(2012). On Human Kinds and Role Models: A Critical Discussion about the African American Male Teacher. Educational Studies: Vol. 48, Black Teachers Theorizing, pp. 296-315.

Focused on preparing educators to teach African American students, this straightforward and teacher-friendly text features a careful balance of published scholarship, a framework for culturally relevant and critical pedagogy, research-based case studies of model teachers, and tested culturally relevant practical strategies and actionable steps teachers can adopt. Its premise is that teachers who understand Black culture as an asset rather than a liability and utilize teaching techniques that have been shown to work can and do have specific positive (...) impacts on the educational experiences of African American children. (shrink)

Research on the intersection of race and gender suggests that, for African Americans, racial inequality is more salient than gender inequality. However, theoretical perspectives on the multiplicative effects of status positions and “outsider within” models suggest that minority group membership can be a catalyst for the development of feminist attitudes. This article examines three issues central to feminism: recognition and critique of gender inequality, egalitarian gender roles, and political activism for the rights of women. The authors found that (...) support for feminist ideology was common for both African American women and men, although the level of support varied depending on the issue and by gender. Factors predicting the endorsement of feminist ideology also varied depending on the issue and by gender. The authors found partial support for the race saliency hypothesis, but there was also evidence of the multiplicative effects of status positions on African Americans' feminist attitudes. (shrink)

Economic cooperative practices increase the ability of agents and communities to resist or curb ecologically damaging practices and to adapt to inevitable cultural and material transitions due to climate change. The history of African American economic cooperatives demonstrates how such efforts can build practical and leadership skills, transform local culture, and lay groundwork for wider collective action. Such practices fit Willis Jenkins’s model of prophetic pragmatism insofar as they draw on inherited traditions and transform culture and us. Contemporary (...) Christians and church communities can encourage economic cooperation as a form of resistance to ecological destruction and, in doing so, encourage the habits of humility, hope, and courage. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to attend to a certain attitude towards philosophy at Spellman College and to offer an account of its occurrence. This paper also offers recommendations on pedagogical methods and curricular models to attract African American students to philosophy. The author uses examples from personal experience teaching ethics seminars and articulates guiding principles for engaging students on a personal level while cultivating their interest in the discipline.

The purpose of this research was to document the alleged underrepresentation of African Americans employed in U.S. nonhuman animal welfare organizations. A telephone survey of 32 animal welfare organizations yielded responses from 13 with 1,584 employees. Almost all organizations were reluctant to respond. Of the 13 organizations responding, 62% had no African American employees. African Americans made up 4% of the total number of employees with only 0.8% at the top levels . African Americans never (...) made up more than 7% of the employees in their respective organization. This paper discusses a model of, and resources for, successful diversity building in nonprofit organizations. (shrink)

with her usual concern with accuracy and clarity, Marilyn Fischer’s explanations are exemplary models of the value of historical scholarship. Concern with context in its many forms is integral to pragmatist philosophy, but the range and depth of Fischer’s research make her papers especially valuable. She helps us understand the extent to which the horizon of understanding is bounded by the particularities of time and place. Careful elucidation of less familiar concrete horizons can give us a better understanding of (...) unfamiliar beliefs and values and illuminate our own pre-suppositions.Such concreteness cuts two ways. It can re-invigorate current debates by challenging our assumptions of what particular texts mean .. (shrink)

