Pub Date : 2019-01-07DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2018.1559782
B. Ludwig
ABSTRACT This long-term ethnographic study about the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island, NY shows that their integration and identity formation are not only influenced by race, but also by the context of reception [Portes, Alejandro, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 1996. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press]. Second generation Liberian Americans have to deal with a number of sources of stigma, leading them to distance themselves from their African heritage. As the children of refugees, they endure taunts associated with this label. The term ‘refugee’ for Blacks in the U.S. has often been equated with being an economic burden. In addition, images of the civil war that raged in Liberia still predominate in the media. Due to the war, many Liberian parents never completed their formal education and thus are illiterate, forcing them to work as home health aides, another cause of shame for the second generation. Finally, the geographical context also matters for Liberian American youth. Seeking to escape discrimination from African Americans in their neighborhoods, they often embrace a ‘Black’ identity, de-emphasizing their African heritage. However, this is to limited effect. Outside of their neighborhood, in greater Staten Island, being ‘Black’ is yet another stigma.
对纽约史坦顿岛利比里亚难民社区的长期民族志研究表明，他们的融合和身份形成不仅受到种族的影响，还受到接受环境的影响[Portes, Alejandro, and rub G. Rumbaut. 1996]。《美国移民:肖像》，第二版。伯克利:加州大学出版社。第二代利比里亚裔美国人必须处理一些耻辱的来源，导致他们与他们的非洲遗产保持距离。作为难民的孩子，他们忍受着与这个标签相关的嘲笑。对美国黑人来说，“难民”一词常常被等同于经济负担。此外，在利比里亚肆虐的内战图像仍然在媒体上占据主导地位。由于战争，许多利比里亚父母从未完成正规教育，因此是文盲，迫使他们做家庭保健助理，这是第二代人感到羞耻的另一个原因。最后，地理环境对利比里亚裔美国青年也很重要。为了逃避社区中非裔美国人的歧视，他们经常接受“黑人”身份，不强调他们的非洲传统。然而，这是有限的效果。在他们的社区之外，在大斯塔顿岛，“黑人”是另一种耻辱。
{"title":"It is tough to be a Liberian refugee in Staten Island, NY: the importance of context for second generation African immigrant youth","authors":"B. Ludwig","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2018.1559782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559782","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This long-term ethnographic study about the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island, NY shows that their integration and identity formation are not only influenced by race, but also by the context of reception [Portes, Alejandro, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 1996. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press]. Second generation Liberian Americans have to deal with a number of sources of stigma, leading them to distance themselves from their African heritage. As the children of refugees, they endure taunts associated with this label. The term ‘refugee’ for Blacks in the U.S. has often been equated with being an economic burden. In addition, images of the civil war that raged in Liberia still predominate in the media. Due to the war, many Liberian parents never completed their formal education and thus are illiterate, forcing them to work as home health aides, another cause of shame for the second generation. Finally, the geographical context also matters for Liberian American youth. Seeking to escape discrimination from African Americans in their neighborhoods, they often embrace a ‘Black’ identity, de-emphasizing their African heritage. However, this is to limited effect. Outside of their neighborhood, in greater Staten Island, being ‘Black’ is yet another stigma.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559782","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41383083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-03DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2018.1559781
Kassahun Kebede
ABSTRACT A growing literature has examined the prevalence of transnational engagement among children of immigrants worldwide. However, the research strongly focused on Asian, Latin American and Caribbean second-generation migrants. Many of these researchers suggest that transnational connections may carry over to the second generation at symbolic levels, but when it comes to concrete transnational actions, the practice shows a marked decline. In this paper, I present the experiences of second-generation Ethiopian Americans. While I agree that symbolic transnationalism is relevant for some second-generation Ethiopians, I also found that they are involved in tangible transnational activities, which include philanthropic involvements, advancing a positive image of Ethiopia in the United States, and taking part in homeland politics. My study examines second-generation Ethiopians variegated transnational engagements, the motivating factors, and how their transnational activities are very much related to, but also different from, the cross-border pursuits of their parents.
