tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/w-e-b-du-bois-24745/articlesW.E.B. Du Bois – The Conversation2023-09-18T12:20:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2110112023-09-18T12:20:58Z2023-09-18T12:20:58ZWhat are the liberal arts? A literature scholar explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548349/original/file-20230914-29-irzrgz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1540%2C1001&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cicero defined 'liberal arts' in a book he wrote about rhetoric in a republic. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/cicero-royalty-free-image/157165581?adppopup=true">ra-photos/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The term “liberal arts” is one of the most misunderstood terms in the public discourse on higher education today. A higher education expert <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/25/liberal-education-advocates-discuss-ways-reclaim-conversations-about-academe">once said</a> that putting the words “liberal” and “arts” together was a “<a href="https://www.gallup.com/education/231746/higher-education-drop-term-liberal-arts.aspx">branding disaster</a>” – one so toxic that it was undermining public support for higher education. To break down the meaning and origin of the term, The Conversation reached out to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PAm7pfgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Blaine Greteman</a>, a professor of English, who looks at how the term emerged in ancient times.</em></p>
<h2>What does the term mean?</h2>
<p>Contrary to how it might sound, “liberal” in the phrase “liberal arts” has nothing to do with political liberalism. And the “arts” part is not really about the arts as most people understand them, such as painting, dancing and the like.</p>
<p>The “liberal” in “liberal arts” derives from the Latin “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dliberalis1">liberalis,</a>” meaning “free.” “Arts” comes from Latin “ars”, for “knowledge” or “skill.” The word “artifact” has the same root: something made by human skill or knowledge. “Liberal arts,” in this sense, is education that equips a person for life as a free citizen. </p>
<p>That was how the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero meant it 2,000 years ago when he became the first on record to refer to a “liberal arts” education. Cicero did this in “<a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0683%3Abook%3D1%3Asection%3D35">De Inventione</a>,” an influential handbook on rhetoric written around 90 B.C. Cicero composed the book as a young man considering the role that public speaking served in the life of a republic.</p>
<p>In his later and more comprehensive work, “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0120%3Abook%3D1%3Asection%3D17">De Oratore</a>,” Cicero explained that the full liberal arts education will equip students with a deep understanding of human emotion, skills in literary expression and a “comprehensive knowledge of things,” or “scientia comprehendenda rerum plurimarum.” This is the “education befitting a free person,” or “eruditio libero digna.”</p>
<p>It’s easy to get bogged down in what exactly that comprehensive or universal education entailed for Cicero or his followers in the Renaissance. But “liberal arts” for Cicero didn’t mean some subject, like “art” or “English,” so much as it meant a broad, general education.</p>
<p>Classically, meaning from the ancient Roman educational system up through the 1800s, when the Victorians began to reform education as practical training for the masses, students would pursue the “trivium” – grammar, logic and rhetoric – before continuing to the “quadrivium” – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. But to get hung up on where painting, ballet or history fits into this scheme kind of misses the point.</p>
<p>“Liberal arts” really means education that is broad, and not strictly vocational, in that it gives you the ability to exercise free choice as a citizen and thinker. A course in philosophy or history will improve a student’s communication skills in ways that will ultimately help them find a job, but the core purpose of the class is to study deeper lessons of the self or the past. That’s very different from the way a course in electrical engineering might cultivate skills students will use in a career designing circuits.</p>
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<img alt="Author, sociologist, historian and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois poses for a portrait in a study room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542666/original/file-20230814-25671-qtkqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542666/original/file-20230814-25671-qtkqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542666/original/file-20230814-25671-qtkqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542666/original/file-20230814-25671-qtkqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542666/original/file-20230814-25671-qtkqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542666/original/file-20230814-25671-qtkqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542666/original/file-20230814-25671-qtkqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Historian W.E.B. Du Bois advocated for the liberal arts in his 1903 book ‘The Souls of Black Folk.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/author-sociologist-historian-and-civil-rights-activist-w-e-news-photo/538843974?adppopup=true">David Attie/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Why does studying the liberal arts matter?</h2>
<p>True freedom, as I see it, is the ability to choose wisely between arguments and theories about how the world works and understand how language can manipulate or elevate us. This is why 17th-century English poet and revolutionary John Milton focused his <a href="https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/areopagitica/text.html">foundational anti-censorship text, “Areopagitica,”</a> on the civic value of the liberal arts. “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties,” Milton wrote. </p>
<p>One of the greatest defenses of the liberal arts in America was written just 37 years after the Civil War by W.E.B. Du Bois. “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm">The Souls of Black Folk</a>” is probably best known today as a groundbreaking work of sociology.</p>
<p>Du Bois also insisted that without access to a complete and comprehensive liberal arts education, Black Americans can never truly be free. To the question, “Shall we teach them trades or train them in liberal arts?” Du Bois answered, “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm">Both</a>.” But he maintained that liberal arts must always be the foundation, because “to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold.”</p>
<p>He was concerned that Booker T. Washington’s “unnecessarily narrow” emphasis on vocational education might come at the expense of this broader education in the arts of freedom. For his part, Washington <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1903/10/the-fruits-of-industrial-training/531030/">felt</a> that inspiration, ideals and “dead languages” were less important than learning “how to apply the knowledge of chemistry to the enrichment of the soil, or to cooking, or to dairying.”</p>
<h2>Are the liberal arts a luxury?</h2>
<p>A similar debate is playing out today in places like West Virginia University. The state’s government and university leadership <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/west-virginia-university-crisis-looms-gop-leaders-focus-102910130">announced in August 2023</a> plans to cut 32 programs, including its entire Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics.</p>
<p>Many faculty and students protest that this move sacrifices a broad civic education and equates a college education with job training.</p>
<p>The governor, university president and legislature have argued that the university’s offerings <a href="https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2023/09/11/gee-addresses-misrepresentations-of-wvu-transformation-work-during-faculty-senate-meeting">“must align majors with future careers.</a>”</p>
<p>Republican Eric Tarr, state Senate finance chair in West Virginia, <a href="https://wvrecord.com/stories/649159606-tarr-west-virginia-doesn-t-need-any-guidance-from-the-aft">explained in an opinion piece</a> written for the West Virginia Record that the goal of the budget decisions is to “provide degrees that lead to jobs.” In other words, to train workers to work, rather than educating citizens in what Du Bois and Cicero would have called “the knowledge of being free.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blaine Greteman 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>When people hear the term ‘liberal arts,’ it may sound like a phrase with political overtones. A scholar of literature explains why that’s wrong and takes a closer look at its origin and meaning.Blaine Greteman, Professor and Chair of English, University of IowaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1992322023-02-07T13:30:39Z2023-02-07T13:30:39ZW.E.B. Du Bois, Black History Month and the importance of African American studies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508198/original/file-20230205-15-zit4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C124%2C4094%2C3225&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scholar-activist W.E.B. DuBois in 1946.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/william-e-b-dubois-sociologist-scholar-and-cofounder-of-the-news-photo/159788642">Underwood Archives/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The opening days of Black History Month 2023 have coincided with controversy about the teaching and broader meaning of African American studies. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/01/1153434464/college-boards-revised-ap-african-american-studies-course-draws-new-criticism">On Feb. 1, 2023</a>, the College Board released a revised curriculum for its newly developed Advanced Placement African American studies course.</p>
<p>Critics have accused the College Board of caving to political pressure stemming from conservative backlash and the decision of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150259944/florida-rejects-ap-class-african-american-studies">ban the course</a> from public high schools in Florida because of what he characterized as its radical content and inclusion of topics such as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-critical-race-theory.html">critical race theory</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/879041052/william-darity-jr-discusses-reparations-racial-equality-in-his-new-book">reparations</a> and the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> movement. </p>
<p>On Feb. 11, 1951, an article by the 82-year-old Black scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois titled “<a href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b210-i014">Negro History Week</a>” appeared in the short-lived New York newspaper The Daily Compass. </p>
<p>As one of the founders of the NAACP in 1909 and the editor of its powerful magazine <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-crisis">The Crisis</a>, Du Bois is considered by historians and intellectuals from many academic disciplines as America’s <a href="https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/815-turning-high-fashion-into-politics-henry-louis-gates-jr-on-web-du-bois-and-the-new-negro-movement-of-1900">preeminent thinker on race</a>. His thoughts and opinions still carry weight throughout the world. </p>
<p>Du Bois’ words in that 1951 article are especially prescient today, offering a reminder about the importance of Black History Month and what is at stake in current conversations about African American studies. </p>
<p>Du Bois began his Daily Compass commentary by praising <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fugitive_Pedagogy/dnUZEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=carter+g+woodson&printsec=frontcover">Carter G. Woodson</a>, founder of the <a href="https://asalh.org/">Association for the Study of Negro Life and History</a>, who established Negro History Week in 1926. The week would eventually become Black History Month.</p>
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<img alt="An elderly black man dressed in a dark business suit poses for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Black historian Carter G. Woodson in 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2016/02/lcm-trending-african-american-history-month/carterwoodson/">Library of Congress</a></span>
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<p>Du Bois described the annual commemoration as Woodson’s “crowning achievement.” </p>
<p>Woodson was <a href="https://www.nps.gov/cawo/learn/carter-g-woodson-biography.htm">the second African American</a> to earn a doctorate in history from Harvard University. <a href="https://guides.library.harvard.edu/hua/dubois">Du Bois was the first</a>.</p>
<p>Du Bois and Woodson did not always see eye to eye. However, as <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=7f443ffde35747ba69faca210faff07145fab78c">I explore</a> in my new book, “<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374293154/the-wounded-world">The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War</a>,” the two pioneering scholars always respected each other.</p>
<h2>Reckoning with history and reclaiming the past</h2>
<p>Du Bois’ connection to and appreciation of Negro History Week grew during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/w-e-b-du-bois-and-black-history-month/">During this time</a>, whether in public speeches or published articles, he never missed an opportunity to acknowledge the importance of Negro History Week. </p>
<p>In the Feb. 11, 1951, article, Du Bois reflected that his own contributions to Negro History Week “lay in my long effort as a historian and sociologist to make America and Negroes themselves aware of the significant facts of Negro history.” </p>
<p>Summarizing his work from his first book, “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Suppression_of_the_African_Slave_tra/04mJJlND1ccC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade</a>,” published in 1896, through his magnum opus “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Black_Reconstruction_in_America_1860_188/Nt5mglDCNHEC?hl=en">Black Reconstruction in America</a>,” published in 1935, Du Bois told readers of the Daily Compass piece that much of his career was spent trying “to correct the distortion of history in regard to Negro enfranchisement.”</p>
<p>By doing so, the nation would hopefully become, Du Bois wrote further, “conscious that this part of our citizenry were normal human beings who had served the nation credibly and were still being deprived of their credit by ignorant and prejudiced historians.”</p>
<p>In addition to championing Negro History Week, Du Bois applauded other Black scholars, like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/E-Franklin-Frazier">E. Franklin Frazier</a>, <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2015/02/11/black-history-month-charles-s-johnson-scholar-race-relations/23256961/">Charles Johnson</a> and <a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/schlesinger-library/collections/shirley-graham-du-bois">Shirley Graham</a>, who were “steadily attacking” the omissions and distortions of Black people in school textbooks. </p>
<p>Du Bois went on to chronicle the achievements of African Americans in science, religion, art, literature and the military, making clear that Black people had a history to be proud of.</p>
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<img alt="A group of black men, women and children are marching on a street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois, third from right in the second row, joins other marchers in New York protesting against racism on July 28, 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/prominent-african-americans-residents-of-the-city-paraded-news-photo/530843082?phrase=web%20du%20bois&adppopup=true">George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Du Bois, however, questioned what deeper meaning these achievements held to the issues facing Black people in the present.</p>
<p>“What now does Negro History Week stand for?” he asked in the 1951 article. “Shall American Negroes continue to learn to be ‘proud’ of themselves, or is there a higher broader aim for their research and study?”</p>
<p>“In other words,” he asserted, “as it becomes more universally known what Negroes contributed to America in the past, more must logically be said and taught concerning the future.”</p>
<p>The time had come, Du Bois believed, for African Americans to stop striving to be merely “the equal of white Americans.”</p>
<p>Black people needed to cease emulating the worst traits of America – flamboyance, individualism, greed and financial success at any cost – and support <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/web-du-bois">labor unions</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3041154">Pan-Africanism</a> and <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois">anti-colonial struggle</a>. </p>
<p>He especially encouraged the systematic study of the imperial and economic roots of racism: “Here is a field for Negro History Week.”</p>
<h2>Black history and Black struggle</h2>
<p>Looking ahead, Du Bois declared that if Negro History Week remained “true to the ideals of Carter Woodson” and followed “the logical development of the Negro Race in America,” it would not confine itself to the study of the past nor “boasting and vainglory over what we have accomplished.” </p>
<p>“It will not mistake wealth as the measure of America, nor big-business and noise as World Domination,” Du Bois wrote in his article.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Under a large headline that reads The Shame of America, a newspaper advertisement lists a number of lynchings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&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">In 1922, the NAACP ran a series of full-page ads in The New York Times calling attention to lynchings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6786">New York Times, Nov. 23, 1922/American Social History Project</a></span>
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<p>Instead, Du Bois believed Negro History Week would “concentrate on study of the present,” “not be afraid of radical literature” and, above all else, advocate for peace and voice “eternal opposition against war between the white and colored peoples of the earth.” </p>
<p>Were he alive today, Du Bois would certainly have much to say about current debates around the teaching of African American history and the larger significance of African American studies. <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05/specials/dubois-obit.html">Du Bois died</a> on Aug. 27, 1963, in Accra, Ghana. </p>
<p>But he left behind his clairvoyant words that remind us of the connections between African American studies and movements for Black liberation, along with how the teaching of African American history has always challenged racist and exclusionary narratives of the nation’s past. </p>
<p>Du Bois also reminds us that Black History Month is rooted in a legacy of activism and resistance, one that continues in the present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Williams 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>As the 20th century’s preeminent scholar-activist on race, W.E.B. Du Bois would not be surprised by modern-day attempts at whitewashing American history. He saw them in 1930s and 1940s.Chad Williams, Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1904862022-09-15T12:18:39Z2022-09-15T12:18:39ZUS is becoming a ‘developing country’ on global rankings that measure democracy, inequality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484375/original/file-20220913-4673-1pyfbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C43%2C4785%2C2687&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People wait in line for a free morning meal in Los Angeles in April 2020. High and rising inequality is one reason the U.S. ranks badly on some international measures of development.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/homeless-people-wait-in-line-for-a-morning-meal-at-the-fred-news-photo/1210677779?adppopup=true">Frederic J. Brown/ AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United States may regard itself as a “<a href="https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Exceptionalism-The-leader-of-the-free-world.html">leader of the free world</a>,” but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list. </p>
<p>In its global rankings, the United Nations Office of Sustainable Development dropped the U.S. to <a href="https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings">41st worldwide</a>, down from its previous ranking of 32nd. Under this methodology – an expansive model of 17 categories, or “goals,” many of them focused on the environment and equity – the U.S. ranks between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries.</p>
<p>The U.S. is also now considered a “flawed democracy,” according to <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy">The Economist’s democracy index</a>.</p>
<p>As a political historian who studies U.S. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-frydl-0406b21a5/">institutional development</a>, I recognize these dismal ratings as the inevitable result of two problems. Racism has cheated many Americans out of the health care, education, economic security and environment they deserve. At the same time, as threats to democracy become more serious, a devotion to “American exceptionalism” keeps the country from candid appraisals and course corrections.</p>
<h2>‘The other America’</h2>
<p>The Office of Sustainable Development’s rankings differ from more traditional development measures in that they are more focused on the experiences of ordinary people, including their ability to enjoy clean air and water, than the creation of wealth. </p>
<p>So while the gigantic size of the American economy counts in its scoring, so too does unequal access to the wealth it produces. When judged by accepted measures like the <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=US">Gini coefficient</a>, income inequality in the U.S. has risen markedly over the past 30 years. By the <a href="https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm">Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s measurement</a>, the U.S. has the biggest wealth gap among G-7 nations.</p>
<p>These results reflect structural disparities in the United States, which are most pronounced for African Americans. Such differences have persisted well beyond the demise of chattel slavery and the repeal of Jim Crow laws.</p>
<p>Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois first exposed this kind of structural inequality in his 1899 analysis of Black life in the urban north, “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhpfb">The Philadelphia Negro</a>.” Though he noted distinctions of affluence and status within Black society, Du Bois found the lives of African Americans to be a world apart from white residents: a “city within a city.” Du Bois traced the high rates of poverty, crime and illiteracy prevalent in Philadelphia’s Black community to discrimination, divestment and residential segregation – not to Black people’s degree of ambition or talent.</p>
<p>More than a half-century later, with characteristic eloquence, Martin Luther King Jr. <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/the-other-america-speech-transcript-martin-luther-king-jr">similarly decried</a> the persistence of the “other America,” one where “the buoyancy of hope” was transformed into “the fatigue of despair.” </p>
<p>To illustrate his point, King referred to many of the same factors studied by Du Bois: the condition of housing and household wealth, education, social mobility and literacy rates, health outcomes and employment. On all of these metrics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-americans-mostly-left-behind-by-progress-since-dr-kings-death-89956">Black Americans fared worse</a> than whites. But as King noted, “Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America.”</p>
<p>The benchmarks of development invoked by these men also featured prominently in the 1962 book “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Other-America/Michael-Harrington/9780684826783">The Other America</a>,” by political scientist <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-socialism-stopped-being-a-dirty-word-for-some-voters-and-started-winning-elections-across-america-156572">Michael Harrington, founder</a> of a group that eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington’s work so unsettled President John F. Kennedy that it reportedly <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-a-new-yorker-article-launched-the-first-shot-in-the-war-against-poverty-17469990/">galvanized him</a> into formulating a “war on poverty.” </p>
<p>Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, waged this metaphorical war. But poverty <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/poverty-and-place">bound to discrete places</a>. Rural areas and segregated neighborhoods stayed poor well beyond mid-20th-century federal efforts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Tents line a leafy park; some people can be seen chatting outside one tent" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C19%2C4275%2C2824&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484374/original/file-20220913-4701-2mulzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Camp Laykay Nou, a homeless encampment in Philadelphia. High and rising inequality is one reason the US rates badly on some international development rankings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/camp-laykay-nou-celebrated-a-stay-in-the-city-of-news-photo/1227676000?adppopup=true">Cory Clark/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In large part that is because federal efforts during that critical time accommodated rather than confronted the forces of racism, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/american-history-after-1945/gi-bill?format=HB&isbn=9780521514248">according to my research</a>. </p>
<p>Across a number of policy domains, the sustained efforts of segregationist Democrats in Congress resulted in an incomplete and patchwork system of social policy. Democrats from the South cooperated with Republicans to doom to failure efforts to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/universal-health-care-racism.html">achieve universal</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-fight-for-health-care-is-really-all-about-civil-rights/531855/">health care</a> or <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/06/07/big-business-and-white-supremacy-the-racist-roots-of-americas-right-to-work-laws/">unionized workforces</a>. Rejecting proposals for strong federal intervention, they left a checkered legacy of <a href="https://www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/04/conversation-jim-crow.php#.YyHMrOzMK8p">local funding for education</a> and <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01466">public health</a>. </p>
<p>Today, many years later, the effects of a welfare state tailored to racism is evident — though perhaps less visibly so — in the inadequate <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00081-3/fulltext">health policies</a> driving a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm">shocking decline</a> in average American life expectancy.</p>
<h2>Declining democracy</h2>
<p>There are other ways to measure a country’s level of development, and on some of them the U.S. fares better. </p>
<p>The U.S. currently ranks 21st on <a href="https://hdr.undp.org/">the United Nations Development Program’s index</a>, which measures fewer factors than the sustainable development index. Good results in average income per person – $64,765 – and an average 13.7 years of schooling situate the United States squarely in the developed world.</p>
<p>Its ranking suffers, however, on appraisals that place greater weight on political systems. </p>
