tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/race-relations-11912/articles
Race relations – The Conversation
2023-05-16T12:39:47Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203883
2023-05-16T12:39:47Z
2023-05-16T12:39:47Z
US has a long history of state lawmakers silencing elected Black officials and taking power from their constituents
<p>Some Republican lawmakers in Georgia are targeting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Black Democrat representing a majority Black district, for removal from office. </p>
<p>These efforts come in the midst of Willis’ investigation and prosecution of former President Donald Trump and 18 others for their alleged conspiracy to overturn results of the state’s 2020 presidential election. </p>
<p>Before a Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump and his co-defendants, Georgia Republican lawmakers pushed through legislation to set up a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, which has the power to discipline or remove from office elected district attorneys whom commission members believe are not adequately enforcing Georgia law. Governor Brian Kemp, also a Republican, <a href="https://gov.georgia.gov/press-releases/2023-05-05/gov-kemp-signs-legislation-creating-prosecuting-attorneys-qualifications">signed the legislation</a> on May 5, 2023. </p>
<p>Steve Gooch, Georgia Senate majority leader, and state Senator Clint Dixon, have said they will use the newly created commission – which will be up and running Oct. 1, 2023 – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/01/georgia-republicans-fani-willis-unseat">to investigate Willis</a>. </p>
<p>Kemp, who objects, said on Aug. 31, 2023, that he “<a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/kemp-rejects-talk-of-special-session-warns-of-risks-of-punishing-fani-willis/I4JZYJIORNACFKY2COSFE3VCSI/">hasn’t seen any evidence</a>” Willis violated her oath of office. </p>
<p>These efforts to undercut prosecutors’ authority in Georgia are not happening in a silo. </p>
<p>On Aug. 9, 2023, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/09/desantis-suspends-state-attorney-worrell-0011044">suspended elected State Attorney Monique Worrell</a>, whom he said was too lenient with criminals. Worrell was Florida’s only Black woman state attorney. DeSantis <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/08/09/ron-desantis-andrew-bain-monique-worrell/">replaced her with Black conservative Andrew Bain</a>. </p>
<p>In Mississippi, legislators have enacted a law that would <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/08/jackson-mississippi-republicans-unelected-court-system">create a new judicial system</a> covering the state’s capital city, Jackson, in place of the current county court system. </p>
<p>In effect since July 1, 2023, the move by a Republican-dominated legislature has been criticized by opponents as creating a “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/04/24/separate-and-unequal-policing-naacp-sues-mississippi-over-new-laws/11728899002/">separate and unequal</a>” court system that is not answerable to the majority-Black community it would seek to govern.</p>
<p>The law was justified by supporters as an effort to curb the <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/naacp-sues-mississippi-over-state-takeover-of-jacksons-policing-and-courts/ar-AA1ahuKA">city’s crime level</a>, which includes <a href="https://www.wlbt.com/2023/01/07/analysis-second-straight-year-jacksons-homicide-rate-ranks-highest-us-among-major-cities/">one of the highest murder rates in the nation</a>. </p>
<p>But the move was the third time in recent months that state legislatures have taken highly visible actions to effectively disenfranchise Black voters: On April 6, 2023, the Tennessee House of Representatives <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2023/04/07/tennessee-house-expulsion-vote-why-were-lawmakers-expelled/70092066007/">expelled two Black members</a> who represented mostly Black districts. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=566DVVQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">sociologist who studies historical issues related to race, gender and social justice</a>, I have closely followed these moves by the states. Throughout U.S. history, I see three main periods of legislative disenfranchisement in which legislative bodies have voted to expel members. These events have been shown to be a form of “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5816/blackscholar.44.2.0103">white backlash</a>” working to keep <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.2.551">Black officeholders out of power and their constituents powerless without representation</a>.</p>
<h2>Reconstruction and legislative disenfranchisement</h2>
<p>After the Civil War, the United States engaged in a brief period known as <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction">Reconstruction</a>, which lasted from 1865 to 1877. It was a deliberate attempt to reverse the negative effects and legacies of slavery by enacting economic, political and social policies that directly benefited the formerly enslaved Black people of the South. </p>
<p>The efforts included formally <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/">abolishing slavery nationwide</a>, guaranteeing <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/">equal protection of the laws</a> to everyone regardless of race, and <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-15/">allowing formerly enslaved people to vote</a>. In addition, formerly Confederate <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-field-order-no-15/">land was set aside</a> for newly freed Black families, and former Confederate soldiers were not allowed to vote.</p>
<p>But after Tennessee politician Andrew Johnson, who had been Abraham Lincoln’s running mate in 1864, took office upon Lincoln’s assassination, many of those provisions of Reconstruction <a href="https://www.nps.gov/anjo/andrew-johnson-and-reconstruction.htm">were reversed</a>. Former Confederate combatants were allowed to vote, and confiscated Confederate property was returned to its prewar owners.</p>
<p>In addition, Johnson and Congress made it easier for defeated Confederate states to <a href="https://www.nps.gov/anjo/andrew-johnson-and-reconstruction.htm">rejoin the Union</a>, which allowed former Confederate leaders to regain their previous positions of power in local and national governments. </p>
<p>Georgia was originally readmitted to the Union in <a href="https://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/opinion/columns/georgias-readmission-to-the-union/article_afb9fc3e-886c-5b5d-ac2f-0e975f68b32e.html">July 1868</a>. But just two months later, in September, the Democratically controlled Georgia Assembly, with a total of 196 members, voted to expel all 33 of its Black elected officials.</p>
<p>Immediately upon making themselves into an all-white legislature, the remaining assembly members enacted the infamous <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-codes">Black Codes</a>. These codes created a unique set of laws specific to the newly freed Blacks, including limiting the types of work they could do.</p>
<p>Collectively, the legislative expulsion of the Black officials and the imposition of the Black Codes served to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/rule-by-violence-rule-by-law-lynching-jim-crow-and-the-continuing-evolution-of-voter-suppression-in-the-us/CBC6AD86B557A093D7E832F8D821978B">effectively disenfranchise</a> the Black voters of Georgia. Senator Henry McNeal Turner, one of those expelled, defiantly <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/georgia-unique-bloody-history-voter-disenfranchisement">asked</a>: “Am I a man? If I am such, I claim the rights of a man.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526293/original/file-20230515-24710-e5v3f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A drawing of a Black man standing on a porch with people surrounding him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526293/original/file-20230515-24710-e5v3f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526293/original/file-20230515-24710-e5v3f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526293/original/file-20230515-24710-e5v3f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526293/original/file-20230515-24710-e5v3f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526293/original/file-20230515-24710-e5v3f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526293/original/file-20230515-24710-e5v3f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526293/original/file-20230515-24710-e5v3f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Under the Black Codes, which were restrictive laws in the post-Reconstruction South, a Black person could be sold into what was effectively a new version of slavery if they could not repay fines or debts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/copy-of-an-illustration-showing-a-free-black-man-being-sold-news-photo/134341296">Interim Archives/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The civil rights era</h2>
<p>Another major effort to disenfranchise Black Americans came during their next major push to achieve political, social and economic equality: the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement">Civil Rights Movement</a> of the 1950s and 1960s. Opponents targeted two prominent civil rights activists who had been elected to represent their communities: Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Julian Bond.</p>
<p>Bond was elected as a Democrat to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but on Jan. 10, 1966, the Democratically controlled House voted not to seat him, citing his criticism of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08997225.1974.10555931">U.S. involvement in Vietnam and support of students who were protesting the war</a>. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Bond’s <a href="https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/182/bond-v-floyd">First Amendment rights</a> had been violated and ordered that he be seated. But for that intervening year, his constituents had no voice in their state legislature. Bond ultimately served in the Georgia Legislature for <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/julian-bond-1940-2015/">another two decades</a>, before turning to teaching and activism.</p>
<p>Powell’s situation was different. He was the first African American to be elected to Congress from New York and from any state in the Northeast. Starting in 1945, he represented the district that included the majority-Black Harlem neighborhood of New York City. He became <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783891?seq=12">one of the most important Democrats</a> in the House, but in the mid-1960s, he found himself <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adam-Clayton-Powell-Jr">embroiled in personal and financial scandals</a>. </p>
<p>After the election of 1966, the House created a committee to investigate Powell’s actions and <a href="https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/P/POWELL,-Adam-Clayton,-Jr--(P000477)/">refused to seat him</a> until the committee’s report was complete. The report found fault, but committee members were split on the proper discipline for Powell. Ultimately the whole House voted to keep him out.</p>
<p>Powell <a href="https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/P/POWELL,-Adam-Clayton,-Jr--(P000477)/">sued to reclaim his seat</a>, saying the House had excluded him unconstitutionally. He also won the special election in April 1967 created by the vacancy but didn’t take his seat because of the lawsuit. The removal of Powell meant that Harlem was <a href="https://archive.org/details/kingofcatsli00hayg">the only congressional district in the nation</a> without a representative from 1967 to 1969.</p>
<p>In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/395/486.html">House had acted unconstitutionally</a> by refusing to seat Powell. By then, Powell had also won the 1968 regularly scheduled election and had been seated, though without the seniority and committee positions that would normally have been given to someone who had continuously been a House member. </p>
<h2>Black Lives Matter movement</h2>
<p>In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, a <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/blacklivesmatter-hashtag-first-appears-facebook-sparking-a-movement">new social movement</a> emerged across the United States. With this new activism came another “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421000460">white backlash</a>” in the form of legislative disenfranchisement.</p>
<p>In May 2022, Tiara Young Hudson, a long-serving Black public defender, <a href="https://www.cbs42.com/alabama-news/last-month-jefferson-county-voters-elected-a-new-judge-now-she-may-never-take-the-bench/">won the Democratic primary</a> for a judgeship in Jefferson County, Alabama. <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/jeffersoncountyalabama">More than half of the county’s population</a> is nonwhite. Facing no opposition in the general election, she was expected to win and take office. </p>
<p>But two weeks after the primary, a state judicial commission, divided along racial lines, <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2022/06/alabama-commission-moves-vacant-jefferson-county-judgeship-to-understaffed-madison-county-courts.html">eliminated the position she was a candidate for</a> and created a new judgeship in the majority-white Madison County. </p>
<p>Hudson immediately <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2022/07/candidate-who-won-jefferson-county-judicial-seat-sues-to-block-transfer-of-seat-to-madison-county.html">sued to block the shift</a>, saying it violated the Alabama Constitution and only the state Legislature had the authority to reallocate judgeships. In March 2023, the state Supreme Court <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2023/03/alabama-supreme-court-allows-jefferson-county-judgeship-transfer-to-madison-county.html">dismissed Hudson’s complaint</a>, effectively stripping the Black people of Jefferson County of a representative they had elected to be their voice on the state’s roster of judges.</p>
<p>And on April 6, 2023, the Republican majority of the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two Black legislators – Justin Pearson and Justin Jones – for participating in a protest calling for gun legislation following yet another mass shooting. </p>
<p>Within days, both Pearson and Jones had been temporarily reinstated by processes for filling vacant seats, and subsequently <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/tennessee-democrats-expelled-gop-protests-special-election-rcna97374">reclaimed their seats in special elections</a>. Their alleged violation was participating in a protest against legislature rules – but their real violation, I believe, was that they are Black. I believe that is the reason Willis is being targeted too.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on May 16, 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203883/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rodney Coates does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Throughout US history, a ‘white backlash’ has worked to keep Black officeholders and their constituents out of power. Atlanta DA Fani Willis is just the latest.
Rodney Coates, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Miami University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183914
2022-05-31T02:32:06Z
2022-05-31T02:32:06Z
The courage to feel uncomfortable: what Australians need to learn to achieve real reconciliation
<p>“Be Brave, Make Change” is the mantra for this year’s <a href="https://nrw.reconciliation.org.au/">National Reconciliation Week</a>. This is a call urging all non-Indigenous Australians to be allies and take up unfinished reconciliation actions for a fairer nation for all. But often reconciliation actions are <a href="https://blogs.griffith.edu.au/gierinsights/reconciliation-more-than-symbology/">observed</a> as insincere and tokenistic. Instead, non-Indigenous people’s actions need to be real, effective and aimed at long-lasting change. </p>
<p>Historical acceptance is one of the <a href="https://www.reconciliation.org.au/reconciliation/what-is-reconciliation/#:%7E:text=Our%20vision%20of%20reconciliation%20is,in%20isolation%2C%20but%20are%20interrelated.">five dimensions</a> of reconciliation. Acceptance would mean all Australians acknowledge this nation’s history of injustice, colonisation, dispossession, displacement, exploitation and violence against First Nations people. However, this endeavour to learn is often hindered by hesitant white educators who don’t feel confident or capable to include Indigenous perspectives in their classrooms. </p>
<p>The topic of Australia’s difficult history is also often rebutted as First Nations people’s failure to move on and simply <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/27/australia-day-indigenous-people-are-told-to-get-over-it-its-impossible">“get over it”</a>.</p>
<p>If non-Indigenous people are to be honest about our nation’s efforts to achieve reconciliation, it’s time to stop trying to being “seen” to be engaged in First Nation issues, and instead take the time to educate themselves about what is often uncomfortable to learn.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-word-practising-reconciliation-through-indigenous-knowledge-sharing-in-tourism-158563">'More than a word’: practising reconciliation through Indigenous knowledge-sharing in tourism</a>
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<h2>Reconciliation Week is an opportunity to listen and reflect</h2>
<p>Reconciliation Week asks all Australians to create meaningful, long-lasting change and strengthen race relations with First Nations people in Australia. However, taking the time to learn about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their histories can make many people feel very uncomfortable. </p>
<p>For many years, the fear of causing offence or making cultural mistakes can leave some people feeling tentative, preferring to hold onto the security blanket of ignorance or indifference. However, many people have <a href="https://theconversation.com/attention-managers-if-you-expect-first-nations-staff-to-do-all-your-indigenous-stuff-this-isnt-support-its-racism-176143">expressed</a> feelings of guilt, shame, anger, and embarrassment at being white, privileged, and ignorant of the true history of First Nations people in Australia. </p>
<p>My research has found that trauma <a href="https://research.bond.edu.au/en/publications/creating-a-culturally-safe-space-when-teaching-aboriginal-content">underlies</a> the lives of many Aboriginal people in Australia, which many Australians do not realise. Research has <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003070696/psychology-culture-shock-colleen-ward-stephen-bochner-adrian-furnham">found</a> non-Indigenous people can feel Australia’s tainted history is at odds with their own faith-based values or cultural world views (for example, not to be rude or to speak out). This can lead to a kind of <a href="https://www.uow.edu.au/study/study-abroad-exchange/studyabroad/prepare-for-your-arrival/culture-shock/">culture shock</a>, bringing another barrier to learning about the cultural politics of this country. </p>
<p>Culture shock can lead to people feeling their identity is under attack when being educated. This can lead to defensiveness, feelings of guilt and culpability, animosity and <a href="https://research.bond.edu.au/en/publications/creating-a-culturally-safe-space-when-teaching-aboriginal-content">fragility</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/oral-testimony-of-an-aboriginal-massacre-now-supported-by-scientific-evidence-85526">Oral testimony of an Aboriginal massacre now supported by scientific evidence</a>
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<h2>Recognising your biases is the first step</h2>
<p>Many people claim to start their educational immersion as a “clean slate” with little to no knowledge about the plight of First Nations people. However, each person brings with them their own unique values, beliefs, and worldviews. Unfortunately this can include already established prejudices or assumptions about First Nations people. </p>
<p>In 2020, Australian National University researchers <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-09/three-in-four-negative-bias-against-indigenous-australians-study/12335184">tested</a> more than 11,000 Australian participants for implicit, unconscious bias. This research found 75% of participants held a negative or unconscious bias against Indigenous people. This correlation between negative bias could mean the development of racist attitudes, which is in stark contrast to the utopian initiatives of Reconciliation Week. </p>
<p>The nature and <a href="https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/1900/">impact</a> of racism on the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across health and education has been the focus of emerging research literature over the last decade. Non-Indigenous people choosing not to learn or engage with Aboriginal issues because it makes them uncomfortable is a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17516773/">microaggression</a> of racism. Essentially, Aboriginal matters are devalued for someone else’s comfort. </p>
<p>Researcher Sarah Pierce has <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0742051X17318310">found</a> microaggressions can be potentially more powerful than other forms of insidious types of racism, described as being “death by a thousand cuts” given their ubiquity and deniability.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-words-matter-the-negative-impacts-of-racial-microaggressions-on-indigenous-and-other-racialized-people-157637">Why words matter: The negative impacts of racial microaggressions on Indigenous and other racialized people</a>
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<p>Self-education is pivotal work for truth and reconciliation. However, the process of being uncomfortable in learning follows this process: identifying the feeling, holding and embracing the feeling, naming the feeling, and processing the feeling, before letting it go.</p>
<p>To become a better learner, people need to embrace critical self-awareness to identify biases and gaps in knowledge. American author Robin DiAngelo <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neV_GlvUGn4">recommends</a> people map what they don’t know about race, so they can identify resources to start to learn about the gaps they have identified. </p>
<h2>Feeling awkward? That might be a good sign</h2>
<p>Being awkward, inept and making mistakes is a fundamental part of building cultural responsiveness. Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0312407X.2010.511677?journalCode=rasw20">research</a> speaks about cultural courage, which includes being willing to feel and name strong and uncomfortable emotions, gaining confidence each time you engage.</p>
<p>Much of being uncomfortable is in the process of unlearning and <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455">decolonising</a> our hearts and minds. Decolonisation means unlearning the racist rhetoric and malicious stereotypes peddled as “facts” by society and the media. </p>
<p>If more people address their ignorance and biases, and sit with their fear and discomfort, there could be more genuine allies and less racism.</p>
<p>Addressing racism within Australia is not just a cognitive exercise. True change requires constant education, critical reflection and self awareness. When we ignore engaging with emotive content and fundamental learning, we are ignoring the very real human suffering occurring within this country. </p>
<p>Reconciliation becomes nothing more than preformative allyship, enacted one week of every year. This National Reconciliation Week, I urge every Australian to be brave enough to engage in tough, deep conversations to make real change for First Nations people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bindi Bennett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Learning about First Nations people and their histories can make some feel awkward or uncomfortable at times. However, being willing to embrace that discomfort is vital to learning.
Bindi Bennett, Associate Professor First Nations Health, Bond University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/179830
2022-04-06T12:24:56Z
2022-04-06T12:24:56Z
How a poet and professor promotes racial understanding with lessons from history
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456220/original/file-20220404-15-abiibw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5090%2C3382&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gaining a deeper understanding of our shared history can allow for healing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/girl-looking-at-book-in-library-silhouette-royalty-free-image/EC0956-003">Terry Vine/The Image Bank via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://africana.okstate.edu/people/core-faculty/364-quraysh-ali-lansana">Quraysh Ali Lansana</a> is the director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, part of a nationwide, community-based initiative to “plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change, and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism.” He is also an author of 22 books in poetry, nonfiction, children’s literature and literary anthologies. Below are highlights from an interview with The Conversation. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Quraysh Ali Lansana speaks about his love of history and his career path.</span></figcaption>
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<p><strong>Why does your research matter? And why do you study it?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Quraysh Ali Lansana:</strong> I am a <a href="https://africana.okstate.edu/people/core-faculty/364-quraysh-ali-lansana">historian and a political junkie</a>. I think that my love for history and connecting - I call it the tenuous tether of yesterday and today – actually was born in my small town, <a href="https://www.enid.org/">Enid, Oklahoma</a>. I grew up in a lower-working-class Black, very deeply segregated town where I did not learn much in K-12 education about Black history.</p>
<p>My love of history began there in Enid with a growing understanding of what I didn’t know, what I didn’t learn, what I was not introduced to. Those questions led me into journalism.</p>
<p><strong>How did you get to where you are today?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Quraysh Ali Lansana:</strong> I attended the University of Oklahoma and studied print and broadcast journalism and started writing poetry as a sophomore. I could scream on a piece of paper as opposed to screaming at a human being. </p>
<p>But I always had a love for poetry, and then I worked professionally in broadcast journalism in Oklahoma City for a year. And then I moved to Chicago in 1989 to get to a literary town, and also to move to a city where I saw folks who look like me engaged in every aspect of civic and cultural and political life, which is something that’s fairly rare in Oklahoma.</p>
<p><strong>What’s the one thing you want people to take away from your research?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Quraysh Ali Lansana:</strong> I want folks to learn from the past so the future can be different, the future can be better. A section of a poem that I wrote a couple of years ago reads,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fear = ignorance.</p>
<p>Ignorance = lack of knowledge. </p>
<p>Lack of knowledge = lack of respect. </p>
<p>Lack of respect = hate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And I think that frame in this poem really sums up what my work is about, right? It’s rooted in Black history, African American history and culture and politics. But it also is informed by the fact that we don’t live in a monolith, and Black culture and Black community are not monolithic either. Even my graduate and undergraduate creative writing course are rooted in BIPOC literature and sensibilities. Langston Hughes wrote, “If you’re going to write, it’s important to have something to say.”</p>
<p><strong>What is something that people might be surprised by in the research you do?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Quraysh Ali Lansana:</strong> In <a href="https://poets.org/poet/quraysh-ali-lansana">my work</a>, I learned from <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/amiri-baraka">Amiri Baraka</a> and <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mari-evans">Mari Evans</a> to speak truth to power. </p>
<p>Some folks might be surprised that <a href="https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2021/spring/ellison-visits-greenwood-1921-quraysh-ali-lansana">the work I do</a>
is primarily rooted in sharing knowledge of Black history and culture for Black folks.
But it is not just for Black folks. It is for everyone. And I think that there are folks who … might think or who may harbor an idea that <a href="https://poets.org/poem/klan-march">my work</a> is an assault or attack or affront on dominant culture. And it’s some of those things, and none of those things.</p>
<p>Because it’s really about how we as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/6/30/21300294/bipoc-what-does-it-mean-critical-race-linguistics-jonathan-rosa-deandra-miles-hercules">BIPOC</a> folks define ourselves, how we understand the history that our elders and our ancestors endured to get us to this point. And then also seeing where we are now and how we can help young people. We want the future be much more welcoming and nurturing and positive for our young people.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150K">Join the list today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Quraysh Ali Lansana does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A poet speaks to how his love of history has shaped his work.
