The purpose of this article is to present a classroom exercise and corresponding discussion for educators to use when teaching critical thinking skills to undergraduate students. The exercise involves applying critical thinking conccpts/questions offered by Browne and Keeley (2004) to a contemporary discussion about parenting issues among some African-American families. Comments by Dr. Bill Cosby have spurred debate about the parenting skills of some lower-income African-American parents. This article offers a classroom-based exercise that may be (...) used to help undergraduate students develop critical thinking that are useful in engaging in productive discourse in issues of importance. (shrink)

Cultural values influence how people understand illness and dying, and impact their responses to diagnosis and treatment, yet end-of-life care is rooted in white, middle class values. Faith, hope, and belief in God’s healing power are central to most African Americans, yet life-preserving care is considered “aggressive” by the healthcare system, and families are pressured to cease it.

Previous studies suggest that social class, class background, and social mobility have important consequences for family life. Exploring hypotheses derived from these studies, as well as the literature on intergenerational relations, the authors focus on one key aspect of family relations: adult daughters' ties to their mothers. Analyzing data from the National Survey of Families and Households, the authors explore how employed women's relations with their mothers are shaped by race, social class memberships and backgrounds, and family arrangements. Their (...) results suggest that social class and mobility exert powerful effects on women's sense of their relations with their mothers, especially among Whites. In addition, however, it is shown that mother-daughter ties among African American and White women are also influenced by family arrangements that operate somewhat independently of social class and mobility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 234-236 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Dreaming Me: An African American Woman's Spiritual Journey Dreaming Me: An African American Woman's Spiritual Journey. By Jan Willis. New York: Riverhead Books, 2001. 321 pp. This book invites comparison with Diana Eck's Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras(Boston: Beacon Press, 1993). Both are by prominent women scholars, both have "spiritual (...) journey" in the subtitle, and both are about Christians who come to terms with a non-Christian religion—Hinduism in Eck's case, Buddhism in Willis's case. But as soon as one gets past the titles, it is the differences that strike one. Where Eck maintains an Olympian poise, hobnobbing with Hindus but remaining a Christian and an objective scholar, interpreting and analyzing as she goes, Willis plunges into Buddhism without rejecting her family's Baptist tradition, becoming a fully participant observer so as to ask how her own history and the history of her fellow African Americans can be healed by an intensely personal internal dialogue. Eck gives us theology. Willis gives us herself. Recognized as "one of the first American scholar-practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism" (294), her students ask her if she practices meditation as well as teaching it. She gives a carefully crafted answer that unifies the practice of Buddhism with the practice of academic teaching as an authentically human activity within the Humanities.The book has the form of a Hindu epic, incidents from Willis's life interrupting the frame story, the dreaming of the title. This dream (whether actual or metaphorical, we are not told) moves with considerable dramatic power from the terror of being pursued by lions to the dreamer's transformation into a lioness who roars the Dharma like Queen Shrimala. Its five parts are called Birth, Odyssey, Choices, Becoming, and Return, taking us from her childhood as a Baptist in Docena, Alabama, to Cornell University, to India and Nepal, and back to Docena, as a self-described Baptist-Buddhist (310).Willis's journey is intimately bound up with her search for self-acceptance as a "white gal"—a noticeably light-complexioned black woman in the Jim Crow South —and for the nobility of African Americans as fully human beings. Her early experiences [End Page 234] were not encouraging. Blacks were not only physically segregated in Docena, they were electronically expunged from television shows by spurious technical difficulties ("trouble along the cable"), and she endured an attack by the Ku Klux Klan on her family's home. The customary but thoroughly illegal suffrage examination administered to her father included such questions as "How many words are there in the U.S. Constitution?" (58, italics in original). He had been specially prepared for such absurdities, and he passed. Midway in her pilgrimage Willis searches for her roots (or "kin," as she says, using the Southern word) in county and federal records, and her initial excitement turns to humiliation as the white historian tells her, with disdainful triumph, that her intelligence must have come from the white slave owner who "everybody says" was her "granddaddy's daddy" (251). A black woman was presumed to be lacking in native intelligence, and Willis's intellectual powers suffered insult not only from whites but from her own mother, who, perhaps having internalized the white folks' contempt, regarded being smart as somehow evil (25). As a student at Cornell, Willis discovered black power and participated in Black Student Alliance (BSA) demonstrations, sometimes involving guns, but she came to believe that direct political action was not for her. She was, she decided, a teacher at heart, and after much soul searching she opted for the "peaceful transformation" (129) that she hoped would come from the study and practice of Buddhism.Although her skin color was a puzzlement to some Indians, who wondered about her caste, her Tibetan teachers in Nepal accepted her as a student who was at least the equal of the white students, and even, perhaps, superior to them. A spot of blonde in her hair was interpreted as the... (shrink)

This essay is a reflection on how ethical violations continue to have an impact across generations within families of vulnerable populations that have experienced significant breaches in biomedical research. The focus is on the surviving family members of the United States Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee (USPHS). Emphasis will be on responsible ethical practices in research and the use of an unique approach narrative storytelling to address the needs of family descendents who have been impacted by the (...) USPHS Syphilis Study. (shrink)

In this era of suburban mega-churches and televised Sunday morning services, it is easy to forget that many Americans worship in small, community churches whose sanctuaries are often repurposed commercial spaces. In Articles of Faith, photographer Dave Jordano documents the at once humble and dynamic storefront churches of Chicago’s African American neighborhoods. These churches, which dot the south and west sides of the city, are truly community churches—individualized and idiosyncratic, they cater to the specific needs and wants of (...) their members. For the last five years, Jordano has spent his weekends traveling to different churches in the city, getting to know their pastors and parishioners. And this attention to personal detail is highly evident in his exquisite photographs that capture the identity and personalities of each church, from the hand-lettered signs to the icons. His interior images of the sacred spaces illustrate how the congregants create a comforting environment of affirmation, hope, and family for members who often live in neighborhoods marked by high crime and troubled homes. Infused in the space of these makeshift churches is also a sense of history that traces back to a time in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when one of the only forms of open expression available to African Americans was religious practice. These powerful and reverent images illuminate a vital component of urban life for many African Americans and speak to the links between the past and present African American experience. (shrink)

Nancy Gardner Prince began writing and self-publishing A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince in the 1850s, at a time when few African American women had the ability to do so. Her story tells of diaspora and of the systematic economic, cultural, and political oppression of free African Americans in the antebellum North. Raised by a mother unable to cope with the economic and emotional burden of raising eight children on her own, Prince (...) spends much of her youth working as a domestic servant in white households. After a long, mostly unsuccessful struggle to maintain family unity, Prince makes the decision to improve her circumstances, marrying sailor Nero Prince after a brief courtship and .. (shrink)

Focusing on the barriers between social work intervention in education and government funded programs that impact African American students, this book approaches these issues from a child-centered perspective. Interviews with ten African American students were conducted to discuss their perspectives on education, family life, and social work intervention.

