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Various aspects of the origin, evolution and present condition of African-American theatre and drama haνe long been within the range of attention of literary scholars in the former Soviet Union. In the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet critics' interest in Black culture was fostered by its pronounced social undertones. The revival of this interest in the late 1950s coincided with the new and exceptionally productive stage in the evolution of Black theatre in the USA which was immediately connected with the important role which theatre and drama played in the Black revolution. In the 1960s and 1970s Soviet scholars addressed, first and foremost, the problem of correlation and balance between art and ideology, examining the ways the Black protest movement was reflected in works by African American dramatists. The focus in current studies in Black theatre is eventually shifting from politics to the arts, as researchers tend today to concentrate on such issues as the folk roots of African American theatre, its diverse uses of popular traditions, its African and European influences and its dramatic techniques, both verbal and non-verbal. ; Πολλές πλευρές της αφετηρίας, της εξέλιξης και της σημερινής κατάστασης του αφρο-αμερικανικού θεάτρου έχουν απασχολήσει εδώ και πολύ καιρό τους κριτικούς της λο­γοτεχνίας στην πρώην Σοβιετική Ένωση. Κατά τις δεκαετίες του 1920 και 1930 το εν­διαφέρον των Σοβιετικών κριτικών για τη Μαύρη κουλτούρα διαμορφωνόταν από τις έντονες κοινωνικές του προεκτάσεις. Η αναβίωση αυτού του ενδιαφέροντος κατά τα τέλη της δεκαετίας του 1950 συνέπεσε με τη νέα και ιδιαίτερα παραγωγική φάση στην εξέλιξη του Μαύρου Θεάτρου στις ΗΠΑ, που συνδέθηκε κατ' ευθείαν με το σημαντικό ρόλο που έπαιξε το θέατρο στη Μαύρη επανάσταση. Κατά τις δεκαετίες του 1960 και 1970 οι Σοβιετικοί άνθρωποι των Γραμμάτων αντιμετώπισαν κατά κύριο λόγο το πρόβλημα της συσχέτισης και ισορροπίας μεταξύ τέχνης και ιδεολογίας, εξετάζοντας τους τρόπους που το κίνημα της Μαύρης διαμαρτυρίας αντικατοπτρίστηκε στα έργα των Αφροαμερικανών ...

The interracial mixing of American families dates back to colonial times, but the history of slavery and racism in the American South made public discussion of the subject taboo—so shameful for whites that they long repressed facts that challenged their fantasies of racial purity, so painful or politically incorrect for African Americans that they suppressed the details of their mixed ancestry. In the 1970s the popularity of Alex Haley's Roots (1976), and the television miniseries that followed, sparked an interest in genealogy among many African Americans, who had long given up hope of tracing African roots severed by the middle passage. Even when Haley's fame was marred by charges of plagiarism and fictionalization of facts, many African American readers continued to embrace the cultural truth of his book. While a few began to search for African ancestors, even more sought cultural connections to Africa. Although some African Americans may have privately acknowledged a white branch or two on their family tree, tracing those roots held little interest in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement (unless perhaps they led to Jefferson's Monticello). Such lack of interest was understandable. While most African Americans did not know the identity of their white ancestors, those who did wanted nothing to do with a kinship begun by rape on southern plantations, or with white relatives who refused to acknowledge the family relationship. Some did not publicly admit mixed ancestry because they resented the white racism that persisted after the legal gains of the Civil Rights Movement; others did not want to appear as if they, like some light-skinned African Americans in the past, were ashamed of a black identity (Njeri 37-39).

Federal and state governments have seen fit to create enterprise and empowerment zones which benefit community redevelopment. Are these areas good for minority businesses? Data from Broward County, Florida show that African-American owned businesses tend to be in ethnic communities. They also tend to be in enterprise zones moreso than the other groups, and less likely than women-owned businesses to be in industry clusters. The findings, if replicated in other diverse urban communities, have implications for potential minority business owners. Future research should address whether the differences in location patterns are related to business success.

After the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877), the social position of Southern Negroes became worse. Negro leader Booker T. Washington, advocated gradual economic advancement of Negroes which was possible only if they relinquished their demand for political and civil rights. He believed that only self-reliant Negroes could more efficiently engage in the struggle for social equality. Other Negro leaders strongly opposed these tactics of gradual development.William E. B. Du Bois, historian and intellectual, was more radical in his ideas. He believed that Negroes must be united in their constant protest against discrimination in the white society and should insist on getting full political and civil rights immediately as well as the right to be educated according to economic circumstances and intellectual abilities. He highligted the advantage of higher education as only educated Negroes could set realistic goals for the Negro population and lead them in their struggle for social equality. Although Washington and his opponents had the same goal, their methods to achieve it differed. Washington strove to reach that goal indirectly, without creating white opposition. African-American literature depicts the reality discussed by politicians on the ideological level and transfers it into the spheres of intimate human drama giving it a moving quality and emotional recognizability. The principle of authenticity, one of the principles of poetic realism, requires an artistic and detailed analysis of reality which leads to the principle of criticism. The Negro author essentially becomes a critic of the reality he has used in his work. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n9p123

