By John Burl Smith
from thedish@ga.net
On August 12, 2010, CNN's AC360° aired the Doll Study Revisited: Girl Calls Her Skin "Nasty," which reexamined the famous "Doll Studies" (1939) conducted by Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Although not expressed, there seemed to be doubt about the validity of the Clark's work, especially in light of today's "color blind society." An updated version of the study, CNN said, The goal was to determine the status of children's racial beliefs, attitudes and preferences as well as skin tones biases at two different developmental periods. Specifically, kindergarten and middle childhood youngsters attending grade schools either in the Northeast or Southeast regions of the United States of America were tested by same race female testers.
The study was comprised of 133 children -- 65 early and 68 middle childhood subjects. There were 75 African American and 58 white children of which 64 came from 4 Northeastern and 69 from 4 Southeastern schools. The 8 schools were from suburbs around New York City and Atlanta (within a 2-hour radius). Very similar to the Clarks' studies, the results seemed to shock commentators, as well as researchers, since 70 years have elapsed between the two studies.
Following the original studies by the Clarks, there were suspicions that the black psychologists used "junk" science to concoct their results to give a false impression about effects of segregation and the doctrine of "separate-but-equal." Today, many thought that effects they measured were temporary and had faded with time, especially after the so-called changes that occurred since Brown v Board of Education (1954). The fallacy in such thinking results from white refusal to acknowledge that slavery/segregation produced persistent residual effects that society reinforced.
Interviewed for Eyes on the Prize (11-3-85), Dr. Clark spoke candidly. The attempt on the part of my wife and me was to try to understand how black children saw themselves -- whether they viewed themselves as equal to others. In fact, what we were trying to do is see how children develop a sense of their own being, their own person. Dr. Clark analysis highlighted the essential fact underlying blacks' perilous existence -- development of their self perception.
Although, whites and blacks went through slavery in tandem, each perspective was very different. Whites determined everything about slaves' lives and slaves were forced to accept and adapt to any demand made upon them by whites. White skin represented power, status, wealth, beauty and any other positive characteristics imaginable. Simultaneously, a slave's skin color was a stigma, a badge of servitude, a depository for attributing any characteristic whites despised. A slave's blackness stood out as no other pigment, drawing to him or her the dread and wretchedness of perpetual bondage.
Emancipation did not free slaves of what was their badge of dishonor. A curse that slave descendants spent their existence -- whitening and lightening -- trying to remove. Black skin means one can be denied equal access to the bounties of US citizenship ? the right to vote, equal pay, employment, education, etc.-- even though all justifications for such treatment have long since been proven false. Moreover, slave descendants' skin color justifies the denial of "equal protection" codified under the 14th Amendment to prevent discrimination, disparate treatment and hostile environment -- unequal justice, lynching, murder by police, school-to-prison pipeline, predatory lending, etc.
Dr. Clark explained what the process of segregation did to children he studied. Oh, of course, I saw the warnings signs, even before I knew there was going to be a case [Brown v Board of Education] against segregation. My wife and I saw them as fairly indicative of the dehumanizing effects of racism, of which segregation is the most concrete manifestation of racism, no question about that. In fact, we saw that so clearly that we were reluctant to publish the results, because the results of our studies were so indicative of the dehumanizing, cruel impact of racism in our allegedly "democratic society" and you know, these children were internalizing that. They saw themselves in terms of the society's definition of them as inferior. That's not a pretty thing to- and it was hard for us to pretend to be objective about it.Dr. Clark's perceptive statement has been borne out by the CNN study. The source of children's self perception is information from the society at-large. Metaphorically, like an umbilical cord, society feeds the young images of how it perceives them and they build up what is called "residual-self identifying imagery" which serves as the basis of their personality. All one needs to do in order to understand this process is to observe society's message to realize that nothing has changed. A white skin still represents power, status, wealth, beauty and any other positive characteristics imaginable. Whereas, blackness is still a depository for everything negative ? ignorance, indolence, ribald, poverty, crime, lack of opportunity, unemployment, degradation, homelessness, welfare, etc.-- attributable to people in American society.
The dehumanizing impact of racism on a child's psyche is profound. Look at television, videos or movies; the desirability of being white is overwhelming. Children see white people perform all the positive functions of society, while they are inundated with negative roles blacks play in society. Unlike the Clarks' studies, the CNN study assessed both white (58) and black (78) children; however, the systemic socializing impact of racism was remarkably similar. The reality of the CNN study is that American society is breeding racism today just as it did during slavery or put another way, slavery never ended!
