Banned Book Week

Posted on October 8, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, in honor of Banned Book Week, we repost our entry from earlier this year when six Temple University Press titles were banned from the Naval Academy’s Nimitz library.

On January 20, President Trump signed an executive order eliminating all “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government.” Federal departments moved quickly, canceling programs and services, shuttering departments, removing vast amounts of content from websites, and rewriting history.

As the Pentagon moved to comply, libraries at the military service academies were directed to remove books related to DEI from their shelves. The Naval Academy was the first to act, removing 381 books from the Nimitz Library on March 31 and April 1. The Guardian reported that Army and Air Force officials directed academy staff to compile lists of books for removal.  

Included among the books removed from the Nimitz shelves were the frequently banned How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, and Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe. And in a stark testament to where the president and his administration may be headed, Maya Angelou’s seminal I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was pulled, but Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf remains on the library shelves.

It was a surprise—or maybe not—to find these six Temple University Press books on the list.

When these authors were informed about their books being banned, many asked the question on everyone’s mind: Why? Are these Temple University Press titles that controversial, or did an AI bot snag them because their titles, descriptions, or subject categories contained one or more of the hundreds of words flagged as subversive?

It would be interesting to know what if any Temple University Press titles remain on the Naval Academy Library’s shelves. Did they have copies of George Lipsitz’ other title, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, or Just Who Loses?, Samuel Rounfield Lucas’ second volume in his Theorizing Discrimination trilogy? What about the recent book in our Sexuality Studies series, Talk about Sex, by Janice Irvine, which shows how the American right wing used sex education to build a political movement and regulate sexuality by controlling sexual speech. And how about a copy of the NAACP Award-winning Envisioning Emancipation, by Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer, which uses photos and text to reflect on Black Americans and the end of slavery? Our list is full of potential targets, including Prison Masculinities, edited by Don Sabo, Terry Kupers, and Willie London, which years ago was banned by the entire state of Texas prison system.

Themes of racial and social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion run throughout the Press’ list. We’re proud that our titles are being challenged and banned by an administration intent on rewriting history and creating a present and future that doesn’t include equal treatment for all. The authors of these banned books and many others speak to and about things the government doesn’t want to be discussed. The Press is honored to support that conversation.

Below are reactions and responses from the Temple University Press authors whose books were banned.

“I’m confused and dazed and sad and proud. Confused and dazed that my work could be so threatening. Sad because it has been censored. Proud, in rather a perverse way, to be one of the authors identified as frightening by the most risible government in modern American history”—Toby Miller, author of Sportsex

“Having my book—my ideas—censored is a direct and personal reminder that especially for higher education, there will be no strategy of negotiation and conciliation that will succeed under this regime. All that’s left is to resist and organize.”—Thomas Kim, author of The Racial Logic of Politics

“I have to laugh at the vain efforts of petty bureaucrats who think they can keep ideas from people who look for or need them. You think you can keep what is written from those who you are interesting in those ideas by suppressing them? Forget it. You bring such writings to the attention of those who look for it, and who will find it. And read it. That is the big one. So much is printed, and many don’t read it until some powerless administrator calls attention to it. And then they will read it. And all you administrators can do with your money is hire a therapist to give you excuses for your unethical behavior.“—Steve Martinot, author of The Machinery of Whiteness

“I am proud to be on a list of authors of banned books that includes Martin Luther King, Jr. and Maya Angelou. As the poet Blas de Otero observed about being censored by the Franco dictatorship in Spain, ‘They don’t let people see what I write, because I write what I see.’ Dictators throughout history have banned and burned books that invite readers to think for themselves rather than merely follow the orders issued by those in power. Book bans are confessions of weakness, of the inability of those doing the banning to refute arguments they do not like. This exercise in censorship indicates that the Naval Academy has so little faith in the intelligence—and so much fear of the fragility—of its students and faculty that it has to shield them from books that simply reveal that racism exists. This sends the midshipmen off to careers where they will be ill equipped to understand and command the troops they lead or the civilian populations they encounter. As the elders in Haiti say, breaking the thermometer will not cure the fever. The history of banning books bodes ill for the banners. Such acts almost always increase rather than decrease demand for the banned books. They also provoke authors to write more works that expose and critique the corruptions of the powerful. Like the many headed hydra of mythology, cutting off one head only enables more to grow in its place.”—George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place

“The United States, my native land, has long articulated powerful ideals of freedom, liberty, justice, human rights, and equal opportunity, and through time, sweat, tears, and blood, has haltingly journeyed toward realizing those ideals for everyone–wealthy and poor, of whatever sex, race, religion, nationality, or predicament. Thus, I am disappointed and sad that the stewards of the U.S. now seem committed to destroying that progress and erasing signposts of it, for as they deny U.S. history and undo U.S. progress, they simultaneously deny the triumph and undo the promise—and worldwide hope–of America. Their banning of my book, Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice, is one small act of many in their erasure project. But I do not feel erased. For I was but one of many channels for the expression of fundamental ideals of human freedom, and the continuation of those ideals is the point. Thus, while they can certainly ban an object–paper, ink, thread, and glue–I take joy in the knowledge that no one has or ever can have sufficient power to ban or otherwise extinguish the spirit and fundamental ideals that provided the book’s force, effect, and inspiration.”—Samuel Roundfield Lucas, author of Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice

“The U.S. Naval Academy’s decision to remove my book, along with almost 400 others, from its library’s shelves is disheartening and small-minded. No books should be removed from library shelves for political or censorship reasons, and certainly not at the college level. Our naval officers should be exposed to a wide range of viewpoints and historical interpretations before they lead our soldiers and represent our country. My book, Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality, analyzes five case studies of college sports integration from 1915 through the early 1970s. It explores how people used sports to discuss issues of equality, freedom, citizenship, and community. While the book calls attention to unsolved issues related to race, it also celebrates progress on and off the field. Learning about the past—including the history of desegregation in college sports, and the ways that athletes, fans, media commentators, and university administrators responded to changes in racial norms and ideas of masculinity—will help make our leaders more informed and better attuned to a wide range of issues in American life.

