Category Archives: 55

In his 1968 presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, Thomas Bailey stated, “False historical beliefs are so essential to our culture…. How different our national history would be if countless millions of our citizens had not been brought … Continue reading →

Introduction: What is Africana Studies? Africana Studies is an academic extension of what Cedric Robinson has called “The Black Radical Tradition.”2 This tradition is notable for emerging out of a preexisting constellation of African intellectual work, shaped by millennia of … Continue reading →

Introduction The current period of global capitalist crisis presents daunting challenges for struggles against transnational capital, white supremacy, and global heteropatriarchy.1 A complex theoretical and practice-oriented understanding of Black Women’s Studies is needed. The call for Black Women’s Studies was … Continue reading →

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, scene 5 Intelligent idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than vulgar materialism. – V.I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks Certain … Continue reading →

This essay is concerned with the epistemic and ideological crises in African American Studies. It is grounded in the possibilities emerging from an intersection of Du Boisian historical phenomenology and dialectical logic.1 As such it is an attempt to extend … Continue reading →

“In spite of all that has been done to us, we who have been described so often, are now describing.” – James Baldwin1 The publication of a paperback edition of Baldwin’s Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin,2 by author and … Continue reading →

Throughout the twentieth century, most progressive scholars have argued against the utility of a Marxist perspective in analyzing racial oppression in the United States. These scholars and critics reject the Marxist notions that racial oppression is undergirded by exploitative and … Continue reading →

Marc Gallicchio, The African American Encounter with Japan and China (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Gerald Horne, Race War!: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire. (New York: New York University Press, 2003). Vijay … Continue reading →

Introduction Following Melanie Bush’s “Un-Pledging Allegiance: Waking up from the ‘American’ Dream” (M. Bush 2008), I argue here that the central task of Africana Studies in the 21st century is to engage its faculty, its students, and its various publics … Continue reading →

What is Africa to me Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang? One three centuries removed From the scenes … Continue reading →