(Source: http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/)
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Call for Papers
NCBS is accepting abstracts for individual paper, poster, panel, session, roundtable discussion, workshop, town hall meeting that explore the Black experience locally, nationally, and/or globally from a variety perspective. Of particular interest are presentations that comparatively explore these experiences, as well as those that examine the discipline of Africana/Black Studies using multi-layered frameworks and methodologies. Papers that incorporate various combinations of race/nationality, class, gender, and sexuality, through the lens of but not limited to Afrocentric, cross and multicultural, diasporic, feminist, postcolonial, postmodernist or transnational interpretative schemes are welcomed. Send a 150-400 word abstract for a panel (one for the panel subject and one for each panelist), and/or individual paper and poster presentations. For roundtable discussions submit a 500 word abstract that explores the discussion topic. For town hall meetings submit a 500 word abstract specifying the roles of the facilitator(s) and recorder(s).
Audio-visual needs (e.g. power,point, monitors, tv etc.)--presenters have to contract equipment from the hotel--NCBS "will not" be responsible for supplying presenters with equipment.
*All conference presenters must pre-register for the conference.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE October 15, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
“Sharing the Narrative of Shirley Sherrod: Lessons in Race and Racism”
From the Afro-Am List-Serve at h-net.org
It is no accident or unintended error that the false accusation of racial bigotry against Shirley Sherrod, former Director of the USDA in Georgia, and the manufactured racial controversy around it, have all but disappeared in the media with no penalty for the perpetrator or his friends at Fox, and no follow-up investigation and exposure of the racialized wilderness into which these self-appointed saviors of White privilege and power are leading the country. But before the issue recedes too far in the short-term memory of those cultivated to endure only quick and uncomplicated messages sent and received, it is important to extract some of its valuable lessons.
The first lesson is this: American society is not really ready to deal with /race as reality/, only as spectacle and special topic, quickly covered on the daily and nightly news – and even then only as a superficial and episodic concern about racial attitudes, speech and the routine talk about tolerance. To deal seriously with race and the raw reality it is, is to deal with /racism/, a system of denial, deformation, and destruction of a people’s history, humanity and human rights based exclusively or primarily on the false concept of race. And here race is not peoplehood or ethnicity, but a socio-biological category constructed by Europe to assign human worth and social status using White people as the exemplary model.
It is to deal with racism as imposition – daily violence and domination; as ideology – a system of ideas negative to the dominated to justify domination and dominance; and as institutional arrangements – structures and processes that promote and preserve White racial domination and dominance. In a word, it is to deal with White dominance in wealth, power and status and the detrimental and deadly impact this has on the lives of Black people and other peoples of color.
Secondly, another lesson to be learned is how vulnerable Black people remain even in supposedly liberal circumstances and even with a Black President – indeed, even within his administration. Shirley Sherrod had been loyal, loving and deeply committed to a post-racist, just and good society. She had been doing an excellent job for Black, White and other farmers. She lectured in 1986 at the NAACP gathering, explaining the need for racial reconciliation. She had used her personal narrative of helping, in spite of initial reservation, a White farmer infected with an acute case of social ignorance, personal arrogance and racial resentment directed toward her whom he had come to for help.
It was a classic Black Christian story of refusing to reciprocate hate, and a civil rights activist’s call to unite the have-nots across racial lines for progressive social change. But a rightwing blogger had taken her narrative and made it appear as if she were saying the opposite and fearing a White negative response to this ’86 narrative on racial healing mistranslated as denying Whites help would hurt President Obama, his officials forced Mrs. Sherrod to resign. They did not investigate or even show her the common courtesy of a call into the office to be questioned and heard. Instead, she was called in her car, asked to pull over and text in her resignation. They have since apologized and asked her to return.
Thirdly, the lesson is that President Obama and his administration cannot justify or sustain, in good faith, the tendency and willingness to sacrifice right, reputations, careers and innocent persons on the altar of rightwing allegations, attacks and disruptive agendas. They seem not to have learned from the sacrificing of Rev. Wright, Van Jones, and ACORN that evil unresisted reinvigorates itself and continues until challenged and checked.
Clearly, Obama must change the way he and his advisors soft-shoe, tiptoe and bend in the wind of rightwing hot air madness. Indeed, he must not constantly retreat, sacrifice persons and principles to appease people who hate and harass him as a way of life and will never be satisfied with anything except his failure, his political absence and a new address. Even then, they will try to discredit him and deny his achievements. Catering to them can only encourage them, foster contempt from them and others, and make insecure anyone with an activist history or intention of working with the poor, preyed-upon and less powerful to achieve social justice.
Another lesson to be learned here is that this is not just about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones or Shirley Sherrod, but about the rightwing agenda to regain dominance in national politics, to disrupt, delay and destroy any hope or move forward on a progressive agenda. And this means disrupting the Obama presidency and using race-baiting against Obama and Black people. It means attempting to whip the White majority into a racial frenzy, to make them feel victimized, not by corporate greed or prior Republican administrations’ policies, but by the scary ascendance of a Black president, and any signs of Black people seeking social justice and demanding an end to White-skin privilege and monopoly on wealth, power and status.
