HISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION:1648 TO PRESENT

WHAT IS PAN-AFRICANISM?

I. Racism (1865-1929)A. The Structure of Racism

1. State-sanctioned racisma. Dreyfus Affair and Russian Pogromsb. End of Reconstruction (1865–1877)c. Jim Crow Laws

• Anti-miscegenation• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): Segregation in

housing, schooling, and transportation• Voting limitations through poll taxes and literacy

tests

“Marriages are void when one party is a white person and the other is possessed of one-eighth or more negro, Japanese, or Chinese blood.” (Nebraska, 1911)

All railroads carrying passengers in the state (other than street railroads) shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the cars by a partition, so as to secure separate accommodations.” (Tennessee, 1891)

I. Racism (1865-1929)A. The Structure of Racism

1. State-sanctioned racisma. Dreyfus Affair and Russian Pogromsb. End of Reconstruction (1865–1877)c. Jim Crow Lawsd. Immigration restrictions

• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (USA)

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore,

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or having so come after the expiration of said ninety days to remain within the United States.

I. Racism (1865-1929)A. The Structure of Racism

1. State-sanctioned racisma. Dreyfus Affair and Russian Pogromsb. End of Reconstruction (1865–1877)c. Jim Crow Lawsd. Immigration restrictions e. Scientific Racism and Eugenics

• In 1907, Indiana state legislators passed the first eugenics law in the country, allowing involuntary sterilization for “confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.”

I. Racism (1865-1929)A. The Structure of Racism

1. State-sanctioned racism2. Structural Racism

a. Political b. Social and Economicc. Cultural

Los Angeles housing development, about 1950. Courtesy of Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research

I. Racism (1865-1929)A. The Structure of Racism

1. State-sanctioned racism2. Structural Racism3. Grass roots racism

a. Xenophobia and Empireb. Ku Klux Klan

KKK Calling Card from Newburgh, IN, 17 September 2007 <http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/sep/17/ku-klux-klan-calling-cards-scattered-in/>

I. Racism (1865-1929)A. The Structure of RacismB. The Practice of Racism

1. Ethnic cleansing/genocide/assimilation

UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, New York, 9 December 1948

The Convention defines genocide as any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I. Racism (1865-1929)A. The Structure of RacismB. The Practice of Racism

1. Ethnic cleansing/genocide/assimilationa. The American west

• Native American boarding schoolsb. Australia: The Stolen Generations (1869-1970s)

2. Terrora. Russian pogromsb. Lynching and Race Riots in the USA

Greenwood, Tulsa, OK, May 31-June 1, 1921

I. Racism (1865-1929)

II. Resistance to Racism

A. W.E.B. Dubois

Pan-African Congress 1921 (Dubois is second from right)

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten.

Dubois, Souls of Black Folk (1903)

I. Racism (1865-1929)

II. Resistance to Racism

A. W.E.B. Dubois

B. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP (1909)

“To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States: to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.”

I. Racism (1865-1929)

II. Resistance to Racism

A. W.E.B. Dubois

B. NAACP (1909)

C. Pan-Africanism: Discussion of W.E.B. Dubois’s speech to the First Pan-African Congress