“One of the truly great things about the service academies is that they bring in students from all over the country, and from all different walks of life. There is an emphasis on learning from one another, of the benefits that come from hearing a variety of perspectives. The decision to remove these books from the USNA library strikes hard against the ideals of our military and our nation at large. Our military leaders should be modeling intellectual curiosity and a thoughtful engagement with the past. Reading more books, not less, is the way to achieve those goals.”—Gregory Kaliss, author of Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality

To the students of U.S. military academies: if you are reading this, we will be happy to send you a copy of one of these banned books for your personal library upon request.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, asian american studies, Asian Studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Education, ethics, gender studies, History, immigration, Labor Studies, law & criminology, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, sports, Urban Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

New book provides a historical and sociological analysis of Turkishness

Posted on September 24, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we share the Preface to the English-language Edition of Barış Ünlü’s The Turkishness Contract.

This is the English edition of Türklük Sözleşmesi, a book I published in Turkish in 2018 with Dipnot Press. But it is not the same book. I made a number of rather comprehensive changes in the English edition. I entirely did away with the first chapter of the original. That chapter was a general overview of Whiteness Studies and was written with readers in Turkey in mind, who, in 2018 at least, were largely foreign to such discussions. Having that as a separate chapter struck me as unnecessary in the English edition. The other main change is to the Introduction, which is now, relative to the original, more sweeping and more theoretical. Since 2018, critical race theory (CRT) has come to occupy more space, both in the social sciences more broadly and, personally, in my own mind. These intellectual and political developments have made CRT more central to this study, compared to Whiteness Studies. Similarly, the new Introduction also reflects the growing importance, for my thinking, of the concept of intersectionality, which, to a significant extent, overlaps with the intellectual history of CRT. And the third basic change is to the Conclusion, which is newly written and largely parallels new ideas I have developed since 2018. Its basic theme is about how two parallel and relational logics of power—what I term contractual power and colonial power—have shaped modern history, more generally, and the moment of crisis we are now experiencing. This new Conclusion is also something of an introduction to future work in progress. Aside from these three major changes, I also made countless minor changes and abridgments throughout.

This book analyzes the historical formation, institutional operations, and embodiment (as habitus) of what I have termed “Turkishness,” approached here as a set of certain schemas for seeing, thinking, feeling, and acting and certain privileges, real or potential. My debt to the insights and concepts about whiteness and structural racism developed, in particular, by Black thinkers is evident throughout. This was one of the ostensible reasons for the negative reactions that the original book attracted among certain Turkish readers from within the political left. Briefly, I was accused of having imported insights and theories from the United States that do not really suit Turkish realities (in the Turkish preface, the brief history of this book was written, in part, in anticipation of such criticisms). Yet, the reactions of Kurds and Armenians from Turkey—that is, the reactions of non-Turkish readers—have been generally positive. In abbreviated form, many said that they found here, in the form of insights and concepts, many things they had always felt but somehow could not quite conceptualize and that this had an empowering effect. At any rate, the book has been both widely read in Turkey and widely discussed, with its fifteenth edition in press at the time of this writing. Such popularity, rather rare for a book in the social sciences, is likely tied to the strong feelings, whether positive or negative, aroused by the new perspective the book tries to develop on Turkish history, society, and the individual. That said, my aim was not only to say something about Turkey; I tried to show that the theories, perspectives, and concepts developed on whiteness and Blackness—at least a significant number, if not all—could be valid and meaningful beyond a Black/white binary. I also tried to, in a sense, globalize (theoretically, historically) CRT debates. In doing so, I got much of my inspiration from the late Charles W. Mills’s influential book, The Racial Contract.

Filed under: cultural studies, immigration, literature, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology, transnational politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Read (about) Our Banned Books

Posted on April 23, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we discuss the six Temple University Press titles that were banned from the Naval Academy’s Nimitz library.

On January 20, President Trump signed an executive order eliminating all “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government.” Federal departments moved quickly, canceling programs and services, shuttering departments, removing vast amounts of content from websites, and rewriting history.

As the Pentagon moved to comply, libraries at the military service academies were directed to remove books related to DEI from their shelves. The Naval Academy was the first to act, removing 381 books from the Nimitz Library on March 31 and April 1. The Guardian reported that Army and Air Force officials directed academy staff to compile lists of books for removal.  

Included among the books removed from the Nimitz shelves were the frequently banned How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, and Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe. And in a stark testament to where the president and his administration may be headed, Maya Angelou’s seminal I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was pulled, but Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf remains on the library shelves.

It was a surprise—or maybe not—to find these six Temple University Press books on the list.

When these authors were informed about their books being banned, many asked the question on everyone’s mind: Why? Are these Temple University Press titles that controversial, or did an AI bot snag them because their titles, descriptions, or subject categories contained one or more of the hundreds of words flagged as subversive?

It would be interesting to know what if any Temple University Press titles remain on the Naval Academy Library’s shelves. Did they have copies of George Lipsitz’ other title, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, or Just Who Loses?, Samuel Rounfield Lucas’ second volume in his Theorizing Discrimination trilogy? What about the recent book in our Sexuality Studies series, Talk about Sex, by Janice Irvine, which shows how the American right wing used sex education to build a political movement and regulate sexuality by controlling sexual speech. And how about a copy of the NAACP Award-winning Envisioning Emancipation, by Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer, which uses photos and text to reflect on Black Americans and the end of slavery? Our list is full of potential targets, including Prison Masculinities, edited by Don Sabo, Terry Kupers, and Willie London, which years ago was banned by the entire state of Texas prison system.

