"Black feminist thought and practice respond to a fundamental contradiction of U.S. society. On the one hand, democratic promises of individual freedom, equality under the law, and social justice are made to all American citizens. Yet on the other hand, the reality of differential group treatment based on race, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship persists. Groups organized around race, class, and gender in and of themselves are not inherently a problem. However, when African-Americans, poor people, women, and other groups discriminated against see little hope for group-based advancement, this situation constitutes social injustice." Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (2000), page 23

In fact, the group identity, and the awareness of shared history, leads to discussion and organization around shared solutions; by contrast, the rhetoric of color blindness has the negative effect of making the social inequalities themselves invisible, if we are unable to talk about the ways in which different treatment affects groups differently. What we seek in recognizing this history of racial and gender discrimination is understanding of the ways in which both forms are entrenched in American society, and interlocking in their effects. The problems themselves cannot simply disappear, or be wished away, without some difficult examination, without some challenging confrontations with the status quo. In analyzing Freedom Summer, what examples can you find of the activists making these examinations, and encountering challenging situations, that led them to a new perspective, a new understanding?

Reconsidering the Civil Rights Movement

As you begin reading about Freedom Summer, you should begin to think about how McAdam's narrative expands and challenges your understanding of the historical context of these events. The social protests that led up to and followed the summer projects of 1964 to increase voter registration of black Southerners, to start alternative schools for black communities to study citizenship and black history, and to try to bring an end to the violence that white authorities used against black people to try to intimidate them should not be seen as simply events in black history, or events that only changed the South, but as significant social changes that challenged the whole of American society. Their impact was felt across the country and around the world, and should properly and fully be viewed in an international political context. How can we use the idea of an African Diaspora (from an interdisciplinary, African American Studies perspective) as a tool of analysis in understanding these events and changes? Once we apply this framework for understanding to a conventional reading of the Cold War and McCarthyism, how does this period start to look much more complicated?

Thinking About Baldwin, Thinking About Today

What do you think Baldwin would say about the social changes evident in our society in 2009? Based on what you have read in "Nobody Knows My Name," do you believe that he would see whatever optimism he might have felt about the end of colonialism and the beginnings of the civil rights movement as finally being rewarded? Are there any recent historical events that you think would particularly surprise him, sadden him, or upset him as proof of positive or negative changes? Why?

Explore your thoughts on Baldwin and these questions in your own blog entries for Wednesday. Be sure to make yourself followers of your classmates' blogs, and to create a profile for yourself before class on Wednesday.

Introduce Yourselves

Hmmmm.....What do you think: about the readings, about the campus, about your first year, about your research, about what is going on in the world and the universe generally? Tell me, and illustrate it--feel free to add pictures, music, narration, links, etc. Be sure to create a profile formally, and have fun with this!

Ask questions, record significant quotes, define terms...

Challenge yourselves and each other to really explore the intellectual significance and practical implications of your learning--don't be afraid to wonder, wander and think new thoughts!