Duchess Harris

Racially writing the republic : racists, race rebels, and transformations of American identity

Racially Writing the Republic investigates the central role of race in the construction and transformation of American national identity from the Revolutionary War era to the height of the civil rights movement. Drawing on political theory, American studies, critical race theory, and gender studies, the contributors to this collection highlight the assumptions of white (and often male) supremacy underlying the thought and actions of major U.S. political and social leaders. At the same time, they examine how nonwhite writers and activists have struggled against racism and for the full realization of America’s political ideals. The essays are arranged chronologically by subject, and, with one exception, each essay is focused on a single figure, from George Washington to James Baldwin. The contributors analyze Thomas Jefferson’s legacy in light of his sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings; the way that Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, rallied his organization against Chinese immigrant workers; and the eugenicist origins of the early-twentieth-century birth-control movement led by Margaret Sanger. They draw attention to the writing of Sarah Winnemucca, a Northern Piute and one of the first published Native American authors; the anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett; the Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan; and the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who linked civil rights struggles in the United States to anticolonial efforts abroad. Other figures considered include Alexis de Tocqueville and his traveling companion Gustave de Beaumont, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina (who fought against Anglo American expansion in what is now Texas), Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and W. E. B. Du Bois. In the afterword, George Lipsitz reflects on U.S. racial politics since 1965. Contributors . Bruce Baum, Cari M. Carpenter, Gary Gerstle, Duchess Harris, Catherine A. Holland, Allan Punzalan Isaac, Laura Janara, Ben Keppel, George Lipsitz, Gwendolyn Mink, Joel Olson, Dorothy Roberts, Patricia A. Schechter, John Kuo Wei Tchen, Jerry Thompson

The State of Black Women in Politics Under the First Black President

History was made in November 2008. Record-breaking numbers of voters lined up to vote the first African-American President into office, with Barack Obama handily beating Arizona Republican Senator John McCain and winning 52% of the electoral vote, a clear mandate for change.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Our Time—Black Feminist Politics in the Trump Era

The Trump presidency, still, incredibly, in its infancy as this edition of the book goes to press, puts into stark relief the barriers that still stand between Black women and specifically, Black feminists, and their full participation and power in the American political process.

Your President Is (a) White (Supremacist): Post Obama and Black Feminist Politics

For the majority of Black Americans—and, it must be said, for plenty of other Americans of color and for many white Americans, too—the transition of presidential power that occurred on January 20, 2017, was a devastating sociopolitical, cultural, and historic moment. It wasn’t simply the fact that America’s first Black President was leaving office after two terms, the end of an era that, for all its flaws, was still historically, socially, and politically significant.

The 1990s in Context: A History of Black Women in American Politics

The emergence of the women’s movement was untimely for Black women in general, but for a select group it was relevant. Black women, who had largely been left out of Civil Rights politics and, especially, leadership, hoped, if only briefly, that they would be able to stake a place within the women’s movement where they could promote their concerns as people who were both female and Black. As this chapter will demonstrate, that hope was both heady and intense, though short-lived. The second section of this book compares the ideological positions and political agendas of the Black women who were appointed to the Fourth Consultation of President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) to those of the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) and the Combahee River Collective (CRC). By examining the ideological and political perspectives of these three Black women’s groups, the evolution of Black feminism from 1961 to 1980 can be documented.

Doubting the Democrats: Current Disenchantment and Political Futures

From the 1960s on, African Americans have been one of the Democratic Party’s most important political constituencies. Black voters have offered nearly unwavering support to Democratic candidates. For the Democrats, it has been easy to maintain this relationship by taking credit for good deeds, and blaming the Republicans for trying to reverse the gains of the 1960s during the 1980s. The Republicans have never completely accepted the Democratic Party’s hold over the Black electorate, but they have never made a concerted effort until the opening of the twenty-first century. Recent Republican campaigns and even national conventions have been carefully orchestrated to appeal to Black voters, and several Black women and men hold high-level Cabinet positions, Condoleezza Rice being one of them.

Black Women’s Relationships with Party Politics

During the month of October 1991, Anita Faye Hill, a law professor, gave sworn testimony before the Senate regarding her allegation of sexual harassment that she experienced while working for Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas at both the Department of Education and the Equal Opportunity Commission in the early 1980s. Hill’s statement recounted sexually explicit conversations and references allegedly made by Thomas to her on several occasions. Revisiting the 1991 Congressional saga of the confirmation process of Thomas to the Supreme Court reveals a context in which both race and gender identities were influential, particularly because the Hill-Thomas conflict was intraracial rather than interracial. The shared racial identity of Thomas and Hill, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus members, created an environment in which gender became a more salient factor than race, providing a strong example of when and where gender can trump race for Black women in political positions and how gender remains even more divisive a political wedge than race.

Multicultural Feminism Transforming Democracy

The author discusses Critical Race Feminism and Kimberlé Crenshaws observation that the theoretical erasure of Black women in legal scholarship leads to their actual erasure in the law. This concept serves as a point of departure to look for answers to the following question: What protection do Black women receive under the constitutions of the United States and South Africa?