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Colonization, enslavement, and institutionalized oppression have disrupted the relationship between the educational experiences of Black students and the fate of African/Black communities. Research has shown that Africana studies has demonstrated the capacity to realign the education of Black students in higher education, leading to the advancement of communities of African descent. This analysis aims to present Africana studies catalytic consciousness theory as a framework for determining the effects of taking Africana studies classes on students who self-identify as being of African descent on college and university campuses—particularly at institutions where they are underrepresented. The main elements of the effects of Africana studies are illustrated through the lens of the Dagara cosmic wheel and its elements: fire, water, earth, mineral/stone, and nature/vegetation.

The subject of coloniality is a phenomenon of consciousness. It explores belief systems, culture, and ethics using conviction and rhetorical force. Mugabe is good at captivating rhetoric. His sophisticated philosophical conundrum derives from modernity, emancipation as it looks at land as a political and economic structure of decolonization. Thus, in him, the belief of self-consciousness and conviction leads to positive confrontation and violence. Peace is universally known to be a product of protracted violence. Zimbabwe went through a war of colonial genocide and mass massacres in the Second Chimurenga. Mugabe’s decolonial agenda is an epistemological extension of coloniality and neo-colonial struggles originated and revisited by Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Samora Machel. Mugabeism thrives on instilling fear into the perpetrators of violence and imperialism by using rhetoric. The doctrine—therefore—reaffirms emancipation and empowerment through postcolonial agrarian revolution rather than “land grabs.” Its magnetic effect is like opposite poles of a magnet—revolutionary versus dictatorship—sharply in contra-distinction with repression, barbarism, and cannibalism. Mugabeism means working toward a common vision of human life for Africans, it means emancipation and freedom. It is a life which is not dependent on an imposed superstructure of oppression of Blacks by Caucasians.

This is a review of the theoretical development of the concept of racism. From its 1960s activist roots, the concept lost its theoretical content in its 1970s popularization. Now racism describes virtually anything having to do with racial conflict. The concept is reintroduced and used to analyze the post-1970s race relations propositions. The declining significance of race, symbolic racism, color-blind racism, and unconscious racism missed the structural regressions brought on by the “southern strategy” to mask indirect and covert ways to continue racial oppression. As a result, the new Jim Crow was missed in race relations since the 1980s. A reconsideration of the theory of racism calls for a strategic approach to race relations research. Research should focus on the etiology of racism among European Americans and the central role played by White elites and the media in maintaining historic cultural and institutional arrangements.

This original study examines the reluctance of oppressed populations to publicly criticize the recognized performance shortcomings of leaders who are members of their identity group. Using critical race theory (CRT), this article utilizes three case examples of Black American leadership that present evidence of what the authors identify as Historical Persecution Reaction Complex (HPRC). HPRC describes four elemental arguments reflecting an oppressed identity group’s attempt to protect itself from perceived further social marginalization, limit the exacerbation of oppression, and to preserve the identity group’s leadership gains in the larger society by supporting leadership despite recognized shortcomings in the leadership. Although asserting HPRC operates as a functional reaction to oppression by serving both as an act of cohesion and resistance to oppressive structures, the authors suggest that HPRC is paradoxically detrimental to oppressed identity groups due to maintaining substandard leadership.

Black Feminist and Womanist theories are culturally based perspectives that take into consideration the contextual and interactive effects of herstory culture, race, class, gender, and other forms of oppression. These frameworks provide a contextualized understanding of African American girls’ experiences and perspectives. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the current status of research about African American girls. In addition, this article demonstrates the need for a theoretical perspective that can be used to produce research that accurately examines the lives of African American girls. Major themes of Black Feminist Thought and Womanism will serve as a viable theoretical framework for studying this population. Last, principles of a Black Feminist-Womanist research model will be defined.