<p>The Economist’s <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy">democracy index</a> now groups the U.S. among “flawed democracies,” with an overall score that ranks between Estonia and Chile. It falls short of being a top-rated “full democracy” in large part because of a fractured political culture. This growing divide is most apparent in the divergent paths between “red” and “blue” states.</p>
<p>Although the analysts from The Economist applaud the peaceful transfer of power in the face of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sore-loser-effect-rejecting-election-results-can-destabilize-democracy-and-drive-terrorism-171571">insurrection intended to disrupt</a> it, <a href="https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021/?utm_source=economist&utm_medium=daily_chart&utm_campaign=democracy-index-2021">their report laments</a> that, according to a January 2022 poll, “only 55% of Americans believe that Mr. Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/us/politics/america-first-secretary-of-state-candidates.html">Election denialism carries with it the threat</a> that election officials in Republican-controlled jurisdictions will reject or alter vote tallies that do not favor the Republican Party in upcoming elections, further jeopardizing the score of the U.S. on the democracy index. </p>
<p>Red and blue America also differ on access to modern reproductive care for women. This hurts the U.S. gender equality rating, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2015/10/onward-2030-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights-context-sustainable-development">one aspect</a> of the United Nations’ sustainable development index.</p>
<p>Since the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1102305878/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade-decision-overturn">Supreme Court overturned</a> Roe v. Wade, Republican-controlled states have enacted or proposed grossly <a href="https://today.westlaw.com/Document/I1ebf6cf01a6a11ed9f24ec7b211d8087/View/FullText.html%22%22">restrictive</a> <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy">abortion laws</a>, to the point of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/us/abortion-bans-medical-care-women.html">endangering a woman’s health</a>. </p>
<p>I believe that, when paired with structural inequalities and fractured social policy, the dwindling Republican commitment to democracy lends weight to the classification of the U.S. as a developing country.</p>
<h2>American exceptionalism</h2>
<p>To address the poor showing of the United States on a variety of global surveys, one must also contend with the idea of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism/">American exceptionalism</a>, a belief in American superiority over the rest of the world. </p>
<p>Both political parties have long promoted this belief, at home and abroad, but “exceptionalism” receives a more formal treatment from Republicans. It was the first line of the Republican Party’s national platform of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiukdmw2pT6AhU6FVkFHRpPDLUQFnoECAsQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fprod-cdn-static.gop.com%2Fmedia%2Fdocuments%2FDRAFT_12_FINAL%255B1%255D-ben_1468872234.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0ZlBtj2Rrovr9mA9DZJCOy">2016</a> and <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2020">2020</a> (“we believe in American exceptionalism”). And it served as the organizing principle behind Donald Trump’s vow to restore “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/31/trump-patriotic-education-406521">patriotic education</a>” to America’s schools. </p>
<p>In Florida, after <a href="https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/florida-board-of-education-approves-new-curriculum-touting-american-exceptionalism-29639851">lobbying by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis</a>, the state board of education in July 2022 approved standards rooted in American exceptionalism while barring instruction in <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05">critical race theory</a>, an academic framework teaching the kind of structural racism Du Bois exposed long ago.</p>
<p>With a tendency to proclaim excellence rather than pursue it, the peddling of American exceptionalism encourages Americans to maintain a robust sense of national achievement – despite mounting evidence to the contrary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathleen Frydl 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 United States came in 41st worldwide on the UN’s 2022 sustainable development index, down nine spots from last year. A political historian explains the country’s dismal scores.Kathleen Frydl, Sachs Lecturer, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1817422022-05-19T14:22:01Z2022-05-19T14:22:01ZWhiteness is at the heart of racism in Britain – so why is it portrayed as a Black problem?<p>In 2020, <a href="https://chscp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Child-Q-PUBLISHED-14-March-22.pdf">two police officers</a> in Hackney strip-searched a 15-year-old Black girl at her school. Police conducted the search of this child, known as Child Q, without the consent of her parents, without an appropriate adult present (despite this being required by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984), and with the knowledge that she was menstruating. </p>
<p>The subsequent safeguarding review, held in March 2022, concluded that “racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search.”</p>
<p>The fallout from the case of Child Q has followed a script that is all too familiar. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/mar/29/we-must-all-tackle-the-systemic-racism-that-led-to-the-abuse-of-child-q">Anti-racist campaigners</a> have pointed to the incident as further evidence that racism remains a problem in contemporary Britain. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60873858">Teachers</a> at the school in question have expressed shock, reportedly claiming not to have known about the search. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60873858">The Metropolitan Police</a> has put the two officers directly involved on desk duty. </p>
<p>Each narrative, and each response, focuses squarely on Child Q and on the violence she suffered. There is a reason why this all seems so predictable. Discussions of racism in Britain centre around the experiences and traumas of Black people, but rarely on the perpetrators.</p>
<h2>How we talk about racism</h2>
<p>When we talk about incidents of racism, the focus – from both individuals and institutions – is often placed on the victim’s behaviour or background. </p>
<p>British police have routinely justified using stop and search more often against ethnic minority groups by incorrectly <a href="https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/foi-media/metropolitan-police/priorities_and_how_we_are_doing/corporate/frontline-policing---stop-and-search-recommendations">claiming</a> that crime and gang membership among these groups is higher. Research, however, shows that <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-spent-seven-years-observing-english-police-stop-and-search-heres-what-we-found-149563">racial bias</a> is at the root of this disproportionate use of stop and search: Black people in Britain are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/27/black-people-nine-times-more-likely-to-face-stop-and-search-than-white-people">nine times</a> more likely to be affected than white people.</p>
<p>Similarly, discussions around the higher <a href="https://covidandsociety.com/ethnic-inequalities-in-covid-19-acknowledge-multifaceted-influence-racism/">COVID death rates</a> among minority groups puts disproportionate focus on the health problems (vitamin D deficiency, diabetes) in the affected population groups. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-black-and-asian-people-at-greater-risk-of-coronavirus-heres-what-we-found-140584">Research shows</a>, however, that racism has been <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112305">a fundamental cause</a>. It explains why minority ethnic people were more likely to be in dangerous, frontline professions; unable to work from home; more likely to face unemployment and deprivation; and more likely to avoid contact with health professionals. Racism is multifaceted. </p>
<p>As writer and academic Gary Younge <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/16/systemic-racism-covid-gary-younge">put it</a>, “The virus does not discriminate on grounds of race. It didn’t need to. Society had done that already.” </p>
<h2>How we respond to racism</h2>
<p>When incidents of racism make the news, even activists and protesters emphasise, in response to each case, the victim’s innocence and vulnerability. In other words, the victim becomes the whole story: Black people themselves are depicted as the source of racism. American sociologist WEB Du Bois identified this impossible situation in 1897 – over a century ago – when he <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/">asked</a>, “How does it feel to be a problem?”</p>
<p>Left out of the discussion, every time, is whiteness. Black victims of racism are made hypervisible, while white perpetrators are kept invisible. There is power in this invisibility. Because white people are not racialised – they are seen as the default, and any other racial group is seen as “other” – their experiences are presented as those of individuals: race is not considered a factor in what they do. </p>
<p>When teachers referred Child Q to the police, they denied her the right to be taught and protected from harm. Instead, they treated her as a threat to other students, thereby effectively placing her outside of the educational institution. Research has highlighted how these institutions are <a href="https://theconversation.com/whiteness-characterises-higher-education-institutions-so-why-are-we-surprised-by-racism-93147">characterised by whiteness</a>, in terms of cohort racial makeup and the student experience and outcomes for people of colour. </p>
<p>When the police officers searched Child Q, they denied her the protections that the law guarantees to children. Instead, they treated her as a criminal adult. In the process, they drew, knowingly or not, from a long history of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26677660">criminalising</a> and <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/46908/9781776146789_WEB.pdf?sequence=1#page=10">dehumanising</a> Black people for the (imagined) protection of white people. </p>
<p>They also engaged, as the safeguarding review noted, in <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/research-confirms-that-black-girls-feel-the-sting-of-adultification-bias-identified-in-earlier-georgetown-law-study/">adultification bias</a>, wherein adults consider Black children to be older and less innocent than white children. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60956799">Police leaders</a> in Tower Hamlets and Hackney <a href="https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/hackney-top-cop-mortified-child-q-scandal-8790460">have since acknowledged</a> as much. </p>
<p>Whiteness underpins racism. Ignoring whiteness perpetuates its violence. US writer <a href="https://www.ijeomaoluo.com/">Ijeoma Oluo</a> made this point <a href="https://medium.com/the-establishment/white-people-i-dont-want-you-to-understand-me-better-i-want-you-to-understand-yourselves-a6fbedd42ddf">emphatically</a> after the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-racism-comments/588067/">2016 US presidential election</a>. “White people,” she wrote, “I don’t want you to understand me better; I want you to understand yourselves. Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it has required your ignorance.” It is only by making whiteness visible that we can understand what leads to violence against Black people. </p>
<p>At the heart of racism is not the existence of Black people, but the active work of white institutions to maintain white supremacy. White supremacy is bigger than the sum of individual white people’s actions. </p>
<p>At its most basic level, whiteness is a way of categorising people, humanising some by dehumanising others. This shapes the way that people exist in society and interact with institutions. It also helps to explain what happened to Child Q. Her <a href="https://chscp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Child-Q-PUBLISHED-14-March-22.pdf">statement</a> is a harrowing reminder of how the maintenance of whiteness makes it impossible for Black people to simply exist. “I can’t go a single day,” she said, “without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up.”</p>
<p>Understanding contemporary racism as the legacy of centuries-old colonialism and slavery may make it seem even more overwhelming. But recognising that whiteness is at the heart of racism can and should change our response. Opposing racism means working to overcome whiteness and reclaim humanity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181742/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meghan Tinsley 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>Discussions of racism in Britain centre around the experiences and traumas of Black people, but rarely on the perpetrators.Meghan Tinsley, Presidential Fellow in Ethnicity and Inequalities, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1814592022-05-05T12:43:51Z2022-05-05T12:43:51ZA white librettist wrote an opera about Emmett Till – and some critics are calling for its cancellation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461045/original/file-20220503-12-jpgsmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C22%2C2986%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A faded photograph is attached to the headstone that marks the gravesite of Emmett Till in Chicago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/faded-photograph-is-attached-to-the-headstone-that-marks-news-photo/1308512100">Scott Olson/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Are Black audiences, actors, and producers simply conditioned to having their stories told by white counterparts?” screenwriter and director <a href="https://www.ebony.com/entertainment/op-ed-the-problem-with-white-writers-writing-black-stories/">Darian Lane</a>, who is Black, wondered in a 2021 op-ed for Ebony. </p>
<p>On TV and in film, white authorship of Black stories has long been a point of contention, whether it was David Simon <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/11/us/who-gets-to-tell-a-black-story.html">writing about a Black neighborhood</a> in Baltimore for his series “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/">The Wire</a>” or Tate Taylor writing and directing “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/">The Help</a>.”</p>
<p>It was only a matter of time before this issue would beset the world of opera. Since “Emmett Till, A New American Opera” <a href="https://playbill.com/article/emmett-till-a-new-american-opera-to-premiere-at-john-jay-college">premiered at John Jay College</a> on March 23, 2022,
a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/cancel-a-new-american-opera-emmett-till-at-john-jay-college">Change.org petition</a> has circulated with 12,000-plus signatories calling for the production to never again see the light of day. </p>
<p>The reason?</p>
<p>A white woman named Clare Coss wrote <a href="https://www.uncoveringsound.com/difference-between-a-libretto-and-a-script/">the libretto</a>, or text, for the opera, which she based on an award-winning play she had written called “<a href="https://theaterlife.com/emmett-down-in-my-heart/">Emmett, Down in My Heart</a>” in 2015. </p>
<p>Coss concocted a fictional white female protagonist named Roann Taylor, who fails to call the police when she overhears the lynching of the 14-year-old Till. Eventually, she realizes that her silence has perpetuated injustice and she confronts the killers. </p>
<p>Critics claim the opera elevates the guilt of white audiences while capitalizing on Black trauma. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/03/22/emmett-till-opera-protest/">The Washington Post</a> notes that the production joins a slew of white-authored responses to the Emmett Till murder that didn’t sit well with the Black community, ranging from Bob Dylan’s “<a href="https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/5856">Death of Emmett Till</a>” to Dana Schutz’s painting “<a href="https://www.vulture.com/2022/01/dana-schutz-open-casket-emmett-till-painting.html">Open Casket</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting of boy in suit in casket." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460796/original/file-20220502-22-8flicq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460796/original/file-20220502-22-8flicq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460796/original/file-20220502-22-8flicq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460796/original/file-20220502-22-8flicq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460796/original/file-20220502-22-8flicq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460796/original/file-20220502-22-8flicq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460796/original/file-20220502-22-8flicq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dana Schutz’s painting of Till sparked protests during the 2017 Whitney Biennial, where it was displayed – with some people calling for its destruction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Casket#/media/File:Dana_Schutz_Open_Casket_2016_Oil_on_canvas.jpg">Dana Schutz, Open Casket (2016). Oil on canvas</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>On the one hand, I sympathize with the frustrating legacy of white artists telling Black stories. On the other hand, my 25 years of experience <a href="https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/0031Q00002QPtm6QAD/anita-gonzalez">teaching African-American theater</a> have made me acutely sensitive to the complications of authorship – especially when it comes to stage productions.</p>
<h2>Whom is the opera for?</h2>
<p>When artists develop new stories about Black experiences it matters who creates the story. How might their own background connect to the narrative? What sort of audience do they have in mind?</p>
<p>Social activist and cultural thinker W.E.B Du Bois published <a href="https://archive.org/search.php?query=sim_pubid%3A10994+AND+volume%3A32&sort=date">an essay in a 1926 issue of Crisis magazine</a> that set out to define what constitutes African American drama. He argued that they were plays that ought to be “about” Black communities, “by” Black authors, written “for” Black audiences and performed “near” Black neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Under this definition, Coss’ opera wouldn’t be considered African American drama. While it was a production about the Black community, it was composed, in part, to help white audiences empathize with Black pain. </p>
<p>And even though Coss has said the opera is intended for everyone, she’s also noted that the inclusion of a white character who recognizes her slow response to racial violence was <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2022/03/23/1088169711/a-new-opera-about-emmett-till-is-criticized-for-being-written-by-a-white-woman">important for predominantly white operagoing audiences to see</a>.</p>
<p>This is the rub. Many Black artists <a href="https://www.ebony.com/entertainment/op-ed-the-problem-with-white-writers-writing-black-stories/">are weary of products told from white perspectives</a> because there’s a tendency for the characters and conflicts to fall into familiar tropes. Lost are the ambiguities and inconsistencies of our unique cultural legacies.</p>
<p>Productions like George Gershwin’s “<a href="https://www.metopera.org/season/2021-22-season/porgy-and-bess/">Porgy and Bess</a>,” where the Black experience is reflected in old tropes, still draw huge crowds. The opera – which tells the story of Porgy, a disabled, downtrodden Black man who lives among drug dealers and addicts – perpetuates stereotypes of Black people as addicts who are incapable of self-sufficiency.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Older man using crutches sings on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461049/original/file-20220503-19080-6ru4ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461049/original/file-20220503-19080-6ru4ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461049/original/file-20220503-19080-6ru4ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461049/original/file-20220503-19080-6ru4ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461049/original/file-20220503-19080-6ru4ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461049/original/file-20220503-19080-6ru4ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461049/original/file-20220503-19080-6ru4ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2019 dress rehearsal of ‘Porgy and Bess’ at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-baritone-eric-owens-performs-at-the-final-dress-news-photo/1179461251?adppopup=true">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/20/us/george-floyd-protests-police-reform.html">In this moment of raised social consciousness</a>, it’s important to tell stories about Black injustices. But stories of joy, community, healing and wellness are just as important. </p>
<p>So it’s refreshing to see newer musicals like Michael R. Jackson’s “<a href="https://strangeloopmusical.com/">A Strange Loop</a>,” which is now playing on Broadway. Jackson, who is Black, wrote a musical that plumbs the inner psyche of a character named Usher who struggles with anxieties about his queer identity and lifestyle. A chorus of colorful characters depicts his thoughts as he untangles his fraught family relationships and rebuilds his self-esteem. </p>
<h2>The complications of ‘by’</h2>
<p>The “by” of Du Bois’ argument is particularly complex in the case of both the Till opera and “Porgy and Bess.” Both productions feature white authors writing about Black experiences that are then depicted by Black performers. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461052/original/file-20220503-17-8tt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man in suit sits in chair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461052/original/file-20220503-17-8tt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461052/original/file-20220503-17-8tt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461052/original/file-20220503-17-8tt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461052/original/file-20220503-17-8tt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461052/original/file-20220503-17-8tt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461052/original/file-20220503-17-8tt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461052/original/file-20220503-17-8tt63g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">To W.E.B. Du Bois, a work needed to meet certain criteria to be considered African American drama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dubois-waits-to-be-called-as-a-witness-at-the-federal-news-photo/514697730?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Is the author the writer, producer, director or lead performer? Many productions about the Black experience – Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088939/">The Color Purple</a>” is just one example that comes to mind – were originally authored by Blacks yet produced by whites to accommodate white sensibilities. At the time of its release, the film also <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/the-color-purple-debate-anniversary-1202217786/">elicited controversy</a> for depicting Black female experiences through the eyes of a white male producer and director.</p>
<p>The current controversy about the Emmett Till opera ultimately glosses over a complex collaborative processes. As with most performance projects, many artists participated in realizing the final product. Afro-Cuban composer <a href="https://www.tanialeon.com/">Tania León</a> conducted the score. The Harlem Chamber Players and Opera Noire International co-produced the work. </p>
<p>Most importantly, Mary Watkins, the composer, is Black. The composer is usually considered the core creative artist in an operatic work, and Watkins artfully uses emotional arias and music that mimics moans to draw listeners into the anguish of the mother’s loss.</p>
<p>“Even though there are many artists of color involved in this project, the critics are assuming that we have had no impact on the final shape of the piece and that the playwright has somehow forced all of us to tell her story,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/03/22/emmett-till-opera-protest/">Watkins wrote in an email interview</a>. “It is an insult to me as a Black woman and to the cast members who are African-American.” </p>
<h2>Performing race</h2>
<p>One of my students once pointed out that enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas naked and were then forced to don clothing provided by the enslavers. </p>
<p>We have been wearing garments and identities designed to conform to white sensibilities ever since. African American theater historians have long grappled with how to assess Black contributions in a country where white critics, by and large, evaluate our cultural productions. </p>
<p>Books like “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/african-american-performance-and-theater-history-9780195127256?cc=us&lang=en&">African American Performance and Theater History</a>” describe how double-conscious performance styles enabled Black artists to resist stereotypical representations on stage. <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/04/hattie-mcdaniel-gone-with-the-wind-oscars-autobiography">Hattie McDaniel</a>, for example, played the maid in “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(film)">Gone With the Wind”</a> with tenacious spunk, using sassy comedy to humanize her servile “Mammy” role.</p>
<p>Newer anthologies, like my edited collection “<a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/black-performance-theory">Black Performance Theory</a>,” complicate notions of Black authorship and artistry. The book describes how Blackness circulates through cultural productions as vocal, physical and visual imagery which may or may not be aligned with Black bodies on stage. For example, in “Emmett Till, A New American Opera,” Watkins’ use of resonant open tones in the first few bars of Mamie Till’s lament, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kfwNzQyrDA&t=28s">My Son, My Child</a>,” evokes the choral singing of the African American gospel tradition.</p>
<p>To me, the backlash against the white librettist is ultimately a waste of time. Not only is there room for works done in collaboration with Black artists, but cross-cultural, interethnic collaborations also add to the richness and versatility of performed storytelling. </p>
<p>Du Bois wrote about Black performance as it existed within the confines of a segregated society. Theatrical performances by, for, near and about can certainly unite Black communities around collective storytelling. </p>
<p>But I also cherish the vibrancy of storytelling that includes a diversity of perspectives. I hope to see more operas, plays and musicals that encourage conversations about Black identities – without efforts to cancel those who have contributed to the effort.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anita Gonzalez 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 Black audiences are justifiably weary of works about their community told from white perspectives. But authorship isn’t always black and white.Anita Gonzalez, Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts, Co-Founder/Director Racial Justice Institute, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1701682021-10-18T18:33:14Z2021-10-18T18:33:14ZAs a patriot and Black man, Colin Powell embodied the ‘two-ness’ of the African American experience<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427041/original/file-20211018-20-8qfg2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C3099%2C2063&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A complex legacy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ObitPowell/d8c0b643cb3e4277ae88f7fdfcb0edb8/photo?Query=colin%20powell&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=674&currentItemNo=15">AP Photo/Vincent Michel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Colin Powell knew where he fit in American history.</p>
