Felice D. Blake's Black Love, Black Hate: Intimate Antagonisms in African American Literature highlights the pervasive representations of intraracial deceptions, cruelties, and contempt in Black literature. Literary criticism has tended to focus on Black solidarity and the ways that a racially linked fate has compelled Black people to counter notions of Black inferiority with unified notions of community driven by political commitments to creative rehumanization and collective affirmation. Blake shows how fictional depictions of intraracial conflict perform necessary work within the Black community, raising questions about why racial unity is so often established from the top down and how loyalty to Blackness can be manipulated to reinforce deleterious forms of subordination to oppressive gender, sexual, and class norms.
Tema del mes ; La música, como todas las artes, se encuentra impregnada de los contextos políticos y culturales que la generaron. Esto se encuentra dado mediante una relación bidireccional, en la cual dos elementos absorben una cosa del otro: el sujeto de la comunidad y la comunidad del sujeto. Ya que la música nació en África, necesariamente habla de la cultura negra, así que cualquier subgénero nos muestra un poco de ella y más aún de todo lo que ha sufrido su gente, entre ello, de la esclavitud ; Music, as the other fine arts, in impregnated with the political and cultural contexts that generated it. This is given by a bidirectional relationship, in which two elements absorb one thing from the other: the subject from the community and the community from the subject. Since music was born in Africa, it necessarily speaks about black culture. Thereafter, any musical subgender can show us a part of this continent, as well as the suffering that its people have been trough
Tema del mes ; La música, como todas las artes, se encuentra impregnada de los contextos políticos y culturales que la generaron. Esto se encuentra dado mediante una relación bidireccional, en la cual dos elementos absorben una cosa del otro: el sujeto de la comunidad y la comunidad del sujeto. Ya que la música nació en África, necesariamente habla de la cultura negra, así que cualquier subgénero nos muestra un poco de ella y más aún de todo lo que ha sufrido su gente, entre ello, de la esclavitud ; Music, as the other fine arts, in impregnated with the political and cultural contexts that generated it. This is given by a bidirectional relationship, in which two elements absorb one thing from the other: the subject from the community and the community from the subject. Since music was born in Africa, it necessarily speaks about black culture. Thereafter, any musical subgender can show us a part of this continent, as well as the suffering that its people have been trough
The article argues that there is still need of black theology. Although apartheid is believed to have died and blacks have political power, the socio-economic and cultural realities and conditions that necessitated black theology are still prevalent. For as long as the black experiences involve pain and suffering there will be need to reflect theologically on what it means to be black in the South African context. This time around, as black theology is resuscitated, it should not merely be an academic- intellectual enterprise of the elites but it should seriously be in such a way that it has an organic relationship with the poor and oppressed. For black theology to be sustainable it has to be done in the context of theological reflection not from the Ivory towers such as academia but together with and alongside the poor and the oppressed, as well as their ecclesiastical and social movements
This project focuses on Nikki Giovanni's history as a revolutionary female activist in The Black Arts Movement (BAM). The BAM was dedicated to advancing the livelihood of African-Americans through the arts. Nikki Giovanni recognized the tensions between being a revolutionary black woman and fitting society's conventional standard of women. This paper highlights the life of an activist and poet engaged in a social revolution while trying to sustain a private life. Through the discussion of various poems in Black Feeling Black Talk/ Black Judgement (1970), this study explores the conflict between gender issues, race relations, and politics. As Giovanni positions herself as a revolutionary poet, she addresses the challenges black women faced to define their own voice under oppressive forces.
This article discusses the fraught relationship between legal citizenship and Black belonging as depicted in the works of two Black Italian women writers. The protagonists in the short story "Salsicce" ("Sausages") by Igiaba Scego and the novella Kkeywa: Storia di una bimba meticcia by Carla Macoggi resist multiple forms of dispossession and struggle to hold on to the autonomy of their self-identification and cultural attachments. Both Scego and Macoggi affirm the necessity to reclaim the power of self-definition, self-representation, and political agency when reckoning with the citizenship project and its inherent exclusions. Thus, these writings showcase the importance of studying the dynamic body of Black literature in Italian and offer us insight into some of the racialized, gendered, and religious negotiations of Italian sociopolitics for Black people navigating life throughout Italy and the Mediterranean.