Many scholars across racial lines argue that the historic election of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States marks the dawning of a “postracial era” in our country. Despite this claim and unprecedented enthusiasm that abounds within African American circles about the direction of race relations in this country, there seems to be a glaring ideological disconnect between the desire and reality of a race-free society. Focusing attention on this disconnect and the symbolic capital of “hope” that Obama’s presidency constitutes for the Black community, this article exposes the potential pitfalls of wholesale investment in postracial thinking, particularly for the most economically vulnerable African American populations. Chief among the questions that the authors ask is how African Americans can productively address the continuing challenges of race-centric oppression under an Obama administration that is itself an embodiment of this postrace thinking.

One unprobed strand of Canada-U.S. racial history demanding examination and explanation is law's obfuscated role of collusion with race—a role that more often than not has aided and abetted racism and racial discrimination. Knowledge of this historical complicity and duplicity between law and race constitutes a precondition for understanding the material reality of the racism that daily blights and scars the lifescapes of Blacks in Canada today. Diasporic literacy demands that we start opening up the Canadian record so as to better comprehend how law as an institution has so often behaved with impunity and continues to operate as if there were nothing about Black people worth honoring! Though in matters of racism and racial discrimination we in Canada have experienced the law too often as a sword of oppression and so seldom as a shield of protection, law nevertheless remains too precious a tool for Black people to abandon.

At the behest of White Americans is a postmodern form of Black oppression via White women as vehicle. In the preferential hiring of White women faculty extended from the women’s rights movement in academe is the racist discrimination against Black and other people of color. The history of women’s rights evolved in the context of racism apparent in the popularity of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Suffice it to say, that modernistic tradition in the preferential hire of White women is a prerequisite to White supremacy. Thus, in this postmodern era the gap between White women and Black folk hired at prestigious institutions of higher education has introduced a more covert but no less formidable strategy for sustaining Black oppression. Academe must confront this issue to sustain its prestige and credibility.

What should be the politics of Afrocentricity? How should Afrocentrists fight globalization's empire, the continuation of slavery by other means? This article grounds political resistance to empire in an ancient Egyptian philosophy of holism. The article's theme is that four powerful movements are converging on a new philosophy. Paradoxically, this “new” philosophy is prefigured in the oldest recorded philosophy, that of ancient Egypt. The four converging philosophies are Afrocentricity, ecofeminism, deep ecology or radical environmentalism, and Marxism. These movements are contemporary expressions of resistance to centuries if not millennia of violent oppression. The article's aim is to create a synergy among these movements to build a coalition that can challenge empire. The article briefly examines the historical career of holism in the area of ontology before considering expressions of holism in the areas of ethics and politics.

One of the persistent and perennial challenges faced by African Americans is that of cultural oppression. Although the effects of oppression on African Americans have received enormous attention, much of the focus has been on political and economic oppression as the primary sources of the social problems that African Americans confront. Less emphasis has been placed on connecting political and economic oppression to cultural oppression and on viewing cultural oppression as foundational in explaining the high societal vulnerability of African Americans. This article identifies and examines how cultural oppression has produced three risk factors—(a) cultural estrangement, (b) attenuation of Black collectivism, and (c) spiritual alien-ation—that diminish African Americans’ ability to advance and prosper in the United States. Separately and collectively, these factors place African Americans at high risk of experiencing continued obstacles toward group affirmation and empowerment.

This study theoretically frames and supports the view that dominated groups engage in more behavioral self-surveillance and therefore are more restricting of their sexuality. The authors posit that sexual behavior and attitudes in the United States reflect patterns of dominance and inequality and that these structures of sexual inequality are enshrined in taken-for-granted American moral dispositions that are in turn structured by locations in the stratification order. These data find that Black women, Black men, White women, and persons of low socioeconomic status differ in the amount of sexual capital they hold, reflecting their position in a stratified society. Results obtained from this work theoretically frame and find that persons of higher social class and White males have greater access to sexual capital. Women, particularly Black women, appear to be the most affected. Findings implicate the importance of understanding how expressions of intimacy are conditioned by group dominance.

