Metaphors

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 26-34
Author(s):  
Marie Anderson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Positive Interactions ◽  
Black Neighborhood ◽  
Black Lives Matter

To what degree can race relations, driven by media perception or inadvertent errors in speaking, be overcome by personal, positive, interactions? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, a retired, white, widowed woman lives in a predominately black neighborhood. Her African-American husband is long dead and she has made every effort to integrate herself into her black community. She is longtime friends with her neighbors, particularly the 16-year-old boy, Zion, who comes over daily to give her dog a diabetes shot and assist her with chores around the house to make extra money. However, as the Black Lives Matter protests escalate in the community, the narrator increasingly becomes the target of hate, sometimes for no reason, sometimes because of her thoughtlessness. Her relationship with Zion continues to falter until he sheepishly takes the side of those in the community and separates all ties with the narrator. He returns the various gifts she has given him over his life because he wishes to leave his childhood behind and take up the fight against oppression. This story, like all After Dinner Conversation stories, has suggested discussion questions at the end.

Obama and Race in America

The Forum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morton Keller
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
American Identity ◽  
African American Identity

AbstractThis examination of Obama and race in America has three themes. The first is his African-American identity, and concludes that it has marked and useful resemblances to John F. Kennedy’s Irish Catholicism. It then examines Obama’s record affecting race relations in America: what he has done and, as revealing, what he has not done. Finally, it seeks to set Obama’s approach to race relations in the context of its rich and diverse history in this nation.

“Times Change”: Frank J. Webb Addresses Robert Morris on the Promise of Reconstruction

2012 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
Amber D. Moulton
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Robert Morris ◽  
American Author

In 1869, African American author Frank J. Webb returned to Washington, D.C., to become a “Carpetbagger” in the Reconstruction South. In a letter to black Bostonian Robert Morris, Webb illustrated the richness of antebellum African American reform networks and portrayed one man’s boundless optimism for race relations in postbellum America.

Strategies for Combating Erasure and Silencing

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-88
Author(s):  
Yelaine Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
African American ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Art And Activism

Curated by Yelaine Rodriguez and edited by Tatiana Flores, this Dialogues stages a series of conversations around Afro-Latinx art through interventions by Afro-Latina cultural producers. Black Latinxs often feel excluded both from the framework of latinidad as well as from the designation “African American.” The essays address blackness in a US Latinx context, through discussion of curatorial approaches, biographical reflections, art historical inquiry, artistic projects, and museum-based activism. Recent conversations around Latinxs and Black Lives Matter reveal that in the popular imaginary, Latinx presupposes a Brown identity. In their contributions to “Afro-Latinx Art and Activism,” the authors argue for a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of Latinx that does not reproduce the racial attitudes of the Lusophone and Hispanophone countries of Latin America, nor the black-white binary of the United States. They look forward to a time when the terms Afro or Black might cease to be necessary qualifiers of Latinx.

Eddie Anderson, Rochester, and Race in 1930s Radio and Film

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
Time Part

African-American dancer, singer, comedian Eddie Anderson pursued an entertainment career in California, his opportunities limited by Jim Crow-era racism in Hollywood but also shaped opportunities in night clubs and cabarets that catered to both black and white patrons. Winning an audition for a one-time role on Benny’s radio show, Anderson’s inimitable gravelly voice spurred Benny to create a full time part, the character of Rochester Van Jones, Jack’s butler and valet, in late 1937. Although initially hampered by stereotyped minstrel-show dialogue and character habits, Rochester soon became renowned by both white and black listeners for his ability to criticize the “Boss” in impertinent manner. Virtually co-starred in three films with Benny that were highly successful at the box office, commenters in the black press in 1940 hoped that Rochester offered “a new day” in improved race relations.

Race Doesn’t Matter

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey D. Fields
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Racial Uplift ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
Abstract Notion

This chapter focuses on African American Republicans who can be labeled as “color-blind” because their strategy for linking black identity to Republican politics involves de-emphasizing the role of race in black people's lives. These African American Republicans see themselves as linked to a broader black community, but they reject identity politics as the pathway to racial uplift. They endorse Republican social policy as part of a commitment to an abstract notion of conservative politics, not because the policies are good for black people. Indeed, for race-blind African American Republicans, the best thing for blacks is to abandon race-based identity politics.