{"title":"‘Ethiopia is misunderstood’: transnationalism among second-generation Ethiopian Americans","authors":"Kassahun Kebede","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2018.1559781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559781","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A growing literature has examined the prevalence of transnational engagement among children of immigrants worldwide. However, the research strongly focused on Asian, Latin American and Caribbean second-generation migrants. Many of these researchers suggest that transnational connections may carry over to the second generation at symbolic levels, but when it comes to concrete transnational actions, the practice shows a marked decline. In this paper, I present the experiences of second-generation Ethiopian Americans. While I agree that symbolic transnationalism is relevant for some second-generation Ethiopians, I also found that they are involved in tangible transnational activities, which include philanthropic involvements, advancing a positive image of Ethiopia in the United States, and taking part in homeland politics. My study examines second-generation Ethiopians variegated transnational engagements, the motivating factors, and how their transnational activities are very much related to, but also different from, the cross-border pursuits of their parents.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559781","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47388433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-03DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2018.1559788
Clémentine Berthélémy
ABSTRACT In the United States, the ‘ethnoracial pentagon’ has become a major tool to define identity. Its normative aspect contributes to the process of categorizing the social sphere into a fixed number of categories notwithstanding the tensions it triggers. Based on a qualitative study and in-depth interviews, this article focuses on how second-generation African college students interpret their racial and ethnic identities and navigate the American ethnoracial pentagon on campus. This article suggests that the norms and ambivalence of the ethnoracial pentagon incite the New African Diaspora to develop identification strategies as a way to distance themselves from stigmatized racial identities.
{"title":"Second-generation African college students and the American ethnoracial pentagon: self-identification, racial labeling and the contouring of group boundaries","authors":"Clémentine Berthélémy","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2018.1559788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559788","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the United States, the ‘ethnoracial pentagon’ has become a major tool to define identity. Its normative aspect contributes to the process of categorizing the social sphere into a fixed number of categories notwithstanding the tensions it triggers. Based on a qualitative study and in-depth interviews, this article focuses on how second-generation African college students interpret their racial and ethnic identities and navigate the American ethnoracial pentagon on campus. This article suggests that the norms and ambivalence of the ethnoracial pentagon incite the New African Diaspora to develop identification strategies as a way to distance themselves from stigmatized racial identities.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559788","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48366877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-03DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2018.1559784
M. Ndemanu
ABSTRACT This essay explores the intricacies of transnational identity development among young Cameroonian-Americans. The paper also examines the intersectionality of socioeconomic and geographic factors influencing the transnational identity development of second-generation Cameroonian-Americans. It argues that cultural identity development among second-generation Cameroonian-Americans is influenced by both the culture of their heritage country, Cameroon, and that of their country of birth, the United States. These second-generation Cameroonian-Americans’ knowledge about their heritage culture that is acquired mostly informally plays an important role in their transnational identity development. Some of the influential aspects of their cultural identity development as examined in this essay include acculturation during Cameroon’s national days’ celebrations, Cameroonian weddings, wakes, funerals, baby showers, conventions, fundraising, monthly meetings, birthdays, and many other cultural events. In spite of their varying degree of exposure to the Cameroonian culture in the United States, second-generation Cameroonian-Americans are still more American than African because of their native-like immersion in the US mainstream culture.
{"title":"Transnational identity formation of second-generation Cameroonian youth in the United States: a perspective of a Cameroonian parent-educator","authors":"M. Ndemanu","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2018.1559784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559784","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay explores the intricacies of transnational identity development among young Cameroonian-Americans. The paper also examines the intersectionality of socioeconomic and geographic factors influencing the transnational identity development of second-generation Cameroonian-Americans. It argues that cultural identity development among second-generation Cameroonian-Americans is influenced by both the culture of their heritage country, Cameroon, and that of their country of birth, the United States. These second-generation Cameroonian-Americans’ knowledge about their heritage culture that is acquired mostly informally plays an important role in their transnational identity development. Some of the influential aspects of their cultural identity development as examined in this essay include acculturation during Cameroon’s national days’ celebrations, Cameroonian weddings, wakes, funerals, baby showers, conventions, fundraising, monthly meetings, birthdays, and many other cultural events. In spite of their varying degree of exposure to the Cameroonian culture in the United States, second-generation Cameroonian-Americans are still more American than African because of their native-like immersion in the US mainstream culture.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559784","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43210236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2017.1412929
Katherine Cook
ABSTRACT Anglican church commemoration in Barbados is traditionally viewed as reflecting a wholly white, British history; however, beginning in the late eighteenth century, these spaces were circumvented as places of memory for the freed black community. As abolition and emancipation triggered greater integration of previously racially segregated groups on the island, funerary monuments provided the opportunity to negotiate memory, social structure, and community relationships, subverting dominant power hierarchies and tensions stimulated by race, religion, and marginalization. This paper will reconstruct narratives and counter-narratives in burial practice and monument use against the backdrop of abolition and emancipation to contribute to historical and archaeological understandings of historical processes of colonization and decolonization, relevant to Barbados and other colonies dependent on slave labour.