Quraysh Ali Lansana, Lecturer in Africana Studies and English, Oklahoma State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169455
2021-10-27T23:41:33Z
2021-10-27T23:41:33Z
Working with us, not for us: strategies for being a better ally to First Nations people
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426351/original/file-20211014-14-3jdd1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/business-people-shaking-hands-719542471">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We write this article together – Kelly, a First Nations woman living on Kombumerri Country, and Richard, a Canadian white male settler living on the lands of the Minjungbal people of the Bundjalung Nation. </p>
<p>As a First Nations Australian academic, Kelly is often approached to give guest lectures. She aims to accept these invitations as she believes <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14744740211029287?journalCode=cgjb">acts of reciprocity and relationality</a> are essential building blocks for reconciliation. Further, her job requires her to teach First Nations People’s histories and knowledges.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, on many occasions, her knowledge is <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/canajeducrevucan.33.4.925.pdf">appropriated</a>, reproduced without permission, frequently misconstrued, or misrepresented and colonised in some way. This all happens under the guise of a non-Indigenous person having “<a href="https://www.hrc.org/news/being-a-good-ally-takes-more-than-good-intentions">good intentions</a>”. In addition, Kelly is frequently <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17456916211011963">micromanaged</a> regarding her Indigenous knowledges.</p>
<p>This is not an uncommon experience for First Nations academics.</p>
<p>The outcome for these academics is often an increased and unpaid workload, and no opportunities for collaboration between academic staff or faculty. This is all coupled with the trauma that occurs when experiencing ongoing <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4317475">micro-aggressions</a> and <a href="https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/05/racial-microaggressions-increase-symptoms-traumatic-stress/">racism</a>.</p>
<p>White people often fail to appreciate <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-labor-and-working-class-history/article/whiteness-and-the-historians-imagination/0C13EEC2BC7AE498B2A869DC6B112DA2">the nature</a> of power differentials and white privilege - with all the accompanying benefits, including money, prestige and even the option to act. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1445549236053942280"}"></div></p>
<p>Further, good intentions are not enough. What settlers need to understand are the principles of proper allyship. </p>
<p>This requires not acting on behalf of someone, but ceding space and decisional authority to others, and privileging the voices and experiences of First Nations Peoples and communities. First Nations communities get to decide on all matters related to themselves and their knowledges. Allies need to understand this is not negotiable. </p>
<p>Here we invite you to consider some strategies for being a good ally with First Nations Peoples and communities. </p>
<h2>What can I do?</h2>
<p>1) First, allies must assume and confront racism <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mishagajewski/2020/06/29/youre-more-racist-than-you-think-how-your-mental-biases-perpetuate-racism-and-how-to-fix-them/?sh=6287bf707ffc">in themselves</a>, explore how they may be part of the problem and look at ways to change. </p>
<p>This means reflecting on and accepting one’s own assigned <a href="https://psychology.umbc.edu/files/2016/10/White-Privilege_McIntosh-1989.pdf">privilege</a>. Acceptance allows us to become more understanding of how we <a href="https://www.ruralhealth.org.au/partyline/article/35-year-learning-journey-proud-non-indigenous-ally">impact others</a>.</p>
<p>2) Always <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-48845-1_1">prioritise</a> the voices of First Nations Peoples above your own. Their voices matter - not those of settlers - in what happens to their communities. This applies to everything - law, policy, health, funding decisions, choices made (or not), and research undertaken (or not).</p>
<p>3) As allies, one’s skills and achievements do not take priority over First Nations Peoples and their needs. Rather, allies should prioritise the creation of “<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-021-00960-9">right relations</a>.” This is an act of establishing relationships with First Nations Peoples as an ally, in a culturally appropriate and reflective manner.</p>
<p>4) Listen to and believe the voices of First Nations Peoples and adopt a position of <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/newsletter/2013/08/cultural-humility">cultural humility</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1524839919884912">Cultural humility</a> is a commitment to self-awareness and refection. It also means redressing power imbalances and developing reciprocal, non-paternalistic partnerships with First Nations Peoples and communities. </p>
<p>Further, one must cede any right to determine the shape or direction of political, economic, or academic projects that involve First Nations Peoples. This needs to be determined by or in consultation with First Nations Peoples.</p>
<p>5) Publicly support First Nations People’s <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/hurq17&div=22&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals">sovereignty</a>, self-determination and autonomy. In this case, act only if First Nations Peoples judge it to be valuable. If they say it could be harmful, then back off and remain silent.</p>
<p>6) Finally, if consistent with relevant First Nations voices, teach (not preach) anti-racism messages to our white-privileged peers and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1742-9544.2010.00015.x">others</a>. </p>
<p>It is important to involve one’s peers in this process. People require space to voice their views, even when their views may be perceived as “racist”. Having an open dialogue is a way to <a href="https://plan-international.org/girls-get-equal/how-be-anti-racist-ally">address</a> potential hostility that can arise when people get defensive.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-too-long-research-was-done-on-first-nations-peoples-not-with-them-universities-can-change-this-163968">For too long, research was done on First Nations peoples, not with them. Universities can change this</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>All people have the right to autonomy and to determine what is right for their own communities. This, too, is an exercise of power, because only those sufficiently privileged to make such choices can do so. Being a better ally is to essentially use the space you are given to provide space for people who are too often excluded from the conversation.</p>
<p>If you are called out for racism or cultural insensitivity, please listen and take the comment seriously as a gift and an invitation to change. </p>
<p>Racism is a white problem and white people need to be the ones to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/04/talk-about-racism-whiteness-racial-hierarchy">solve it</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169455/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Rather than trying to take agency away from First Nations people, sometimes white allies need to take a step back.
Richard Matthews, Associate Professor of Medical Ethics, Bond University
Kelly Menzel, Assistant Professor - First Nations Health, Bond University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163413
2021-06-30T12:11:37Z
2021-06-30T12:11:37Z
When a Black boxing champion beat the ‘Great White Hope,’ all hell broke loose
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408713/original/file-20210628-15-12h7z86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C0%2C4514%2C2642&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, right, beat James Jeffries in 1910, sparking racial violence.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1910-07-06/ed-1/seq-9/">George Haley, San Francisco Call, via University of California, Riverside, via Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An audacious Black heavyweight champion was slated to defend his title against a white boxer in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910. It was billed as “the fight of the century.”</p>
<p>The fight was seen as a referendum on racial superiority – and all hell was about to break loose in the racially divided United States.</p>
<p>Jack Johnson, the Black man, decisively beat James Jeffries, nicknamed “the Great White Hope.” Johnson’s triumph ignited <a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-black-fighter-won-the-fight-of-the-century-race-riots-erupted-across-america-3730b8bf9c98">bloody confrontations and violence</a> between Blacks and whites throughout the country, leaving perhaps two dozen dead, almost all of them Black, and hundreds injured and arrested. </p>
<p>“No event yielded such widespread racial violence until the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., fifty-eight years later,” Geoffrey C. Ward wrote in his biography of Johnson, “<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/18/the-man-with-the-golden-smile/">Unforgiveable Blackness</a>.”</p>
<p>Johnson’s victory, in the manliest of sports, contradicted claims of racial supremacy by whites and demonstrated that Blacks were no longer willing to acquiesce to white dominance. Whites were not willing to give up their power. The story has a familiar ring today, as America remains a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/05/what-do-do-about-race-big-divider-american-politics/">country deeply divided by race</a>.</p>
<p>I began my book, “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803276802/">From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line</a>,” with Johnson because the consequences of the fight’s aftermath would affect race relations in sports, and America, for decades.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustrations showing troops preparing to leave and marching out of a town center" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Federal troops leave New Orleans in April 1877, as Reconstruction ends.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/93505869/">A.J. Bennett in Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A backdrop of racial hostility</h2>
<p>Born in 1878 in Galveston, Texas, Johnson grew up as the Jim Crow era in American history was getting started. The previous year, Rutherford B. Hayes became president <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/compromise-of-1877">after promising three former Confederate states</a> – South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana – that he would withdraw federal troops, who had protected the measure of racial equality Blacks were beginning to achieve.</p>
<p>As federal forces left, whites disenfranchised Black voters and passed segregation laws, which were enforced by legal and illegal means, including <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/insurgency-refocuses-need-for-history-of-white-mob-violence-to-be-taught-in-classroom/2021/01">police brutality and lynching</a>. <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210769/">Journalists</a>, too, sought to maintain social order by preserving myths about white supremacy.</p>
<p>Johnson’s boxing career challenged those myths. He dispatched one white fighter after another and taunted both the fighter and the crowd. He was brash and arrogant and made no attempt to show any deference to whites. He sped through towns in flashy cars, wore expensive clothes, spent his time with gamblers and prostitutes, and dated white women, which Black sociologist and commentator W.E.B. Du Bois considered “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/fight-jack-johnson-1878-1946/">unnecessarily alienating acts</a>.”</p>
<h2>Setting up a racial battle</h2>
<p>Johnson won the heavyweight title by easily defeating the defending champion Tommy Burns in 1908. Novelist Jack London, writing in the New York Herald, wrote about Johnson’s “hopeless slaughter” of Burns and, like other journalists, called on former champion James Jeffries to come out of retirement and “<a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-black-fighter-won-the-fight-of-the-century-race-riots-erupted-across-america-3730b8bf9c98">wipe that smile from Johnson’s face</a>.”</p>
<p>Jeffries announced to the world that he would “<a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128245468">reclaim the heavyweight championship for the white race</a>.” He became the “<a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128245468">Great White Hope</a>.”</p>
<p>The Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, said Jeffries and Johnson would “settle the mooted question of supremacy.” The Daily News in Omaha, Nebraska, reported that a Jeffries victory would restore <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=L07wCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT10&lpg=PT10&dq=Johnson+would+settle+the+mooted+question+of+supremacy&source=bl&ots=Irf6RpfNOu&sig=ACfU3U0YUdyayxVqHeqRW_6mouIHYoLeSg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFu4ej4LXxAhXPKs0KHeMMAFYQ6AEwA3oECAkQAw#v=onepage&q=Johnson%20would%20settle%20the%20mooted%20question%20of%20supremacy&f=false">superiority to the white race</a>. </p>
<p>Before the fight, there were signs whites feared a Jeffries loss – and that this loss would not be restricted to the boxing ring but would have ramifications for all of society. </p>
<p>The New York Times warned, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=L07wCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT10&lpg=PT10&dq=%22If+the+black+man+wins,+the+New+York+Times+editorialized,+%22thousands+and+thousands%22&source=bl&ots=Irf6RwhTIv&sig=ACfU3U03XhwVDEzCZVB9yIX_6RR0mjJUnw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjk_sfB7rfxAhVBpZ4KHcN7CBEQ6AEwAHoECAQQAw#v=onepage&q=%22If%20the%20black%20man%20wins%2C%20the%20New%20York%20Times%20editorialized%2C%20%22thousands%20and%20thousands%22&f=false">If the black man wins</a>, thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory.” The message was clear: If Jeffries won, white superiority would be proved – but if he lost, whites would still be superior. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BnMJL36_oCs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Footage of the Johnson-Jeffries fight.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Seeking to retain power</h2>
<p>After Johnson easily defeated Jeffries, the Los Angeles Times reinforced white supremacy, telling Blacks: “<a href="https://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2012/10/07/a-word-to-the-black-man-a-reminder/">Do not point your nose too high</a>. Do not swell your chest too much. Do not boast too loudly. Do not get puffed up. … Your place in the world is just what is was. You are on no higher place, deserve no new consideration, and will get none.” Nearly a century later, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-14-ed-johnson14-story.html">the newspaper</a> apologized for that 1910 editorial.</p>
<p>In response to the violence, <a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-black-fighter-won-the-fight-of-the-century-race-riots-erupted-across-america-3730b8bf9c98">many cities forbade a film</a> of the fight to be shown in theaters. In 1912, Congress, citing the same motion picture, passed the Sims Act, <a href="https://reason.com/2018/05/25/jack-johnson-fight-films/">banning the transport of fight</a> films over state lines.</p>
<p>In doing so, it kept Blacks and whites from seeing Johnson beat a white man. Historian Jeffrey Sammons says, “in many ways, Johnson represented the ‘bad n—–’ that whites were so willing to parade as an example of why <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/fight-jack-johnson-1878-1946/">blacks must be kept in ‘their place.</a>’”</p>
<h2>An outpouring of violence</h2>
<p>No white boxer could defeat Johnson in the ring, so white America worked to defeat him outside the ring. Johnson was <a href="https://www.history.com/news/white-slave-mann-act-jack-johnson-pardon">arrested in 1912</a> and charged <a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unforgivable-blackness/mann-act/">with violating the Mann Act</a>, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” He served <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/sports/jack-johnson-pardon-trump.html">10 months in federal prison</a>. </p>
<p>But he was much more than one man. “No longer the respectful darky asking, hat in hand, for massa’s permission, Johnson was seen as the prototype of the independent black who acted as he pleased and accepted no bar to his conduct,” Randy Roberts wrote in “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Papa-Jack/Randy-Roberts/9780029269008">Papa Jack</a>,” his biography of Johnson. “As such, Johnson was transformed into a racial symbol that threatened America’s social order.”</p>
<p>Whites responded to Johnson’s triumph by using violence to keep Blacks in their place by any and all means. When Black construction workers celebrated Johnson’s victory near the town of Uvalda, Georgia, whites began shooting. As the Blacks tried to escape into the woods, the whites hunted them down, killing three and injuring five, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Papa-Jack/Randy-Roberts/9780029269008">Roberts wrote</a>. </p>
<p>Such scenes were <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1910/07/05/Race-riots-in-dozen-cities-follow-Johnson-fight-victory/8746818371120/">repeated throughout the country</a>, according to local media reports. </p>
<p>When a Black man in Houston expressed his joy over the fight’s outcome, a white man “slashed his throat from ear to ear.” Another Black man in Wheeling, West Virginia, who was driving an expensive car, just like Johnson was known for, was dragged from his car by a mob and lynched. A white mob in New York City set fire to a Black tenement and then blocked the doorway to <a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-black-fighter-won-the-fight-of-the-century-race-riots-erupted-across-america-3730b8bf9c98">keep the occupants from escaping</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A newspaper front page showing news of the fight result and ensuing violence" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Leavenworth Times in Kansas on July 5, 1910, published news of Johnson’s win and racial violence across the nation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://hchm.org/floats-of-every-description-the-fight-of-the-century-july-4-1910/">Leavenworth Times via Harvey County Historical Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The sports world responds</h2>
<p>Johnson’s punishment served as a cautionary tale for Blacks during the Jim Crow era. Black athletes, however talented, whether it was sprinter Jesse Owens or boxer <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/fight-black-boxers-and-idea-great-white-hope/">Joe Louis</a>, were warned they had to be the “right type” of Black person, one who knew his place and did not challenge the racial status quo. </p>
<p>In those sports where Blacks were not banned and instead begrudgingly allowed to compete with and against whites, there were violent attacks on Black athletes. <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/jack-trice-life-and-football-career-were-tragically-cut-short/">Jack Trice</a>, an Iowa State football player, died of injuries from the attack he suffered in a game against the University of Minnesota in 1923. </p>
<p>The end of professional baseball’s color line in 1946 line was possible only because Jackie Robinson promised he would <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2021/02/17/jackie-robinson-spring-training-story-75-years-ago/4488581001/">not respond to racist epithets</a> and physical abuse so that he would be acceptable to white America.</p>
<p>In the 1960s, white America taught Muhammad Ali, whom many considered the “wrong type” of Black athlete, the lesson it had once taught Jack Johnson. Ali, a brash Muslim who refused to defer to the demands of white supremacy, <a href="https://www.si.com/boxing/2020/04/28/this-day-sports-history-muhammad-ali-refuses-induction-army-stripped-title">was convicted of draft evasion</a> for refusing to be inducted into the armed services. He was stripped of his heavyweight title and sentenced to prison. </p>
<p>Other Black athletes, like sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, baseball player <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/07/curt-flood-fought-for-free-agency-and-against-racism-but-who-remembers/">Curt Flood</a> and football player <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2021/02/09/black-history-tommie-smith-colin-kaepernick-athlete-activism/6484313002/">Colin Kaepernick</a>, all found themselves punished and ostracized for challenging white supremacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Johnson’s victory, in the manliest of sports, contradicted claims of racial supremacy by whites and demonstrated that Blacks were no longer willing to acquiesce to white dominance.
Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, Indiana University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/145769
2020-09-14T15:06:26Z
2020-09-14T15:06:26Z
America’s inflection point: four key things Africa must watch for
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357896/original/file-20200914-22-ihm118.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Jessica Koscielniak / pool</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>African scholars and policymakers face a tough challenge in analysing how the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53657174">US presidential election</a> on 3 November might affect Africa-US relations. </p>
<p>This is because of the extreme polarisation of politics that has been growing for decades in the US. Simultaneous national crises have made matters worse. These suddenly erupted over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, its impact on the economy, and fresh evidence of white racism towards black Americans. </p>
<p>In deeply divided America, four clusters of political political conflicts arise over issues of national identity, sustainable democracy, international relations and electoral integrity. Crises in public health, the economy and race relations are adding to these conflicts. </p>
<p>African countries struggle with similar political issues – though in very different local circumstances. They are also afflicted by the global COVID-19 pandemic and economic crises. </p>
<p>These four unresolved and contentious clusters of political issues have confronted the US since it declared independence from Britain <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Declaration-of-Independence">in 1776</a> and created a federal state in 1789. In 2020 many crucial issues have <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2019-02-05/new-americanism-nationalism-jill-lepore">yet to be resolved</a>. </p>
<p>Republican President Donald Trump and his deputy Mike Pence <a href="https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/08/24/rnc-sends-trump-pence-ticket-off-and-running/">campaign</a> for an ethnic nationalist identity. Their appeal is to white Christian racial supremacists. They also advocate a nationalist and unilateral foreign policy. They back Republican efforts to limit equal voting rights. And they <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/08/28/what-can-trump-do-to-eke-out-a-victory-in-the-electoral-college/">threaten other actions</a> to subvert electoral integrity.</p>
<p>Their Democratic challengers Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris have very different goals. They are <a href="https://apnews.com/1483c085980847a6a54957a4ed0399f4">campaigning</a> for an America that is more inclusive and equitable. A similar aspiration is enshrined in South Africa’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>: to become a country that belongs to all who live in it, united in its diversity. </p>
<h2>American inflection point</h2>
<p>Harris describes the 2020 election as an “inflection point”. She means a turning point in America’s long curve towards or <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/08/19/Kamala-Harris-says-US-at-inflection-point-Obama-rebukes-Trump/5251597870474/">away from democratic development</a>. It is a nod to an adage attributed to Martin Luther King, and <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/white-house-defends-king-quote-on-oval-office-rug/1877758/">popularised by former President Barack Obama</a>, that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-smith-obama-king_n_5a5903e0e4b04f3c55a252a4">The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This theme threads through the Democratic Platform, with <a href="https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-07-31-Democratic-Party-Platform-For-Distribution.pdf">specific promises</a>. Biden and Harris now appear <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-presidential-race-is-still-joe-bidens-to-lose">likely to be elected</a>. It’s therefore important to consider what their positions mean for Africa-US relations.</p>
<p>Trump, by contrast, repeats his promise of 2016 to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/trump-rnc-speech-alone-fix-it/492557/">restore America’s “greatness”</a>. His Republican Party doesn’t even offer a new list of goals and programmes for the next four years. Instead, the party republished its 2016 platform with a covering memo praising the leadership of Donald Trump. This leaves voters and foreign governments with <a href="https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_2020.pdf">little new to analyse</a>.</p>
<p>For those trying to calculate the effects on African nations of an American inflection point, there are four areas to consider:</p>
<h2>National identity</h2>
<p>White supremacy has been the predominant national identity since America was colonised in the 17th century. Now, with ethnic diversity accelerating, exemplified by the election of a black president <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05campaign.html">in 2008</a>, Trump has stoked a backlash. Deprived of any claim to a strong economy as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage, he is reduced to running again as an ethnic nationalist – akin to a “tribalist” in Africa.</p>
<p>In today’s America there are limits to blatant appeals to racial prejudice. </p>
<p>Trump absurdly claims to have done more for African-Americans than any president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/05/trumps-claim-that-hes-done-more-blacks-than-any-president-since-lincoln/">since Abraham Lincoln</a>. But there are also political limits to how far Biden can go in embracing progressive calls for more rapid and complete integration. </p>
<p>The structural racism cited by the <a href="https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1327&context=honorstheses">Black Lives Matter movement</a> persists among liberals. But it does so as an implicit <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/americas-racial-contract-showing/611389/">“racial contract”</a> sustaining white privilege in access to housing, health care, education and employment. These are familiar issues in African countries, where a white tribal faction has historically dominated. </p>
<h2>Sustainable democracy</h2>
<p>In accepting the Democratic Party nomination, Biden focused on issues of <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/biden-dnc-speech-transcript/index.html">character and leadership</a>. He had Obama make the case for sustainable democracy and democratic inclusion. Obama pointedly referenced democracy 18 times in an address that reprised themes Africans heard in his <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/07/17/629862434/transcript-obamas-speech-at-the-2018-nelson-mandela-annual-lecture">2018 Mandela Lecture</a> in South Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357897/original/file-20200914-22-1se33rf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357897/original/file-20200914-22-1se33rf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357897/original/file-20200914-22-1se33rf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357897/original/file-20200914-22-1se33rf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357897/original/file-20200914-22-1se33rf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357897/original/file-20200914-22-1se33rf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357897/original/file-20200914-22-1se33rf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Presidential hopeful Joe Biden addresses the Democratic National Convention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/DNCC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump, by contrast, did not reference democracy once in his unusually long 70-minute address accepting his party’s nomination for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/us/politics/trump-rnc-speech-transcript.html">a second term</a>.</p>
<p>Obama’s warnings to Americans that Trump threatens the integrity and sustainability of democratic institutions has a familiar ring. In his 2009 address to the Ghanaian parliament, he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-ghanaian-parliament">Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump, along with his family, cronies and party enablers, appears to have achieved sufficient “state capture” to bring the US to a negative inflection point, as I <a href="https://www.eisa.org/pdf/sym2017papers.pdf">predicted in 2018</a> (Chapter 10).</p>
<h2>International relations</h2>
<p>Of more immediate and practical concern to African nations is whether Trump’s <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-08-11/present-disruption">nationalist unilateralism</a> will continue to dominate US foreign policy. Or will there be a turn towards the multilateralism that Biden pledges to pursue? This includes:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/pay-remaining-dues-trump-pulls-200902210814877.html">restoring US funding and engagement</a> in the World Health Organisation,</p></li>
<li><p>support for climate change mitigation, </p></li>
<li><p>immigration reform, and</p></li>
<li><p>support for collective security efforts to help Africans implement their commitments to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-african-union-has-failed-to-silence-the-guns-and-some-solutions-139567">ending armed conflicts</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>African scholars also <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-09-07-four-more-years-of-donald-trump-bodes-ill-for-the-future-of-africa/">warn</a> of a growing US-China “Cold War” under Trump. This would be detrimental to Africa.</p>
<p>Former US national security advisor and UN ambassador Susan Rice has called for an <a href="https://www.democratsabroad.org/susan_rice_call">early summit</a> with South Africa’s president and current African Union chair, Cyril Ramaphosa, should Biden be elected. Similarly, former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, Johnnie Carson, <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/acsus/">envisions</a> a deepening of African-American partnerships under a Biden administration. </p>
<h2>Electoral integrity</h2>
<p>The threat to American democracy most familiar to Africans is an incumbent’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa-faces-a-new-threat-to-democracy-the-constitutional-coup-72011">subversion of electoral integrity</a>. Trump has repeatedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/06/trumps-voter-suppression-effort-has-devolved-into-farce/">indicated his readiness to do</a> something similar.</p>
<p>African electoral violence specialist Michelle Small has noted the need to compare Trump’s responses to racial protests with efforts to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/witsacsus/photos/a.685933545195575/1075414576247468/?type=3">retain power by extra-constitutional means</a>. All members of the African Union, despite democratic setbacks, are still obliged to hold periodic national elections, accessible to <a href="https://eisa.org/pdf/eisa2016Stremlau.pdf">external observers</a>.</p>
<p>Well documented interference in the 2016 and 2020 US elections by the Russian government, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/">favouring Trump</a>, may also portend similar risks of foreign manipulation of [African elections]. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/technology/russia-facebook-disinformation-africa.html)</p>
<h2>What to expect</h2>
<p>For African scholars and policymakers seeking to advance their national and regional interests in dealings with the US, the <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/inauguration-day">59th presidential inauguration</a> will also be an inflection point. </p>
<p>Should Trump prevail, there is unlikely to be any discernible change in his behaviour of the past four years. Occasional private disparagement of African <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946">nations</a> and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-nelson-mandela-leader-south-africa-judge/">leaders</a> will most likely continue. </p>
<p>There will be continued disengagement from initiatives of concern to Africans in public health, the environment, trade and other areas. His actions towards Africa, as in other areas, lack strategy. But as in 2016 <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/how-trump-could-win?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_091120&utm_campaign=aud-">he could still win</a>.</p>
<p>Despite presidential neglect, programmes in public health, trade agriculture, health, education and young leaders launched by Trump’s predecessors would likely continue with <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/02/20/how-america-deals-with-africa-despite-donald-trump">bi-partisan Congressional support</a>. </p>
<p>A Biden win offers a much richer field for contingency planning, although resources will be very constrained and attention will be <a href="https://theconversation.com/africas-wish-list-of-what-might-change-under-a-biden-presidency-133253">overwhelmingly domestic</a>. </p>
<p>That said, Biden would enter office owing a huge political debt to the support of African Americans. His ticket indicates receptiveness to honouring it, including immigration and other reforms affecting the African diaspora as well as expanding US-Africa partnerships. Planning to take advantage of those contingencies should be a priority in Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145769/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John J Stremlau is affiliated as board member of the Electoral Institute of International Affairs and is a member of Democrats Abroad.. </span></em></p>
Many political issues in the 2020 US election are domestic. But black resistance to white supremacy has long had global repercussions.