Coda

2019 ◽  
pp. 171-180
Author(s):  
Cameron Leader-Picone
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Black Lives Matter

This coda briefly addresses the election of Donald Trump and the implications of an increasingly visible white nationalist movement on the arguments of the book. The coda also analyzes elements of the Black Lives Matter movement to argue that while much of the optimism of the post era has been mitigated, several of its major theoretical strains—the emphasis on individual agency over racial identity, the turn towards racial identity as performance—remain critical to understanding current activism. It also explains the influence of theoretical frameworks such as intersectionality and Afropessimism on current movements. The coda also looks briefly towards growing and ongoing trends in African American literature, like Afrofuturism.

Introduction: A Movement Architect

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jonathan Fenderson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Publishing Company ◽  
Stated Goal ◽  
Local Organizations ◽  
Michigan Avenue ◽  
The City ◽  
Protest Chants

On a wintry Monday in December 1969, a small contingent of African American protesters gathered at 1820 South Michigan Avenue just outside the main headquarters of the black-owned Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) in Chicago. Armed with picket signs and protest chants, they dramatically captured the attention of eyewitnesses and bewildered employees inside the building. Included among the demonstrators were several artists, intellectuals, and activists from a variety of local organizations—a genuine cross-section of the Black creative community in the city. In their efforts to seize the attention of JPC’s founding owner and president, John H. Johnson, the group staged the protest with the stated goal to make the company “truly representative of the Black community.”...

Jovita Gonzalez Stakes a Claim in Tejas History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen R. Roybal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

This chapter examines the short story, "Shades of the Tenth Muses," the novel, Caballero: A Historical Novel, and a master's thesis – each narrative written by Tejana folklorist and author, Jovita González – to reveal how she contributed to an alternative archive about the Texas/Mexico borderlands. As a member of the Texas folklore society, González participated alongside what were considered prominent Texas folklorists and historians (mainly Anglo males) of the twentieth century, in an effort to (re)tell her own version of Tejano history. The chapter argues that González uses her literary and academic work to create an alternative archive about gender and race relations along the Texas/Mexico border in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work contributes to an ever-growing body of Chicana/o work that recuperates Mexicana/o cultural memory.

‘Satyre upon a Saxaphone’: Fitzgerald and Music

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-113
Author(s):  
Jade Broughton Adams
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Tin Pan Alley ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Popular Magazine

This chapter demonstrates how Fitzgerald invokes music in his short fiction, which heavily features jazz. Fitzgerald shows how white artists such as the Castles and Irving Berlin often profited from the appropriation of African American musical culture such as jazz and blues. Fitzgerald’s explorations of Tin Pan Alley’s output demonstrate that a more malleable treatment of established formulae can yield valuable results. This book draws parallels between Irving Berlin’s subversion of tired Tin Pan Alley formulae, and Fitzgerald’s own manipulations of the popular magazine short story genre. In his later use of music, Fitzgerald explores the limitations of language, the role of the artist in society, and questions the value of popular culture itself. He satirises the conventions of popular songs, and subtly parodies short story conventions (particularly romantic short story conventions). Fitzgerald identifies with the songwriter, whose role is to provoke emotion and forge an intimacy with the consumer, much like the commercial short storyist. By positioning Fitzgerald’s thematic and character repetitions and concessions to the magazine format as deliberate rather than desperate, this chapter suggests that his self-parody is a conscious aesthetic decision in the process of exploring the identity of the authentic literary craftsman, dancer, or musician.

The ‘Chocolate Arabesques’ of Josephine Baker: Fitzgerald and Jazz Dance

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Jade Broughton Adams
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Short Story ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Popular Arts ◽  
Josephine Baker

This chapter shows how Fitzgerald often associates modern dance with the primitive. Fitzgerald’s engagement with African American culture is complex, and though the appropriation of African American culture for profit is punished in certain stories, Fitzgerald’s engagement with black culture is elsewhere more challenging. This chapter explores how performative identity (that is to say, the deliberate, theatrical presentation of inner traits) functions at the level of both form and content in the story ‘Babylon Revisited’, using the appearance of the dancer Josephine Baker’s ‘chocolate arabesques’ as a platform from which to explore how people perform identity. Fitzgerald prizes authenticity as the key attribute of any artist, dancer, or writer. In the story, Baker is berated for an inauthentic performance, merely delivering her routine without improvisation. This chapter argues that this sense of inauthentic artistry informed Fitzgerald’s self-conception as a popular short storyist. In Baker, Fitzgerald presents an artist who has bridged the ‘high’ and popular arts: ballet and cabaret. Fitzgerald sets up jazz dance as formulaic by satirising blind adherence to rules and fashions, and this chapter offers a reading of these rules as a metaphor for the short story conventions within which Fitzgerald toiled as a commercial short storyist.

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