Increasing the numbers of scholars is the key

By Lamont Flowers

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education’s interview with Dr. Houston Baker, “Literary Scholar Indicts Some Black Thinkers for Shallow Works,” was very informative in that it enables all of us to think more critically about our work and what is the real impact of our scholarship. The interview also encourages researchers and scholars who focus on the African American experience to consider some of the pressing challenges facing scholarship about African American history and life as well as the role of academic freedom.

More importantly, I believe that the interview uncovers probably a more critical issue that may potentially impact the production of scholarship on African Americans - the underrepresentation of scholars writing about and conducting research on issues related to understanding and improving the quality of life for African Americans. In essence, the interview points clearly to the importance of encouraging scholars, who are able and willing, to mentor the next generation of scholars and problem solvers. Producing and mentoring new scholars will ensure that there will be a variety of people, with different cultural lenses and scholarly approaches, to examine the African American experience in education, housing, politics, economics, criminal justice, music, media, philosophy, etc.

 

I contend that an increase in the number of scholars who study issues related to African American issues and race relations may also improve the number and utility of approaches for enhancing the well-being of the Black community in America. Moreover, this next generation of scholars may also lead to the type of diversity in thinking that may provide the best defense against the myriad of theoretical, evidence-based, scholarly, and practical topics, issues, and concerns that decrease opportunities and defers the dreams of many African Americans.

Dr. Lamont A. Flowers is the Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership and Executive Director of Charles H. Houston Center for the Study of the Black Experience in Education at Clemson University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merkel on the Nascence of Free Soil Constitutionalism

By Alfred Brophy

We continue to hear lots of talk about antislavery and proslavery law–it’s in part a response to the growing discussion of reparations. William Merkel of Washburn University’s law school has a new article out on “Jefferson’s Failed Anti-Slavery Proviso of 1784 and the Nascence of Free Soil Constitutionalism.”

Merkel’s abstract reads:

Despite his severe racism and inextricable personal commitments to slavery, Thomas Jefferson made profoundly significant contributions to the rise of anti-slavery constitutionalism. This Article examines the narrowly defeated anti-slavery plank in the Territorial Governance Act drafted by Jefferson and ratified by Congress in 1784. The provision would have prohibited slavery in all new states carved out of the western territories ceded to the national government established under the Articles of Confederation. The Act set out the principle that new states would be admitted to the Union on equal terms with existing members, and provided the blueprint for the Republican Guarantee Clause and prohibitions against titles of nobility in the United States Constitution of 1788. The defeated anti-slavery plank inspired the anti-slavery proviso successfully passed into law with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Unlike that Ordinance’s famous anti-slavery clause, Jefferson’s defeated provision would have applied south as well as north of the Ohio River.

You can download the full article here for free.

Alfred Brophy

Voting is our privilege and our responsibility

By James Ewers

Thank goodness we live in a country where we can freely vote.  It is something that we should not take for granted as we only have to look at other countries to see the chaos that has occurred because of voting or the lack of it.  Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent your vote has counted in the Buckeye State so far this year.  Obviously it will count again in the Fall when the general election is held.  With many of the caucuses and primaries now in the distant past, I would offer that we had more people voting in them than ever.  For example young people voted in record numbers and all of the candidates benefitted from this increase.  There has been so much build up to this primary season.  You only have to look at the amount of hoopla that surrounded the primaries held in North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.  Voting has simple dominated the news coverage for some months now.  Unless something really strange happens we know that John McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee for president.  He has pretty much been able to watch the top Democratic candidates fight it out for the votes of the American people.  Of course we know that some months ago, John Edwards dropped out of the race and it left Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to convince the American public who on the Democratic side is best suited for the most important position in the world and that is president of the United States of America.  I will say more about John Edwards later.  While we all have our favorite Democratic candidate, we have to admire both Clinton and Obama.  They are both convincing and highly skilled orators able to deliver their message of hope and opportunity.