Based on a qualitative study of 48 teenage mothers living in the Denver metropolitan area, this research examines the loss of multiple attachments, including mothers, siblings, and other extended family members and friends, among African American and Latina girls who become young mothers. Through life history narratives, this article explores the isolating effects of teen motherhood on the relational world of young mothers and the transition to “forced autonomy” that emerges out of the relationship strains in the teen (...) mothers’ lives. Faced with ruptures in significant childhood attachments and strains in the mother–daughter bond, young mothers develop strategies of accommodation to cope with the disruptions to connectivity and the demands of forced autonomy that are the result of early motherhood. These findings are interpreted through the frame of self-in-relation theory as this theoretical perspective has been informed by the scholarship on race and ethnicity. In reengaging the discourse on race, class, and gender, our findings contribute to the field in a number of significant and related ways: first, through an investigation into relationship loss and repair among teen mothers; second, by addressing the conditions under which teen mothers gain acceptance in their families; and third, in applying self-in-relation theory to the experience of adolescent girls of color whose relational lives are disrupted by the stigma and adversity of teen motherhood. (shrink)

The Human Genome Project (HGP) represents a massive merging of science and technology in the name of all humanity. While the disease aspects of HGP-generated data have received the greatest publicity and are the strongest rationale for the project, it should be remembered that the HGP has, as its goal the sequencing of all 100,000 human genes and the accurate depiction of the ancestral and functional relationships among these genes. The HGP will thus be constructing the molecular taxonomic norm for (...) humanity. Currently the HGP genomic baseline is almost exclusively skewed toward North Atlantic European lineages through the extensive use of the Centre d’Études du Polymorphisme Humaine (CEPH) data set. More recently, the HGP has shifted to the use of volunteer donors since adequate informed consent had not been secured from the CEPH families. No evidence exists that either the CEPH families or the current volunteers are the most appropriate demographic or evolutionary lineages for the functional genomic studies that will guide production of new DNA based drugs, targeted therapeutics and gene-based diagnostics. The lack of scientific representativeness of the HGP is a serious impediment to its broad applicability. Yet this can be remedied, and five alternative sampling strategies are presented. In response to the current exclusionary design of the HGP, there is noteworthy caution and skepticism in the African American community concerning genetic studies. The Manifesto on Genomic Studies Among African Americans reflects both a desire to be systematically included in federally funded genomic studies and a desire to maintain some control over the interpretation and application of research results. Representative sampling in the HGP is seen as an international human rights issue with domestic ethical implications. (shrink)

There are three serious problems in the ongoing debate over whether or not to grant ethical significance to race. First, although disagreement over whether or not "race" is a "real" or "objective" concept is only part of the debate, exchanges have increasingly concentrated on this issue. The result is that currently, the question of whether or not to grant ethical significance to race is most often presented as primarily a metaphysical rather than a normative one. This is misleading because the (...) metaphysical disagreement reflects underlying normative concerns, rather than the other way around. Second, the normative debate centers on whether or not people of African descent in the United States are justified in granting ethical significance to race by treating members of their race as if they were family. I argue, however, that choosing to treat members of one's race as family is a right. Like other rights, it entails concomitant obligations to act upon it only in ways that do not infringe upon other rights of other people. The important question, therefore, is whether and how people can treat members of their race as family without infringing upon the rights of others. I argue that this is possible and delineate the responsibilities and limitations involved. Third, much of the debate is a consequentialist debate over whether strategies that promote granting ethical significance to race or strategies that promote denying ethical significance to race will help to mitigate anti-black oppression. Yet neither side offers an adequate analysis of anti-black oppression to support their claims. I present and defend an analysis that suggests that granting ethical significance to race is important for fighting anti-black oppression. While I do not intend this as a justification for granting ethical significance to race, because I argue that justification is not required, I offer it to persuade those who deny ethical significance to race to reconsider their position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 2. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 419 Paul Amar Insurgent African Intimacies in Pandemic Times: Deimperial Queer Logics of China’s New Global Family inWolf Warrior 2 This essay offers a new paradigm of “deimperial queer analysis” that reveals the tension between the People’s Republic of China’s extractive expansionism in Africa and its claim to solidarity with Africans against white supremacy and Northern imperialism. (...) China has been labeled an “anti-imperial empire” that forcefully challenges previous Euro-American imperial legacies—all while it verges on reenacting them.1 A critical way it resolves this geopolitical tension is through the articulation of a mission for global China, and since 2017, the heroic filmic fictional figure of the “Wolf Warrior” anchors such an approach. The Wolf Warrior is a gorgeous, muscled, Chinese male rogue soldier in exile who adventures through the archipelago of the PRC’s shipping, mining, and medical projects across the Global South to battle white mercenaries, corrupt Asian businessmen, and local pirates—all while saving Africa from a ravaging pandemic. Extending a hugely popular film series, the release in 2017 of the blockbuster Wolf Warrior 2 (abbreviated below as Wolf 2) unleashed a worldwide social media frenzy as well as a revolution in diplomatic tone and protocol for China. In these ways, Wolf Warrior 2 came to mark the debut of the global PRC as a hegemonic structure 1. David Armitage, “The Anti-Imperial Empire?” Times Literary Supplement, no. 6018, August 3, 2018, https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-anti-imperialempire -american. 420 Paul Amar of feeling with an attendant popular cultural logic, launching a cast of military characters, humanitarian imaginaries, and gendered rebranding initiatives. These fused into a global cultural megaproject with the PRC presenting itself as a leader in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global South—a time the PRC has officially branded as its “Rejuvenation Era” of “Stepping Out into the World.” This essay shows how exactly this Wolf Warrior imagination has legitimized a new global regime, but I also reveal how, paradoxically, the Wolf Warrior regime has offered a distinct, more subversive worlding project. I argue here that the utopia immanent in this project can be revealed by interpretively turning this Wolf universe inside out through a deimperial queer analysis that honors and combines a Third World feminist lens and the “Asia as Method” approach with Danmei/BL and Slash queer-feminist fanfiction hacks. Danmei is a Chinese (originally mainly Tawainese) fanfiction genre that subverts mainstream heteronormative narratives by erotically aestheticizing and renarrating male-male intimacies within mainstream plotlines from feminist perspectives. BL (short for “boylove ”) is a similar Japanese fanfiction genre, and Slash is the term used in English for the queer/feminist hacking and excavation of sublimated and particularly utopian gender and sexuality plots from within seemingly conventional heteronormative or patriarchal popular-cultural texts. The everted or inside-out epistemology given expression here uses a set of non-phallogocentric lenses and decolonial feminist decoding practices. At stake is the urgency of not repeating the epistemic violence of conventional “anti-imperial” arguments, which tend to be heteronormative, statist, macho, and monolithic. Instead, the form of critique elaborated here brings questions of gender, race, and sexuality to the fore through a three-part approach. First, I identify the homoerotic register of the techno-infrastructural elements in the film. I generate close readings that detail the visual and genre codes of battle scenes, thug subjects, and piracy plots that forge a homoerotic model of rogue or “wolf” governmentality and that act as a metaphor for China’s techno -infrastructural rule. Second, this essay explores the gendered hauntings of supremacist humanism. I deploy a decolonial feminist lens to map the configuration of African women, female doctors, Maoist women insurgents, and feminized “flowerboys” as a rebel protectorate overseen by China’s phallic prerogative that is itself haunted by the specters of Euro-American humanist betrayal and white supremacy. Third, Paul Amar 421 I trace queer kinship utopias. I demonstrate that Wolf Warrior 2 rejuvenates a non-Western, queer, globalist kinship structure that triangulates Asian, white, and Black through adoption dramas and bromance bonds. Through these intimacies, an... (shrink)