<p>The former secretary of state – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/us/politics/colin-powell-dead.html">who died</a> on Oct. 18, 2021, at 84 as a result of COVID-19 complications – was a pioneer: the first Black national security advisor in U.S. history, the first Black chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and also the first Black man to become secretary of state.</p>
<p>But his “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/133242/my-american-journey-by-colin-powell-with-joseph-e-persico/">American journey</a>” – as he described it in the title of an autobiography – is more than the story of one man. His death is a moment to think about the history of Black American men and women in the military and the place of African Americans in government. </p>
<p>But more profoundly, it also speaks to what it means to be an American, and the tensions that Colin Powell – as a patriot and a Black man – faced throughout his life and career. </p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=7f443ffde35747ba69faca210faff07145fab78c">scholar of African American studies</a> who is currently writing a book on the great civil rights intellectual W.E.B. DuBois. When I heard of Powell’s passing, I was immediately reminded of what DuBois referred to as the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/">double-consciousness</a>” of the African American experience.</p>
<p>As DuBois put it <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/">in an 1897 article</a> and later in his classic 1903 book “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/">The Souls of Black Folk</a>,” this “peculiar sensation” is unique to African Americans: “One feels his two-ness – 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>This concept profoundly describes Colin Powell as a soldier, a career military man and a politician.</p>
<h2>What it means to serve</h2>
<p>On the surface, Colin Powell’s life would seem to refute DuBois’ formulation. He stood as someone that many people could point to as an example of how it is possible to be both Black and a full American, something DuBois viewed as an enduring tension. There is a narrative that Powell <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3843957">used the military to transcend race</a> and become one of the most powerful men in the country. In that sense, he was the ultimate American success story.</p>
<p>But there is a danger to that narrative. Colin Powell’s story was exceptional, but he was no avatar of a color-blind, post-racial America.</p>
<p>The U.S. Army has long been seen as a route for Black Americans, especially young Black men, out of poverty. Many chose to turn their service into a career. </p>
<p>By the time Powell, the <a href="https://bronx.news12.com/bronx-raised-colin-powell-leaves-behind-a-legacy-in-nyc">Bronx-raised</a> son of Jamaican immigrants, joined the U.S. Army, there was already a proud history of African Americans in the U.S. military – from the “<a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/proud-legacy-buffalo-soldiers">Buffalo Soldiers” who served in the American West, the Caribbean and South Pacific</a> after the U.S. Civil War to the <a href="https://www.tuskegee.edu/support-tu/tuskegee-airmen">Tuskegee Airmen</a> of World War II.</p>
<p>Powell was part of that military history. He joined in 1958, a decade after <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=84">desegregation of the Armed Forces</a> in 1948.</p>
<p>But the military was – <a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-military-racism-discrimination-4e840e0acc7ef07fd635a312d9375413">and still is</a> – an institution characterized by structural racism. That was true when Powell joined the Army, and it is true today.</p>
<p>As such, Powell would have had to wrestle with his blackness and what it meant in the military: What did it mean to serve a country that doesn’t serve you?</p>
<p>As a military man during the Vietnam War, Powell also stood apart from many Black political leaders <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietnam">who condemned U.S. action</a> in Southeast Asia. </p>
<p>While Muhammad Ali <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/28/muhammad-ali-50-years-ago-today-was-told-to-step-forward-he-refused/">was asking why</a> he should “put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people” at a time when “so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights,” Powell was making his way up the military ranks.</p>
<p>It helps explain why despite Powell’s undoubted achievements, his legacy as a Black leader is complicated. His identity – being of Jamaican heritage – posed questions about what it means to be an African American. His life in the military prompted some to ask why he would serve a country that has historically been hostile to nonwhite people in the U.S. and around the world. The veteran activist and singer Harry Belafonte likened Powell in 2002 to a “house slave” in one <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/oct/11/news">particularly contentious remark</a> questioning his loyalty to the U.S. system.</p>
<p>Powell acknowledged the realities of racism in the U.S., while at the same time believed it should never serve as an obstacle nor cause Black people to question their American-ness. In a <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/cpowell.html">May 14, 1994 commencement speech at Howard University</a>, Powell told graduates to take pride in their Black heritage, but to use it as “a foundation stone we can build on, and not a place to withdraw into.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Colin Powell, seated behind a microphone and 'United States' nameplate speaks to the United Nations Security Council." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colin Powell addresses the United Nations Security Council.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Obit-Powell/66a341e1e4e2487fbfe7ea59c2ac4fda/photo?Query=colin%20powell%20united%20nations&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=12&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Elise Amendola</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And then there are his political affiliations. He was Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor and George H. W. Bush’s chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at a time when the domestic policies of both presidents were devastating Black America, through <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/history-mass-incarceration">mass incarceration of Black men and women</a> and <a href="https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc52b.pdf">economic policies</a> that stripped services in lower-income areas.</p>
<p>That was before one of the most consequential and controversial moments in Powell’s political life. </p>
<p>In February 2003, Powell <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin-powell-knew-about-iraq-fifteen-years-ago-and-what-he-told-the-un/">argued before the United Nations Security Council</a> for military action against Iraq – a speech that erroneously claimed that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. He hadn’t, and the war that Powell helped steer the U.S. into scars his legacy.</p>
<h2>A complicated existence</h2>
<p>Powell’s two-ness, to use the DuBois phrase, manifested later in his decision in 2008 to endorse Barack Obama as presidential candidate over his fellow Republican and military man, John McCain.</p>
<p>In Obama, Powell saw “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/19/colin.powell/">a transformational figure</a>” in America and on the world stage.</p>
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<p>In endorsing Obama, Powell chose the historic significance of the U.S. having its first Black president over loyalty and service to his friend and political party. </p>
<p>His drift from Republicanism furthered after Donald Trump seized the reins of the party. He became <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/colin-powell-calls-trump-liar-says-he-skirts-constitution-will-n1227016">increasingly vocal in opposing Trump</a>, who saw Powell – as did many of Trump’s supporters – as something of a traitor.</p>
<p>That view ignores the history.</p>
<p>Powell was a patriot who embodied DuBois’ “two warring ideals in one dark body.” For Powell to have reached the heights he did required dogged strength and perhaps far greater effort to hold it together than his white predecessors. </p>
<p>In America, being Black and a patriot is – as DuBois hinted at more an a century ago, and as Powell’s life attests to – a very complicated, even painful, affair.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Williams 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 scholar of African American studies explores how the former secretary of state, who died at 84, dealt with what WEB DuBois described as the ‘double-consciousness’ of being Black and American.Chad Williams, Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1611412021-06-18T12:30:05Z2021-06-18T12:30:05ZHow Black writers and journalists have wielded punctuation in their activism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407101/original/file-20210617-13-1ba8em2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=114%2C123%2C1784%2C1254&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Playing with syntax, capitalization and punctuation marks can upend narratives put forth by the mainstream media.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/woman-looking-over-shoulder-under-question-mark-royalty-free-image/1253985738?adppopup=true">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Using punctuation and capitalization as a form of protest doesn’t exactly scream radicalism. </p>
<p>But in debates over racial justice, punctuation can carry a lot of weight.</p>
<p>During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, mainstream news organizations grappled with whether to capitalize the first letter of “black” when referring to Black people. Of course, writing “Black” was already common practice in activist circles. Eventually <a href="https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2020/ap-says-it-will-capitalize-black-but-not-white">The Associated Press</a>, <a href="https://www.nytco.com/press/uppercasing-black/">The New York Times</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/12/why-usa-today-gannett-capitalizing-b-black-uppercase/3178288001/">USA Today</a> and many other outlets declared that they, too, would capitalize that first letter.</p>
<p>It turns out the push to capitalize “black” is only the most recent way Black writers and activists have pushed back against entrenched power through ostensibly bland elements of writing.</p>
<p>As I discuss in my recent book, “<a href="https://www.umasspress.com/9781625345264/jim-crow-networks/">Jim Crow Networks: African American Periodical Cultures</a>,” Black activism in the media can take a variety of forms – some more subtle than others. </p>
<p>Seemingly unimportant elements of writing have long been adapted as tools of Black activism. Much like the recent drive to capitalize “black,” activists have deployed punctuation to question the legitimacy of confessions, criticize justifications made for lynchings and highlight the undervaluing of Black expertise and knowledge.</p>
<h2>The power of punctuation</h2>
<p>Punctuation was developed in the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150902-the-mysterious-origins-of-punctuation">3rd century B.C.</a> to visually separate sentences and improve comprehension. But punctuation can do more than clarify. It can extend, contradict and play with meaning. </p>
<p>Think of the difference between ending a sentence with an exclamation point and with an <a href="https://cmosshoptalk.com/2019/07/30/dot-dot-dot-a-closer-look-at-the-ellipsis/">ellipsis</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/emoticons-and-symbols-arent-ruining-language-theyre-revolutionizing-it-38408">or the way emoticons made of repurposed punctuation</a> can be used to denote sarcasm or add playfulness and emotion.</p>
<p>This makes it a useful tool for activists who seek to upend dominant narratives.</p>
<h2>Quotation marks convey suspicion</h2>
<p>A push to capitalize has actually happened before. </p>
<p>In the 1920s, influential Black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois wrote to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html">The New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/08/the-battle-between-w-e-b-du-bois-and-his-white-editor-was-an-early-reckoning-over-objectivity/">Encyclopedia Britannica</a> to argue that the word “negro” ought to have its first letter capitalized.</p>
<p>A decade later, to counter racism in the white press, the Black press used quotation marks when reporting on the case of a young man named Robert Nixon, who was convicted of murder. </p>
<p>In 1938, the white-owned Chicago Tribune notoriously described Nixon – who would serve as the basis for protagonist Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright’s 1940 novel “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/native-son-richard-wright?variant=32207416983586">Native Son</a>” – as an “animal” whose “physical characteristics suggest an earlier link in the species.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A black and white portrait of author Richard Wright, pictured seated." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Wright.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a42820/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the city’s influential Black newspaper, the <a href="https://search-proquest-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/hnpchicagodefender/docview/492523968/4FB79128D34F46CBPQ/32?accountid=35635">Chicago Defender</a>, covered the case differently, reporting Nixon’s claim that his confession was the result of police coercion. In a 1938 article, the Defender included a subheading that declared, “Nixon Also Refutes ‘Confession’.”</p>
<p>These simple quotation marks signaled doubt over the legitimacy of this confession, while teaching newspaper readers to be suspicious of so-called legal facts.</p>
<p>As sociologist Mary Pattillo notes in her book “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo4149945.html">Black on the Block</a>,” the Defender’s strategic use of quotation marks called into question official accounts of Nixon as a murderer. In doing so, the paper highlighted the unfair treatment of Black people by the media, police and court system.</p>
<h2>The code of the question mark</h2>
<p>Similarly, Black activists used question marks to criticize mainstream accounts of events during the Jim Crow era. </p>
<p>In her 1892 pamphlet “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14975/14975-h/14975-h.htm">Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases</a>,” anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells used question marks in parentheses on four occasions to interrogate descriptions of crimes supposedly committed by Black Americans.</p>
<p>For example, she wrote, “So great is Southern hate and prejudice, they legally(?) hung poor little thirteen year old Mildrey Brown at Columbia, S. C., Oct. 7th, on the circumstantial evidence that she poisoned a white infant.” </p>
<p>She also quoted from one of her earlier newspaper editorials in which she discussed the lynchings of eight Black men by saying that, in each case, “citizens broke(?) into the penitentiary and got their man.” The question mark casts doubt on this “break-in” and suggests that the perpetrators were, in fact, aided and abetted by law enforcement in murdering these men.</p>
<p>These simple question marks subtly undermined a legal system that sought to cast the murders of a young girl and eight men as just responses. Wells indicted not only the legal system but also the white press, which was often an accomplice to racial violence.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 106,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<h2>Afrofuturist questions</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Pauline Hopkins poses for a portrait wearing a hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pauline Hopkins.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pauline_Elizabeth_Hopkins_circa_1901.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The writer, editor and activist Pauline E. Hopkins similarly used question marks within parentheses in her early Afrofuturist novel “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Of_One_Blood.html?id=FJ0EqcHzEU0C">Of One Blood</a>.” </p>
<p>The novel – which contains depictions of a leopard attack, a lost African city and a ghost – was serialized in the pages of the <a href="http://coloredamerican.org/">Colored American Magazine</a> from 1902 to 1903. At one point, the protagonist, a Black doctor, brings a patient back to life. Yet the responses to this miracle display ambivalence:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The scientific journals of the next month contained wonderful and wondering (?) accounts of the now celebrated case, – re-animation after seeming death.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much as Wells used the question mark to dismiss the official accounts of lynchings, Hopkins deploys it to undermine the scientific establishment and cast doubt on the journals for their stunned and disbelieving responses to the medical marvel. </p>
<p>For Hopkins, the question mark worked to demand respect for Black expertise and knowledge.</p>
<h2>Punctuation’s possibilities</h2>
<p>Punctuation activism can be an important companion to on-the-ground activism. It reveals language’s capacity to transform the world. At the same time, it exposes language’s often hidden role in maintaining structures of power.</p>
<p>Certainly, punctuation – like language overall – is typically used in less radical ways. But these examples of early 20th century Black writers, activists and journalists point to punctuation’s possibilities in questioning entrenched power structures and laying claim to alternative futures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eurie Dahn 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>For over a century, Black activists have used punctuation marks to subtly challenge official accounts of events.Eurie Dahn, Associate Professor of English, The College of Saint RoseLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1515382021-02-05T13:08:13Z2021-02-05T13:08:13ZWhen Black kids – shut out from the whitewashed world of children’s literature – took matters into their own hands<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382551/original/file-20210204-22-xcj5gr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C21%2C513%2C541&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A newspaper boy hawks copies of the Chicago Defender.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/fsa.8e04925/">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hanging on the wall in my office is the framed cover of the inaugural issue of <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/22001351/">The Brownies’ Book,</a> a monthly periodical for Black youths created by W.E.B. Du Bois and other members of the NAACP in 1920. </p>
<p>The magazine – the first of its kind – includes poems and stories that speak of Black achievement and history, while also showcasing children’s writing. </p>
<p>Although much of American children’s literature published near the turn of the last century – and even today – filters childhood through <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-world-of-childrens-books-is-still-very-white/">the eyes of white children</a>, The Brownies’ Book gave African American children a platform to explore their lives, interests and aspirations. And it reinforced what 20th-century American literature scholar Katharine Capshaw <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253218889/childrens-literature-of-the-harlem-renaissance/">has described</a> as Du Bois’ “faith in the ability of young people to lead the race into the future.”</p>
<p>Most likely inspired by The Brownies’ Book, several Black weekly newspapers went on to create <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/660184">their own children’s sections</a>. While the children’s publishing industry may have shut out Black voices and perspectives, the editors of these periodicals sought to fill the void by celebrating them, giving kids a platform to express themselves, connect with one another and indulge their curiosities.</p>
<h2>A pioneering publication</h2>
<p>The cover image of that first issue of The Brownies’ Book, published in January 1920, epitomizes this effort. In it, a young Black girl stands on the tips of her toes, dressed in a ballet costume. </p>
<p>Already, this image represented a radically different vision of Black childhood. Children’s literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries very rarely focused on African Americans. The few Black children who did appear in print were often written or drawn as variations of Topsy, the enslaved young girl from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/203/203-h/203-h.htm">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a>,” who is initially considered “naughty” <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Little-Eva-fictional-character">only to be redeemed by Eva</a>, who plays the role of the “white savior.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382511/original/file-20210204-14-ed1exv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smiling girl dressed in white raises her arms and stands en pointe." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382511/original/file-20210204-14-ed1exv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382511/original/file-20210204-14-ed1exv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382511/original/file-20210204-14-ed1exv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382511/original/file-20210204-14-ed1exv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382511/original/file-20210204-14-ed1exv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382511/original/file-20210204-14-ed1exv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382511/original/file-20210204-14-ed1exv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&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 inaugural issue of ‘The Brownies’ Book.‘</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2004ser01351/?sp=1">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As children’s literature scholar Michelle H. Martin <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Brown-Gold-Milestones-of-African-American-Childrens-Picture-Books-1845-2002/Martin/p/book/9780415646277">has noted</a>, “children who wanted to read about black characters in children’s literature could read about buffoons, mammies, Sambos or savages,” but not about “the beauty” of Black children.</p>
<p>The girl on The Brownies’ Book cover offers a vastly different vision of Black childhood than the caricatures seen throughout popular culture of the time. She’s confident, excited and talented. The pages that follow feature an assortment of fiction, commentary, history and news for young readers that honors and extols Black identity.</p>
<p>One of the most compelling recurring sections is titled “The Jury,” which features children’s letters to the editor. In the magazine’s first issue, a boy named Franklin writes to ask about “things colored boys can work at when they grow up.” Eleanor wants the editor to recommend “some books on the Negro” so that she “can learn more about [her] race.” And a 15-year-old girl inquires about possible funding sources so that she can attend a boarding school that accepts African American students. </p>
<p>The Brownies’ Book had a relatively short run – 24 issues from January 1920 to December 1921. But it nonetheless seems to have encouraged a number of other Black newspapers to launch children’s sections in the early 1920s. The <a href="https://newpittsburghcourier.com/">Pittsburgh Courier</a>, Baltimore’s <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045829/">Afro-American</a> and the <a href="http://thenewjournalandguide.com/">Journal and Guide</a>, published in Norfolk, Virginia, each experimented with children’s sections.</p>
<p>But by far the most successful effort was that of the <a href="https://chicagodefender.com/">Chicago Defender</a>, which would launch a periodical section for Black youths that ran for decades.</p>
<h2>‘Let us make the world know that we are living’</h2>
<p>The Chicago Defender was perhaps <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/the-defender/9781328470249">the most influential Black newspaper</a> of the 20th century. Its readership extended across the United States, and it <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo3774992.html">helped spur the Great Migration</a>, a time during which millions of African Americans left the South, by promoting job opportunities in Northern industrial cities like Chicago. Roi Ottley, biographer of Defender publisher Robert S. Abbott, <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006284097">wrote</a> that only the Bible was more significant to Black Americans during the first half of the 20th century.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382528/original/file-20210204-14-4jiivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="It contains spaces for a child's name, address, age, city and state." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382528/original/file-20210204-14-4jiivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382528/original/file-20210204-14-4jiivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382528/original/file-20210204-14-4jiivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382528/original/file-20210204-14-4jiivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382528/original/file-20210204-14-4jiivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382528/original/file-20210204-14-4jiivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382528/original/file-20210204-14-4jiivz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An application form to join the Bud Billiken Club from the April 29, 1922, edition of the Chicago Defender.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ProQuest Historical Newspapers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1921, the Chicago Defender started publishing a section called the Defender Junior, run by a fictional editor named Bud Billiken. Billiken was really a 10-year-old boy named <a href="https://chicagoliteraryhof.org/inductees/profile/willard-motley">Willard Motley</a>, who later became a noted novelist, though sometimes the paper’s adult editors wrote under Billiken moniker. In his first column, Billiken tells readers that he wants to fill “this column with sayings and doings of we little folks,” and implores them to submit their poems, questions and opinions.</p>
<p>Young readers could become members of the Bud Billiken Club by mailing in a form with their name, but they could also mail in letters and poetry as a way to correspond with their fellow Billikens. In June 1921, a girl named Ruth McBride of Oak Hill, Alabama, submitted the following letter to Bud:</p>
<p>“As I was reading the Chicago Defender a lovely paper of our Race, I came across some beautiful poems written by some of the members of your club. It filled my heart with joy to read such sweet poems. I am a little girl 9 years old, and I wish to join your club. If there is any space for me. I go to school and am in the fifth grade. My mother gets the Defender every week. Here is a poem I am sending:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Down in the sunny South, where I was born,
Where beautiful flowers are adoring,
The daisies white and the purple lily.
This is where the land is hilly."
</code></pre>
<p>In July 1921, Juanita Johnson of Washington, D.C., sent the Defender Junior her poem:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> "When you are lonely and don’t know what to do,
When you must admit that you are feeling blue,
Take your pen in hand, my dear child, I entreat,
And write the B.B. Club something nice and sweet.
Your blues will depart, I’ll surely guarantee.
You’ll cheer up at once, for so it is with me."