Themes of racial and social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion run throughout the Press’ list. We’re proud that our titles are being challenged and banned by an administration intent on rewriting history and creating a present and future that doesn’t include equal treatment for all. The authors of these banned books and many others speak to and about things the government doesn’t want to be discussed. The Press is honored to support that conversation.

Below are reactions and responses from the Temple University Press authors whose books were banned.

“I’m confused and dazed and sad and proud. Confused and dazed that my work could be so threatening. Sad because it has been censored. Proud, in rather a perverse way, to be one of the authors identified as frightening by the most risible government in modern American history”—Toby Miller, author of Sportsex

“Having my book—my ideas—censored is a direct and personal reminder that especially for higher education, there will be no strategy of negotiation and conciliation that will succeed under this regime. All that’s left is to resist and organize.”—Thomas Kim, author of The Racial Logic of Politics

“I have to laugh at the vain efforts of petty bureaucrats who think they can keep ideas from people who look for or need them. You think you can keep what is written from those who you are interesting in those ideas by suppressing them? Forget it. You bring such writings to the attention of those who look for it, and who will find it. And read it. That is the big one. So much is printed, and many don’t read it until some powerless administrator calls attention to it. And then they will read it. And all you administrators can do with your money is hire a therapist to give you excuses for your unethical behavior.“—Steve Martinot, author of The Machinery of Whiteness

“I am proud to be on a list of authors of banned books that includes Martin Luther King, Jr. and Maya Angelou. As the poet Blas de Otero observed about being censored by the Franco dictatorship in Spain, ‘They don’t let people see what I write, because I write what I see.’ Dictators throughout history have banned and burned books that invite readers to think for themselves rather than merely follow the orders issued by those in power. Book bans are confessions of weakness, of the inability of those doing the banning to refute arguments they do not like. This exercise in censorship indicates that the Naval Academy has so little faith in the intelligence—and so much fear of the fragility—of its students and faculty that it has to shield them from books that simply reveal that racism exists. This sends the midshipmen off to careers where they will be ill equipped to understand and command the troops they lead or the civilian populations they encounter. As the elders in Haiti say, breaking the thermometer will not cure the fever. The history of banning books bodes ill for the banners. Such acts almost always increase rather than decrease demand for the banned books. They also provoke authors to write more works that expose and critique the corruptions of the powerful. Like the many headed hydra of mythology, cutting off one head only enables more to grow in its place.”—George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place

“The United States, my native land, has long articulated powerful ideals of freedom, liberty, justice, human rights, and equal opportunity, and through time, sweat, tears, and blood, has haltingly journeyed toward realizing those ideals for everyone–wealthy and poor, of whatever sex, race, religion, nationality, or predicament. Thus, I am disappointed and sad that the stewards of the U.S. now seem committed to destroying that progress and erasing signposts of it, for as they deny U.S. history and undo U.S. progress, they simultaneously deny the triumph and undo the promise—and worldwide hope–of America. Their banning of my book, Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice, is one small act of many in their erasure project. But I do not feel erased. For I was but one of many channels for the expression of fundamental ideals of human freedom, and the continuation of those ideals is the point. Thus, while they can certainly ban an object–paper, ink, thread, and glue–I take joy in the knowledge that no one has or ever can have sufficient power to ban or otherwise extinguish the spirit and fundamental ideals that provided the book’s force, effect, and inspiration.”—Samuel Roundfield Lucas, author of Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice

“The U.S. Naval Academy’s decision to remove my book, along with almost 400 others, from its library’s shelves is disheartening and small-minded. No books should be removed from library shelves for political or censorship reasons, and certainly not at the college level. Our naval officers should be exposed to a wide range of viewpoints and historical interpretations before they lead our soldiers and represent our country. My book, Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality, analyzes five case studies of college sports integration from 1915 through the early 1970s. It explores how people used sports to discuss issues of equality, freedom, citizenship, and community. While the book calls attention to unsolved issues related to race, it also celebrates progress on and off the field. Learning about the past—including the history of desegregation in college sports, and the ways that athletes, fans, media commentators, and university administrators responded to changes in racial norms and ideas of masculinity—will help make our leaders more informed and better attuned to a wide range of issues in American life.

“One of the truly great things about the service academies is that they bring in students from all over the country, and from all different walks of life. There is an emphasis on learning from one another, of the benefits that come from hearing a variety of perspectives. The decision to remove these books from the USNA library strikes hard against the ideals of our military and our nation at large. Our military leaders should be modeling intellectual curiosity and a thoughtful engagement with the past. Reading more books, not less, is the way to achieve those goals.”—Gregory Kaliss, author of Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality

To the students of U.S. military academies: if you are reading this, we will be happy to send you a copy of one of these banned books for your personal library upon request.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, asian american studies, Asian Studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Education, ethics, gender studies, History, immigration, Labor Studies, law & criminology, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, sports, Urban Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Is New York City as politically liberal as we assume?

Posted on March 19, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Tim Weaver, author of Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City, writes about New York City’s political development. 

The 2024 presidential election delivered a profound shock to the American political system. One of the election’s most striking features was the surge of support for Donald Trump among voters in putatively liberal places, most stark in New York City where a red wave swept across the city’s working-class neighborhoods, not only in reliably Republican Staten Island, but also in parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and in Queens, where Trump was born and raised. Why did “reliably blue” New York, a putative liberal bastion, undergo such a decisively rightward shift?

To answer this question, one must look not only at the recent past—where rising vote shares for the GOP in presidential elections have been detectable since 2012—but more deeply into the city’s political history. My recent book, Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City, analyses the past 50 years to argue that the city’s political and economic development belies glib assumptions about its supposedly liberal character.