Long touted in literary and historical works, the Mississippi River remains an iconic presence in the American landscape. Whether referred to as ‘Old Man River’ or the ‘Big Muddy,’ the Mississippi River represents imageries ranging from pastoral and Acadian to turbulent and unpredictable. But these imageries – revealed through the cultural production of artists, writers and even filmmakers – did not adequately reflect the experiences of everyone living and working along the river. The African-American community and its (...) relationship to the Mississippi River down the ages is occluded by these discourses. In focusing on this alternate history, namely the African-American experience with the Mississippi River, the overarching framework of this paper will consist of three lenses on the river as: refuge, labor, and cultural icon. From the moment of their arrival, the intersection of their lives with the Mississippi River reveals a history where the river offers freedom, oppression, escape, sustenance, renewal, disease and displacement. From this largely unexplored perspective, distinctions of race and class are exposed and reinforced. Although rivers have long been included in the historical record, whether through a geographical, spiritual, aesthetic or recreational perspective, the juncture where human lives intersect with rivers, constructing memory and identity, remains overlooked despite a plethora of cultural artifacts such as song, prose and poetry that distinguish experiences. These cultural artifacts, in turn, differentiate reciprocal relationships with the river based on race and class. For the African-American community, the Mississippi River alternated between liberator and oppressor, informing the social construct of an identity that was at times lamented, celebrated, demeaned and feared. But how did these linkages with the river not only influence a distinct collective memory but also nurture a culture with certain understandings and perspectives about the river? And if so, what have been their ramifications? Through an examination of folklore, song and first-person accounts, these questions will be addressed as multiple narratives persist, offering a history that makes more explicit the distinctive experiences of the African-American communities in their engagement with the Mississippi River. (shrink)

Philosophy confronts two existential crises: the threats to its existence from scientists like Stephen Hawking who claim that philosophy is dead; and the threat to life itself from catastrophic climate change. The essay’s first theoretical part critiques Nietzsche’s claim that philosophy’s primary function is to guarantee the future of life. The essay’s second practical part claims that philosophy must meet the challenge of life’s extinction through a revised model for ethics in education. Taking its start from recent conceptualizations of philosophy (...) as a ‘field discipline,’ this part considers African American models for delivering ethics in education to under-resourced communities. The third part shows how these theoretical models may be actualized in the practice of an African field philosopher. (shrink)

If we are dissatisfied with our situation in life, we often dream of how our life could be improved. Most basically, we want a full stomach, decent clothing and housing, and a sense of security, and millions of people in the world today do not now have these things. Throughout American history, African Americans were kept from achieving this most basic decent life, let alone the more complex needs that become possible for those who fulfill the first needs. (...) All the elements of this fundamental vision are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in 1948 but was not ratified by the United States until 1992. Among the rights included in the Universal Declaration are Article 4. No one... (shrink)

Recent studies suggest that terminally ill African Americans’ care is generally more expensive and of lower quality than that of comparable non-Hispanic white patients. Scholars argue that increasing hospice enrollment among African Americans will help improve end-of-life care for this population, yet few studies have examined the experiences of African American patients and their loved ones after accessing hospice care. In this article, we explore how African American patients and lay caregivers evaluated their hospice (...) experiences. Drawing from 39 in-depth interviews with 26 participants, we use a modified version of Bute and Jensen’s (2011) narrative typology to organize patients’ and caregivers’ stories into three general categories: narratives of satisfaction, narratives of regret, and narratives of ambivalence. Building from these categories, we discuss the implications of this research for understanding hospice experiences, promoting hospice access, and improving end-of-life care for marginalized populations. (shrink)

The domestic legal obstacles to affirmative action to address the problem of the color line that have arisen in the United States in the past 30 years have become the occasion for discouragement and even despair in the face of the persistent racial disparities in American life. This is due, in part, to the limits of our domestic vocabulary for speaking about such initiatives. In this paper I argue that Christian ethics, with the help of the resources of the (...) emergent minority rights dialogue in international human rights, can play an important role in securing the cultural transformation needed to broaden our vocabulary and reframe our thinking so that our efforts to secure racial justice are not bound by the limits of the conventional domestic vocabulary. Specifically, I argue that the new international discussion of "the right to self-determination" can be usefully employed within Christian ethics to secure the cultural, moral and legal changes needed to secure racial justice in the United States. (shrink)

In this compelling and engaging work, Tsenay Serequeberhan discusses recent themes in African-American and African Philosophy from a hermeneutical perspective, while paying special attention to the question of how we relate to our past and the open possibilities of our future. Our Heritage carefully examines the variety of approaches to African philosophy and argues for a historically engaged and existentially attuned paradigm shift. The result is an approach that explores the contemporary situation of African and (...) African-American existence in view of emancipatory struggles that have established the confines of the present. (shrink)

Through the back door: the problem of history and the African American philosopher/philosophy -- The problem of philosophy: metaphilosophical considerations -- The search for values: axiology in ebony -- Philosophy of science: African American deliberations -- Mapping the disciplinary contours of the philosophy of religion: reason, faith, and African American religious culture.