</code></pre>
<p>Black children could find – or at least attempt to find – their voices on the pages of these periodicals. For Bud Billiken, there was no greater urgency. In his introduction to the April 23, 1921, edition, he tells the story of a fly that "sat on the axle of a chariot wheel and said, ‘What a dust I do make.’” </p>
<p>“The fly imagines that he is causing the wheel to go around,” Billiken continues. “Let us not be like the fly, thinking we are doing something when really we only move as the world moves us.”</p>
<p>He concludes by writing, “The world would move on if we were not in it. This paper would be published just the same without our space. Let us make the world know that we are living and helping to make the noise and dust.” </p>
<p>The Defender Junior proved popular – so popular that the newspaper launched the Bud Billiken Parade in 1929 in Chicago’s South Side. <a href="https://www.chipublib.org/fa-abbott-sengstacke-family-papers-2/">By midcentury</a>, the annual parade had become one of the largest gatherings of African Americans in the U.S., attracting national figures such as Duke Ellington and Muhammad Ali. In 2020, the beloved event <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-bud-billiken-parade-canceled-20200701-hdasr3rzsfbn3eqqp2qzcj7abe-story.html">was canceled</a> for the first time in 91 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A birds-eye view of a throng of kids marching in the parade." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382531/original/file-20210204-24-meiwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382531/original/file-20210204-24-meiwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382531/original/file-20210204-24-meiwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382531/original/file-20210204-24-meiwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382531/original/file-20210204-24-meiwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382531/original/file-20210204-24-meiwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382531/original/file-20210204-24-meiwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kids march during the 1967 Bud Billiken Parade in Chicago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/aerial-view-showing-participants-walking-during-the-bud-news-photo/185688388?adppopup=true">Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Brownies’ Book, the Defender Junior and the children’s sections of other African American weeklies gave Black children a space to tell their stories, express their anxieties and assert their ambitions.</p>
<p>In that photograph of the ballerina on The Brownie’s Book’s first cover, I imagine her saying something similar to Bud Billiken’s appeal – “Let us make the world know that we are living.” </p>
<p>Or perhaps more simply, “Black lives matter.”</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151538/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paige Gray is a longtime member and committee chair of the Children's Literature Association. </span></em></p>At the turn of the 20th century, with few children’s books featuring Black characters, one young editor implored his peers to ‘Let us make the world know that we are living.’Paige Gray, Professor of Writing and Liberal Arts, Savannah College of Art and DesignLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539812021-01-28T09:09:49Z2021-01-28T09:09:49ZHow former president Rawlings pioneered heritage tourism in Ghana – in his own words<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380970/original/file-20210127-19-1bx9ucu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tourists pose for pictures at the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NATALIJA GORMALOVA/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1980s, Flight Lieutenant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/jerry-rawlings-obituary">Jerry John Rawlings</a> launched heritage tourism as a means to economic development in Ghana. Under his initiative, Ghana’s forts and castles – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-slavery-journey-widerimage-idUSKCN1UR4JV">where</a> enslaved Africans were forcibly put on slave ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean into slavery in the Americas – were turned into heritage sites for tourism. It united Africans and African descendant people living in the disapora.</p>
<p>Rawlings was Ghana’s youngest and longest-serving post-independence leader. He led military uprisings in 1979 and 1981 and served as elected president from 1992 to 2000. When Rawlings came to power in 1981, Ghana faced numerous <a href="https://asq.africa.ufl.edu/files/Adedeji-Vol-5-Issue-2.pdf">challenges</a>. Food was scarce, medicines unavailable, over a million Ghanaians were deported from Nigeria, and the economy was almost bankrupt. Rawlings understood the capital investment necessary to rebuild the economy. </p>
<p>However, Ghana’s 1979 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Ghana-1982-1992-Revolution-Democracy/dp/9988786816">revolution</a> had criticised the former regime’s ties to the West and Western imperialism, so private investment dried up. Eastern bloc nations gave minimal support. Rawlings was compelled to secure World Bank and International Monetary Fund assistance, a tactical acquiescence that proved pivotal for heritage.</p>
<p>Rawlings rarely gave interviews. This abbreviated <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1743873X.2020.1817929">interview</a> with him was the first time he spoke publicly on heritage tourism and development. It comprises several conversations in 2018 and 2019. </p>
<hr>
<h2>How did you arrive at this innovative idea – using cultural heritage tourism for development?</h2>
<p>I was always interested in culture and art. (He shows me his childhood artwork.) As a child, I was an artist. </p>
<p>At that time (in the 1980s), Ghana was politically stable. Cocoa, gold and timber were our major commodities. The tourism idea was unplanned. But I worked with many progressive-minded people. For instance, Valerie Sackey (Ministry of Communications) and Dr Ben Abdallah (Minister of Culture and Tourism) who approached me with the idea. They targeted cultural heritage, such as the forts and castles, natural heritage, performance and arts – for example <a href="https://panafestghana.org/">Panafest</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in an overall and shades reads a placard that says, 'Do Not Mind Foreign Intervention', a crowd of peoplein the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380896/original/file-20210127-15-q5onix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rawlings reading a placard at a 1981 demonstration in Nicholson Stadium, Accra.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Rawlings Archival Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quite frankly, I was surprised by the response. I remember, when I was young, <a href="https://theconversation.com/kwame-nkrumah-why-every-now-and-then-his-legacy-is-questioned-120790">(Kwame) Nkrumah</a> was the star of Africa, and black Africa at that. I was acquainted with African Americans coming to Ghana. We had personalities such as <a href="https://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/Who%20We%20Are/who-was-george-padmore">George Padmore</a> and <a href="https://duboiscentreghana.org/">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. I was familiar with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/books/malcolm-x-a-life-of-reinvention-by-manning-marable-review.html">Malcolm X</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr">Martin Luther King</a>. I expected those who visited would want to know Africa better. After all, I was a young student when <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muhammad-Ali-boxer">Muhammad Ali</a> came to my school. Consequently, I saw all of this as part of a natural flow of events – even if it also brought some resentment. Many had a complex relationship with Ghana. After I left school, I observed this first-hand, when I used to ‘be-bop’ around town. African Americans struggled to come to terms with the fact that Africans participated in the transatlantic slave trade and sold their ancestors into slavery. It was a very mixed response. </p>
<p>So, when I was in office, I did not think African Americans travelling to Ghana was something to be revived. I left the matter to those who championed heritage tourism and the various ministries.</p>
<h2>Is it possible to describe you as a pragmatist, for trying to reconcile the revolution with ‘real world’ demands?</h2>
<p>We had little money to invest in what was important to provide stability – a stable climate, water, roads. But we did well, as tourism became our third largest foreign exchange earner – though we didn’t invest in tourism per se. Ghana was seen as a place where the black man had reason to feel proud and was not exploited by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/neocolonialism">neocolonialism</a>, so that was something in and of itself. The 1979 revolution also restored justice and respect… In our case, this pilgrimage … was a connection to blackness, to ‘Africanness’. </p>
<h2>Were there any challenges?</h2>
<p>Sure. The African diasporan presence raised the subject of citizenship and nationality. This created issues, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-is-morally-bound-to-offer-reparations-for-slavery-153544">reparations</a> for the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, which also created a polarisation between our own people and African descendants. Still, I would like to mention something interesting. Gradually, African Americans won recognition in various arenas, for example, sports and entertainment. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, several were so disgusted at their treatment by the United States government that they offered to participate in the Olympics on Ghana’s ‘ticket.’</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A greying man with a beard and sunglasses sits in a brown chair looking ahead intently." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380902/original/file-20210127-17-1p4j12a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rawlings later in life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alhassan Idrissu/Courtesy the Rawlings Archival Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, soon after, African American perceptions of Africa altered with the <a href="https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/1980s-ethiopia-famine-facts">Ethiopian famine</a>. Whereas previously, they sympathised with Africa’s struggles and, in a defiant move, wanted to identify with the continent, that sentiment suddenly collapsed. Horrible scenes on the television – overwhelming images of Ethiopians covered in flies, with bloated stomachs, dissuaded lots of African Americans from identifying with Africa. </p>
<h2>As head of state, you worked and lived at Osu Castle. What was that like?</h2>
<p>Often, I was too busy to give thought to the (slave trade and colonial) past. I saw my fellow black man suffering. When I travelled up north, I saw my people did not have water to flush their toilets and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/guineaworm/index.html">Guinea worm</a> was everywhere. The pressure of economic and social injustice was on me! Don’t forget that I was not always at the castle. I was always on the move. So was (my wife) Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. I had water, electricity and a bed to sleep on. What more could I have asked for? Why would I spend money on renovating the castle? Many Ghanaians did not have basic necessities. I did not even have the money to buy bullets for my soldiers in Liberia, or to protect people during the violence in the north.</p>
<h2>How do you see the heritage tourism and development initiative today?</h2>
<p>As for Ghana, we receive people well. Over the years, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">the ‘return’</a> has become increasingly known. Ghana has enjoyed a unique position because of our history, independence, Nkrumah, the assertion of black people in Africa’s liberation struggle and black people generally.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-year-of-return-2019-traveler-tourist-or-pilgrim-121891">Ghana's Year of Return 2019: traveler, tourist or pilgrim?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We are aware of our responsibilities to ourselves, our fellow Africans, and those in the diaspora. I am not enthusiastic about (financial) reparations. Those taken during the transatlantic slave trade must decide. If they return, we should offer them land and dual citizenship as restorative and social justice … As for diasporans and development … they do not have the money to develop us in Africa. Let us give them the respect that they want, that is due. That is the beginning of it all. Then other things will follow. This way, they can also fight for the continent … help us gain access to what the continent deserves. You see? This is how it should be. </p>
<p><em>Postscript: President Rawlings passed away as this article was to go to press. It is published with support from the Rawlings family. Thanks to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjht20/current">Journal of Heritage Tourism</a> for permission to republish.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann 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>In a rare series of interviews, the late Ghanaian leader spoke of how the country’s slave trade was revisited as a vehicle for economic development.Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Director of Christiansborg Archaeological Heritage Project, Associate Professor at Africa Institute Sharjah & Associate Graduate Faculty, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1505872021-01-06T13:11:39Z2021-01-06T13:11:39ZTrump tapped into white victimhood – leaving fertile ground for white supremacists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376554/original/file-20201223-49872-1h3j4ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2991%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Attendees chant during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/peter-cvjetanovic-along-with-neo-nazis-alt-right-and-white-news-photo/830617832">Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite failed lawsuits, recounts and formal confirmation that President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump and his supporters continue to maintain that the <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346110956078817280">election was rigged</a> and that he and the American people are victims of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump/in-recorded-call-trump-pressures-georgia-official-to-find-votes-to-overturn-election-idUSKBN2980MG">massive voter fraud</a>. </p>
<p>This politicization of victimhood is nothing new to the Trump presidency. </p>
<p>It was there from the beginning. When Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his presidential campaign in 2015, he stoked fears of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/06/16/full-text-donald-trump-announces-a-presidential-bid/">Mexican rapists and drug traffickers</a> attacking U.S. citizens.</p>
<p>The claims of victimhood ran throughout his presidency. He played on U.S. fears of being attacked by foreign terrorists to enact the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states-2/">travel ban</a> targeting several Muslim-majority countries. </p>
<p>When protesters called for the removal of Confederate monuments, Trump claimed that they wanted to make people <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-white-house-conference-american-history/">ashamed of American history</a>. As COVID-19 spread across the U.S., Trump dubbed it the “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2020/10/08/trump-is-demanding-china-pay-big-price-for-covid-19/?sh=52dd6dd441c8">China virus</a>” and contended that China would pay for what it had done.</p>
<p>Journalists and commentators also turned to a sense of aggrievement to explain the popular support Trump received. <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/15/13286498/donald-trump-voters-race-economic-anxiety">A narrative emerged</a>: White, working-class voters from rural and Rust Belt communities felt abandoned by the political establishment. Decades of free trade, automation and cuts to the social safety net turned these voters against the mainstreams of both political parties. </p>
<p>But this narrative fails to answer two critical questions: Why did <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2016/11/22/donald-trump-clinton-rural-suburbs/?sh=624b65cf38b5">upper-middle-class and wealthy white voters</a> – who aren’t economic victims – vociferously support Trump in 2016? And why do communities of color – who’ve experienced centuries of economic and racial victimization – largely <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/11/09/no-trump-didnt-win-the-largest-share-of-non-white-voters-of-any-republican-in-60-years/?sh=342ce6024a09">oppose</a> him? </p>
<p>I teach about <a href="https://english.asu.edu/content/lee-bebout">whiteness in the U.S.</a> and am writing a book on the rhetoric of white entrenchment. I believe Trump and Trumpism tapped into a long-standing sense of aggrievement that often – but not exclusively – manifests as white victimhood.</p>
<h2>White victimhood</h2>
<p>The politics of white victimhood is nothing new. For example, before the Civil War, pro-slavery advocates <a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Fanatical-Schemes,1942.aspx">blamed abolitionists</a> for causing slave revolts and endangering the lives of white Southerners. </p>
<p>A sense – or fear – of victimhood pervades contemporary white supremacy, from the extreme to the mainstream.</p>
<p>Since the 1980s, figures like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb_QRjaAkgI">Lou Dobbs</a> and <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312374365">Pat Buchanan</a> have alluded to plots involving Mexican immigrants and the Mexican government to retake the U.S. Southwest.</p>
<p>This paranoid victimhood ultimately led to a <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479858538/whiteness-on-the-border/">ban on ethnic studies</a> in some Arizona schools after politicians claimed that the classes encouraged hatred toward white people and activists contended that Mexican American studies would bring about a reconquest of the U.S. Southwest.</p>
<p>And there is the perennial <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-fox-news-created-the-war-on-christmas">War on Christmas</a> wherein some Christians feel they are persecuted by people who say “Happy Holidays” to recognize that their fellow citizens may celebrate other faith traditions. Notably, the idea of a “War on Christmas” was coined by Peter Brimelow, founder of the VDARE white supremacist website.</p>
<p>Even avowed white supremacists fear their victimhood and use fear of becoming the victim as a recruiting tool.</p>
<p>Consider <a href="https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/14-words">this motto</a> widely used across various neo-Nazi groups: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” These adherents wouldn’t need to secure a future for white children if they didn’t see that future as imperiled.</p>
<p>Similarly, at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/14/jews-will-not-replace-us-why-white-supremacists-go-after-jews/">the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville</a>, Virginia, white supremacists chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” </p>
<p>Trump’s stoking of victimhood is neither novel nor something that merely taps into economic anxiety.</p>
<h2>‘Wages of whiteness’</h2>
<p>To understand this identity invested in victimhood, we must explore whiteness. </p>
<p>Historian <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/255-the-wages-of-whiteness">David Roediger</a> demonstrated how in the 19th and early 20th centuries, adopting whiteness gave working-class European Americans certain psychological and social advantages as well as economic ones. American intellectual <a href="https://libcom.org/library/black-reconstruction-america-web-du-bois">W.E.B. DuBois</a> called these advantages the “wages of whiteness.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Portrait of W.E.B. DuBois" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376557/original/file-20201223-49513-u7djeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376557/original/file-20201223-49513-u7djeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376557/original/file-20201223-49513-u7djeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376557/original/file-20201223-49513-u7djeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376557/original/file-20201223-49513-u7djeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376557/original/file-20201223-49513-u7djeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376557/original/file-20201223-49513-u7djeo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=627&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. DuBois, American sociologist and NAACP co-founder, 1868-1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dr-william-edward-burghardt-du-bois-82-year-old-news-photo/2662826?adppopup=true">Keystone/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These “wages of whiteness” gave white Americans the social advantages afforded by higher-paying jobs as well as residential and school segregation. The psychological payout came in knowing that even if they were being economically exploited by elites, at least they held social standing above their Black working-class counterparts.</p>
<p>Although the U.S. is far from achieving racial equality, many of the formal mechanisms for these wages have disappeared. We live in <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018211">hypersegregated neighborhoods</a>, but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/racist-housing-covenants/2020/10/21/9d262738-0261-11eb-8879-7663b816bfa5_story.html">racist housing covenants</a> are now illegal. Public education is tremendously inequitable and often <a href="https://azpbs.org/horizon/2014/06/de-facto-school-segregation/">de facto segregated</a>, but Black or Mexican schools are no longer explicitly written into the law.</p>
<p>But because whiteness is an identity built upon securing advantages over others, the historical shift toward greater equality – even if it’s often more formal than substantive – is perceived by many whites as a loss. American sociologist Michael Kimmel has described this as a form of “<a href="https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/michael-kimmel/angry-white-men/9781568589626/">aggrieved entitlement</a>.”</p>
<p>For example, programs designed to address centuries of inequality and admit more students of color to universities are viewed by some white people as <a href="https://abc13.com/ut-austin-university-of-texas-lawsuit-affirmative-action-students/6336142/">victimizing whites</a>. </p>
<p>Purely economic explanations of Trumpism ignore this aggrieved entitlement. When commentators contend that free trade and technological advances have left behind blue-collar Americans – whom they often assume to be white – they fail to note how the perceived loss of the “wages of whiteness” has fostered a political identity based on aggrievement.</p>
<p>The danger isn’t simply a victimhood identity – it’s how victimhood can be deployed and weaponized. White power groups use this sense of victimhood to recruit and radicalize. </p>
<p>On numerous college campuses, white supremacist groups have posted flyers asserting <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/11/05/its-ok-be-white-posters-rile-campuses">“It’s OK to be white”</a> and <a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x600ied">“Diversity is code for white genocide.”</a> These slogans tap into a preexisting sense of white victimhood in much the same way that Trump has done at his rallies — <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/live-updates/midterms/midterm-election-updates/introducing-his-daughter-ivanka-at-cleveland-rally-trump-vows-never-to-call-women-beautiful/?arc404=true">stating the purportedly politically incorrect</a> to elicit a sense of besieged belonging. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>In its most dangerous manifestations, the rhetoric of victimhood is used to excuse violence or rationalize murder. That’s evident in the cases of mass killers Elliot Rodger, Dylann Roof, Patrick Crusius or even Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. Church shooter Dylann Roof <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2016/1211/What-motivated-Dylann-Roof-Confession-offers-clues">invoked this victmhood</a> when he claimed that “What I did is so minuscule to what they’re doing to white people every day all the time.” </p>
<p>Trump may recede from the limelight in coming months. But this politicized victimhood that existed long before him – a victimhood <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/12/19/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-victimhood-from-winning-to-whining/">he powerfully tapped into</a> and mobilized – will be fertile soil for white supremacy and political violence for generations to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee Bebout 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 sense – or fear – of victimhood pervades contemporary white supremacy from the extreme to the mainstream.Lee Bebout, Professor of English, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508252020-12-14T13:20:34Z2020-12-14T13:20:34ZW.E.B. Du Bois embraced science to fight racism as editor of NAACP’s magazine The Crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373656/original/file-20201208-21-huflu9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C17%2C2243%2C1613&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois in his office at The Crisis in New York City, 1925.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0421">W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The NAACP – the most prominent interracial civil rights organization in American history – published the first issue of The Crisis, <a href="https://www.thecrisismagazine.com">its official magazine</a>, 110 years ago, in 1910. For almost two and a half decades, sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois served as its editor, famously using this platform to dismantle scientific racism. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Yellowed print ad for The Crisis with photo of a young Black child and text." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An advertisement for The Crisis, circa March 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b170-i549">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the time, many widely respected <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/211280">intellectuals gave credence to beliefs</a> that empirical evidence exists to justify a “natural” white superiority. Tearing down scientific racism was thus a necessary project for The Crisis. Under Du Bois’ leadership, the magazine laid bare the irrationality of scientific racism. </p>
<p>Less remembered, however, is how it also sought to help its readers understand and engage with contemporary science. </p>
<p>In nearly every issue, the magazine reported on scientific developments, recommended scientific works or featured articles on natural sciences. Du Bois’ time as editor of The Crisis was just as much about critically embracing careful, systematic, empirical science as it was about skewering the popular view that Blacks (and other nonwhites) were naturally inferior. </p>