In this regard, it is more than a coincidence that in the midst of Obama’s push for rightful restitution for Black farmers, Mrs. Sherrod, one of their most effective advocates, is targeted and forced to resign. This not only affects the status of the designated bill to do this, the Pigsford II initiative, but again raises questions about the justice of this effort. As a matter of history, this initiative grows out of a class action suit won by Black farmers for decades of discrimination in the South by the USDA officials. Even the USDA conceded discrimination through denying and delaying loans and restrictive monitoring. Now the rightwing and Republicans are trying to block payments, disqualify claims and thus deny long overdue justice to these Black farmers.
Finally, the lesson here is also that there is a ruthless ideological war being waged by the rightwing to delegitimize our rightful social justice claims, to appropriate our identity as a moral and social vanguard and to reverse the moral order, manufacturing White wounds and worries, and inventing White victims while denying Black ones. Indeed, they seek to hide the fact that it is not race or racial difference that divides and discredits this country, but racism; not the way people look, but the unequal way they are forced to live based on the way they look and the way they are unjustly judged. Clearly, we cannot let this stand and our response must be our continuing and self-conscious, righteous and relentless struggle.
Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach, Chair of The Organization Us, Creator of Kwanzaa, and author of /Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle. /
It is no accident or unintended error that the false accusation of racial bigotry against Shirley Sherrod, former Director of the USDA in Georgia, and the manufactured racial controversy around it, have all but disappeared in the media with no penalty for the perpetrator or his friends at Fox, and no follow-up investigation and exposure of the racialized wilderness into which these self-appointed saviors of White privilege and power are leading the country. But before the issue recedes too far in the short-term memory of those cultivated to endure only quick and uncomplicated messages sent and received, it is important to extract some of its valuable lessons.
The first lesson is this: American society is not really ready to deal with /race as reality/, only as spectacle and special topic, quickly covered on the daily and nightly news – and even then only as a superficial and episodic concern about racial attitudes, speech and the routine talk about tolerance. To deal seriously with race and the raw reality it is, is to deal with /racism/, a system of denial, deformation, and destruction of a people’s history, humanity and human rights based exclusively or primarily on the false concept of race. And here race is not peoplehood or ethnicity, but a socio-biological category constructed by Europe to assign human worth and social status using White people as the exemplary model.
It is to deal with racism as imposition – daily violence and domination; as ideology – a system of ideas negative to the dominated to justify domination and dominance; and as institutional arrangements – structures and processes that promote and preserve White racial domination and dominance. In a word, it is to deal with White dominance in wealth, power and status and the detrimental and deadly impact this has on the lives of Black people and other peoples of color.
Secondly, another lesson to be learned is how vulnerable Black people remain even in supposedly liberal circumstances and even with a Black President – indeed, even within his administration. Shirley Sherrod had been loyal, loving and deeply committed to a post-racist, just and good society. She had been doing an excellent job for Black, White and other farmers. She lectured in 1986 at the NAACP gathering, explaining the need for racial reconciliation. She had used her personal narrative of helping, in spite of initial reservation, a White farmer infected with an acute case of social ignorance, personal arrogance and racial resentment directed toward her whom he had come to for help.
It was a classic Black Christian story of refusing to reciprocate hate, and a civil rights activist’s call to unite the have-nots across racial lines for progressive social change. But a rightwing blogger had taken her narrative and made it appear as if she were saying the opposite and fearing a White negative response to this ’86 narrative on racial healing mistranslated as denying Whites help would hurt President Obama, his officials forced Mrs. Sherrod to resign. They did not investigate or even show her the common courtesy of a call into the office to be questioned and heard. Instead, she was called in her car, asked to pull over and text in her resignation. They have since apologized and asked her to return.
Thirdly, the lesson is that President Obama and his administration cannot justify or sustain, in good faith, the tendency and willingness to sacrifice right, reputations, careers and innocent persons on the altar of rightwing allegations, attacks and disruptive agendas. They seem not to have learned from the sacrificing of Rev. Wright, Van Jones, and ACORN that evil unresisted reinvigorates itself and continues until challenged and checked.
Clearly, Obama must change the way he and his advisors soft-shoe, tiptoe and bend in the wind of rightwing hot air madness. Indeed, he must not constantly retreat, sacrifice persons and principles to appease people who hate and harass him as a way of life and will never be satisfied with anything except his failure, his political absence and a new address. Even then, they will try to discredit him and deny his achievements. Catering to them can only encourage them, foster contempt from them and others, and make insecure anyone with an activist history or intention of working with the poor, preyed-upon and less powerful to achieve social justice.
