Download or read book Blue Veins and Kinky Hair written by Obiagele Lake and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-06-30 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author explores how Africans in America internalized the negative images created of them by the European world, and how internalized racism has worked to fracture African American unity and thereby dilute inchoate efforts toward liberation. In the late 1960s, change began with the Black Is Beautiful slogan and new a consciousness, which went hand in hand with Black Power and pan-African movements. The author argues that for any people to succeed, they must first embrace their own identity, including physical characteristics. Naming, skin color, and hair have been topical issues in the African American community since the 18th century. These three areas are key to a sense of identity and self, and they were forcefully changed when Africans were taken out of Africa as slaves. The author discusses how group and personal names, including racial epithets, have had far-reaching and deep-seated effects on African American self perception. Most of her attention, however, is focused on issues of physical appearance which reflect a greater or lesser degree of racial blending. She tells us about exclusive African American organizations such as The Blue Vein Society, in which membership was extended to African Americans whose skin color and hair texture tended toward those of European Americans, although wealthy dark-skinned people were also eligible. Much of the book details the lengths to which African American women have gone to lighten their complexions and straighten their hair. These endeavors started many years ago, and still continue, although today there is also a large number of women who are adamantly going natural. Her historical look at the cultural background to African American issues of hair and skin is the first monograph of its kind.
Download or read book Black Women in Interracial Relationships written by Kellina Craig-Henderson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the most recent U.S. census, twice as many black men are involved in interracial relationships as black women. Do black women consciously resist such involvement? What motivates the relatively few women who are in these types of relationships? And how do they navigate the unfamiliar terrain in intimacy? One of the most popular explanations for black women's involvement in interracial intimacy is the unavailability of eligible black men. This explanation focuses on the dismal statistics popularly discussed in reports that forecast lonely futures for African American females. Craig-Henderson explores another, more provocative explanation. She argues that some black women may disassociate from larger social stereotypes by consciously and strategically making choices that distance them from what is considered characteristic of the "typical" African American woman. Scant serious attention has focused upon intimate interracial relationships, perhaps because of a general reluctance to deal with two extremely provocative issues: race and sex. As rates of interracial relationships continue to increase, discussions about interracial intimacy are relevant and timely. Craig-Henderson considers the continuing taboo of interracial relationships involving African Americans, the way this taboo is changing, and the way that contemporary race relations perpetuate longstanding stereotypes about race and sex. The book includes in-depth, unstructured interviews with a wide range of black women currently involved in interracial intimate relationships. Each individual discusses their relationships with family members, beliefs about the influence of race in America, unique problems associated with interracial intimacy, as well as sexual attraction, racial identity, and children. Of particular interest to specialists in race, gender, family, and sexual issues, this work is also accessible and appealing to general readers.
Download or read book Black Power beyond Borders written by N. Slate and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking volume examines the transnational dimensions of Black Power - how Black Power thinkers and activists drew on foreign movements and vice versa how individuals and groups in other parts of the world interpreted 'Black Power,' from African liberation movements to anti-caste agitation in India to indigenous protests in New Zealand.
Download or read book Color Stories written by JeffriAnne Wilder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-10-26 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an in-depth sociological exploration of present-day colorism in the lives of black women, investigating the lived experiences of a phenomenon that continues to affect women of African descent. Race still matters. And for black women, the related issues of skin tone are just as important today as in decades past. Part cultural commentary, part empirical analysis, this book offers a compelling study and discussion of colorism—a widely discussed but understudied issue in "post-racial" America—that demonstrates how powerful a factor skin color remains in the everyday lives of young black women. Author JeffriAnne Wilder conducted interviews with dozens of young black women about the role of colorism in their everyday lives. Collectively, these findings offer a compelling empirical and theoretical analysis of colorism in key areas of 21st-century life, including within family and school settings, in the media, and in intimate relationships. The culmination of nearly two decades of the author's deep entrenchment in colorism studies, Color Stories: Black Women and Colorism in the 21st Century provides a new perspective on a controversial issue that has been a part of black culture and academic study for generations by exploring how the contemporary nature of colorism—from Facebook to the First Lady to Beyoncé—impacts the ideas and experiences of black women. This work serves as essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about the historical and contemporary significance of colorism in modern-day America, regardless of the reader's race, sex, or age.
