Africana Studies: Law, Culture, and Africana Studies (PDF)

Ever since the first contacts between Europe and Africa, African people have been confined to the fringes of Eurocentric experience in the Western mind. Much of what we have studied in African history and culture, or literature and linguistics, or politics and economics, has been orchestrated from the standpoint of Europe's interests. Whether it is a matter of economics, history, politics, geographical concepts, or art, Africans have been seen as peripheral. This volume reviews the past in order to evaluate the present and move ahead with appropriate policies for the future. The authors focus on issues of affirmative action, legal culture, theories of black culture, and methodologies of scholarly work in Africana studies.

Contents include: Cecil Blake, "The Culture Nexus Construct in Africana Studies," Ronald Turner, "On Palatable, Palliative, and Paralytic Affirmative Action, Grutter-Style," Winston A. Van Horne, "Three Concepts of Legitimacy," Robert E. Weems, Jr., "Africana Studies and the Quest for Black Economic Empowerment: What Can be Done," Ula Y. Taylor, "Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam: Separatism, Regendering, and a Secular Approach to Black Power after Malcolm X," Lewis R. Gordon, "Must Revolutionaries Sing the Blues? Thinking through Fanon and the Leitmotif of the Black Arts Movement," Delores P. Aldridge, "Race, Gender, and Africana Theorizing," and James L. Conyers, "Biography and Africology: Method and Interpretation." The volume concludes with reviews of significant recent scholarship on black history and culture.

Law, Culture, and Africana Studies will have particular interest for scholars in the fields of American and European studies, cultural studies, history, sociology, and specialists in African-American studies.