Based on a qualitative study of 48 teenage mothers living in the Denver metropolitan area, this research examines the loss of multiple attachments, including mothers, siblings, and other extended family members and friends, among African American and Latina girls who become young mothers. Through life history narratives, this article explores the isolating effects of teen motherhood on the relational world of young mothers and the transition to “forced autonomy” that emerges out of the relationship strains in the teen (...) mothers’ lives. Faced with ruptures in significant childhood attachments and strains in the mother–daughter bond, young mothers develop strategies of accommodation to cope with the disruptions to connectivity and the demands of forced autonomy that are the result of early motherhood. These findings are interpreted through the frame of self-in-relation theory as this theoretical perspective has been informed by the scholarship on race and ethnicity. In reengaging the discourse on race, class, and gender, our findings contribute to the field in a number of significant and related ways: first, through an investigation into relationship loss and repair among teen mothers; second, by addressing the conditions under which teen mothers gain acceptance in their families; and third, in applying self-in-relation theory to the experience of adolescent girls of color whose relational lives are disrupted by the stigma and adversity of teen motherhood. (shrink)

Ask any Civil War historian about the cost of the Civil War and they will recite a host of well-known assessments, from military casualties and government expenditures to various measures of direct and indirect costs. But those numbers are not likely to include an appraisal of the humanitarian crisis and suffering caused by the wartime destruction of slavery. Peace-time emancipation in other regions and in other societies certainly presented dangers and difficulties for the formerly enslaved, but wartime emancipation chained the (...) new opportunities and possibilities for freedom to war’s violence, civil chaos, destruction and deprivation. The resulting health crisis, including illness, injury, and trauma, had immediate and lasting consequences for black civilians and soldiers. Although historians are more accustomed to thinking of enslaved people as the beneficiaries of this war, rather than its victims, we cannot assess the cost of this war until we answer two important questions: first, what price did enslaved people have to pay because their freedom was achieved through warfare rather than a peacetime process; and secondly, in this war in which so many Americans paid such a high cost, to what extent did racism inflate the cost paid by people of African descent? In answering these questions, we reconsider this specific war, but we must also tie the U.S. Civil War to a larger scholarship on how wars impact civilians, create refugee populations, and accelerate harsh treatment of people regarded as racial, religious, or ethnic outsiders. We are reminded that war is not an equal-opportunity killer. (shrink)

This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. (...) Section One of this book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Community in Early America: The Colonizers, the Colonized, the Marginalized, and the Enslaved The Unresolved American Dilemma: Community, Segregation, and Desegregation The “Failure of Integration”? Conclusion: Pluralism and the Challenge of the New Millennium.

Studies that investigate cognitive ability in African children and estimate the general cognitive abilities of African adults tend to work with existing models of intelligence. However, African philosophy and empirical studies in cross-cultural psychology have demonstrated that conceptualizations of human cognitive ability vary with location. This paper begins with the assumption that the existing Anglo-American models of cognitive abilities are valuable but limited in their capacity to account for the various conceptualizations of valued cognitive (...) abilities in different human societies. On the basis of this assumption, I employ extant empirical evidence generated through ethnographic studies across Africa to formulate what an African model of valued human cognitive ability ought to be. The output of this formulation has been so christened a model of valued cognitive ability in order to draw attention to the fact that models of cognitive abilities have currency and values in each human society. This value allocation is expected to influence which elements of cognitive ability each human society will promote and develop. In addition, implications for theory, research and praxes are discussed. (shrink)

