Abstract
This chapter discusses why Africana studies is essential in foreign and domestic policy analyses. I discuss several historical episodes in which Africana culture and policy issues intersected in the civil and post-civil rights era. These episodes include Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 The Negro Family, the Reagan administration’s 1986 Omnibus Anti-Drug Act, the Clinton administration’s complacency regarding Rwanda in 1994 and the 2000 African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).1 In each of these case histories, I illustrate how Africana scholarship has been ignored, deemed irrelevant, or misused while examining ways in which Africana studies scholarship could have contributed to a clearer understanding and engagement of key policy developments.
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Notes
Many have expressed displeasure with the quagmire in which Africana studies has descended in recent years. Considering the plight of the discipline, Henry Louis Gates Jr. lamented: “The bad news is that too many Black studies programs—where this new knowledge ought to be created and disseminated—have become segregated, ghettoized amen corners of quasi-religious feeling, propagating old racial fantasies and even inventing new ones.” Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Black Studies: Myths or Realities?” Essence (February 1994): 138. According to Johnetta B. Cole, “Black Studies advocates respond that Black teachers and students should be accountable to Black people as they struggle for a place of dignity, integrity and equality in American society... Black Studies advocates argue, like C. Wright Mills, that we should strive to be objective, but we should not be detached. Education they argue is one means by which Black youth could be prepared to play a significant role in the improvement of the conditions of Black communities.” Johnetta B. Cole, “Black Studies in Liberal Arts Education” in The Black Studies Reader, ed. Jacqueline Bobo, Cynthia Hudley, and Claudine Michel (New York: Routledge, 2004), 26.
Adams Russell, “African American Studies and the State of the Art” in Africana Studies: A Survey of Africa and the African Diaspora, ed. Mario Azvedo (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), 33.
See Abdul Akalimat, Introduction to Afro-American Studies (Chicago: Twenty-First Century Books, 1986), 15–17.
An influential work in developing this position has been James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), esp. 28–47.
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
See Douglas E. Schoen, Pat: A Biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1st ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).
See the introduction to Daryl Michael Scott], Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880–1996 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 199
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Office of Policy Planning and Research (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 1965), 5, 15–17.
Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, eds., The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, MA: M. I. T. Press, 1967), 188.
Moynihan cites E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (New York: Collier, 1962)
Thomas Pettigrew, A Profile of the Negro American (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1964)
Whitney Young, To Be Equal (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964)
E. Franklin Frazier, “Problems and Needs of Negro Children and Youth Resulting from Family Disorganization,” Journal of Negro Education 19:3 (Summer 1950): 269–270.
See Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 11
Noliwe M. Rooks, White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education (Boston: Beacon, 2006), 70–72.
See Kenneth Bancroft Clark, Prejudice and Your Child, 1st Wesleyan ed. (Scranton, PA: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 185–186, 236–272.
Kenneth Bancroft Clark, Dark Ghetto (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
See Donald Gibson, “Introduction” in W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin, 1989), xxvii–xxviii.
See Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: M. I. T. Press, 1974).
Douglas E. Schoen, Pat: A Biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1st ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 110.
Moynihan, The Negro Family. Also see Daryl Michael Scott], Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880–1996 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 199
On neoconservative critiques and attacks on Africana studies and multiculturalism in general, see David Horowitz, The Heterodoxy Handbook: How to Survive the PC Campus (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1994).
Manning Marable, Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006), 194.
Steven R. Belenko, Crack and the Evolution of Anti-Drug Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), 2.
See Raymond Wolters, Right Turn: William Bradford Reynolds, the Reagan Administration, and Black Civil Rights (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1996), 12–13.
See Ronald W. Walters, White Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black Community, African American Life Series (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 67–68.
For a detailed analysis of the emerging association of white ethnicity and presidential politics, consider the discussion of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
Ronald Reagan, George P. Shultz, Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, Martin Anderson, Reagan: A Life in Letters (New York: Free Press, 2003), 194–195.
Michael Schaller, Robert D. Schulzinger, and Karen Anderson, Present Tense: The United States since 1945, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 440.