In the aftermath of the city’s 1975 fiscal crisis New York’s development was driven by a neoliberal order reflected in periodic imposition of austerity measures under the egis of an unelected Emergency Financial Control Board, which reduced the size and scope of city government. Furthermore, mayoral administrations, from those of Ed Koch to Michael Bloomberg—Democratic and Republican alike—embraced the ever-expanding use of tax incentives to boost commercial and residential real estate development in a bid to transform New York into what Mayor Bloomberg called a “luxury city.” It was government largess in the form of tax breaks that underwrote Trump’s meteoric rise in the 1980s. The net effect of the neoliberal economic policies has been widening income inequality, stagnating median wages, stubbornly high levels of poverty, and gentrification. Thus, far from hewing to the dictates of New Deal liberalism, after 1975 neoliberal economic policy was the order of the day.

But if neoliberalism characterized the city’s approach to economic policy, it was not the only game in town. Alongside neoliberalism, New York’s approach to law-and-order highlights an additional driver of the city’s political development: conservatism. The 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a sustained rise in violent crime, often associated with the drug trade, which gripped neighborhoods like Harlem and the Lower East Side. Until the 1960s, the preferred approaches to crime and drug addiction were primarily liberal. These problems were largely viewed as emanating from underlying structural socioeconomic failings. From this perspective, the solution was to address root causes and offer treatment to addicts. In the face of rising crime and social dislocation, however, conservative diagnoses and remedies were stridently advanced by right-wing elites and working-class New Yorkers who were desperate for change.

Whereas conservative claims about the “culture of poverty” frequently took a racist and misogynistic form—as the “welfare queen trope” reveals—concern about disorder and crime cut across racial divides, as did preferences for tough-on-crime measures. Hence, mayors like Ed Koch and the city’s first black mayor, David Dinkins, prioritized investments in policing and corrections over funding for social programs. Still, it would take the combined administrations of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg to transform New York into a mass incarceration city. Whereas Giuliani promoted “broken windows” policing, which targeted those committing “quality of life” crimes, Bloomberg accelerated the use of stop-and-frisk. Indeed, even as serious crime fell markedly, the number of people stopped and frisked annually exploded from 160,851 in 2002 to 685,724 in 2011. Over the course of Bloomberg’s mayoralty, there were almost five million stops, the vast majority of which were found to be unconstitutional, not least because they overwhelmingly ensnared black and Latino New Yorkers. Hence, alongside the neoliberal, elite-led transformation of economic policy, in the realm of policing conservative ideas came to dominate, bubbling up from the streets and flowing down from the think-tanks.

But if neoliberal and conservative ideas and policy designs came to define key elements of New York City’s political development since the 1975, the left was not vanquished entirely. The city’s centuries-old tradition of protest and rebellion was apparent throughout this period, as illustrated by the movements against gentrification in Tompkins Square Park in the late 1980s and the Occupy Wall Street revolt that exploded onto the scene and was echoed worldwide beginning in 2011. Furthermore, leftists and liberals enjoyed a modicum of electoral and programmatic success with the mayoralty of Bill de Blasio, which reversed the city’s decades-long tough-on-crime policing strategy, increased public-sector wages, froze socially regulated rent, and rolled out universal pre-kindergarten with alacrity. Furthermore, beyond the de Blasio administration a plethora of progressive forces based both in the resurgent labor movement and organized at the community level pressed for transformational economic and social policies. Therefore, alongside the neoliberal and conservative political orders sits an egalitarian order fighting for the material interests of the city’s working class.

With the social disruption of the pandemic, and an associated (albeit transient) spike in crime, the city’s conservative and neoliberal orders found themselves once again with the initiative. The familiar bromides of austerity and punitive policing were back on the agenda. Voters turned once again to somebody who promised to “get tough” on crime: former NYCP cop Eric Adams, who was elected in 2022. Although they spring from vastly different social and economic backgrounds, the parallels between Adams and Trump are clear, even beyond their causal relationship with the truth and the law. Perhaps most strikingly, their willingness to scapegoat “illegal immigrants,” who they deem responsible for crime and disorder, has paid political dividends, helping them to garner the support of the city’s racially and ethnically diverse working-class.

A historical understanding of New York City’s political development since the 1960s helps us to see how its trajectory has been shaped by the interplay among its three political orders: conservatism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism. Such a perspective gives lie to the view that New York is a liberal city to the core. Rather, it is a blend of the political traditions that will continue to vie for power in the years to come. The balance of those forces will determine whose interests get protected and who will suffer the consequences.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, civil rights, economics/business, History, law & criminology, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology, Urban Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Celebrating Black History Month

Posted on February 26, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we highlight twenty classic Temple University Press titles for Black History Month.

The African American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America, by David Howard-Pitney

Begun by Puritans, the American jeremiad, a rhetoric that expresses indignation and urges social change, has produced passionate and persuasive essays and speeches throughout the nation’s history. Showing that black leaders have employed this verbal tradition of protest and social prophecy in a way that is specifically African American, David Howard-Pitney examines the jeremiads of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Mary McLeod Bethune, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, as well as more contemporary figures such as Jesse Jackson and Alan Keyes. This revised and expanded edition demonstrates that the African American jeremiad is still vibrant, serving as a barometer of faith in America’s perfectibility and hope for social justice.

Black Communists Speak on Scottsboro: A Documentary History, by Walter T. Howard

On March 25, 1931, Alabama police detained nine young African American men at a railroad stop not far from Scottsboro. In the process, they encountered two white women-who promptly accused the young men of raping them. Soon after, all-white juries found the nine youths guilty and eight of them were sentenced to death. Although many Americans were outraged by the injustices of the case, the loudest voices raised in protest were those of members of the American Communist Party. Many white Communists spoke out, but black Communists took the lead in organizing public protests and legal responses. As this surprising book makes clear, they were acting at the direction of the Communist International (Comintern) which had directed them to address the “Negro problem.” Now, with the opening of formerly inaccessible Communist party archives, this collection of primary documents reveals the little-known but major roles played by black Communists in the case of “the Scottsboro Boys.”

Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape: Deep Roots, Continuing Legacy, by Amy Jane Cohen

Black Philadelphians have shaped Philadelphia history since colonial times. In Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape, Amy Cohen recounts notable aspects of the Black experience in Philadelphia from the late 1600s to the 1960s and how this history is marked in the contemporary city. She charts Charles Blockson’s efforts to commemorate the Pennsylvania slave trade with a historical marker and highlights Richard Allen, who founded Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church. Showing how increased attention to the role of African Americans in local and national history has resulted in numerous, sometimes controversial, alterations to the landscape, Cohen guides readers to Black history’s significance and its connections with today’s spotlight on racial justice.

Black Identity Viewed from a Barber’s Chair: Nigrescence and Eudaimonia, by William E. Cross Jr.

Throughout his esteemed career, William Cross has tried to reconcile how Black men he met in the barber shop “seemed so normal,” but the portrayal in college textbooks of Black people in general—and the Black working class in particular—is self-hating and pathological. In Black Identity Viewed from a Barber’s Chair, Cross revisits his ground-breaking model on Black identity awakening known as Nigrescence, connects W. E. B. DuBois’s concept of double consciousness to an analysis of how Black identity is performed in everyday life, and traces the origins of the deficit perspective on Black culture to scholarship dating back to the 1930s. He follows with a critique showing such deficit and Black self-hatred tropes were always based on extremely weak evidence.

Black Venus 2010: They Called Her “Hottentot”, edited by Deborah Willis

Black Venus 2010 traces the so-called “Hottentot Venus,” Saartjie Baartman’s memory in our collective histories, as well as her symbolic history in the construction and identity of black women as artists, performers, and icons. The wide-ranging essays, poems, and images in Black Venus 2010 represent some of the most compelling responses to Baartman. Each one grapples with the enduring legacy of this young African woman who forever remains a touchstone for black women.

BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered!: Hidden African American Philadelphia of the Twentieth Century, Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection

African American history has produced countless exceptional heroes, leaders, and role models. The graphic novel, BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered!, tells the inspiring stories of 14 important Black Philadelphians, such as opera singer Marian Anderson, civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois, and “Father of the Harlem Renaissance,” Alain Locke.

The City on the Hill from Below: The Crisis of Prophetic Black Politics, by Stephen H. Marshall

Within the disciplines of American political science and political theory, African American prophetic political critique as a form of political theorizing has been largely neglected. In The City on the Hill from Below, Stephen H. Marshall interrogates the political thought of David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison to reveal a vital tradition of American political theorizing and engagement with an American political imaginary forged by the City on the Hill.

The Civil Rights Lobby: The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Second Reconstruction, by Shamira Gelbman

As the lobbying arm of the civil rights movement, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR)—which has operated since the early 1950s—was instrumental in the historic legislative breakthroughs of the Second Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Lobby skillfully recounts the LCCR’s professional and grassroots lobbying that contributed to these signature civil rights policy achievements in the 1950s and ’60s.

The End of Empires: African Americans and India, by Gerald C. Horne

Martin Luther King Jr.’s adaptation of Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolent resistance is the most visible example of the rich history of ties between African Americans and India. In The End of Empires, Gerald Horne provides an unprecedented history of the relationship between African Americans and Indians in the period leading up to Indian independence in 1947. Horne tells the fascinating story of these exchanges, including the South Asian influence on the Nation of Islam and the close friendship between Paul Robeson and India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery, by Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer

Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end. Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture.

If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress: Black Politics in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia, edited by James Wolfinger

Philadelphia has long been a crucial site for the development of Black politics across the nation. If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress provides an in-depth historical analysis—from the days of the Great Migration to the present—of the people and movements that made the city a center of political activism. The editor and contributors show how Black activists have long protested against police abuse, pushed for education reform, challenged job and housing discrimination, and put presidents in the White House.

Mediating America: Black and Irish Press and the Struggle for Citizenship, 1870-1914, by Brian Shott

Mediating America explores the life and work of T. Thomas Fortune and J. Samuel Stemons as well as Rev. Peter C. Yorke and Patrick Ford—respectively two African American and two Irish American editor/activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historian Brian Shott shows how each of these “race men” (the parlance of the time) understood and advocated for his group’s interests through their newspapers. Yet the author also explains how the newspaper medium itself—through illustrations, cartoons, and photographs; advertisements and page layout; and more—could constrain editors’ efforts to guide debates over race, religion, and citizenship during a tumultuous time of social unrest and imperial expansion.

The Parker Sisters: A Border Kidnapping, by Lucy Maddox

In The Parker Sisters, Lucy Maddox gives an eloquent, urgent account of the tragic kidnapping of these young women. Using archival news and courtroom reports, Maddox tells the larger story of the disastrous effect of the Fugitive Slave Act on the small farming communities of Chester County and the significant, widening consequences for the state and the nation.

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, by George Lipsitz

George Lipsitz’s classic book The Possessive Investment in Whiteness argues that public policy and private prejudice work together to create a possessive investment in whiteness that is responsible for the racialized hierarchies of our society. Whiteness has a cash value: it accounts for advantages that come to individuals through profits made from housing secured in discriminatory markets, through the unequal educational opportunities available to children of different races, through insider networks that channel employment opportunities to the friends and relatives of those who have profited most from past and present discrimination, and especially through intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generations. White Americans are encouraged to invest in whiteness, to remain true to an identity that provides them with structured advantages.

Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith, by Tommie Smith and David Steele

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Tommie Smith and his teammate John Carlos came in first and third, respectively, in the 200-meter dash. As they received their medals, each man raised a black-gloved fist, creating an image that will always stand as an iconic representation of the complicated conflations of race, politics, and sports. In this, his autobiography, Smith fills out the story around that moment–how it came to be and where it led him.