This book acknowledges and highlights the moral excellence embedded in black queer practices of family. Taking the lives, narratives, and creative explorations of black queer people seriously, Thelathia Nikki Young brings readers on a journey of new, queer ethical methods that include confrontation, resistance, and imagination. Young asserts that family and its surrounding norms are both microcosms of and foundations for human relationships. She discusses how black queer people are moral subjects whose ethical reflection, lived experience, and embodied action demonstrate (...) valuable moral agency for those of us thinking about liberating and life-giving ways to enact “family.” Young posits that black queer people enact moral agency in ways that ought to be understood qua moral agency. Refusing to recognize the examples from this (and any other) community, Young argues, denies us all the learning and moral growth that come from connecting with diverse human experiences. This book investigates how acknowledging and critically engaging with the moral agency within marginalized subjectivities allow us to consider and bear witness to the moral potential in us all. (shrink)

John Ogbu has studied minority education from a comparative perspective for over 30 years. The study reported in this book--jointly sponsored by the community and the school district in Shaker Heights, Ohio--focuses on the academic performance of Black American students. Not only do these students perform less well than White students at every social class level, but also less well than immigrant minority students, including Black immigrant students. Furthermore, both middle-class Black students in suburban school districts, as well as (...) poor Black students in inner-city schools are not doing well. Ogbu's analysis draws on data from observations, formal and informal interviews, and statistical and other data. He offers strong empirical evidence to support the cross-class existence of the problem. The book is organized in four parts: *Part I provides a description of the twin problems the study addresses--the gap between Black and White students in school performance and the low academic engagement of Black students; a review of conventional explanations; an alternative perspective; and the framework for the study. *Part II is an analysis of _societal and school factors_ contributing to the problem, including race relations, Pygmalion or internalized White beliefs and expectations, levelling or tracking, the roles of teachers, counselors, and discipline. *_Community factors_--the focus of this study--are discussed in Part III. These include the educational impact of opportunity structure, collective identity, cultural and language or dialect frame of reference in schooling, peer pressures, and the role of the family. This research focus does _not_ mean exonerating the system and blaming minorities, nor does it mean neglecting school and society factors. Rather, Ogbu argues, the role of community forces should be incorporated into the discussion of the academic achievement gap by researchers, theoreticians, policymakers, educators, and minorities themselves who genuinely want to improve the academic achievement of African American children and other minorities. *In Part IV, Ogbu presents a summary of the study's findings on community forces and offers recommendations--some of which are for the school system and some for the Black community. _Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement_ is an important book for a wide range of researchers, professionals, and students, particularly in the areas of Black education, minority education, comparative and international education, sociology of education, educational anthropology, educational policy, teacher education, and applied anthropology. (shrink)

In the United States, low-income or minority populations tend toward earlier births than the more advantaged. In disadvantaged populations, one factor that may exert pressure toward early births is “weathering,” or pervasive health uncertainty. Are subjective perceptions of health related to fertility timing? Drawing on a small sample of intensive interviews with teenage mothers-to-be, I suggest that low-income African American teenagers may expect uncertain health and short lifespans. Where family economies and caretaking systems are based on kin networks, (...) such perceptions may influence the decision to become a young mother. Heuristic typologies of ways socially situated knowledge may contribute to the reproduction of fertility timing practices contrast the experiences of poor African American interviewees, working class white interviewees, and middle-class teens who typically postpone childbearing. (shrink)

Is the United States "the land of equal opportunity" or is the playing field tilted in favor of those whose parents are wealthy, well educated, and white? If family background is important in getting ahead, why? And if the processes that transmit economic status from parent to child are unfair, could public policy address the problem? Unequal Chances provides new answers to these questions by leading economists, sociologists, biologists, behavioral geneticists, and philosophers.New estimates show that intergenerational inequality in the United (...) States is far greater than was previously thought. Moreover, while the inheritance of wealth and the better schooling typically enjoyed by the children of the well-to-do contribute to this process, these two standard explanations fail to explain the extent of intergenerational status transmission. The genetic inheritance of IQ is even less important. Instead, parent-offspring similarities in personality and behavior may play an important role. Race contributes to the process, and the intergenerational mobility patterns of African Americans and European Americans differ substantially.Following the editors' introduction are chapters by Greg Duncan, Ariel Kalil, Susan E. Mayer, Robin Tepper, and Monique R. Payne; Bhashkar Mazumder; David J. Harding, Christopher Jencks, Leonard M. Lopoo, and Susan E. Mayer; Anders Björklund, Markus Jäntti, and Gary Solon; Tom Hertz; John C. Loehlin; Melissa Osborne Groves; Marcus W. Feldman, Shuzhuo Li, Nan Li, Shripad Tuljapurkar, and Xiaoyi Jin; and Adam Swift. (shrink)

It is widely believed that gendered expectations are communicated to children in the process of socialization. However, there is reason to ask whether and how gender is constructed in Black families. An early perspective that still continues to inform some contemporary research is assimilationism, which assumes that Black people embrace and pass on to their children the gender norms of the dominant white society. The Afrocentric perspective challenges this view, maintaining that the unique historical experiences of Blacks have militated (...) against an emphasis on rigid gender distinctions, and that relative gender neutrality exists in Black families' child-rearing practices. The development of multicultural feminist theory, which argues that the impact of race on gender varies by social class, implies that both assimilationism and Afrocentrism may be overgeneralizations. Yet, little systematic research has been done on whether race makes a difference in how parents view gender. The authors use data from surveys completed by a nonrandom sample of parents in 202 African American and 204 white families in two large metropolitan school districts to examine the impact of gender, race, and class on parents' self-reports of their immediate priorities and long-term goals for their children, their view of the parenting role, and their discipline strategies. The findings are consistent with multicultural feminist theory: Race and social class interact to shape the intergenerational construction of gender in families. (shrink)

