Browsing by Subject "Black"

"Capitalizing Subjects: Free African-Descended Women of Means in Xalapa, Veracruz during the Long Seventeenth Century" explores the socioeconomic worlds of free women of means. I find that they owned slaves, engaged in cross-caste relations, managed their estates, maintained profitable social networks with other regional elites, and attempted to secure the economic futures of their children. Through an examination of notarial, ecclesiastical, and viceregal sources, I highlight the significant role this group played in the local economy and social landscape. My work demonstrates that free women of African descent engaged in specific types of economic endeavors that spoke to their investments in particular kinds of capital (economic, social, and cultural) that allowed them greater visibility and social legitimacy than previously documented. This dissertation, further, challenges a historiography that has over-emphasized the roles of race and gender in determining the lives of all people of African descent in colonial Latin America.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a cadre of black women merged the ideals of the "New Woman" and the "New Negro" to configure New Negro Womanhood. For these women, the combining of these two figurations encapsulated the complexity and strivings of black women attempting to achieve racial and gender equality and authorial control of their bodies and aspirations. New Negro women challenged racial and gender inequality and exclusion from participating in contemporaneous political and cultural currents. New Negro women are meaningful in understanding how ideas about black women's political, economic, social and cultural agency challenged New Negro's ideological focus on black men and New Woman's ideological focus on white women. At the core of the New Negro woman ethos was a transformation in how black women thought about the possibility of moving into the public sphere. Black women etched out the parameters of individual and collective aspirations and desires within a modern world in which they were treated as second-class citizens.

My dissertation explores New Negro womanhood in Washington, D.C. The nation's capital functioned as a preeminent site for the realization of African American possibility. The District of Columbia also offered unique opportunities for African American political, civic, social and cultural involvement. More specifically, the city was a fruitful site for the development of African American women's leadership, entrepreneurship and creativity. I use black beauty culture, performance activism, women's suffrage activism, higher education, and black leisure spaces in Washington to examine how black women grappled with and configured ideas about black modernity. Each of these areas provided a distinct context in which African American women in Washington transgressed boundaries of both racial and gender hierarchies and aspired to greater visibility, mobility, and legibility within the modern world. African American women in Washington embraced New Negro Womanhood as a conduit to black modernity.

Cyclical Navigations: In the In Between is a creative process-based interdisciplinaryinstallation and paper that conceptualizes storytelling as a practice of embodied memory recollection. This work focuses on viewing storytelling and land acknowledgement as necessary tools in the navigation of cyclical temporalities in the present, or what I have termed the In Between. Through the employment of ethnography, dance-based somatic practice Lettering, and oral interviews, I posit that first-person narratives work to combat the violence(s) of erasure and racial ventriloquism that occur when archiving Black life. By using a methodology of care, this project considers what is possible if Black history and thus, Black quotidian stories are treated and shared with care.

Young Black men in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and intensive policing have a greater risk of violent death—both at the hands of civilians and police—than any other demographic group in the United States. Yet, there is a dearth of academic research that examines safety and what constitutes legitimate policing from this demographic’s perspective. In this dissertation, I conduct two-hour qualitative interviews of 21 young Black men living in Durham, NC to examine how they assess police and their desired police reforms. Chapters focus on participants’ (1) criteria for judging how well police are doing; (2) ideal attributes of officers well-suited to carry out their vision of policing; and (3) standards for building and maintain trust. I find that participants are principally concerned with the unpredictable nature of policing. Their reforms center on forging a police force that is predictable and reliable, and whose actions reflect a government contract they are owed as American citizens and, more importantly, human beings. Findings enrich our theoretical understanding of what this population believes would need to change to ensure their communities are and feel safe. Each substantive chapter concludes with policy recommendations for police departments and municipal leaders.

