African-Americans Americanization Experience
KevinLiu
DuBoisandFreireonAfricanAmericanAmericanization.pptxThe African American Americanization
Major Themes for Evaluating 21st Century Integration
The African American Timeline
This timeline present a perspective or evaluating African American’s continued Americanization experiences shaped through structural and systemic inequality systems;
1619 – 1864: Period of Slavery accounting for 246 years
1865 – 1964: Segregation and Jim Crow laws account for 99 years
1965 – current: Citizenship rights affirmed through civil rights legislation
*African-Americans’ Americanization is founded in 257 years of formal institutionalized oppression and alienation, and merely 52 years of recognized citizenship rights.
Significance of Americanization Timeline
African Americans Americanization experiences, defined through over 340+ years of legal paternalistic domination is unique in comparison to other groups.
African Americans are the singular group having their citizenship legally defined through a civil rights legislation.
Though one of the oldest population in the United States, African Americans have only enjoyed 52 years of rightful citizenship.
W.E.B. Du Bois on the African American Experience
In his book, The Souls of Black Folk;
“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 the 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.”
Importance of W.E.B. Du Bois’
Du Bois’ “self-conscious manhood” depicts the African American experience through Freire’s evaluation on humanization and dehumanization, where he sates, “…humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives, only the first is the people’s vocation. This vocation is constantly negated, yet it is affirmed by that very negation.”
Involuntary initial contact, white ethnocentrism, and subsequent system of slavery, led to a dehumanization through classification as “savage and bestial” (Marger)
346 years of paternalistic domination sustains to this day a domestic dependency on larger government and social institutions for relevant resources – thus inability for a collective self-governance.
The continued existence of the N-word evidences Du Bois’ dual-consciousness and Freire’s discussion on “fear of freedom” and prescription as he states “One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness”.
Connecting Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Freire explains pedagogy of the oppressed as “animated by authentic, humanistic (not humanitarian) generosity, presents itself as a pedagogy of mankind. Pedagogy which begins with the egoistic interests of the oppressors (an egoism cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) and makes of the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies oppression.”
Evidenced through 340+ years of dehumanization, paternalistic domination, domestic dependency, and cultural deprivation
Evidenced through the development, restriction, and alienation of Blacks in racially segregated communities (ghetto’s, low-income residences)
Found in the 95+ years of systemic and structural inequalities existing in American social, political and economic institutions which created and sustains a wealth gap between blacks and whites.
African Americans have an historic and modern day experience of being classified and systemically treated as second-class citizens.
Basis Understandings and Thoughts
Both Du Bois and Freire illuminates the experiences of an African American’s dual-Americanization experiences shaped through the interconnectedness between the oppressor and oppressed.
Does the combined readings highlighting the dual-Americanization experiences give understanding on current NFL players protesting the National Anthem relating to the continued experiences of African American’s treatment as second-class citizens? – As Freire states, “The pedagogy of the first stage must deal with the problem of the oppressed consciousness and the oppressor consciousness, the problem of men and women who oppress and men and women who suffer oppression. It must take into account their behavior, their view of the world, and their ethics.”
