Racial Hierarchy Of African Consciousness

Furthermore, Biman Basu’s The Black Voice And The Language Of The Text: Toni Morrison’s Sula, investigates what he calls “one of the most significant developments in African American tradition…the formation of a class of intellectuals” (Article). More precisely, Basu is speaking of individuals like Morrison, who have not only broken down barriers for herself as a woman writer, but the others whom have followed in her footsteps to publish a rich tapestry of African-American literature. Furthermore, Basu’s investigates the conflict that arises when one class overtakes another stating that the conflict “on one hand, is between African-American and American Culture, and on the other, between this class of intellectuals and the ‘people’”(article).

Chapter five in Takaki’s “A Different Mirror” focused primary on the African-American experience 1700s through the end of the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. The experience of reading these chapters after learning about the continued degradation of Native Americans lent itself to continued feelings of hopelessness regarding the beginnings of U.S. history. For a moment, I felt deep shame at the actions of the founders of the United States, especially those who were the head of the country, in that time President Andrew Jackson. Slavery was not only a "peculiar institution" but also one that forced landowners to dismiss that they were exploiting fellow human beings for profit. Takaki discussed four major figures before, during, and

Between the World and Me has been called a book about race, but the author argues that race itself is a flawed, if anything, nothing more than a pretext for racism. Early in the book he writes, “Race, is the child of racism, not the father.” The idea of race has been so important in the history of America and in the self-identification of its people and racial designations have literally marked the difference between life and death in some instances. How does discrediting the idea of race as an immutable, unchangeable fact changes the way we look at our history? Ourselves? In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and the current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the

Writing in the favor of black people has always remained controversial from the very beginning. Critics regard such writing as “a highly conventionalized genre” indicating that “its status as literature was long disputed but the literary merits of its most famous example such as Frederick Douglass 's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass…are widely recognized today.” (Ryan:537) Despite of such severe resistance, writers like Douglass have penned down their autobiography to present the misery of their fellow beings.

Barbara Cooper argues that the gap between African historians and the general field of historians is derived from the many debates surrounding the legitimacy of oral sources as a tool of understanding the evolution and development of Africa and its past. As a result of this, the exciting developments occurring within African history have been “…rendered unintelligible to academic historians in general” (Cooper 211) as the methodological research that Africanists put into acquiring and using oral sources are overlooked and ignored. She encourages other historians to utilize this research and for African history scholars to do their part as well by participating in conversations with other historians and debates to bring their work to light. All in the hopes that African history becomes relevant and exciting to a larger audience including historians outside the African field of work, as this history is too important to be

Slavery is a contradictory subject in American history because “one hears…of the staid and gentle patriarchy, the wide and sleepy plantations with lord and retainers, ease and happiness; [while] on the other hand on hears of barbarous cruelty and unbridles power and wide oppression of men” (Dubois 2). Dubois’s The Negro in the United States is an autoethnographic text which is a representation “that the so-defined others

“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men 's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact” (Lyndon B. Johnson). Frederick Douglas and Herman Melville lived in the same time for almost the same length of time. Herman Melville lived from August, 1819 – September 28, 1891, while Frederick Douglass lived from February, 1818 – February 20, 1895. Yet these two narratives couldn’t have been more different. While taking a look at the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas and Benito Cerano we can see these two insights of their world. I will be delving into how these two narratives show the condoning of racialized slavery, the endorsing of rebellion, and their individual perspectives. There is one thing that combines these two and that is their education. Education is what shifts the mind from the mind of a brute regardless of color to the level of where color and racism don’t exist.

While the nostalgic tone suddenly transitions to formal, X advances his essay with worldwide findings on race. Identifying the hidden history, Books such as Wonders of the World, Story of Civilization, Outline of History, Souls of Black Folk, and Negro History (para. 22), offer X a more comprehensive African history other than the “whitened” (para. 19) history of slavery. While enumerating ignored sources of history from his research, X strengthens logos and ethos and connotes a contrast to the setting of this narrative: many blacks’ contribution of history had been obliterated. Inequalities in history triggered his attention; X additionally incorporates books about race from various countries, and his tone gradually becomes indignant. For example, “Austrian monk” asserts the genetic origin of humankind is black (para. 24); New York Time writer reports that “American is only an extension of Asia” (para. 26). These sources target the inevitable contradiction it is contradictory to history for white people to be racists. X forwards the category of examples to descriptions of white men’s homicidal actions, developing an enraged tone. For instance, New England “Abolitionist” describes a women “tied up and flogged with whips” and “[watched] their babies being dragged off” (para. 28); Indian citizens experienced the most “bestial and ruthless [non-white] human carnage” (para. 32); “over 115 million African blacks […] were murdered and enslaved” in America (para. 33). The