Download or read book Is Lighter Better written by Joanne L. Rondilla and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colorism is defined as "discriminatory treatment of individuals falling within the same 'racial' group on the basis of skin color." In other words, some people, particularly women, are treated better or worse on account of the color of their skin relative to other people who share their same racial category. Colorism affects Asian Americans from many different backgrounds and who live in different parts of the United States. Is Lighter Better? discusses this often-overlooked topic. Joanne L. Rondilla and Paul Spickard ask important questions such as: What are the colorism issues that operate in Asian American communities? Are they the same issues for all Asian Americans--for women and for men, for immigrants and the American born, for Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, and other Asian Americans? Do they reflect a desire to look like White people, or is some other motive at work? Including numerous stories about and by people who have faced discrimination in their own lives, this book is an invaluable resource for people interested in colorism among Asian Americans.
Download or read book Race Gender and the Politics of Skin Tone written by Margaret L. Hunter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone tackles the hidden yet painful issue of colorism in the African American and Mexican American communities. Beginning with a historical discussion of slavery and colonization in the Americas, the book quickly moves forward to a contemporary analysis of how skin tone continues to plague people of color today. This is the first book to explore this well-known, yet rarely discussed phenomenon.
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 201 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 From the Kitchen to the Parlor written by Lanita Jacobs-Huey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-20 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When is hair "just hair" and when is it not "just hair"? Documenting the politics of African American women's hair, this multi-sited linguistic ethnography explores everyday interaction in beauty parlors, Internet discussions, comedy clubs, and other contexts to illuminate how and why hair matters in African American women's day-to-day experiences.
Download or read book An American Color written by Andrew N. Wegmann and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2022-01-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Psychology of Love written by Michele A. Paludi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 977 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From arranged marriages to online dating, this four-volume work presents everything from personal accounts to empirical evidence to document what creates love in our culture as well as around the world. The field of biology views "love" as a hard-wired mammalian drive, akin to thirst and hunger. In contrast, psychology views love from a social and cultural perspective where our drive to find love—and our responses to it—are highly dependent on societal norms. In The Psychology of Love, esteemed author and educator Michele A. Paludi examines love through all lenses, thereby providing readers a deeper understanding of the ways we can express caring, sensitivity, empathy, and respect toward one another. Each chapter in this comprehensive four-volume work includes a scholarly overview of empirical research and theories about the psychology of love. In addition, individuals' own definitions of love are included. Special attention is paid to accepted standards of love across a variety of cultures, the ways individuals express liking and love across the lifecycle, and patterns in dissolutions of friendships and romantic relationships, making note of gender and race differences.
Download or read book The Vanishing Black African Woman Volume Two written by Olumide, Yetunde Mercy and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skin-lightening is currently one of the most common forms of potentially harmful body modification practices in the world and African women are among some of the most widely represented users of skin-lightening products. The overall objective of this book is to provide up-to-date evidence-based recommendations for reducing the global burden of cosmetic skin bleaching and preventing injuries related to skin bleaching in sub-Saharan Africa and Africans in diaspora. The book aims to: offer an appraisal of all relevant literature on cosmetic bleaching practices to-date, focusing on any key developments; identify and address important medical, public health issues as well as historical, genetic, psychosocial, cultural, behavioural, socioeconomic, political, institutional and environmental determinants; provide guideline recommendations that would help attenuate the burden and possibly eliminate the injuries related to skin bleaching; discuss potential developments and future directions.
Download or read book Free the Land written by Edward Onaci and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-04-17 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On March 31, 1968, over 500 Black nationalists convened in Detroit to begin the process of securing independence from the United States. Many concluded that Black Americans' best remaining hope for liberation was the creation of a sovereign nation-state, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). New Afrikan citizens traced boundaries that encompassed a large portion of the South--including South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana--as part of their demand for reparation. As champions of these goals, they framed their struggle as one that would allow the descendants of enslaved people to choose freely whether they should be citizens of the United States. New Afrikans also argued for financial restitution for the enslavement and subsequent inhumane treatment of Black Americans. The struggle to "Free the Land" remains active to this day. This book is the first to tell the full history of the RNA and the New Afrikan Independence Movement. Edward Onaci shows how New Afrikans remade their lifestyles and daily activities to create a self-consciously revolutionary culture, and argues that the RNA's tactics and ideology were essential to the evolution of Black political struggles. Onaci expands the story of Black Power politics, shedding new light on the long-term legacies of mid-century Black Nationalism.
