Following a history of racial oppression and segregation, Black Americans were able to move in greater numbers into previously all- or predominantly-White colleges and universities. However, they encountered normative structures that excluded or distorted the Black experience and denied Black perspectives. As a result, Black studies grew up reconstructing the humanity of a historically oppressed, devalued, and exploited group. Knowledge production in Black studies offers distinct insights into the strength and resiliency of the human spirit and poses exemplary models for enlightened social change. This book examines the foundational parameters and historical mission of the field of African-American Studies, which emerged from a broad-based Black intellectual tradition defined by the metaproblem of cultural hegemony. Semmes seeks to broaden our thinking about the scope and content of Black studies. The End of Black Studies identifies Afrocentric or Black-centered approaches to knowledge production that are distinctly different from, yet inclusive of, a historiographical emphasis on ancient Egypt, but alternative to the claim of a singular African worldview. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in the field of Black Studies, including African American studies, Africana studies, Africology, and Pan-African studies. It will be a source of critical discussion for graduate seminars examining theory building and/or knowledge production (research and writing) in Black studies. The End of Black Studies has received the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the National Council for Black Studies. Read the Introduction for free online using our eBook widget >>

Following a history of racial oppression and segregation, Black Americans were able to move in greater numbers into previously all- or predominantly-White colleges and universities. However, they encountered normative structures that excluded or distorted the Black experience and denied Black perspectives. As a result, Black studies grew up reconstructing the humanity of a historically oppressed, devalued, and exploited group. Knowledge production in Black studies offers distinct insights into the strength and resiliency of the human spirit and poses exemplary models for enlightened social change. This book examines the foundational parameters and historical mission of the field of African-American Studies, which emerged from a broad-based Black intellectual tradition defined by the metaproblem of cultural hegemony. Semmes seeks to broaden our thinking about the scope and content of Black studies. The End of Black Studies identifies Afrocentric or Black-centered approaches to knowledge production that are distinctly different from, yet inclusive of, a historiographical emphasis on ancient Egypt, but alternative to the claim of a singular African worldview. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in the field of Black Studies, including African American studies, Africana studies, Africology, and Pan-African studies. It will be a source of critical discussion for graduate seminars examining theory building and/or knowledge production (research and writing) in Black studies. The End of Black Studies has received the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the National Council for Black Studies. Read the Introduction for free online using our eBook widget >>

From Jean Baptiste Point DuSable to Oprah Winfrey, black entrepreneurship has helped define Chicago. Robert E. Weems Jr. and Jason P. Chambers curate a collection of essays that place the city as the center of the black business world in the United States. Ranging from titans like Anthony Overton and Jesse Binga to McDonald's operators to black organized crime, the scholars shed light on the long-overlooked history of African American work and entrepreneurship since the Great Migration. Together they examine how factors like the influx of southern migrants and the city's unique segregation patterns made Chicago a prolific incubator of productive business development-and made building a black metropolis as much a necessity as an opportunity. Contributors: Jason P. Chambers, Marcia Chatelain, Will Cooley, Robert Howard, Christopher Robert Reed, Myiti Sengstacke Rice, Clovis E. Semmes, Juliet E. K. Walker, and Robert E. Weems Jr.

The uniqueness, sweeping content, and timing of "Negro Digest/Black World" give it enormous historical and scholarly importance. The most influential and widely read Black literary magazine in the 1960s, "Negro Digest" played a critical role in the era's Black Arts and Black Consciousness movement and is the most complete voice of that movement. Renamed "Black World" in 1970, the magazine gave voice to scholars coining and developing the concept of Afrocentric and African-centered analysis. An analysis of Afrocentric methods and discourse would not be complete without an examination of this magazine. This reference guide provides easy access to this valuable publication.

Part One includes chapters on Literature and Literary Criticism, History, Mass Media and the Arts, and Social and Political Analysis, which provide annotations on original articles and speeches. Part Two indexes original materials, including poetry, short stories and plays, reviews, and interviews.