The aim of this article is to look for common ground in the philosophies advanced by Africans in the diaspora. The Africana response to racism establishes a tradition of resistance to oppression, grounded in a philosophy of freedom. What is the meaning of being Black in the world's future? What new philosophy emerges out of Africana experience? Challenging the orthodoxy of racist ideology, this article argues that Afrocentricity allows one to embrace the divergent cultural experiences of a global village.

It is generally admitted that in the specific case of self-defense involving persons or nations, recourse to violence is a legitimate choice. Outside such cases of self-defense, only the state has the legitimate power to use violence, it being assumed that the monopoly of violence by the state is precisely how individuals give up their own right to violence and agree to come under a political authority. However, theories, such as Marxism, have also approved violence as a legitimate expression of revolutionary movements. They identify violence as a midwife of history whereby emerging higher social demands overthrow outdated and reactionary social systems. Frantz Fanon provided us with a new legitimation of violence issuing from the specific case of colonial oppression. Arguing that colonialism is qualitatively different from previous forms of conquest and subjugation, Fanon recommended violence for reasons surpassing the necessity of self-defense or the removal of a rotten social system. He sees violence as a necessary therapy for a cultural disease brought about by colonial subjugation. The mere departure of the colonizer is not enough; liberation and dignity cannot be recovered unless the colonized get involved in violent performances. This article first examines the reasons and experiences that led Fanon to endow violence with a curative effect and then evaluates the consistency of his interpretation.

Since the inception of Black studies, Black women activists and scholars have carved out an intellectual space to uncover, (re)define, contextualize, and validate Black women's realities. These efforts have manifested themselves in various related developments, including the initiation of Black women's studies (see Brewer, 2000; Hull & Smith, 1997) and the proliferation of explicitly Black feminist/womanist theories and analyses over the past two decades (e.g., Dove, 1998; Taylor, 1998a, 1998b). These theories are now being included in core introductory Black studies texts and infused into Black studies curriculum. Although many Black feminist theories differ in their emphases and conclusions regarding liberation, there are several areas of convergence, namely, that Black women are oppressed on multiple interlocking levels. Articulations of Revolutionary Black Feminism (RBF) has increasingly become visible in the literature and has provided a radical analysis of these multiple systems of oppression (e.g., Hamer & Neville, 1998; James, 1999); by radical analysis, we mean one that more explicitly outlines the impact of capitalism and class on Black

Without question, the latest source of social power is the Internet-a globally interconnected system of computer networks. It allows information to be obtained, exchanged, and archived faster, over a longer distance, and more accurately than ever before (Andersen, Bikson, Law, & Mitchell, 1995). By the year 2000, statistical estimates suggests that the number of Internet hosts will reach 187 million (Rutkowsi & the Internet Society, 1996). Although Vice President Al Gore (1995), Bill Gates, and others champion the democratizing potential of the Internet, more critical assessments have examined aspects of cyberspace that allow it to become another factor in the continued oppression of historically marginalized peoples (Anderson et al., 1995; Beckles, 1996, 1997; Brook & Boale, 1995; Corn, 1996; Defife, 1995; Dennis, 1996; Gandy, 1995; Miller, 1995). Indeed, in relation to Internet access, content, and usage, the Internet has not lived up to its democratic potential for people of African descent. A daunting revelation was that, as opposed to the Internet serving as a vehicle for a redistribution of power, what we are in fact witnessing in cyberspace is a reconcentration of power along class and race lines (Andersen et al., 1995; Beckles, 1997). As of 1996, African Americans comprised only 5% of Internet users. A 1997 study performed by the Graphic Visualization Survey (GVS) suggested that nationally, African Americans accounted for less than

The history of Black America is a well-known struggle against the oppression and domination of White America. American democracy, in its practices if not in its premises, embraces a social structure reflective of ancient Greco-Roman societies, built on the foundation of a hierarchical system with a privileged class on top and slaves at the bottom. But African American practices confound the theories of White America and its progenitors: Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. The use of humor is a case in point, as African American discourse confounds the principles of humor developed in ancient rhetorical theory.