Citizenship has its origins not in modernity, but in the political thought and practice of the ancient Greeks and Romans. However, with the advent of the nation state in late eighteenth century, the idea of citizenship took on new meanings and started to play a crucial role in modern history. The first nation modernity produced, the United States provides an ideal setting for studying modern citizenship. The Civil War (1861-1865) was the traumatic event that marked its history. In the decades preceding it, along with American political culture and other institutions, U.S. citizenship was caught up in the whirling vortex of political, legal, and literary discourses of national identity. This paper starts from the national discourses that defined citizenship in pre-Civil War America later attempting to identify and analyze the ways in which two African American literary texts (Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl) represented the idea of citizenship. The purpose is to show that the two slave narratives, which have only recently earned their position in the nineteenth century literary canon, were deeply involved in the national debate and, in spite of their presumed marginality, textually representative for the problematic idea of citizenship before the Civil War. The two narratives went far beyond mere illustration; they actively engaged the world of their readers and thus, their representations of the idea o citizenship purport to the nation's past and future.

ObjectiveTo explore the nature of genetic-susceptibility to multiple sclerosis (MS) in African-Americans.BackgroundRecently, the number of genetic-associations with MS has exploded although the MS-associations of specific haplotypes within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) have been known for decades. For example, the haplotypes HLA-DRB1*15:01~HLA-DQB1*06:02, and HLA-DRB1*03:01~ HLA-DQB1*02:01 have odds ratios (ORs) for an MS-association orders of magnitude stronger than many of these newly-discovered associations. Nevertheless, all these haplotypes are part of much larger conserved extended haplotypes (CEHs), which span both the Class I and Class II MHC regions. African-Americans are at greater risk of developing MS compared to a native Africans but at lesser risk compared to Europeans. It is the purpose of this manuscript to explore the relationship between MS-susceptibility and the CEH make-up of our African-American cohort.Design/methodsThe African-American (AA) cohort consisted of 1,305 patients with MS and 1,155 controls, who self-identified as being African-American. For comparison, we used the 18,492 controls and 11,144 MS-cases from the predominantly European Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) and the 28,557 phased native Africans from the multinational "Be the Match" registry. The WTCCC and the African-Americans were phased at each of five HLA loci (HLA-A, HLA-C, HLA-B, HLA-DRB1 and HLA-DQB1) and the at 11 SNPs (10 of which were in non-coding regions) surrounding the Class II region of the DRB1 gene using previously-published probabilistic phasing algorithms.ResultsOf the 32 most frequent CEHs, 18 (56%) occurred either more frequently or exclusively in Africans) whereas 9 (28%) occurred more frequently or exclusively in Europeans. The remaining 5 CEHs occurred in neither control group although, likely, these were African in origin. Eight of these CEHs carried the DRB1*15:03~DQB1*06:02~a36 haplotype and three carried the DRB1*15:01~DQB1*06:02~a1 haplotype. In African Americans, a single-copy of the European CEH (03:01_07:02_07:02_15:01_06:02_a1) was associated with considerable MS-risk (OR = 3.30; p = 0.0001)-similar to that observed in the WTCCC (OR = 3.25; p<10-168). By contrast, the MS-risk for the European CEH (02:01_07:02_07:02_15:01_06:02_a1) was less (OR = 1.49; ns)-again, similar to the WTCCC (OR = 2.2; p<10-38). Moreover, four African haplotypes were "protective" relative to a neutral reference, to three European CEHs, and also to the five other African CEHs.ConclusionsThe common CEHs in African Americans are divisible into those that are either African or European in origin, which are derived without modification from their source population. European CEHs, linked to MS-risk, in general, had similar impacts in African-Americans as they did in Europeans. By contrast, African CEHs had mixed MS-risks. For a few, the MS-risk exceeded that in a neutral-reference group whereas, for many others, these CEHs were "protective"-perhaps providing a partial rationale for the lower MS-risk in African-Americans compared to European-Americans.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the nature of genetic-susceptibility to multiple sclerosis (MS) in African-Americans. BACKGROUND: Recently, the number of genetic-associations with MS has exploded although the MS-associations of specific haplotypes within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) have been known for decades. For example, the haplotypes HLA-DRB1*15:01~HLA-DQB1*06:02, and HLA-DRB1*03:01~ HLA-DQB1*02:01 have odds ratios (ORs) for an MS-association orders of magnitude stronger than many of these newly-discovered associations. Nevertheless, all these haplotypes are part of much larger conserved extended haplotypes (CEHs), which span both the Class I and Class II MHC regions. African-Americans are at greater risk of developing MS compared to a native Africans but at lesser risk compared to Europeans. It is the purpose of this manuscript to explore the relationship between MS-susceptibility and the CEH make-up of our African-American cohort. DESIGN/METHODS: The African-American (AA) cohort consisted of 1,305 patients with MS and 1,155 controls, who self-identified as being African-American. For comparison, we used the 18,492 controls and 11,144 MS-cases from the predominantly European Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) and the 28,557 phased native Africans from the multinational "Be the Match" registry. The WTCCC and the African-Americans were phased at each of five HLA loci (HLA-A, HLA-C, HLA-B, HLA-DRB1 and HLA-DQB1) and the at 11 SNPs (10 of which were in non-coding regions) surrounding the Class II region of the DRB1 gene using previously-published probabilistic phasing algorithms. RESULTS: Of the 32 most frequent CEHs, 18 (56%) occurred either more frequently or exclusively in Africans) whereas 9 (28%) occurred more frequently or exclusively in Europeans. The remaining 5 CEHs occurred in neither control group although, likely, these were African in origin. Eight of these CEHs carried the DRB1*15:03~DQB1*06:02~a36 haplotype and three carried the DRB1*15:01~DQB1*06:02~a1 haplotype. In African ...

