Seneca Vaught

ABSTRACT This paper addresses these important themes by examining the impact of corner stores in two American cities: Buffalo, New York and Atlanta, Georgia. The paper illustrates how corner stores can effectively address unique demands in urban niche markets and the problems and possibilities these approaches present. The paper puts these developments into a historical, economic and spatial context that illustrates how neighborhood stores emerge and the dynamics of race, economics, and geography that they engage. Finally, the paper illustrates several models for effective small propriety grocers that specifically address issues of economic disparity and racial divisions, illustrating how these examples have empowered communities and transformed antagonistic approaches to urban commerce.

Repatriation as Pedagogy In recent years, several high profile philanthropic organizations have attempted to address socioeconomic, racial and academic challenges using innovative transnational approaches to education in the continent of Africa. Some programs such as the Baraka Program, funded by the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation, sent troubled youth from inner-city youth Baltimore to rural Kenya in 2000 for education in a low-stress, minimum distraction, and race-neutral environment. Other models were based creating educational reform in Africa drawing from the cultural and educational context of the United States. For example, in 2007 Oprah Winfrey opened a school for girls in South Africa to develop leadership skills and provide an opportunity for a world-class education based on merit for some of Africa's most promising students. In 2009, the CNN series Black in America 2 showcased Malaak Compton-Rock's school program for inner-city youth called the Angel Rock Project...

Introduction This essay addresses several cultural factors surrounding the absence of American intervention in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. The assertion that the Rwandan genocide seemed like a drive-by shooting is not used to describe how the Interhamwe rolled down the streets of Kigali in a tricked-out 1987 Chevy Caprice, indiscriminately killing Tutsi bystanders. Likewise, the metaphor is not employed to describe the ruthlessness of the Interhamwe who mercilessly hacked thousands of innocent Tutsi women and children to death with machetes until the roads were plastered with bloodstained mud and the ditches clogged with severed flesh. The simile of a drive-by shooting is a reference to how many Americans perceived the horrendous tragedy in Rwanda against the immediate background of gangsta rap, racial strife, pervasive stereotyping, and cultural misconceptions. The goal of the essay is to present an international perspective on the relevance of Africana Studies as a tool in an...

Located near Niagara Falls, Niagara University is a Catholic and Vincentian university whose mission is inspired by the life of St. Vincent de Paul, a French 17th century priest who addressed the needs of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed. With 2,600 undergraduates and 800 graduate students, many drawn from western New York, the university has historically been recognized for its service-oriented curriculum, modeled after St. Vincent de Paul’s example. The Learn and Serve program, a required component of the curriculum, provides opportunities for faculty to integrate volunteer and service projects into their courses. The College of Arts and Sciences has also sponsored a series of teaching grants to assist its faculty in developing innovative, integrated, and active service-learning pedagogies and has encouraged faculty/student research as an effective means of achieving these goals. The university’s history department involves its students with the local community in traditional...

This  study  examines  the  life  of  Crips  cofounder  Stanley “Tookie”  Williams  and  the  controversy  surrounding  his multiple  nominations  for  the  Nobel  Peace  Prize.  After being sentenced to death for a quadruple murder, Williams underwent a period of radical transformation and became an internationally recognized ambassador for peace. From San  Quentin’s  death  row,  Williams  supported  several  in-ternationally  recognized  gang  peace  initiatives  including the  1992  Watts  truce,  the  1993  Summit  on  Urban  Peace and Justice, Hands Across America, and the  2004 Tookie Protocol  for  Peace.  This  article  explores  the  challenges Williams faced in his evolution from a gang member to a peace activist, his role in these projects, and how neoliberal criminal  justice  reforms  undermined  his  global  efforts  to promote grassroots peace coalitions.

Dr. Seneca Vaught interviewed Dr. Jesse Benjamin about his personal pedagogical background and process, its intersections with activism and scholarship, and how this led him to working with the Walter Rodney Foundation and various associated projects in the Atlanta area. The discussion moves from research at a radical experimental Quaker international college, to activism and research in upstate New York, at Binghamton University, and finally to work as an engaged community professor in Atlanta. Also covered are the establishment of a Coloniality Research Working Group and a Walter Rodney Study Group in New York, and the influence of Sylvia Wynter. The discussion concludes with an overview of institution building activities in Atlanta, conjecturing the rise of Walter Rodney School of Praxis.doi:10.13169/jinte.2.1.0006

Constructions of black mothers and fathers are often complicated intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, and place. This chapter seeks to examine the contested representations of black mothers, black fathers, and the black family in hip hop discourses and offers a typology of hip hop families. Specifically, the chapter focuses on the ways in which hip hop texts are in conversation with historical discourses on the
black family and the ways in which hip hop has challenged traditional notions of family, kinship, and familial love. The chapter examines representations of hip hop fathers and hip hop mothers, complicates notions of the “modern” American family, and frames new trajectories for how black families are imagined in hip hop discourses.

