Framing the Discussion of Racism 55 Wornie Reed

Africana Cultures and Policy Studies CONTEMPORARY BLACK HISTORY Manning Marable (Columbia University) and Peniel Joseph (Brandeis University) Series Editors This series features cutting-edge scholarship in Contemporary Black History, underlining the importance of the study of history as a form of public advocacy and political activism. It focuses on postwar African American history, from 1945 to the early 1990s, but it also includes international black history, bringing in high-quality interdisciplinary scholarship from around the globe. It is the series editors’ firm belief that outstanding critical research can also be accessible and well written. To this end, books in the series incorporate different methodologies that lend themselves to narra- tive richness, such as oral history and ethnography, and combine disciplines such as African American Studies, Political Science, Sociology, Ethnic and Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice. Published by Palgrave Macmillan: Biko Lives!: The Contested Legacies of Steve Biko Edited by Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, and Nigel C. Gibson Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement: “Another Side of the Story” Edited by Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang Africana Cultures and Policy Studies: Scholarship and the Transformation of Public Policy Edited by Zachery Williams Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton By Duchess Harris (forthcoming) Mau Mau in Harlem?: The U.S. and the Struggle to Free Kenya By Gerald Horne (forthcoming) Black Power Principals By Matthew Whitaker (forthcoming) Africana Cultures and Policy Studies Scholarship and the Transformation of Public Policy Edited by Zachery Williams AFRICANA CULTURES AND POLICY STUDIES Copyright © Zachery Williams, 2009. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-37115-0 ISBN 978-0-230-62209-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-62209-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Africana cultures and policy studies : scholarship and the transformation of public policy / edited by Zachery Williams. p. cm.—(Contemporary Black history) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. African Americans—Government policy. 2. African Americans— Politics and government. 3. African Americans—Social conditions—1975– 4. United States—Race relations. I. Williams, Zachery, 1974– E185.86.A338 2009 305.896Ј073—dc22 2008045488 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: June 2009 This volume is dedicated to the enduring life, legacy, and memory of “Baba” Dr. Louis Djisovi Ikukomi Eason. Contents Series Editors’ Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Africana Cultures and Policy Studies 1 Zachery Williams Part 1 Public Policy Foundations and Culture Critiques 1 The Fields and Functions of African American Studies and Public Policy 15 Nathaniel Norment Jr. 2 A Law unto Themselves: Historical Consequences and Cultural Realities from the Neglect of Africana Studies in Policymaking Processes 33 Seneca Vaught 3 Framing the Discussion of Racism 55 Wornie Reed Part II Urban Culture and Public Policy 4 The Wire: Media Placement and Postindustrial Landscapes 73 Robert Smith and Debra Smith 5 Institutionalized Terror: A Social Systems Analysis of Police Brutality 95 Loretta Prater 6 African American Administration of Predominately Black Schools: Segregation or Emancipation in Omaha, NE 113 Tekla Ali Johnson, Pearl Ford, Greg Wiggan, and Deborah Brown Quick Part III Gender and Policy Construction 7 Born to Rebel and Born to Excel: Black Religious Intellectuals, Benjamin E. Mays, and the Development of Black Male Leadership 133 Zachery Williams viii CONTENTS 8 America Has the Laws and Material Resources to Insure Justice for All: Historical Trajectory of Legal Critique and Experiential Voice in Black Women’s Political Activism 157 Greg Childs 9 The Policy of Dating: The Effect of Romantic Relationships on African American Adolescents 177 Kenyatta Phelps, Jennifer Goode, Kaarin Danielle Perkins, and Renata Harden 10 Gender and Culture: The Shaping of British Colonial Educational Policy in West Africa 203 Tara Jabbaar-Gyambrah Part IV African/African Diasporan Culture, Immigration, and Policy 11 A History of Black Immigration into the United States and Canada with Culture and Policy Implications 219 Babacar M’Baye, Amoaba Gooden, and Wendy Wilson-Fall 12 Speaking of Africa and Singing of Home: The Trope of Africa in African American Historiography 247 Tim Lake Appendix: ACPSI Proposal for Pan-African Studies CommUniversity 261 Notes on Contributors 265 Index 271 Series Editors’ Foreword Peniel E. Joseph and Manning Marable fricana Cultures and Policy Studies: Scholarship and the Transformation Aof Public Policy is an important and groundbreaking contribution to the fields of Africana Studies and Contemporary Black History. Historically, a core theme of the black freedom struggle has focused on transforming public policy on behalf of African Americans. Indeed, from the antebellum period of chattel slavery through Jim Crow segregation that marred much of twentieth-century America, blacks have been the most stalwart advocates of utilizing legal and legislative processes toward the promotion of equal citizenship. During the postwar civil rights movement, blacks fundamentally transformed American democracy, in large part through a robust, creative, and provocative engagement with public policy. The civil rights era’s heroic period culminated in the successful legal challenge against segregation, handed down in the May 17, 1954 Brown Supreme Court decision. Over the course of the next decade, through sit-ins, bus boy- cotts, marches, and countless demonstrations, African Americans fought to end legal and legislative restrictions that restricted personal, economic, and political growth and opportunities based on race. Local and national efforts to transform public policy dovetailed with global concerns, as efforts to aid African indepen- dence struggles buoyed domestic antiracist protests. Although signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were the culmination of bruising protests waged by African Americans. The Black Power Movement offered a different take on public policy, argu- ing that political self-determination would produce the power required to fundamentally transform black life. On this score, African Americans successfully built new urban political machines, elected local and national politicians, ignited a national movement for Black Studies and Black Arts, and placed aid for an independent Africa at the center of black foreign policy interventions. The March 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana found disparate strands of the black freedom struggle united in a cohesive identity that sought to leverage racial solidarity into sophisticated and politically progressive domestic and foreign policy engagement. In the post–civil rights and post–Black Power Era, policy concerns con- tinue to animate much of the black freedom struggle. Rooted in the belief that x SERIES EDITORS’ FOREWORD intellectual work matters and it is intimately connected to politics and public policy, the essays in this volume seek to critically analyze the global black expe- rience through the interdisciplinary lens of Africana Studies. Eschewing the either/or nature of top-down/bottom-up approaches to history and public policy, the chapters that follow link intellectual theory and political praxis, culture and policy, social and political history to present a bold, provocative framework for interrogating the relationship between contemporary black life and public policy. In so doing, Africana Cultures and Policy Studies continues in the best tradition of bridging intellectual work and public policy that is personified by the examples of W. E. B. Du Bois whose legendary resistance to racial segregation fused towering intellectual work with historic civic engagement and Ida B. Wells, the heroic antilynching crusader whose commitment to democracy and human rights remains unsurpassed. Although acutely aware of the historical roots of black engagement with policy studies, what makes this volume significant is its pragmatic efforts to situate the interdisciplinary work of Africana Studies scholars in the realm of local, national, and global public policy. Africana Cultures and Policy Studies offers policymakers, intellectuals, community organizers, politicians, and ordinary citizens valuable tools of analysis, debate, and civic engagement. Most importantly, it challenges all of us to reimagine contemporary understanding of policy studies, history, community activism and organizing, culture, and politics, and the role of Africana Studies scholars in shaping the twenty-first

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