John J Stremlau, Honorary Professor of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/140679
2020-06-24T12:08:51Z
2020-06-24T12:08:51Z
To fight US racism, research prescribes a nationwide healing process
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342286/original/file-20200616-23266-1f31b18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C15%2C5184%2C3864&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, documents the lynchings of more than 4,400 people between 1877 and 1950.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Travel-Montgomery/df14efeeb28443cf953a1f2fc5d4b9d1/30/0">AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the U.S. prepares to celebrate another year of its independence, the country is paying renewed attention to the founders, and how their legacy of slavery is linked to systemic racism.</p>
<p>Calls for reform to policing across the nation can help to directly reduce police violence against civilians but don’t address the centuries-old underlying problems in American society. Our research indicates that the country is not likely to escape its historic cycles of violence and racial oppression without addressing this painful and troubled history.</p>
<p>Sparked by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, protests have emerged across the United States demanding police and criminal justice reform. Reform efforts abound – including Minneapolis city councilors declaring they will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/us/minneapolis-police-abolish.html">dismantle the police department</a>, <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/black-lives-matter-protests-change-215544913.html">school districts cutting ties with local police</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/14/us/george-floyd-national-police-reforms/index.html">states banning the police use of chokeholds</a>. </p>
<p>Those efforts can make meaningful differences in individuals’ lives, but they do not address the systemic injustices perpetrated throughout the nation’s history. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qVgMgJgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Our</a> <a href="http://www.cyanneloyle.com">research</a> into how war-torn and fractured nations <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx045">find peace, justice and societal reconciliation</a> offers one possible approach. Truth commissions and reparations programs can effectively involve all perspectives in a conflict in a national-level discussion about longstanding political and economic grievances. In other countries, those efforts have led to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2018.1543017">sustainable and lasting peace</a> in divided societies.</p>
<h2>How do truth commissions work?</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341974/original/file-20200615-65947-3639i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341974/original/file-20200615-65947-3639i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341974/original/file-20200615-65947-3639i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341974/original/file-20200615-65947-3639i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341974/original/file-20200615-65947-3639i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341974/original/file-20200615-65947-3639i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341974/original/file-20200615-65947-3639i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341974/original/file-20200615-65947-3639i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A book published by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada details the abusive treatment of Indigenous people in residential schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TRC_Canada_They_Came_for_the_Children.pdf">Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Truth commissions are investigations into past wrongdoings by a group of authorities, such as community or church leaders, historians or human rights experts. There is great variation in how truth commissions are designed, but their missions are the same. These investigations include the voices of those who experienced the wrongdoings as well as those alleged to have done harm. </p>
<p>Typically, truth commissions create a forum where wrongs can be disclosed, examined and confronted through education, prosecution, compensation or other forms of redress.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most recognized example was <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a>, established in 1995 at the end of apartheid. The commission collected personal statements from 21,000 victims of gross human rights violations at the hands of South Africa’s government and police. Much of this testimony was broadcast on national television. The commission later compiled and published a seven-volume report into the abuses suffered under apartheid, which included recommending reparation payments to victims and prosecutions for those denied amnesty. </p>
<p>Other countries have had similar processes aimed at righting wrongs. For instance, a <a href="http://www.trc.ca">Canadian truth commission</a> documented the legacy of physical and sexual abuse inflicted on thousands of Indigenous Canadians in a program of forced assimilation and education. The findings led to a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prime-minister-stephen-harper-s-statement-of-apology-1.734250">formal government apology</a>, saying “Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.” Its work also sparked <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-content-school-curriculums-trc-1.5300580">reforms to the national education curriculum</a>.</p>
<p>Truth commissions promote reconciliation when they <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14754830110111553">help victims heal</a> from the wounds of the past by publicly acknowledging those wrongs. Commissions also educate other members of society about the suffering incurred by victims through the publication of <a href="http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_001.htm">summary reports</a>, <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/the-tismaneanu-commission-presents-the-final-report-romanian-communism">public dissemination of findings</a> and <a href="https://www.sierraleonetrc.org/index.php/view-the-final-report/popular-reports">education campaigns</a>.</p>
<p>In the wake of Floyd’s death and the resulting protests, California Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat, has introduced legislation calling for the establishment of a national Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Commission to “<a href="https://lee.house.gov/news/press-releases/in-the-wake-of-covid-19-and-murder-of-george-floyd-congresswoman-barbara-lee-calls-for-formation-of-truth-racial-healing-and-transformation-commission">fully acknowledge and understand how our history of inequality continues today</a>.” </p>
<p>In recent years, others have suggested similar efforts to address <a href="https://theconversation.com/dealing-with-hate-can-americas-truth-and-reconciliation-commissions-help-73170">anti-Semitism, racism and other social injustices</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342288/original/file-20200616-23213-9ldtpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342288/original/file-20200616-23213-9ldtpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342288/original/file-20200616-23213-9ldtpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342288/original/file-20200616-23213-9ldtpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342288/original/file-20200616-23213-9ldtpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342288/original/file-20200616-23213-9ldtpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342288/original/file-20200616-23213-9ldtpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342288/original/file-20200616-23213-9ldtpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The opening session of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was held April 15, 1996.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-take-part-at-the-opening-session-of-the-truth-and-news-photo/1052235744">Philip Littleton/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>When are truth commissions effective?</h2>
<p>Our work provides specific guidance about making these processes most effective. </p>
<p>First, they must include all parties to the dispute.</p>
<p>In a U.S. discussion of racial injustice, that means white and Black Americans must participate together. The commission’s hearings would be an important opportunity for Black Americans to heal through discussing their shared experiences. </p>
<p>But it is at least as important, or possibly more so, for white Americans to hear this information, which is likely to be unfamiliar to many of them – and acknowledge the long-term effects of slavery and systemic racism in U.S. society. </p>
<p>In South Africa, for instance, research found that the commission was most effective at <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/overcoming-apartheid">changing the racial attitudes of white South Africans</a> by teaching them about the abuses Black South Africans suffered. This facilitated reconciliation because once the truth was shared, people could apportion blame and responsibility.</p>
<p>Second, our research suggests that national-level processes are an important component of durable peace, as measured by the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx045">lack of a return to violence</a> following civil conflict. Structural injustice is a nationwide problem in the U.S. Larger social change therefore requires an approach at the national scale.</p>
<p>Those processes can often lead to wider public understanding of how and why reparations, financial compensation payments to victims of wrongdoings, can be a vital part of national healing. These programs directly address the material and personal losses inflicted on the victims of prejudice and injustice. Some notable leaders like <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">author Ta-Nehisi Coates</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/reparations-slavery-are-only-way-fix-america-s-racial-wealth-ncna1225251">media magnate and BET founder Robert Johnson</a> have made the case for financial payments to Black Americans. That is one way to approach the wrongdoings.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342289/original/file-20200616-23276-cutmbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342289/original/file-20200616-23276-cutmbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342289/original/file-20200616-23276-cutmbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342289/original/file-20200616-23276-cutmbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342289/original/file-20200616-23276-cutmbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342289/original/file-20200616-23276-cutmbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342289/original/file-20200616-23276-cutmbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342289/original/file-20200616-23276-cutmbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators in New York City asked city leaders for reparations for all survivors and victims of police brutality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-families-of-victims-of-police-brutality-community-news-photo/585202674">Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our work, however, finds that community reparations, such as funding for community development programs like public spaces and hospitals and educational scholarships, can also be effective when they are adopted as part of an effort that reveals truth and acknowledges grievances. Reparations can bring about social healing because they send a strong signal to the population that the government is committed to addressing historical wrongs.</p>
<p>But a word of caution is also in order. Our work has found that reconciliation efforts can be susceptible to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2015.1052897">political manipulation</a> and <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501705762/hijacked-justice/#bookTabs=1">hijacking</a>. Truth commissions and reparations can <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2017.1366537">fail to bring about reconciliation</a> when they do not incorporate diverse perspectives and experiences. Overcoming these challenges requires a national process with widespread participation across communities as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1475483032000132999">strong community organizations</a> and a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijq004">free press</a> to monitor its progress.</p>
<p>The killing of George Floyd has once again revealed the racism and racial oppression that continue to plague America. The protesters and <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/06/12/why-rural-america-is-joining-the-movement-for-black-lives">their broad-based group of supporters</a> also make clear that many in the country are ready for leaders to finally adopt a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/opinion/police-brutality-protests-legislation.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR21kYExEbwHNZ4jwZ4mu90RWrut0RHR5I3Fbc4xLv1BrLo73qD-cfnPmPA">fundamentally new approach to racial equality</a>. </p>
<p>It may be tempting for people to work locally to address these injustices, and those efforts can indeed make changes. But our research shows that a national solution would be the best way to heal from America’s “<a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-12-12/americas-original-sin">original sin</a>” of slavery and longstanding institutional racism, and achieve lasting peace and justice. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140679/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cyanne E. Loyle has recieved funding from the National Science Foundation and the US Institute of Peace. She is a Global Fellow with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Appel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Research into how war-torn and fractured nations find justice and societal reconciliation finds ways to establish sustainable and lasting peace in divided societies.
Benjamin Appel, Associate Professor of International Relations, Michigan State University
Cyanne E. Loyle, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Penn State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136822
2020-04-30T20:12:05Z
2020-04-30T20:12:05Z
Race-based health data urgently needed during the coronavirus pandemic
<p>A one-size-fits-all approach to COVID-19 does not work.</p>
<p>David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, recently said the province will not collect data on race and other indicators of who is being hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “<a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/04/10/race-based-coronavirus-data-not-needed-in-canada-yet-health-officials-say.html">regardless of race, ethnic or other backgrounds, they’re all equally important to us</a>.” Williams says he’s following the guidance of the World Health Organization (WHO) and he’s not alone.</p>
<p>No Canadian province or territory currently collects these data, although Alberta’s Chief Medical Health Officer Deena Hinshaw <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/04/10/race-based-coronavirus-data-not-needed-in-canada-yet-health-officials-say.html">committed last week</a> to looking into it in partnership with First Nations communities. A spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada similarly said the federal government has “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/race-coronavirus-canada-1.5536168">no plans</a>” to collect disaggregated data on social determinants of health as risk factors for COVID-19.</p>
<p>There are <a href="https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/covid-19-spreads-in-homeless-shelter-who-seeks-funds-in-the-news-for-april-25">outbreaks in shelters</a>, among <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/kent-bridge-greenhouse-covid19-1.5546188">migrant farm workers</a> and in long-term care homes. <a href="https://egale.ca/egale-in-action/covid19-impact-report/">LGBTQI2S people</a> have been harder hit by economic shutdowns. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-staff-at-toronto-public-health-hq-ordered-home-after-office-hit-by/">temporary closures</a> of consumption and treatment services for people who use drugs <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/pandemic-one-crisis-too-many-for-those-with-opioid-addiction/">have increased their vulnerability</a>. Public-facing essential workers continue to risk exposure, all pointing to their expendability masked under a one-size-fits-all response. </p>
<h2>No legal barriers to collecting race-based data</h2>
<p>While the provinces are unresponsive to calls for race-based data, there has been some movement. After thousands of people and hundreds of organizations called for <a href="https://www.allianceon.org/news/Letter-Premier-Ford-Deputy-Premier-Elliott-and-Dr-Williams-regarding-need-collect-and-use-socio">the collection of race-based and sociodemographic data</a>, some local public health units in Ontario stepped up to fill the provincial void. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.inbrampton.com/peel-public-health-to-begin-collecting-race-and-occupation-based-data-amid-covid-19-pandemic">Peel</a>, Toronto and London-Middlesex public health units have all announced plans to collect and use sociodemographic and race-based data for contact tracing. </p>
<p>Nationally, groups like the <a href="https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/Measurement_of_Equity_in_Health_Care_Proceedings_Report_EN.pdf">Pan-Canadian Dialogue to Advance the Measurement of Equity in Health Care</a> continue to advance the conversation. </p>
<p>But the federal and most provincial governments still refuse to act. An Ontario <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/04/21/toronto-public-health-to-start-collecting-covid-19-data-on-race-in-a-bid-to-track-health-inequities.html">Ministry of Health spokesperson</a> claims that current legislation does not “authorize health information custodians to collect race-based data.” Yet, as researchers in health equity, we know this is possible under current laws, because we and our partners have <a href="http://torontohealthequity.ca/">long gathered data</a> on race and other social factors that affect health and healthcare.</p>
<p>Long before the pandemic, many racialized communities were advocating to advance the systematic collection of race-based data in health care.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/beQSp5Zbvpk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">There are growing calls for Canada to collect wider demographic data after numbers from the U.S. revealed that racially and economically marginalized people are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>American and international data show us how</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://iris.paho.org/handle/10665.2/51570">WHO says health systems need equity-informed data</a> to take informed action. Strikingly, the <a href="http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/pro/programs/publichealth/oph_standards/docs/protocols_guidelines/Health_Equity_Guideline_2018_en.pdf">Ontario Public Health Standards</a> require the collection of these data, supported by Williams’ own 2018 report <a href="http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/common/ministry/publications/reports/cmoh_18/default.aspx">Improving the Odds: Championing Health Equity in Ontario</a>. </p>
<p>The United States does collect race-based data. The evidence shows that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/its-a-racial-justice-issue-black-americans-are-dying-in-greater-numbers-from-covid-19">African Americans</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/coronavirus-takes-more-native-americans-lives-killing-our-elderly-erases-ncna1189761">Indigenous people</a> are among the hardest hit by the coronavirus. Systemic anti-Black racism has been cited as a root cause of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/04/08/us/ap-us-virus-outbreak-race.html">African American health disparities</a>. </p>
<p>If you think these issues only exist south of the Canada-U.S. border, think again. In 2017, the United Nations said they were “<a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G17/239/60/PDF/G1723960.pdf?OpenElement">deeply concerned about the human rights situation of African Canadians</a>;” it recommended that race-based data be collected to identify and address the disparities experienced by Black Canadians. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-is-not-the-great-equalizer-race-matters-133867">Coronavirus is not the great equalizer — race matters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Indigenous health data requires its own strategy, led by and for Indigenous people. Due to historic and present-day practices that misuse data or focus only on negative findings, First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, and many Indigenous leaders and communities do not want governments or mainstream healthcare providers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32755-1">collecting and using data about them</a>. Instead, <a href="https://iphcc.ca/">Indigenous-governed health care providers</a> collect and use their own data following the principles of <a href="https://www.afn.ca/uploads/files/nihbforum/info_and_privacy_doc-ocap.pdf">Indigenous data sovereignty</a>.</p>
<h2>Equalizing the COVID-19 response</h2>
<p>This pandemic has shown that a lot can be done given enough political and collective will. Shifting to a health equity response driven by data is doable too. </p>
<p>Of course, data is not the only step needed to ensure an equitable COVID-19 response. Detailed plans for high-risk places like shelters and long-term care homes, stronger protections for low-income essential workers and the inclusion of marginalized communities at decision-making tables are vital, too.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330879/original/file-20200427-145560-6m6n0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330879/original/file-20200427-145560-6m6n0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330879/original/file-20200427-145560-6m6n0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330879/original/file-20200427-145560-6m6n0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330879/original/file-20200427-145560-6m6n0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330879/original/file-20200427-145560-6m6n0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330879/original/file-20200427-145560-6m6n0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. data shows that the novel coronavirus disproportionately affects Black communities, yet that type of race-based analysis is absent in Canada, leaving Black Canadian families without key information.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But collecting race-based health data is an important step — one that can be immediately implemented in the province’s new <a href="https://www.allianceon.org/news/Ontario-must-bring-health-equity-lens-new-COVID-19-test-technologies-and-data-tools">Pandemic Threat Response (PANTHR) data platform</a>. Once that data is integrated into the overall provincial data, it can help direct test kits and personal protective equipment to where they are most needed. Race-based health data is needed to help citizens and residents understand the pandemic’s full impact. </p>
<p>Every day, decisions about the pandemic are made. Transparency in data can ensure that care is available for people who have — so far — been left behind. </p>
<p>We have been able to identify certain groups at increased risk largely due to their location — long-term care homes, shelters, farms. There are likely other groups at increased risk of infection that cannot be identified in this way. Based on U.S. data, Black and Indigenous people are experiencing increased risk of infection and death. We need race-based and other sociodemographic data in Canada in order to determine if any groups are at greater risk, in order to take appropriate supportive action.</p>
<p><em>This is a corrected version of a story originally published April 30, 2020. The earlier story incorrectly stated that York Region in Ontario will collect race-based data for contact tracing.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136822/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Mulligan works for the Alliance for Healthier Communities. She sits on the Toronto Board of Health and the board of the Association of Local Public Health Agencies.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Rayner works for the Alliance for Healthier Communities. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Onye Nnorom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Gathering race-based data during the coronavirus pandemic is essential for Indigenous communities, racialized people and those with disabilities and mental health challenges.
Kate Mulligan, Assistant Professor, Social & Behavioural Health Sciences, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
Jennifer Rayner, Assistant Professor, Centre for Studies in Family Medicine
Onye Nnorom, Associate Program Director of the Public Health & Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Toronto, University of Toronto
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/120705
2019-07-25T13:01:13Z
2019-07-25T13:01:13Z
In the face of fear and loathing, many British Muslims feel they must play hide and seek with their identity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285694/original/file-20190725-136764-1bnib5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5889%2C4014&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/shoreditch-london-uk-january-11-2015-253878526">DrimaFilm/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Islamophobia is a form of prejudice that is not well understood. Instead it is often ignored and increasingly even undermined, such as through the argument that claims of Islamophobia are a threat to free speech, or hinder the prevention of crime. Terrorism is an oft-cited example, or more recently “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-boyfriend-model-of-abuse-is-not-restricted-to-grooming-gangs-82599">Asian grooming gangs</a>”.</p>
<p>As it happens, when the <a href="https://appgbritishmuslims.org/">All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims</a> proposed a new definition of Islamophobia following almost two years of consultation, Theresa May’s government used these very same reasons to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-islamophobia-definition-conservative-party-a8840531.html">kick it into the long grass</a>. </p>
<p>Free speech must not be used to justify bigotry, any more than a definition of Islamophobia must not prevent genuine criticism of the tenets and practices of Islam. The fear or dislike of all or most Muslims and therefore dread or hatred of Islam is what Muslims want tackled. </p>
<p>But, despite calls last year by the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/05/1009542">UN Special Rapporteur on racism, xenophobia and intolerance</a> for the UK to “comprehensively” combat racism and bias, this seems as unlikely as ever. Many Muslims therefore avoid using the term Islamophobia altogether, treating it almost with as much caution as other words like shariah, jihad and fatwah that have become associated with past moments of conflict between Muslims and western society.</p>
<p>In fact some Muslims have gone much further, downplaying or hiding the Muslim aspects of their character in order to succeed or simply avoid hostility. At work, in universities, or on public transport, beards are shaved and hijabs removed or colourfully decorated to make them appear less stark.</p>
<p>In contrast there are other reactions, such as those Muslims who double-down in the face of hostility, finding inspiration from within their faith, however it is interpreted, and strength in numbers, seeking out and building upon each other’s support to succeed. </p>
<p>Downplaying one’s identity is known as “covering”: practised, consciously or otherwise, in order to more easily blend into the mainstream. It is not a truly free act. Neither is it peculiar to Muslims: minorities everywhere will recognise it. Through covering, names are changed or Anglicised and CVs are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20608039">“whitened”</a>. So “Osama” becomes “Sammy”, and Sajid Javid, the Conservative MP who was the first Asian Home Secretary and is now the first Asian Chancellor of the Exchequer, thus believes in Allah but tells us that the <a href="https://www.sajidjavid.com/news/immigrants-must-learn-english-and-respect-our-country-and-laws-says-asian-toryv">only religion practised in his home is Christianity</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285690/original/file-20190725-136749-13s6chz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285690/original/file-20190725-136749-13s6chz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285690/original/file-20190725-136749-13s6chz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285690/original/file-20190725-136749-13s6chz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285690/original/file-20190725-136749-13s6chz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285690/original/file-20190725-136749-13s6chz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285690/original/file-20190725-136749-13s6chz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285690/original/file-20190725-136749-13s6chz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For some British Muslims, wearing obvious symbols of their culture will be unremarkable (photo posed by model).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-british-muslim-woman-urban-environment-588834986">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These camouflaging manoeuvres are intended to go unnoticed. They may seem drastic, but the reality is that a job-seeker with an English-sounding name is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38751307">three times more likely</a> to receive an interview than an applicant with a Muslim name. Data collated by the <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/562/562.pdf">Race Disparity Audit</a> reveals that almost <a href="https://www.mend.org.uk/news/findings-race-disparity-audit-call-action-racial-inequality-britain/">half of all Muslims live in the bottom 10%</a> of deprived districts in England and Wales. Despite higher rates of university participation and qualifications, Muslim women continue to have the <a href="https://www.runnymedetrust.org/projects-and-publications/parliament/appg-2/appg-inquiry.html">highest rates of unemployment</a>, and Muslims in employment experience the highest rates of in-work poverty, with persistently low wages.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285691/original/file-20190725-136737-1kt4xvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285691/original/file-20190725-136737-1kt4xvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285691/original/file-20190725-136737-1kt4xvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285691/original/file-20190725-136737-1kt4xvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285691/original/file-20190725-136737-1kt4xvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285691/original/file-20190725-136737-1kt4xvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285691/original/file-20190725-136737-1kt4xvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285691/original/file-20190725-136737-1kt4xvz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">But some British Muslims may feel the need to alter their appearance to blend in for fear of prejudice (photo posed by model).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-british-muslim-woman-urban-park-588826025">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While both the incoming Chancellor and Mayor of London are Muslim, it is rare to see British Muslims in positions of power and influence. The few that have managed to break the glass ceiling almost invariably find that to progress further they must be seen to take a hard-line stance against their fellow Muslims. Sajid Javid’s decision to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/19/isis-briton-shamima-begum-to-have-uk-citizenship-revoked">revoke the British citizenship of ISIS wife Shamima Begum</a> rather than to put her on trial in Britain is a case in point.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sajid-javid-and-the-complex-life-of-a-muslim-conservative-leadership-hopeful-118849">Sajid Javid and the complex life of a Muslim Conservative leadership hopeful</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Another example is Javid’s refusal to back calls for an independent inquiry into accusations of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. Having maintained this position for years, his recent decision to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/18/sajid-javid-puts-rivals-on-the-spot-over-tory-party-islamophobia">U-turn on this issue</a> during his ultimately unsuccessful Tory leadership bid suggests he has always known there is a case to answer, but chose his moment in such a way that it helped him position himself as the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/jun/12/tory-leadership-boris-johnson-facing-fierce-criticism-because-of-his-huge-appeal-says-leading-supporter--live-news">change candidate</a>” among the contestants. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285695/original/file-20190725-136754-1sasdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285695/original/file-20190725-136754-1sasdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285695/original/file-20190725-136754-1sasdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285695/original/file-20190725-136754-1sasdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285695/original/file-20190725-136754-1sasdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285695/original/file-20190725-136754-1sasdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285695/original/file-20190725-136754-1sasdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests against Islamophobia such as this one in 2019 are less visible than the racism toward Muslims found in the media.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/1340569901">Andrius Kaziliunas/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since then a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/24/tory-members-would-not-want-muslim-prime-minister-islamophobia-survey">YouGov poll</a> has confirmed alarming bigotry within the Conservative Party, with nearly half of party members stating that they would not want a Muslim prime minister. It is telling that Boris Johnson, speaking to the BBC, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jun/27/tory-islamophobia-inquiry-will-be-general-investigation-boris-johnson-sajid-javid">downgraded his promise</a> from an inquiry into Islamophobia to a “general investigation” into all types of prejudice. He is either unwilling to ruffle feathers among those that hold these bigoted views, or shares them himself.</p>
<p>Covering is about the management of self-image, and the key question is always the same: is success, however that is interpreted, at risk? Will the act of covering alienate one’s fellow Muslims, or a specific group such as Sunni, Shia, Salafi or Deobandi, or one’s family? Is the trade-off worth it to become a <a href="https://www.muppies.org/">“Muppie”, or Muslim urban professional</a>? In contrast, could disclosing Muslim heritage be advantageous? Each Muslim must assess the risk and weigh the gains and losses of their decision, mental arithmetic that is significant, challenging, and exhausting.</p>
<p>Anti-Muslim sentiment sadly remains widespread, as expressed by Conservative peer and British Muslim Baroness Warsi in 2011 when she said that Islamophobic comments passed the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/20/lady-warsi-islamophobia-muslims-prejudice">dinner table test</a>”. Until this is addressed, the practice of covering will continue to be part of the daily experience of many Muslims.</p>
<p>This reveals that it is still not easy being a British Muslim, despite equality and human rights legislation, and the claim that mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs or none are supposedly part of our cherished “British values”. There can be little improvement without a widely-agreed, accepted and enforced definition of Islamophobia adopted by the public, private and charitable sectors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120705/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sham Qayyum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Faced with open and hidden prejudice, some British Muslims downplay their difference in public in order to succeed.