Slavery and Abolition in Pennsylvania, by Beverly C. Tomek

In her concise history Slavery and Abolition in Pennsylvania, Beverly Tomek corrects the long-held notion that slavery in the North was “not so bad” as, or somehow “more humane” than, in the South due to the presence of abolitionists. While the Quaker presence focused on moral and practical opposition to bondage, slavery was ubiquitous. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania was the first state to pass an abolition law in the United States.

Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America, by Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin

In Tasting Freedom Daniel Biddle and Murray Dubin chronicle the life of the charismatic black leader, Octavius Catto, a free black man whose freedom was in name only. A civil rights pioneer–one who risked his life a century before the events that took place in Selma and Birmingham, Catto joined the fight to be truly free–free to vote, go to school, ride on streetcars, play baseball, and even participate in Fourth of July celebrations.

Un-American: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution, by Bill V. Mullen

Un-American is Bill Mullen’s revisionist account of renowned author and activist W.E.B. Du Bois’s political thought toward the end of his life, a period largely dismissed and neglected by scholars. He describes Du Bois’s support for what the Communist International called “world revolution” as the primary objective of this aged radical’s activism. Du Bois was a champion of the world’s laboring millions and critic of the Cold War, a man dedicated to animating global political revolution.

Upon the Ruins of Liberty: Slavery, the President’s House at Independence National Historical Park, and Public Memory, by Roger C. Aden

The 2002 revelation at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park that George Washington kept slaves in his executive mansion in the 1790s prompted an eight-year controversy about the role of slavery in America’s commemorative landscape. When the President’s House installation opened in 2010, it became the first federal property to feature a slave memorial. In Upon the Ruins of Liberty, Roger Aden offers a compelling account that explores the development of this important historic site and the intersection of contemporary racial politics with history, space, and public memory. 

Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life, by Tiffany Ruby Patterson

A historian hoping to reconstruct the social world of all-black towns or the segregated black sections of other towns in the South finds only scant traces of their existence. In Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life, Tiffany Ruby Patterson uses the ethnographic and literary work of Zora Neale Hurston to augment the few official documents, newspaper accounts, and family records that pertain to these places hidden from history.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, Anthropology, art, civil rights, cultural studies, gender studies, History, literature, Mass Media and Communications, Philadelphia, philosophy, photography, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, Religion, sexuality, sociology, sports, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Who are antiracists?

Posted on January 22, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, George Yancey, coauthor of Who Is Antiracist? explains how he documented the demographic makeup and social attitudes of those who support the type of antiracism popularized in the United States.

Years from now there will be those not yet born who will ask those of us who lived through it about what happened in 2020. They will likely refer to the Covid pandemic. But they may also refer to the racial unrest that emerged at the murder of George Floyd. I felt the impact of both events. But while adjusting to Covid had a more powerful short-term impact on my life, the racial unrest produced a more long-term effect.

Because of that racial unrest, I was drawn back to the study of racial issues. In particular I was fascinated by how the concept of antiracism became popularized. Before 2020, few people were familiar with that term. During the summer of 2020, two of the most popular books on the Amazon and New York Times bestsellers lists were antiracism books (White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist). Prominent antiracist speakers started to command as much as $20,000 to $25,000 for a presentation. Antiracism programs and trainings were established at businesses, universities, government agencies, and churches. Antiracism became the popular buzzword in the United States.

But while individuals talked about antiracism as a philosophy or about antiracist programs, no one was talking about antiracists as a group. This led to the research in our book Who Is Antiracist?: Beliefs, Motivations, and Politics. In it, we first looked at the primary literature written by antiracists to categorize the basic ideas that undergird the popularized ideology of antiracism. We then developed a scale, which we tested and validated, and placed it on a national sample to gain basic demographic and social information about those who support antiracist ideals. We then explored websites espousing antiracist ideas to gain more nuance and gather qualitative data about the nature of antiracism in the United States.

We found that antiracism does not simply have a racial dimension or even just a political dimension but also has a very strong partisan dimension. Antiracists’ loyalty is not limited to racial issues but extends to other progressive issues. For example, in 2023 antiracists focused attention on issues that favor Democrats (such as abortion) and avoided issues that worked to the disadvantage of Democrats (such as inflation). The actions of antiracists go beyond  loyalty to progressive political ideology and toward partisan support for the Democrat party. This partisan tie ensures both a solid supportive and an opposing group of Americans for antiracists. We speculated that this provides a ceiling and a floor of support for antiracists, ensuring that they will remain an influential group in the United States, but that there is a distinct limit in the level of power they may obtain.

Since my attention to antiracism first emerged in 2020 due to the rise of popularized antiracism, the importance of antiracism has not abated. Over the past several years controversies connected to Black Lives Matter and a backlash to antiracism in the form of opposition to Critical Race Theory have acted as powerful brakes to the spread of antiracism. Red-state governments have passed laws limiting the use of antiracism programs in educational and governmental institutions. Surveys have indicated that support for DEI and other types of diversity programs advocated by antiracists is dropping. Antiracism continues to have influence in our society, but that influence may be waning. All of that is predictive by our arguments concerning the continued presence, but limited influence, of antiracism.

I wrote this book as neither an advocate for nor critic of antiracism. However, in this time of retrenchment for antiracists, I believe that this research can aid antiracists in considering new directions. Whether they decide to use this information or not, I am glad to have done the work to produce it.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, civil rights, cultural studies, ethics, Mass Media and Communications, philosophy, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Announcing Temple University Press’ Spring 2025 titles

Posted on January 2, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we present our list of forthcoming Spring 2025 titles!

