Black celebrities in America have always walked a precarious line between their perceived status as spokespersons for their race and their own individual success -and between being "not black enough" for the black community or "too black" to appeal to a broader audience. Few know this tightrope walk better than Kanye West, who transformed hip-hop, pop and gospel music, redefined fashion, married the world's biggest reality TV star and ran for president, all while becoming one of only a handful of black billionaires worldwide. Despite these accomplishments, his polarizing behavior, controversial alliances and bouts with mental illness have made him a caricature in the media and a disappointment among much of his fanbase. This book examines West's story and what it reveals about black celebrity and identity and the American dream.

"Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever". Was there some truth behind this famous speech given by George Wallace? Did African Americans truly benefit from the results of Brown v. the Board of Education or did they get the short end of the stick? Over the years, the Black community has suffered major loses in the areas of education, business and gender identity due to integration. The founders of the NAACP objectives were to unite and educate a suppressed race that would fight against social injustice and bring capital into the Black community. Initially, these ideologies were well represented by this noble organization; however during and after the decision of the Brown versus the Board of Education case things drastically changed. The once unified organization began to have major conflicts with Black educators. Some rejoiced over this landmark victory, citing that justice had finally prevailed, while other embraced for the worst, believing that the outcome from the case was only a Pyrrhic victory. This book aims to understand the effects of integration on the African American community and offers inspiration to those who want to change and build a better and strong Black community.

Winner, 2018 Section on Asia and Asian America Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association Traces the religious adaptation of members of an important Indian Christian church- the Mar Thoma denomination - as they make their way in the United States. This book exposes how a new paradigm of ethnicity and religion, and the megachurch phenomenon, is shaping contemporary immigrant religious institutions, specifically Indian American Christianity. Kurien draws on multi-site research in the US and India to provide a global perspective on religion by demonstrating the variety of ways that transnational processes affect religious organizations and the lives of members, both in the place of destination and of origin. The widespread prevalence of megachurches and the dominance of American evangelicalism created an environment in which the traditional practices of the ancient South Indian Mar Thoma denomination seemed alien to its American-born generation. Many of the young adults left to attend evangelical megachurches. Kurien examines the pressures church members face to incorporate contemporary American evangelical worship styles into their practice, including an emphasis on an individualistic faith, and praise and worship services, often at the expense of maintaining the ethnic character and support system of their religious community. Kurien's sophisticated analysis also demonstrates how the forces of globalization, from the period of colonialism to contemporary out-migration, have brought about tremendous changes among Christian communities in the Global South. Wide in scope, this book is a must read for an audience interested in the study of global religions and cultures.

John Kasper was a militant far-right activist who first came to prominence with his violent campaigns against desegregation in the Civil Rights era. Ezra Pound was the seminal figure in Anglo-American modernist literature and one of the most important poets of the 20th century. This is the first book to comprehensively explore the extensive correspondence - lasting over a decade and numbering hundreds of letters - between the two men. John Kasper and Ezra Pound examines the mutual influence the two men exerted on each other in Pound's later life: how John Kasper developed from a devotee of Pound's poetry to an active right-wing agitator; how Pound's own ideas about race and American politics developed in his discussions with Kasper and how this informed his later poetry. Shedding a disturbing new light on Ezra Pound's committed engagement with extreme right-wing politics in Civil Rights-era America, this is an essential read for students of 20th-century literature.

Contemporary debates on the role of religion in American public life ignore the overlap between religion and race in the formation of American democratic traditions and more often than not imagine democracy within the terrain of John Rawls's political liberalism. This kind of political liberalism, which focuses on political commitments at the expense of our religious beliefs, fosters the necessary conditions to open historically closed doors to black bodies, allows blacks to sit at the King's table and creates the necessary safeguards for black protest against discrimination within a constitutional democracy. By implication of its emphasis on rights and inclusion, political liberalism assumes that the presence of black bodies signifies the materialization of a robust American democracy. However, political liberalism discounts the historical role of religion in forming and fashioning the nation's construction of race. Tragic Soul-Life argues that the collision between religion and politics during U.S. slavery and segregation created the fragments from which emerged a firm but shifting moral disdain for blackness within the nation's collective moral imagination.
The very problem political liberals want to avoid, our comprehensive philosophy, is central to solving the political and economic problems facing blacks.

