Afro-Paradise

by Christen A Smith

Author	: Christen A Smith
Publisher	: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages	: 281
Release	: 2016-03-15
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 0252098099

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Tourists exult in Bahia, Brazil, as a tropical paradise infused with the black population's one-of-a-kind vitality. But the alluring images of smiling black faces and dancing black bodies masks an ugly reality of anti-black authoritarian violence. Christen A. Smith argues that the dialectic of glorified representations of black bodies and subsequent state repression reinforces Brazil's racially hierarchal society. Interpreting the violence as both institutional and performative, Smith follows a grassroots movement and social protest theater troupe in their campaigns against racial violence. As Smith reveals, economies of black pain and suffering form the backdrop for the staged, scripted, and choreographed afro-paradise that dazzles visitors. The work of grassroots organizers exposes this relationship, exploding illusions and asking unwelcome questions about the impact of state violence performed against the still-marginalized mass of Afro-Brazilians. Based on years of field work, Afro-Paradise is a passionate account of a long-overlooked struggle for life and dignity in contemporary Brazil.

Trouble in Black Paradise

by Fundi

Author	: Fundi
Publisher	: AuthorHouse
Total Pages	: 501
Release	: 2013-04-12
Genre	: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN	: 1481707264

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National anti gay marriage laws join Californias voter approved Proposition 8 challenging America. Afro-American Christians launch from sidelined shadows hitting the streets, vocally backing these measures. Intense Afro denunciation of gays capture media coverage; angry images fuel Americas sensational discourse stagetheyve become the new self-appointed representatives of global religious advocacy. Afro supporters justify opposition citing standard historical verbiage. Claimed is that no evidence of sacredly integrated gay life, or gay marriage resonates from antiquity. Intense condemnation of gays professes compassion, not hate. A white gay mainstream, shocked and baffled, wonders in their eyes how so-called fellow Civil Rights seeking groups could in turn condemn them. Afro religious though, vehemently reject any claim to shared Civil Rights predicament made by gays. Trouble In Black Paradise tackles this entanglement head on. Highly volatile situations are fleshed-out in a way unprecedented by impassioned literary presentation. Now, a man steeped in Civil Rights tradition through Southern Baptist family initiates a sensitive, intimate dialogue with broader Afro-Christian communities. Fundi is an educator, historian and social/cultural activist of 38 years; concurrently hes been a practitioner of Buddhism and an openly gay Black man coming out in the pre AIDS era. Afro-Americans and the gay mainstream do not live in a vacuum. Troubling civil nuances impacting each cultural phenomenon reveals a strangely unused bridge. Here, decades of cutting edge social/anthropological research is finely organized, enlightening each side about one anotherheroes, villains, institutions (uplifting and disingenuous) and media, all are laid bare. Exposes confront negligible Civil Rights participation by an entrenched Afro-Christian establishment; white gays in parallel light reveal extreme political/multiethnic disconnect. Racism and homophobia are intertwined aspectsinexplicably tying bothand find rigorous review. Trouble In Black Paradise holds unforeseen surprises with a shocking conclusion. Fasten yourself for a beginning-to-end rollercoaster ride.

White Nights, Black Paradise

by Sikivu Hutchinson

Author	: Sikivu Hutchinson
Publisher	: Sikivu Hutchinson
Total Pages	: 167
Release	: 2015-11-16
Genre	: Fiction
ISBN	: 0692267131

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In 1978, Peoples Temple, a Black multiracial church once at the forefront of progressive San Francisco politics, self-destructed in a Guyana jungle settlement named after its leader, the Reverend Jim Jones. Fatally bonded by fear of racist annihilation, the community's greatest symbol of crisis was the "White Night"; a rehearsal of revolutionary mass suicide that eventually led to the deaths of over 900 church members of all ages, genders and sexual orientations. White Nights, Black Paradise focuses on three fictional black women characters who were part of the Peoples Temple movement but took radically different paths to Jonestown: Hy, a drifter and a spiritual seeker, her sister Taryn, an atheist with an inside line on the church s money trail and Ida Lassiter, an activist whose watchdog journalism exposes the rot of corruption, sexual abuse, racism and violence in the church, fueling its exodus to Guyana. White Nights, Black Paradise is a riveting story of complicity and resistance; loyalty and betrayal; black struggle and black sacrifice. It locates Peoples Temple and Jonestown in the shadow of the civil rights movement, Black Power, Second Wave feminism and the Great Migration. Recapturing black women's voices, White Nights, Black Paradise explores their elusive quest for social justice, home and utopia. In so doing, the novel provides a complex window onto the epic flameout of a movement that was not only an indictment of religious faith but of American democracy.