College enrollment and graduation rates for African Americans remain lower than enrollment and graduation rates for middle and upper-class White students. The lower enrollment and graduation rates have an effect on the number of African American students who pursue the Ph.D. and other research doctorate degrees. In order to increase the number of African Americans and other underrepresented students in the Ph.D. pipeline, the United States Congress passed legislation that created the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program (McNair Scholars Program) in the mid-1980s. The purpose of the McNair Scholars Program is to prepare college students for doctoral studies and careers in academia through involvement in summer research internships and other scholarly activities. One way in which this program may prepare students is through the development of students' academic, research and social self-efficacy. To date, however little research has been conducted to see if the McNair Scholars Program has an effect on African American students' levels of self-efficacy. The purpose of this study was to compare levels of academic, research and social self-efficacy among African American pre- and post-McNair Scholar participants. Levels of self-efficacy were analyzed by McNair participant status (pre-McNair and post-McNair), gender, college and grade point average. The study employed a national sample of African American pre- and post McNair Scholar Program participants. Data were collected using the Graduate Education Self-Efficacy Scale (GESES), a 57-item instrument designed specifically for this study. Items for the survey were developed utilizing existing literature on academic, research and social self-efficacy. Results revealed significant differences in academic, research and social self-efficacy between African American pre- and post-McNair Scholar Program participants. There were no significant differences by gender on academic, research or social self-efficacy. Neither were significant differences found by college grade level on academic or social self-efficacy. There were, however, significant differences based on college grade level on research self-efficacy. There were also significant interaction effects between gender and college grade level on academic, research and social self-efficacy. The results suggest that participating in the McNair Scholars Program raises levels of academic, research and social self-efficacy among African American college students. ; Ph. D.

The low rates of breastfeeding among African American women in the U.S. is a poorly understood, persistent disparity that contributes to higher incidences of morbidity and mortality for African Americans across the lifespan. Understanding how African American women experience breastfeeding in the context of their day-to-day lives lead to suggestions for new strategies that could promote and protect breastfeeding within the African American population. This aim of this study was to explore the breastfeeding experiences of African American women from a wider demographic who had successful breastfeeding experiences. Black feminist thought, a critical social theory, provided the theoretical framework and the lens for of discovering not simply what, but how and why certain cultural and environmental factors affect the breastfeeding decisions made by African American women. The Sequential-Consensual Qualitative Design (SCQD), a three stage qualitative methodology, was used to explore the cultural, personal, and political context of African American women's breastfeeding experiences. Stage one included 4 individual interviews with key informants who were African American women who assisted women with breastfeeding. Stage 2 included individual interviews with 17 African American women who breastfed at least one healthy baby. Stage 3 was accomplished through a focus group of 7 African American women who breastfed. Qualitative content analysis from a feminist perspective was used to analyze and code the transcripts of the interviews and focus group. Codes extracted from the key informant interview data from stage 1 of the study supported and mirrored the 5 key dimensions of Black feminist thought, and provided cultural guidance in the development of the interview questionnaire for stage 2 of the study, accessing the personal voice. Themes that emerged from stage 2 of the study included (a) self determination and intrinsic motivation for breastfeeding, (b) breastfeeding as a spiritual tradition, and (c) empowerment through ...