Historical, sociological, and ecological analyses reveal that the health of a people is broadly determined by the strength, resilience, and vitality of their culture. The destructive effects of oppression and exploitation on health linger and are difficult to transcend when systemic attacks on the institutional stability of a people persist. Normative cultural destabilization produces added and abnormal challenges to the health status of African Americans. The pursuit of health becomes both a goal and a tool of liberation. Better health builds and releases mental, physical, and spiritual energy that can be directed toward achieving empowerment and development. The process of self-consciously pursuing better health attacks the fundamental mechanisms of cultural exploitation and oppression by serving to dismantle colonial-like relationships of dependency.

Historical, sociological, and ecological analyses reveal that the health of a people is broadly determined by the strength, resilience, and vitality of their culture. The destructive effects of oppression and exploitation on health linger and are difficult to transcend when systemic attacks on the institutional stability of a people persist. Normative cultural destabilization produces added and abnormal challenges to the health status of African Americans. The pursuit of health becomes both a goal and a tool of liberation. Better health builds and releases mental, physical, and spiritual energy that can be directed toward achieving empowerment and development. The process of self-consciously pursuing better health attacks the fundamental mechanisms of cultural exploitation and oppression by serving to dismantle colonial-like relationships of dependency.

Clovis Semmes extends Afrocentric social theory by formulating the problem of structured inequality for African Americans in terms of cultural hegemony. "Cultural Hegemony and African American Development" challenges oppositional and segmented analyses that look at Black inequality in terms of either economic dislocation or racial oppression, and introduces the idea that what is at stake are the issues of progressive cultural adaptation, cultural reconstruction, and institutional development. What emerges is a new way of seeing and understanding the intellectual tradition and body of knowledge called Black, African American, or Africana Studies.

In chapter 1 Semmes defines the relationship between cultural hegemony and the African American experience and establishes how this relationship creates distinctive and recurring problems for development. The following two chapters analyze the works by sociologists E. Franklin Frazier and Harold Cruse. Chapter 4 explores the role of legitimacy in psychological and social psychological adaptation, and inter- and intra-group relations. In Chapter 5, Semmes analyzes the relationship between the political economy of the mass media and African American aesthetic and artistic production, and argues that the expropriation of African American cultural products is a structural problem contributing to cultural negation. Chapters 6 and 7 examine two important institutional forms: religion and health. Next Semmes looks at the significance of cultural revitalization efforts which reveal the collectively-felt need to transcend destructive hegemony. He concludes with a chapter on factors affecting the production of knowledge in African American studies and the implications for cultural development. Sociologists and scholars in Ethnic and American Studies, as well as African American Studies, will find this study useful.

Clovis Semmes extends Afrocentric social theory by formulating the problem of structured inequality for African Americans in terms of cultural hegemony. Cultural Hegemony and African American Development challenges oppositional and segmented analyses that look at Black inequality in terms of either economic dislocation or racial oppression, and introduces the idea that what is at stake are the issues of progressive cultural adaptation, cultural reconstruction, and institutional development. What emerges is a new way of seeing and understanding the intellectual tradition and body of knowledge called Black, African American, or Africana Studies.

In chapter 1 Semmes defines the relationship between cultural hegemony and the African American experience and establishes how this relationship creates distinctive and recurring problems for development. The following two chapters analyze the works by sociologists E. Franklin Frazier and Harold Cruse. Chapter 4 explores the role of legitimacy in psychological and social psychological adaptation, and inter- and intra-group relations. In Chapter 5, Semmes analyzes the relationship between the political economy of the mass media and African American aesthetic and artistic production, and argues that the expropriation of African American cultural products is a structural problem contributing to cultural negation. Chapters 6 and 7 examine two important institutional forms: religion and health. Next Semmes looks at the significance of cultural revitalization efforts which reveal the collectively-felt need to transcend destructive hegemony. He concludes with a chapter on factors affecting the production of knowledge in African American studies and the implications for cultural development. Sociologists and scholars in Ethnic and American Studies, as well as African American Studies, will find this study useful.