Critique of Latin American Reason is one of the most important philosophical texts to have come out of South America in recent decades. First published in 1996, it offers a sweeping critique of the foundational schools of thought in Latin American philosophy and critical theory. Santiago Castro-Gómez argues that “Latin America” is not so much a geographical entity, a culture, or a place, but rather an object of knowledge produced by a family of discourses in the humanities that (...) are inseparably linked to colonial power relationships. Using the archaeological and genealogical methods of Michel Foucault, he analyzes the political, literary, and philosophical discourses and modes of power that have contributed to the making of “Latin America.” Castro-Gómez examines the views of a wide range of Latin American thinkers on modernity, postmodernity, identity, colonial history, and literature, also considering how these questions have intersected with popular culture. His critique spans Central and South America, and it also implicates broader and protracted global processes. This book presents this groundbreaking work of contemporary critical theory in English translation for the first time. It features a foreword by Linda Martín Alcoff, a new preface by the author, and an introduction by Eduardo Mendieta situating Castro-Gómez’s thought in the context of critical theory in Latin America and the Global South. Two appendixes feature an interview with Castro-Gómez that sheds light on the book’s composition and short provocations responding to each chapter from a multidisciplinary forum of contemporary scholars who resituate the work within a range of perspectives including feminist, Francophone African, and decolonial Black political thought. (shrink)

Barbados is a center of international genetic research premised on race. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork following Johns Hopkins studies carried out in Barbados, this article explores this travel for research. This biomedical science relies on a conflicting significance of Barbados: as a site of suffering, due to the disparities of disease, and, conversely, a site of ease, playing on desires and pleasures of escaping too much asceticism in biomedicine. For the American researchers, Barbados becomes a locus of desire to (...) ethically address the African diaspora without the quandaries of accusations and recriminations experienced in carrying out such work in urban America. The concept of cathartic science is used to describe an endeavor that creates a controlled space to know and act on some perceived sufferer without risk of being complicit in the suffering. These medical migrations of researchers to Barbados are paralleled by Bajan families participating in the American studies as a kind of proxy medical migration to the US, bitterly reflecting on the care available to them at home. This article explores the motives of this mutual travel, as a biomedicalized Barbados becomes a spectral figure for patients and researchers fraught with race, injustice, and desire. The article extends the concept of cathartic science from genomics of race to medical anthropology to foreground the desires and anxieties of any science of suffering. (shrink)

Little is known about the lives of the never married. Demographic data show that rates of nonmarriage have increased significantly across racial and ethnic groups. Among women, African Americans have the highest rates of nonmarriage, followed by Asian Americans and European Americans. This research used in-depth interviews with native- and foreign-born Chinese American and Japanese American never married women to explore why these women are delaying or rejecting heterosexual marriage. Respondents were asked a series of open- and (...) closed-ended questions about their attitudes, experiences, and decisions concerning marriage and family life. Questions also focused on how their family backgrounds and occupational plans affected their decisions to marry. Preliminary findings reveal that Chinese American and Japanese American women express a number of reasons for being never married. The four most consistent factors were their parents' marriages, their status as the eldest or only daughter, their educational goals, and the perceived lack of suitors. (shrink)

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we commemorate its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery? In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs—some never before published—from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans (...) born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration. Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end. Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture. (shrink)

BackgroundHospitalized older adults frequently have impaired cognition and must rely on surrogates to make major medical decisions. Ethical standards for surrogate decision making are well delineated, but little is known about what factors surrogates actually consider when making decisions.ObjectivesTo determine factors surrogate decision makers consider when making major medical decisions for hospitalized older adults, and whether or not they adhere to established ethical standards.DesignSemi-structured interview study of the experience and process of decision making.SettingA public safety-net hospital and a tertiary referral (...) hospital in a large city in the Midwest United States.ParticipantsThe study included 35 surrogates with a recent decision-making experience for an inpatient aged 65 or older.MeasurementsThe key factors that surrogates considered when making decisions. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed using the grounded theory method of qualitative analysis.ResultsSurrogates considered patient-centered factors and surrogate-centered factors. Patient-centered factors included: respecting the patient’s input, using past knowledge of the patient to infer the patient’s wishes, and consider ing what is in the patient’s best interests. Some surrogates expressed a desire for more information about the patient’s prior wishes. Surrogate-centered factors included: surrogate’s wishes as a guide, surrogate’s religious beliefs and/or spirituality, surrogate’s interests, and family consensus.ConclusionOur study indicates that surrogate decision making is more complex than the standard ethical models, which are limited to considerations of the patient’s autonomy and beneficence. Because surrogates also imagine what they would want under the circumstances and consider their own needs and preferences, models of surrogate decision making must account for these additional considerations. Surrogates’ desire for more information about patients’ preferences suggests a need for greater advance care planning. (shrink)

Recent research on the semantics and pragmatics of slurs has offered insight into several important facts concerning their meaning and use. However, prior work has unfortunately been restricted primarily to considerations of slurs that typically target females, homosexuals, and African Americans. This is problematic because such a narrowly focused attention to slurs in prior work has left theorizing of how slurs generally function relatively uninformed by facts of actual language use. As a result, theoretical accounts of slurs that have (...) so far been proposed have largely failed to accurately reflect actual usage, account for the empirical findings about slurs and general pejoratives from the social sciences, and offer any informative predictions to help guide future research. At this time more empirically oriented homework on the variety of ways that different slurs have been used in different cases would be helpful for theorists to consider so that they can proceed to develop more nuanced and empirically informed theories about slurs, their usage, and their effects. Accordingly, since no account of slurs for Italian Americans has so far been offered, this article provides a systematic and empirically informed analysis of slurs for Italian Americans that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Further, this article demonstrates that the family resemblance account of slurs maintained here has major advantages over previous accounts insofar as it is flexible yet robust enough to accommodate both the derogatory and appropriative use of slurs, can explain many of the psychological effects that slurs actually have on both their users and targets, and is more in accord with the real rather than ideal nature of our organic human psychology. (shrink)