For an overview of the problems of race and Reaganism, consider Clarence Lusane and Dennis Desmond, Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs (Boston, MA: South End, 1991), esp. 15–17.
Joe Feagin, Racist America (London: Routledge, 2000), 4–5.
Beverly Watkins and Mindy Thompson Fullilove, “Crack Cocaine and Harlem’s Health,” Souls 1:1 (1999): 38.
Marvin D. Free Jr. “The Impact of Federal Sentencing Reforms on African Americans,” Journal of Black Studies 28:2 (1997): 278.
On the impact of drug policy on the imprisonment of African Americans, see Troy Duster, “Pattern, Purpose and Race in the Drug War: The Crisis of Credibility in Criminal Justice,” in Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice, ed. Craig Reinarman and Harry Gene Levine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 261–268.
For a detailed analysis of Nixon’s drug policy, see Michael Massing, The Fix (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
See Martin Keim, Rethinking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2008), 3–28, esp. 63–104.
Fergal Keane, Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey (London; New York: Penguin, 1996), 7.
The italics in the block quote are mine. See David Mills, “Sister Souljah’s Call to Arms,” Washington Post, May 13, 1992, quoted in Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), 394–395.
Zillah R. Eisenstein, The Color of Gender: Reimaging Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 93–96.
Eric Nuzum, Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 278–279.
Michael Quinn, “Never Shoulda Been Let out the Penitentiary: Gangsta Rap and the Struggle over Racial Identity,” Cultural Critique, no. 34 (1996): 65.
Cheryl Lynette Keyes, Rap Music and Street Consciousness (Music in American Life), 1st paperback ed. (Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 163–164.
Linda R. Melvern, A People Betrayed (New York: Zed Books, 2000), 70–71.
Marc Anthony Neal and others have considered how a long-term historical analysis of gangsta rap places it in a trajectory of the “commodification of black dysfunction.” Neal writes, “Because of precarious economic conditions, African-Americans are often forced to be complicit in their own demonization by producing commercially viable caricatures of themselves.” See Marc Anthony Neal], What the Music Said: Black Popular Culture and Black Public Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999)
For an impressive analysis of the lyrics and timetable for production of particularly offensive gangsta rap during the years leading up to the genocide, see Edward Armstrong, “Gangsta Misogyny: A Content Analysis of the Portrayals of Violence against Women in Rap Music, 1987–1993,” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 8:2 (2001): 96–126.
Charles Freeman, Crisis in Rwanda (Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1999), 16–17.
Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 2004), 25–27.
Charles K. Mironko, “Ibitero: Means and Motive in the Rwandan Genocide” in Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda: New Perspectives, ed. Susan E. Cook (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2006), 163–164.
Stressing the need to equate African humanity with European humanity, Jackson has consistently emphasized the need for debt relief and investment and equal access to capital as necessary for both the development of Africa and African America. See Jesse Jackson, “A Marshall Plan for Africa” in State of the Race: Creating Our 21st Century, Where Do We Go from Here? ed. Jemadari Kamara and Tony Menelik Van Der Meer (Boston, MA: Diaspora, 2004), 342–343.
Why are the questions of development in the African Diaspora so narrowly defined? Africana cultures and policy studies incorporates a much broader perspective into development. For a traditional view on development policy in sub-Saharan Africa, see William R. Cline, Trade Policy and Global Poverty (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics: Center for Global Development, 2004).
As stated earlier in this chapter, even African-centered scholarship is multidimensional. Consider the debate of African scholars on Ali Mazrui’s problem-centric approach to the continent. See James N. Karioki, “African Scholars versus Ali Mazrui,” Transition 45 (1974): 55–63.
For an intriguing discussion on the philosophical basis of race in modernity and cosmopolitan liberalism, see Lucius Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1996).
W. E. B. Du Bois in Our Souls Have Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Poets Read Their Work (Los Angeles, CA: Rhino/Word Beat, 2000), sound recording.
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© 2009 Zachery Williams
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Vaught, S. (2009). A Law unto Themselves: Historical Consequences and Cultural Realities from the Neglect of Africana Studies in Policymaking Processes. In: Williams, Z. (eds) Africana Cultures and Policy Studies. Contemporary Black History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622098_3
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