Sham Qayyum, Lecturer in Law, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/116790
2019-05-16T09:57:31Z
2019-05-16T09:57:31Z
Thousands of mixed-race British babies were born in World War II – and adoption by their black American fathers was blocked
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274651/original/file-20190515-60537-1rdy6y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Outside Holnicote House children's home, Somerset.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Lesley York</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Around <a href="https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest">2.2%</a> of the population of England and Wales is now mixed race and <a href="https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest">3.3%</a> are from black ethnic groups. During World War II, over 70 years ago, these figures were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_British#World_War_II">far lower</a>. And so unsurprisingly, life was difficult for the 2,000 or so mixed race babies who were born in World War II to black American GIs and white British women. </p>
<p>They grew up in predominately white localities and experienced significant racism. I have interviewed 45 of these children (now in their seventies), hailing from all over England. <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526133267/">Their story</a> of institutional racism rivals the horrors of the appalling story of the Windrush generation.</p>
<p>Of the 3m US servicemen that passed through Britain in the period 1942-45, approximately <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Rich_relations.html?id=QQdyAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">8%</a> were African-American. The GIs were part of a segregated army and they brought their segregation polices with them, designating towns near to American bases “black” or “white” and segregating pubs and dances along colour lines, with dances held for black GIs one evening and whites the next. </p>
<p>Inevitably, relationships formed between the black GIs and local women and some resulted in what the African-American press referred to as “brown babies”. All these children were born illegitimate because the American white commanding officers refused black GIs permission to marry, the rationale being that back in the US, 30 of the then 48 states had anti-miscegenation laws.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274646/original/file-20190515-60545-2gueni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274646/original/file-20190515-60545-2gueni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274646/original/file-20190515-60545-2gueni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274646/original/file-20190515-60545-2gueni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274646/original/file-20190515-60545-2gueni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274646/original/file-20190515-60545-2gueni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274646/original/file-20190515-60545-2gueni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young Monica.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Monica Roberts</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The children grew up in predominately white areas – the sites where the GIs had been largely based: south and south-west England, south Wales, East Anglia and Lancashire, where they had little or no black or mixed race role models. Most suffered racism, the stigma of illegitimacy and a confused identity. </p>
<p>Monica, one of the women I interviewed, remembers that there were no other mixed race children in her area at all. “That was the hardest part,” she told me. “People literally would turn around if I walked into a shop and stare, it was horrible … I was made to feel like a complete outcast, like I was contaminated.”</p>
<p>Jennifer, meanwhile, recalls one particular incident: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was a girl that were very friendly. She told me where she lived and I went to call for her one night. And her mother opened the door. Oh, she went bananas. Oh, she went mad! I thought she were gonna have the door off the hinges. It’s a good job my fingers weren’t in the door, she’d have broke them!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Racist name calling was widespread for these children. Gillian, for example, who grew up in Rugeley, Staffordshire, told me that in addition to “blackie” and “nigger”, when she got to secondary school her peers started to call her “Gillywog”.</p>
<p>The thing that Deborah, born in Somerset in 1945, never got used to was being pointed at in shops. She remembers that children used to ask: “Mummy, why is that girl black?” The hardest thing, she found, “was not knowing why I was different. If you’ve got an identity that includes being black, you should be proud of it”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274647/original/file-20190515-60529-vjbgnm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274647/original/file-20190515-60529-vjbgnm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274647/original/file-20190515-60529-vjbgnm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274647/original/file-20190515-60529-vjbgnm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274647/original/file-20190515-60529-vjbgnm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274647/original/file-20190515-60529-vjbgnm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274647/original/file-20190515-60529-vjbgnm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jennifer Brown and her grandmother, who she lived with.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jennifer Brown</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Stuck in the UK</h2>
<p>Just under half of these children were put into children’s homes. Few were adopted. Everyone involved in the adoption process appeared to assume that black or mixed-race children were “too hard to place”, an attitude that carried on into at least the 1960s. Of the 45 “brown babies” I spoke to, 21 were put into children’s homes but only four were adopted by non-relatives. Several were adopted by their grandparents, while a few were fostered. </p>
<p>Leon Lomax is the only British “brown baby” I have found who was adopted by his US father. In December 1945, Somerset County Council, who had 45 mixed-race GI babies in their care, approached the Home Office to see if they could get the children adopted by “putative fathers, near relatives or other ‘coloured’ families in the US” (“putative” as there was no DNA testing to establish paternity until the 1960s). But the Home Secretary pointed out that it went against the Adoption Act, which only allowed adoption by British subjects or relatives.</p>
<p>In 1948, the government changed its policy for just over a year (the year of Leon’s adoption), but in 1949 reverted back to the ban, despite hundreds of African Americans keen to adopt the children. It appears that in 1948 the government had become increasingly concerned that they were being seen to be shirking responsibility and of dumping the mixed-race children of British subjects onto the Americans. The Home Office explicitly wanted “to avoid any suggestion that we in this country are trying to get rid of the coloured waifs left behind by the American occupation”.</p>
<p>Yet government’s ambivalence towards the “brown babies” remained. The children were not white and therefore not truly “British”, since Britishness assumed whiteness. In addition, a mixed-race GI baby stood out as a visual marker of the black soldier having indeed, as the comedian Tommy Trinder was well-known for <a href="https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/oversexed-overpaid-and-over-here.html">quipping</a>, been “over-paid, over-fed, over-sexed and over-here”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274652/original/file-20190515-60570-1xds5sx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274652/original/file-20190515-60570-1xds5sx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274652/original/file-20190515-60570-1xds5sx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274652/original/file-20190515-60570-1xds5sx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274652/original/file-20190515-60570-1xds5sx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274652/original/file-20190515-60570-1xds5sx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274652/original/file-20190515-60570-1xds5sx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Stockley and his mother.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© John Stockley</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Finding fathers</h2>
<p>Whether or not they grew up in a children’s home, nearly all my interviewees knew little or nothing about their fathers. They often did not even know their father’s name.</p>
<p>Over the years, some have found their fathers – such is the wonder of DNA testing and its increasing use in the US. Many are still finding US relatives, although it is rare that a father is still alive. For Sandi, finding her father’s wife and hearing that her father always talked of her was a turning point: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was like tumbleweed. You know – when you see them cowboy films and the tumbleweed’s just blowing about where the wind takes it. I was like that. And I was aware of it, but I didn’t how to change it. And it’s about roots. It’s your roots that stabilise you. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And when James met his father in 2000, he told me he felt transformed: “Up to that point, I never felt whole. There was a part of me missing. And finding me dad was that part. I felt better and settled.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274657/original/file-20190515-60570-v56ccs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274657/original/file-20190515-60570-v56ccs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274657/original/file-20190515-60570-v56ccs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274657/original/file-20190515-60570-v56ccs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274657/original/file-20190515-60570-v56ccs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274657/original/file-20190515-60570-v56ccs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274657/original/file-20190515-60570-v56ccs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James reunited with his dad.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© James Andrews</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The historian David Olusoga <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/david-olusoga/black-and-british/9781509837113">refers</a> to the “Windrush myth”: “The widespread misconception that black history began with the coming on that one ship.” The children left behind by the African-American GIs during and after the war are part of this pre-Windrush black British history – a part that has very largely been overlooked. In generously sharing their stories, the children left behind by the African-American GIs during and after the war have shone a light on an important but overlooked aspect of this pre-Windrush black British history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116790/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Bland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
This sorry tale of institutional racism represents a scandal to rival the treatment of the Windrush generation.
Lucy Bland, Professor of Social and Cultural History, Anglia Ruskin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111697
2019-02-15T23:52:31Z
2019-02-15T23:52:31Z
Virginia politics: The uneasy marriage of new liberalism and historic racism
<p>Virginia is home to America’s original contradiction – <a href="https://books.wwnorton.com/books/American-Slavery-American-Freedom/">the peculiar juxtaposition of slavery and freedom</a>.</p>
<p>The recent “blue-ing” of Virginia has obscured a sobering political reality: Racial progress and racial bigotry can exist at the same time. </p>
<p>Those contradictions were on display when Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam recently admitted to, and subsequently denied, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/analysis-northam-struggles-to-escape-virginias-troubled-past--and-his-own/2019/02/02/b4cb1962-2729-11e9-90cd-dedb0c92dc17_story.html?utm_term=.3c3b7252cc60">being photographed in blackface in the early 1980s</a>. </p>
<p>Northam is the latest elected official to fan the flames of America’s tortured racial history. </p>
<p>The Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook photo <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/01/virginia-gov-ralph-northams-yearbook-page-shows-blackface-kkk-photo/2747748002/">shows a man in blackface standing next to a person in Ku Klux Klan</a> attire. This image, nearly three decades old, ignited a chain of nationwide commentary on the current state of American race relations. </p>
<p>The photo represents another sobering reminder of old bigotry in contemporary politics. </p>
<p>And while racist political power is not specific to Virginia, the “Old Dominion” is, and has been, a bellwether for American politics – the good and the bad, but mostly the contradictory. </p>
<p>As a historian of 20th-century American history and <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=4997#.XGc6zC2ZPgE">Richmond, Virginia’s recent political history</a>, these contradictions have contemporary connotations. </p>
<h2>Reconciliation and dehumanization</h2>
<p>Despite its recent history of voting Democratic, ambivalent political traditions continue to characterize the Commonwealth. The home of the Confederacy’s capital, Richmond, also gave the United States its first African-American governor in 1990, <a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Wilder_Lawrence_Douglas_1931-">Lawrence Douglas Wilder</a>. </p>
<p>Virginia also <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/11/04/barack-obama-wins-conservative-virginia">helped elect</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2012/results/states/virginia.html">Barack Obama, twice</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259336/original/file-20190215-56232-1h2goz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259336/original/file-20190215-56232-1h2goz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259336/original/file-20190215-56232-1h2goz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259336/original/file-20190215-56232-1h2goz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259336/original/file-20190215-56232-1h2goz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259336/original/file-20190215-56232-1h2goz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259336/original/file-20190215-56232-1h2goz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259336/original/file-20190215-56232-1h2goz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Virginians voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. Here, he’s campaigning in 2018 for Democratic candidates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Election-2018-Senate-Kaine-Obama/7679e70f1e0f47e5912babddf8641236/1/0">AP/Jacquelyn Martin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But in the late 19th century, Southerners and Virginians met the challenges of slavery’s abolition with legal and social racial separation. This separation, commonly referred to as <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow segregation</a>, was not only sanctioned by state laws, many of these laws lasted until the late 1960s. </p>
<p>In other words, Southern black Americans were not full citizens of the United States until the 1960s and Jim Crow mitigated many African-Americans’ upwardly mobile aspirations. </p>
<p>Northam, who campaigned on racial reconciliation yet allegedly once wore a costume inextricably linked to black dehumanization, embodies this American dilemma – a dilemma with deeply segregationist overtones. </p>
<p>That Virginia, the wealthiest state of the former Confederacy, has recently turned blue is a watershed moment in American political development. </p>
<p>When the Commonwealth went for Obama in the 2008 presidential election, Virginians ended nearly four decades of conservative control over Southern presidential politics. Virginia also cast all its 13 electoral votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dailyprogress.com/opinion/opinion-commentary-changing-demographics-also-shift-virginia-politics/article_1a62feea-e943-11e8-902e-cfa9dbe87f1c.html">Much of this is attributable</a> to the growth and diversifying of populations in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the Hampton Roads region and the Richmond metropolitan area. </p>
<p>Virginia’s recent elections undeniably <a href="https://prospect.org/article/end-solid-south">helped shatter the Southern Strategy</a>, a long-term Republican plan designed to break Democrats’ dominance over Southern politics. A region that has trended red since the <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=4997#.XGSoAS2ZPgE">ratification of the Voting Rights Act of 1965</a> had turned blue.</p>
<p>But developments in national politics cannot alone explain Northam’s and Attorney General <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/us/politics/virginia-blackface-mark-herring.html">Mark Herring’s</a> ostensibly contradictory behavior. Herring – the state’s third-most powerful elected official – also recently admitted to donning blackface. </p>
<p>If blackface is inextricably linked to slavery, people wearing blackface in the 1980s is attributable to racial segregation. In understanding this crisis, Virginia’s history matters. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259344/original/file-20190215-56243-qqj9by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259344/original/file-20190215-56243-qqj9by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259344/original/file-20190215-56243-qqj9by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259344/original/file-20190215-56243-qqj9by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259344/original/file-20190215-56243-qqj9by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259344/original/file-20190215-56243-qqj9by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259344/original/file-20190215-56243-qqj9by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259344/original/file-20190215-56243-qqj9by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The April 30, 1904 Richmond Planet described a Jim Crow law meant to bar blacks from streetcars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025841/1904-04-30/ed-1/seq-1/#">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Segregation and the suburbs</h2>
<p>Virginia’s 20th-century political history is nothing short of scandalous. </p>
<p>Poll taxes (a fee required to vote) determined who voted in the Commonwealth <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1965/48?page=8">until 1966</a>. Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1901-02 eventually erased <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4583">80 percent of African-Americans and 50 percent of whites</a> from the polls. Throughout the early 20th century, the Commonwealth had the lowest voter turnout rate in America and one of the lowest rates of any free democracy in the world. By 1959, the year of Northam’s birth, these obstacles to democracy continued to shape politics in the Commonwealth.</p>
<p>The undemocratic face of disenfranchisement had grave implications for Northam’s generation. </p>
<p>In fact, disenfranchisement ensured that mid-20th century Virginians inherited an oligarchy – a small number of people controlled the political structure. </p>
<p>A handful of well-heeled segregationists used disenfranchisement to spearhead Southern <a href="https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/civil-rights-movement-virginia/massive">“massive resistance”</a> to public school integration in 1956. Anxiety over integration gave rise to unprecedented white flight to suburbs – not just in Virginia, but throughout America. </p>
<p>During the 1950s and 1960s, the same officials used the power vested in the General Assembly to clear urban slums, build freeways – often through communities whose voters had been disenfranchised – and compress the descendants of former slaves into isolated public housing projects. While these urban policies shaped cities throughout the United States, Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement expedited this process in Virginia (and throughout the South). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=4997#.XGSoAS2ZPgE">By 1970</a>, Richmond’s poverty rate was 25 percent. African-Americans bore the brunt of that poverty. </p>
<p>The city’s public schools were nearly 80 percent African-American by 1980. In 1985, Richmond trailed only Detroit in murder rate per capita. Between 1970 and 1980 alone, approximately 40,000 whites – of roughly 140,000 in 1970 – fled to Richmond’s suburbs. </p>
<p>In other words, segregationists, along with federal officials, helped create the inner city and suburban growth at the same time.</p>
<h2>Progress isn’t linear</h2>
<p>Americans remember the story of the civil rights movement as a triumph of democracy. History speaks otherwise. </p>
<p>Many of Virginia’s cities were more segregated by race and class in 1980 than in 1960. </p>
<p>In time, segregation undermined the types of social trust – <a href="https://timeline.com/redlining-federal-housing-racist-14d7f48267e8">the notion that people can understand and count on one another</a> – that experts argue is required for thriving communities. </p>
<p>It also explains how students from racially homogeneous communities populated Virginia’s predominantly white colleges during the 1980s.</p>
<p>These were the colleges where students such as Northam wore blackface. The Virginia Military Institute, Northam’s alma mater, <a href="https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-xpm-19971011-1997-10-11-9710110047-story.html">did not integrate until 1968</a>. That was only 13 years before Northam graduated from the institute in 1981. </p>
<p>These places were in short supply of racial diversity well into the late 20th century. They remind Americans that nowhere have white and black Americans been closer together, yet further apart, than beneath the Mason-Dixon line. </p>
<h2>The new divide</h2>
<p>More ominously, the politics of segregation outlived Jim Crow laws. </p>
<p>By the 1980s, white flight and congressional redistricting (namely, the compression of black voters into exclusively urban enclaves) hastened the rise of regional partisanship. And while this rise in partisanship characterized American politics broadly, it hit the South and Virginia hard – a region that Democrats dominated for nearly seven decades. </p>
<p>As African-Americans hitched their wagons to Democrats, many whites fled the Democratic Party. They left a party that was once home to generations of Southern racists who would never contemplate belonging to Abraham Lincoln’s GOP, and became Republicans. </p>
<p>Virginia’s policymakers drew district boundaries to protect these white areas from the voting power of urbanites, who were mostly black. </p>
<p>In time, residential segregation and redistricting gave rise to shockingly predictable electoral outcomes. Cities trended liberal, while rural and suburban areas mostly voted conservatively. </p>
<p>Between 1970 and 1988, only 13 African-Americans had served on Virginia’s General Assembly. Yet, African-Americans made up nearly 20 percent of Virginia’s population in the 1980s. The total number of African-Americans in the General Assembly did not exceed five until 1984.</p>
<p>To this day, a disproportionate number of the Commonwealth’s legislators are from rural and suburban enclaves. </p>
<h2>Liberal in blackface</h2>
<p>Governor Northam not only inherited this Virginia, he was a product of it.</p>
<p><a href="https://prospect.org/article/end-solid-south">Millennial voters</a> are relocating to once-predominantly African-American cities and the so-called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/books/review/the-great-inversion-and-the-future-of-the-american-city.html">“Great Inversion”</a> out of American suburbs continues. </p>
<p>The once “solid South” is up for grabs. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting">Political consultants</a> have long recognized and exploited these changes. In fact, these trends changed the political composition of not just Virginia, but America.</p>
<p>Yet old habits die hard. </p>
<p>The re-emergence of <a href="https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/conversations-about-confederate-monuments-in-the-former-confederate-capital">Confederate memorialization</a> and <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/national/what-happened-charlottesville-looking-back-the-anniversary-the-deadly-rally/fPpnLrbAtbxSwNI9BEy93K/">white supremacy</a> in Virginia is a panic reaction to these political and demographic developments. </p>
<p>Is it any wonder, then, that a son of the segregated Virginia might wear blackface in one era – yet recognize the political expediency of racial reconciliation in another?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111697/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Maxwell Hayter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Virginia’s stark political contradictions, reflecting centuries of racism and a new liberal majority, were on display when a blackface image was found recently on the governor’s old yearbook page.