The American philosopher Thomas Nagel famously argued that no matter how many objective facts we may know about bats, we cannot know what it is like to be a bat. There is an irreducible subjectivity to the experience of being a bat. I can only imagine what it would be like for a subject like me to be a bat but never what it is like for the actual bat to be a bat.In her book, Benvenuti demonstrates extraordinary sensitivity (...) to the subjectivity of the nonhuman animals she discusses. In addition to being an organic farmer in southern Italy, Benvenuti is also a licensed psychologist. Her training and interest in neurobiology is evident throughout the work. She walks the middle path between human exceptionalism (the “old meme” as she puts it of humans being “distinct from” and “superior to” all other animals, p. 15) on the one side and collapsing the differences on the other. While she might agree with the thrust of Nagel's claim (she never mentions him in the book) that we cannot truly know what it is like to be a bat, we are not so different to bats that we cannot empathetically understand something of a bat's experiences. We are, after all, kin. Kinship, she argues, rather than “distinct and superior” is the more correct scientific understanding (p. 18).Her work is clearly influenced by that of her mentor, Jaak Panksepp, on affective neurobiology. Like the biologist and ethologist Marc Bekoff, Benvenuti argues that it is possible to be “biocentrically anthropomorphic and do rigorous science” (p. 66). Of course, kinship does not entail sameness. “The central core of my life's work,” Benvenuti writes, “is to articulate the grounds for real relationships between humans and other animals. This implies the capacity to empathize accurately and to be able to communicate across species differences, but also the capacity to recognize that the other is not ‘just like me’” (p. 82). Importantly for her, it is not just our learning about other animals but our learning from them and they from us. It is the complex—and it is very complex—relationship that matters.Kindred Spirits is a beautifully written book, part travelogue, part personal anecdotes, with a nice mixture of scientific and philosophical musings. It begins in her own backyard (in the United States at the time) with a friendship struck up with a crow named Jason and then transports us to destinations around the world and species including bees, dogs, elephants, cheetahs, whales, and rescued farmed animals. Benvenuti spends much of her time with people trying to research, rescue, and rehabilitate endangered species. Above all, she intends it as a hopeful book. She finds great inspiration and hope in the fact that so many people around the world care about animals. She finds hope in the decline of circuses that merely use and abuse animals for human entertainment. She points to the growing understanding of animal studies and general interest in animals’ internal lives and feelings.The book makes a useful contribution to the growing literature of cognitive ethology. It is along similar lines as the works of Marc Bekoff and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. For those of us already convinced of our kinship and similarity with nonhuman animals, there are inspiring stories of others engaged in trying to save the world, or at least the part of it they can. One of the real strengths of the book is the constant questioning of the animal's experience. While we all appreciate those “animal ambassadors” who come to represent their kind and educate us, Benvenuti raises the important ethical question as to whether those animals want to be ambassadors at all. Sometimes a quick bite, as she once received from an African gray parrot, is enough to remind us to mind our manners around other species. It was a lesson in respecting differences and boundaries. The book does in the end inspire hope that if enough European and American scientists continue to advance the study of animal intelligence and emotion, we might one day come to the understanding that our indigenous brothers and sisters around the world have had since the beginning—that we, human and nonhuman, are all kin. (shrink)

In June 21, 1990, the Joneses, an African-American family living in the mainly white and working-class neighbourhood of St. Paul in Minnesota, saw a small white cross burning in their yard. By placing the burning cross on the yard, the Minnesota Supreme Court argued that one of the accused, Robert A Viktora, had engaged in ‘fighting words’. However, the US Supreme Court reversed this decision, arguing that the local authority in St Paul only legally banned certain ‘fighting words’, (...) but not others. Judith Butler explores this legal case, R.A.V. v. St. Paul. Judith Butler argues in her earlier work that the Supreme Court in effect represented the burning cross as being non-performative and simply a vehicle of expression rather than a historical symbol of hate speech towards African-Americans. In this paper, I look again at the R.A.V. case. But I do so by both drawing on what Butler explicitly says about the case in her early work and integrating this with her later work on the ethics of grief, state hegemony and public assemblies. Furthermore, I also incorporate some of the insights of the Bakhtin Circle into Butler’s work to strengthen her arguments. The paper then revisits R.A.V. v. St. Paul and shows how Reaganite state hegemony effectively transformed issues of racism surrounding this free speech case into ‘monologic’ and ‘ungrievable’ public matters of concern. The paper concludes by briefly discussing counter-hegemonic politics of free speech. (shrink)

Although Kirk Lougheed recognises the need to integrate diverse frameworks into its predominantly Anglo-American tradition,1 his argument contains a limited understanding of vital force as well as a restricted view of communal relationships. We therefore suggest a broader framework for understanding vitality, community and what is permissible by emphasising how African beliefs by the Akan, advance care directives and Afro-Caribbean religious practice such as Santería expand perspectives within global bioethics and thus encourage more inclusive approaches to addressing bioethical (...) dilemmas. For the Akan (in Ghana), the fundamental concept of ‘being’ is construed on the belief that Okra (considered as soul, or the life-giving spirit in man) and Nkrabea (considered as destiny) determine the life of every individual. Individual autonomy in the matter of ‘death’ is linked to the collective responsibility for the preservation of life. For a terminally ill person, his family and community members, this responsibility is upheld by allowing Nkrabea (destiny) to take its natural course without any human intervention especially in matters of ‘death’. Thus, the Akan belief and conviction concerning Nkrabea or destiny run contrary to the approval of euthanasia.2 The impermissibility of euthanasia, from this perspective …. (shrink)

This article reviews the recent crisis in Detroit focusing on the placement of an Emergency Manager in charge of financial decisions, and a bankruptcy process. This political disenfranchisement harmed the pensions of city employees and offered valuable real estate to investors at low prices. While the crisis was long in the making, with deindustrialization and residential segregation beginning in the 1950s, the crisis was exacerbated in 2008 with the mortgage crisis and with water shut-offs to residences. The greatest harms were (...) felt by African American families in the city. The article takes toll of the harms suffered and chronicles movements of resistance against Emergency Management and community organizing efforts. (shrink)

This study examines how and why peoples of African descent access and utilize community-based pedagogical spaces that exist outside schools. Employing a theoretical framework that fuses historical methodology and border-crossing theory, the researchers review existing scholarship and primary documents to present an historical examination of how peoples of African descent have fought for and redefined education in nonschool educative venues. These findings inform the authors? analysis of results from an oral history project they conducted into how Black Bermudian (...) men utilized learning spaces outside schools, such as the family, Black church, and athletics clubs, to augment their personal and scholastic development. Based on their historical and empirical research findings, the authors argue that educational actors (including teachers, administrators, policy makers, and researchers) focused on school-based issues like the academic achievement gap would do well to recognize the impact learning spaces outside of schools may have on student scholastic success, particularly for minority men. (shrink)

African-American Philosophers brings into conversation seventeen of the foremost thinkers of color to discuss issues such as Black existentialism, racism, Black women philosophers within the academy, affirmative action and the conceptual parameters of African-American philosophy.