Download or read book The Allure of Blackness among Mixed Race Americans 1862 1916 written by Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Allure of Blackness among Mixed-Race Americans, 1862–1916, Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly examines generations of mixed-race African Americans after the Civil War and into the Progressive Era, skillfully tracking the rise of a leadership class in Black America made up largely of individuals who had complex racial ancestries, many of whom therefore enjoyed racial options to identity as either Black or White. Although these people might have chosen to pass as White to avoid the racial violence and exclusion associated with the dominant racial ideology of the time, they instead chose to identify as Black Americans, a decision that provided upward mobility in social, political, and economic terms. Dineen-Wimberly highlights African American economic and political leaders and educators such as P. B. S. Pinchback, Theophile T. Allain, Booker T. Washington, and Frederick Douglass as well as women such as Josephine B. Willson Bruce and E. Azalia Hackley who were prominent clubwomen, lecturers, educators, and settlement house founders. In their quest for leadership within the African American community, these leaders drew on the concept of Blackness as a source of opportunities and power to transform their communities in the long struggle for Black equality. The Allure of Blackness among Mixed-Race Americans, 1862–1916 confounds much of the conventional wisdom about racially complicated people and details the manner in which they chose their racial identity and ultimately overturns the “passing” trope that has dominated so much Americanist scholarship and social thought about the relationship between race and social and political transformation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Download or read book What Is Ailing Africa Practical Philosophy in Reinventing Africa written by Stephen Onyango Ouma and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-04-11 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not only does this book detail the colonial experiences in Africa through what the author refers to as a ‘social construct,’ it also vehemently criticises modern African governments for their current corruption and maintenance of the continent's situation. This book presents a two-pronged analysis of Africa’s predicament by looking at the duality of ethics and identity. It tries to trace the problematic aspects of westernization and modernization within the contexts of neo-colonialism and continued exploitation of Africa by external forces, as well as the complicity of Africans themselves.
Download or read book Young American Muslims written by Nahid Afrose Kabir and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-20 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it like to be a young Muslim in America? Many young Americans cherish an American dream, 'that all men are created equal. And the election of America's first black President in 2008 has shown that America has moved forward. Yet since 9/11 Muslim Americans have faced renewed challenges, with their loyalty and sense of belonging being questioned. Nahid Kabir takes you on a journey into the ideas, outlooks and identity of young Muslims in Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York and Virginia. Based on around 400 in-depth interviews with young Muslims, discover the similarities and differences between ethnic and racial groups such as Iranians, Arab Americans and African Americans. Find out how they rate President Obama as a national and world leader, where they stand on the Israeli-Palestine issue and how the media impacts on them.
Download or read book Naming Africans written by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-06-08 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the epistemic value of African names, this edited collection is based on the premise that personal names constitute valuable sources of historical and ethnographic information and help to unveil endogenous forms of knowledge. The chapters assembled here document and analyze personal names and naming practices in a slew of African societies on the geographically vast and ethnically diverse continent, including contributions on the naming practices in Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda. The contributors to this anthology are scholars from different African language communities who investigate names and naming practices diachronically. Taken together, their work offers a comparative focus that juxtaposes different African cultures and reveals the historical and epistemic significance of given names.
Download or read book Thyra J Edwards written by Gregg Andrews and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1938, a black newspaper in Houston paid front-page tribute to Thyra J. Edwards as the embodiment of “The Spirit of Aframerican Womanhood.” Edwards was a world lecturer, journalist, social worker, labor organizer, women’s rights advocate, and civil rights activist—an undeniably important figure in the social struggles of the first half of the twentieth century. She experienced international prominence throughout much of her life, from the early 1930s to her death in 1953, but has received little attention from historians in years since. Gregg Andrews’s Thyra J. Edwards: Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle is the first book-length biographical study of this remarkable, historically significant woman. Edwards, granddaughter of runaway slaves, grew up in Jim Crow–era Houston and started her career there as a teacher. She moved to Gary, Indiana, and Chicago as a social worker, then to New York as a journalist, and later became involved with the Communist Party, attracted by its stance on race and labor. She was mentored by famed civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, who became her special friend and led her to pursue her education. She obtained scholarships to college, and after several years of study in the U.S. and then in Denmark, she became a women’s labor organizer and a union publicist. In the 1930s and 1940s, she wrote about international events for black newspapers, traveling to Europe, Mexico, and the Soviet Union and presenting an anti-imperialist critique of world affairs to her readers. Edwards’s involvement with the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, her work in a Jewish refugee settlement in Italy, and her activities with U.S. communists drew the attention of the FBI. She was harassed by government intelligence organizations until she died at the age of just fifty-five. Edwards contributed as much to the radical foundations of the modern civil rights movements as any other woman of her time. This fascinating biography details Thyra Edwards’s lifelong journey and myriad achievements, describing both her personal and professional sides and the many ways they intertwined. Gregg Andrews used Edwards’s official FBI file—along with her personal papers, published articles, and civil rights manuscript collections—to present a complete portrait of this noteworthy activist. An engaging volume for the historian as well as the general reader, Thyra J. Edwards explores the complete domestic and international impact of her life and actions.