{"title":"Negotiating memory: funerary commemoration as social change in emancipation-era Barbados","authors":"Katherine Cook","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2017.1412929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2017.1412929","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Anglican church commemoration in Barbados is traditionally viewed as reflecting a wholly white, British history; however, beginning in the late eighteenth century, these spaces were circumvented as places of memory for the freed black community. As abolition and emancipation triggered greater integration of previously racially segregated groups on the island, funerary monuments provided the opportunity to negotiate memory, social structure, and community relationships, subverting dominant power hierarchies and tensions stimulated by race, religion, and marginalization. This paper will reconstruct narratives and counter-narratives in burial practice and monument use against the backdrop of abolition and emancipation to contribute to historical and archaeological understandings of historical processes of colonization and decolonization, relevant to Barbados and other colonies dependent on slave labour.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2017.1412929","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47733025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2018.1467747
R. Skinner
ABSTRACT This article examines the existential grounds and experiential limits of an embodied and intersubjective being-in-the-world, in walking dialogue with the remembrances of Afro-Swedish subjects. To walk, wander, and roam in Sweden, particularly through the abundant green spaces that intrude upon and surround nearly every town and city, is a socially constitutive practice of everyday life. It is a sign of personal vitality, healthfulness, and a kind of being-with others predicated on a regular, vigorous, and widespread being-toward nature. Yet, for many Swedes of African descent (as for non-white Swedes more generally), such an imagined community of salubrious walkers is largely just that, a socially constructed fiction that perforce excludes them; an abstraction of urban planning that encumbers their movements, creating anomalous spaces of stasis and immobility; a caesura in the biopolitical field that indexes their black lives as matter out of place, beyond both culture and nature.
{"title":"Walking, talking, remembering: an Afro-Swedish critique of being-in-the-world","authors":"R. Skinner","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2018.1467747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1467747","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the existential grounds and experiential limits of an embodied and intersubjective being-in-the-world, in walking dialogue with the remembrances of Afro-Swedish subjects. To walk, wander, and roam in Sweden, particularly through the abundant green spaces that intrude upon and surround nearly every town and city, is a socially constitutive practice of everyday life. It is a sign of personal vitality, healthfulness, and a kind of being-with others predicated on a regular, vigorous, and widespread being-toward nature. Yet, for many Swedes of African descent (as for non-white Swedes more generally), such an imagined community of salubrious walkers is largely just that, a socially constructed fiction that perforce excludes them; an abstraction of urban planning that encumbers their movements, creating anomalous spaces of stasis and immobility; a caesura in the biopolitical field that indexes their black lives as matter out of place, beyond both culture and nature.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2018.1467747","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45453067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2018.1559785
Dialika Sall
ABSTRACT Prior research on Black immigrants in the US has almost exclusively focused on those from the Caribbean. Yet African immigrants are poised to become the largest Black immigrant group in the US. This article addresses this issue by exploring the ethnoracial identity-work central to the processes by which the children of African immigrants integrate into American. I draw upon interviews of 36 West African and Black American high school students in the Bronx, New York. The findings reveal an identificational convergence where African and Black American youth identify similarly (i.e. as ‘Black’ and ‘African-American’) yet make different meanings of behind these terms. I examined three prominent domains (e.g. physical appearances, parenting and cultural stereotypes) that shape these varied articulations and intraracial boundaries.
{"title":"Convergent identifications, divergent meanings: the racial and ethnic identities of second-generation West African youth","authors":"Dialika Sall","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2018.1559785","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559785","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Prior research on Black immigrants in the US has almost exclusively focused on those from the Caribbean. Yet African immigrants are poised to become the largest Black immigrant group in the US. This article addresses this issue by exploring the ethnoracial identity-work central to the processes by which the children of African immigrants integrate into American. I draw upon interviews of 36 West African and Black American high school students in the Bronx, New York. The findings reveal an identificational convergence where African and Black American youth identify similarly (i.e. as ‘Black’ and ‘African-American’) yet make different meanings of behind these terms. I examined three prominent domains (e.g. physical appearances, parenting and cultural stereotypes) that shape these varied articulations and intraracial boundaries.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559785","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43763153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2017.1412928
Meron Zeleke
ABSTRACT Transit migration is a phenomenon on the rise partly due to the growth of international migration and more robust policies in destination countries making onward travel more difficult. The dominant discourse portrays transit migrants as agents stranded enroute-lacking agency to decide about their state of mobility/immobility. By going beyond such a normative victimization narrative of transit migrants, and by drawing on lived experiences of female Ethiopian migrants, this paper examines the agency of transit migrants; that is, the creative strategies they employ while planning their mobility/immobility, and in negotiating their precarious and vulnerable position. The paper discusses prospects of mobility/Immobility and/or settlement of migrants and factors that affect their informed decisions and argues against a monocausal analysis of factors influencing decision-making of migrants.