Visualizing Black Lives

by Reighan Gillam

Author	: Reighan Gillam
Publisher	: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages	: 195
Release	: 2022-04-26
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 0252053400

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A new generation of Afro-Brazilian media producers have emerged to challenge a mainstream that frequently excludes them. Reighan Gillam delves into the dynamic alternative media landscape developed by Afro-Brazilians in the twenty-first century. With works that confront racism and focus on Black characters, these artists and the visual media they create identify, challenge, or break with entrenched racist practices, ideologies, and structures. Gillam looks at a cross-section of media to show the ways Afro-Brazilians assert control over various means of representation in order to present a complex Black humanity. These images--so at odds with the mainstream--contribute to an anti-racist visual politics fighting to change how Brazilian media depicts Black people while highlighting the importance of media in the movement for Black inclusion. An eye-opening union of analysis and fieldwork, Visualizing Black Lives examines the alternative and activist Black media and the people creating it in today's Brazil.

Trouble in Black Paradise

by Fundi

Author	: Fundi
Publisher	: AuthorHouse
Total Pages	: 503
Release	: 2013
Genre	: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN	: 1481707280

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National anti gay marriage laws join California's voter approved Proposition 8 challenging America. Afro-American Christians launch from sidelined shadows hitting the streets, vocally backing these measures. Intense Afro denunciation of gays capture media coverage; angry images fuel America's sensational discourse stage—they've become the new self-appointed representatives of global religious advocacy. Afro supporters justify opposition citing standard historical verbiage. Claimed is that no evidence of sacredly integrated gay life, or gay marriage resonates from antiquity. Intense condemnation of gays professes compassion, not "hate." A white gay mainstream, shocked and baffled, wonders in their eyes how so-called fellow Civil Rights seeking groups could in turn condemn them. Afro religious though, vehemently reject any claim to shared Civil Rights predicament made by gays. Trouble In Black Paradise tackles this entanglement head on. Highly volatile situations are fleshed-out in a way unprecedented by impassioned literary presentation. Now, a man steeped in Civil Rights tradition through Southern Baptist family initiates a sensitive, intimate dialogue with broader Afro-Christian communities. Fundi is an educator, historian and social/cultural activist of 38 years; concurrently he's been a practitioner of Buddhism and an openly gay Black man "coming out" in the pre AIDS era. Afro-Americans and the gay mainstream do not live in a vacuum. Troubling civil nuances impacting each cultural phenomenon reveals a strangely unused bridge. Here, decades of cutting edge social/anthropological research is finely organized, enlightening each side about one another—heroes, villains, institutions (uplifting and disingenuous) and media, all are laid bare. Exposes' confront negligible Civil Rights participation by an entrenched Afro-Christian establishment; white gays in parallel light reveal extreme political/multiethnic disconnect. Racism and homophobia are intertwined aspects—inexplicably tying both—and find rigorous review. Trouble In Black Paradise holds unforeseen surprises with a shocking conclusion. Fasten yourself for a beginning-to-end rollercoaster ride.

African-American Reflections on Brazil's Racial Paradise

by David J. Hellwig

Author	: David J. Hellwig
Publisher	:
Total Pages	: 258
Release	: 1992
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 9780877228929

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At the turn of the twentieth century, the popular image of Brazil was that of a tropical utopia for people of color, and it was looked upon as a beacon of hope by African Americans. Reports of this racial paradise were affirmed by notable black observers until the middle of this century, when the myth began to be challenged by North American blacks whose attitudes were influenced by the civil rights movement and burgeoning black militancy. The debate continued and the myth of the racial paradise was eventually rejected as black Americans began to see the contradictions of Brazilian society as well as the dangers for people of color. David Hellwig has assembled numerous observations of race relations in Brazil from the first decade of the century through the 1980s. Originally published in newspapers and magazines, the selected commentaries are written by a wide range of African-American scholars, journalists, and educators, and are addressed to a general audience. Author note:David Hellwigis Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.