This article evolves from my study (see Dove, 1993, 1996) of the life herstories2 of African mothers who send their children to culturally affirming schools. I focus on conceptualizing and defining the racialization of the world through European domination/White supremacy. In doing this work, I find it impossible to ignore the specificity of the oppression of African women living in male-centered Western society. My original study included 21 herstories. A significant number of these mothers had experienced negative relationships with men who played critical roles in their lives. In what seemed to be a paradox, these women neither hated nor separated themselves from men. To the contrary, those who had sons, for instance, recognized their responsibilities to their sons. They feared for their sons' survival and for the safety of African men living under White supremacy. They wanted their sons to be fearless and to respect women. To be true to their feelings required that I not only use their words to tell their stories but develop a culturally based theory that could be sensitive to their experiences as African women. Theories pertaining to the particularized nature of African women's experiences have largely been inadequate. Those related to the feminist tradition, both White and Black, have critiqued the social conditions of women within Europeanized societies and sought solutions within European paradigms. In a departure from this pattern, Hudson-Weems's (1993) Africana womanist theory critically examines the limitations of feminist theory and helps to

In many respects, Indiana is a very average state. Geographically, it is in the middle of the country; its income is about average, as is its unemployment rate and its ethnic composition. Both agriculture and industry are well represented; it is a mix of North and South. It is average-except when it comes to toxic wastes. In this category, Indiana outpaces most other states (all but seven others). It consistently ranks among the top 10 on most listings of hazardous waste sites, air pollution, and so on. Although the state as a whole is heavily polluted, there are large parts that are relatively unpolluted. Many other parts are polluted beyond use, the so-called sacrifice zones. Public policy concerning allowable levels of pollution generally favors business interests. The regulatory agency, Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), is and has been severely underfunded and understaffed. A part of an unwritten public policy concerning toxics seems to have been that you dump it in someone else's backyard-but not just anyone's backyard. Toxic waste facilities have been regularly located in areas populated by African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, or Asian Americans. Environmental racism is a very insidious form of discrimination, sometimes destroying whole communities, other

One of the consistent and disturbing features of my undergraduate and graduate training was the pervasiveness of academic theories that emerged from people who were not members of my cultural group. Regardless of the course, the textbooks used and theories discussed were almost exclusively written and developed by White people, especially White men. At first, I did not pay too much attention to this occurrence. However, as time went on and as I became exposed to knowledge that significantly underscored and illuminated my oppression as a Black man in White America, I became more conscious of the hegemony White people had over the knowledge validation and information dissemination process in academe. By the time I entered Howard University's School of Social Work to pursue an M.S.W. degree, my tolerance for social and psychological theories emanating exclusively from one cultural group was gradually waning. Although Howard and many other historically Black colleges and universities integrate alternative ideas, especially as they center around racial discrimination, the knowledge base (i.e., the textbooks, many of the required readings, and major theories or paradigms) is fundamentally Eurocentric. Thus, I became more frustrated with the Eurocentric hegemony of

The activities of the anti-Afrocentrists are clear barometers of how accepted the intellectual idea of Africans as agents has become in the intellectual community. Already pronounced in the popular cultural sphere of Africans in North America, Africa, Europe, and South America as a generator of fashions, styles, art, and music, the concept of Afrocentricity has begun to affect method and theory in the social sciences (Kershaw, 1989). Quite a number of scholars have written critiques of Afrocentricity. Some authors (e.g., Appiah, 1993; Early, 1995) have bordered on panic writing and ad hominem attacks on Afrocentrists. Others have made highly useful critiques of the intellectual ideas surrounding the Afrocentric movement. One such writer is Sidney Lemelle, whose 1993 essay, "The Politics of Cultural Existence," in Race and Class sought to maneuver through the media minefields to ascertain the authentic voice of the Afrocentrists. Lemelle (1993) seeks to place Afrocentricity within the context of the continuing struggle against oppression. Indeed, he writes that his article is "an attempt to gauge the importance of Pan Africanist and Black Nationalist thought as forces for change through a historical and contemporary examination of their influence on popular consciousness and liberation struggles" (p. 95). I believe that Lemelle has attempted an important critique of the Afrocentric idea. He raises four questions about the "debate" surrounding the politics of cultural existence

