scholarly journals Woman in the Mirror: Reflections

2015 ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Laura Fish
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Black People ◽  
White People ◽  
Black British ◽  
Mary Prince ◽  
Political Views ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joan Riley

In A Room of One’s Own (1929) Virginia Woolf asserts: “Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size”. (34) The use of the mirror is key to Woolf’s arguments about the position of women in general and in particular that of women writers. Complicating Woolf’s view less than a century later, I examine how black women function as looking-glasses in a dual way: as blacks, we shared the past (and now share the current) fate of black people reflecting the “darker” side of white people, as many whites projected onto blacks the unacknowledgeable traits of their own nature. The mirror is also key then to the way in which racial oppression has been analysed in literature. My paper offers an account, by way of selected examples from the history of our literature, of indicating how the mirror has been essential to how black British women are viewed and reflected back. I suggest that the misshapen image in the looking glass created by white people and also black men, allows them to see an inflated reflection of themselves, to assume false feelings of superiority, and to perpetuate oppression against us. I focus on Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Una Marson, Joan Riley and Helen Oeyemi–authors whose work either anticipates or relates to Woolf’s notion of mirroring, by seeking ways to addressor overcome the situation in which we are placed. The texts explored not only trace the development of the tradition of our writing - the shift from being represented to representing ourselves– but also present a range of cultural and political views and identify three recurring themes: firstly, the denigration in our portrayal; secondly, the assumed superiority white people and black men adopt over us; and thirdly our resistance in remonstrating against such treatment and exposure.

scholarly journals Racism as a Leading Cause of Death: Measuring Excess Deaths in the US

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Massey ◽  
Jeremy Faust ◽  
Karen Dorsey ◽  
Yuan Lu ◽  
Harlan Krumholz
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Cause Of Death ◽  
White Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
White People ◽  
The Us ◽  
Excess Deaths

Background: Excess death for Black people compared with White people is a measure of health equity. We sought to determine the excess deaths under the age of 65 (<65) for Black people in the United States (US) over the most recent 20-year period. We also compared the excess deaths for Black people with a cause of death that is traditionally reported. Methods: We used the Multiple Cause of Death 1999-2019 dataset from the Center of Disease Control (CDC) WONDER to report age-adjusted mortality rates among non-Hispanic Black (Black) and non-Hispanic White (White) people and to calculate annual age-adjusted <65 excess deaths for Black people from 1999-2019. We measured the difference in mortality rates between Black and White people and the 20-year and 5-year trends using linear regression. We compared age-adjusted <65 excess deaths for Black people to the primary causes of death among <65 Black people in the US. Results: From 1999 to 2019, the age-adjusted mortality rate for Black men was 1,186 per 100,000 and for White men was 921 per 100,000, for a difference of 265 per 100,000. The age-adjusted mortality rate for Black women was 802 per 100,000 and for White women was 664 per 100,000, for a difference of 138 per 100,000. While the gap for men and women is less than it was in 1999, it has been increasing among men since 2014. These differences have led to many Black people dying before age 65. In 1999, there were 22,945 age-adjusted excess deaths among Black women <65 and in 2019 there were 14,444, deaths that would not have occurred had their risks been the same as those of White women. Among Black men, 38,882 age-adjusted excess <65 deaths occurred in 1999 and 25,850 in 2019. When compared to the top 5 causes of deaths among <65 Black people, death related to disparities would be the highest mortality rate among both <65 Black men and women. Comment: In the US, over the recent 20-year period, disparities in mortality rates resulted in between 61,827 excess deaths in 1999 and 40,294 excess deaths in 2019 among <65 Black people. The race-based disparity in the US was the leading cause of death among <65 Black people. Societal commitment and investment in eliminating disparities should be on par with those focused on other leading causes of death such as heart disease and cancer.

scholarly journals Racism Reflected in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 66-71
Author(s):  
Nikita Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
Black People ◽  
White People ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Congo River ◽  
Heart Of Darkness ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Racist Ideology ◽  
The 19Th Century

This paper deals with the concept of racism, which is considered as a dark topic in the history of the world .Throughout history, racist ideology widespread throughout the world especially between black people and white people. In addition, many European countries started to expand their empire and to get more territories in other countries. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness which is his experience in the Congo River during the 19th century dealt with the concept of racism, which was clear in this novel because of the conflicts that were between black and white people and it explained the real aims of colonialism in Africa, which were for wealth and power.