Julian Maxwell Hayter, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/108821
2019-02-01T11:40:08Z
2019-02-01T11:40:08Z
Super Bowl LIII and the soul of Atlanta
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256475/original/file-20190130-127151-13yv0ky.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">During Super Bowl LIII, will Atlanta's long struggle for racial equality be highlighted or glossed over?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/petercirophotography/25561248997">Peter Ciro/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/180852120">historian who studies W.E.B. Du Bois</a> – and as someone who once lived in nearby Athens, Georgia – I’m struck by the significance of Atlanta hosting the Super Bowl at this moment in the country’s history.</p>
<p>When Du Bois lived in Atlanta in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a place of both opportunity and peril for blacks. During the civil rights era, it headquartered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, while serving as a base for black student activism. Today, many view it as America’s “<a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469635354/the-legend-of-the-black-mecca/">Black Mecca</a>.” It has a solid black middle and upper class, possesses a vibrant soul and hip-hop music scene and serves as a base of black political power.</p>
<p>Atlanta hosting the Super Bowl, however, creates an undeniable paradox. </p>
<p>Over the past few seasons, the NFL has found itself grappling with the issue of whether to allow its players to protest the killings of unarmed black men and women by kneeling during the national anthem. The league has made clear that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2018/10/17/nfl-plans-no-change-national-anthem-policy-least-through-season-perhaps-longer/?utm_term=.3a2b20282d0f">it doesn’t support players’ right to protest</a>, and many of the Americans who cheer for these players every Sunday object to those same players standing up against the racial inequalities that persist in American life.</p>
<p>While much of the focus of Sunday’s game will be on the pageantry and competition, I think it’s worth reflecting on how Atlanta evolved into the city it is today, the forces that threaten its progress, and how hosting the Super Bowl symbolizes this tension.</p>
<h2>Two Atlantas, two warring ideals</h2>
<p>In 1897, Du Bois came to Atlanta to establish a center of social scientific research at Atlanta University. During this time in Du Bois’ life, Atlanta was ground zero for America’s racial tensions. It was strictly segregated and subject to Jim Crow laws, and 241 blacks were lynched in Georgia <a href="https://uncpress.flexpub.com/preview/the-legend-of-the-black-mecca">between 1888 and 1903</a>.</p>
<p>In 1899, Du Bois lost his infant son, Burghardt, to diphtheria, a bacterial infection. Du Bois believed Burghardt died from a lack of prompt treatment because white doctors in Atlanta would not treat black patients. That same year, a black man named Sam Hose <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/w-e-b-du-bois-georgia">was brutally lynched</a> in nearby Newnan, Georgia, after being accused of raping a white woman. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256481/original/file-20190130-112314-1k8gu6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256481/original/file-20190130-112314-1k8gu6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256481/original/file-20190130-112314-1k8gu6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256481/original/file-20190130-112314-1k8gu6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256481/original/file-20190130-112314-1k8gu6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256481/original/file-20190130-112314-1k8gu6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256481/original/file-20190130-112314-1k8gu6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois’ feelings about Atlanta alternated between hope and despair.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Motto_web_dubois_original.jpg">National Portrait Gallery</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These two events tremendously influenced Du Bois, his relationship with Atlanta, and his understanding of race in America. In 1903, he published “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm">The Souls of Black Folk</a>,” in which he declared, “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.” </p>
<p>Du Bois foresaw a future in which black Americans would endure the “psychic tension” of living in a society that encouraged them to be Americans yet condemned them to second-class citizenship. </p>
<p>“One ever feels his two-ness,” he wrote, “an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”</p>
<p>Following the book’s publication, Du Bois continued to face challenges in Atlanta. In 1906, riots broke out after <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/atlanta-race-riot-1906">a local paper published rumors</a> of black men raping white women. In response, Du Bois penned the poem “<a href="https://www.bartleby.com/269/26.html">A Litany of Atlanta</a>,” petitioning God for understanding and intervention. </p>
<p>“A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and Black Hate,” he wrote.</p>
<p>Despite his grief, Du Bois held out hope that Atlanta, the “city of a hundred hills,” could become a beacon of greater democracy.</p>
<h2>Of Atalanta and golden apples</h2>
<p>In “The Souls of Black Folk,” Du Bois also draws on Greek mythology to recount the legend of the “winged maiden” Atalanta, who, disinclined to marry, says she will only marry a man who can beat her in a foot race. When a suitor, Hippomenes, challenges Atalanta, he lures her off course with three golden apples. Atalanta’s greed costs her the race and she is forced to marry Hippomenes.</p>
<p>The story is a cautionary one. For Du Bois, Atlanta had the potential to be a great city. But if it worshiped materialism and chased wealth, it too would suffer the curse of Atalanta. Instead of reaching for golden apples, Du Bois encouraged Atlanta to establish and support universities that promote democratic ideals of “truth,” “freedom” and “broad humanity,” while striving to “Teach thinkers to think.”</p>
<p>In many ways, Atlanta has lived up to Du Bois’ dreams for the city. Today, it is home to the vibrant Atlanta University Center Consortium, which comprises Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse, Spelman and Morehouse School of Medicine; Atlanta, along with Washington, D.C., <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2018/01/15/the-cities-where-african-americans-are-doing-the-best-economically-2018/#173716261abe">is considered by Forbes as the best U.S. city economically for blacks</a>; and <a href="https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/mayor-s-office/meet-the-mayor">Keisha Lance Bottoms</a> serves as the city’s seventh consecutive black mayor. </p>
<p>Yet, as historian Maurice Hobson <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-atlantas-new-mayor-revive-americas-black-mecca-86902">has pointed out</a>, Atlanta also has a large percentage of its black population living in poverty. At certain points over the past five years, 80 percent of black children in Atlanta resided in poverty-ridden communities and unemployment among blacks <a href="https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/georgia/report-puts-atlanta-among-the-50-worst-cities-to-live-in-the-country/93-564459928">has been as high as 22 percent</a>.</p>
<p>There is still work to be done, and golden apples can be tempting. According to the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the Super Bowl <a href="https://www.ajc.com/sports/football/new-stadium-lures-2019-super-bowl-atlanta/kJKUJdLlOwzOmoVAMkEFkO/">will reportedly have a US$400 million economic impact on the city</a>. While attracting revenue can be beneficial, the city has already lost of some its legacy as a result of development. </p>
<p>In fact, the $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the Super Bowl will be held, sits on the grounds of the historic Friendship and Mount Vernon Baptist churches – a symbol of how <a href="https://bittersoutherner.com/lightning-the-atlanta-community-lost-to-super-bowl-dreams">the forces of development can silence history and wipe out communities</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256484/original/file-20190130-110834-1jyg271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256484/original/file-20190130-110834-1jyg271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256484/original/file-20190130-110834-1jyg271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256484/original/file-20190130-110834-1jyg271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256484/original/file-20190130-110834-1jyg271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256484/original/file-20190130-110834-1jyg271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256484/original/file-20190130-110834-1jyg271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police on horseback patrol the parking lot of Mercedes-Benz Stadium ahead of Super Bowl LIII.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Super-Bowl-Security/884a3a226dc24138a0d03c5ba04ab99d/1/0">AP Photo/David Goldman</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What to watch for</h2>
<p>Du Bois’ ideas in “The Souls of Black Folk” provide a framework for understanding the complexities of the Super Bowl taking place in Atlanta. </p>
<p>While black players are lauded for their on-field accomplishments, the harsh criticism they receive for peacefully protesting racial inequality creates the double consciousness Du Bois so eloquently described. It raises, again, a question Du Bois famously posed: “How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.”</p>
<p>Will the Super Bowl organizers showcase Atlanta’s civil rights history, or gloss over it? Will they bring attention to the city’s rich legacy of peacefully protesting racial injustice? I’m not getting my hopes up.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256489/original/file-20190130-112314-m6kxfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256489/original/file-20190130-112314-m6kxfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256489/original/file-20190130-112314-m6kxfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256489/original/file-20190130-112314-m6kxfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256489/original/file-20190130-112314-m6kxfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256489/original/file-20190130-112314-m6kxfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256489/original/file-20190130-112314-m6kxfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256489/original/file-20190130-112314-m6kxfl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man paints a mural on a building near the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta as part of a program to highlight Atlanta’s civil rights legacy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Super-Bowl-Civil-Rights-Murals/c967734d665a4ec08c271f8769ff8ef5/4/0">AP Photo/John Bazemore</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As I watch the halftime show, I will appreciate singer Rihanna’s <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/rihanna-declined-super-bowl-liii-halftime-show-offer/">refusal to participate</a>; I’ll also be thinking about Jay-Z’s decision not to perform at last year’s Super Bowl, <a href="https://www.ajc.com/sports/football/jay-turns-down-offer-perform-super-bowl/QhaU4XIe7YYWX98Ry7ez9H/">reportedly in support of players’ peaceful protests</a>.</p>
<p>Despite the paradox of hosting the Super Bowl, the city does seem to understand that this is an important opportunity to provide the nation with a teachable moment.</p>
<p>Last year, city officials launched an initiative <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/local/civil-rights-themed-murals-grace-atlanta-before-super-bowl/fCwsRPTKS44B7HK7i7ls5M/">to paint murals</a> around the city to commemorate the civil rights movement in the months leading up to the Super Bowl. In addition, the NAACP and other civil rights groups <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional/civil-rights-groups-rally-piedmont-park-ahead-super-bowl/IBlm7ZLIQYIzbIFtwF4a3J/">will hold a protest</a> on the day before the Super Bowl.</p>
<p>I hope that this tradition will continue – that, in the long run, Atlanta will resist the temptation to be enticed by Hippomenes’ golden apples, that it will bring attention to racial injustices by advocating for “truth,” “freedom” and “humanity.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108821/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derrick P. Alridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The country’s ‘Black Mecca’ is hosting the Super Bowl. With the NFL’s national anthem controversy still lingering, this creates an undeniable paradox.
Derrick P. Alridge, Professor of Education, University of Virginia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107253
2018-11-22T16:50:03Z
2018-11-22T16:50:03Z
50 years after Star Trek’s ‘kiss’, how have attitudes towards interethnic marriage changed?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246702/original/file-20181121-161644-14rtqai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The kiss' was probably the most memorable, if not the first, of early on-screen interracial embraces.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CBS/Paramount Pictures © 1968</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the long-running sci-fi serial Star Trek, the mission of the crew of the starship USS Enterprise is to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdjL8WXjlGI">boldly go where no one has gone before</a>”. This was most often apparent in the crew’s discovery of new worlds and new beings in the course of the drama. </p>
<p>But the series pushed another new boundary 50 years ago when, having been subjected to “sadistic” mind control by aliens, Captain James Kirk (played by William Shatner) and Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (played by Nichelle Nichols) were compelled to <a href="https://theconversation.com/tvs-first-interracial-kiss-launched-a-lifelong-career-in-activism-101721">passionately kiss each other</a>. With Shatner a Canadian-born actor of European descent and Nichols an American-born actress of African descent, this became one of the earliest, and by far the most watched, scripted interracial kiss on US television. While the kiss is tame by today’s standards, in 1968 it was certainly somewhere few men or women in US television had gone before.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-interracial-kiss-on-another-planet-102546">An Interracial Kiss – on Another Planet</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The kiss occurred at a time when only a minuscule proportion of couples within the US married across racial or other ethnic boundaries. Estimates vary, but according to a <a href="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/19102233/Intermarriage-May-2017-Full-Report.pdf">2017 Pew Research Centre report</a> fewer than 3% of US marriages were interethnic in 1968 – just one year after the US Supreme Court had struck down the existing anti-miscegenation state laws against mixed relationships as unconstitutional in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/loving-v-virginia-exploring-biracial-identity-and-reality-in-america-50-years-after-a-landmark-civil-rights-milestone-77092">Loving vs Virgina case</a>. By contrast, in 2015 (the most recent year for which detailed statistics are available) around 10% of US marriages were interethnic, fuelled largely by newlyweds: 17% of all new US marriages were mixed marriages. </p>
<p>The change in the proportion of interethnic marriages in the US during the past 50 years is striking, although this still implies that around 90% of individuals continue to marry within their ethnic group. This is driven mostly by the tendency of non-Hispanic, European-descent individuals to marry among their own.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tvs-first-interracial-kiss-launched-a-lifelong-career-in-activism-101721">TV's first interracial kiss launched a lifelong career in activism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the Pew Research Centre <a href="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/19102233/Intermarriage-May-2017-Full-Report.pdf">report</a>, authors Gretchen Livingston and Anna Brown credit the rise in interethnic marriage with a corresponding change in public attitudes across time. For example, as recently as 1990, a staggering 63% of those not of African descent expressed disapproval towards the idea of a family members’ marriage to someone of African descent. By 2016, that rate had tumbled to 14%. </p>
<p>For comparison, this rate of disapproval was substantially higher than the same perspective from the other side, that of non-white people disapproving of their family members marrying someone of a white background, which stood at 4%. Among those of Asian or Hispanic descent, the same disapproving view of intermarriage stood at around 9%.</p>
<p>So if the rise in interethnic marriage has led to a decrease in negativity among public attitudes toward interethnic marriage over the last two generations, can we also link this increasing interethnicity to increasingly positive attitudes on that topic? A recent addition to attitude surveys is the question of whether interethnic marriage is good for US society, and according to the report the news seems favourable. The proportion of respondents saying that interethnic marriage is a good thing for US society rose from 24% in 2010 to 39% in 2017. For comparison, around 9% said that interethnic marriage was bad for US society, and 52% said that interethnic marriage made no difference.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9KGE7HYEie0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>I believe that the authors were correct to identify the rise of interethnic marriage as having contributed to a decrease in negative attitudes, and increase in positive attitudes. But I also believe that, as Gordon Allport predicted in <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/caporaso/courses/203/readings/allport_Nature_of_prejudice.pdf">The Nature of Prejudice</a>, in 1954, it is necessary for government officials to lead the way in their words and deeds if interethnic couples are to be able to marry safely in the US. Civil rights-era shows such as Star Trek in 1968, alongside movies such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061735/">Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner</a> in 1967, both mirrored and helped contribute to changing public attitudes in their own way. </p>
<p>Has the “Trump effect” made a difference to attitudes? Based partly on trends I noticed while writing Identity and Interethnic Marriage in the United States, I suspect that some racists have felt increasingly emboldened in stating their opposition to interethnic marriage, especially towards couples comprised of black men and white women. Yet among the 70% of Americans who are not Trump supporters, the rise in interethnic marriage will not be a subject of major concern (and, in fact, the rate will continue to rise).</p>
<p>There is no comparable data to that from the Pew Research Centre that covers the UK, but as the political fallout over Brexit continues I would speculate that the UK has its own issues to address. For example, what will be the fate of marriages between EU residents and UK citizens once Brexit is fully implemented? Nevertheless, I would suppose that interethnic marriages in the UK will continue to rise as young people (in particular) increasingly marry without limiting themselves to “traditional” ethnic boundaries. </p>
<p>In any event, on either side of the Atlantic, 50 years and two generations on from “the kiss”, we can see how far we have progressed – and how far we still have to go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stanley Gaines does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Star Trek’s groundbreaking interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura was 50 years ago today – how have public attitudes to interracial and interethnic relationships changed in the years since?
Stanley Gaines, Senior Lecturer In Psychology, Brunel University London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104078
2018-10-03T14:10:31Z
2018-10-03T14:10:31Z
South African law needs a zero tolerance approach to racist utterances
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238446/original/file-20180928-48659-1sx21na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was recently the subject of a racist video rant.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lintao Zhang/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A “selfie” video rant has landed a South African man, Kessie Nair, in hot water. Nair faces six counts of crimen injuria and two of incitement to public violence after recording himself <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/kessie-nair-arrested-k-word-cyril-ramaphosa/">spewing racist language</a> at the country’s President Cyril Ramaphosa. He has since <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/forgive-me-kessie-nair-apologises-to-ramaphosa-public-for-k-word-slur-20180926">apologised</a> to the president.</p>
<p>But what is crimen injuria, and why is it being used in this instance?</p>
<p>Crimen injuria is a supple common law offence that has been applied to a diverse array of conduct. It’s a unique feature of South African criminal law, and focuses on the protection of dignity and privacy, rather than the protection of reputation, which is encompassed by the <a href="https://docplayer.net/61883297-Protecting-dignity-under-common-law-and-the-constitution-the-significance-of-crimen-iniuria-1-in-south-african-criminal-law.html">law of defamation</a>. </p>
<p>It’s <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/faqdetail.php?fid=9">defined</a> in South Africa as “unlawfully and intentionally impairing the dignity or privacy of another person”. The early recorded cases tended to involve incidents of private or public indecent exposure and invasions of privacy, especially cases involving what’s colloquially termed “peeping Toms”. </p>
<p>Subsequently, the crime was also applied to demeaning conduct and offending words. This includes the deeply racist and derogatory term <a href="https://www.news24.com/Columnists/GuestColumn/mogoeng-we-are-too-soft-on-racism-20161108"><em>“kaffir”</em></a>, which was central to another recent high profile case of crimen injuria. A woman named Vicki Momberg was sentenced to three years in prison (one of which was suspended) for her racist abuse of black police officers at a crime scene. This was caught on camera. </p>
<p>The severity of Momberg’s sentence caught headlines: it’s believed to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/jail-time-for-south-african-woman-using-racist-slur-sets-new-precedent-94179">the first case</a> resulting in a substantial prison sentence for racist utterances alone. Critics lauded the magistrate in Momberg’s case for taking a zero tolerance approach to racism. In Nair’s case, too, there has been a swift and loud public outcry for a harsh penalty.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1044802842672988162"}"></div></p>
<p>But does a zero tolerance approach necessarily mean harsher penalties? Is it a good precedent to use prison for harmful words alone rather than harmful actions? Momberg’s sentence is being <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1988865/momberg-to-appeal-prison-sentence/">appealed</a>; this is due to be heard in November. The outcome of this appeal is bound to have an impact on Nair’s case, should he be convicted. So what can be learned from previous similar cases?</p>
<h2>The costs of prison</h2>
<p>Even though the use of the word <em>“kaffir”</em> is currently considered one of the most serious forms of verbal crimen injuria, courts have been reluctant to assign prison sentences to such convictions. </p>
<p>In one instance, a prison sentence for a man who directed the word at a black traffic officer was <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAECHC/2004/14.html">overturned on appeal</a>. Part of the reason for the appeal judge’s decision was that “neither [the Defence] nor [the State] were able to refer us to any decision of the High Court in which an effective term of imprisonment was imposed or confirmed on review or appeal in a case of crimen iniuria of this nature”. </p>
<p>Arguably there is sound justification for the court’s reluctance to assign prison terms for verbal crimen injuria. Prison is expensive for society. It costs the taxpayers <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-07-18-fact-sheet-the-state-of-south-africas-prisons/">over R100 000 a year</a> to house an inmate in prison. That money could be going to education, employment initiatives and other social services to help prevent offending in the first place.</p>
<p>Prison also costs society in non-monetary terms. In many respects prison contributes to a cycle of offending and desocialisation that causes widespread damage in communities. So, prison should be reserved for the most serious offences and for offenders who pose a risk to society.</p>
<h2>Deterrence</h2>
<p>Calls to impose harsh prison sentences for verbal crimen injuria are often premised on the need to deter such behaviour. Prison sentences are unlikely to achieve this laudable goal. </p>
<p>There are two aspects to deterrence in criminal justice. The first is called <a href="https://legaldictionary.net/general-deterrence/">general deterrence</a>. This entails using punishment to deter other would-be offenders from committing similar crimes. The second aspect is called <a href="https://legaldictionary.net/specific-deterrence/">specific deterrence</a>: using the punishment to deter a particular offender from offending again in the future.</p>
<p>Regarding general deterrence, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/principled-sentencing-9781841137179/">research has shown</a> for many decades that the most important feature in using the criminal justice system to deter would-be offenders is not the severity of punishment. The concepts of “certainty” and “publicity” are far more important. In other words, even if the death penalty could be applied for crimen injuria, if offenders believe they will not be caught it will do little to deter them. </p>
<p>Conversely, a fine that’s believed to be certain, due to the consistency with which it’s applied as well as the publicity of its application, will put far more people off the offensive conduct.</p>
<p>From a specific deterrence perspective, prison is a particularly blunt tool to rid people of racism. Journalist <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-03-29-analysis-why-the-vicki-momberg-racism-sentence-deserves-scrutiny/">Rebecca Davis’s observations</a> of the Momberg case ring true here:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are presumably few people who would argue that time in prison will ‘cure’ Momberg of her evidently deeply ingrained racism. A jail term in this case may feel intuitively satisfying to many, but does little to address the wider social problem of racism and its causes.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A smarter approach</h2>
<p>The frequency of apparent incidences of verbal crimen injuria involving racism displays that the criminal justice system must adopt a zero tolerance approach. But this approach needs to be a much smarter one than simply throwing these offenders in prison. </p>
<p>It’s too soon to tell if Nair’s case will result in a conviction. Currently it is postponed for him to undergo psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial. </p>
<p>If Nair is eventually convicted and punished, the criminal justice system should devise a sentence that has the sophistication, constructiveness and humanity that’s so devoid from his reprehensible behaviour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104078/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Phelps does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Calls to impose harsh prison sentences for verbal crimen injuria are often premised on the need to deter such behaviour.
Kelly Phelps, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/95810
2018-05-03T11:59:23Z
2018-05-03T11:59:23Z
Altab Ali: Bangladeshis in east London reflect on legacy of a racist murder
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217260/original/file-20180502-153881-upj5gk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Altab Ali: murdered on May 4, 1978. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Swadhinata Trust</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a young Bangladeshi man, Altab Ali, was found murdered on the streets of Whitechapel, London, on May 4, 1978, his murder awoke the local Bangladeshi community. </p>
<p>Ten years after Enoch Powell’s infamous <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html">Rivers of Blood</a> speech, Ali’s murder was symptomatic of the racial antagonism stirred up in the 1970s. Extreme white supremacist groups such as the National Front engaged in organised and systematic patterns of violence against the local Bangladeshis of east London, using slogans such as “Blacks Out”, “White is Right” and <a href="http://www.altabalifoundation.org.uk/articles/Blood_on_the_Streets.pdf">“kill the black bastards”</a>.</p>
<p>To mark the 40th anniversary of Ali’s senseless murder, I spoke to people who knew him personally, as well as community leaders and local residents who experienced first-hand the culture of violence and hate that contributed to the racially motivated killing.</p>
<p>Ali, a 25-year-old machinist, emigrated from Bangladesh to the UK in 1969. Arman Ali, a close relative, told me about Ali’s “kind-hearted, respectful and polite nature”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He had just recently married. He worked very hard and like most other British Bangladeshis, his ambition was to seek a prosperous future and support his family with his earnings. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ali was returning home from work in nearby Brick Lane when he <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-36191020">was fatally stabbed</a> in Adler Street, Whitechapel by three teenagers. In 1998, a park near where Ali died was subsequently renamed <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/arts/architecture/new-park-life-whitechapels-altab-ali-park-6368641.html">Altab Ali Park</a> in his memory and continues to act as a symbol of community, hope and peace.</p>
<h2>Living in fear</h2>
<p>In contrast to the gentrified, trendy vibe of 2018, Brick Lane was a dangerous place to live and work in the 1970s where skinheads and elements of the extreme far right from all over east London came to indulge in routine acts of “Paki bashing”. It’s important to emphasise that these racially motivated violent acts were mainly carried out by an extremist minority. Many Bangladeshis lived harmoniously with their white working-class neighbours.</p>
<p>Most of the victims of violent hate crimes were newly arrived Bangladeshi men working in the rag trade which was primarily concentrated within the E1 postcode. “When Altab Ali was murdered,” recalled Arman, “fear spread within the community. People were afraid of going to work, sending their kids to school, travelling on public transport.” </p>
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<p>I spoke to community activist Abu Mumin who describes himself as a “survivor of that era of hate and violence”. He told me: “I shouldn’t be here right now talking to you. I should be either critically injured or dead.” Like Arman, Mumin vividly recalls the culture of fear and intimidation that paralysed a whole community:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Paki-bashing’ was a daily occurrence in schools, parks and the streets, and ‘100 metre after school dash’ to our homes to escape the skinheads was routine. I remember an incident in the late 1970s when a concrete boulder was thrown through our window, nearly killing my two younger baby brothers who were sleeping on the bed. We were all living in a state of fear. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pensioner Abdush Shahid also remembers the 1970s and 80s with immense distress. He told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Local Bangladeshi businesses would always get vandalised, and bottles and stones would be thrown on us from the top of buildings as we walked home after work … there were some ‘no-go’ areas for Bangladeshis such as Cable Street, Roman Road and the Teviot Estate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I can also relate with such painful stories. Growing up in the 1980s in Bethnal Green, my memories of childhood also revolve around running home from school, being spat at, beaten up and being called a “paki”. It was a difficult and traumatic time to live in east London.</p>
<h2>Ali’s legacy</h2>
<p>Ali’s racially motivated murder was a watershed moment that marked a significant turning point for race relations in east London. Not only did it galvanise the local Bangladeshi community into political action, but it also heightened the call for social justice and equality among many other ethnic minority communities across the UK. His killing mobilised communities in Tower Hamlets to take a stand against hatred, discrimination and intolerance. Many invisible, marginalised and alienated Bangladeshis became embroiled in the <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/293607">politics of “recognition”</a> – demanding social and economic justice, power and representation.</p>
<p>The Bangladeshi community’s response was strong and organised. Ten days after the murder, around 7,000 people marched behind Ali’s coffin to 10 Downing Street demanding better police protection and also highlighting wider issues of institutionalised racism. Bangladeshis teamed up with the Socialist Party and trades unions and engaged in mass demonstrations and strikes, which were successful in eventually forcing out the National Front from the area.</p>
<p>Local resident, Goyas Miah, who was nine at the time of Ali’s murder, sums up the mood of revolt and discontent: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>After Altab Ali’s murder in 1978, we found that the only way we could be effective against violent racial attacks was to organise ourselves … the atmosphere was like ‘we’re safer in numbers’ … Self-defence classes were common … The fear and intimidation continued into the 1980s … It was a juncture of realisation … we are here to stay and therefore need to stamp our authority of British Bengaliness. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217252/original/file-20180502-153884-15545f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217252/original/file-20180502-153884-15545f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217252/original/file-20180502-153884-15545f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217252/original/file-20180502-153884-15545f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217252/original/file-20180502-153884-15545f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217252/original/file-20180502-153884-15545f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217252/original/file-20180502-153884-15545f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Altab Ali park in Tower Hamlets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/londonmatt/39944582560/sizes/l">Matt from London/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So what of the younger generation of British-born Bangladeshis? I asked the grandson of Abdush Shahid, 19-year-old Rayhan Razzique, whether he knew who Altab Ali was. As a member of a Westernised, affluent, educated and socially mobile generation, Razzique’s response was not surprising: “I don’t know who he is but I know that there is a park named after him.” </p>
<p>At this point, his grandfather looked despondent and told Razzique, who was visibly shocked and upset, the stories of sacrifice, hardship and bloodshed in the 1970s and 80s. </p>
<h2>Tower Hamlets today</h2>
<p>The demographics of east London, in particular Tower Hamlets, have changed drastically over the past 40 years. According to the <a href="https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/Documents/Borough_statistics/Ward_profiles/Census-2011/RB-Census2011-Ethnicity-2013-01.pdf">2011 census</a>, Tower Hamlets is ethnically diverse, with 55% of the population belonging to an ethnic group other than “white”. </p>
<p>As an area, east London has always been a hub for immigrant communities, from the Irish and French Huguenot refugees to the influx of Eastern European Jews during the late 19th century. And it appears that the defiant message of “we are here to stay” has come to fruition for the Bangladeshi community. The 2011 census puts the the Bangladeshi resident population of Tower Hamlets at <a href="https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/Documents/Borough_statistics/Ward_profiles/Census-2011/RB-Census2011-Ethnicity-2013-01.pdf">approximately 81,000</a> – the largest concentration of Bangladeshis in Britain. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"860454795047563264"}"></div></p>
<p>Since the events of May 1978, Bangladeshis have continued to experience occasional hostility from extremist elements, such as the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/how-quddus-alis-ambitions-were-silently-beaten-out-of-him-279013.html">vicious attack</a> by eight white youths on 17-year-old Bangladeshi student Quddus Ali in Stepney in 1993. However, Tower Hamlets remains, on the whole, a really good example of a multi-ethnic neighbourhood where diversity and difference has not resulted in far-reaching social unrest in recent history, despite a wider backdrop of social and material deprivation. This sense of “community” is perhaps one of Ali’s most significant legacies. </p>
<p>My own research has looked at the generational turn towards a more religiously orientated <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/British_Islamic_Identity.html?id=OQIVogEACAAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">Islamic identity</a> for many younger British-born Bangladeshis. Sadly, this puts them at higher risk of experiencing <a href="https://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/Islamophobia%20Report%202018%20FINAL.pdf">Islamophobia</a>. </p>
<p>Albeit in a different and subtle guise, the ugly face of racism and discrimination still persists, though this <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_New_Racism.html?id=tm95GgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">“new” racism</a> of Islamophobia is not the same as the violent clashes of the late 20th century. Instead, as Arman poignantly reminded me: “The focus of discrimination has shifted away from the colour of skin to ‘differences’ in ideology, values, culture, language and religion.” </p>
<p>The experience of feeling different, displaced and alienated remains a stark reality for many Bangladeshis from east London. So let’s be optimistic about the future, but cautiously so. The fight for a truly multicultural society and social justice goes on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95810/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aminul Hoque does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Forty years after Altab Ali’s racist murder in Whitechapel, the story of how it mobilised the Bangladeshi community.
