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10+ oeuvres 254 utilisateurs 3 critiques

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Clarence Lusane is Assistant Professor at the School of International Service, American University. He is also a journalist whose work has appeared in publications like The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, The Progressive, Colorlines, Race and Class, The Washington Post, and The Black Scholar

Comprend les noms: C. Lusane

Crédit image: Clarence Lusane. Photo courtesy Miller Center.

Œuvres de Clarence Lusane

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The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered] (1998) — Contributeur — 78 exemplaires

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Covers every known American of African ancestry connected in a vital way to the house of the president now commonly known as the White House--and also the People's House. Starting with Oney Judge--look her up and give one of "founding fathers" a serious side-eye--and ending with Barack Hussein Obama--United States of America's first bi-racial, and openly Black, president.
 
Signalé
nfulks32 | Jul 17, 2020 |
In “Race in the Global Era (copyright 1997), Clarence Lusane (Professor of International Race Politics, inter alia, at American University) seeks, through a series of essays, to evaluate the status of “blackness” at the beginning of the 21st century. His topics range from welfare, to poverty, to O.J., to crack cocaine, to Tupac, to Louis Farrakhan, and to gender politics.

He asks us, “What are white folks thinking about in these days of great transitions when they think about race?" His answer is that “they are thinking some pretty appalling, disturbing, and wrong ideas.” In fact, much of the thrust of his essays is aimed at setting out, and setting straight, media distortion on the realities of race. He offers data to counter some of the more egregiously incorrect notions that many whites have about blacks as revealed by polls from the date of his manuscript [and again just recently in the run-up to the recent election].

Several riffs of thought stand out in his essays. Professor Lusane asserts that color blindness is advocated in the mainstream as an attempt to neutralize the social power of race. What he means is that policies can legitimately be deemed “color-blind” only if all parties can start from the same place. But what “color blind” policies do is to jettison “the ramifications of a long history of racial oppression marked not only by the oppression of people of color, but significantly, by substantial white privilege.” Thus, “underneath the progressive notion that race is a social “construct” and should not matter, is an insistence that race will not matter even in circumstances where racial inequities prevail…. In this way, liberals blind themselves to real racial issues, and conservatives “use the rhetoric of color blindness to justify the elimination of social programs and policies deemed to remedy problems that disproportionately affect racial minorities.”

Whites do not want to incur either the responsibility or the sacrifice for the plight of the poor, Professor Lusane charges. Instead, cherished American doctrines of self-reliance and responsibility (always more relevant to myth than to reality) are invoked to help dissipate guilt and sympathy, as well as to deflect attention from the roles of government, policymakers, and corporations in determining conditions of black life.

Professor Lusane gives admirable coverage to the patriarchal nature of much of black music, religious thought, and even political organizing. He observes “while black women have made great strides in countless fields – even as they continue to carry the disproportionate, multiple burdens and responsibilities of childrearing, homemaking, and socialization – they have become the demons of choice for New Democrat liberals, old-line conservatives, and prominent black nationalists.” He bemoans the characterization of black women as “traitorous” for exposing less than admiral behavior in prominent black males (e.g., Clarence Thomas, Marion Barry, etc.) He also excoriates the role of gangsta rappers in promulgating negative attitudes toward women.

The arguments in this book are well-taken, but they aren’t universal enough to elevate this book to a timeless status. With the wonderful diversity of African-American voices now on blogs and the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, much of what the author discusses could use updating. The book definitely provides a useful overview of current black culture, however, for those just starting out in their studies.
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Signalé
nbmars | Dec 1, 2008 |
This is a book that I have coveted for a long time and was not able to purchase due to the availability, the price, and the taxes and shipping charges. I am very very grateful to a secretsanta who purchased it for me as a gift so that I now can have the chance to study and own this book and to add it to my holocaust and black history studies collections. There really is a Santa Claus!
Book Description
The Nazi era in Germany and all of its accompanying atrocities is one of the most documented periods in history. However, this documentation is incomplete in one important area: the history and experiences of people of African descent in Nazi Germany. Did Afro-Germans and other blacks suffer under Nazism? The answer to this question, to the degree it has been asked at all, remains vague even for those scholars and researchers familiar with the Nazi era and the Holocaust in particular.
Drawing on interviews with the Black survivors of Nazi concentration camps and archival research in North America, Europe, and Africa, this book documents and analyzes the meaning of Nazism's racial policies towards people of African descent, specifically those born in Germany, France, England, the United States or Africa, and the impact of that legacy on contemporary race relations in Germany, and more generally, in Europe. The book also specifically addresses the concerns of those surviving Afro-Germans who were victims of Nazism, but have not generally been included in or benefited from the compensation agreements that have been developed in recent years.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
BookAddict | Mar 20, 2006 |

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Œuvres
10
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1
Membres
254
Popularité
#90,187
Évaluation
½ 3.3
Critiques
3
ISBN
19

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