{"id":64017,"date":"2022-09-16T20:53:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T20:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=64017"},"modified":"2022-09-16T20:53:58","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T20:53:58","slug":"striving-to-sing-our-own-songs-notes-on-the-left-not-right-in-africana-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64017","title":{"rendered":"Striving to Sing Our Own Songs: Notes on the Left not Right in Africana Studies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Striving to Sing Our Own Songs: Notes on the Left not Right in Africana Studies<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Discipline and African 2022 World Report<\/a>
\nNational Council for Black Studies<\/a>
\npages 186-192<\/p>\n

Mark Christian, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Africana Studies
\nCity University of New York, New York, New York<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

By way of an introduction, the last year or more has witnessed an unprecedented upsurge in human insecurity across the globe. Perhaps it is the right time to put some historical context into what this means for peoples of African heritage<\/a> globally\u2014and more specifically, those located within the borders of the United States<\/a>. This article will briefly consider the continued battle for Africana<\/a> liberation, employing a Sankofa<\/a> perspective\u2014to go back and retrieve for present use. Moreover, there will be a critique of the so-called \u201cBlack Radical Left,\u201d as it seems that scrutiny of such scholars rarely occurs. Indeed, many appear \u201cuntouchable\u201d in terms of criticism from within Africana studies\u2014yet the same cannot be stated in regard to African-centered scholars who, ironically, argue for largely similar forms of Black liberation. Therefore, while taking into account the developments of the last year for this NCBS annual report, it is necessary to consider some of the various schools of thought in the discipline and the imperative to develop a cross-fertilization of ideas in Africana studies.<\/p>\n

In the last 18 months, I have traveled back in time to the 19th and 20th centuries in regard to my research output, completing two major studies (Christian, 2021a, 2021b). It has been palpably worthwhile because one finds that there is nothing particularly original in terms of the struggle for social justice. Of course, there have been major structural changes in the U.S. with the collapse of enslavement in 1865, followed by the ephemeral Reconstruction era<\/a>, then de jure segregation, followed largely by de facto<\/em> segregation<\/a>. Women\u2019s rights have also markedly improved since the 19th century, yet here we are, comfortably into the 2020s, in what could be deemed the \u201cGeorge Floyd<\/a> era,\u201d wherein the need for racialized justice across the spectrum of society remains ubiquitous. The seemingly insuperable reality of racism remains an ever-present social problem. Meanwhile, Africana scholars, in all their various schools of thought, continue to tackle an array of \u201cisms\u201d in their varied capacities throughout higher education…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Striving to Sing Our Own Songs: Notes on the Left not Right in Africana Studies The Discipline and African 2022 World Report National Council for Black Studies pages 186-192 Mark Christian, Ph.D., Professor of Africana Studies City University of New York, New York, New York By way of an introduction, the last year or more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,8,26,23674],"tags":[33661,220,33659,33660],"class_list":["post-64017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-social-justice","tag-africana-studies","tag-mark-christian","tag-national-council-for-black-studies","tag-ncbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64017"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64019,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64017\/revisions\/64019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}