<p>Sociologists <a href="https://as.vanderbilt.edu/sociology/bio/?who=patrick-greiner">Patrick Greiner</a> and <a href="https://faculty.utah.edu/u0847751-BRETT_CLARK/hm/index.hml">Brett Clark</a> <a href="https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/sociology/faculty/faculty-directory/besek-jordan.html">and I</a> recently pored through the magnificent <a href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/collection/mums312">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers</a> at the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X20938624">We found that Du Bois not only drew from natural sciences</a>, but thought deeply about the ways in which The Crisis should and should not do so. He would even go so far as to critique allies for using science in ways he thought inappropriate.</p>
<h2>Case in point: Defending Darwin</h2>
<p>On Feb. 18, 1932, the Harlem pastor Adam Clayton Powell wrote to Du Bois, asking him to publish his recent address at a NAACP mass meeting in an upcoming issue of The Crisis.</p>
<p>A week later, <a href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b192-i371">Du Bois responded</a> that while he’d read Powell’s address “with great interest,” he could not publish it as written. Why? It got biologist Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection very wrong. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="excerpt of typewritten letter on yellowed paper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An excerpt of Du Bois’ letter of Feb. 25, 1925 to Adam Clayton Powell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b192-i371">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Darwin, explained Du Bois, did not try to demonstrate “who ought to survive,” as Powell’s address assumed. Rather, Darwin’s work is “simply a scientific statement” that had been twisted to support eugenicist and other pseudo-scientific doctrines. </p>
<p>This short reply to the powerful pastor contains so much. It shows that Du Bois demanded a nuanced appreciation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Further, he insisted Darwin should not be held liable for the racist ideologues who misappropriated his work, cloaking their demagoguery in scientific objectivity. Darwin’s work is of clear value, but one must always remain aware that, like with all science, politics shaped its reception.</p>
<p>For Du Bois, how one understands and uses science were not minor issues. </p>
<h2>Science in The Crisis</h2>
<p>In the first section of <a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507789/">the first issue of The Crisis</a>, there is an archaeological report. It describes how “exploration of the African continent is yet in its infancy and will doubtless yield surprising results in establishing the advanced state of development attained by the black races in early times.” </p>
<p>According to the latest archaeology, in other words, African heritage is something to be proud of. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Subheading 'SCIENCE' above a column of text." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On page 6 of the inaugural issue of The Crisis, a subheading for ‘SCIENCE.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507789/">The Crisis. Vol. 1, No. 1; 1910. The Modernist Journals Project. Brown and Tulsa Universities, ongoing. www.modjourn.org</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later in that issue, under the subheading “Science,” it is noted that a paper was read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science concluding that “all earlier human races were probably colored.” This same section notes a recent study providing evidence that, in a direct rebuke to scientific racism, “mere brain weight is no indication of mentality.”</p>
<p>In the second issue of The Crisis, the famed Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas explained that there is no physical anthropological evidence “<a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507810/">showing inferiority of the Negro race</a>.” Later issues would highlight early African metallurgy and critique racist intelligence tests. Another would <a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507921/">recommend a work by Peter Kropotkin</a>, the great Russian anarchist and zoologist, which suggested that natural selection is more about cooperation among species than any fight for survival between them.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Article headlined 'Is the Negro Inferior?'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&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 Crisis published articles by prestigious scholars who drew on science to refute racism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AVgEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Crisis, Nov. 1932</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Crisis published this sort of work throughout Du Bois’ time as editor. The reason why is clear. Du Bois knew that a proper understanding of science does not lead to biological essentialism – the idea that biology limits who you are and what you can do. It leads to the exact opposite conclusion, that every population has the ability to make their own meaning and determine themselves as they see fit. The only constraints are social processes like colonialism and racism. Science, for Du Bois, was in this way necessary and liberating.</p>
<h2>Science for an emancipated politics</h2>
<p>Today’s political moment is different than Du Bois’, though there are some parallels. One is that a political life free of exploitation and enhanced by participatory democracy remains out of reach for many. Disenfranchisement still exists in many forms. As the Black Lives Matter movement and others have shown, racism is a big reason why.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="W.E.B. Du Bois in his office, ca. 1948" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois in his office, ca. 1948, holding the first issue of The Crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0463">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While only a piece of the puzzle, Du Bois’ insistence on critically embracing a careful, systematic and empirical view of science can be an important part of that struggle for an emancipated politics. A critical embrace of science can help people better tackle pressing issues like environmental justice, health care disparities and more. </p>
<p>To critically embrace science is to, as Du Bois did in the pages of The Crisis, remain unwavering in the fact that any scientific theory promoting racial and other forms of injustice is categorically wrong.</p>
<p>He demonstrated how to reject racist science without rejecting the ways that science can help people better understand our relationships with the world. In particular, engaging science shows how our relationships with each other are not determined by nature, but are under our own control.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?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/150825/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Besek 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>As editor of the magazine for 24 years, Du Bois featured articles about biology, evolution, archaeology in Africa and more to refute the rampant scientific racism of the early 20th century.Jordan Besek, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University at BuffaloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1481212020-11-24T15:02:00Z2020-11-24T15:02:00ZMbeki and Obasanjo: case studies in the use of soft power in Africa’s interests<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364785/original/file-20201021-23-7ijop4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki share a light moment at a meeting of the G8 and developing nations in Tokyo in 2000.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Michel Euler</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The concept of soft power has been part of the parlance of international relations for <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1148580?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">three decades</a>. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00358533.2020.1819629?journalCode=ctrt20">Soft power</a> actors use non-coercive and persuasive means to achieve their objectives. Attraction rather than force is their preferred language.</p>
<p>The application of soft power remains focused on states because of their primacy in international politics. But, the increasing influence of non-state actors dictates a need to review this approach. Non-state actors on the international stage include international organisations, NGOs, multinational corporations, terrorist groups and individuals. </p>
<p>It is against this backdrop that I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00358533.2020.1819629?journalCode=ctrt20">studied</a> the power of attraction of non-state actors. I focused on the soft power credentials of former African presidents – <a href="https://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/people/olusegun-obasanjo/">Olusegun Obasanjo</a> (Nigeria, 1999-2007) and <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">Thabo Mbeki</a> (South Africa, 1999-2008). </p>
<p>The two have made important contributions to the continent this century through promoting peace, democracy, pan-Africanism and regional integration.</p>
<p>The study captures the essence of their soft power. It also engages how it has rubbed off on their respective countries – during and after their presidencies. </p>
<p>I examined Obasanjo’s and Mbeki’s traits, ideas and policies. In particular I focused on their contribution to pan-Africanism and the idea of the <a href="http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/mbeki.html">African Renaissance</a>. I argue that they successfully used their soft power and international clout to make significant contributions in Africa and beyond.</p>
<h2>Obasanjo as a soft power president</h2>
<p>After Obasanjo’s civilian administration ended in 2007, he attracted widespread criticism within Nigeria. This is perhaps best captured by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s description of him as a “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt81pgm">master of hypocrisy</a>”.</p>
<p>But, this underplays some of his accomplishments. The period between 1976 and 1979 when he was the military head of state is <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Nigeria_s_External_Relations_and_Foreign.html?id=ImN0AAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">lauded by some</a> as the most dynamic era of Nigeria’s foreign policy. And during his civilian administration (1999–2007) Nigeria was catapulted from a pariah state (due to gross human right abuses by successive military regimes) to a significant regional and, to a lesser extent, global player. </p>
<p>Thanks to Obasanjo’s idiosyncratic soft power, Nigeria, once neglected in global affairs, witnessed an influx of high profile visits, including US presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Its voice was better heard in such bodies as the <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/">Commonwealth</a>, <a href="https://www.g77.org/">Group of 77</a> and the <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/inter/nam.htm">Non-Aligned Movement</a>. </p>
<p>Obasanjo was notable for his courage and decisiveness, particularly when it came to colonialism and, later, apartheid. His toughness on these issues, and his promotion of regional integration, had remarkable success. </p>
<p>A foreign policy that embraces genuine promotion of democracy and peacemaking generates <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=x5Q5DgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=soft+power&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwje2-zgiLvsAhX_SxUIHZ7aBt4Q6AEwAHoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q=soft%20power&f=false">soft power</a>. </p>
<p>Obasanjo enhanced his, and by extension Nigeria’s soft power through his successful peacemaking and promotion of democracy. The former, in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. The latter, in São Tomé and Príncipe, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire.</p>
<p>In Liberia, he was instrumental in ending the war. Obasanjo also facilitated the resignation of President Charles Taylor who was granted asylum in Nigeria. He played an active role in the transition to democratic rule that ushered in President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2018.1492833?journalCode=rsdy20">in 2006</a>.</p>
<p>In São Tomé and Príncipe, Obasanjo ensured the reinstatement of President Fradique de Menezes following a military coup <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533952.2018.1492833?journalCode=rsdy20">in 2003</a>.</p>
<p>His reformist ideas, set out in the <a href="http://www.dirco.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/africa/cssdca.htm">Memorandum of Understanding</a> of the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa, was adopted by the African Union summit in 2002. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589000600769926">memorandum</a> has four cornerstones. These are security, stability, development and cooperation as prerequisites for good governance on which African states would be measured. </p>
<p>It is thus clear that Obasanjo’s towering personality and international stature have enabled Nigeria to shape African institutions. He is thus a wielder of soft power.</p>
<p>Since leaving office, Obasanjo has continued to exhibit this soft power through conflict mediation and humanitarian interventions, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2008–2009) and Côte d'Ivoire (2011). </p>
<p>But, a number of shortfalls blot his soft power credentials. These include his unilateral decisions and apparent disdain for the rule of law <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/aa_afren/5/1/EJC10288">while in power</a>.</p>
<h2>Mbeki’s legacy</h2>
<p>Mbeki was influenced by some of Africa’s great political minds, as well as pan-African thinkers, during his years in exile in the UK. </p>
<p>For example, while studying at Sussex University in England in the mid-1960s, he engaged the ideas of pan-Africanist luminaries <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aime-Cesaire">Aimé Cesaire</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fanon-and-the-politics-of-truth-and-lying-in-a-colonial-society-102594">Frantz Fanon</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-Senghor">Leopold Senghor</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. Arguably, all these individuals influenced Mbeki’s views as seen in his pursuit of pan-Africanism and African Renaissance. </p>
<p>Mbeki has often been labelled an “African intellectual” and “African <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17532523.2017.1414396">philosopher king</a>”. There is no gainsaying that his administration had the most impact of any post-apartheid government in international affairs – even more so than <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>. </p>
<p>This was evident in his push for South-South solidarity and reform of old international institutions such as the <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/">UN Security Council</a>. The African Union, despite its weaknesses, provided the platform for him to promote peace and security in Africa.</p>
<p>Exercising his soft power attribute (persuasion), Mbeki used shuttle diplomacy to garner the support of other African states, the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/group-eight-g8-industrialized-nations#:%7E:text=The%20Group%20of%20Eight%20(G8)%20refers%20to%20the%20group%20of,security%2C%20energy%2C%20and%20terrorism.">Group of Eight</a> and the <a href="https://asean.org/">Association of Southeast Asian States</a> to establish the <a href="https://www.nepad.org/">New Partnership for Africa’s Development</a> and the <a href="https://www.aprm-au.org/">African Peer Review Mechanism</a>. He was noted as a major peacemaker on the continent. This is best shown by his administration’s peacemaking and peacekeeping in Burundi, the DRC and Sudan.</p>
<p>Mbeki was often called upon to mediate and find lasting solutions to conflict in Africa. In 2004, the African Union asked that he proffer a political solution to the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire. He was actively involved in mediation to end conflicts in Comoros, Rwanda, Sudan, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>Some of the interventions turned out to be a mere plastering of wounds as countries such as the DRC and Sudan remained fragile. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Mbeki facilitated the <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/drc-lusaka-agreement99">Lusaka ceasefire agreement</a> and the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/burundi_arusha-peace-and-reconciliation-agreement-for-burundi.pdf">Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement</a>. The accords aimed to end the DRC and Burundi’s conflicts, respectively.</p>
<p>Indeed, the calls for Mbeki’s mediation reflect recognition of his idiosyncratic soft power.</p>
<p>Mbeki’s administration demonstrated remarkable commitment to provide aid to Africa. The African Renaissance Fund was established in 2000 to disburse aid to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10220460802636158">fellow African states</a>. This offered an alternative to Western aid laced with debilitating conditions.</p>
<p>Mbeki continued to play a significant role after his presidency. He was appointed chair of the African Union’s efforts to bring peace to <a href="https://www.peaceau.org/en/article/progress-report-of-the-african-union-high-level-implementation-panel-for-sudan-and-south-sudan">Sudan and South Sudan</a> in 2009. This culminated in South Sudan’s independence in 2011.</p>
<p>The most significant factors that undermined his credibility were his <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40175024?seq=1">quiet diplomacy in Zimbabwe</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.25159/0256-8845/3094">HIV/AIDS denialism</a>. </p>
<p>Due to their soft power resources, Obasanjo and Mbeki made their mark on pan-Africanism and conflict resolution in Africa. Their ideas remain deeply ingrained in the African Union.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oluwaseun Tella 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>Former presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki have arguably made the most important contribution to Africa in the 21st Century by promoting peace, democracy, regional integration and pan-Africanism.Oluwaseun Tella, Director, The Future of Diplomacy at the Institute for the Future of Knowledge, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401432020-08-03T11:58:48Z2020-08-03T11:58:48ZHow the failures of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty set the stage for today’s anti-racist uprisings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349728/original/file-20200727-21-gt3hqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=90%2C67%2C4865%2C3311&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On May 27, 1919, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Italian President Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and American President Woodrow Wilson met May 27, 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/british-prime-minister-lloyd-george-italian-president-news-photo/3289187?adppopup=true">Lee Jackson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The racism that is now the target of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/world/george-floyd-global-protests.html">protest across the globe</a> is rooted in the tragic choices of leaders seeking to roll back change a century ago. </p>
<p>Nearly all historians now agree that at the end of World War I, the choice to return to an imperialist world order by the victorious Allied, or Entente, powers – France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States – was a historic error. It not only prepared the ground for the rise of fascism in Europe, but also sparked decades of political violence in Asia and Africa by <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/the_paris_peace_conference_and_its_consequences">people denied their rights</a> and humanity.</p>
<p>As World War I ended in <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/world-war-i-ends">November 1918</a>, the Spanish Flu pandemic swept across the globe, killing <a href="https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence#:%7E:text=The%20horrific%20scale%20of%20the%201918%20influenza%20pandemic%E2%80%94known,and%20civilians%20killed%20during%20World%20War%20I%20combined.">more than 50 million</a> people. <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/210420/worldwide_flu_outbreak_killed_45000_american_soldiers_during_world_war_i">Most vulnerable were soldiers</a> living in crowded barracks and their families back home, where hunger weakened immunity.</p>
<p>Like today, the effect of pandemic was aggravated by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2015/02/02/the-biggest-recession-youve-never-ever-heard-of/#4d41863d3619">economic recession and unemployment</a>. Worse, the people of the defeated German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires <a href="https://www.history.com/news/germany-world-war-i-debt-treaty-versailles">suffered chaos under political collapse</a>.</p>
<p>Amid these multiple crises, the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace">Paris Peace Conference</a> opened in January 1919. American President Woodrow Wilson personally traveled to Paris to ensure that the conference would make the world “<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/woodrow-wilson-racism-self-determination.html">safe for democracy</a>.”</p>
<p>Wilson had promised a new era of peace and justice in his famous <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/fourteen_points.shtml">Fourteen Points</a> statement of war aims, which included an end to secret treaties, the curtailment of colonial empires, the right of all people to choose their own government and a League of Nations to adjudicate international conflicts. </p>
<p>In 1920, like 2020, race became the pivot of a historic turning point. In both moments, world leaders faced a choice: to restore the previous status quo that had produced the crisis – or to embrace the need for a new world order. </p>
<p>The European members of the Entente powers <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Allied-Powers-international-alliance#ref1228825">at Paris – Britain, France, and Italy</a> – ignored Wilson’s call for world order based on law and rights. With the implementation of the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-0043.pdf">Treaty of Versailles</a> in January 1920, they chose to restore a racial hierarchy across the globe, extending their colonial rule over territories once held by the defeated German and Ottoman empires in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. </p>
<p>The treaty, which included establishment of the League of Nations, betrayed not only Wilson’s ideals, but also the Entente’s nonwhite allies and the colonial soldiers who fought in the “war to end all wars.” The racial injustice of the 1919-20 peace settlement sparked decades of political violence – not only in the colonized Middle East, Africa and Asia, but also in the United States. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois went to Paris to try to ensure that racist laws like the U.S. had would not be imposed in Africa to the detriment of African rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2003681451/?loclr=blogloc">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Journey to Paris</h2>
<p>In January 1919, activists from around the world traveled to Paris <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic#:%7E:text=Even%20President%20Woodrow%20Wilson%20reportedly%20contracted%20the%20flu,in%20Spain%2C%20though%20news%20coverage%20of%20it%20did.">despite risks to their health</a>. They embraced Wilson’s Fourteen Points as a chance to remake a broken world system of imperial rivalry that had led to World War I and the deaths of <a href="https://www.geo.tv/latest/212756-world-war-i-in-numbers">10 million soldiers and 50 million civilians</a>.</p>
<p>Among those activists was NAACP leader <a href="http://scua.library.umass.edu/duboisopedia/doku.php?id=about:versailles_peace_conference">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, who had fought against the spread of racist, segregationist Jim Crow laws from southern states to the North. He now feared that a similar legal double standard might be imposed in international law, to the detriment of African rights.</p>
<p>Du Bois asked to join the American delegation at Paris, but the Wilson administration refused him. Wilson feared that Du Bois’ <a href="https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/civil-rights-during-and-after-world-wars/dubois-wilson">call for racial equality</a> might spoil his negotiations with the other conference leaders – prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy – who ruled most of Africa as colonies. </p>
<h2>Claiming rights</h2>
<p>Undeterred, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/world-war-i-american-experiences/about-this-exhibition/world-overturned/peace-and-a-new-world-order/the-pan-african-conference/">Du Bois organized a Pan African Congress</a> to defend Africans’ rights. He understood, as others did in Paris, that racial <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/08/11/742293305/a-century-later-the-treaty-of-versailles-and-its-rejection-of-racial-equality">inequality was the foundation</a> of the old imperial world order.</p>
<p>Like Du Bois and his African allies, <a href="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/06/the-middle-eastern-prince-who-tried-to-change-the-treaty-of-versailles/">Arabs and Egyptians</a> claimed their right to sovereignty. But they found that the Entente leaders also considered Arab Muslims a lower species of human, unfit for self-rule.</p>
<p>Prince Faisal of Mecca gained entry to the conference because his Arab army had fought against the Ottoman Turks alongside Britain, with the understanding that Arabs would <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/08/14/treaty-versailles-michael-neiberg">gain an independent state</a>. But the British broke their promise and denied independence to Faisal’s Syrian Arab Kingdom. They instead <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Sykes-Picot-Agreement">joined French colonialists to divide Arab lands</a> between them. </p>
<p>Asians, too, were regarded as an inferior race. Japan had fought alongside the victorious Allies and had <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/essay/The-Treaty-Of-Versailles-And-Japan-F3V33J6WKPTDX">won a leading role</a> at the conference.</p>
<p>But when the Japanese delegation proposed a racial equality clause for the Covenant of the new League of Nations, the conference’s white leaders <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-japan-turned-against-paris-peace-treaty-and-why-it-matters-39527">rejected it</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The five members of the Japanese delegation to the Paris peace conference." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&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 Japanese delegation, shown here, proposed a racial equality clause for the charter of the new League of Nations. The leading powers rejected it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.28843/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Racial inequality codified</h2>
<p>The Covenant of the League of Nations, drafted by those same leaders at <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/League-of-Nations/The-Covenant">Paris in 1919</a>, codified the inequality of races in international law.