Many African American children make use of African American English in their everyday lives, and face academic barriers when introduced to Standard American English in the classroom. Research has shown that students who can adapt and use SAE for academic purposes demonstrate significantly better test scores than their less adaptable peers. Accordingly, AAE use and its confirmed inverse relationship to reading achievement have been implicated in the Black-White Test Score Gap, thus becoming the focus of (...) intense research and practical interest. This volume discusses dialectal code-switching from AAE to SAE and stresses the benefits and importance of African American students becoming bi-dialectal. It provides background theory and science supporting the most promising educational approach to date, Contrastive Analysis, a set of longstanding methods drawn from Second Language research and used effectively with students ranging from kindergarten through college. It offers a deeper knowledge of AAE use by students, the critical features of Contrastive Analysis, and detailed information about successful applications which teachers can apply in their own pedagogy. (shrink)

The U.S. Civil War chained slave emancipation to war's violence, destruction and deprivation. The resulting health crisis, including illness, injury, and trauma, had immediate and lasting consequences. This essay explores the impact of ideas about race on the U.S. military's health care provisions and treatment of former slaves, both civilians and soldiers.

This essay considers the recuperation of beauty as a productive critical strategy in discussions of African American dance. I argue that black performance in general, and African American concert dance in particular, seeks to create aesthetic sites that allow black Americans to participate in discourses of recognition and appreciation to include concepts of beauty. In this, I suggest that beauty may indeed produce social change for its attendant audiences. I also propose that interrogating the notion of (...) beauty may allow for social change among audiences that include dance theorists and philosophers. Through a case-study consideration of work by three African American choreographers, Donald Byrd (b. 1949), Ulysses Dove (1947 – 1996), and Abdel Salaam (b. 1949), I ultimately hope to suggest critical possibilities aligning dance performance with particular aesthetic theory relevant to its documentation and interpretation. (shrink)

Traditional African American foods, also referred to as “soul food,” are often given a blanket label of “poor food choices.” The cultural value of these ethnic foods may be disregarded without sufficient study of their nutrient content. This study showed that of the various foods perceived as traditionally African American by the local sampled population, greens were the most often identified as such by 78% and the most frequently consumed (22%) by the subjects. 37% perceived chitterlings (...) as a traditional food, yet only 30% consumed them, and only on an occasional basis. Okra, yams, and black-eyed peas had relatively high consumptions but were not often perceived as traditional African American foods. The latter may suggests a lack of historical food facts, relating to indigenous African foods or may indicate the mainstreaming of these foods. Cowpeas or black-eyed peas, okra, sesame seeds, and watermelon seeds were originally brought to North America from Africa. The literature contains scant information on this particular topic, which leaves unanswered: (1) the current consumption of traditional foods by African Americans, (2) certain availability of these foods; and (3) the positive contributions to the diet that these foods may contribute. The author recognizes that “African American” is the most appropriate and preferred term used widely today, to refer to African descendants in North America, however “Black” and “Black American” will be used interchangeably, to reflect consistency of literature cited herein. First, this article will define traditional African American foods and relate their historical significance. Secondly, it will present data on current food consumption from a sample population of African Americans surveyed in San Diego. Lastly, this article will explore possible applications of the research itself. (shrink)

One can understand humor in terms of one or some combination of the three types of humor and also by envisioning humor as a finite-province of meaning in the tradition of Alfred Schutz’s essay “On Multiple Realities”. Exemplifying varieties of humor articulated by philosophical theory, especially the superiority theory, which undermines those thought “superior,” African-American humor, from the days of slavery until the 1960s, struggled against widespread cultural suppression, as a brief survey of its history shows. Contemporary philosophical (...) discussions of trust elucidate why it would have been perfectly rational and prudent for African-Americans to avoid sharing humor that vents legitimate aggressiveness against whites even though modified by humor, and yet these discussions present the possibility that by trusting another one can transform that other. One can find examples in African-American folklore, particularly the John/ole Massa stories, of a dream of doing what was impossible in pragmatic everyday life, namely to engage in a comic engagement with white slave-owners. In that dream, African-American slaves utopianly imagined themselves as able through humor understood as a finite province of meaning shaped by an epoché, form of spontaneity, reduced tension of consciousness, sense of self, and a distinctive temporality and sociality, to express outrage at injustice, transform even white slave-owners, and even win freedom for humorists themselves. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article asks why African American Philosophy matters. The notion of the “Black philosopher” continues to be an enigma. African descendants are not generally associated with the revered location and status of “the philosopher” and with doing philosophy. In a celebration of the sustained work of the Black philosopher-practitioner, who continues to suffer a fate of deliberate academic “invisibility” and historical erasure, this article supports the expansion of philosophical categories, philosophical conversation, and philosophical inclusivity. This work (...) contends that the marginalization of African American philosophy can be understood from a synthesis of Foucault’s thesis of “subjugated knowledge” and Black philosopher Lewis Gordon’s explanation of “subverted realization,” which is built in to “white” modern thought. Both key philosophers help locate the problem questioned here. The overriding current of the “white stream” of philosophy, by its deliberate exclusion of African American philosophy, disqualifies it. (shrink)