The Fast Track: Inside the Surging Business of Women’s Sports, by Jane McManus
Investigating adversity and advancement for women’s sports

A Sports Odyssey: My Ithaca Journal, by Grant Farred
How sports evokes love

BG’s ABCs: Tackling Football and Life, Written by Brandon Graham and Lesley Van Arsdall; Illustrated by Mr. Tom
Life Lessons from an NFL Legend

Remission Quest: A Medical Sociologist Navigates Cancer, by Virginia Adams O’Connell
Sharing the story of being diagnosed with and treated for lymphoma-and the knowledge it provides

Canaries in the Code Mine: Precarity and the Future of Tech Work, by Max Papadantonakis
Explores the vulnerabilities of software developers in the tech industry

Be Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Protests, by Ming-sho Ho
How Hongkongers launched a large-scale protest movement with collective improvisation

Counterfeited in China: The Operations of Illicit Businesses, by Ko-lin Chin
Dispels the many myths surrounding an illegal industry through face-to-face interviews with luxury-goods counterfeiters in Guangzhou, China

Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City, by Timothy P. R. Weaver
Shows that urban politics and political development are driven by clashes among multiple political orders

Reel Freedom: Black Film Culture in Early Twentieth-Century New York City, by Alyssa Lopez
How Black New Yorkers used film culture to claim the city as their own

Visuality of Violence: Witnessing the Policing of Race, by Ofelia Ortiz Cuevas
Examining the visual, political economic, legal, and cultural functions of racial violence

Theatres of the Body: Dance and Discourse in Antebellum Philadelphia, by Lynn Matluck Brooks
An expansive study of Philadelphia’s significant contributions to dance during the nation’s political, social, and intellectual development

Monstrous Nature and Representations of Environmental Harms: A Green Cultural Criminological Perspective, by Avi Brisman and Nigel South
How popular culture informs our ideas about harms to the environment caused by humans

Sodomy’s Solicitations: A Right to Queerness, by Joseph J. Fischel
Advances a queer politics that backgrounds identity claims and foregrounds instead the state’s deployment of sex to govern

Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922–1972, by Averill Earls
Tells the unexpected, sometimes heartbreaking stories of Dublin’s men who desired men and the Gardaí who policed them

Family and Disability Activism: Beyond Allies and Obstacles, edited by Pamela Block, Allison C. Carey, and Richard K. Scotch
Giving voice to a range of intersectional disability and parent experiences within social movement activism

Cultural Studies in the Interregnum, edited by Robert F. Carley, Anne Donlon, Beenash Jafri, Laura J. Kwak, Eero Laine, SAJ, and Chris Alen Sula
Interrogates and reconfigures possibilities for activist-intellectual work during times of social transformation

European Higher Education, Social Responsibility, and the Local Democratic Mission, by Sjur Bergan
Provides global lessons from Europe’s experience developing a culture of democracy through higher education

The Hidden Face of Local Power: Appointed Boards and the Limits of Democracy, by Mirya R. Holman
Juxtaposes appointed boards that generate policy and consolidate power with others that pacify agitation from marginalized groups

Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland: Race and Redevelopment in the Rust Belt, by Rebecca Jo Kinney
Analyzing the role of regional racial formation in Asian American community development in the Rust Belt

American Corruption Talk: A Political Etymology, by Robert G. Boatright and Molly Brigid McGrath
Explores differences in how Americans have deployed corruption talk throughout the nation’s history

Foundations of Black Epistemology: Knowledge Discourse in Africana Philosophy, by Adebayo Oluwayomi
An exploration of questions about agency and the power of knowledge from the Black philosophical perspective

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, Anthropology, asian american studies, Asian Studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Disability Studies, drama, economics/business, Education, environment, ethics, gender studies, health, History, immigration, Jewish, Labor Studies, Latin American studies, law & criminology, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, Philadelphia, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, Religion, sexuality, sociology, sports, transnational politics, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Announcing a new series: Theorizing from Within

Posted on November 27, 2024 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we are proud to announce the new Temple University Press book series, Theorizing from Within, edited by Victoria Reyes and Ghassan Moussawi.

Victoria Reyes and Ghassan Moussawi

This series is rooted in Black, women of color, indigenous, and transnational feminisms that take seriously that the personal is political and that one’s embodied experiences within particular structural positions are key sources of knowledge to develop arguments, build theory, and extend existing research.

Thus, we seek authors whose book projects draw on and use their own social worlds, interactions, experiences, and knowledges to theorize broader structural processes. While topically open to substantive content, we are particularly interested in manuscripts that interrogate systems of oppression and domination, including but not limited to racial capitalism, coloniality, gendered racisms, carcerality, affect and temporality, health and disability studies, and empire. We welcome works that combine these reflexive data and methods with more traditional ones such as archives, interviews, ethnography, oral histories, and close reading of texts and material objects. In particular, we seek to highlight manuscripts that draw on and speak to multiple audiences and that truly embrace interdisciplinary thinking and theorizing.

The erasure of the personal is a political choice. Further, without careful attention to the self, research obscures how interior life is central to knowledge production. Although we are currently witnessing a Du Boisian turn in the social sciences, what remains absent from this recovery is his methodological
use of the self to theorize. As scholars, we stand witness to what we study.

Informed by James Baldwin, we see witnessing as an ethical principle that guides our work, especially when it comes to the study of power and marginalizations. However, if methodological practices are not transformed alongside theoretical insights, researchers will continue to reproduce in practice the very
kinds of knowledge production and gatekeeping they critique.

SERIES ADVISORY BOARD: Elizabeth Bernstein, Crystal Baik, Chris Barcelos, Jenny Davis, mimi khúc, Martin Manalansan, Aldon Morris, Mary Romero, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, and Assata Zerai

Submissions to the series are welcome to contact:

Victoria Reyes vreyes@ucr.edu

Ghassan Moussawi moussawi@illinois.edu

Ryan Mulligan, Editor, Temple University Press ryan.mulligan@temple.edu

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, asian american studies, cultural studies, Disability Studies, Education, ethics, gender studies, Latin American studies, philosophy, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Remembering marginalized histories

Posted on July 24, 2024 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Wendi Yamashita, author of Carceral Entanglements, writes about how memory operates within the Japanese American community.