<a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp">Article 22</a> denied independence to Arabs, Africans and Pacific Islanders once ruled by the Ottomans and Germans. </p>
<p>In the condescending language of moral uplift, the article designated them as “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” Therefore, they would be placed under temporary European rule as “a <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art22">sacred trust of civilisation</a>.”</p>
<p>In other words, the League of Nations would administer temporary colonies, called mandates, to tutor uncivilized (nonwhite) people in politics. Racial inequality was enshrined in the very institution, the League of Nations, that was to ensure the governance of international law.</p>
<p>The mandates were imposed by gunpoint, with no pretense to respect self-determination. In July 1920, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Syria/The-French-mandate">French army occupied Damascus</a>, destroyed the Syrian Arab Kingdom and sent <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Faysal-I">Faisal into exile</a>. Likewise, the British battled mass opposition to claim its mandates in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Iraq/British-occupation-and-the-mandatory-regime">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199796953/obo-9780199796953-0200.xml">Palestine</a>. Meanwhile, South Africa imposed a brutal racist regime upon southwest Africa.</p>
<p>Racial exclusion from the club of so-called civilized nations provoked anti-colonial movements for the rest of the 20th century. </p>
<p>The president of the Syrian Arab Kingdom’s Congress, Sheikh Rashid Rida, foresaw violent consequences <a href="https://tcf.org/content/report/arab-worlds-liberal-islamist-schism-turns-100/?session=1">in his 1921 appeal</a> to the League of Nations. </p>
<p>“It does not befit the honor of this League, which President Wilson proposed to include all civilized nations for the good of all human beings,” he wrote, “for it to be used as a tool by two colonial states. These states seek to use this Assembly to guarantee … the subjugation of peoples.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Prince Faisal of Mecca with his delegation at the Peace Conference." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.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">Prince Faisal of Mecca with his delegation at the Peace Conference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq#/media/File:FeisalPartyAtVersaillesCopy.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rida prophetically warned that “Syria, Palestine, and other Arab countries will ignite the fires of war in both the West and the East.” The bitter sheikh turned against European liberalism and inspired the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rashid-Rida">founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928</a>. </p>
<p>In the later 20th century, this racial exclusion of Arab Muslims inspired the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/06/30/the-new-islamic-caliphate-and-its-war-against-history/">violent Islamist movements that</a> drew the United States into seeming endless conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.</p>
<h2>Jim Crow stays</h2>
<p>In the United States, racial hierarchy was similarly reimposed by violence. Black veterans returned from Europe to confront <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/wwi/red-summer">lynching and race riots</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s newsletter explains what’s going on with the coronavirus pandemic. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=coronavirus-going-on">Subscribe now</a>.</em>]</p>
<p>The link between the American racial order and the new world order was made explicit by President Wilson’s adviser, Colonel <a href="https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=2294">Edward M. House</a>. He advised Wilson that racial equality would cost him votes in the South and California. Worse, such a clause could <a href="https://www.guernicamag.com/andrew-s-lewis-wilson-and-the-racial-equality-clause/">empower the League of Nations</a> to intervene in the United States against Jim Crow laws.</p>
<p>In March 1920, the U.S. Senate <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/senate-rejects-league-of-nations-nov-19-1919-113006">rejected American membership</a> in the League of Nations precisely because clauses on transnational law enforcement and collective security threatened U.S. sovereignty.</p>
<p>It is no accident that the current crisis in the U.S. has come to focus on racial injustice. Among its several sources are the decisions made 100 years ago by white men from powerful countries who believed maintaining their dominance was more important than seeking peace through justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140143/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Thompson received funding for her research from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and American University in Washington, DC. </span></em></p>Suffering a pandemic and the aftermath of a war that killed 50 million, the world in 1920 faced a turning point as it negotiated a new political order. As today, the key issue was racial inequality.Elizabeth Thompson, Professor and Mohamed S. Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1180262019-05-30T23:02:34Z2019-05-30T23:02:34ZJ. Edgar Hoover’s revenge: Information the FBI once hoped could destroy Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been declassified<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277266/original/file-20190530-69067-gdsosc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., addresses marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/March-On-Washington-Photo-Gallery/799f8d9c3371479b9e7d6be2b80b2ae2/3/0">AP/File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An article just published by the U.K.-based <a href="https://standpointmag.co.uk/">Standpoint Magazine</a> alleges that civil rights icon Martin Luther King witnessed and even celebrated a woman’s rape. </p>
<p>Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian <a href="https://www.davidgarrow.com/">David Garrow</a>, one of <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060566920/bearing-the-cross/">King’s biographers</a>, the claim relies upon <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release%22%22">recently declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation documents</a> that summarize tape recordings of King’s extramarital affairs.</p>
<p>The allegation that King witnessed a rape and did not stop it is a serious one. Its impact on how we understand and tell U.S. history, and King’s role in it, is likely to be debated for years. </p>
<p>It’s important to reevaluate King’s legacy in light of this new information. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://independentresearcher.academia.edu/TrevorGriffey">as an historian</a> who has done substantial research in FBI files on the black freedom movement, I believe that it’s also important to understand how this information came to be public. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277268/original/file-20190530-69067-1059mpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, before testifying at a hearing in Washington, D.C., Sept. 18, 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-DC-USA-APHS104014-J-Edgar-Hoover-1968/aaeceee62552400d93b3707e6c04be2e/60/0">AP/File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Targeting black activism</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/directors/j-edgar-hoover">director of the FBI from 1924-72, J. Edgar Hoover</a> had an outsized influence on the organization. <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about">The FBI operated within the Department of Justice</a> and was tasked with investigating violations of federal law and developing intelligence on foreign agents operating on U.S. soil. </p>
<p>At various points in the 20th century, both Congress and the president instructed the FBI to investigate not just foreign agents but also “radicals” and “subversives.” Hoover interpreted that mandate to also develop what the FBI called <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-2e.html">“racial intelligence.”</a> </p>
<p>From the 1910s to the 1970s, the FBI treated civil rights activists in general, and African American activists in particular, as either disloyal “subversives” or “dupes” of foreign agents. The FBI’s predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, sought to <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?isbn=978-0-253-10923-1">“compel black loyalty” during World War I</a> and <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/marcus-garvey">investigate “negro radicalism” in the 1920s</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1940s and 1950s, the FBI amassed 140,000 pages of documents as part of its investigation of what it called “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/fbis-racon-racial-conditions-in-america-during-world-war-ii/oclc/64083849">foreign inspired agitation</a> among American Negroes.” That didn’t even include its files on individual black “subversives” such as civil rights activist <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807856161/ella-baker-and-the-black-freedom-movement/">Ella Baker</a>, <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/E.%20B.%20%28William%29%20Dubois">the renowned scholar W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, and the singer and actor <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/Paul%20Robeson%2C%20Sr.">Paul Robeson</a>. </p>
<p>And from the late 1930s through the 1970s, the FBI and the <a href="https://www2.gwu.edu/%7Eerpapers/teachinger/glossary/huac.cfm">House Un-American Activities Committee</a>, through official reports like “<a href="https://archive.org/details/americannegroinc00unit">The American Negro and the Communist Party</a>,” popularized the notion among conservatives that communists were always trying to use the struggle against racial segregation as a “front” for the “subversion” of individual American liberty. </p>
<h2>Focus on King</h2>
<p>As Martin Luther King ascended in prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s, it was inevitable that the FBI would investigate him, like it did every other civil rights movement activist, for what it called “<a href="https://archive.org/details/lazarfoia?and%5B%5D=%22communist+influence+racial+matters%22&sin=&sort=titleSorter">communist influence in racial matters</a>.” </p>
<p>King did consult with former members of the Communist Party, among many others. One of his advisers – <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/levison-stanley-david">Stanley Levison – maintained closer ties to the party than he admitted to King</a>, and the FBI knew it. </p>
<p>But it was the civil rights movement’s growing influence that inspired Hoover to become increasingly alarmed about these connections. </p>
<p>Two days after King delivered his famous <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/i-have-dream-address-delivered-march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">“I Have a Dream” speech</a> at the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a>, William Sullivan, the FBI’s director of intelligence, <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-Neutralize-King">famously responded by writing</a>, “We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” </p>
<p>In late 1963, FBI leaders met to discuss ways of “<a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-Neutralize-King">neutralizing King</a> as an effective Negro leader and developing evidence concerning King’s continued dependence on communists for guidance and direction.”</p>
<p>One of those ways for “developing evidence” involved <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/614/2821.pdf?1559244520">bugging hotel rooms</a> and other places to record King’s conversations with colleagues.</p>
<p>The recordings did not provide evidence of “communist influence” on the civil rights movement. Instead, they recorded King’s extramarital affairs. FBI officials, who already planned to “neutralize” King before they recorded his infidelities, shifted the rationale for their campaign to “morality” without missing a beat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277279/original/file-20190530-69087-q5gp5x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Screenshot from a 1966 FBI memo regarding surveillance of King.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/613/2820.pdf?1559244493">National Archives via Trevor Griffey photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Obscene file’</h2>
<p>Perhaps surprising to a 21st century reader, policing sexuality had long been part of the FBI’s mission. </p>
<p>The agency had a history of <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674368118">selectively enforcing the Mann Act</a>, the 1910 law that aimed to stem interstate transport of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” The FBI did this by prosecuting African American men for traveling across state lines with white women. Its “sex deviates” investigation from 1951 through the 1970s produced over 300,000 pages of files as part of what one historian has called “<a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2119-4.html">a war on gays</a>.” </p>
<p>FBI agents regularly collected “obscene” materials as part of their investigations, which were then deposited in an “<a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781566630719/J-Edgar-Hoover-Sex-and-Crime-An-Historical-Antidote">Obscene File</a>” that contained thousands of books, photographs and films by the mid-1960s. </p>
<p>And longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s “Personal and Confidential” files contained what Attorney General Edward Levi <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/28/archives/levi-details-wide-scope-of-hoovers-secret-files-levi-details-wide.html">described to Congress in 1975</a> as 48 folders on “public figures and prominent persons… Presidents, executive branch employees and 17 individuals who were members of Congress.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t clear, however, how the FBI could circulate information about King’s affairs without also raising questions as to why the FBI was bugging King’s hotel rooms in the first place. When FBI Assistant Director Courtney Evans <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-MISUR-Martin-Luther-King">recommended in September 1964 that the tapes be destroyed</a>, Hoover overruled him. </p>
<p>Instead, in late 1964, following the passage of the Civil Rights Act and King’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize, the FBI sent excerpts of the recordings to King’s wife, Coretta, along with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html">a letter that encouraged King to commit suicide</a> to avoid having exposure of his extramarital affairs ruin his life.</p>
<p>The stunt failed. In <a href="https://www.baylorpress.com/9781602580732/an-easy-burden/">his autobiography</a>, civil rights leader Andrew Young described his and Coretta and Martin Luther King’s responses to the tape that accompanied what he called the “sick letter”: “It was a very poor quality recording. … There was no question in our minds that this scurrilous material was coming from the FBI … few people had the capability of bugging hotel rooms except the FBI.” </p>
<p>Undeterred, the FBI continued to bug King’s hotel rooms from 1965 to 1968, and occasionally circulated <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBI-MISUR-Martin-Luther-King">memos to the attorney general</a> about the results of the recordings, including both political and sexual topics. </p>
<p>But the FBI didn’t release the tapes themselves, because doing so may have generated the same suspicions raised by the one sent to King.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277269/original/file-20190530-69079-2ykwss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King arrives with his wife Coretta Scott King, to deliver the traditional address of the winner of Nobel Peace Prize at the University of Oslo, Dec. 11, 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-NOR-APHS341546-Nobel-Prize-MLK-1964/4d4387d816794f62ab1277f1e67ddbb0/7/1">AP/File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Context matters</h2>
<p>The preservation of the FBI’s tapes so that they could someday come to light was a political decision made through acts of omission. </p>
<p>When J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, his secretary <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001203mag-chart.html">Helen Gandy destroyed the FBI’s “Personal and Confidential”</a> files on public officials and celebrities. At the same time, according to Athan Theoharis’ <a href="https://www.amazon.com/FBI-Comprehensive-Reference-Guide/dp/089774991X">“The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide,”</a> Acting Director Mark Felt incorporated the Bureau’s “Official and Confidential” files into the FBI’s central records system, subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Files on King’s private life were placed in this latter set of records rather than destroyed, and some were <a href="https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2005/nr05-89.html">transferred to the National Archives in 2005</a>. </p>
<p>Litigation by Bernard Lee from King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference sought to compel destruction of the recordings and transcripts. But the judge in the case, John Lewis Smith Jr., rejected the request, and instead <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/01/archives/fbi-ordered-to-send-king-tapes-to-archives.html">ordered them sealed for 50 years until 2027</a>. </p>
<p>People will rightly debate the trustworthiness of FBI sources, and Garrow’s interpretation of them. No figure, no matter how revered, should be immune from scrutiny over their potential support for violence against women.</p>
<p>But those weighing the evidence and its veracity should not forget that the tapes being used to facilitate this discussion were created and preserved with the goal of destroying Martin Luther King’s reputation. The FBI’s intent was to demoralize and fragment the coalition of supporters King brought together in his life, the people who find common purpose by honoring his memory. </p>
<p>In this respect, revealing these materials could be considered “Hoover’s revenge.”</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the name of the litigant from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who sought to compel destruction of the recordings and transcripts.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Trevor Griffey 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>Publication was justified of information from the FBI that Martin Luther King Jr. witnessed and celebrated a woman’s rape, writes a historian, who warns the FBI had long wanted to destroy King.Trevor Griffey, Lecturer, Labor Studies, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1107622019-02-14T22:37:42Z2019-02-14T22:37:42ZNAACP’s first meeting was held in Canada but there were no Canadians there<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257834/original/file-20190207-174857-1rhnyap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Niagara Movement meeting in Fort Erie Canada, near Niagara Falls in 1905 had no Canadians present. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.37818/">Library of Congress</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first meeting of what would later become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took place in 1905 in Fort Erie near Niagara Falls, Canada. Legendary thinkers such as W.E.B. Du Bois attended.</p>
<p>Although the social justice movement for the advancement of Black Americans was initially named <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/niagara-movement">the Niagara Movement</a>, based on that first meeting in Canada, there was no mention of Black Canadians at this historic meeting. </p>
<p>The story of this meeting helps to demonstrate the ongoing invisibility of Black Canadians both within Canada, across North America and internationally. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259129/original/file-20190214-1730-10t1tm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259129/original/file-20190214-1730-10t1tm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259129/original/file-20190214-1730-10t1tm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259129/original/file-20190214-1730-10t1tm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259129/original/file-20190214-1730-10t1tm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259129/original/file-20190214-1730-10t1tm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259129/original/file-20190214-1730-10t1tm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American women at the 2nd Niagara Movement Conference which took place in the U.S. at Harpers Ferry: Mrs. Gertrude Wright Morgan (seated) and (left to right) Mrs. O.M. Waller, Mrs. H.F.M. Murray, Mrs. Mollie Lewis Kelan, Mrs. Ida D. Bailey, Miss Sadie Shorter, and Mrs. Charlotte Hershaw.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the strong geographical connection between Canada and the U.S., it is reasonable to question why Black Canadians are missing from the Niagara Movement’s historical narrative. </p>
<p>Their absence in this history highlights the erasure of the contributions of Indigenous, Black people and other racialized peoples in Canada. This Canadian historical narrative, as Canadian sociologist Rinaldo Walcott suggests, has effectively “invisibilized” the Black presence in Canada. </p>
<p>In his book, <em><a href="https://49thshelf.com/Books/B/Black-Like-Who3">Black Like Who?</a></em>, Walcott speculates that the NAACP disallowed Black Canadians from attending this first meeting, despite their attempts to engage in dialogue with the organizers. Walcott writes that there were Black people in Canada who had both heard of and wanted to participate in the movement. However, he believes they were not welcomed. </p>
<p>Many know that Black Americans faced racist laws meant to segregate and oppress their existence, but many do not realize that Black Canadians also faced the hardship of anti-Black racism or the extent to which they suffered. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259130/original/file-20190214-1721-2apkp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259130/original/file-20190214-1721-2apkp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259130/original/file-20190214-1721-2apkp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259130/original/file-20190214-1721-2apkp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259130/original/file-20190214-1721-2apkp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259130/original/file-20190214-1721-2apkp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259130/original/file-20190214-1721-2apkp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The untold story of Canadian slavery and the burning of Old Montréal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HarperCollins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historian Afua Cooper’s portrayal of enslaved woman Marie Joseph Angelique, accused of <a href="https://greyroots.com/sites/default/files/naomi_norquay_book_review_the_hanging_of_angelique_2009.pdf">“allegedly setting fire to Montréal in 1734”</a> in <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-hanging-of-angelique-book-review"><em>The Hanging of Angelique</em></a>, helps to illuminate anti-Black racism and the enslavement of Black people in Canada in the 1700s. Although there was no direct evidence to prove Angelique caused the blaze, <a href="https://greyroots.com/sites/default/files/naomi_norquay_book_review_the_hanging_of_angelique_2009.pdf">“she was convicted on circumstantial evidence in a justice system that declared defendants guilty unless proven innocent, by a court whose members had all suffered losses in the fire and by 24 vengeful witnesses, including a 5 year old girl.”</a> </p>
<p>Cooper’s example helps to demonstrate the Canadian settler social conditions where Black people are assumed to be guilty.</p>
<h2>The urgent need for a social justice movement</h2>
<p>Black people in both Canada and the United States have encountered, and continue to face, a white settler terrain that loathes Blackness. After the Civil War, the United States Congress passed laws to support newly freed African-Americans but in the decades that followed, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of decisions that set back those efforts. </p>
<p>During that time, Black Americans encountered “anti-Negro” <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/springfield-race-riot-1908/">race riots</a>. Historian <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/54/3/696/744430">Charles Kellogg</a> recounts stories from African-Americans in places like Springfield, Illinois, where they encountered <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/2716769?journalCode=jnh">white mobs that burned down Black homes, lynched Black bodies and murdered Black people</a>.</p>
<p>By 1905, the need for a social movement for African-Americans was urgent. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257827/original/file-20190207-174894-ld8xlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257827/original/file-20190207-174894-ld8xlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257827/original/file-20190207-174894-ld8xlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257827/original/file-20190207-174894-ld8xlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257827/original/file-20190207-174894-ld8xlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257827/original/file-20190207-174894-ld8xlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257827/original/file-20190207-174894-ld8xlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A closer look at the studio photo taken at the Niagara Movement meeting in Fort Erie Canada, 1905. Top row (left to right): H. A. Thompson, Alonzo F. Herndon, John Hope, James R. L. Diggs (?). Second row (left to right): Frederick McGhee, Norris B. Herndon (boy), J. Max Barber, W. E. B. Du Bois, Robert Bonner. Bottom row (left to right): Henry L. Bailey, Clement G. Morgan, W. H. H. Hart, B. S. Smith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The NAACP would become the vehicle to increase the social citizenship of Black people in America, especially during the early 1900s, when the race divide cut deep and afflicted the social, political and economic conditions of Black folk. </p>
<p>U.S. segregation laws in the 1900s made holding meetings in hotels impossible. Efforts to hold the original meeting in Buffalo, New York were thwarted by a social climate that was simmering with racial hostility toward Black Americans. In historical notes, Buffalo’s NAACP chapter president, Rev. Mark Blue, mentioned that Black American thinkers were accepted by the management of the <a href="https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/niagara-movement-paved-the-way-for-the-naacp/71-588302597">Erie Hotel</a>, near Niagara Falls, Ont. </p>
<p>Why were Black Americans but not Black Canadians allowed at this historic meeting? Who disallowed them to enter? Was it the hotel managers? Was it the organizers? Were they there but perhaps not mentioned?</p>
<h2>Invisible in Canada</h2>
<p>Canada often characterizes itself as a haven for Black slaves of the American South, but it does so without acknowledging its own participation in the Black slave industry.</p>
<p>A seldom mentioned historical fact is that <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-enslavement">Canada has its own Black slave history</a>. Prior to abolition, Black enslavement existed in Canada until it was abolished throughout British North America. </p>
<p>Before the Niagara Movement, the Canadian region was the site of safer passage of Blacks fleeing slavery in the United States. Heroic figures like <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/dc40217905404be7424014b40b6ba0fd/1?casa_token=v-V4tPkuYPkAAAAA:k4hQUofCUVTgFEDg86h6OA_kRohjSniPD1ZoqWG_7MQLdhv1s3xideVBtUzViBG9twOIpAXM6gIB&cbl=37747&pq-origsite=gscholar">Harriet Tubman</a> travelled through Niagara, Canada to bring slaves to a better life in northern North America. Yet, as Walcott points out, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674076068">there is little or no reference to these facts</a> in the historical commentaries on the Niagara Movement. </p>