Another lesson to be learned here is that this is not just about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones or Shirley Sherrod, but about the rightwing agenda to regain dominance in national politics, to disrupt, delay and destroy any hope or move forward on a progressive agenda. And this means disrupting the Obama presidency and using race-baiting against Obama and Black people. It means attempting to whip the White majority into a racial frenzy, to make them feel victimized, not by corporate greed or prior Republican administrations’ policies, but by the scary ascendance of a Black president, and any signs of Black people seeking social justice and demanding an end to White-skin privilege and monopoly on wealth, power and status.
In this regard, it is more than a coincidence that in the midst of Obama’s push for rightful restitution for Black farmers, Mrs. Sherrod, one of their most effective advocates, is targeted and forced to resign. This not only affects the status of the designated bill to do this, the Pigsford II initiative, but again raises questions about the justice of this effort. As a matter of history, this initiative grows out of a class action suit won by Black farmers for decades of discrimination in the South by the USDA officials. Even the USDA conceded discrimination through denying and delaying loans and restrictive monitoring. Now the rightwing and Republicans are trying to block payments, disqualify claims and thus deny long overdue justice to these Black farmers.
Finally, the lesson here is also that there is a ruthless ideological war being waged by the rightwing to delegitimize our rightful social justice claims, to appropriate our identity as a moral and social vanguard and to reverse the moral order, manufacturing White wounds and worries, and inventing White victims while denying Black ones. Indeed, they seek to hide the fact that it is not race or racial difference that divides and discredits this country, but racism; not the way people look, but the unequal way they are forced to live based on the way they look and the way they are unjustly judged. Clearly, we cannot let this stand and our response must be our continuing and self-conscious, righteous and relentless struggle.
Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach, Chair of The Organization Us, Creator of Kwanzaa, and author of /Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle. /
Call for Articles-New Journal from ASALH
CALL FOR ARTICLES
*The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) proudly announces the creation of /Fire!!!: The Multimedia Journal of Black Studies./ Designed to connect Black Studies scholarship with the Digital Revolution in the Age of Communication, /Fire!!!/ serves as a contemporary conduit through which Black Studies knowledge can be distributed. The journal’s/ /unique contribution is the use of the digital world in providing a peer-reviewed venue for scholars who utilize multimedia evidence to advance their theories and interpretations.
/Fire!!!/ is a multi-disciplinary journal that serves primarily the social sciences, arts, and humanities. The journal welcomes research that crosses the lines of traditional disciplines and focuses on contemporary issues that expand the intellectual realm of Black Studies. Our goal is to use media to increase the kinds of primary evidence that can be brought to bear to expand knowledge.
/Fire!!!/ is interested in obtaining articles, review essays, and reviews for its February and August 2011 issues. All articles and review essays should be between 7,500 and 12,000 words. The maximum file size for each (including media) is 10 mb. /Fire!!! /publishes reviews of feature films and documentaries, audio recordings, theatrical productions, websites, museum exhibits, and books relevant to teaching courses on Black life, history, and culture. Scholars interested in submitting reviews should contact the editors before submitting.
/Fire!!! /will be distributed to institutional libraries through JSTOR. If you are interested in contributing to this cutting-edge publication visit our website for submission guidelines. www.fire-jbs.org
Questions? Contact the editors at: editors@fire-jbs.org
*The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) proudly announces the creation of /Fire!!!: The Multimedia Journal of Black Studies./ Designed to connect Black Studies scholarship with the Digital Revolution in the Age of Communication, /Fire!!!/ serves as a contemporary conduit through which Black Studies knowledge can be distributed. The journal’s/ /unique contribution is the use of the digital world in providing a peer-reviewed venue for scholars who utilize multimedia evidence to advance their theories and interpretations.
/Fire!!!/ is a multi-disciplinary journal that serves primarily the social sciences, arts, and humanities. The journal welcomes research that crosses the lines of traditional disciplines and focuses on contemporary issues that expand the intellectual realm of Black Studies. Our goal is to use media to increase the kinds of primary evidence that can be brought to bear to expand knowledge.
/Fire!!!/ is interested in obtaining articles, review essays, and reviews for its February and August 2011 issues. All articles and review essays should be between 7,500 and 12,000 words. The maximum file size for each (including media) is 10 mb. /Fire!!! /publishes reviews of feature films and documentaries, audio recordings, theatrical productions, websites, museum exhibits, and books relevant to teaching courses on Black life, history, and culture. Scholars interested in submitting reviews should contact the editors before submitting.
/Fire!!! /will be distributed to institutional libraries through JSTOR. If you are interested in contributing to this cutting-edge publication visit our website for submission guidelines. www.fire-jbs.org
Questions? Contact the editors at: editors@fire-jbs.org
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Racial Wealth Gap
Did we really need this study? Being an African American, I do not expect to see a change until people change and people of color are treated fair and given equality in opportunities to obtain wealth.
Rev Jackson's remarks
I agree with Re. Jackson. There are those people with authority who think that they can intimidate other people who havae less authority than they have.
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