David Levering Lewis

Parallels and Divergences: Assimilationist Strategies of Afro-American and Jewish Elites from 1910 to the Early 1930s

If, as most behavioral scientists maintain, the dynamics of minority group acculturation and assimilation are crucially influenced by the assimilationist aversions of majority groups, the fact remains that historically most AfroAmericans and Jews in the United States have themselves insisted that acculturation must not lead to assimilation. Indeed, both Jews and AfroAmericans have tended to cling to reinforcing ideologies to conceal or to deny the assimilative process whenever it begins to operate with great efficacy. As a fact of social life, acculturation invariably tends to lead to assimilation, but it is not inevitable that the former process end in the latter-in self-denial and the disappearance of ethnic group identity through dispersion and intermarriage.1 Most Afro-Americans and Jews have not wanted to disappear; this article is concerned with those who did. The argument, simply stated, is that there was a time when a small number of socially powerful and politically privileged Jews and Afro-Americans embraced an ideology of extreme cultural assimilationism; that, although this ideology was emphatically not without paradox and illogic, its ultimate consequence entailed the abandonment of identity; and that these two elites-one, wealthy and of primarily German-Jewish descent; the other, largely northern, college-trained Afro-American-reacting to threats to their hegemony both from within and from outside their ethnic universes, decided to concert many

The race to Fashoda : European colonialism and African resistance in the scramble for Africa

The fortress of Fashoda is on an obscure junction of the Nile, but from 1870 onwards, because of its strategic position and the rise of European colonialism, it became the subject of conflict between the rival Western powers of Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and Italy. This is an account of those struggles based largely on unpublished documents and told from the perspective of the Africans themselves. It also aims to show how this conflict led to the African peoples first battles for their independence and fostered the political tensions that helped to cause World War I.

Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life.@@@Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals.

This is a study of black history and thought, revealing the complex and vital role of African-American intellectuals in the USA. This book illuminates facets of this rich history, such as African tribal institutions, American slavery, and black schools, churches, politics and popular culture in America. The author discusses prominent black figures ranging from pioneers like Frederick Douglass, to intellectuals of the modern age, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison. Many black scholars and artists people the pages of this imaginative study.