User:Chris B. Church/sandbox

5/2/17

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Black_popular_culture?veswitched=1

- Modernity and migration of black communities to the North has had a history of placing strain on the retention of black cultural practices and traditions. The urban and radically different spaces in which black culture was being produced raised fears in anthropologists and sociologists that the southern black folk aspect of black popular culture were at risk of being lost in history. The study over the fear of losing black popular cultural roots from the South have a topic of interest to many anthropologists, who among them include Zora Neale Hurston. Through her extensive studies of Southern folklore and cultural practices,Hustron has claimed that the popular Southern folklore traditions and practices are not dying off. Instead they are evolving, developing, and re-creating themselves in different regions.

Brundage, W. F., & Brundage, W. F. (2011). Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930. University of North Carolina Press.

Powell, D. R. (2007). Critical regionalism: connecting politics and culture in the american landscape. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina press.

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197451

4/26/17

The practice of psychology and addressing mental health issues have not been highly publicized and easily discussed topics within the black community. There is a long standing stigma attached to publicly admitting mental health issues and seeking treatment within the black communities as many see mental health treatment as a sign of weakness and in many instances as emasculating. The health issues of diabetes, HIV/AIDS, Heart Disease, and Hypertension have been public health concerns that have garnered the most public attention and have been open to discussion. The importance placed on the minds of African Americans has a direct link to the Harlem Renaissance and the concept of “double consciousness” as coined in the work of W. E. B. Du Bois titled The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk understood that the minds of African Americans could not framed and understood in the same terms as the dominant Anglo-Saxon portion of the population because they did not have to psychologically contend with the racism and subjugation that came along with being black in American society. This difference in the understanding of the black mind is still a topic of discussion even with the formation of medical boards and institutions dedicated to furthering the understanding of psychology. The issues in how black minds are framed in psychology is problematic because of the differences in experience between blacks and whites historically. One of the major flaws as pointed out by Paul M. Smith Jr. is the appointment of the psychiatrists and medical professionals themselves to treat black patients. Even if the psychiatrists are black themselves, they have been trained in the Euro-American dominated school of thought and practice which historically has oppressed African Americans in all possible manners. Therefore, there should be a difference in addressing black patients in the school of psychiatry. Smith and other proponents of this difference in treatment for blacks and whites utilize the contrasting personal experiences of the two groups to support their claims. Smith Jr. claims that psychiatrists must consider what their patients experience during 24 hours. For example, they may deal with the normal occurrences of human life: work, stress over bills, relationships, material and economic goals, and cultivating social lives. Psychiatrists are then expected to examine the totality of their patient’s experiences and provide help in areas they may be struggling and together work towards establishing a healthier frame of mind for the patient. This is where Smith Jr sees the flaw in treating blacks in the same manner. Black patients must deal with all the same circumstances and dealings of daily life that white patients must, but blacks have other difficulties which this school of psychiatry has failed to address. Smith Jr. in Black Psychologist as a Change Agent in the Black Community writes that the mental burdens of black patients are compounded by the mental assault a person of color has historically endured in American society. Smith Jr states that black patients in psychiatry have had to endure slavery, racism, bigotry, internalized racism, feelings of inadequacy, threat of physical harm at the hands of law enforcement, and being treated as second class citizens. Smith Jr therefore is critiquing the Euro- American centered school of psychiatry and its inability to historically address these issues. He poses the question of how can the “solution” to the mental problems facing black communities in American society be found in systems and schools of thought that have done whatever possible throughout history to subdue physically, and mentally its black population. Smith Jr seeks an alternative in methodology and conceptualization of mental issues from psychiatrists and the teaching institutions in their efforts to treat the mental health of black communities.

            Black communities were undoubtedly negatively affected by the enforcement of racial segregation in cities and urban areas where blacks were limited in what residential areas they could occupy. Whether in the South or the North, segregation limited the social, educational, and economic progress of the varying black communities forced into this racist social practice. However, new economic, anthropological and census research conducted establishes how black communities in the North during the late 19^th Century fought against racial segregation by donning new attitudes towards commerce and entrepreneurship. Racial segregation in the North during the late 19^th Century saw a considerable rise in black entrepreneurship and black owned small businesses within their respective communities. These small business owners were able to take advantage of constraints placed upon the African American communities, and exploit a market of untapped black consumers that at the time were not allowed a great deal of purchasing power in white economic markets. This rise in “negro markets” as framed by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Clayton in Black Metropolis occurred in the South Side of cities like Chicago where African Americans established a “black belt” of their own where the number of black owned businesses reached 2,500 by 1937 in South Side Chicago.