The Anti-Black City

by Jaime Amparo Alves

Author	: Jaime Amparo Alves
Publisher	: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages	: 349
Release	: 2018-02-13
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1452956030

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An important new ethnographic study of São Paulo’s favelas revealing the widespread use of race-based police repression in Brazil While Black Lives Matter still resonates in the United States, the movement has also become a potent rallying call worldwide, with harsh police tactics and repressive state policies often breaking racial lines. In The Anti-Black City, Jaime Amparo Alves delves into the dynamics of racial violence in Brazil, where poverty, unemployment, residential segregation, and a biased criminal justice system create urban conditions of racial precarity. The Anti-Black City provocatively offers race as a vital new lens through which to view violence and marginalization in the supposedly “raceless” São Paulo. Ironically, in a context in which racial ambiguity makes it difficult to identify who is black and who is white, racialized access to opportunities and violent police tactics establish hard racial boundaries through subjugation and death. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in prisons and neighborhoods on the periphery of this mega-city, Alves documents the brutality of police tactics and the complexity of responses deployed by black residents, including self-help initiatives, public campaigns against police violence, ruthless gangs, and self-policing of communities. The Anti-Black City reveals the violent and racist ideologies that underlie state fantasies of order and urban peace in modern Brazil. Illustrating how “governing through death” has become the dominant means for managing and controlling ethnic populations in the neoliberal state, Alves shows that these tactics only lead to more marginalization, criminality, and violence. Ultimately, Alves’s work points to a need for a new approach to an intractable problem: how to govern populations and territories historically seen as “ungovernable.”

Palm Oil Diaspora

by Case Watkins

Author	: Case Watkins
Publisher	: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages	: 369
Release	: 2021-05-20
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 1108787932

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Behind the social and environmental destruction of modern palm oil production lies a long and complex history of landscapes, cultures, and economies linking Africa and its diaspora in the Atlantic World. Case Watkins traces palm oil from its prehistoric emergence in western Africa to biodiverse groves and cultures in Northeast Brazil, and finally the plantation monocultures plundering contemporary rainforest communities. Drawing on ethnography, landscape interpretation, archives, travelers' accounts, and geospatial analysis, Watkins examines human-environmental relations too often overlooked in histories and geographies of the African diaspora, and uncovers a range of formative contributions of people and ecologies of African descent to the societies and environments of the (post)colonial Americas. Bridging literatures on Black geographies, Afro-Brazilian and Atlantic studies, political ecology, and decolonial theory and praxis, this study connects diverse concepts and disciplines to analyze and appreciate the power, complexity, and potentials of Bahia's Afro-Brazilian palm oil economy.

Becoming Heritage

by Maria Fernanda Escallón

Author	: Maria Fernanda Escallón
Publisher	: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages	: 259
Release	: 2023-04-13
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 1009189832

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Since the late twentieth century, multicultural reforms to benefit minorities have swept through Latin America, however, in Colombia ethno-racial inequality remains rife. Becoming Heritage evaluates how heritage policies affected the Afro-Colombian community of San Basilio de Palenque after it was proclaimed by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2005. Although the designation partially delivered on its promise of multicultural inclusion, it also created ethno-racial exclusion and conflict among groups within the Palenquero community. The new forms of power, knowledge, skills and values created to safeguard heritage exacerbated political, social, symbolic and economic inequalities among Palenqueros, and did little to ameliorate the harsh realities of living and dying in Palenque. Bringing together broader discussions on race, nation and inclusion in Colombia, Becoming Heritage reveals that inequality in Palenque is not only a result of Black Colombians' uneven access to resources; it is enforced through heritage politics, expertise and governance.