As I write this blog entry regarding the publication of my first book, I find myself struggling with a mixture of excitement and grief. I am beyond excited to have my book out in the world, but this year will be the fourth without my maternal grandmother, who suddenly and unexpectedly passed away at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. My writing is so intimately connected to her story. Documenting her memories was one of the ways I showed her I loved her.

As a fourth-generation Japanese American (Yonsei) my self-identity and history are intimately tied to my grandparents’ World War II incarceration experiences. For example, my grandfather’s family responded “no, no” to the infamous Loyalty Questionnaire given to all incarcerated Japanese American adults who were expected to pledge their loyalty to the United States with military service. Because of their answer, my grandfather’s family was sent to the Tule Lake Segregation Center and registered to “repatriate” to Japan. At the last minute the family changed their mind and I often think about how I almost didn’t exist.

In many ways, death is a central part of this book. Death is an integral part of memory and memory is an important part of the Japanese American community. It has mobilized Japanese Americans to preserve their history via museums, pilgrimages, national historical sites, and oral history archives, to fight for a national apology and reparations through grassroots organizing and political power, and to fight for others whose civil rights are similarly being infringed upon.

Carceral Entanglements: Gendered Public Memories of Japanese American World War II Incarceration explores how memory operates within the Japanese American community. I argue that the contradictory location of Japanese Americans, as both victims of incarceration and racialized violence and those who experience privilege as model minorities, allows for not only a unique understanding of racial hierarchies but also a chance to explore when our memories of WWII incarceration sustain white supremacy and are thus harmful. Carceral Entanglements looks at sites of community — national museums, digital archives, pilgrimages, and student plays — to determine how and when Japanese Americans can be better allies for and co-conspirators with those also fighting for freedom and justice.

In today’s political climate, remembering marginalized histories is important as attacks on students, diversity and equity initiatives, ethnic studies, and critical race studies that seek to repress voices like my grandmother’s increase. Japanese American memory practices have shifted since I began writing. Ignited by the election of Donald Trump, the renewed rise of anti-Asian hate, and the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Japanese American organizations have taken the time to study, self reflect, and mobilize against police brutality, and immigration detention and deportation, while advocating for African American redress and prison abolition. Carceral Entanglements sees relational organizing as a possibility for a more just future, not just for Japanese Americans, but for all of us. It maps the ways in which Japanese Americans have historically done this work, notes when we have misstepped, and provides a pathway for moving forward.

Filed under: american studies, asian american studies, Asian Studies, civil rights, cultural studies, ethics, History, immigration, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology, transnational politics, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Displacing kinship

Posted on March 13, 2024 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Linh Thủy Nguyễn, author of Displacing Kinship, write about family history in the aftermath of the Vietnam war.

I have a clear memory of the day that, at 18, I realized that my parents were refugees from the Vietnam War. Struggling to order more rice at a Chinese restaurant, confusing the waiter as I spoke mixed Chinese (mom) and Vietnamese (dad), my sister laid out the details. She had for several years been taking college courses about the history of the region and the war. It sounds like a ridiculous thing, to be so detached from family and national history, but mine is a typical second-generation immigrant story about children not knowing about their parents’ pasts. This version is now, perhaps, difficult to imagine for the generations having grown up consuming Vietnamese American cultural productions, as Viet Thanh Nguyen, Ocean Vuong, and Thao Nguyen have reached mainstream popularity.

What I encountered about the history of this instance of forced displacement and the US response to it was a vast gulf in what the children of refugees, the second generation, knew about their parents and their pasts and what policymakers and social scientists knew about them. When the first cohort of 130,000 mostly Vietnamese refugees arrived in 1975, few expected a diaspora that would amount to over 2.2  million Vietnamese Americans. Policy makers and scientists made quick work of predicting their successful assimilation into the country, speculating that their ties with the US government, projected model minority status, and proximity to white values would spare them the “downward assimilation” faced by their Black and brown neighbors. This inclusion, of course, came at the cost of their own histories and relations.

Why does it seem that so much of the art and writing of children of Vietnamese refugees is singularly focused on searching for origins and longing for parental affection? Social science and policy framings of refugee successes in America are matched in volume by narratives of familial discord and trauma by the second generation. Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production is my response to emerging dominant narratives about family history and that war. The book was inspired by seemingly constant popular culture evocations and my students’ comments about what they called the intergenerational trauma of the war – an idea that seemed to do more to mask than explain the alienation they experienced from their parents. It is my attempt to contextualize for the children of refugees from the wars in Vietnam, but also for all children of immigrants, that the reasons for our disconnect from our histories is structural, though it is experienced interpersonally.

Second-generation texts situate themselves in relation to the past and their family history, and squarely in the war. My close readings of Vietnamese American art, music, and writing revealed that behind the emotional weight and heaviness of the texts was a sense of mourning for the family relationships that were destroyed. These were destroyed not only by the specificities of the war and its aftermath, including environmental destruction and economic embargoes, but also, as I emphasize, the larger systems of white supremacy and racial capital that shape U.S. interventions and the day-to-day lives of refugees after they have been resettled. Much of the pain and suffering described in the texts I analyze was much more about everyday experiences of fighting to make it in the U.S., stories of parents struggling to make ends meet, scenes of watching white neighbors yell racist vitriol, in short, the experiences of poverty and racism.

In Displacing Kinship, I explore the reasons the Vietnamese diaspora feels separated from family histories and ultimately call for new ways to relate to ourselves and our own communities. It is my hope that once we can identify the conditions that have alienated us from these histories, we can forge new liberatory cultural politics rooted in connection and attachment to radical possibilities, rather than increasingly conservative identity politics.

Filed under: american studies, asian american studies, Asian Studies, cultural studies, ethics, History, immigration, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology, transnational politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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