Aminul Hoque, Lecturer in Education, Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/90274
2018-01-19T14:42:04Z
2018-01-19T14:42:04Z
Football and race relations have progressed a lot since Cyrille Regis’s day – but not enough
<p>My earliest football memory is of being sat around an old black-and-white television with my older brothers watching Cyrille Regis score a disallowed goal for Coventry against Tottenham Hotspur in the 1987 FA Cup final. Other than that, to me as an 11-year-old second-generation African-Caribbean child, Regis was unremarkable. This was my first match and so I assumed it was normal that there were five black players on the pitch. That fans always sung their heroes’ names – whether black or white. By the end of the match I had chosen to support “Spurs” – mostly because I had fallen in love with their smart all-white kit (which had a reversible collar!). </p>
<p>This was important, upon reflection. As a young black child I felt a freedom to choose a team purely on the basis of their kit, unlike my older siblings, who supported Regis over any club loyalties (even though they all supported Liverpool like most kids at the time, they always wanted Liverpool to lose if the opposing team had Regis in it). They were more bound by an incontestable cultural allegiance to Regis. He was important to them. But this was lost on me – at the time. </p>
<p>This difference points to what was – by the 1990s – a slowly changing landscape in English professional football. It also points to changes within the experience of young black men within the game and the country more widely. Importantly, it indicates what a different experience it was to be young and black in the 1970s, the 1990s, and today.</p>
<h2>Regis’s day</h2>
<p>Regis was born in French Guiana in 1958, but moved to England in 1962 and signed for West Bromwich Albion in 1977. He made his England debut in 1982. Alongside black teammates Brendan Batson and Laurie Cunningham – and Nottingham Forest’s Viv Anderson – he was part of a small but growing black British presence emerging in English professional football during the 1970s and 1980s.</p>
<p>In the context of race relations, this was an especially ugly and violent period in recent British history. The black experience was characterised by prejudice and marginalisation in employment, housing, education and politics. British African-Caribbeans also experienced violence and brutality by the state.</p>
<p>Professional football during this period was deeply fused with a particular violent, male, white, nationalist working-class identity which was inhospitable to “foreign outsiders”. Despite often being located in densely populated black and South Asian areas, football stadiums were the social and geographic hub for this type of white working-classness. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/jul/13/racism-football-premier-league-campbell">Resistance</a> to foreign outsiders usually took the form of racist songs, monkey chants or by throwing bananas and coins at the opposition’s black players. Football was white – and blacks were an unwanted presence. Prior to making his debut for England in 1983, Regis <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1310956/How-Cyrille-Regis-faced-bullet-beat-racists.html">received a letter</a> from one fan which contained a bullet. It stated: “If you put your foot on our Wembley turf, you’ll get one of these through your knees.”</p>
<p>A combination of his good looks, powerful frame and his ability to quite literally blaze a trail past – and often through – defenders, meant that Regis quickly became a powerful symbol of an assertive black Britishness, masculinity, solidarity and resistance for many young black men – even if frontline politics was not his intention. The efforts of Regis and his peers meant that white coaches had little choice but to begrudgingly recruit more black players.</p>
<p>It was perhaps ironic that the successes of players such as Regis also reinforced a certain type of racial perception of black athletes held by many white coaches and chairmen at the time. Black players were seen to be naturally powerful and strong but lacking in intellect and grit. This translated to black players being perceived as more suited to certain on-pitch positions, such as forward or winger, and not suited to positions which required cognitive skills and technical ability, such as in the central midfield – or in leadership roles. Former Crystal Palace chairman Ron Noades <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2003/jan/20/jimwhite">once claimed</a> that in “multi-racial” teams, white players would “balance things up and give the team some brains”. This blueprint for black inclusion enabled access for certain types of black footballers and constrained the inclusion of others.</p>
<h2>Cool Brittania and beyond</h2>
<p>But by the time Regis had played his last professional game for Chester City in 1996, race relations in professional football and England had changed dramatically. The arrival of New Labour in 1997 witnessed the emergence of a wave of anti-discrimination policies in all areas of social life. Cool Britannia brought with it new social and political discourses which celebrated and encouraged ethnic and racial diversity.</p>
<p>Black footballers now occupied all on-pitch positions for their clubs and had captained the national team. England’s successful Euro ’96 campaign showcased to the world that the country, professional football and its national team were an example of a successful multicultural society, which had a multi-racial team and fan base. And in regards to black inclusion on the pitch, by the end of the century, professional football was, to use the tagline of the then recently reorganised FA Premier League: a whole new ball game.</p>
<p>Today, it is clear that Regis undoubtedly influenced the landscape of modern sport and wider social life in Britain for British African-Caribbeans. Black heritage players are no longer subjected to the kinds of crude and overt articulations of racism that he had to endure. They account for around <a href="http://www.farenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/We-speak-with-one-voice.pdf">one-third</a> of professional footballers and the Premier League’s <a href="http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11679/10939279/top-10-most-expensive-premier-league-transfers-of-all-time">two most expensive players</a> are black (if not British). </p>
<p>More widely, Britain’s African-Caribbean community is perhaps arguably the most integrated of all post-war immigrant communities from the old colonies. Given all this, it is unsurprising that many of the young people that I have surveyed in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tcnzp">my own research</a> now believe racism is a thing of the past. This is arguably true of a certain type of racism.</p>
<p>But black-heritage footballers today experience new and more complex forms of racism – and some of the same old ones. For example, <a href="http://www.farenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/We-speak-with-one-voice.pdf">less than 1%</a> of senior coaches and managers in England are black. And there appears to be an <a href="https://theconversation.com/british-asians-and-football-how-the-beautiful-game-needs-to-change-88264">almost complete exclusion</a> of South Asian players and coaches. Social media, meanwhile, provides an anonymity and platform for people to openly and freely racially abuse black players once again. </p>
<p>The game’s governing bodies such as FIFA, EUFA and the Football Association are frequently found to be <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/england/9614255/How-Uefa-has-dealt-with-racism-compared-to-other-issues.html">ill-equipped to adequately support</a> the victims of sporting racism or to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/eniola-aluko-female-footballer-law-degree-centre-fa-racism-scandal//">adequately sanction</a> the perpetrators of these kinds of discriminations. The latest generation of men and women of British African-Caribbean heritage are confronted with new and elusive forms of covert discrimination and ethnic closures in employment and wider social life.</p>
<p>Regis will rightly be remembered as one of the most powerful examples of English professional football – and as a model for black inclusion and equity in sport and social life. When reflecting on his life, we must celebrate just how far professional football and race relations have progressed since the 1970s – and recognise his contribution to this. At the same time, we must also use his story to not forget that much work still needs to be done.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Ian Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Regis will be remembered as one of the most powerful examples of English professional football, and as a model for black inclusion and equity in sport and social life.
Paul Ian Campbell, Senior Lecturer in Sociology (Race, Ethnicity and Leisure), Coventry University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84314
2017-09-20T09:28:47Z
2017-09-20T09:28:47Z
To me, golliwogs are racist – but a tearoom tangle and a new poll shows Britain disagrees
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186601/original/file-20170919-22604-6pxb8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a café at the foot of the South Downs. On the wall hangs a golliwog. And that bothers me. So much so that, on discovering it a few weeks ago, I got into a heated argument with the owners which resulted in them calling the police, me contacting the council, and, in the end, nothing whatsoever happening.</p>
<p>That’s because the owners are adamant that they won’t be told what to do. Said golliwog has never caused offence before. Moreover, and in spite of the fact that, apparently, the stuffed toy originally came into their possession because someone left it outside the café to cast a racist slur against them (one of the owners is a Greek immigrant), it definitely isn’t racist.</p>
<p>I beg to differ. Although, as a child in the sixties and seventies, I grew up with golliwogs – on the sides of Robertson’s jam jars, in Enid Blyton’s books, in toyshops – I don’t think I actually owned one. And as I grew up, I fairly quickly came to realise – as eventually did <a href="http://www.kentlive.news/time-when-golliwog-badges-were-all-the-rage/story-30067737-detail/story.html">Robertson’s</a>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6359248/Noddy-returns-without-the-golliwogs.html">Blyton’s publishers</a>, and maybe even <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1136005/Chiles-reveals-truth-Carol-Thatchers-golliwog-gaffe.html">former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s daughter, Carol</a> – that they were inescapably demeaning to black people.</p>
<p>Obviously, readers can make up their own minds – perhaps after consulting <a href="https://ferris.edu/jimcrow/golliwog/">this excellent primer</a> on the golliwog produced by Ferris State University’s <a href="https://youtu.be/yf7jAF2Tk40">Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia</a>, which uses objects of intolerance to teach tolerance and promote social justice.</p>
<p>What no one should do, however, is go away with the idea that, if they end up on my side of the argument rather than on the side of the café owners and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/21/right-to-sell-golliwogs-not-something-should-be-fighting-for-in-2016-suzanne-moore">sundry other seaside shopkeepers</a>, then they’re in the majority – not if they live in the UK in 2017 anyway.</p>
<p>I know this because I commissioned a poll by YouGov to find out. We asked two questions: “Generally speaking, do you think it is or is not acceptable to sell or display a golliwog doll?” and “Do you think it is or is not racist to sell or display a golliwog doll?”</p>
<h2>Surprising attitudes</h2>
<p>The answers we got reveal that the majority of British people don’t really have a problem with golliwogs: some 53% think selling or displaying them is acceptable, compared to 27% who don’t and 20% who don’t know. Interestingly, the majority who don’t consider doing so as racist is even bigger: 63% don’t, compared to 20% who do and 17% who don’t know.</p>
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<p>But the answers also reveal big differences driven by demography, education, ethnicity, and political preferences. Indeed, the “golliwog test” might have been a pretty good predictor, for instance, as to whether someone was going to vote for or against <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/eu-referendum-2016">Brexit</a>.</p>
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<p>The older you are, the less likely you are to have a problem with golliwogs. Some 70% of over 65s think it’s acceptable to sell or display one and 80% of them are convinced that doing so isn’t racist. The figures for 18- to 24-year-olds are just 24% and 34% respectively.</p>
<p>Education seems to make a difference, too – although not as big as you might think. A plurality, but only a small one, of graduates (40% vs 37%) think it’s unacceptable to sell or display golliwogs. And when it comes to whether doing so is racist, that plurality is reversed: only 31% of graduates think it is, as against 47% who think it isn’t.</p>
<p>Less surprising, perhaps, are the stark differences with regard to ethnicity. Some 55% of white respondents think selling or displaying a golliwog is acceptable, as opposed to 29% of their ethnic minority counterparts, 43% of whom consider it unacceptable. That said, only a minority (albeit a substantial one) of the minority respondents (32%) think doing so is racist, compared to just 19% of white respondents, 65% of whom think it isn’t.</p>
<p>Maybe, though, it’s politics that provides the most striking finding. Lib Dem supporters, followed by Labour supporters, are the most likely to have a problem with golliwogs, while Conservative supporters are much less bothered. Only one in three Lib Dems think selling or displaying one is acceptable, compared to four out of ten Labour supporters and seven out of ten Tories. And when it comes to whether doing so is racist, 78% of Tories dismiss the idea, dropping to 56% of Labour supporters and 46% of Lib Dems.</p>
<h2>Leave or Remain?</h2>
<p>Most eye-catching of all the survey’s findings, however, is quite how differently the issue is seen by those who voted to leave and those who voted to stay in the EU in June 2016. Displaying or selling a golliwog is seen as acceptable by almost twice as many leavers (72%) as remainers (37%). And some 81% of leavers are convinced that doing so isn’t racist, compared to 48% of remainers.</p>
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<p>Now, no one – least of all me – is arguing that we judge whether a symbol or stereotype is or isn’t unacceptable or racist according to whether a majority or plurality of people think it is. It’s perfectly legitimate to argue that something is (or is not) racist, irrespective of public opinion. Conversely, it is equally possible to argue that, if a minority group feels demeaned by a symbol or stereotype obviously aimed at them, then that symbol or stereotype is demeaning whether or not others regard it as such. An awareness – implicit or explicit – that this may be the case is presumably why a few respondents to the survey don’t see displaying or selling a golliwog as racist but nevertheless think it’s unacceptable to do so.</p>
<p>Of course, what is and isn’t considered offensive or racist is socially constructed and reconstructed over time and space. Why is a golliwog, for instance, deemed acceptable when a stuffed toy based on a caricature of other enslaved racial minorities probably wouldn’t be? And could we – should we – try to change people’s views on golliwogs by telling them more about their origins?</p>
<p>Then there’s the whole debate around whether racist slurs can somehow be appropriated and turned around by those they were originally used to offend, with the paradigmatic example being the use of the N-word by (some) African Americans. Yet, even if you’re convinced that such reappropriation somehow works, how far can it be taken? Put bluntly, can a Greek really reappropriate a golliwog?</p>
<p>Finally, there is the question of property rights and free speech. In this case, the café owners, were they ever to see the results of this poll, would see that around a quarter of their potential customers would find something they’re doing unacceptable and that a fifth would find it downright racist. But if they chose to carry on regardless, taking any potential opportunity cost on the chin on the basis of their right to do as they please with their own business, should public policy support or constrain that right?</p>
<p>Answers on a (seaside) postcard, please.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Bale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Some 53% of British people think it’s acceptable to display these dolls – and the difference between remainers and leavers is particularly surprising.
Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83913
2017-09-15T10:22:36Z
2017-09-15T10:22:36Z
Roots of racism: 6 essential reads
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185917/original/file-20170913-1514-vl1gl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
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<p><em>On Friday, Sept. 15, “<a href="http://www.ozy.com/topic/third-rail">Third Rail with OZY</a>” will discuss racism in the United States.</em></p>
<p><em>These stories from The Conversation archive explore where racism came from and why it persists.</em> </p>
<hr>
<h2>1. Going back to Europe</h2>
<p>American University historian <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ibram-x-kendi-277652">Ibram Kendi</a> has traced the history of racist ideas in the U.S. back to the European societies that largely populated our nation. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uncovering-the-roots-of-racist-ideas-in-america-71467">In an essay</a> based on his award-winning book “Stamped from the Beginning,” Kendi rejects the conventional wisdom that hate and ignorance breed racist policies. </p>
<p>Rather, Kendi writes: “Time and again, powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas in order to justify the racist policies of their era.”</p>
<h2>2. Myths of slavery</h2>
<p>Arguably, the most racist policy of any era was the one that allowed whites in this country to call black people property – chattel slavery.</p>
<p>Many people connect the origins of racism to slavery without knowing much about that history. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/daina-ramey-berry-141237">Daina Ramey Berry</a>, a historian at University of Texas at Austin, lays out <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-slavery-separating-fact-from-myth-79620">four major myths of slavery</a> – including the idea that it happened too long ago to have much impact on our contemporary society.</p>
<p>“Truth: African-Americans have been free in this country for less time than they were enslaved,” Berry writes. “Do the math: Blacks have been free for 152 years, which means that most Americans are only two to three generations away from slavery.”</p>
<h2>3. Teach your children well</h2>
<p>One reason racism persists into contemporary times is because racist ideas are passed down from one generation to the next. Psychologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/marjorie-rhodes-317040">Marjorie Rhodes</a> looks at the importance of <a href="https://theconversation.com/combatting-stereotypes-how-to-talk-to-your-children-71929">how adults speak to children</a>.</p>
<p>“Hearing generalizations, even positive or neutral ones, contributes to the tendency to view the world through the lens of social stereotypes,” Rhodes writes.</p>
<h2>4. Not just city folk</h2>
<p>One stereotype people hold is that American cities are diverse while rural areas are mostly white.</p>
<p>However, research by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jennifer-van-hook-312964">Jennifer Van Hook</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/barrett-lee-325213">Barrett Lee</a> at Penn State shows “the populations of <a href="https://theconversation.com/diversity-is-on-the-rise-in-urban-and-rural-communities-and-its-here-to-stay-69095">communities throughout the nation are being transformed</a>,” as the scholars write. “Nine out of 10 rural places experienced increases in diversity between 1990 and 2010, and these changes occurred in every region of the country.”</p>
<p>The researchers argue this trend is past the tipping point. “Despite the initial importance of migration, racial and ethnic diversity is now self-sustaining,” they write. “Minority groups will soon be maintained by ‘natural increase,’ when births exceed deaths, rather than by new immigration.”</p>
<h2>5. Learning while black</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kevin-oneal-cokley-247888">Kevin O'Neal Cokley</a> of the University of Texas, Austin is an African-American scholar who studies <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-it-means-to-be-black-in-the-american-educational-system-63576">the experiences of black college students</a>.</p>
<p>“The unfortunate reality is that black Americans experience subtle and overt discrimination from preschool all the way to college,” Cokley writes. “Black boys are almost three times as likely to be suspended than white boys, and black girls are four times as likely to be suspended than white girls.”</p>
<p>The issue is not restricted to primary education. Black men are also underrepresented in college – even compared to black women. “According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 887,000 black women enrolled in college versus 618,000 black men,” Cokley writes.</p>
<h2>6. A hopeful message</h2>
<p>“How can we heal a nation that is divided along race, class and political lines?” <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/joshua-f-j-inwood-315335">Joshua F.J. Inwood</a> of the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State asked. He suggests that remembering Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of love <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-fractured-nation-needs-to-remember-kings-message-of-love-68643">could bring our fractured nation together</a>.</p>
<p>“For King,” Inwood writes, “love is a key part of creating communities that work for everyone and not just the few at the expense of the many.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83913/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
When were the seeds of racism sown in the US and why is it so hard to root out?
Emily Costello, Director of Collaborations + Local News, The Conversation US
Danielle Douez, Associate Editor, Politics + Society
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78733
2017-06-16T00:41:10Z
2017-06-16T00:41:10Z
The Fresh Air Fund’s complicated racial record
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173654/original/file-20170613-10363-19f1baf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fresh Air host Mark Stucky of Newton, Kansas shook hands with Thomas Flowers from Gulfport, Mississippi, as Doris Zerger Stucky – Mark’s mother – watched in this 1960 photo.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mennonite Library & Archives, Bethel, Kansas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>New York City’s <a href="http://www.freshair.org/cts2017">Fresh Air Fund</a> has sent city kids, most of them low-income, to suburban and rural neighborhoods for two-week summer vacations for the past 140 years. Originally intended to restore malnourished, sickly and white immigrant children to health, the fund expanded its mission in the 1960s to focus on – as director Frederick Lewis put it in 1969 – “bridge-building and unifying” across racial lines.</p>
<p>While studying the history of the Fresh Air Fund and more than 60 similar programs across North America between 1939 and 1979, I found a significant gap between their racial aims and what the kids who took part experienced. My new book, “<a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100386560">Two Weeks Every Summer</a>,” examines the experiences of African-American and Latino children who traveled in those years from cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia throughout the Northeast and Midwest and to points as far West as Hawaii to stay with host families. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173650/original/file-20170613-30097-1lzr9hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173650/original/file-20170613-30097-1lzr9hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173650/original/file-20170613-30097-1lzr9hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173650/original/file-20170613-30097-1lzr9hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173650/original/file-20170613-30097-1lzr9hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173650/original/file-20170613-30097-1lzr9hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173650/original/file-20170613-30097-1lzr9hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173650/original/file-20170613-30097-1lzr9hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Two boys from Harlem pitch in at milking time on a Hinesburg, Vermont farm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York Public Library, Schomburg Collection</span></span>
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<p>Nearly all these “guests” encountered bigotry or racial naiviete. Since many <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/top_10_strategies_for_reducing_prejudice">well-intentioned responses</a> to racially charged <a href="https://theconversation.com/uncovering-the-roots-of-racist-ideas-in-america-71467">violence and rhetoric</a> still follow the same assumptions as those of the Fresh Air movement, it’s important to spot the model’s flaws. </p>
<h2>A long history</h2>
<p>Willard Parsons, a Presbyterian minister bent on saving “little tenement prisoners” from the Big Apple’s “squalid homes and sun-baked streets,” founded the Fresh Air Fund in 1877. His interest in immersing city children in the “pastoral peace” found in nature presaged concerns voiced by Richard Louv and others about urban children’s “<a href="http://richardlouv.com/books/last-child/">nature deficit</a>.” </p>
<p>Beginning in the 1950s, as the civil rights movement heated up, the kids taking these trips became more diverse, and more than 80 percent were black or Latino by the late 1970s. Fresh Air programs operated in 20 states by that point, sending children from more than 35 cities on vacation. They had served more than 1.5 million children.</p>
<p>Many hosts relished these intimate, home-based exchanges across racial lines. Arnold Nickel, a pastor and host from Moundridge, Kansas, even claimed in 1961 that bringing urban children into his community did more to quell racial tensions than <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=C2DjEl5MnxQC&pg=PA79">the Freedom Riders</a> – activists who faced violence and intimidation while integrating interstate bus travel in the South. “We work toward creating better relationships and better understandings,” he said.</p>
<p>Some guests had such positive experiences that they eagerly returned when invited. Despite dealing with awkward questions about their home life, they enjoyed the chance to travel, swim in backyard pools and try new foods. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173657/original/file-20170613-30107-5h71zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173657/original/file-20170613-30107-5h71zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173657/original/file-20170613-30107-5h71zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173657/original/file-20170613-30107-5h71zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173657/original/file-20170613-30107-5h71zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173657/original/file-20170613-30107-5h71zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173657/original/file-20170613-30107-5h71zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173657/original/file-20170613-30107-5h71zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This map identifies more than 1,100 Fresh Air hosting sites active between 1939 and 1979, drawn from archival sources, newspaper accounts and publicity materials.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Map designed by Bill Nelson, based on data compiled by Molly Williams</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Our interviews</h2>
<p>My team interviewed and collected memoirs from nearly 50 former hosts, guests and program administrators who participated in the program in the mid-20th century. Those interviewed represented the major sending communities including New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia and popular hosting sites. Their stories confirmed what we found in thousands of letters and other documents. Nearly all the hosts and administrators we interviewed were white, consistent with the program’s demographics back then. Although we interviewed a few white former guests, most – also reflecting the demographics – were African-American and Latino, and personally recalled instances of racial tension and overt racism.</p>
<p>Throughout this research, the Fresh Air Fund <a href="https://timeline.com/fresh-air-fund-race-3eaa365a741b">denied me access to its records</a>, so I relied instead on thousands of regional newspaper reports, oral histories and other archives. Asked to address the Fund’s racial history, its director declined, saying, “We have never been about race.”</p>
<p>All 15 of the African-American former guests we interviewed remembered their hosts committing some form of racial harassment, expressing prejudice or being naive about bigotry. Most of the former Latino guests had similar experiences, but not the white children – even those with strong ethnic identities. </p>
<p>I frequently give lectures about this research at academic conferences and universities. Interestingly, audience members always tell me that they or people they know who took part in the program as guests in the 1980s or later also encountered overt prejudice and racial naivete.</p>
<h2>Coping mechanisms</h2>
<p>Many kids of color taking part in the Fresh Air programs told their friends who later participated what to expect – and how to deal with racial epithets. For example, Thomas Brock, an African-American man who took part in the program while growing up in Virginia in the 1950s, recalled playing ball with the children in his host family as they called him the “N-word.” </p>
<p>Not only did Chicagoan Janice Batts have to deal with feeling like she was at a “slave auction” when the white Iowan hosts came to pick up the tag-wearing African-American children in the 1960s and 1970s;, her host siblings would ask questions like “Why is your nose so wide? Do you sunburn? Why is your hair curly?”</p>
<p>She experienced severe trauma as well; a host father sexually abused her over the course of two consecutive summers. After a series of <a href="http://www.davidhechler.com/books/the-battle-and-the-backlash/">sexual abuse lawsuits</a> in the early 1980s, the Fresh Air Fund finally began to vet hosts to screen out potential abusers.</p>
<p>Another concern to many of the people who participated in the program as children in my study – a concern that Fresh Air alums who took part in the program more recently have shared with me – was the assumption that, because they were from the city and nonwhite, they were not “equal” to their rural host families.</p>
<p>For example, Cindy Vanderkodde, a Fresh Air guest from New York hosted by a Michigan family in the 1960s, remembers thinking at the time, “Oh wow, this is family, they love me.” But when she moved into the hosting community a dozen years later as a college-educated social worker, things changed. “Once I became an equal … there was just no interest there,” she told me.</p>
<h2>Some progress?</h2>
<p>Fresh Air Fund administrators told me that hosts today rarely disparage the nonwhite children staying in their homes and that more nonwhite hosts take part in the program. Images of white families hosting children of color, however, <a href="http://www.freshair.org/host">dominate its website</a>. More importantly, the model remains unchanged: short-term, one-way exchanges billed as rescuing kids of color from the inferior conditions of their urban life.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173659/original/file-20170613-10363-36zrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173659/original/file-20170613-10363-36zrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173659/original/file-20170613-10363-36zrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173659/original/file-20170613-10363-36zrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173659/original/file-20170613-10363-36zrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173659/original/file-20170613-10363-36zrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173659/original/file-20170613-10363-36zrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173659/original/file-20170613-10363-36zrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tennis player Althea Gibson shows two New York City children the first tennis racket she used in 1942, in the summer of 1973. Participation in Fresh Air ventures has declined in recent years, partly due to growing numbers of urban-based alternatives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-United-/c9f5615667e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/11/0">AP Photo</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As psychologist <a href="https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/gordon-w-allport">Gordon Allport</a> articulated in what he called a “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Nature_Of_Prejudice.html?id=q2HObxRtdcwC">contact hypothesis</a>” in the 1950s, social scientists have long recognized that short-term contact between disparate groups can actually reinforce stereotypes and prejudices <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00380237.1974.10571409">when participants are not on equal terms</a>. </p>
<p>In 1971, a black nationalist critic of the program, John Powell, called for a <a href="http://raceandreligion.com/JRER/Volume_2_(2011)_files/Shearer%202%207.pdf">complementary “stale-air” program</a> and suggested that Fresh Air ventures be “terminated” because its racially paternalistic assumptions were a recipe for failure. Most of these programs folded because of this kind of criticism, changes in family dynamics with host mothers increasingly working outside the home, and urban alternatives like free day camps. The Fresh Air Fund is by far the largest and most robust of the few remaining.</p>
<p>Despite their good intentions, I don’t believe that one-way, short-term cultural exchanges like the Fresh Air programs can wipe racism off the map – especially given the economic and social gaps between the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35255835">segregated communities</a> in which we live.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tobin Miller Shearer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Many urban children who took part in a program that was supposed to enrich their lives dealt with racism instead. Why can’t this cultural exchange become a two-way street?