Planes

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandra D. Bhimull
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Black People ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Air Travel ◽  
White Flight ◽  
White People ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Air Passage ◽  
Affective Dimensions

Chapter 4 concentrates on how people learned to be in and live with ordinary flight through the everyday sky. Focused on air passage itself, it explores how a flying culture took hold and examines the affective dimensions of airline travel. Analyzing air travel stories, it chronicles what first-generation fliers did and felt inside early airline cabins. The vertical distance between the airplane and the ground profoundly altered the ways air passengers related to colonial landscapes and lives beneath them. The second part of the chapter illuminates how black people on the ground reacted to white people in the sky, and vice versa. It connects the emergence of everyday air travel practices to the upward expansion of empire. The last part of the chapter brings the history of white flight and racial segregation to present-day discussions of aerial mobility and the varying experiences of frequent and infrequent fliers.

Officers, Servants, and Race

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-105
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Population ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Information Resources ◽  
Union Army ◽  
White People ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Individual Level

While many western Union officers came to support emancipation and even the enlistment of black troops, their racial attitudes changed very little. On the whole, officers continued to view black people as inferior, exotic, incapable, and even subhuman. Interactions with former slaves reinforced racial stereotypes. This intense prejudice was especially prominent in the Midwest where there were many discriminatory laws. Freeing the slaves, which many officers only supported as a practical necessity to win the war, was very different from seeing black people as anything close to equal with white people. But experiences with black men and women, particularly servants with whom Federals formed long-lasting personal bonds, often tempered racial prejudices on an individual level. Black men and women who assisted the Union army by providing information, resources, and aid in dangerous circumstances also won positive comments from officers. This softening of racial attitudes, however, almost never extended to the black population as a whole, and even ardent supporters of emancipation showed little sympathy for expanding black rights. The Civil War had eliminated slavery but had hardly solved the problem of racial prejudice.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly M. Welch
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
South African ◽  
Black People ◽  
White People ◽  
Trial Court ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Debt Recovery ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

Black plaintiffs in civil suits remain a little known aspect of the legal history of the slave South. African Americans were not only observers of trials, informal participants, defendants, or objects of regulation: trial court records reveal them to be prolific litigators as well. They were parties to civil suits in their own interests and directly active in legal proceedings. They sued other black people, certainly, but they also sued white people. What is more, they often won. This is a phenomenon that has largely been overlooked by historians. But it ought not to be, because it speaks to the heart of the ways we understand the operation of power, of law, and of racial hierarchies in the slave South. The black legal experience in America cannot be reduced to white regulation and black criminality. Examining African Americans’ involvement in private law reveals a different picture. Black people appealed to the courts to protect their interests. They exploited the language of rights and property, thus including themselves within an American narrative of citizenship and privilege in advance of formal emancipation. When black litigants made such claims at law, they expected the courts to validate and execute those claims. Indeed, they sought accountability. Thus, seemingly mundane civil actions like debt recovery suits complicate our notions about the sources of rights and their relationship to civic inclusion.

scholarly journals Introduction: African Americans: Official and Unofficial Violence in America

2020 ◽  
pp. 002193472097008
Author(s):  
Molefi Kete Asante
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Active Imagination ◽  
White People ◽  
Control Forces