<p>Black Canadian historical moments, such as the destruction of <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/4w5q9n/africville-canadas-secret-racist-history">Africville</a> in 1967, live “only in the memories of its former inhabitants and their descendants.” Few know that <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/africville">“Halifax was founded in 1749, when African people held as slaves dug out roads and built much of the city.”</a></p>
<p>The lack of information about these histories is another form of anti-Black racism that exists in Canada. Canada has adopted a policy of erasure when it comes to acknowledging the history and contributions of its Indigenous and Black peoples. </p>
<p>Many scholars have asserted the importance of continued Black Canadian cultural studies. The power politics of whose work gets published, and where, and the absence of Black, Indigenous and racialized histories have reinforced Black invisibility. </p>
<p>It is necessary to critically engage on historical notions of Blackness and the “<a href="https://49thshelf.com/Books/B/Black-Like-Who3">cross border political identification</a>” of Black Canadians and Americans. By recognizing that both Black Canadian and American historical episodes of anti-Black racism are similar, we question how the white settler terrain has convinced mainstream society to believe one is worse than the other. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of a story originally published on Feb. 14, 2019. It clarifies the location of the Niagara Movement’s first meeting.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110762/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>The first NAACP meeting was held in Canada but there is no mention of Black Canadians in the books. This historical absence is a symbol of the invisibility of anti-Black racism in Canada.Warren Clarke, Ph.D., Carleton UniversityNadine Powell, PhD Student Department of Sociology; RA - Migration and Diaspora Studies, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1088212019-02-01T11:40:08Z2019-02-01T11:40:08ZSuper 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 VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/973602018-05-29T10:40:09Z2018-05-29T10:40:09ZNFL tells players patriotism is more important than protest – here’s why that didn’t work during WWI<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220677/original/file-20180529-80629-1alqr11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C192%2C5056%2C2545&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The NFL is attempting to shut down protests like this one by members of the Cleveland Browns.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/David Richard</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000933971/article/nfl-owners-approve-national-anthem-policy-for-2018">recent decision by the NFL</a> regarding player protests and the national anthem has yet again exposed the fraught relationship between African-Americans and patriotism. </p>
<p>The controversy has taken place nearly a century after another time when African-Americans painfully grappled with questions concerning loyalty to the nation and the struggle for equal rights. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220678/original/file-20180529-80626-hi1zwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220678/original/file-20180529-80626-hi1zwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220678/original/file-20180529-80626-hi1zwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220678/original/file-20180529-80626-hi1zwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220678/original/file-20180529-80626-hi1zwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220678/original/file-20180529-80626-hi1zwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220678/original/file-20180529-80626-hi1zwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220678/original/file-20180529-80626-hi1zwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a53178">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In July 1918, at the height of American participation in World War I, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/W_E_B_Du_Bois.html?id=BU4vH95YySgC">W. E. B. Du Bois</a>, the acclaimed black scholar, activist and civil rights leader, penned arguably the most controversial editorial of his career, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/civil-rights/crisis/0700-crisis-v16n03-w093.pdf">“Close Ranks.”</a> </p>
<p>“Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy,” he advised his fellow African-Americans. Du Bois acknowledged that this was “no ordinary sacrifice,” but black people would nevertheless make it “gladly and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills.” </p>
<p>Pressured from league owners, white fans and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/sports/nfl-anthem-kneeling.html">the president of the United States</a>, black NFL players are now faced with the dilemma of closing ranks and forgetting their “special grievances,” or continuing to protest against racial injustice. </p>
<p>The history of African-Americans in World War I, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0ROwDrcmHssC&printsec=frontcover&dq=torchbearers+of+democracy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFwOr7iqnbAhWIt1kKHWj-AHgQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=torchbearers%20of%20democracy&f=false">as I have explored in my work</a>, offers important lessons about how to confront this challenge. </p>
<h2>The NFL, race and the national anthem</h2>
<p>Last season, during the playing of the national anthem, dozens of NFL players kneeled, locked arms and raised their fists in protest against <a href="https://eji.org/history-racial-injustice-ongoing-police-violence">police and state-sanctioned violence</a> inflicted upon African-Americans. Their actions elicited a fierce backlash, much of it <a href="http://time.com/4954684/donald-trump-nfl-speech-anthem-protests/">fueled by President Donald Trump</a>, who encouraged his overwhelmingly white base of supporters to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/24/us/politics/trump-calls-for-boycott-if-nfl-doesnt-crack-down-on-anthem-protests.html">boycott the NFL</a> so long as players, in his view, continued to disrespect the flag. Seeking to avoid further controversy, <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000933962/article/roger-goodells-statement-on-national-anthem-policy">on May 23</a>, Commissioner Roger Goddell announced that for the upcoming season, “All team and league personnel on the field shall stand and show respect for the flag and the Anthem.” Not following this directive could result in teams being fined and players subject to “appropriate discipline.” </p>
<p>Approximately <a href="http://nebula.wsimg.com/1a7f83c14af6a516176740244d8afc46?AccessKeyId=DAC3A56D8FB782449D2A&disposition=0&alloworigin=1">70 percent of the players in the NFL are African-American</a>. They have also been the most visible faces of the national anthem protests, which began in 2016 with quarterback <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-colin-kaepernick-is-like-george-washington-64525">Colin Kaepernick</a>, who is currently <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/10/15/colin-kaepernick-collusion-lawsuit-against-nfl">unemployed and suing owners for collusion</a> to keep him out of the league. </p>
<p>I see the decision by the NFL as an unmistakable attempt to police the actions of its majority black work force, impose what amounts to a loyalty oath, and enforce through intimidation and threat a narrow definition of patriotism. The message is clear: Either demonstrate unqualified devotion to the United States or be punished.</p>
<h2>African-Americans and World War I</h2>
<p>African-Americans confronted the same stark choice during World War I. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=B13CGJMiyOIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=african+americans+in+the+military&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZ9oXEkKnbAhUhuVkKHbvJA2EQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=african%20americans%20in%20the%20military&f=false">previous conflicts</a>, African-Americans had sacrificed and shed blood for the nation. But patriotism alone has never been enough to overcome white supremacy. By 1917, as the United States prepared to enter the world war, disfranchisement, Jim Crow segregation, and racial violence had rendered African-Americans citizens in name only. </p>
<p>Black people thus had every reason to question the legitimacy of fighting in a war that President Woodrow Wilson declared would make the world <a href="https://theconversation.com/1917-woodrow-wilsons-call-to-war-pulled-america-onto-a-global-stage-75022">“safe for democracy.”</a> African-Americans immediately exposed the hypocrisy of Wilson’s words, while also seizing the opportunity to hold the United States accountable to its principles. They did this, in part, by serving in the army, as some <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0ROwDrcmHssC&printsec=frontcover&dq=torchbearers+of+democracy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFwOr7iqnbAhWIt1kKHWj-AHgQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=torchbearers%20of%20democracy&f=false">380,000 black soldiers</a> labored and fought to not just win the war, but to also make democracy a reality for themselves. </p>
<p>African-Americans also recognized the importance of protest. Discrimination and racial violence continued throughout the war, highlighted by the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/845285143">East St. Louis massacre</a> in July 1917, where white mobs killed as many as 200 black people. In response, the <a href="http://www.naacp.org/">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a> organized a <a href="https://theconversation.com/100-years-ago-african-americans-marched-down-5th-avenue-to-declare-that-black-lives-matter-81427">Silent Protest Parade</a> in New York City, where more than 10,000 black men, women and children peacefully marched down Fifth Avenue carrying signs, one of which read, “Patriotism and loyalty presuppose protection and liberty.” </p>
<h2>‘Closing ranks’ and the costs</h2>
<p>Just as it does today, protesting racial injustice during the war carried risk. The federal government wielded the repressive power of American nationalism to crush disloyalty to the United States. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xno2DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=espionage+act+and+sedition+act&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQj_nPkanbAhXwzVkKHYqSDVsQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=espionage%20act%20and%20sedition%20act&f=false">The Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918)</a> severely curtailed civil liberties by criminalizing “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language.” </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nQiOUqLdUCcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Uncle+Sam+Wants+You:+World+War+I+and+the+Making+of+the+Modern+American+Citizen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi53ofOiqnbAhWizlkKHf6ZCEoQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Uncle%20Sam%20Wants%20You%3A%20World%20War%20I%20and%20the%20Making%20of%20the%20Modern%20American%20Citizen&f=false">“100 percent Americanism”</a> entailed the policing of immigrant communities, restricting freedom of the press, jailing anti-war activists, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vNCmXlv_5zAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=mark+ellis+race+war&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzvLrukanbAhVyuVkKHcDBB_sQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=mark%20ellis%20race%20war&f=false">monitoring African-Americans</a>, including W. E. B. Du Bois, for potential radicalism. This pressure, along with the personal desire to demonstrate his loyalty to the nation, compelled Du Bois to soften his critiques of the government and issue his call for African-Americans to “close ranks.” </p>
<p>“The words were hardly out of my mouth when strong criticism was rained upon it,” Du Bois <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vHbiAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=du+bois+dusk+of+dawn&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjq1_eyiqnbAhVus1kKHS7SAAcQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=du%20bois%20dusk%20of%20dawn&f=false">later remembered</a>. Even during a time of war, most African-Americans refused to set aside the “special grievances” of segregation, lynching and systemic racial abuse. And Du Bois paid a heavy price. <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/trotter-william-monroe-1872-1934">William Monroe Trotter</a>, the fiery newspaper editor and civil rights leader from Boston, branded Du Bois “a rank quitter,” adding that his one-time ally had “weakened, compromised, deserted the fight.” </p>
<p>But African-Americans, having fought for democracy, would surely be rewarded for their loyal service and patriotic sacrifices, Du Bois reasoned. </p>
<p>To the contrary, they were greeted with a torrent of racial violence and bloodshed that came to be known as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2ogt4871j3sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=red+summer+1919&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiL8qyBiqnbAhVOs1kKHQa8AW8Q6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=red%20summer%201919&f=false">“Red Summer” of 1919</a>. White people, North and South, were determined to remind black people of their place in the nation’s racial hierarchy. Race riots erupted throughout the country and the number of African-Americans lynched skyrocketed, <a href="https://eji.org/reports/online/lynching-in-america-targeting-black-veterans">including several black veterans still in uniform</a>.</p>
<p>The NFL’s decision is essentially an attempt to appease the mob in 2018.</p>
<p>Echoing the backlash following World War I, the vitriolic reactions to the national anthem protests reflect what happens when African-Americans physically and symbolically challenge an understanding of <a href="https://www.theroot.com/star-spangled-bigotry-the-hidden-racist-history-of-the-1790855893">patriotism rooted in white supremacy</a> and racist ideas of black subservience. I believe the NFL has acquiesced to the threats of President Trump and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-difference-between-black-football-fans-and-white-football-fans-84810">unrest of its white fan base</a> by establishing a policy that requires black players to remain <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-oppressive-seeds-of-the-colin-kaepernick-backlash-66358">docile, obedient employees, devoid of any outward expression of racial and political consciousness</a>, which sole purpose is to entertain and enrich their owners. </p>
<p>And now, the NFL wants black players to “close ranks” by giving them the false choice between standing for the pledge or hiding their protest in the locker room, conveniently out of sight of fans in the stadium and away from television cameras.</p>
<p>The league ignores any mention of the “special grievances” of police brutality, racial profiling and antiblack harassment that remain alive and well. Ironically, the NFL has been the one to transform the flag into a political weapon to silence black activism, protect its corporate interests and maintain a racial status quo. Displays of patriotism and loyalty to nation are meaningless when not accompanied by the actual freedoms and protections that come with being a citizen. </p>
<p>W. E. B. Du Bois would spend the rest of his life <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-american-history/article/world-war-i-in-the-historical-imagination-of-w-e-b-du-bois/6E248883345B4DAB9C7257CFF147D3F2">questioning his decision for African Americans to “close ranks” during World War I</a>. He ultimately recognized that until America reckoned with its racist history and embraced the humanity of black people, the nation would remain deeply wounded. At the age of 90, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eMA8ngEACAAJ&dq=du+bois+autobiography+of+du+bois&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNkJnkkqnbAhVFjlkKHa7CBmQQ6AEIKTAA">reflecting on the questions that shaped his decades of struggle</a>, Du Bois pondered, “How far can love for my oppressed race accord with love for the oppressing country? And when these loyalties diverge, where shall my soul find refuge?” </p>
<p>Like the battlefields of France 100 years ago, the football fields of NFL stadiums are just one place where African-Americans have historically sought to answer these questions. And simply closing ranks has never been sufficient. In this moment of racial repression and moral mendacity, when the ideals of democracy are undermined daily, the debate over national anthem protests reminds us that the fight to affirm the sanctity of black life is much longer and deeper than a Sunday afternoon game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97360/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Williams 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>Where to draw the line between loyalty to the nation and the struggle for equal rights? A scholar sees parallels between NFL protests and a call for African-Americans to ‘close ranks’ during WWI.Chad Williams, Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/822002018-02-02T11:29:53Z2018-02-02T11:29:53ZBlack America’s ‘bleaching syndrome’<p>For black Americans, skin color is a complex topic.</p>
<p>Whenever a black celebrity lightens his or her skin – whether it’s pop star Michael Jackson, retired baseball player Sammy Sosa or rapper Nicki Minaj – they’re usually greeted <a href="http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/most-shocking/10-celebrities-who-shockingly-bleached-their-skin/">with widespread ridicule</a>. Some accuse them of self-loathing, while many in the African-American community <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-counts-as-black-71443">view it as a rejection of black identity</a>.</p>
<p>Increasing numbers of mixed-race births have further complicated matters, with light-skinned blacks occasionally <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-counts-as-black-71443">being accused</a> of not being “black enough.”</p>
<p>At the same time, The New York Times recently detailed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/health/skin-lightening-glutathione-bleaching.html">the growing popularity of glutathione treatments</a>. The antioxidant, which is administered intravenously, can deactivate the enzyme that produces darker skin pigments. </p>
<p>The article noted that while these treatments have become hugely popular in Asia, “it is also cropping up among certain communities in Britain and the United States,” with demand “slowly growing.”</p>
<p>As someone who has studied and written about the issue of skin color and black identity for over 20 years, I believe the rise of glutathione treatments – in addition to the growing use of various bleaching creams – reveal a taboo that African-Americans are certainly aware of, but loathe to admit. </p>
<p>Though they might criticize lighter-skinned black people, many people of color – deep down – abhor dark skin. </p>
<h2>The power of fair skin</h2>
<p>There are few places in the world where dark skin isn’t stigmatized. </p>
<p>Many Latin American countries <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/world/americas/brazil-enacts-affirmative-action-law-for-universities.html">have laws and policies in place</a> to prevent discrimination relative to skin color. In many Native American communities, “Red-Black Cherokees” <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Red-over-Black-Contributions-Afro-American/dp/0837190347">were denied acceptance</a> into the tribe, while those with lighter skin were welcomed. </p>
<p>But it is in Asia where dark skin has seen the longest and most intense level of stigma. In India, dark-skinned Dalits, for thousands of years, were viewed as “untouchables.” Today, <a href="http://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/user_folder/pdf/New_files/India/Dalit_children_in_India_-_victims_of_caste_discrimination.pdf">they’re still stigmatized</a>. In Japan, long before the first Europeans arrived, dark skin was stigmatized. <a href="https://japansociology.com/2014/11/01/white-skin-covers-the-seven-flaws/">According to Japanese tradition</a>, a woman with fair skin compensates for “seven blemishes.” </p>
<p>The United States has its own complicated history with skin color, primarily because “mulatto” skin – not quite black, but not quite white – often arose out of mixed-race children conceived between slaves and slave masters.</p>
<p>In America, these variations in complexions produced an unspoken hierarchy: Black people with lighter complexions ended up being granted some of the rights of the master class. By early 19th century, the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=o_FGvL1ZQ3IC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=mulatto+hypothesis&source=bl&ots=BlKJP5RmJb&sig=hegCbqWgblA-1ee3SiyGctIyy7w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwig86uPx4DZAhVQS60KHUZXBMYQ6AEIPzAE#v=onepage&q=mulatto%20hypothesis&f=false">mulatto hypothesis</a>” emerged, arguing that the “white blood” of light-skinned slaves made them smarter, more civilized and better looking. </p>
<p>It’s probably no coincidence that light-skinned blacks emerged as leaders in the black community: To white power brokers, they were less threatening. Harvard’s first black graduate was the fair-skinned <a href="https://media.poetryfoundation.org/m/image/15830/web-dubois-cropped-hires.jpg?w=1200&h=1200&fit=max">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. Some of the most prominent black politicians – from former New Orleans Mayor <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/files/blackpast_images/morial_ernest.gif">Ernest Morial</a>, to former Virginia Gov. <a href="http://www.azquotes.com/public/pictures/authors/f9/84/f9849b43468d068b785a03bea9a06e7c/5494c6fbe5740_douglas_wilder.jpg">Douglas Wilder</a>, to former President <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/President_Barack_Obama.jpg">Barack Obama</a> – have lighter skin.</p>
<h2>Fair skin and beauty</h2>
<p><a href="http://homepage.smc.edu/delpiccolo_guido/soc34/soc34readings/colonial%20relationship.pdf">In 1967</a>, Dutch sociologist Harry Hoetink <a href="http://www.ijpsy.com/volumen5/num2/114/from-psychology-of-race-to-issue-of-skin-EN.pdf">coined the term</a> “somatic norm image” to describe why some shades of skin are favored over others. </p>
<p>In America, some trace the emergence of light skin as the “somatic norm image” for all modern-day races to the 1930s advertising campaign of <a href="http://www.retroarama.com/2012/05/breck-girl.html">Breck Shampoo</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204339/original/file-20180131-157458-1r7sj5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204339/original/file-20180131-157458-1r7sj5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204339/original/file-20180131-157458-1r7sj5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204339/original/file-20180131-157458-1r7sj5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204339/original/file-20180131-157458-1r7sj5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204339/original/file-20180131-157458-1r7sj5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204339/original/file-20180131-157458-1r7sj5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204339/original/file-20180131-157458-1r7sj5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&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">A print advertisement features the fair-skinned Breck Girl.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jbcurio/4243655958">Jamie/Flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To market its product, the company created the “Breck Girl.” In advertisements, her fair, alabaster skin was touted as the perfect ideal of feminine beauty. Few considered the devastating affects a glamorized image of light skin might have on the self-esteem of dark-skinned Americans – in particular, women. </p>
<p>In a 2008 study, researchers at the University of Georgia called skin color distinction “a well-kept secret” in black communities. “The hue of one’s skin,” <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J137v01n02_05">they wrote</a>, “tends to have a psychological effect on the self-esteem of African-Americans.” </p>
<p>Yet they also noted that existing research on the relationship between skin color and self-esteem didn’t even exist. Fear of being perceived as a race traitor continues to make the topic taboo in the United States – in a way which exceeds that in places like India or Japan.</p>
<p>To obtain a fairer complexion, many apply bleaching creams. Some of the most popular are Olay, Natural White, Ambi Fade Cream and Clean & Clear Fairness Cream. </p>
<p>While these creams can work, they can be dangerous: Some contain <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/world/asia/14thailand.html?scp=7&sq=skin+whitening&st=nyt">cancer-causing ingredients</a>. Despite the potential danger, skin bleaching cream sales have grown. By 2024, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bleaching-creams-are-by-products-of-colonialism-a-view-from-french-history-83692">it’s projected</a> that global profits will reach $31.2 billion. </p>
<p>In the U.S., sales are difficult to assess; African-Americans are reluctant to admit that they bleach. For this reason, American companies will often market their creams by using <a href="https://www.cvs.com/shop/ambi-fade-cream-normal-skin-2-oz-prodid-1140270?skuId=350666">abstract language</a>, claiming that the creams will “fade,” “even the tone” or “smooth out the texture” of dark skin. In this way, black people who buy the creams can avoid confronting the real reasons they feel compelled to purchase the product, while skirting accusations of self-hate.</p>
<h2>The harmful effects of the ‘bleaching syndrome’</h2>
<p>After studying skin color for years, I coined the term “bleaching syndrome” to describe this phenomenon. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07399863940163008">I published my first paper</a> on the topic in 1994. Put simply, it argues that African-Americans, Latinos and every other oppressed population will internalize the somatic norm image at the expense of their native characteristics. So even though dark skin is a feature of African-Americans, light skin continues to be the ideal because it’s the one preferred by the dominant group: whites.</p>
<p>The bleaching syndrome <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/002193479502600205">has three components</a>. The first is psychological: This involves self-rejection of dark skin and other native characteristics. </p>
<p>Second, it’s sociological, in that it influences group behavior (hence the phenomenon of black celebrities bleaching their skin). </p>
<p>The final aspect is physiological. The physiological is not limited to just bleaching the skin. It can also mean altering hair texture and eye color to mimic the dominant group. The rapper Lil’ Kim, in addition to lightening her skin, <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/lil-kim-how-her-face-has-changed-w204002/">has also changed</a> her eye color and altered her facial features. The fact that so few in mainstream culture can even acknowledge the existence of the bleaching syndrome is a testament to how taboo the topic is.</p>
<p>The solution to the bleaching syndrome is political. The disdain for dark skin today is similar to disdain for kinky hair in the 1960s. African-Americans’ dislike of their natural hair was so ingrained that the first black millionaire, <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/madam-cj-walker-9522174">Madam C.J. Walker</a>, was able to accumulate her fortune by selling hair-straightening products to black folks.</p>
<p>“Black is Beautiful” – <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/9504cc0ef53aaa2eaa2b1f04187bf540/1?pq-origsite=gscholar">a slogan popularized at the tail end of the 1960s</a> – was a political statement that sought to upend the negative associations many Americans, including many African-Americans, felt toward all things black. In response, the Afro became a popular hairstyle, and black entertainers, from Sammy Davis Jr. to Lou Rawls, proudly grew out their hair, refusing to apply hair straightening products. </p>
<p>“Back to Black” – a nod to the “Black is Beautiful” campaign – is a political statement that could address the impulse many feel to bleach their dark skin. It has the potential to reverse the disdain for such skin and hence those so characterized. Even black celebrities who possess fair skin could help glamorize dark skin by repeating the slogan and paying tribute to the numerous dark-skinned beauties whose attractiveness goes seldom acknowledged: Lupita Nyong’o, Gabrielle Union and Janelle Monae.</p>