The earnings of African American women increased throughout the 1960s and 1970s, yet by the 1980s there were signs of a reversal. Using data from the 1980 and 1990 censuses of population, this study examines the deterioration in Black women's earnings across the 1980s. The authors ask what caused the earnings reversal given the improvements in Black women's human capital and industrial locations. The study finds that while the returns to schooling and industrial distribution improved over the decade, (...) these gains were offset by the negative effects of changing family structure, nonmetropolitan residence, and occupational redistribution. Noteworthy is the fact that despite higher returns for public sector employment, work in this sector contributed little to Black women's changing economic status, perhaps because of cutbacks in affirmative action programs. The authors also find evidence of a widening bifurcation among African American women workers, with growing numbers of this group concentrated in the lower end of the earnings distribution. (shrink)

Cynthia Willett brings together diverse insights from social psychology, classical and contemporary literature, and legal and justice theory to redefine the basis of the moral and legal person. Feminists, communitarians, and postmodern thinkers have made clear that classical liberalism, with its emphasis on individual autonomy and excessive rationalism, is severely limited. Although she is sympathetic with the liberal view, Willett finds it necessary to go further. For her, attention to the social dimensions of the family and civil society is critical (...) if issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality are to be taken seriously. Interdependency, not autonomy, is of increasing significance in an era of globalization. Willett proposes an alternate normative theory that recognizes the impact of social forces on individual well-being. Citizenship in a democracy should not be defined solely on the basis of rights to autonomy, such as bare rights to property or free speech, she explains. Rather, citizenship should be defined first of all in terms of the rights, responsibilities, and capacities of the social person. It is within the African American tradition of political thought that Willett finds a more useful definition of human identity and political freedom. The African American experience offers a compelling vision of social change and a deeper understanding of what it means to be a social person. By focusing on everyday battles against racism, Willett contends, we can gain valuable insight into the meaning of justice. (shrink)

This article focuses on the experiences of 29 African American teachers in K–12 institutions in Southern California. The article reports on the major themes of the participating teachers’ shared narratives in light of the theory of racial micro-aggression; their responses include evidence that racial micro-aggression during interactions with nonminority organizational members have had a negative impact on their experience. These findings, which are consistent with the neophyte literature, reveal a unique opportunity for scholars to engage in cutting edge (...) research and also suggest the need to integrate training specific to racial micro-aggression in professional development and teacher education programs in order to improve the experience of African American teachers in the future. (shrink)

This article uses data from the 2020 TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index to show that many American families were financially fragile well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. economy. Financial fragility is particularly severe among specific demographic groups, such as African-Americans and those with low income. The article also shows that financial fragility is strongly linked to financial literacy and that many Americans are ill-equipped to deal with the financial decisions needed to navigate through a financial (...) crisis. Suggestions are provided to deal with personal finance decisions in times of emergency. (shrink)

'Ideologies of Discrimination' considers the implications of the new genetics for understandings of personhood and for understandings of the relationship between people in groups. In particular, the essay delineates and examines the emerging notion of a 'genetic group' and considers the social implications of redefining families, racial groups and ethnic groups through express, and often exclusive, reference to a shared genome. One consequence of such redefinition has been the justification and elaboration of stigmatizing images of and discrimination against such (...) groups-especially those, such as Jews and African-Americans, that have long been identified with specific somatic characteristics. A few worrisome trends begin to emerge in the response of the American legal system to the notion of genetic groups. Among these is a shift in the locus of privacy and identity from the autonomous individual to the genetic group. This shift challenges (and threatens) long-standing Western values (including equality and liberty) that depend upon the ideological centrality of autonomous individuality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:108 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Ellyn Weiss Anna U. Davis: An Introduction Anna U. Davis is a Swedish American mixed-media artist who was born in Lund, Sweden, and currently resides in Washington, DC. Her work draws frequently on the challenges she has faced living in the United States, particularly those related to her gender and racial position. Her husband, who spent (...) most of his childhood in the same Swedish town as Davis, was born to an African American man and a white Swedish woman. When Anna, who is also white, was pregnant with her own son, now in his early twenties, she began drawing what she terms “Frocasians,” people who are neither black nor white and who cannot claim automatic acceptance from either group. As her work explores, the outsider status of Frocasions both presents opportunity and exacerbates insecurity. Davis’s Swedish roots are central to her brand of feminism. She remembers growing up in an environment where notions of gender justice were firmly embedded in the legal framework and norms of the community. Her struggles with inadequate childcare and family leave as a young mother in the United States, then, form a strong undercurrent shaping her critical perspective. Davis also narrates growing up in a household that was emotionally unstable and sometimes difficult to navigate. As an outgrowth of these varied struggles, her art both values and aims to project strength. Davis’s graphic skills anchor her work; she always starts with detailed pieces in black and white. These pieces are then sometimes All images shown in this art essay courtesy of Anna U. Davis. Anna U. Davis, The Modern Plague, 2012. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 30 × 26 inches. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Anna U. Davis, Bull’s-eye, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 38 × 4 inches. Anna U. Davis, The Edge of Transit, 2008. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 12 × 10 inches. Anna U. Davis, Houseman, 2018. Acrylic and ink pen on cut-out birch plywood, 46 × 3 inches. Anna U. Davis, Black Velvet, 201. Inkjet print, 60 × 80 inches. Anna U. Davis, Black Velvet, 201. Inkjet print, 60 × 80 inches. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Anna U. Davis, Drop Dead Gorgeous, 2008. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 48 × 96 inches. Anna U. Davis, Delivered Agenda, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 20 × 20 inches. Anna U. Davis, Anonymous Was the Woman, 2014. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 12 × 10 inches. NEXT PAGE Anna U. Davis, Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hyde, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. LEFT TO RIGHT Anna U. Davis, Equilibrium, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 40 × 40 inches. Anna U. Davis, Second Class, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT Anna U. Davis, Shark-cuteri, 2016. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. Anna U. Davis, Face-it (part ), 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 18 × 24 inches. Anna U. Davis, Love, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. CENTER Anna U. Davis, Last Call, 2019. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 10 × 10 inches. NEXT PAGE Anna U. Davis, Tripping, 201. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on canvas, 2 × 96 inches. LEFT TO RIGHT Anna U. Davis, The Anonymous Celebrity, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 8 × 44 inches. Anna U. Davis, Tug of War, 2019. Acrylic, ink pen, and paper collage on raw linen, 41 × 31 inches. Anna U. Davis, Undertaker, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 4 × 2 inches. Anna U. Davis, Lena, 2009. Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 32 × 32 inches. Ellyn Weiss 125 enlarged, either remaining in black and white, becoming the underpinning of a collage, or more recently, turning into a sculptural wall relief. The color in her pieces is typically derived from the brilliant tones of glossy illustrations in so-called “women’s magazines,” which she cuts up for collaging. The content is also influenced by the articles and advertisements in such magazines. Implicit in some of Davis’s... (shrink)