The issue of slavery in the United States has been hotly debated for centuries. Historians continuously squabble over the causes and effects of America’s capitalistic, industrial form of slavery. But two of the most heavily discussed questions are whether the institution of slavery destroyed African culture in America, and whether it reduced slaves to a child-like state of dependency and incompetence. Anthropologist Melville Herskovits, and historian Stanley Elkins both weigh in on this debate: Herskovits with, The Myth of the Negro Past, and Elkins with, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. In, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, Elkins asserts that African culture was all but destroyed by a repression of the slaves’ rights, at the hands of their masters. He claims that complete dependence on their masters and a lack of collective cultural identity and family bonds, reduced slaves to a child-like state of helplessness and ignorance, and childish behavior called the ‘Sambo’. Herskovits takes a different stance in this debate. In, The Myth of the Negro Past, he claims that African culture was not completely destroyed by slavery, and that the ‘Sambo’ stereotype was no more than a myth or at least a gross generalization. He uses slave revolts and the persistence of African culture in American in music, dance, and language as evidence to prove this.

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race, culture, and situation along with contemporary authors’ fictionalized depictions. Their persona was often “characterized as infantile, incompetent, and...incapable of achievement” (Hunter-Willis 11) while the actions of slaveholders were justified with the arguments that slavery would maintain a cheap labor force and a guarantee that their suffering did not differ to the toils of the rest of the “struggling world” (Hunter-Willis 12). The emergence of the slave narratives created a new voice that discredited all former allegations of inferiority and produced a new perception of resilience and ingenuity.

Parham’s video presented to me a counseling method that I do not believe I would be comfortable doing as a White, agnostic man. Multicultural class has shown that psychology research has been Euro-centric and minority populations have been pathologized. I appreciate Parham’s approach and how it engaged the client in finding support through spirituality and interconnectedness, but I do not believe an African American client would respond to me as they did to him. Parham stated African-centered psychology defines the African psychological experience from an African perspective, a perspective that reflects an African orientation.

The intended purpose of this study was to find a relationship between African self-consciousness and psychological well-being. Precisely, to observe if the African self-consciousness of African descent college students had an effect on their psychological well-being. Results of this study indicated that there is a positive correlation between African self-consciousness and psychological well-being. These findings were consistent with Baldwin (1985) who found that African self-consciousness was a prominent factor in determining differences in psychological functioning, aspects of psychological well-being, and behavior in Black college students. It was also consistent with the finding of Baldwin & Bell (1985) who found that healthy Black personality

In "The Woman Question." Harry stated that "by exploring the spiritual and cultural heritage of Africa in his plays, Wilson hope to re-envision and reclaim "lost" history, thereby facilitating collective healing and regeneration for Blacks in America". ( Drama Criticism 218).  It seems Harry implied that Wilson through his works recreated the "lost" culture of African Americans. He used the evidences and arguments throughout this article to prove her assumption, therefore, I thought this is a thesis of this

In Silencing The Past, Michel-Rolph Trouillot details how power operates in both the creation and distribution of history. Examining the Haitian slave revolt against French colonial rule, Trouillot eloquently explains how the “frequency of retrieval” of historical knowledge, effects the way narratives are told. Specifically focusing on the case of Jean-Baptiste Sans-Souci, Trouillot expertly illuminates how the limited frequency led to a shallow representation of Sans-Souci in the historical literature — regardless of Sans-Souci’s obvious level of historical importance. Despite his critical role in leading a massive slave rebellion and as a high-ranking officer in Louverture’s army, Sans-Souci’s role was frequently minimized - often being referred to in historical literature without mention of his first name.

It is no wonder that how advanced the world may be, there are still a number of human beings, who struggle a lot for their survival; These are the human beings, who are pushed to the margins for the reasons unknown to them, these are the human beings, who are denied a secured place in the world for the mistakes which are not committed by them. These are marginalized people and just like them, their history too is marginalized. Being neglected by the mainstream history, this marginalized history, sometimes has to transform itself and settle in fiction in order to come into light.