This study examined the connection between Black youth moral behavior and the aesthetic value of Black art. Today's Black youth are impressed with elements in the media, their schools, and other social surroundings that have been a little less than upstanding. This exploration of moral relevance of self evaluation is important in order to empower the Black youth of today. With this self-empowerment, Black youth can have the ability to access and exhibit behaviors of moral integrity. This study examined interpretative narratives regarding Black art through group discussions, one on one interaction, a questionnaire, and participant observations by Black youth in the community in Jonesboro, Georgia. The interpretive stories were collected from a group of five eighth grade Black youth. This selected group represented less than 1% of the population of 30 % of under age 18 year old Black youth in a community of 51.6% Black. Participants were encouraged to relate the visual experience to their own childhood. In addition to this, stories from my own childhood experiences were incorporated as an important aspect of this research. The goal is to share my research and strategies with educators, parents, and community leaders who can ii direct this process of increasing self awareness regarding morals among Black youth through specific exercises in schools and community venues. Critical race theory provides the theoretical framework for this study with an emphasis on aesthetics. This framework contains information gathered from historical narratives of Black works of art as well as written and verbal texts of Black students and theorists of Black studies. I have included a number of poems which are reflective of the Black experience. This research drew upon developments of democracy, relating to Black culture, education of Blacks in the South, and the relationship of moral principles among Blacks relating to art, schools, and social events in America. These theoretical insights span from the beginning of the educational history of Blacks in the United States until the present. A visual narrative methodology was used to interpret the semiotics for Black culture which creates an aesthetic pedagogy necessary for introducing change to curricula in schools and programs in the community. Through these controlled discussions and written responses the implications of moral understanding resulted in evidence for understanding oneself as Black youth.
This book, co-authored with Ian Baucom and edited by David A Bailey, is the outcome of a lengthy period of research into the last twenty years of Black Art in Britain. It focuses particularly on the Thatcher period and the explosion of the Black Arts Movement in the wake of civil unrest and rioting in a number of British cities. The book is extensively illustrated bringing together a dialogue between leading artists, curators, art historians, and critics including Stanley Abe Jawad, Adelaide Bannerman, Allan deSouza, Kobena Mercer, Yong Soon Min and Judith Wilson. Combining cultural theory with anecdote and experience, it examines how the black British artists of the 1980s should be viewed historically and explores the political, cultural, and artistic developments that sparked the movement. It reviews practice in the context of public funding, and the trans-national art market and its legacy for today's artists and activists. The volume includes a unique catalogue of images, a comprehensive bibliography, and a series of descriptive timelines situating the movement in relation to relevant artworks, films, exhibitions, cultural criticism, and political events from 1960 to 2000. The book has become an established point of reference for the study of Black Art and cultural developments of Braitain during the period. In March 2007 it was awarded the INIVA Historians of British Art Book Prize.
Ready access to abundant electricity is a key enabler of modern life. During the past decade the vulnerability of Critical Infrastructure sectors in the U.S. to a variety of natural hazards and man-made threats has become increasingly apparent. The electrical infrastructure (the "Grid") is the foundation for all other critical civil infrastructures upon which our society depends. Therefore, protection of the Grid is an energy security, homeland security, and national security issue of highest importance. Geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) induced by solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs), electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks, and cyber attacks are three events having the potential to plunge the U.S. into partial or total Grid failure (de-energization) with subsequent blackouts so massive they are referred to as "Black Sky Events". Embedded in the U.S. Grid are almost one hundred commercial nuclear power reactors in some sixty nuclear power plants (NPPs). This paper explores the nature of society's coupled "system of systems" (i.e. Grid, other Critical Infrastructure, human operators of these infrastructures, Government, and the Public) that would be stressed by a Black Sky Event, and presents an analytical framework for probing the behavior of this system during Black Sky Events. The question of how NPPs might be impacted by a prolonged Black Sky Event, and what role, if any, NPPs can play in enabling a rapid recovery from a Black Sky Event is examined. The likely behavior of an NPP during a Black Sky Event is discussed, and it is concluded that today's generation of NPPs are Black Sky liabilities. However, a unique characteristic of NPPs (the large fuel inventory maintained in the reactor) could make the NPPs extraordinarily valuable assets should a Black Sky Event occur. Their value in this regard depends on whether or not it might be possible to affect a number of changes in the NPPs, the U.S. Grid, and other Critical Infrastructure in the U.S. to enable the NPPs to become Black Start Units – generating stations that would be the foundation of recovering the U.S. Grid during a Black Sky Event. This paper poses the question, "Can today's nuclear power plants be transformed from Black Sky Liabilities to Black Sky Assets, and if so, how?" An integrated framework for addressing this question is proposed.