In the burgeoning field of whiteness studies, What White Looks Like takes a unique approach to the subject by collecting the ideas of African-American philosophers. George Yancy has brought together a group of thinkers who address the problematic issues of whiteness as a category requiring serious analysis. What does white look like when viewed through philosophical training and African-American experience? In this volume, Robert Birt asks if whites can "live whiteness authentically." Janine Jones examines what it (...) means to be a "goodwill white." Joy James tells of beating her "addiction" to white supremacy, while Arnold Farr writes on making whiteness visible in Western philosophy. What White Looks Like brings a badly needed critique and philosophically sophisticated perspective to central issue of contemporary society. (shrink)

A special issue of _The Philosophical Forum_, one of the most prestigious philosophy journals, is now available to a wider readership through its publication in book form. The volume includes twelve essays in three sections-- Philosophical Traditions; the African-American Tradition; and Racism, Identity, and Social Life. Contributors are: K. Anthony Appiah, Kwasi Wiredu, Lucius Outlaw, Leonard Harris, Bernard Boxill, Frank M. Kirkland, Tommy L. Lott, Adrian M.S. Piper, Laurence Thomas, Michele M. Moody-Adams, Anita L. Allen, and Howard McGary. (...) The introduction is by John P. Pittman. (shrink)

The recent expansion of online genetic-genealogical networks has been hailed as a development that could break racial taboos in the United States by providing irrefutable evidence of the myriad historical and genetic links—many originating in slavery—connecting white and black families. These predictions are countered, however, by a scholarly literature on “white ignorance,” defined as an active historical project that works to prevent privileged groups from apprehending their links to, and positionality within, systems of racial oppression. This paper mobilizes concepts (...) from the fields of agnotology and epistemic ethics to assess how far genetic-genealogical technologies can contribute to redressing racialized epistemic inequities between slave and slaveholder descendants, by inducing the latter to respond to the former’s kinship claims and give access to data that could help reconstruct their linked family histories. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data that foreground the experiences of African American genealogists, the study outlines the structural and affective dimensions that have converged to enable white ignorance regarding genealogies of slavery and discusses ethical and technical solutions proposed by genealogical practitioners to redress the racialized power dynamics that continue to condition access to, and public acceptance of, family history knowledge relating to slavery. (shrink)

A recent message on one of the e-mail bulletin boards sent by a college student read, “I believe that the AIDS virus was developed in government labs for the purpose of controlling black folks.” In September 1990, Essence, an African American magazine with a circulation of 900,000, had as a lead article “AIDS: Is It Genocide?” In 1991, the New York Times quoted Clarence Page, African American columnist and Pulitzer prize winner: “You could call conspiracy theories (...) about AIDS and drugs fringe ideas, but they seem, to have a large following among the black intelligentsia. … [And] you find it at all levels.” In April 1992, Lorene Gary explained in Newsweek “Why it's not just paranoia.” In that same month, another New York Times article reported: “Bizarre as it may seem to most people, many black Americans believe that AIDS and the health measures used against it are part of a conspiracy to wipe out the black race.”4 In February 1992, Science quoted Peter Breggin, director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry in Bethesda, Maryland, as saying that research on violence “cloaks the intention to identify problem black children and then … prescribe pacifying drugs.”. (shrink)

Context: Comparing the Covid-19 related experiences of vulnerable groups can help to improve public health.?The United States and the United Kingdom are both characterized by underfunded public health in the context of racist systems. We reviewed differences in Covid-19 outcomes between groups in the US and UK and compared intergroup differences between the two countries. Methods: The scoping review analyzed articles published in English during the Covid-19 pandemic focusing on the US or the UK. Using Scopus and PubMed, research articles (...) were chosen based on titles, abstracts, and relevance to the research question. Certain demographic groups known to be differentially affected by Covid-19 were chosen a priori for inclusion. Data was extracted by the first author and reviewed by senior authors. 63 studies met the inclusion criteria. Results: Two studies compared the US and UK. One found that minority status is an important social determinant of health (SDOH) of Covid-19 related health outcomes in both countries, likely through association with other SDOH. Another found that the risk of confirmed infection was higher in African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans in the US and in African-Caribbean/Black-Africans, South-Asians, and Mixed-race people in the UK, compared with their respective White peers. Asian ethnicity is subject to different definitions in the US and the UK. Individual articles focusing on either the US or the UK also found that, in both countries, essential workers were impacted; those with disabilities were more often affected by Covid-19 related comorbidities in both countries. In addition, in both the US and the UK, people living in multigenerational families were more susceptible to Covid-19. Misclassification of causes of morbidity and mortality was noted in both countries. Discussion and conclusion: A limited literature indicates that, in both the US and UK, non-White populations were more affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, possibly due to association of SDOH with racist systems. Racial definitions differ between these countries and this needs further research. In both countries, data focused on LGBTQ+ groups and people with disabilities is lacking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Susan Laird, “Musical Hunger: A Philosophical Testimonial of Miseducation”Heidi WesterlundCan hunger and satisfaction, which according to John Dewey form “the arsis and thesis of a child’s life,”1 create the rhythm and heartbeat of music education? Susan Laird shows us through her autobiographical experiences how this heartbeat was missed in her case, while the undertone of her narrative and testimonial begs a wider self-reflection upon the culture (...) of music education. Indeed, Laird’s testimonial assumes that musical hunger has something to do with professional music educators; that musical hunger and satisfaction while setting the beat for a person’s musical life are not simply biological functions—something that exists and stays no matter how and what the person is fed or where and with whom the person eats. As Dewey wrote,[t]he very tendency of the child, while hungry, to recall his previous satisfaction, and to anticipate the coming one, is the beginning of the recognition of time. It grows more definite and accurate just in the degree in which all experiences are related to each other as members of one whole.2The imaginative musical dinner table that Laird’s testimonial lays out calls for music educators to reflect upon what kind of meal is served, not only from their own perspective but also from that of their students. Yet, reconstructing the menu is demanding in a profession that struggles with the pros and cons of a tradition in which teachers have learnt to teach in the same way that they themselves have been taught, also teaching using the same order in which they have learned—only hoping to do it more effectively.Quite recently, when visiting the recording studio at the Sibelius Academy department of music education to listen to one of my student’s work with her own rock band, I was reminded by my own remembrances of the difficulty, as well as the necessity, of reconstructing traditions in music teacher education. My thoughts led me fleetingly back to the ‘70s when making arrangements, improvisations, or working in recording studios were part of my musical life, until they were overwhelmed by the then-prevalent diet of professional music studies. Although my experiences of general music education were similar to those of Laird, teachers in the specialized music school fed me with goal-directed instruction in more than one instrument, in music theory, solfege, and the history of Western [End Page 81] art music. Looking back, however, I was lucky in more ways than one: my adolescent leisure time was blessed with numerous choirs, orchestras, and gigging bands—bringing a self-organized satisfaction and motivation to all kinds of music and musical activities. Multiple diets were feeding my musical life: I obtained the strengthening vitamin drops and enjoyed my self-made smorgasbord with family and friends, none of which had been enough by themselves to lead me into the profession. Yet, when entering the university to pursue my professional music studies, I experienced events in reverse order to that which Lucy Green describes in How Popular Musicians Learn.3 As I then did not have a piano of my own, I only had the opportunity to practice what was necessary for exams and so I practically stopped playing for fun. I also realized that not all flute teachers were able to accompany their students as did my first teacher, and so I had to play my flute repertoire for most of the year only imagining how the pieces would sound as a whole with no community with whom to share the joy of music making. While watching my student working in front of the studio desk searching for the right bass sound for her own song—a song that she was performing with friends and fellow students—to give the song the final touch for her work for the pedagogy of African-American music (popular music) course, to my own surprise I suddenly felt a long-forgotten hunger and desire. I was reminded of the challenges facing teacher education in exemplifying by its own practices a music education that does not take for granted that particular subject content or official... (shrink)