This project explores the ways in which clergy and Christian leaders can positively affect the continued development of the self-image of Black, Christian, Gen Z women. For those who are privileged to hold a space of influence with this demographic, experience among those in collegiate ministry shows that there is an abundance of curiosity and doubt, tenderness and fragility related to their self-image. These circumstances provide the opportunity for building up the self-image of these young adults, God’s beloved.The thesis first defines “self-image” using psychology, sociology, and theology as a foundation. Next, using a methodology that is womanist in nature, this project allows Black, Christian, Gen Z women to speak for themselves. The project explores via in- depth interviews with ten Black, Christian, Gen Z women how their self-image has developed over time, specifically in regard to their encounters with Christian organizations and clergy and Christian leaders. Finally, this project asks these young women to recommend actions Christian clergy and other Christian leaders can take to positively affect the self-image of women like themselves. What results are recommendations that will benefit not only Black, Christian, Gen Z women, but also will benefit others far beyond this limited demographic. A project that was implicitly womanist yields explicitly womanist results.

Research on romantic partnering has traditionally focused on the process of relationship formation, marital stability and permanence, and the problems created by distress in relationships. Over the last several decades, declines in marriage, increases in divorce and remarriage, and delayed and non-marital childbirths has led scholars to investigate the factors that contribute to these patterns. In addition to overall changes in romantic partnering arrangements, it important to acknowledge that there are deep racial and gender-based inequalities in dating, romantic relationships, and marriage. Specifically, for Black Americans scholars have focused much of their inquiry on the processes and patterns involved in romantic relationship and family formation among low-income and economically disadvantaged Black women, with emphases on the availability of Black men as viable partners, marriage as a way to escape poverty, and non-traditional family forms. Less attention, however, has been paid to the romantic and intimate lives of middle class Black women. While it is entirely possible that the romantic beliefs, aspirations, and actions of middle class Black women are similar to low-income Black women, it stands to reason that women who have more education, higher incomes, and greater access to resources and ability to deploy these resources will approach and engage in romantic interactions in ways that are distinct and nuanced.

Drawing on 52 in‐depth interviews with Black middle class women, I examined how these women approached and engaged in romantic interactions and relationships. Three studies are presented here. The first study explored how parents’ behaviors, socialization practices, and messaging shaped Black middle class women’s attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and actions in romantic or intimate relationships. I outlined existing research on the transmission of beliefs and knowledge and present a brief summary of the ways that socialization, family structure and familial characteristics, and social learning and interactional characteristics in the family of origin informed individuals’ beliefs about love and dating. Using intergenerational transmission and social exchange theories to guide this study, results indicated that respondents perceived that their parents employ four types of messaging about romantic relationships and partnering – practical, progressive, protective, and principled.

In the second study, I explored the nonlinearity of romantic experiences and relationships for middle class Black women and considered what role emotions play in these romantic encounters. I examined the relationship between Black middle class women’s location in the marriage market and the kinds of nonlinear relationships Black middle-class women participate in. The marriage market structures the kinds of romantic opportunities that Black middle-class women have, the opportunity to engage in relationships, and the emotions they experience in these engagements. In this study, I queried a finding I found early on in my analysis of the data. If marriage, which was a goal for more than 95 percent of the unmarried respondents in this study, was not a viable or immediately present option for these women, what kinds of relationship arrangements did they engage in and why? Results showed respondents initiated and evaluated romantic interactions and commitments, decided to end or reengage with romantic partners, and determined whether a relationship is worth maintaining or not. I paid particular attention to respondents’ emotions throughout these processes and the bidirectional influence of women’s emotions on their relational experiences. An appreciation for the role of uncertainty in the lives of respondents grounded these analyses as I took into account how relational, economic, and interpersonal insecurity was related to the aforementioned outcomes.

In the third study, I investigated marital satisfaction among Black middle class women. To do so, I considered women’s relational aspirations and experiences and define the expectations, characteristics, and conditions a romantic partner or relationship met in order for women to express contentment or happiness in their marriages. Additionally, I identified shared themes associated with respondent’s marital dissatisfaction.