In this paper the authors argue that Euro-American ‘mainstream’ models of psychological intervention have limited value in the context of South African apartheid. Given the unique nature of political oppression and economic disparity, apartheid in South Africa is a contributing etiological factor in the onset of psychological difficulties. The case is made that counselling and psychotherapy must go beyond merely dealing with intrapsychic phenomena, toward a mandate to address political, economic and social variables which influence behavior. Reformulations have occurred in the nature and form of apartheid resulting in a dynamic political and economic system that promises further shifts in the future. Given the undeniable delay between legal and political change on one hand, and the fundamental transformation of South Africa from a position of racism and violence to a democratic, non-racial society on the other hand, the search for alternative psychological intervention models will remain an imperative.

In both Britain and the United States, slaves were chattels possessing no rights whatever in law or custom, and instances of gross maltreatment were not uncommon (Fyfe, 1962, p. 13). The so-called free Blacks in both countries were only nominally free. Not surprisingly, some White and Black persons saw emigration of Blacks to Africa as a way out of their oppression in the New World. Aided by some British philanthropists, notably Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, and Thomas Clarkson, and by the British government, about 400 Blacks recently freed by British law and nicknamed the "Black Poor" emigrated from Britain to Sierra Leone in April 1787. In January 1792 and September 1800, about 1,190 Nova Scotian Blacks and about 550 Maroons, respectively, emigrated from Canada to Sierra Leone, aided by the Sierra Leone Company, which some British philanthropists and merchants had incorporated in June 1791 to trade with, and administer, Sierra Leone (Akpan, 1978, p. 93).' Similarly in 1822, about 80 African Americans settled in Liberia under the patronage of the American Colonization Society (ACS) and the U.S. government. By 1900 over 16,000 African Americans and about 400 Afro-West Indians had settled in Liberia, aided largely by the ACS. Additionally, between 1822 and 1862, about 5,500 recaptured Africans, mostly people from the Congo region who were seized from slavers in the Atlantic waters by American

Most Americans are aware of the high rates of social problems among Black Americans. For example, Blacks are disproportionately represented among Americans experiencing academic failure, teenage pregnancy, female-headed families, chronic unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction, and criminal victimization (Poussaint, 1983; U.S. News and World Report, 1986). Consequently, there is a great deal of debate among politicians, journalists, academics, and ordinary citizens concerning the etiology of these problems. Those who attempt to explain the prevalence of these conditions among Blacks tend to argue one of three positions: genetic inferiority, culture of poverty, or racial oppression. Advocates of the genetic inferiority perspective argue that the high rates of social problems among Blacks is a product or expression of Black peoples' innate inferiority to Caucasians and other racial groups. Moreover, advocates of this perspective argue that Blacks possess genetic traits and characteristics that predispose them to engage in problematic behavior at higher rates than White (Garrett, 1961; Jensen, 1973). A major problem with genetic inferiority theories is that advocates of this perspective tend to differentially apply it in explaining the causes of social problems among various racial and ethnic groups. For example, White Americans have higher rates of academic failure, teenage pregnancy, female-headed families, drug addiction, and criminal involvement than do Europeans (Archer and Gartner, 1983; Time Magazine, 1985). However, the rate dif