The philosopher Jorge J. E. Gracia engages fifteen prominent scholars on race, ethnicity, nationality, and Hispanic/Latino identity in the United States. Their discussion joins two distinct traditions: the philosophy of race begun by African Americans in the nineteenth century, and the search for an understanding of identity initiated by Latin American philosophers in the sixteenth century. Participants include Linda M. Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, Richard J. Bernstein, Lawrence Blum, Robert Gooding-Williams, Eduardo Mendieta, and Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., and (...) their dialogue reflects the analytic, Aristotelian, Continental, literary, Marxist, and pragmatic schools of thought. These intellectuals start with the philosophy of Hispanics/Latinos in the United States and then move to the philosophy of African Americans and Anglo Americans in the United States and the philosophy of Latin Americans in Latin America. Gracia and his interlocutors debate the nature of race and ethnicity and their relation to nationality, linguistic rights, matters of identity, and Affirmative Action, binding the concepts of race and ethnicity together in ways that open new paths of inquiry. Gracia's Familial-Historical View of ethnic and Hispanic/Latino identity operates at the center of each of these discussions, providing vivid access to the philosopher's provocative arguments while adding unique depth to issues that each of us struggles to understand. (shrink)

This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. (...) Section One of this book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although Kairos in Greek mythology is often depicted as the winged son of Zeus who grants to those who lay hold of his single lock of hair their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, in traditional African American culture, particularly when it comes to speech, Kairos is essentially family. Given how much African American speakers depend on seizing the moment to invoke spiritual connections, emit laughter, and profess the truth, Kairos, or what we might call CPT (“Colored People’s Time”), (...) can be summoned almost at will. One of the African American discourses this article will use to illustrate this point is Call and Response, a verbal exchange in which speakers and listeners attune to one another and to the timeliness of an event. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was such an event, but it wouldn’t have been so were it not for the timely responding of his favorite gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson. (shrink)

TO ADDRESS THE ROLE OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES IN STRUGGLES FOR justice, we must bear in mind not "family" in the abstract but particular families in particular times and places. The decisions and actions of particular families—certain African American and white families with children of high school age in Little Rock, Arkansas, during the academic years 1957 and 1958—prompted the controversy I reconsider here, between the German-born political philosopher Hannah Arendt and African (...) class='Hi'>American participants and leaders in the southern civil rights movement, most famously represented by Martin Luther King Jr. (shrink)

This article examines changes in employed African American mothers' use of relatives for child care. Data from nationally representative pooled cross sections show that the proportion of Black mothers relying on extended kin for care of their preschool-age children declined significantly between 1977 and 1994. Multivariate analyses reveal that the decline characterized all subgroups of employed African American mothers but was less pronounced for young, single, mothers living outside the South. Thus, by 1994, employed Black mothers (...) who most needed relatives' child care support received it, while those who could manage without such help did so. This change suggests that African Americans' use of kin-provided support responds to shifts in broader social and economic conditions that affect the balance of resources and needs within extended families. (shrink)

One does not just live in a crisis: a crisis calls for action. Etymologically, from the Greek krisis, it is a turning point or a moment of decision. It not only alters perception; it alters the demands for living. It stands out from the everyday. If we follow Gail Weiss (2008), we could say that a crisis is a moment when the ground called “ordinary life” is interrupted in such a way that it no longer functions as an out-of-awareness backdrop (...) but itself becomes the visible figure. But what happens when the ground is already permeated by crises, large and small? How should we think about crisis when we cannot call upon a simple binary—times of crisis and somehow livable normal times? How to think, conceptually, about those communities who live with what is variously termed “slow death” (Berlant 2011), “slow violence,” (Nixon 2011) or “chronic crisis” (Vigh 2008) that make the everyday a source of such continual threat that crisis and non-crisis shade into one another? I ask these questions in the context of my twenty-year history of research in African American communities in which families are caring for children with disabilities and chronic illnesses. (shrink)

Despite decades of activism, resistance, and education, both feminists and gender rebels continue to experience personal, political, institutional, and cultural resistance to rights, recognition, and respect. In the face of these inequalities and disparities, Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse seeks to engage with, and disrupt the long-standing debates, unquestioned conceptual formations, and taboo topics in contemporary feminist studies. The first half of the book challenges key concepts and theories related to feminist scholarship by advocating new approaches for theorizing interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, (...) critical race theory, trans studies, and genetics. The second half of the book offers feminist critiques or explorations of timely topics such as the 2017 Women's March and Donald Trump's election as well as non-Western perspectives of family and the absence of women's perspectives in healthcare. Contributors comprise of leading scholars and activists from disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, African American studies, communication studies, sociology, political science, and media. Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse is a compelling examination of some of the most high-profile feminist issues today. It hopes to infuse future and current debates and conversations around feminism and feminist theory with intersectional, imaginative, provocative, and evocative ideas, inspiring bold cross-fertilizations of concepts, principles, and practices. (shrink)

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