Periviable infants (i.e., born before 26 complete weeks of gestation) represent fewer than .5% of births in the US but account for 40% of infant mortality and 20% of billed hospital obstetric costs. African American women contribute about 14% of live births in the US, but these include nearly a third of the country's periviable births. Consistent with theory and with periviable births among other race/ethnicity groups, males predominate among African American periviable births in stressed populations. We test the hypothesis that the disparity in periviable male births among African American and non-Hispanic white populations responds to the African American unemployment rate because that indicator not only traces, but also contributes to, the prevalence of stress in the population. We use time-series methods that control for autocorrelation including secular trends, seasonality, and the tendency to remain elevated or depressed after high or low values. The racial disparity in male periviable birth increases by 4.45% for each percentage point increase in the unemployment rate of African Americans above its expected value. We infer that unemployment-a population stressor over which our institutions exercise considerable control-affects the disparity between African American and non-Hispanic white periviable births in the US.

If one were to embark on a trip down South, that is where the journey of what most consider 'good eating' will take place. Food within the African American community lies beyond more than just health disparities and the scraps left for slaves. Within the context of eating, food, for African Americans, plays an important role culturally and in how we behave and interact with one another. Food has impacted generations within the Black community with recipes, cultural identity, and household structures. Using an array of scholastic articles, alongside political journals, the importance of food in the African American community will highlight the ways in which identity, cultural attitudes, and the Black household structure shapes the way African Americans interconnect. With these resources the role of eating can be analyzed and dissected in order to collect a better understanding of the dimensions in eating within the African American experience.

This study is intended to analyze the persistence of African American stereotype in the contemporary slavery-themed novel authored by Valerie Martin, Property (2003). Valerie Martin is a white author, who seems to have changed the slavery discourse, but the stereotyping of African Americans is still there and built in a new form of stereotyping. Postcolonial analysis showed that the stereotyping of African Americansas 'other' existed in direct stereotyping and indirect stereotyping. Direct stereotyping is that the author directly uses the pejorative language and symbols in forming the African American character, meanwhile indirect stereotyping is the author using the shift of discourse that seemed worthy in describing the African American character, but in the same time it affirms the stereotype of the African American identity as inferior still exists, even in the so-called Post-racial era in the United States. Keywords: Representation, Stereotyping, Identity, Race, African American

"'Gratuitous Distribution': Distributing African American Antislavery Texts, 1773–1850" examines the networks and practices African Americans used to move antislavery print in the early nineteenth century. Exchanges made use of subscription agents, business affiliates, churches, civic institutions and family or personal connections. Texts moved by formal and informal means, were smuggled and mailed, and some recipients read them aloud to people lacking or prohibited from literacy. At times, these practices transgressed laws or resulted in white authorities' attempts to suppress the circulation of antislavery materials and the roles played by black distributors. Collaborative efforts facilitated the flow of printed texts and people and linked communities across vast geographies to promote projects of black empowerment. The distribution of printed materials as diverse as sermons, newspapers, pamphlets, hymn-sheets, and textbooks was essential in supporting African American resistance to racial discrimination and promoting the growth of the abolitionist movement in the early republic. These strategies laid the groundwork for national movements against racial inequality and for African American empowerment. Black print networks made possible, informed, and distributed the work of white abolitionists who joined in the shared political labor against slavery, as the United States hurtled towards a bloody civil war. Recovering long hidden or obscured African Americans' print distribution practices and networks offers a new vantage point for reconsidering the agency of these black individuals and communities and reinterpreting their foundational roles in the struggles for abolition and racial equality.

We present a comprehensive assessment of genomic diversity in the African-American population by studying three genotyped cohorts comprising 3,726 African-Americans from across the United States that provide a representative description of the population across all US states and socioeconomic status. An estimated 82.1% of ancestors to African-Americans lived in Africa prior to the advent of transatlantic travel, 16.7% in Europe, and 1.2% in the Americas, with increased African ancestry in the southern United States compared to the North and West. Combining demographic models of ancestry and those of relatedness suggests that admixture occurred predominantly in the South prior to the Civil War and that ancestry-biased migration is responsible for regional differences in ancestry. We find that recent migrations also caused a strong increase in genetic relatedness among geographically distant African-Americans. Long-range relatedness among African-Americans and between African-Americans and European-Americans thus track north-and west-bound migration routes followed during the Great Migration of the twentieth century. By contrast, short-range relatedness patterns suggest comparable mobility of similar to 15-16km per generation for African-Americans and European-Americans, as estimated using a novel analytical model of isolation-by-distance.

In order to critically assess the health-care system in Indianapolis, it is important to analyze this African-American population from two major perspectives. First, the local African-American population must be viewed in the context of the local health-care system in its present and historical setting. Second, the local African-American population must be viewed in conjunction with other urban African-American populations. These two perspectives will show how the region's economic, social, cultural, and political climate have affected the health-care status of African Americans in Indianapolis.