The media has absolutely been enthralled with both campaigns on the Democratic side while the Republican nominee, John McCain has not gotten as much national coverage.  Each day that Clinton and Obama campaign is a day that history is being made.  While there have been other women and other African Americans to run for president, none have captured the hearts and minds of Americans like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I never thought that in my lifetime, I would see a serious bid by a woman and an African American to become president.  It is simply unbelievable to me!  In my quiet moments, I consider how far America has come.  It is without debate that women and people of color have travelled a long and difficult road to get to this point. 

I think many of us get caught up in the Clinton and Obama battle because it has been so testy and fiercely contested.  Before we lose perspective let us just remember this couldn’t have happened in previous years.  The momentum for each candidate has been hanging in the balance with every caucus and primary.  The political pundits have gone back and forth about Barack’s strengths and Hillary’s strengths.  I have been watching the presidential elections for years and I have never seen so many women and people of color as political commentators.  Every time that I see Roland Martin on CNN, I say, “go boy”!

With the closeness of every contest, it means that every vote literally does count.  You only have to take a look at the Guam primary which Barack Obama won by a grand total of seven votes.  The news about each campaign becomes more compelling as the days go by.  Just the other night Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama pretty handily in West Virginia.  However not to be outdone on Wednesday Barack Obama introduced John Edwards while campaigning in Michigan.  And of course Edwards gave an enthusiastic endorsement of Barack Obama.  So the delegates that Hillary won and the delegates that Edwards has have almost cancelled each other out.  It makes Clinton’s victory in West Virginia not as sweet.  So in many ways it looks like from a practical viewpoint that all eyes are on Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for president.  I know some are pinching themselves. However, all indicators suggest Obama will be the party’s choice.  While all of the momentum is on Obama’s side, there is no quit in Hillary Clinton.  So let us give her high marks.

Having given great “props” to Hillary Clinton, I believe the nomination is in sight for Barack Obama.  It is the thinking of many that his victory in North Carolina and his narrow defeat in Indiana provided him with an insurmountable lead.  Of course Michigan and Florida are still on the outside looking in, but that will be fixed before the Democratic convention.  So when we have to vote, let us remember that every vote counts.  Just ask the citizens of Guam!

Buckner Inniss on Reparations Rhetoric

If you’ve been following the reparations movement of late, you’ve likely seen talk of the lawsuits filed back in 2002 in federal courts around the country.  They were consolidated in the Northern District of Illinois in front of Judge Norgle.  The name of the case was In re African American Slave Descendants Litigation.  Whew, that’s a mouthful.

Lolita Buckner Inniss of Cleveland State University’s Law School has recently posted a paper analyzing Judge Norgle’s 2006 opinion dismissing the case.  (So maybe I should have titled this post, Buckner Inniss on anti-reparations rhetoric.)  Her abstract is as follows:

In this paper I apply critical legal rhetoric to the judicial opinion rendered in response to the Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs’ Second Amended and Consolidated Complaint in ‘In Re African American Slave Descendants’, a case concerning the efforts of a group of modern-day descendants of enslaved African-Americans to obtain redress for the harms of slavery. The chief methodological framework for performing critical legal rhetorical analysis comes from the work of Marouf Hasian, Jr. particularly his schema for analysis which he calls substantive units in critical legal rhetoric.  Critical legal rhetoric is a potent tool for exposing the way in which the public ideologies of society and the private ideologies of jurists, legislators and other legal actors are manifested in legal and law-like pronouncements. After introducing this case, I briefly tracing the evolution and meaning of the term rhetoric and examine the relationship between rhetoric and law. I next explore the connection between rhetoric and ideology, which is crystallized in the form of the ideograph and its use as a tool of what is known as critical rhetoric.  Finally, I show how critical legal rhetoric is achieved by bringing critical rhetoric to law, and thereafter apply critical legal rhetoric to the case of ‘In Re African American Slave Descendants’.

You can download the paper here for free.

Alfred Brophy