It is becoming evident that failure to reconcile African Christians and Muslims is partly due to the misinterpretation of the African epistemology of peace. This work argues that Christian-Muslim peacemaking must be conceived apart from the Western epistemology whereby conferences, lectures, chart signing, religious fora, and systematic military strategies are common practices. For Africans, peacemaking involves creating a space where members of a community connect with each other at a deeper level. This paper explores the process of reconciling (...) African Christians and Muslims, not exclusively from a diplomatic tact and religious slant, but from intrinsic cultural constituents like the African ubuntu, Fulbe’s pulaaku, and the Ethiopian medemer which are entrenched in the notion of kinship. A Fulbe proverb constitutes a tool for illustrating kinship and peace. (shrink)

Two philosophical approaches are prominent in race studies: an interpretive phenomenological method, utilized by Sartre, Fanon and Schutz, that describes how Blacks and non-blacks interpret eac...

An emerging body of research comparing body image disturbance and eating problems among African American and white women suggests that there are major ethnic differences in these areas. African American women appear to be more satisfied with their weight and appearance than are white women, and they are less likely to engage in unhealthy weight control practices, yet they are more likely to have high rates of obesity. Drawing on both Black and white feminist literature on (...) eating problems, this article advances three arguments that may account for these differences: Black women may develop a strong positive self-valuation and an alternative beauty aesthetic to resist societal stigmatization, Black women may be less likely to acquire eating disorders due to differences in the cultural construction of femininity in Black communities, and positive body image among Black women may sometimes reflect a defensive need to deny health problems such as compulsive overeating and obesity. (shrink)

A special issue of The Philosophical Forum , one of the most prestigious philosophy journals, is now available to a wider readership through its publication in book form. The volume includes twelve essays in three sections-- Philosophical Traditions; the African-American Tradition; and Racism, Identity, and Social Life. Contributors are: K. Anthony Appiah, Kwasi Wiredu, Lucius Outlaw, Leonard Harris, Bernard Boxill, Frank M. Kirkland, Tommy L. Lott, Adrian M.S. Piper, Laurence Thomas, Michele M. Moody-Adams, Anita L. Allen, and Howard (...) McGary. The introduction is by John P. Pittman. (shrink)

African-American political thought finds its premises in European philosophical traditions. But these traditions often challenge African-American humanity which African-American political thought defends. African-American political thought is therefore an extended commentary on the consistency of European philosophical traditions.

This textual analysis is a collective case study of K-12 United States History content standards in light of how they represent the historical experiences of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. The study uses a multi-perspective critical conceptual framework to evaluate the standards for nine state-level polities on both the quality of treatment and the orientation of how African Americans are depicted in the standards. Analysis revealed that the reviewed standards tend to discourage rigorous historical thinking in (...) favor of non-conflictual narrative perspectives that accentuate the historical contributions of African Americans within a framework of linear social progress. This curricular approach is ultimately problematic because it encourages teachers and students to rely on convenient historical archetypes to construct a usable past, rather than problematizing the past and present experiences of African Americans. (shrink)