Despite the numerous critical appraisals of W.E.B. Du Bois’
Soul of Black Folk, relatively few scholars have delved into the
ongoing relevance of one of the book’s most poignant essays.
The fifth chapter, “Of the Wings of Atalanta,” presents a complex
moral reading of a nascent city in the post-bellum South and its
role in recurring debates about morality, progress, and the nature
of true education. This paper argues that reflections on Du Bois’
“Of the Wings of Atalanta” shed light on understudied aspects
of Black history and Southern history but also interdisciplinary
discourse about Hip Hop culture and the meaning of progress in
Atlanta’s Hip Hop generation.

In attempts to defuse racial tensions on campus, higher education administrators have ofien commissioned special units and campus-wide initiatives. Historically, these commissions ofien address racial challenges in higher education that impact both faculty and students. If designed and deployed carefully , these commissions can be very useful mechanisms to address sensitive racial, religious, and linguistic concerns on campus. Despite the prevalence of studies that discuss racial experiences on campus, far less scholarship has focused on the effectiveness of these commissions and the dialogic strategies that faculty of color have employed in their service. This study draws on three major findings. First, the chapter explores why the presidential commission structure is a powerful mechanism for improving dialogue about racial and ethnic issues on campus. Former commissioners discuss its potential for addressing the complex and interlocking concerns of faculty, staff; and students of color. Second, although the commission's structure is promising, we present numerous problems that require further attention. We discuss how the emphasis on dialogue and less dedication to targeted actions and policies may actually undermine the goals of commissions like these and further frustrate aggrieved faculty, staff: and students. Third, the chapter highlights successful and unsuccessful strategies for sustaining fruitful dialogue that lead to an increased understanding and acceptance of diverse viewpoints and perspectives.

This paper explores the historical context and pedagogical rationale for the repatriation of black students to the continent of Africa.  Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, many influential educators such as John Russwurm and Granville Sharpe thought it better for blacks living in Europe, North America, and the Caribbean to return to Africa.  They held that these returnees could most effectively challenge racial hostility in England and the United States by educating indigenous Africans and themselves through nation-building in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In recent years, the pedagogical worth of repatriation has been reassessed in small scale educational experiments such as the Baraka School in Kenya and Angel Rock Project in South Africa.  The successes and shortcomings of these contemporary endeavors provide interesting points of comparison with the past and pose important questions about future transnational models of education for all students regardless of race.

This essay attempts to address the dilemma of theory and praxis, what Freire referred to as “mere verbalism,” by examining one historical instance of critical pedagogy in history education. This essay argues that Walter Rodney’s curriculum, as detailed in his syllabi on “Historians and Revolutions” and "Groundings," helps educators better understand how to more effectively bridge the gap between a critical pedagogical theory and praxis in African history. Using Rodney as an example of a critical pedagogy theorist and practitioner, this essay explores how concerned historians (and those who use history as a basis for teaching) can traverse traditional disciplinary challenges to make history meaningful to diverse audiences.

The article explores W.E.B. Du Bois' ideas on foreign policy as portrayed during the volatile post-World War I and World War II years through his series of essays directed to policy architects and diplomats.  I narrate how Du Bois' evolving views on the role of race in international conflict and imperial design foreshadowed problems of the Cold War and post-independence era and challenged prevailing ideas of nationalist discourse.  Finally, I discuss how reconsideration of Du Bois' ideas of this period relate to contemporary assumptions of internationalism and the future of Pan-Africanism.

This article discusses Tupac Shakur’s relationship
with policy debates in the 1990s using an interdisciplinary approach to examine historical, musical, archival, and policy sources. Key episodes in his life, especially his incarceration at the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York from 1995 to 1996, illustrate numerous challenges Black men of the hip-hop generation encountered, such as incarceration, targeted enforcement, and police corruption. Shakur’s contributions to the study of Black masculinity should not be relegated only to his music, but also include his contributions to policy discourse by engaging his T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. code in its proper historical and cultural context. This research demonstrates how unsettled policy questions and cultural debates have continuing significance in the present, as well as the limitations of public policy approaches that exclude diverse perspectives on race, gender, and culture.