______________________________________________________________________________________

4/5/17

page 13- 15

Greg Tate also points to the issues surrounding cultural appropriation when he discusses the distancing between cultures that is caused by appropriation. Greg Tate argues that appropriation and the "fetishizing" of cultures in fact alienates those whose culture is being appropriated as it removes their intellectual, social and political agency over what is cultural produced

page 231-233

One of the issues concerning the involvement of Black females in film making is not simply the involvement or lack in numbers, but the influence given to them. As Ada Gay Griffin examines in Seizing the Moving Image the issues in telling a Black story in film cannot be resolved by adding a couple of black actors or hiring black crews to produce the film, but by seizing control of the image as Griffin argues and this is done by gaining production ownership of the films which can be done by Black women gaining more Studio Executive positions in the film industry which is severely lacking.

page 229

While the America saw Europe as a model for education due to its established private and public school systems and institutions, the American push for public education has deep roots in the fight for Universal Human Rights for former slaves. As Ada Gay Griffin details, the demand for a public educational systems rose from the fight for universal literacy and educational rights for former slaves and the African American population that lacked an adequately educated and literate body.

______________________________________________________________________________________

3/22/17

Group edit page for article

http://bit.ly/2ndkzMp

_______________________________________________________________________________________

3/22/17

page 165

With the decline of Disco in the 1970's and early 1980's Rap became a new form of expression as it arose from musical experimentation. Rap was a departure from Disco as Sherley Anne Williams argues, in fact Williams refers to the development of Rap as "anti-Disco" in style and means of reproduction. The early productions of Rap after Disco sought a more simplified manner of producing the tracks they were to sing over. Williams explains how Rap composers and DJ's opposed the heavily orchestrated and ritzy multi-tracks of Disco for "break beats" which were created from compiling different records from numerous genres and did not require the equipment from professional recording studios. Professional studios were not necessary therefore opening the production of rap to the youth who as Williams explains felt "locked out" because of the capital needed to produce Disco records.

page 156

"Craniometry" also played a role in the foundation of the United States and the ideologies or racism that would become ingrained in the American psyche. As John Jeffries articulates in The Collision of Culture the Anglo-Saxon hegemony present in America during the eighteenth and nineteenth century helped establish "The American School of Craniometry" which helped establish the American and Western concept of race. As Jeffries points out the rigid establishment of race in eighteenth century American society came from a new school sciences which sought to distance Anglo-Saxons from the African American population. The distancing of the African population in American society through craniometry helped greatly in the efforts to "scientifically" prove they were inferior. The ideologies set forth by this new "American School" of thought were then used to justify maintaining an enslaved population to sustain the increasing number of slave plantations in the American South during the eighteenth and nineteenth century

page 154

As the United States gained its independence from Great Britain it sought to keep distancing itself from Europe and its ideologies. Not only did the newly formed United States seek to draw distinctions between "American" and "British", but the need for separation within the population presented itself as the questions regarding the African population, freed and enslaved became more contentious. The distinctions within the population came from the ideological and legal implementation of "race" within the newly formed America. As John Jeffries claims, the construction of race was integral in the development of the United States and a history of systematic racism during the eighteenth and nineteenth century because of the slave question. As Jeffries argues the Western analytic concept of race allowed for a "rhetorical smoothing over" when it came to slavery. By establishing categories of races and subsequent hierarchies, the language and the laws concerning race allowed a space where the enslavement and racist attitudes towards African Americans could coincide with a new nation and its ideas of liberty.

______________________________________________________________________________

Page 45 Dent rephrasing "West has often spoken about the lack of adequate black leadership and how it leads to doubt within black communities as to their political potential to ensure change"

page 45 Dent rephrasing "These political movements may begin as small and at the local level, but grassroots politics as Cornel West contends are necessary in shaping progressive politics as they bring public attention to regional political concerns

page 51 Dent rephrasing " Black communities however must not ward off completely intellectualism criticism in their artistic and social production. Instead they should improve their lives through questioning and by creating works that oppose problems within their communities.

Page 118 Dent rephrasing " The sexual black female form can be contrasted with another more domestic female form and in doing so a binary regarding black women and thier sexuality can be formed