In this essay the author introduces the emergence of the paddy rollers as control forces to contain the black population during the enslavement of Africans in the United States. Soon after the end of the Civil War the police forces took over the activities that had been the purvey of the paddy rollers: keeping black people in place and out of the way of white people. However, the resistance to abuse, torture, and murder was never far from the active imagination and reality of African Americans who maintained their own humanity. Tracing, in a limited fashion, how the biologically unscientific race became the premise for racism and the attacks on black people by police officers who often took their perceptions of blacks, especially black men, as negative and inferior from the systemic and institutional character of the society’s understanding of superior and inferior humans. This, according to the author, is at the base of hatred, discrimination, and lynching of African Americans in current and previous occasions. He illustrates this by discussing the case of Mary Turner who was killed in the early part of the 20th century for objecting to white mob attacks on her husband.

scholarly journals Building the Digitally Gated Community: The Case of Nextdoor

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 111-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahim Kurwa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gated Communities ◽  
Gated Community ◽  
White People ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Residential Space

The neighborhood is a historic and contemporary site of the assertion of white racial and economic domination, particularly over Black people. Although there is strong evidence that whites continue to prefer racially segregated neighborhoods, fifty years of fair housing jurisprudence has made it more difficult to openly bar non-white residents. Among the many strategies used to protect white domination of residential space is the coordinated surveillance and policing of non-white people. In this paper, I show how Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social network, has become an important platform for the surveillance and policing of race in residential space, enabling the creation of what I call digitally gated communities. First, I describe the history of the platform and the forms of segregation and surveillance it has supplemented or replaced. Second, I situate the platform in a broader analysis of carcerality as a mode and logic of regulating race in the United States. Third, using examples drawn from public reports about the site, I illustrate how race is surveilled and policed in the context of gentrification and integration. Finally, I discuss implications, questions, and future issues that might arise on the platform.

Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly M. Welch
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
American South ◽  
White People ◽  
Personal Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
And Storage ◽  
Natchez District ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
The Ideal

In the antebellum Natchez district, in the heart of slave country, black people sued white people in all-white courtrooms. They sued to enforce the terms of their contracts, recover unpaid debts, recuperate back wages, and claim damages for assault. They sued in conflicts over property and personal status. And they often won. Based on new research conducted in courthouse basements and storage sheds in rural Mississippi and Louisiana, Kimberly Welch draws on over 1,000 examples of free and enslaved black litigants who used the courts to protect their interests and reconfigure their place in a tense society. To understand their success, Welch argues that we must understand the language that they used—the language of property, in particular—to make their claims recognizable and persuasive to others and to link their status as owner to the ideal of a free, autonomous citizen. In telling their stories, Welch reveals a previously unknown world of black legal activity, one that is consequential for understanding the long history of race, rights, and civic inclusion in America.

It's Still Slavery by Another Name

2020 ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Michael D. Yates
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Black People ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
White People ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Black And White

As the long history, right to the present day, of police and vigilante violence against black people has shown with great clarity, the racial chasm between black and white people in the United States lives on. A few black men and women have climbed into the 1 percent, and a sizable African-American middle class now exists. But by every measure of social well-being, black Americans fare much worse than their white counterparts. Just as for the economic, political, and social distance between capitalists and workers, so too is there a differential between black and white people, for these same interconnected components of daily life continue because of the way our system is structured.

scholarly journals Black women's narratives of resilience through vicarious incarceration and reintegration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Teah Monique Hairston
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Black People ◽  
Large Percentage ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Culturally Informed

Systemic racism has resulted in the disproportionate imprisonment of Black people. With Black men constituting a large percentage of incarcerated bodies, many Black women (44 [percent])--mothers, wives, sisters, etc.--will experience vicarious incarceration. This research examines the ways this population, as caretakers and supporters of their incarcerated loved, ones manage resilience in their daily lives as they navigate a racist, sexist society. Ten women were interviewed about their experiences with vicarious incarceration and reentry. I conclude that the women manage resiliency largely through the support of other Black women and community-family, who--in many instances--are also experiencing vicarious incarceration and/or other racial stress and trauma. Findings provide implications for the need for effective resources, more specifically, culturally-informed, culturally-relevant resources--to assist Black communities with healing from the effects of incarceration, and to prevent and intervene in the intergenerational cycles of criminal justice entanglement.

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