<p>These dark-skinned black women would qualify as beautiful by any standards – regardless of skin color.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82200/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald E. Hall 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 longing for lighter skin remains a taboo topic in African-American communities.Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814272017-07-26T01:55:29Z2017-07-26T01:55:29Z100 years ago African-Americans marched down 5th Avenue to declare that black lives matter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179312/original/file-20170722-28515-16wxxmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Silent protest parade in New York against the East St. Louis riots, 1917.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95517074/">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s Note: This article was published on July 25, 2017.</em></p>
<p>The only sounds were those of muffled drums, the shuffling of feet and the gentle sobs of some of the estimated 20,000 onlookers. The women and children wore all white. The men dressed in black. </p>
<p>On the afternoon of Saturday, July 28, 1917, nearly 10,000 African-Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, in silence, to protest racial violence and white supremacy in the United States.</p>
<p>New York City, and the nation, had never before witnessed such a remarkable scene. </p>
<p>The “Silent Protest Parade,” as it came to be known, was the first mass African-American demonstration of its kind and marked a watershed moment in the history of the civil rights movement. As I have written in my book <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469609850/torchbearers-of-democracy/">“Torchbearers of Democracy</a>,” African-Americans during the World War I era challenged racism both abroad and at home. In taking to the streets to dramatize the brutal treatment of black people, the participants of the “Silent Protest Parade” indicted the United States as an unjust nation. </p>
<p>This charge remains true today.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179691/original/file-20170725-2133-1td69y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Several thousand people attended a Seattle rally to call attention to minority rights and police brutality in April 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ted S. Warren</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One hundred years later, as black people continue to insist that “Black Lives Matter,” the “Silent Protest Parade” offers a vivid reminder about the power of courageous leadership, grassroots mobilization, direct action and their collective necessity in the fight to end racial oppression in our current troubled times. </p>
<h2>Racial violence and the East St. Louis Riot</h2>
<p>One of the great accomplishments of the Black Lives Matter movement has been to demonstrate the continuum of racist violence against black people throughout American history and also the history of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-making-of-black-lives-matter-9780190601348?cc=us&lang=en&">resistance against it</a>. But as we continue to grapple with the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/us/police-shooting-castile-trial-video.html?_r=0">hyper-visibility of black death</a>, it is perhaps easy to forget just how truly horrific racial violence against black people was a century ago. </p>
<p>Prior to the “Silent Protest Parade,” <a href="https://archive.org/details/thirtyyearsoflyn00nati">mob violence and the lynching</a> of African-Americans had grown even more gruesome. In Waco, a mob of 10,000 white Texans attended the May 15, 1916, lynching of a black farmer, <a href="http://www.tamupress.com/product/First-Waco-Horror,1483.aspx">Jesse Washington</a>. One year later, on May 22, 1917, a black woodcutter, <a href="https://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/memphis-burning/Content?oid=4438125">Ell Persons</a>, died at the hands of over 5,000 vengeance-seeking whites in Memphis. Both men were burned and mutilated, their charred body parts distributed and displayed as souvenirs.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-black-women-and-police-violence-139937">A short history of black women and police violence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Even by these grisly standards, <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/57mbk5qp9780252009518.html">East St. Louis</a> later that same summer was shocking. Simmering labor tensions between white and black workers exploded on the evening of July 2, 1917.</p>
<p>For 24 hours, white mobs indiscriminately stabbed, shot and lynched anyone with black skin. Men, women, children, the elderly, the disabled – no one was spared. Homes were torched and occupants shot down as they attempted to flee. White militia men stood idly by as the carnage unfolded. Some actively participated. The death toll likely ran as high as 200 people.</p>
<p>The city’s surviving 6,000 black residents became refugees. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=747&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179539/original/file-20170724-11166-omtn8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ida B. Wells.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93505758/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>East St. Louis was an <a href="http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/American+Pogrom">American pogrom</a>. The fearless African-American anti-lynching activist <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061972942">Ida B. Wells</a> traveled to the still smoldering city on July 4 and <a href="http://gildedage.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-gildedage%3A24051">collected firsthand accounts</a> of the aftermath. She described what she saw as an “awful orgy of human butchery.” </p>
<p>The devastation of East St. Louis was compounded by the fact that America was at war. <a href="https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wilson's_War_Message_to_Congress">On April 2</a>, President Woodrow Wilson had thrown the United States into the maelstrom of World War I. He did so by asserting <a href="https://theconversation.com/1917-woodrow-wilsons-call-to-war-pulled-america-onto-a-global-stage-75022">America’s singularly unique place on the global stage</a> and his goal to make the world “safe for democracy.” In the eyes of black people, East St. Louis exposed the hypocrisy of Wilson’s vision and America itself. </p>
<h2>The NAACP takes action</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.naacp.org/">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a> quickly responded to the massacre. Founded in 1909, the NAACP had yet to establish itself as a truly representative <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/lift-every-voice">organization for African-Americans across the country</a>. With the exception of <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466841512">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, one of the NAACP’s co-founders and editor of The Crisis magazine, the national leadership was all white. Branches were overwhelmingly located in the North, despite the majority of African-Americans residing below the Mason-Dixon line. As a result, the NAACP had largely failed to respond with a sense of urgency to the everyday horrors endured by the masses of black folk. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179628/original/file-20170725-31338-oegjci.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Weldon Johnson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Weldon_Johnson.jpg">Twentieth Century Negro Literature</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/321968/along-this-way-by-james-weldon-johnson/9780143105176/">James Weldon Johnson</a> changed things. Lawyer, diplomat, novelist, poet and songwriter, Johnson was a true African-American renaissance man. In 1916, Johnson joined the NAACP as a field secretary and made an immediate impact. In addition to growing the organization’s southern membership, Johnson recognized the importance of expanding the influence of the NAACP’s existing branches beyond the black elite.</p>
<p>Johnson raised the idea of a silent protest march at an executive committee meeting of the NAACP Harlem branch shortly after the East St. Louis riot. Johnson also insisted that the protest include the city’s entire black community. Planning quickly got underway, spearheaded by Johnson and local black clergymen. </p>
<h2>A historic day</h2>
<p>By noon on July 28, several thousand African-Americans had begun to assemble at 59th Street. Crowds gathered along Fifth Avenue. Anxious New York City police officers lined the streets, aware of what was about to take place but, with clubs at the ready, prepared for trouble.</p>
<p>At approximately 1 p.m., the protest parade commenced. Four men carrying drums began to slowly, solemnly play. A group of black clergymen and NAACP officials made up the front line. W.E.B. Du Bois, who had recently returned from conducting an <a href="http://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1292426769648500.pdf">NAACP investigation in East St. Louis</a>, and James Weldon Johnson marched side by side. </p>
<p>The parade was a stunning spectacle. At the front, women and children wearing all-white gowns symbolized the innocence of African-Americans in the face of the nation’s guilt. The men, bringing up the rear and dressed in dark suits, conveyed both a mournful dignity and stern determination to stand up for their rights as citizens.</p>
<p>They carried signs and banners shaming America for its treatment of black people. Some read, “Your hands are full of blood,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” “Mothers, do lynchers go to heaven?” Others highlighted the wartime context and the hollowness of America’s ideals: “We have fought for the liberty of white Americans in six wars; our reward was East St. Louis,” “Patriotism and loyalty presuppose protection and liberty,” “Make America safe for Democracy.”</p>
<p>Throughout the parade, the marchers remained silent. The New York Times <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1917/07/29/96262006.html?pageNumber=12">described the protest</a> as “one of the most quiet and orderly demonstrations ever witnessed.” The silence was finally broken with cheers when the parade concluded at Madison Square. </p>
<h2>Legacy of the Silent Protest Parade</h2>
<p>The “Silent Protest Parade” marked the beginning of a new epoch in the long black freedom struggle. While adhering to a certain <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674769786">politics of respectability</a>, a strategy employed by African-Americans that focused on countering racist stereotypes through dignified appearance and behavior, the protest, within its context, constituted a radical claiming of the public sphere and a powerful affirmation of black humanity. It declared that a “New Negro” had arrived and launched a black public protest tradition that would be seen in the parades of the <a href="http://lsupress.org/books/detail/the-world-of-marcus-garvey/">Universal Negro Improvement Association</a>, the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter marches of today. </p>
<p>[<em>Context on today’s headlines, each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=context">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The “Silent Protest Parade” reminds us that the fight against racist violence and the killing of black people remains just as relevant now as it did 100 years ago. Black death, whether at the hands of a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/03/us/alton-sterling-doj-death-investigation/index.html">Baton Rouge police officer</a> or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/charleston-church-shooter-i-would-like-to-make-it-crystal-clear-i-do-not-regret-what-i-did/2017/01/04/05b0061e-d1da-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html">white supremacist in Charleston</a>, is a specter that continues to haunt this nation. The expendability of black bodies is American tradition, and history speaks to the long endurance of this violent legacy.</p>
<p>But history also offers inspiration, purpose and vision. </p>
<p>Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson and other freedom fighters of their generation should serve as models for activists today. That the “Silent Protest Parade” attracted black people from all walks of life and backgrounds attests to the need for organizations like the NAACP, following its recent national convention, to remember and embrace its origins. And, in building and sustaining the current movement, we can take lessons from past struggles and work strategically and creatively to apply them to the present. </p>
<p>Because, at their core, the demands of black people in 2017 remain the same as one of the signs raised to the sky on that July afternoon in 1917: </p>
<p>“Give me a chance to live.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Williams 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>Thousands marched in silence against racial violence after a riot left hundreds of blacks dead and thousands homeless. The demands of black people in 2017 remain the same as they did in 1917.Chad Williams, Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/526012016-02-16T04:21:47Z2016-02-16T04:21:47ZSobukwe’s pan-Africanist dream: an elusive idea that refuses to die<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111330/original/image-20160212-29214-1lp2idg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C671%2C4716%2C3507&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><em>Foundation essay: Our foundation essays are longer than usual and take a wider look at key issues affecting society.</em></p>
<p>Is Africa really for Africans? American commissioner to Africa and abolitionist <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/delany-major-martin-robison-1812-1885">Martin Delany</a> asked this question a century and a half ago following his sojourn in Africa and Europe. </p>
<p>Attempts to answer it spawned pan-Africanism - an idea that refuses to die. This question is asked in memory of South African leader <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/robert-sobukwe-overview.htm#.Vr2c9fl97IU">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a>, a doyen of pan-Africanism who died in February 1978. </p>
<p>What became of Sobukwe is a consequence of a myriad of factors, starting from his days at <a href="http://ectoday.co.za/business/a-legacy-of-black-excellence/">Healdtown Comprehensive School</a>. A speech he made as head boy at the school emphasised co-operation between blacks and whites, demonstrating his sense of awareness of the issue of race at a young age.</p>
<p>Such awareness evolved into an ideological posture, nurtured and refined by many factors that spawned his Africanist orientation. It was at Fort Hare, a university from which a great many African leaders graduated, where much of this happened. His study of Native Administration as a subject and interaction with a lecturer who taught it, <a href="http://www.jonathanball.co.za/index.php/component/virtuemart/robert-sobukwe-how-can-man-die-better-detail?Itemid=6">Cecil Ntloko</a>, sharpened his political consciousness. </p>
<p>To these add the pursuit to forge synergy of African people’s struggles against colonialism as institutionalised in the All-African Convention of 1935; his interest in African politics; and John Galsworthy’s play titled Strife - a story of <a href="http://www.jonathanball.co.za/index.php/component/virtuemart/robert-sobukwe-how-can-man-die-better-detail?Itemid=6">“a struggle between Labour and Capital”</a>.</p>
<p>While a member of the African National Congress (ANC), Sobukwe embraced its Youth League’s definition of African nationalism that emerged during the leadership of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/anton-muziwakhe-lembede">Anton Lembede</a>. It was at odds with the mother body as it </p>
<blockquote>
<p>emphasized the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=YR9JUxYlJOkC&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=Leo+Kuper+emphasized+the+exclusive+basis+of+African+solidarity,+as+a+race+and+as+a+nation&source=bl&ots=_rsEb8So99&sig=uimfHaCfTMWd7s9rVCygNFF3pBU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii7sXB-vnKAhUGuRoKHQc-B98Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=Leo%20Kuper%20emphasized%20the%20exclusive%20basis%20of%20African%20solidarity%2C%20as%20a%20race%20and%20as%20a%20nation&f=false">exclusive basis of African solidarity</a>, as a race and as a nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sobukwe developed the philosophy of African nationalism to even higher intellectual heights. He believed that African nationalism was</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a basis for the complete unity of the African people, and the basis for achievement of national freedom for the African people as a step towards a fully <a href="http://www.jonathanball.co.za/index.php/component/virtuemart/robert-sobukwe-how-can-man-die-better-detail?Itemid=6">fledged democratic order</a> in South Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He dedicated his life selflessly to this cause. The lesson he left for humanity was his ideological stand that there is <a href="https://ilizwe.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/speeches-of-r-m-sobukhwe.pdf">only one race</a>, the human race. Perhaps if we had listened to Sobukwe’s teachings, the world would not be struggling today with blatant racism.</p>
<h2>The fathers of pan-Africanism</h2>
<p>Delany argued in his <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=9dBC2U-EgBsC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=%E2%80%9CAfrica+for+the+African+race+and+black+men+to+rule+them%E2%80%9D,+Official+Report+of+The+Niger+Valley+Party,+Martin+Delany&source=bl&ots=cwzA3gCqKo&sig=h_tvXH6ZexCXeOBityvlH_FPR9A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPgvKBgvLKAhWJ0xoKHWOWAz8Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CAfrica%20for%20the%20African%20race%20and%20black%20men%20to%20rule%20them%E2%80%9D%2C%20Official%20Report%20of%20The%20Niger%20Valley%20Party%2C%20Martin%20Delany&f=false">1861 Report</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Africa for the African race and black men to rule them</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Attempts to achieve this date back to the struggles against slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and racism. </p>
<p>They became systematised into a pursuit called pan-Africanism. It aimed to elevate the human race of African origin from <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4029079?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">centuries of humiliation</a>. Pan-Africanism came to engender the spirit of African unity among the native Africans and those in the <a href="http://panafricanperspective.com/pheko.htm">diaspora</a>.</p>
<p>Following Edward Blyden’s theorisation of <a href="http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/73/292/277.full.pdf">African Personality</a>, a Trinidadian barrister, <a href="http://www.africanidea.org/pan-Africanism.html">Henry Sylvester-Williams</a>, coined Pan-Africanism. The concept came to frame efforts to </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Unity-The-Evolution-Pan-Africanism/dp/0582645220">re-establish the dignity</a> (of Africans) in a world that has hitherto conceded [them] none. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Blyden is considered the father of pan-Africanism. But, pan-African scholar <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pan-Africanism-Exploring-Contradictions-Development-Interdisciplinary/dp/1840143754">William Ackah</a> argued that pan-Africanism does not have “a single founder or particular tenets that can be used as a definition”. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history-w.e.b.-dubois">WEB DuBois</a>, <a href="http://marcusgarvey.com/">Marcus Garvey</a>, <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/gah/hayford-joseph-ephraim-casely-1866-1930">Joseph Casely-Hayford</a>, and <a href="http://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/Who%20We%20Are/who-was-george-padmore">George Padmore</a>, among others, enhanced the profundity of the concept. It later evolved into an ideology, a philosophy, and a movement. It enthused the first generation of post-colonial African leadership, chief among them <a href="http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/pan-afrikanism-afrocentricity/37699-pan-africanism-imperialism-unity-struggle-towards-new-democratic-africa.html">Kwame Nkrumah</a>.</p>
<h2>So what is it?</h2>
<p>Pan-Africanism is a socio-political worldview. As an ideology, it represents integrative intent directed at fundamental change in society. In <a href="https://consciencism.wordpress.com/history/consciencism-philosophy-and-ideology-for-decolonisation/">Nkrumah’s words</a>, Pan-Africanism</p>
<blockquote>
<p>guides and seeks to connect the actions of millions of persons towards specific and definite goals. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a philosophy “based on the belief that Africans share common bonds and objectives and … advocate[s] unity to <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1803448.Pan_Africanism_in_the_African_Diaspora">achieve these objectives</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111325/original/image-20160212-4413-xbsme6.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">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Philosophy is the instrument of ideology for a desired social, economic and political order. According to <a href="https://consciencism.wordpress.com/history/consciencism-philosophy-and-ideology-for-decolonisation/">Nkrumah</a>, it “performs ideological function when it takes shape as political philosophy”, laying “down certain ideals for our pursuit and fortification”, and becoming “an instrument of unity by laying down the same ideals for all the members of a given society”.</p>
<p>After decades of decolonisation, an inevitable question is whether a desired social, economic and political order as envisaged in pan-Africanism has been realised.</p>
<h2>Is Africa really for Africans?</h2>
<p>Africa is a construct of colonial imagination, which the 1885 <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195337709.001.0001/acref-9780195337709-e-0467">Berlin conference</a> perfected in the resolution to balkanise her for imperial ends. </p>
<p>This <a href="http://nobidadetv.com/archives/9690">destroyed</a> “the cultural and linguistic boundaries established by the indigenous African population”. Africans became estranged from one another, separating into different nationalities.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.dfa.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/africa/oau.htm">Organisation of African Unity</a> was established in 1963 to foster unity and solidarity. But it did not deconstruct the Berlin conference stratagem of continued domination of the continent. Its focus was on colonial freedom. It did not change the narrative of the scramble for Africa. This “showed the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3677657/Nationalism_and_Pan_Africanism_revised_-_decisive_moments_in_Nyereres">limits</a> of the pan-Africanism of African states”. </p>
<p>The decolonisation project secured the independence of the African states, but their evolution followed the pattern of fragmentation determined in Berlin. Hence, Africans characterise each other as foreigners in their colonially determined boundaries.</p>
<p>Sometimes this assumes the form of hatred and violence - <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/05/xenophobia-south-africa-150501090636029.html">xenophobia</a>, <a href="https://writix.co.uk/blog/the-history-of-rwanda-genocide">ethnic</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">civil</a> wars. And African leaders jealously protect their sovereignty. These are the contradictions that drive Africa’s history.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://dilemma-x.net/2013/02/10/black-history-month-the-united-states-of-africa-the-diasporas-remittances-in-2012/">United States of Africa</a> remains an elusive ideal. This is a pity because an important lesson of geopolitics is that the world’s largest economies derive their strength from their unity.</p>
<p>Nkrumah was conscious of this. He was so committed to the pan-African ideal of a united Africa that he was even prepared to give up the sovereignty of Ghana. </p>
<p>He knew that for Africa to be for Africans it must unite. This requires, as Dialo Diop correctly <a href="http://bookze.xyz/pub/mafube-tafelberg">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>mutual and reciprocal surrender of sovereignty among states on the basis of common interest and free popular consent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the concept of <a href="http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/mbeki.html">African Renaissance</a> former South African president <a href="http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/speeches/1998/mbek0813.htm">Thabo Mbeki</a> articulated a pan-African agenda in the 21st century. He did so with profound clarity and a sense of mission, underscoring the significance of collective self-reliance of African countries. </p>
<h2>Securing African future a pan-African way</h2>
<p>Contemporary institutional arrangements to pursue the pan-African agenda in the <a href="http://www.au.int/">African Union</a> and <a href="http://www.au.int/en/organs/pap">African Parliament</a> are laudable. But, do these institutions really exemplify the Unity of Africa or that of her leadership? </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111284/original/image-20160212-29207-80aocd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I am asking this question because ugly scenes of violence against African foreign nationals dominate our space. Why is pan-Africanism not yet a fully lived experience? Some appear to ascribe a reason for this to <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=rZCPAQAAQBAJ&pg=PR4&lpg=PR4&dq=Kwandiwe+Kondlo.+2009&source=bl&ots=DBMapBB540&sig=7QCMczbrM6OxQVlzoacW8nOMlbg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNx_iH9O_KAhXFvBoKHQitC2YQ6AEITzAJ#v=onepage&q=Kwandiwe%20Kondlo.%202009&f=false">continentalism</a>. This suggests that the African Union and African Parliament are used as a means to achieve this rather than pan-Africanism. </p>
<p>Most African leaders are stuck in the sovereignty of their nationalism. So are their followers. Burundi’s stand against the African Union’s decision to <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/burundi-african-union-wont-impose-peacekeepers-421557?rm=eu">deploy peacekeepers</a> is a case in point. Pan-Africanism is pitted against nationalism. This makes Africa weak and vulnerable. It gives way for <a href="http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/ashcroft3a.html">“a continuity of preoccupation”</a>. </p>
<p>As the decoloniality scholar <a href="http://www.thethinker.co.za/resources/48%20Thinker%20full%20mag.pdf">Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni</a> explains, the colonial matrices of power continue </p>
<blockquote>
<p>to exist in the minds, lives, languages, dreams, imagination, and epistemologies of modern subjects in Africa and the entire global South.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Africa to be for Africans, pan-Africanism should be a lived experience, not an ideological project for political rhetoric. </p>
<p>A body of pan-African thought exists. This has been developed by outstanding African scholars, political scientists, historians and philosophers living in Africa and the <a href="http://panafricanperspective.com/pheko.htm">diaspora</a>. It is the responsibility of African universities to accommodate it in their curricula to ensure that the future leaders of this continent have a pan-African orientation when they graduate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52601/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from National Research Foundation(NRF) for his post-graduate studies. He is affiliated to the South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM)- an organisation that he served as its President from 2012-2015. He is the Chief-Editor of the Journal of Public Administration. </span></em></p>Robert Sobukwe developed the philosophy of African nationalism to even higher intellectual heights. The lesson for humanity was his ideological stand that there is only one race - the human race.Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.