A special issue of _The Philosophical Forum_, one of the most prestigious philosophy journals, is now available to a wider readership through its publication in book form. The volume includes twelve essays in three sections-- Philosophical Traditions; the African-American Tradition; and Racism, Identity, and Social Life. Contributors are: K. Anthony Appiah, Kwasi Wiredu, Lucius Outlaw, Leonard Harris, Bernard Boxill, Frank M. Kirkland, Tommy L. Lott, Adrian M.S. Piper, Laurence Thomas, Michele M. Moody-Adams, Anita L. Allen, and Howard McGary. (...) The introduction is by John P. Pittman. (shrink)

There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan value of communal relationship and demonstrate that it entails (...) a substantial allowance for difference. I aim to show that African thinkers need not appeal to, say, characteristically Euro-American values of authenticity or autonomy to make sense of why individuals should not be pressured to conform to a group’s norms regarding sex and gender. A key illustration involves homosexuality. (shrink)

One day a newly hatched eagle fell from its mother's clutches as she was flying over a chicken yard. The young eagle grew up in the chicken yard with young chickens and took on the habits, customs, and behavior of chickens. He ate like a chicken, walked like a chicken, and generally performed his daily routine like the birds who surrounded him. One day an eagle flew over the chicken yard, perhaps a parent eagle, looking for the lost eagle. Perched (...) high on a tree's limb over-looking the chicken yard, the eagle saw the young eagle that had fallen out of its mother's clutches. The old eagle called to the young eagle, “Eagle, can you hear me?” The young eagle thought of himself as a chicken and did not respond to the call of the eagle in the tree. However, the old eagle continued to call out to him, “Eagle down there, hello.” Finally the eagle in the chicken yard thought, can that eagle in the tree be yelling to me? So he looked up at the tree and saw that the old eagle was beckoning to him to fly up to the tree's branch. The young eagle said, “I cannot fly. I am a chicken.” Insisting that he try to fly the old eagle said, “No, you are not a chicken you are an eagle and I know your parents, in fact, I am your mother and your father is waiting for me to bring you.”. (shrink)

Interventions to decrease acquisition and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases among African American women using text messages versus small-group delivery modalities pose distinct research risks and benefits. Determining the relative risk–benefit ratio of studies using these different modalities has relied on the expertise of investigators and their institutional review boards. In this study, African American women participated in focus groups and surveys to elicit and compare risks and benefits inherent in these two intervention delivery modalities, focusing (...) on issues such as convenience, privacy, and stigma of participation. Some risk/benefit variables were implicated in willingness to participate the two intervention modalities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze by Anthony Sean NealKordell DixonPhilosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze Anthony Sean Neal. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.Philosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle begins with a clear and concise establishment of its aim: to analyze and expand upon those figures mentioned when discussing the academic (...) project of studying black people. Neal broadens the account of black scholars examining racialized existence by centering his work on the modern era and its initiator W. E. B Du Bois. Neal develops an ethnic reflective canon that documents the long history of black thinkers attempting to define their blackness and advance the conception of freedom. This book does an excellent job of capturing the genealogical structure of the struggle for freedom. Within the work, Neal denotes that all relevant figures in this tradition are freedom gazers. These gazers are spectators of a radically imagined future liberated from the oppressive systems that encumber the persecuted. Du Bois's approach to freedom gazing uses academic training to examine his blackness and inevitably to solve the "race problem." What Neal provides the reader is a road map of the intellectual work of black scholars. This road map details the common themes among black thinkers and how these themes relate to Du Bois. Neal's intricate network of philosophers uses their experience and their expertise to write about what is necessary for black people to obtain freedom. Neal composes a complex and remarkable catalog of black scholars that demonstrates the interconnectedness and progression of black thought on oppression and liberation.In the second chapter, Neal elucidates why Du Bois is chosen as the inaugurator of the modern era. As a formally educated black man, Du Bois questions his experience and what tethers him to oppression. Neal uses Du Bois as a focal point, not because Du Bois is the first black person to document their struggle with their racialized existence, but because he believes that Du Bois is the first scholar to analyze the black experience completely. The holistic nature of Du Bois's study of the existential conflict that race can manifest within its subjects allows Du Bois's analysis to be used as a tool to unify other works that discuss race and the struggle for freedom. Neal expresses how other scholars such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and Anna Julia Cooper all had work that takes up a similar task as Du Bois's but lacks the fullness of Du Bois's study. Here, Neal does not articulate clearly [End Page 87] how these figures are inadequate with respect to their work. It could be argued that each scholar named could be said to have accomplished a task similar to that of Du Bois. However, how these figures are studied throughout different disciplines gives the impression that their examination of race and freedom is much more focused on one specific field. This point speaks to how we interpret the work of these scholars and not to these scholars' work itself. Neal proceeds to describe Du Bois as a freedom gazer and explains how Du Bois's imagining of black persons as freed would allot a perceptual framework that motivates them to proclaim their right to mental and physical freedom. Further, Neal establishes that Du Bois's position as a freedom gazer allows him to expand the ethnic reflective canon. This canon includes Ida B. Wells, whose journalism on the lynching of black people during the Reconstruction era made headway on what social sciences could contribute to the struggle against injustice. Anna Julia Cooper is included in this canon; her radically imagined future was thought to be achieved through education. Wells and Cooper proceeded and directly influenced the work of Du Bois, creating a lineage of radical social thought. Neal maps his transition through the intellectual work of black scholars by using conceptions of peace, rebellion, revolution, and freedom as relational markers. The reader can identify the relationships among the varied work of freedom gazers despite the vast range of their spatiotemporal placement.In the third chapter, Neal examines the subjects Hubert Harrison, William H... (shrink)