Tobin Miller Shearer, Director of the African-American Studies Program and Associate Professor of History, University of Montana
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77092
2017-06-08T02:37:02Z
2017-06-08T02:37:02Z
Loving v. Virginia: Exploring biracial identity and reality in America 50 years after a landmark civil rights milestone
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172790/original/file-20170607-21294-1dmkm45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mildred and Richard Loving in 1965.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, on June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down one of the most important civil rights decisions in American history, <a href="http://time.com/4362508/loving-v-virginia-personas/">Loving v. Virginia</a>. The landmark case ended the last of the country’s state laws banning interracial marriage – prohibitions described in the <a href="http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Excerpts_from_a_Transcript_of_Oral_Arguments_in_Loving_v_Virginia_April_10_1967">case’s oral arguments</a> as “the most odious of the segregation laws and the slavery laws.”</p>
<p>This wasn’t simply the dramatic end to longstanding policy justified with <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/388/1.html">biblical assertions about the separation of the races</a>. In the most intimate human terms, the court’s decision marked the end of a difficult journey for Mildred and Richard Loving, the interracial couple at the heart of the case. In the years leading up to the Supreme Court decision, for the crime of being married as a woman of color and a white man, the Lovings faced <a href="http://www.history.com/news/mildred-and-richard-the-love-story-that-changed-america">harassment, a police invasion of their home</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/06loving.html">and even jail time</a>.</p>
<p>The Loving decision has both political and personal meaning to me, the mother of two biracial children and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1995892/">a documentary filmmaker and scholar</a> whose work is grounded in <a href="http://cmsimpact.org/team/caty-borum-chattoo/">social justice</a>. </p>
<h2>Social change happens over time</h2>
<p>Social change in U.S. civil rights often has been rooted in an act of the court system, evident in the related Supreme Court decisions <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/case.html">Brown v. Board of Education (1954)</a>, which declared “separate but equal” public schools for black and white children as unconstitutional, and <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/576/14-556/dissent4.html">Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)</a>, which affirmed the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry. And yet, as history shows, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/two-milestones-in-education/361222/">societal change ripples out slowly in the decades that follow</a> such decisions, embodied in social norms and the generational shifts in our cultural perspectives. Social change, in other words, happens through daily life and our understanding of one another, and through what we pass along. </p>
<p>For me, a white woman married to a man of color, raising two biracial children, the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia represents a recognition of progress and social change – but it also spotlights work still to be done. When I became a mother, I was unprepared for how much more I would intimately feel, see and understand about race – and race relations – in the U.S.</p>
<p>I realized quickly how much I don’t know – but also how much others don’t know, either, about the cultural and psychological realities for biracial people. Attempting to tell the story through film, then, might contribute to the cultural understanding that helps foster positive social change. After all, biracial people have been officially <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/chapter-1-race-and-multiracial-americans-in-the-u-s-census/">counted by the U.S. Census only since 2000</a>. In some ways, this is a new chapter in the very old legacy of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/miscegenation">miscegenation</a> in America. </p>
<h2>Two moms embark on a journey</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172786/original/file-20170607-30402-1t7eskr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172786/original/file-20170607-30402-1t7eskr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172786/original/file-20170607-30402-1t7eskr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172786/original/file-20170607-30402-1t7eskr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172786/original/file-20170607-30402-1t7eskr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172786/original/file-20170607-30402-1t7eskr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172786/original/file-20170607-30402-1t7eskr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leena Jayaswal and Caty Borum Chattoo on the road in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caty Borum Chattoo</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And so it was, against the backdrop of the waning days of the Obama presidency, that Leena Jayaswal and I decided to produce <a href="https://www.mixeddocumentary.com/">a documentary film, entitled “Mixed,”</a> to examine America’s deep cultural ambivalence about its rapidly changing mixed-race reality. Jayaswal, a fellow documentary filmmaker and professor, is a woman of color raising a biracial son with her white husband. </p>
<p>We set out to answer questions like: What is it like to be a biracial person in today’s America? How does biracial identity develop, and what should the rest of us understand in order to not inadvertently trivialize, fetishize or discriminate against biracial people? What does the country think of our kids and families, and how are they reflected in the culture, a half-century after Loving v. Virginia? </p>
<p>From our journey through North Carolina and California and New York and Ohio and Texas and beyond, what have we learned? Here are a few highlights. </p>
<h2>Images of biracial people in American culture</h2>
<p>Despite our cultural tendency to fetishize biracial <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-saying-youre-multiracial-changes-the-way-people-see-you-64509">people</a> and <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/mirandalarbi/celebrities-you-probably-didnt-know-were-mixed-race">celebrities</a> as exotic and beautiful, racism is a reality. In 2013, when a Cheerios TV commercial included a biracial family, the <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/30/268930004/that-cute-cheerios-ad-with-the-interracial-family-is-back">racist response</a> made headlines around the country. Two years later, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/27/heres-what-i-did-when-racists-complained-about-an-interracial-family-in-my-magazine/?utm_term=.4ba65d4f3b19">a similar ad in Houstonia magazine</a> elicited letters expressing disgust about the featured biracial family. In 2016, <a href="http://www.today.com/style/old-navy-ad-interracial-family-prompts-social-media-outrage-support-t90226">Old Navy was the target of online ire</a> aimed at an online ad’s interracial family.</p>
<p>We explored these reactions with psychology scholar Allison Skinner, who learned in a recent study that a group of <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-say-theyre-okay-with-interracial-marriage-but-could-the-brain-tell-a-different-story-64149">white respondents experienced feelings of disgust</a> when they saw images of black and white people together as a couple – a significantly different response than seeing two people of color together, or two white people. Skinner concluded that this is a learned perspective, and, as she wrote, <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-say-theyre-okay-with-interracial-marriage-but-could-the-brain-tell-a-different-story-64149">“we are not born with these biases.”</a> It’s dangerous to assume, then, that focusing on “the beauty” of biracial people is evidence of understanding their full personhood – or that such surface-level aesthetic judgment is proof that implicit bias and racism isn’t an issue. <a href="http://www.tolerance.org/lesson/looking-race-and-racial-identity-through-critical-literacy-c">Talking about race and racial identity</a> is important, particularly when children are learning to navigate the world around them. We can undo this societal damage. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172826/original/file-20170607-30402-e4egj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172826/original/file-20170607-30402-e4egj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172826/original/file-20170607-30402-e4egj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172826/original/file-20170607-30402-e4egj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172826/original/file-20170607-30402-e4egj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172826/original/file-20170607-30402-e4egj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172826/original/file-20170607-30402-e4egj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1103&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Starting in 1974, The Jeffersons featured an interracial couple, Helen and Tom Willis.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Normalizing reflections of biracial people and families in American entertainment could be helpful. Despite the fact that interracial romance can be found across the TV landscape today (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal”), biracial individuals and families are scarce in entertainment programming without a sexualized portrayal, which may contribute to our tendency to festishize biracial people. </p>
<p>Some media research tells us that our <a href="http://cmsw.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/The-Parasocial-Contact-Hypothesis.pdf">interaction with media characters</a> can feel similar to our real-world interactions with people, and thus, can reduce prejudice against others different from us. In other words, when we see and like characters in entertainment who are different from us, it makes a difference in how we feel about people in the real world.</p>
<h2>Seeing biracial people as their full selves</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5395390">“What are you?”</a> is a question many biracial people hear consistently. Or, they’re placed into one category or another – too much of one thing, not enough of another. Both ends of the spectrum can give a message: You don’t belong. As parents and a culture, when we force mixed-race people to choose one or the other, we can harm their <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0963721414558115">emotional well-being and self-esteem</a>.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0963721414558115">psychology scholar Sarah Gaither</a>, multiracial people experience tension when they have to conform or select only one of their groups, “whether due to social context or societal pressures to conform to a monoracial category.” But Gaither’s work also points to the <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0963721414558115">resilience and unique experience of biracial people</a>: They have a connection to more than one racial identity and perspective, which makes them more fluid and flexible in their behavior when interacting with diverse others. And, they show less racial bias in how they perceive others from different racial backgrounds. It’s not up to us – monoracial parents and the culture – to force biracial individuals into one racial category or identity. Similarly, it’s up to biracial people themselves to choose their own cultural labels - whether “mixed,” “biracial,” “swirls” - or to make the choice to culturally identify as monoracial, as did former <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/09/btsc.obama.race/">President Barack Obama</a>. </p>
<p>In another 50 years, this inquiry hopefully will be a time-capsule relic, as the population grows more diverse. But today, in 2017, how we understand and open the door to talking and thinking about race will help shape the equity of that future. We can look in the rear-view mirror at 1967 and Loving v. Virginia, and we can clearly see progress. But the future is ours to shape, through every conversation we embrace or perspective we choose to teach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Co-directors Caty Borum Chattoo and Leena Jayaswal have received grant funding to produce the documentary film, MIXED.</span></em></p>
In 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested in Virginia for the crime of being married. The couple helped spark an effort to strike down laws against interracial marriage in the United States.
Caty Borum Chattoo, Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, American University School of Communication
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/71455
2017-02-08T04:24:12Z
2017-02-08T04:24:12Z
How Obama’s presidential campaign changed how Americans view black candidates
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155997/original/image-20170208-9113-p3590h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Barack Obama at a campaign stop in 2007.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Nati Harnik</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The relationship between black presidential candidates and potential voters is more complex than it is for their white opponents. My <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/historic-firsts-9780199314188?q=evelyn%20simien&lang=en&cc=us">research</a> on historic “firsts” shows that white voters tend to ascribe characteristics to black candidates that place them at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>That’s why Barack Obama’s presidency became synonymous with an end goal of the civil rights movement and a source of pride for so many Americans. His campaign experience, like that of predecessors Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson, suggests something about the extent to which African-Americans have gained acceptance as legitimate political actors.</p>
<p>Obama more easily mobilized white voters because he was less interested in challenging “the system,” and more ideologically liberal than his predecessors. He also adapted to the political environment, recognizing key voting constituencies. Obama pulled together the type of coalition that Chisholm and Jackson had aspired to lead, composed of college students, hard-core progressives, organized labor and independents.</p>
<p>His candidacy and victory continue to be celebrated as historic achievements to this day.</p>
<h2>Undeniably black</h2>
<p>Presidential <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/jesse-jackson-1984_b_4793293.html">campaigns</a> launched by Shirley Chisholm in 1972 and Jesse Jackson in 1984 were aimed at forging interracial alliances. However, each of these candidates failed to build a coalition of historically marginalized groups. Instead, their <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?325324-2/1972-shirley-chisholm-presidential-campaign-announcement">rhetoric</a> primarily appealed to African-American voters in locales where they comprised a majority, or near majority, of the population.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6H6vazOz018?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jackson speaking at a rally during his 1984 run for president.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a result, they drew limited support from white voters. For example, by large margins, white voters <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/13/us/jackson-share-of-votes-by-whites-triples-in-88.html">viewed Jackson</a> as less knowledgeable, less fair, less likely to care about people like them and more prejudiced than his white opponents Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.</p>
<p>Like Chisholm and Jackson, Obama’s candidacy in 2008 aroused fears, resentments and prejudices. </p>
<p>He was falsely accused of being a Muslim. Stereotypes were <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/13/yikes-controversial-emnew_n_112429.html">reinvented</a> and popular images reanimated and parodied in blogs, email, tweets and other social media outlets. T-shirts were printed with an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/18/new-york-post-cartoon-race">image</a> of Curious George, a monkey from a well-known children’s book, inscribed with the words “Obama ’08,” comparing African-Americans to apes.</p>
<p>The Tea Party Movement, a conservative wing of the Republican Party, also <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/tea+party+obama/">orchestrated</a> a number of attacks on Obama’s patriotism, religious beliefs and citizenship status through protest rallies and social media. Obama’s racial iden tity and other personal traits remained a matter of public debate long after the general election.</p>
<p>Like his predecessors, Obama was perceived as <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22326360/ns/politics/t/mccain-assails-obama-lack-experience/#.WJkqFG8rKUk">lacking</a> leadership <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-16-obama-experience-cover_x.htm">experience</a>. He was viewed as less competent, less knowledgeable of foreign affairs and more concerned with racial issues like affirmative action and immigration reform.</p>
<p>Because he was undeniably black, he was seen as an “authentic” representative of the African-American electorate, not the entire American electorate. His campaign had to overcome this notion.</p>
<h2>Overcoming race</h2>
<p>Obama employed a race-neutral approach during his first presidential campaign. In his hallmark <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2004Jul27.html">speech</a> at the 2004 DNC he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America, there is the United States of America.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His rhetoric aimed to satisfy diverse constituents across racial and ethnic groups. Obama used universal, color-blind language that appealed to most Americans.</p>
<p>He focused on quality-of-life issues, such as universal health care, equal educational opportunities and full employment for the lower and middle classes. Doing so increased the likelihood that more Americans would support his campaign. He was less interested in race-specific overtures that directly appealed to African-American voters. As I argue in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/historic-firsts-9780199314188?q=evelyn%20simien&lang=en&cc=us">my book</a>, “Historic Firsts: How Symbolic Empowerment Changes U.S. Politics,” Obama unified liberal white voters. </p>
<p>Still, pundits pondered whether a black man, elected by a white majority with support of African-American voters, represented a psychological, but not necessarily a substantive, triumph over race. </p>
<p>His predecessors Chisholm and Jackson had heavily relied on racial bloc voting and the stylistic influence of a Black Power tradition – “speaking truth to power,” dramatic confrontation and public spectacle – for electoral success. Obama was a successful candidate because he was neither righteous nor indignant. He ran a campaign that was racially and culturally inclusive.</p>
<p>Today, there is little question as to whether a black male politician at the top of a major party’s presidential ticket can transform beliefs about African-American men in politics. The outcome of the 2008 American presidential election shows that the majority of American voters are willing to vote for a black Democratic presidential candidate.</p>
<p>However, it is a certain type of black presidential candidate who will find it easier, and others more difficult, to gain white support.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71455/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Evelyn M. Simien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Black politicians throughout US history have struggled to overcome deep, negative stereotypes held against them by white Americans. Obama succeeded at the highest level. Here’s how.
Evelyn M. Simien, Associate Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies, University of Connecticut
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68873
2017-01-21T00:40:11Z
2017-01-21T00:40:11Z
Obama’s legacy is bittersweet – and its chance of survival hangs in the balance
<p>The grace. The elegance. The deftness of touch. The quick intelligence. The soaring rhetoric. The unlimited aspirations. The hope of a better life for all. Though Barack Obama’s legacy is rather lesser than some might have hoped for when he was inaugurated president of the United States in 2009, in him the world has lost the leadership of a gentle soul, a humble man of immense quality and kindness. And now, these qualities will be replaced with bitter self-interest and vulgarity.</p>
<p>Even without the contrast of Donald Trump, Obama’s dignified bearing, even his very existence, was an inspiration. He and his wife <a href="https://theconversation.com/michelle-obama-speech-proves-you-dont-have-to-blow-your-own-trumpet-to-be-heard-70978">Michelle</a> were an unrivalled illustration of dignity in public office – and more than that, he has clearly left a profound mark on his country. </p>
<p>In his <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38580546">valedictory address</a> in Chicago, Obama was as always breathtakingly optimistic, both about what has been achieved and in his estimation of America’s potential to achieve greater things yet:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I’d told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history; if I’d told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, take out the mastermind of 9/11; if I’d told you that we would win marriage equality and secure the right to health insurance for another 20m of our fellow citizens – if I’d told you all that, you might have said our sights were set a little too high.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To watch the incoming administration crumble this legacy into rubble will be unbearably painful. But it also pays to ask why this hugely gifted politician didn’t accomplish more – and why he won’t leave a more durable legacy.</p>
<h2>Back from the brink</h2>
<p>The task Obama faced after his inauguration was monumental. The 2008 financial crisis had threatened to engulf the US in a recession as deep and lasting as the Great Depression in the 1930s; the new president inherited an unemployment rate of 7.8%, which by October 2009 had risen to 10%. The 2009 <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/what-was-obama-s-stimulus-package-3305625">American Recovery and Reinvestment Act</a> delivered an $831 billion stimulus package, pumping money into infrastructure, education, health, energy, federal tax incentives, and expansion of unemployment benefits and welfare provisions. </p>
<p>According to the Council of Economic Advisers, the US economy added jobs for <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/economic_reports/2016.pdf">74 consecutive months</a> and reached its pre-recession average by mid-2015, falling to 4.6% by November 2016. Non-farm employment exceeded its pre-recession peak by 6.7m, with the automobile industry <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=111613">adding 700,000 jobs</a>.</p>
<p>This was a stunning turnaround, but millions of casualties of the financial crisis <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/americans-cant-recover-from-financial-crisis-2016-7?utm_source=feedburner&%3Butm_medium=referral&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+(Business+Insider)?r=US&IR=T">have still not recovered</a>. There remains a lingering sense that the financial institutions that caused the crisis were never made to pay for it. </p>
<p>Then there was the battle to achieve affordable universal health care, Obama’s signal social reform. This was a titanic fight that left him in an intractable conflict with the Republican Party in Congress for the whole of his two terms in office. The <a href="http://obamacarefacts.com/obamahealthcare-summary/">Affordable Care Act</a>, now widely known as “Obamacare”, requires all Americans to purchase a private health plan, secure an exemption, or pay a tax penalty. Those who could not afford health care qualified for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or assistance in the form of tax credits. </p>
<p>Health care was ultimately extended to all citizens. But the system’s troubled implementation and the political guerrilla war waged against it before and since its introduction demonstrates the just how unprepared US for any comprehensive form of social provision.</p>
<h2>Bad examples</h2>
<p>Obama drew a line under the US’s military adventurism in the Middle East, finally <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-withdrawal-idUSTRE7BH03320111218">withdrawing US forces</a> from Iraq in December 2011; he also <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/28/statement-president-end-combat-mission-afghanistan">declared an end</a> to the war in Afghanistan in November 2014. But he was unable to head off the horrors of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/obamas-legacy-will-be-forever-tarnished-by-his-inaction-in-syria-67030">Syrian civil war</a>, first setting out a “red line” that Bashar al-Assad’s regime could not cross without consequences and then declining to act when it did. </p>
<p>While he avoided putting American “boots on the ground” on a grand scale, he presided over actions by special forces, including the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. He also continued to rain bombs on Muslim countries, and his apparent penchant for <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-political-role-of-drone-strikes-in-us-grand-strategy-62529">drone strikes</a> has arguably set a <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-donald-trump-takes-control-of-the-us-drone-fleet-63377">dangerous precedent</a>.</p>
<p>Obama also maintained a quiet but determined commitment to <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/02/interview-president-obama-underwater-snorkeling/">protect the environment</a>, working hard to replace fossil fuels with renewables. And while the world’s developing economies rebuffed a global climate agreement at Copenhagen in 2009, they ultimately committed to a rapid reduction in emissions at the 2015 <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-paris-climate-agreement-at-a-glance-50465">Paris summit</a>. The sense of optimism was capped by Obama’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/world/asia/obama-xi-jinping-china-climate-accord.html">emmissions reduction agreement with President Xi</a> of China. </p>
<p>But once again, by using his <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/donald-trump-barack-obama-trump-transition-executive-orders-544838?rm=eu">executive powers</a> to circumvent an intransigent Republican congress, Obama laid this and other key achievements open to destruction by future presidents – and first in line is Donald Trump.</p>
<p>The fate of the US economy now lies in the hands of a man who claims to be a serial entrepreneur, but who could just as well be described as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/general-election/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-the-first-presidential-debate/fact-check-has-trump-declared-bankruptcy-four-or-six-times/">serial bankrupt</a>. The new Republican-controlled Congress is already preparing to dismantle Obamacare, but needs to ensure millions of Americans who now have access to health care <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/314549-study-obamacare-repeal-could-leave-32-million-without-coverage">don’t suddenly lose it</a>.</p>
<p>In foreign affairs and military intervention, Obama’s successor promises to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-undiplomatic-twitter-diplomacy-isnt-a-joke-its-a-catastrophic-risk-70861">highly unpredictable</a>. He might be most dangerous of all when it comes to climate change and environmental protection, although international support for serious global measures to curb emissions has probably never been higher. </p>
<h2>System flaws</h2>
<p>Obama also failed to achieve some of his fundamental objectives, but many of these failures reflect fundamental flaws in the American system that are beyond any one president’s power to repair. </p>
<p>Above all, his hopes for a new era in race relations were cruelly dashed. Black Americans were still being lethally victimised as his presidency drew to a close, with police brutality perhaps a more incendiary issue than ever. Throughout it all, he remained dignified as ever; his <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38562817">plaintive rendition of Amazing Grace</a> at a church in <a href="https://theconversation.com/hate-violence-and-the-tragedy-of-the-charleston-shootings-43579">Charleston, South Carolina</a> where eight worshippers and a pastor were brutally killed marked the end of his effort not to be portrayed as a black president.</p>
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<p>Tragically, his efforts to constrain gun violence in the US failed to overcome the onslaught of political opposition to responsible control, and a constant patter of gunfire punctuated his presidency. At <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20738998">Sandy Hook elementary school</a>, 20 young children and six adults perished at the hands of a single shooter. The event <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67h-vsMX1EQ">brought Obama to tears</a>: “Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.”</p>
<p>By his own admission, Obama failed to overcome the <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/republican-party-obstructionism-victory-trump-214498">intense partisanship</a> of American politics and society. The disfigurement of US democracy continues, undermining the possibility of stable government. Tens of millions of Americans don’t participate in the democratic process at all, and the political agenda is still disproportionately shaped by a wealthy corporate elite. </p>
<p>We can only hope that while the traumatic 2016 election may have left America’s more idealistic political forces chastened, they are not broken.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68873/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Clarke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The 44th president is now gone. What mark does he leave on his country?
