Browsing by Subject "Black power"

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Radical dismissal : Stokely Carmichael and the problem of inclusion in public deliberation
(2020-08-13) Hatch, Justin Dean; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-; Longaker, Mark G.; Sackey, Donnie; Gilyard, Keith; Joseph, Peniel
“Radical Dismissal: Stokely Carmichael and the Problem of Inclusion in Public Deliberation” has two interrelated goals—first, to lay bare the rhetorical mechanisms by which those in power silence dissent, and, second, to view with greater clarity Stokely Carmichael’s rhetorical strategies and legacies. Toward those goals, I examine Carmichael’s words in the year following SNCC’s release of the slogan “Black Power,” and I look closely at the almost universally negative responses to them during the same period. While the terms—angry, hateful, demagogue, racist, etc.—that Carmichael’s critics use to dismiss him vary, they all direct attention away from his institutional critique toward his relationship to subjective norms of discourse. I open the dissertation by introducing Carmichael and relevant context and by developing the dissertation’s overarching theoretical framework. I borrow from scholars writing on “civility” to develop “civility policing” as rhetorical action that preserves unjust harmonies (Roberts-Miller, Deliberate Conflict 154), displaces blame from oppressor to oppressed (Welch 110), and silences dissent (Lozano-Reich and Cloud 223). Chapter One finds that Carmichael’s critics shaped his image and longer legacy by amplifying a distorted version of his message. An exploration of Carmichael’s words especially within a set of letters to Lorna Smith offers a corrective. Chapter Two explores the utility of two definitions of the term “demagogue” for distinguishing anti-racist rhetoric. While critics accuse Carmichael of being a “demagogue,” his words in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America not only contradict the claim, but also return the charge. Chapter Three builds on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “dissociation of concepts” and Janice Fernheimer’s “dissociative disruption” to better understand the adaptive rhetorical strategies Carmichael used in his most famous speech given at Berkeley. I offer the term “subversive dissociation” as a charge to discover the dissociative foundations of dominant racial narratives.
“We are an African people :” the development of Black American solidarity with Portuguese Africa
(2014-05) Parrott, Raymond Joseph; Lawrence, Mark Atwood; Suri, Jeremi
Beginning in 1961, the struggle for decolonization in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau captured world attention. A transnational movement developed in the western world in solidarity with these predominantly socialist struggles for liberation. In the United States, African Americans helped lead the charge in the 1970s. Historians have tended to ignore this pivotal period due to its timing between the high tide of African independence and the rise of the anti-Apartheid movement, but the global campaign for Portuguese Africa represented a pivotal transition. It linked activists across national borders and provided models for organizing that would be carried into the solidarity campaigns of the next decade. This solidarity did not emerge fluidly, but had to be forged by a combination of motivated African nationalists and receptive American audiences. Black minorities in the United States continued to sympathize with the independence cause in Africa, but responses to the 1961 Angolan revolution diverged on the question of the proper role of African Americans in shaping foreign policy. A radical minority helped develop sympathy into a wider activist movement through educational campaigns and rallies. Conducted in direct cooperation with liberation groups such as the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) and the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC), these activities introduced blacks to the successful armed revolutions and socialist philosophies of Portuguese Africa. The assertive visions of black independence contrasted with the quieter struggle against Apartheid and helped inspire domestic calls for communal development in places like New York, Boston, and elsewhere. This coalition of African nationalists and black American activists collapsed the distance that had always separated the poles of the global struggle for racial and economic equality and established networks of transnational exchange. Using the experience gained from this successful organizing, American activists expanded their support of leftist nationalist causes to the rest of southern Africa after the Portuguese states achieved independence in 1975.