Making links between different embodied cultural practices has become increasingly common within the feminist literature on multiculturalism and cultural difference as a means to counter racism and cultural essentialism. The cross-cultural comparison most commonly made in this context is that between ‘African’ practices of female genital cutting (FGC) and ‘western’ body modifications. In this article, I analyse some of the ways in which FGC and other body-altering procedures (such as cosmetic surgery, intersex operations and 19th century American clitoridectomies) (...) are compared within this feminist literature. I identify two main strategies of linking such practices, which I have termed the ‘continuum’ and ‘analogue’ approaches. The continuum approach is employed to imagine FGC alongside other body-altering procedures within a single ‘continuum’, ‘spectrum’ or ‘range’ of cross-cultural body modifications. The analogue approach is used to set up FGC and other body-altering practices as analogous through highlighting cross-cultural similarities, but does not explicitly conceive of them as forming a single continuum. Two key critiques of the continuum and analogue approaches are presented. First, because these models privilege gender and sexuality, they tend to efface the operation of other axes of embodied differentiation, namely race, cultural difference and nation. As such, the continuum and analogue approaches often reproduce problematic relationships between race and gender while failing to address the implicit and problematic role which race, cultural difference and nation continue to play in such models. This erasure of these axes, I contend, is linked to the construction of a ‘western’ empathetic gaze, which is my second key critique. The desire on the part of theorists working in the West to establish cross-cultural ‘empathy’ through models that stress similarity and solidarity conceals the continuing operation of geo-political relations of power and privilege. (shrink)

African-American Philosophers brings into conversation seventeen of the foremost thinkers of color to discuss issues such as Black existentialism, racism, Black women philosophers within the academy, affirmative action and the conceptual parameters of African-American philosophy.

: This paper reviews current and suggested policies designed to increase organ donation in the United States and indicates the problems inherent to these approaches for increasing organ donation by African Americans. Data from a population-based study assessing attitudes and beliefs about organ donation among white and African-American respondents are presented and discussed. We pose the question of whether it is reasonable to maintain the existing system or whether we should institute a system that uses policies based (...) on the attitudes and beliefs of a minority group that is in greater need than the majority. In light of the discussion, we suggest that the current policies guiding the organ procurement system are not adequate to address existing concerns within the African-American community and that a different set of assumptions may be needed to drive organ procurement policy. (shrink)