Thomas Clarke, Professor, UTS Business, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/71131
2017-01-12T02:12:25Z
2017-01-12T02:12:25Z
In racially divided times, Obama’s farewell address swings for the middle
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152503/original/image-20170112-1581-3d0ukp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Obama arrives to give his presidential farewell address. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Jan. 10, President Barack Obama delivered a farewell address to the nation in his adopted hometown of Chicago. As he often did during his presidency, Obama struck a middle path, one that had moments of real power but ultimately fell short of a full-throated defense of Democratic Party policies. In a decidedly immoderate time, with his signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act, on the chopping block, Obama’s speech was a model of moderation. In a season defined by <a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ay9dkp/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-fallout-from-donald-trump-s-pussygate-scandal">Pussygate</a> and Russian hacking, and with an incoming billionaire’s cabinet poised to loot every entitlement and regulation not nailed down, Obama gave us the “Compromiser-in-Chief.”</p>
<p>In 2009, in response to Obama’s election, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14704129090080020405">I wrote</a> that Obama has always strategically framed his candidacy and presidency as evidence of the civil rights movement’s success. I argued then that Obama should use his bully pulpit to call attention to and reduce racial inequality. This farewell address was his final opportunity to plainly tell the nation why the electoral path just taken, one strewn with racism, Islamophobia and misogyny was the wrong one. </p>
<p>Instead, he argued yet again that racial groups are more alike than not. This argument came in a climate of sharp racial and class divides that must be acknowledged, rather than minimized by reflections on <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/my-president-was-black/508793/">Obama’s own biography,</a> which was characterized by a racially tolerant white family. Since Trump’s election, we have seen a sharp rise in white attacks on racial and religious minorities, and yet Obama squandered an opportunity to call out this white backlash, a response to his own presidency, by resorting to well-worn narratives that do not speak to the contemporary political and cultural moment. </p>
<h2>Threats to our fragile ‘solidarities’</h2>
<p>The address began with Obama listing his signature achievements. During his eight years in office, the economy created <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/18/obamas-record-on-jobs-versus-five-other-presidents.html">16 million new jobs</a>, the Supreme Court protected gay marriage and 20 million uninsured people got health insurance. Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden and the U.S. normalized relations with Cuba and halted Iran’s nuclear arms program. </p>
<p>However, if the nation was in good shape, “the state of our democracy” and the fragile “solidarities” on which it was built were not, Obama asserted. Indeed, they were being threatened by “stark inequality,” the undermining of “science and reason,” and racism. On <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/obamas-war-on-inequality/501620/">inequality</a>, Obama stressed the need for widespread economic opportunity and a social safety net that protects all of our citizens, something he championed while in office. </p>
<p>As for the assault on facts and reason, a not-so-subtle jab at the president-elect, Obama argued that it “betrays the essential spirit of innovation and practical problem-solving that guided our Founders.” Admonishing those who live in self-selecting “bubbles,” where their beliefs go unchallenged, Obama quipped, “If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet try to talk with one in real life.” </p>
<h2>An oft-played note</h2>
<p>On racism, Obama struck a familiar and oft-played note. He framed racism primarily as a matter of “hearts” changing through empathy and interaction. This was a variation on his 2008 “<a href="https://nplusonemag.com/issue-27/politics/the-obama-speeches/">A More Perfect Union</a>” speech on race where Obama famously compared his white grandmother’s fear of black men to Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s indictment of white America for its systemic racism, using his biography as a bridge between the two. </p>
<p>Similarly, in Obama’s farewell address, he urged racial minorities to tie their own struggles to other oppressed groups. Those included “the middle-aged white man who from outside may seem like he’s got all the advantages, but who’s seen his world upended by economic, cultural and technological change.” As he did in 2008, Obama created a false equivalency between whites who feel a sense of disadvantage and those who are truly disadvantaged. </p>
<p>True, working-class white men have seen <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/05/news/economy/working-class-men-income/">their earnings drop</a> since the 1990s, but the unemployment rate for black America is still twice that of white America and has been for the <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/18/obamas-record-on-jobs-versus-five-other-presidents.html">last 40 years</a>. Black people are killed by police at <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303575">three times the rate</a> of white people. No false equivalency between perceived and real disadvantage should mask those realities. </p>
<p>In watching Obama’s speech, I felt what I always feel – conflicted.
On the one hand, he is a gifted intellect and orator, a deeply principled man who carried the office of the President lightly on his shoulders with grace and sometimes deep empathy. Recall his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/arts/obamas-eulogy-which-found-its-place-in-history.html?_r=0">moving eulogy</a> for Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, one of nine killed by racist Dylan Roof, during which Obama sang the opening verse of “Amazing Grace.” </p>
<p>On the other hand, rather than squarely confronting the systemic and deeply embedded racism and state violence that plagues black and brown communities, Obama has too often criticized racism’s victims, rather than its perpetrators. In 2013, he chastised Morehouse graduates for the allegedly unique propensity young black men have to “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/how-the-obama-administration-talks-to-black-america/276015/">make bad choices</a>.” He has been too quick to appease conservative whites and chastise black activists – most recently, the Black Lives Matter Movement – for not acknowledging the racial progress that has been made. </p>
<p>As we enter <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-voting-rights-act_us_587520a2e4b099cdb0ffc2c1">the Trump era</a> with a white supremacist chief strategist and an Attorney General nominee who thinks the Voting Rights Act is “intrusive,” I think we need a full-throated rebuttal to the nativism, Islamophobia, racism and misogyny that characterized the president-elect’s campaign. </p>
<p>Instead, Obama counseled his audience to “presume” a “reservoir of goodness in others,” words that ring hollow in this political climate. While Obama asked the American people to “lace up their shoes” and organize, he didn’t do the same. Instead, he praised the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, to whom the nativism and racism on display during the presidential campaign would have been familiar. He resorted to tired comparisons of inner cities and rural communities, missing an opportunity to organize his supporters, most of whom are not in rural America, for four years of resistance. </p>
<p>Glossing over the hard battles ahead, Obama’s farewell address seemed like a preview of the 2020 Democratic appeal to white workers. It was not a sorely needed battle cry to his black, brown, Asian and white liberal base. As he often did during his presidency, Obama missed an opportunity to swing for the fences, preferring instead to hit a line drive down the middle of our racially divided democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cynthia A. Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The nation needed a full-throated rebuttal to the nativism, racism and misogyny that characterized the president-elect’s campaign. Obama failed to deliver.
Cynthia A. Young, Department Head and Associate Professor of African American Studies, Penn State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68655
2016-12-02T07:06:49Z
2016-12-02T07:06:49Z
From Paraguay, a history lesson on racial equality
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147079/original/image-20161122-10997-llxh0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An 18th-century painting shows an indigenous woman with her Spanish husband and their child. The plaque reads: 'From a Spaniard and an Indian is produced a mestizo.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Mestizo.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Any notion that the United States had become “post-racial” ended when Donald Trump, who as a candidate <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/opinion/trump-makes-his-birther-lie-worse.html">questioned president Barack Obama’s citizenship</a> and employed <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-racial-rhetoric-crime-puts-him-political-bind-n651886">heated racial rhetoric</a>, was elected to succeed the country’s first black president.</p>
<p>As North American social issues often do, the debate on race and equality is has an echo in Latin America. Mexican historian Enrique Krauze <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/opinion/enrique-krauze-latin-americas-talent-for-tolerance.html?_r=0">recently praised</a> Latin America’s “talent for tolerance” in the New York Times, noting that, as early as 1858, Mexico elected an indigenous president (<a href="http://www.biography.com/people/benito-ju%C3%A1rez-39733">Benito Juárez</a>). Since then, 33 of the country’s 36 presidents have been <em>mestizos</em> – that is, in Latin American parlance, someone of mixed race. </p>
<p>As a South American historian, this moment has also caused me to reflect on my region’s own imperfect racial history. There’s one unusual and controversial moment that, I hope, may prove enlightening: the time Paraguay made it <a href="http://www.tierraviva.org.py/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Digesto_Normativo_sobre_Pueblos_Indigenas_en_el_Paraguay_1811-20031.pdf">illegal</a> for some people to marry within their race. </p>
<h2>Paraguayan exceptionalism</h2>
<p>It was March 1 1814, and <a href="http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/paraguay/francia.htm">José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia</a>, was about to become “Supreme Dictator”, a title he would hold until his death in 1840.</p>
<p>Many credit Francia with modern Paraguay’s pluriethnic, plurilingual, and multicultural society. He remains a mysterious figure, who had a doctorate in theology but in politics behaved as a <a href="https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/kat_anna/jacobins.html">French Jacobin</a>. Running an austere and orderly iron-fisted government, Francia secured Paraguayan independence by isolating his nation from the outside world.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147077/original/image-20161122-11012-1cn26ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147077/original/image-20161122-11012-1cn26ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147077/original/image-20161122-11012-1cn26ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147077/original/image-20161122-11012-1cn26ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147077/original/image-20161122-11012-1cn26ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147077/original/image-20161122-11012-1cn26ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147077/original/image-20161122-11012-1cn26ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Francia was Paraguay’s ‘Supreme Dictator’ from 1814 to 1840.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Gaspar_Francia_(La_Plata,_the_Argentine_Confederation,_and_Paraguay).jpg">Thomas Jefferson Page/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1814, Francia issued a <a href="http://www.tierraviva.org.py/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Digesto_Normativo_sobre_Pueblos_Indigenas_en_el_Paraguay_1811-20031.pdf">decree</a> forbidding marriages between “European men” (namely, Spaniards) and women “known as Spanish” (born in Spain or of Spanish descent). European men would only be allowed to marry indigenous, mixed-race or black Paraguayan women. </p>
<p>By preventing the white elite from reproducing, Francia’s decree had the undeniable potential to allow the newly independent Paraguay to rise as a mixed-race nation. </p>
<h2>Racial justice or political manoeuvring</h2>
<p>But was that Francia’s intent? Scholars differ on the reasoning behind his law, which is unique in all Latin American, if not in world, history. </p>
<p><a href="http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/otros/20130529043420/critica5.pdf">Sergio Guerra Vilaboy</a> sees it as an economic effort, noting that in newly post-colonial Paraguay, Europeans still held a prominent position. By curbing their power, Francia dealt “a hard blow to the old trade oligarchy of [the capital] Asunción”, allowing other social classes to thrive. </p>
<p>For <a href="https://books.google.com.uy/books?id=-Qd3AAAAMAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions">Julio César Chaves</a>, the 1814 marriage decree aimed to reduce the political threat posed by royalist Spaniards in Paraguay, and it was one of many such provisions. In addition to forbidding Europeans to wed Europeans, Francia also confiscated royal and church lands and gave them to indigenous peasants as “state ranches”. In return, they served as soldiers loyal to the Supreme Dictator; no one was allowed to hold a rank above captain.</p>
<p>According to historian <a href="https://books.google.com.uy/books/about/Paraguay_s_Autonomous_Revolution_1810_18.html?id=WNYrAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">Richard Alan White</a>, all this added up to the “first autonomous revolution in the Americas”: Francia launched a successful program of economic development without any foreign financing. </p>
<p>An alternative interpretation of the 1814 marriage decree is that it was about equality – just not racial equality. </p>
<p>Over the course of his reign, as historian <a href="https://books.google.com.uy/books/about/The_Poverty_of_Progress.html?id=H-GV_4ysCSUC&redir_esc=y">E. Bradford Burns</a> chronicles, Francia sought to increase Paraguayan egalitarianism. He abolished taxes paid to the Catholic Church, established religious freedom, and organised a free elementary educational system that reached a majority of even indigenous populations. </p>
<p>By 1840, Paraguay had emerged as “the most egalitarian society yet known in the Western Hemisphere”, Burns says. </p>
<h2>Exceptional, yes – but since when?</h2>
<p>Intent aside, the 1814 decree did cause the extinction of Spanish Europeans as an ethnic group in Paraguay. </p>
<p>In that effort, Francia was building on Paraguayan initiatives to eliminate racial difference <a href="http://www.nhanduti.com/Libros.PY.PT/Tiempo%20de%20Historia.PT/Jornadas%20de%20H.%20del%20Paraguay%20%28II%29%20-%20Montevideo/Jornadas.%20Paraguay.%20Montevideo.II.html">that already dated back to colonial times</a>. Because virtually no European women accompanied the Spanish conquistadors and settlers who arrived in Paraguay from 1540 to 1550, all took native <a href="http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/Ling450ch/reports/Guarani1.html">Guaraní</a> women as wives. </p>
<p>A century later, in 1662, local authorities requested a royal proviso to categorise their mixed-race descendants as legitimate American-born Spaniards. Succeeding generations, also classified as Spaniards, were granted the same privileges as European-born Spaniards. </p>
<p>For <a href="http://www.nhanduti.com/Libros.PY.PT/Tiempo%20de%20Historia.PT/Jornadas%20de%20H.%20del%20Paraguay%20%28II%29%20-%20Montevideo/Jornadas.%20Paraguay.%20Montevideo.II.html">American scholar Jerry Cooney</a>, it’s this proviso, which was also unprecedented and unequalled in the Spanish Empire, that prompted Paraguayan exceptionalism. </p>
<p>Francia’s decree 150 years later, was just another “step towards the creation of a homogeneous Paraguayan society”. By 1800, well before the Supreme Dictator, “Spanish mestizos” comprised almost 60% of Paraguay’s population and had become the new upper and middle classes. </p>
<p>Thus in Paraguay’s early period, there had long been a considerable degree of racial equality, especially compared to neighbours such as Brazil or the then-United Provinces (Argentina). </p>
<h2>Mestizo but not post-racial</h2>
<p>But equality only held for the mestizo ruling classes. Spanish law never allowed members of the mestizo majority to marry minority black or mixed-race Afrodescendant people, though they could occasionally wed indigenous people. </p>
<p>As a result, a significant divide was maintained between the ruling mestizo elite and minority populations of black, mixed-race Afrodescendant and some nomadic or un-assimilated indigenous tribes.</p>
<p>Francia never questioned these principles on a moral basis. On balance, his regime consolidated the political hegemony of the mestizo class, with policies such as land redistribution and universal education also benefiting large indigenous groups. But black, mixed-race people and certain nomadic native tribes were left out of the equation. </p>
<p>It is difficult to evaluate whether Francia’s marriage decree has had an impact on present-day Paraguay. On the one hand, it quickly <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1008321?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">fell into disuse after his death</a> and nearly all of Paraguay’s male population was annihilated in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-the-Triple-Alliance">War of the Triple Alliance</a> (1864-1870). On the other, today Paraguay proudly considers itself a mestizo nation, with Francia as its founder. </p>
<p>What can this slice of history offer modern readers? For me, it reiterates the fact that “post-racial” does not exist. The recent US election disappointingly proved that racial intolerance (alongside gender prejudice) remains very present.</p>
<p>Similarly, after Francia’s reign, <a href="https://books.google.com.uy/books?id=DdQZAAAAYAAJ&dq=The%20Stroessner%20Regime%20and%20Indigenous%20Resistance%20in%20Paraguay%20Ren%C3%A9%20Harder%20Horst&source=gbs_similarbooks">oligarchic governments</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com.uy/books?id=tAzaRAAACAAJ&dq=The+Stroessner+Regime+and+Indigenous+Resistance+in+Paraguay+Ren%C3%A9+Harder+Horst&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">military dictatorships</a> introduced new forms of racism and intolerance to Paraguay. Today, indigenous peoples still suffer <a href="http://unsr.vtaulicorpuz.org/site/index.php/documents/country-reports/84-report-paraguay">discrimination</a>. </p>
<p>Americans and the world saw the Obama years as the embodiment of social progress. But, as Paraguay’s exceptionalist period reveals, progress is complex, and it can quickly be undone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Juan Manuel Casal receives funding from Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación (ANII, Uruguay). </span></em></p>
The strange and enlightening tale of a South American dictator who tried to prevent white people from marrying other white people.
Juan Manuel Casal, Professor, University of Montevideo
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69593
2016-12-01T15:41:15Z
2016-12-01T15:41:15Z
Can South Africans be friends across ‘racial’ boundaries? Yes and no.
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148081/original/image-20161130-17056-1v1bhui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African students have been at the forefront of activism especially over the past two years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Now that the season of realpolitik is upon us in South Africa and the rainbow nation <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/opinion/the-end-of-the-rainbow-nation-myth.html?_r=0&mtrref=int.search.myway.com&gwh=342D20F339E69E220BF313C7FFFA3C89&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion">myth</a> is receding we must ask ourselves whether we still need a framework of reconciliation that presupposes friendship across the races as an important and useful barometer of the health of the nation.</p>
<p>Some will argue that the question of friendship is frivolous. They will say we must be more concerned with matters of politics and economics than of emotion, and that we don’t need to be friends; we simply need not to interfere with one another’s destinies. Others will insist that we must indeed be friends. They will wring their hands and argue that to abandon the idea of friendship is to abandon an important national ideal and perhaps to abandon a peaceful future.</p>
<p>Perhaps counter-intuitively we must hold on to both instincts. On the one hand, our progress in improving the conditions of black people must be central and must be guided not by a desire for blacks and whites to be friends, but by the need for black people to live dignified and equal lives that are commensurate with those of their white compatriots. </p>
<p>In defence of this, we must be prepared to alienate whites (and for that matter blacks) who do not accept this as a fundamental reality. We must accept that they might leave and seek their fortunes elsewhere and this must not concern us.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we must accept that although the notion of interracial friendship has sometimes threatened to overshadow the importance of black dignity, it is crucial that we keep its possibility alive. This, even as we tend to the more urgent matters of preserving and elevating the meaning of black personhood because this is the basis upon which a genuine and robust culture of respect in contemporary South Africa will be built.</p>
<h2>Interracial respect</h2>
<p>To even begin to talk about interracial respect in modern South Africa is difficult because so much unintentional damage was done by our country’s first iteration of reconciliation; what I refer to as Reconciliation 1.0. There were many laws in that first version. </p>
<p>Yet in light of palpable anger and discord on <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-01-14-racism-is-so-much-more-than-words">race</a> in recent years, we have a new opportunity to develop a more honest code: call it the open source version. Indeed the seeds of this are evident in the activism that swept our country in 2015. South African students are at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/feesmustfall-21801">forefront</a> of designing the upgrade, and the next generation will owe them a debt of gratitude.</p>
<p>Ironically, perhaps, in thinking about how we deepen this new code we must stretch our minds back to ancient times, to the Greeks, to Aristotle in particular. For Aristotle, <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/love/">philia</a> was the most perfect form of friendship. The great philosopher suggested that there are three kinds of friendship: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>friendships of convenience, where the parties interact, for example, in order to do business or <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/business/trends/empowerment/bee.htm#.WD6KEbJ97IU">Black Economic Empowerment</a> deals; </p></li>
<li><p>friendships of pleasure, where if the pleasurable thing, say drinking or smoking crack, disappeared, then the friendship would too; and</p></li>
<li><p>friendships of character, in which “one spends a great deal of time with the other person, participating in joint activities and engaging in mutually beneficial behaviour”.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In this view: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Between friends there is no need for justice, but people who are just still need the quality of friendship; and indeed friendliness is considered to be justice in the fullest sense.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words Aristotle argued that between real friends, there is seldom need for the interventions of outsiders; justice is made possible by the nature and depth of the relationship. In short, where there is trust, there is no need for strongly enforced rules. By extension then, those who consider themselves to be good and moral cannot be truly good or moral if they do not have the “friends” to prove it.</p>
<h2>Millions of black potential “friends”</h2>
<p>For the white South African, who is surrounded by millions of black potential “friends”, the implied question in Aristotle’s framing of the relationship between friendship and justice is, “Are you just?”</p>
<p>Because of our history, this moral and practical question is especially directed at white people. Friendship should and must be of great ethical and philosophical concern for whites. In general, white people in this country should worry and be pained by this matter in ways that black people need not be, for obvious reasons of demography and history.</p>
<p>If we are to replace the distorted and falsely optimistic vision of the rainbow with a more honest but no less aspirational vision of dignity and respect, whites will need to give up their ideological and practical specialness. They will also have to reject the increasingly irrelevant, weepy, and unhelpful mythology of “Rainbowism”. Those who are truly invested in the future of this country will also have to stop hiding behind their emotions and their tears whenever the subject of race comes up.</p>
<p>One of the tenets of the rainbow era was that those of us who extended our hands across the racial divides were thwarting racism. If the racist hates it when children play together, then surely those of us who encourage our children to interact are not racist?</p>
<p>Unfortunately it is not so simple. Friendships involving people who are more powerful than us have seldom served black people well. The power imbalances are too great, the possibilities for manipulation and domination even by those with good intentions are simply too high to assume that light friendship is the answer.</p>
<h2>Friendship is not free of responsibility</h2>
<p>Today, a generation into democracy, young black people raised to believe that friendship across the races is an indicator of progress are questioning this. They are asserting that friendship, if you want it, is not free of responsibility. Some of them are going further to say that friendship is simply not on the cards for them.</p>
<p>In a South Africa trying desperately to figure out a way forward these assertions are not easy to speak aloud. Yet they represent a recalibration of our aspirations. Some people are worried by this: They are scared of what they call “separatism”.</p>
<p>I am not, mainly because this sort of robust honesty does not mean that we have abandoned the idea that “race” is an empty construct that should neither bind nor divide anyone. We can both believe in the need for a just world in which race is meaningless, and accept that in this time and place, “race” is a term that is bursting with meaning.</p>
<p>Can we be friends across these “racial” boundaries? Yes, we can. And no, we cannot. It’s that simple and that complex. It is the struggle for understanding the complexity of this paradox that must enthuse and inspire us.</p>
<p><em>This was originally published as the Ruth First Memorial Lecture in 2015 and is an edited extract from “Ties that Bind: Race and the Politics of Friendship in South Africa” (Wits University Press), edited by Shannon Walsh & Jon Soske</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69593/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sisonke Msimang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Young black South Africans have been raised to believe that friendship across the races is an indicator of progress. Now, a generation into democracy, they are questioning this.
Sisonke Msimang, Ruth First Fellow, Journalism, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.