clarke and published by Black Classic Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African history as world history: Africa and the Roman Empire -- Africa and the rise of Islam -- The mighty kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay -- The Atlantic slave trade: Slavery and resistance in South America and the Caribbean -- Slavery and resistance in the United States -- African Americans in the twentieth century.
Download or read book White on Black written by Jan Nederveen Pieterse and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: White on Black is a compelling visual history of the development of European and American stereotypes of black people over the last two hundred years. Its purpose is to show the pervasiveness of prejudice against blacks throughout the western world as expressed in stock-in-trade racist imagery and caricature. Reproducing a wide range of illustrations--from engravings and lithographs to advertisements, candy wrappings, biscuit tins, dolls, posters, and comic strips--the book challenges the hidden assumptions of even those who view themselves as unprejudiced. Jan Nederveen Pieterse sets Western images of Africa and blacks in a chronological framework, including representations from medieval times, from the colonial period with its explorers, settlers, and missionaries, from the era of slavery and abolition, and from the multicultural societies of the present day. Pieterse shows that blacks have been routinely depicted throughout the West as servants, entertainers, and athletes, and that particular countries have developed their own comforting black stereotypes about blacks: Sambo and Uncle Tom in the United States, Golliwog in Britain, Bamboula in France, and Black Peter in the Netherlands. Looking at conventional portrayals of blacks in the nursery, in sexual arenas, and in commerce and advertising, Pieterse analyzes the conceptual roots of the stereotypes about them. The images that he presents have a direct and dramatic impact, and they raise questions about the expression of power within popular culture and the force of caricature, humor, and parody as instruments of oppression.
Download or read book America s Original Sin written by Jim Wallis and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's problem with race has deep roots, with the country's foundation tied to the near extermination of one race of people and the enslavement of another. Racism is truly our nation's original sin. "It's time we right this unacceptable wrong," says bestselling author and leading Christian activist Jim Wallis. Fifty years ago, Wallis was driven away from his faith by a white church that considered dealing with racism to be taboo. His participation in the civil rights movement brought him back when he discovered a faith that commands racial justice. Yet as recent tragedies confirm, we continue to suffer from the legacy of racism. The old patterns of white privilege are colliding with the changing demographics of a diverse nation. The church has been slow to respond, and Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour of the week. In America's Original Sin, Wallis offers a prophetic and deeply personal call to action in overcoming the racism so ingrained in American society. He speaks candidly to Christians--particularly white Christians--urging them to cross a new bridge toward racial justice and healing. Whenever divided cultures and gridlocked power structures fail to end systemic sin, faith communities can help lead the way to grassroots change. Probing yet positive, biblically rooted yet highly practical, this book shows people of faith how they can work together to overcome the embedded racism in America, galvanizing a movement to cross the bridge to a multiracial church and a new America.
