Do We As African Americans Have A Culture?

[DSTRen13]

Originally Posted by DSTCHAOS

This is not an exhaustive list b/c this is just from the "top of my head" so I encourage people to add to it:

1. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2001) White Supremacy and Racism
2. Cultural deficiency theory which believes that the "lower social status" of blacks and Hispanics signifies the cultural inferiority of these groups (who are disproportionately involved in criminality and poverty). This would mean that these groups actually HAVE a culture or practices that are common enough to be called a (deficient) "culture."
You can read more about this in Bonilla-Silva Racism Without Racists (2003) and Reed (1990) "The Underclass as Myth and Symbol." Radical America. 24: 21-40.
3. Any of John Hope Franklin's work, including "Ethnicity in American Life: The Historical Perspective." in John Hope Franklin, ed., Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988.
4. Milton Gordon "Assimilation in America: Theory and Reality" Daedalus.
5. W.E.B. DuBois (1973) The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960 Edited by Herbert Aptheker.
6. David Levering Lewis (1993). W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919.

DSTChaos, you have studied these issues for much longer than me, so please feel free to disagree with any of my suggestions, but these are some books I've found to be good that are related to this topic (they're all from a more historical/cultural studies perspective):

The "Racial" Economy of Science. Editor: Sandra Harding. (AKA_Monet & others of you in science & tech fields, if you haven't read this, you might really like it.)
Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. Editors: Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic.
Critical White Studies. Editors: Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic. (This one is pretty interesting; it's a collection of articles & essays looking at what "whiteness" means in the context of race theory.)
Racial Formations in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. Authors: Michael Omi and Michael Winant.
White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Author: Winthrop D. Jordan. (The "classic" text.)
Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Author: Reginald Horsman.