Punishing the Black Body examines the punitive and disciplinary technologies and ideologies embraced by ruling white elites in nineteenth-century Barbados and Jamaica. Among studies of the Caribbean on similar topics, this is the first to look at the meanings inscribed on the raced, gendered, and classed bodies on the receiving end of punishment. Dawn P. Harris uses theories of the body to detail the ways colonial states and their agents appropriated physicality to debase the black body, assert the inviolability of the white body, and demarcate the social boundaries between them.,br> Noting marked demographic and geographic differences between Jamaica and Barbados, as well as any number of changes within the separate economic, political, and social trajectories of each island, Harris still finds that societal infractions by the subaltern populations of both islands brought on draconian forms of punishments aimed at maintaining the socio-racial hierarchy. Her investigation ranges across such topics as hair-cropping, the 1836 Emigration Act of Barbados and other punitive legislation, the state reprisals following the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, the use of the whip and the treadmill in jails and houses of correction, and methods of surveillance, policing, and limiting free movement. By focusing on meanings ascribed to the disciplined and punished body, Harris reminds us that the transitions between slavery, apprenticeship, and post-emancipation were not just a series of abstract phenomena signaling shifts in the prevailing order of things. For a large part of these islands' populations, these times of dramatic change were physically felt.

Documentary as Exorcism is an interdisciplinary study that builds upon the insights of postcolonial studies, critical race theory, theological and religious studies and media and film studies to showcase the role of documentary film as a system of signifying capable of registering complex theological ideas while pursuing the authentic aims of documentary filmmaking. Robert Beckford marries the concepts of 'theology as visual practice' and 'theology as political engagement' to develop a new mode of documentary filmmaking that embeds emancipation from oppression in its aesthetic. In various documentaries made for Channel 4 and the BBC, Beckford narrates the complicit relationship of Christianity with European expansion, slavery, and colonialism as a historic manifestation of evil. In light of the cannibalistic practices of colonialism that devoured black life, and the church's role in the subjugation and theological legitimation of black bodies, Beckford characterises this form of historic Christian faith as 'colonial Christianity' and its malevolent or 'occult' practices as a form of 'bewitchment' that must be 'exorcised'. He identifies and exorcises the evil practices of colonialism and their present impact upon African Caribbean Christian communities in Britain in films such as Britain's Slave Trade and Empire Pays Back through a deliberate process of encoding/decoding. The emancipatory impact of this form of documentary filmmaking is demonstrated by its ability to bring issues such as reparations to the public square for debate, and its capacity to change a corporation's trade policies for the good of Africans.

"The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." This quote is among the most prophetic in American history. It was written by W. E. B. DuBois for the Exhibition of American Negroes displayed at the 1900 Paris Exposition. They are words whose force echoed throughout the Twentieth Century. W.E.B. DuBois put together a groundbreaking exhibit about African Americans for the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. For the first time, this book takes readers through the exhibit. With more than 200 black-and-white images throughout, this book explores the diverse lives of African Americans at the turn of the century, from challenges to accomplishments. DuBois confronted stereotypes in many ways in the exhibit, and he provided irrefutable evidence of how African Americans had been systematically discriminated against. Though it was only on display for a few brief months, the award-winning Exhibit of American Negroes represents the great lost archive of African American culture from the beginning of the twentieth century.

Is jazz a universal idiom or is it an African-American art form? Although whites have been playing jazz almost since it first developed, the history of jazz has been forged by a series of African-American artists whose styles caught the interest of their musical generation--masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker. Whether or not white musicians deserve their secondary status in jazz history, one thing is clear: developments in jazz have been a result of black people's search for a meaningful identity as Americans and members of the African diaspora. Blacks are not alone in being deeply affected by these shifts in African-American racial attitudes and cultural strategies. Historically in closer contact with blacks than nearly any other group of white Americans, white jazz musicians have also felt these shifts. More importantly, their careers and musical interests have been deeply affected by them. The author, an active participant in the jazz world as composer, performer, and author of several books on jazz and Latin music, hopes that this book will encourage jazz lovers to take a rhetoric-free look at the charged issue of race as has affected the world of jazz.

A work about the formulation of identity in the face of racial difference, the book considers topics such as the promotion of black Southern culture and inner-city styles like rhythm and blues and rap as a means of achieving black racial solidarity. It discusses the body of music fostered by an identification to Africa, the conversion of black jazz musicians to Islam and other Eastern religions, and the impact of a jazz community united by heroin use. White jazz musicians who identify with black culture in an unsettling form by speaking black dialect and calling themselves African-American is examined, as is the assimilation of jazz into the wider American culture.