The current challenges faced by today’s youth are greater than any since the civil rights era. Yet many Black students and Black Studies programs are less empowered to deal with these challenges due to a lack of resources, lack of intention, and lack of coordination.  These shortcomings have converged amidst concentrated efforts to delegitimize historical models of black empowerment in the so-called age of post-racialism. This paper presents examples and critiques of approaches to teaching leadership in Black Studies.  Specifically the paper speaks to the challenges of developing a pedagogy that addresses the unique challenges encountered by the No Child Left Behind/Millennial cohort of Black students on college campuses.  The paper specifically addresses some of the troubling findings in Academically Adrift that students of color are learning less than their white counterparts and what students and educators sensitive to the unique demands and responsibilities of Black Studies programs can do to address this “gap” in leadership and learning outcomes.

James Baldwin's 1965 debate with William Buckley is an important moment that illustrates the vivid connections between his literature and public intellectualism.  The debate highlighted Baldwin’s deep understanding of black America but also his critique of white conservatism at a pivotal time in America's civil rights history and his own literary career.  This essay addresses the significance of this debate in its historical and literary context, illustrating how Baldwin confronts the social construction of whiteness in modern American conservative thought.

From the American perspective, the Rwandan genocide developed amidst a cultural and racial crisis of the 1990s. The American attitude towards the crisis in Kigali provides a
complex historical case study on how race and culture have profound and often-ignored policy implications. Specifically, the lack of American intervention in Rwanda reveals the complexity race and policy in American history and the shared fates of Africans
throughout the world. Taken as a whole, the domestic cultural background of the early 1990s, including the rise of gangsta rap, rioting, and the dilemma of “black-on-black crime,” collectively influenced American policy towards Africa at a critical juncture in the continent’s history.

More than any other retail industry in the last thirty years, the small proprietary neighborhood grocery store, has re-emerged to dominate the American urban landscape. A corner store, often affectionately referred to as “mom-and-pop” stores (also known as bodega, mini-mart, etc) can be used to describe a variety of small urban enterprises. In recent history however, the designation carries a racially coded meaning. While corner stores are both owned and patronized by a diverse racial and ethnic cross-section of American society, these stores are most visible in some of the most economically isolated urban areas. They have maintained a significant presence using a variety of business practices and strategies that larger retailers are unwilling or unable to embrace.

Despite the notable attributes that independently owned neighborhood stores showcase, they also present some significant problems. Corner stores frame racial and economic divisions in complicated ways while simultaneously illustrating how self-employment and community cooperation can generate community development. For many immigrant families coming to the United States, corner stores serve as an important entrepreneurial segue into American economic life but they also replicate the existing racial order.

These stores are also often characterized by practices that would be unheard of in a middle-class commercial setting, such as selling “loosies” (single cigarettes), toiletries and feminine hygiene products in the vicinity of food, uniquely branded and flavored junk foods (e.g, ketchup potato chips, dill vinegar potato chips) and a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages (e.g, low-end fortified wine such MD 20/20, Cisco, Nightrain, Colt 45, etc.). Often these goods are sold for more than the fair market value that one could expect in more affluent areas. Some items are not marked at all and the price is determined as the customer reaches the cash register, which in itself can be another defining characteristic of these places of commerce. More often than not, there is extensive use bulletproof glass, convex security mirrors, and profiling of customers, all of which were introduced as precautionary measures but have contributed to increased tensions between store owners and patrons. In some cases, illegal activity such as drug trafficking and prostitution may take place in the vicinity of the corner store though not necessarily tied to the owners.

This paper addresses these important themes by examining the impact of corner stores in two American cities: Buffalo, New York and Atlanta, Georgia. The paper illustrates how corner stores can effectively address unique demands in urban niche markets and the problems and possibilities these approaches present. The paper puts these developments into a historical, economic and spatial context that illustrates how neighborhood stores emerge and the dynamics of race, economics, and geography that they engage. Finally, the paper illustrates several models for effective small propriety grocers that specifically address issues of economic disparity and racial divisions, illustrating how these examples have empowered communities and transformed antagonistic approaches to urban commerce.

Is College a Lousy Investment?: Negotiating the Hidden Cost of Higher Education discusses many of the economic misconceptions about earning a college degree. While it is widely believed that attending college guarantees wealth and success, students, concerned parents, and higher education professionals have neglected calculating the full-range of short-term and long-terms costs. Our work illustrates how the promotion of education merely as a commodity come at a high price for the individual and society. We argue how the idea of ‘investment’ can be expanded from a short-sighted view to engage a broader, more holistic rationale for higher education from which students can expect a full return on investment.