Edition of weekly newsletter published by Black Knights, Inc., an organization dedicated to bringing news pertinent to the black community of Chattanooga. Contains hand-drawn political cartoons, as well as updates on various forms of discrimination present in Chattanooga.
The New Black is a documentary that tells the story of how the African American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over Civil Rights. The film documents activities, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the Black community's institutional pillar, the Black church, and reveals the Christian right wing's strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda. Following the film, we will hear from one of the main characters, Sharon Lettman-Hicks. Sharon is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Black Justice Coalition, a Civil Rights organization dedicated to empowering Black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. ; Queer People of Color @ VT and Multicultural Programs and Services ; Division of Student Affairs ; Virginia Tech. University Libraries
A review of Matthew E. Henry's Teaching While Black. Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2020. Matthew E. Henry's slim, searing first book of poems, Teaching While Black, is composed of situations or "teaching moments" that have occured throughout his life and particularly in his career as a Black teacher at mostly white and privileged schools. Particularly timely after the recent police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, the poems, and the moments each represents, highlight the intersection of race, class, and gender politics, exploring the conflicted meanings of place, position, and identity for a Black educator. These are challenging, insightful, and passionate poems that would be ideal reading for courses focused on these issues, particularly in conjunction with the BLM protests that coincide with the collection's publication and with helping students both to understand and resist the received positions that society, or educational institutions assign them.
This item is part of the Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements (PRISM) digital collection, a collaborative initiative between Florida Atlantic University and University of Central Florida in the Publication of Archival, Library & Museum Materials (PALMM).
Jean Genet's writing has generated controversies over the years, particularly his advocacy for demoting whiteness and its means of domination. He is primarily regarded as an angry homosexual white French male who portrays grotesque shadows of humanity in his work. In his 1959 Play The Blacks, Genet describes the way Blacks are categorized in France through the mediation of abjecting politics of disgust, which cast black bodies as repulsive and outside the pole. At the same time, The Blacks considers the strategies of resistance and critique that are available to these bodies and those working alongside with them. Characters in The Blacks conform to the roles that they are given, therefore creating a visual mask over their identity. For Genet acting becomes a (positively) perverse and subversive mean for gaining power over oppression by taking an art from something that is traditionally based in strict role playing and turning it into a form of individual and collective expression necessary to "negatively" creating what can then be conceived as an assertively "positive" socio-political identity.
In 1969 James Cone, AME minister and professor of theology, published Black Theology and Black Power with the aim of theologically redefining the place of the Christian church in terms of black oppression. My paper aims to show how Black Theology proponents answered the black community's need for more radical empowerment after the Civil Rights Movement by articulating the necessity of spirituality to achieve liberation. I show the "dilemma" of being African American and Christian by contrasting the progress of the religiously fueled Civil Rights Movement with the emergence of militant Black Power movements in the context of continued racial violence and socio-economic injustice. In addition, I would like to raise discussion about problems and successes of Cone's published theology in terms of African-American history. I have conducted my research through the close examination of a variety of both secondary and primary historical texts, including peer-reviewed journals, contemporary and historical interviews and articles from major African-American periodicals from the 1960s. My goal with this research is to reveal the complexity of the African-American struggle for Civil Rights and highlight the historical importance of Black Theology to religion, politics, and society in the United States. I believe my access to diverse sources spanning the past fifty years, and careful observation of Black Theology and its origins, provide a more intricate perspective both to the study of United States history and to the African-American experience.