{"title":"Too many winds to consider; which way and when to sail!: Ethiopian female transit migrants in Djibouti and the dynamics of their decision-making","authors":"Meron Zeleke","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2017.1412928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2017.1412928","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Transit migration is a phenomenon on the rise partly due to the growth of international migration and more robust policies in destination countries making onward travel more difficult. The dominant discourse portrays transit migrants as agents stranded enroute-lacking agency to decide about their state of mobility/immobility. By going beyond such a normative victimization narrative of transit migrants, and by drawing on lived experiences of female Ethiopian migrants, this paper examines the agency of transit migrants; that is, the creative strategies they employ while planning their mobility/immobility, and in negotiating their precarious and vulnerable position. The paper discusses prospects of mobility/Immobility and/or settlement of migrants and factors that affect their informed decisions and argues against a monocausal analysis of factors influencing decision-making of migrants.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2017.1412928","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48766221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2018.1423943
Gunilla Hultén
ABSTRACT When the alternative and separatist media site Rummet (The Room) was launched in 2014, it had immediate echo in Swedish mainstream media. The platform’s founders declared that it was for and by ‘racialized feminists and anti-racists’, and that only non-whites were welcome to participate. Criticism from the elite media focused on the separatist stance and accused the founders of being racists themselves. My discussion in this case study concerns the racialized intersections of body, space, and identity. The data consist of texts posted on Rummet’s website during January 2014, and articles in the Swedish mainstream media published during the first three months of 2014. The founders of Rummet made use of the media space to reverse the white gaze, reframe themselves and their bodies, and re-imagine place-making mediascapes and identities. The polemical debate framed the site’s separatism as a threat to social cohesion and evaded the question of white privilege.
{"title":"Race place shape: a case study of contested racialized boundaries of belonging, embodiment, and gender in Swedish alternative media","authors":"Gunilla Hultén","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2018.1423943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1423943","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT When the alternative and separatist media site Rummet (The Room) was launched in 2014, it had immediate echo in Swedish mainstream media. The platform’s founders declared that it was for and by ‘racialized feminists and anti-racists’, and that only non-whites were welcome to participate. Criticism from the elite media focused on the separatist stance and accused the founders of being racists themselves. My discussion in this case study concerns the racialized intersections of body, space, and identity. The data consist of texts posted on Rummet’s website during January 2014, and articles in the Swedish mainstream media published during the first three months of 2014. The founders of Rummet made use of the media space to reverse the white gaze, reframe themselves and their bodies, and re-imagine place-making mediascapes and identities. The polemical debate framed the site’s separatism as a threat to social cohesion and evaded the question of white privilege.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2018.1423943","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48357537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17528631.2017.1394082
Alison Okuda
ABSTRACT This article examines the politics of belonging for women in Ghana’s entertainment scene. As a result of instability while a series of different military and civilian leaders controlled the country between 1966 and 1979, Ghanaian women were scrutinized in local newspapers for actions that were deemed inappropriate, such as provocative dancing. Yet, these same Ghanaian journalists contradicted their own language and respectability ideals by celebrating the sexualized images and performances of Caribbean and African American women visiting Ghana during this period. By distinguishing between the actions of Ghanaian women and women of African descent, their language demonstrates that journalists prioritized national identity politics over the claims of respectability expected of all women in their country. Through the use of what I describe as ‘Ghanaianness’, a term indicating that ‘authenticity politics’ were at stake, I argue that journalists purposefully excluded diasporic women from Ghanaian belonging.
{"title":"Performing Ghana: the politics of being a black woman on the stage, 1966–1979","authors":"Alison Okuda","doi":"10.1080/17528631.2017.1394082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2017.1394082","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the politics of belonging for women in Ghana’s entertainment scene. As a result of instability while a series of different military and civilian leaders controlled the country between 1966 and 1979, Ghanaian women were scrutinized in local newspapers for actions that were deemed inappropriate, such as provocative dancing. Yet, these same Ghanaian journalists contradicted their own language and respectability ideals by celebrating the sexualized images and performances of Caribbean and African American women visiting Ghana during this period. By distinguishing between the actions of Ghanaian women and women of African descent, their language demonstrates that journalists prioritized national identity politics over the claims of respectability expected of all women in their country. Through the use of what I describe as ‘Ghanaianness’, a term indicating that ‘authenticity politics’ were at stake, I argue that journalists purposefully excluded diasporic women from Ghanaian belonging.","PeriodicalId":39013,"journal":{"name":"African and Black Diaspora","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17528631.2017.1394082","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44640622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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