Despite some clear racialized and gendered inequalities, results indicated that Black middle class women are reflective, strategic, hopeful, and committed to establishing fulfilling romantic interactions. I argue that traditional findings on the romantic partnering practices and processes largely ignore the relationship between the intergenerational transmission of beliefs and values about romantic love, intimacy, and commitment, the ways that race, class, gender, power, and inequality intersect to create a sometimes uneven, unpredictable, movement-filled romantic landscape for Black women, and the role of emotional and financial safety and security, balancing marriage, career, and motherhood, and the desire for personal responsibility influence marital satisfaction among middle-class Black women.

We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Pan-African Consciousness Raising and Organizing in the United States and Venezuela, draws on fifteen months of field research accompanying organizers, participating in protests, planning/strategy meetings, state-run programs, academic conferences and everyday life in these two countries. Through comparative examination of the processes by which African Diaspora youth become radically politicized, this work deconstructs tendencies to deify political s/heroes of eras past by historicizing their ascent to political acclaim and centering the narratives of present youth leading movements for Black/African liberation across the Diaspora. I employ Manuel Callahan’s description of “encuentros”, “the disruption of despotic democracy and related white middle-class hegemony through the reconstruction of the collective subject”; “dialogue, insurgent learning, and convivial research that allows for a collective analysis and vision to emerge while affirming local struggles” to theorize the moments of encounter, specifically, the moments (in which) Black/African youth find themselves becoming politically radicalized and by what. I examine the ways in which Black/African youth organizing differs when responding to their perpetual victimization by neoliberal, genocidal state-politics in the US, and a Venezuelan state that has charged itself with the responsibility of radically improving the quality of life of all its citizens. Through comparative analysis, I suggest the vertical structures of “representative democracy” dominating the U.S. political climate remain unyielding to critical analyses of social stratification based on race, gender, and class as articulated by Black youth. Conversely, I contend that present Venezuelan attempts to construct and fortify more horizontal structures of “popular democracy” under what Hugo Chavez termed 21st Century Socialism, have resulted in social fissures, allowing for a more dynamic and hopeful negation between Afro-Venezuelan youth and the state.

This dissertation is the first study of this length to examine the ways adult African American men build community. It is also a new attempt to describe the pedagogical approaches these men use as educators, and to theorize how their life experiences and personal style impact their work in the classroom. The study centers on a group of African American football coaches, and expands from that critical site to the personal and professional lives of the educators on that staff.

Though Black men are often assumed to be emotionally inexpressive, I find that the coaches I work with expressed their most intimate emotion to select groups of trusted partners. These individuals actively built communities of love and support through processes of racial vetting and personal character evaluation, and took extended periods of time to develop close friendships. After reviewing the ways in which the social sciences have generally regarded Black males with varying degrees of contempt, fear and pity, I examine the ways the game of football and the "consensual violence" the football community fostered help build, rather than deconstruct, personal bonds. I use examples of roughhousing and interpersonal confrontation as ways to talk about how, contrary to much of the scholarship on violence in sports, aggression can lead to intimacy.

In similar fashion, the coach-educators of Eastside High approached teaching as an exercise underpinned by a need to be brutally honest, or "real," with their "kids." I found that these coaches were critical of their colleagues that insisted upon anything but honesty with students, and championed realistic expectations for students as a key to effective pedagogy. These educators also articulated the importance of engaging students from a communal perspective, particularly in an educational environment that at times can be openly hostile to "at risk" students. While these teachers and staff were often critical of youth culture in very specific ways, they also tried to create spaces for their students to express themselves, even in counter-cultural ways. Lastly, the coaches of Eastside High postulated teacher burnout as a pressing issue that should be at the center of considerations for educational reform. They argued that the testing regime had reduced their work as teachers to a numbers game, and insisted that the support of teachers should be central to systemic reform.