The history of the Africana woman reveals her peculiar predicament within the dominant culture as victim of a tripartite form of oppression-racism, classism, and sexism, respectively. Since American slavery, she and the Africana man have experienced much brutality; however, her womanhood has placed her in an even more vulnerable position. Whether an African-American writer chooses to emphasize oppression based on race, class and/or sex, invariably the victimization of the Africana woman surfaces. For example, Frederick Douglass (1968: 60) notes in My Bondage and My Freedom that the "slave woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her master." Furthermore, Blassingame (1979: 155) asserts in The Slave Community that "frequently they [the slave masters] purchased comely black women for their concubines." Hence, while racism is their major focus, sexism and classism also are key issues in the African-American experience. As institutionalized racism has been a much debated subject, the present emphasis on class and female subjugation for the Africana woman then becomes a revived or fresh case of study for today's critic, particularly with women writers. My sense is that, relative to the times, this present emphasis merits serious consideration since racism continues to be in the forefront of African-American life. The intent of this literary analysis is to show how two twentiethcentury African-American women writers, Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker, depict the three-dimensional peculiarity of the Afric

Social science represents as much an expression of a people's ideology as it does a defense of that ideology (Asante, 1980). The extent to which that ideology contains elements of implicit oppression is the extent to which that particular social science is in fact an instrument of oppression. Nobles (1978a) discusses the fact that "Western Science, particularly social science, like the economic and political institutions has become an instrument designed to reflect the culture of the oppressor and to allow for the more efficient domination and oppression of African peoples." Consequently, the uncritical acceptance of the assumptions of Western science by African people is to participate in our own domination and oppression. Nobles, in the same discussion, goes on to justify the need for a social science system reflective of our cultural reality. Our objective in this discussion is to identify some characteristics of Western social science and to suggest some alternative assumptions for the establishment of an African social science. African social scientists have failed to come to grips with the fact that the tools that they have acquired in the course of their training in the Western social science tradition have illequipped them to deal with the fundamental task of liberating

The relationship between stress and health has been well established. However, little attention has been paid to extraordinary socio-cultural factors which precipitate stress, such as racism, sexism, etc. In a racist society, one would expect that increased stress and anxiety might be precipitated within those groups toward whom the discrimination is directed. While a common sense analysis would lead to this conclusion, the quantification of data confirming it is absent in psychological literature, particularly in terms of physiological effects and reactions to oppression. The purpose of this study is to examine the potential relationships between physiological responses to anxiety and stress, and reactions to oppression among Black males. The aim will be not only to explicate such a relationship, but also to explore the relevance of quantitative methods for increasing our understanding of human behavior from Afrocentric, as well as Eurocentric, perspectives. Hector Myers (1976) describes membership in the Black race as entailing exposure to highly stressful experiences, triggered essentially by the fact of race. He goes on to identify poverty and ethnicity as two of the most important consequential factors contributing to

It is clear that the more powerful nations have systematically stripped the poorer, developing nations of the world of their rights, their strengths, and their resources. These larger nations have entered into local politics to such an extent that selfdetermination, in the classic sense, has been virtually denied the developing nations. Indeed, the developing nations are being exploited both by outsiders and by insiders who arealigned with outsiders. Their peoples are being deprived of their rightful powers and rewards. Initially the colonialists accomplished this by plundering-the use of brute force. Later came gunboat diplomacy-employing threats of force. Today the neo-colonialists and imperialists use words as the chief means of control. The masses in the developing countries are being told untruths and half-truths designed to alleviate frustration. But the power of words relies on a plethora of rules and connotations. Many today feel that the continuing war of words is the single biggest cause of oppression in the world.

Many changes have occurred in this country since 1954, covering a wide array of personalities, values, and institutions and bringing about a marked change in the functioning of society as a whole. These changes have been most dramatic within the institution of the family, where the most telling effect is on our personal lives. We are all, to some degree, affected by increasing sexual permissiveness, changes in sexrole expectations, a declining fertility rate, altered attitudes toward childbearing and rearing, a continuing increase in the divorce rate, and the like. One would not expect Black families to be immune to the forces modifying our family forms. There is ample evidence that they are not. At the same time, their special status as a racial minority, with a singular history, continues to give Black marital and family patterns a unique character. Despite what many allege to be the positive gains of the sixties and seventies, the problems of poverty and racial oppression continue to plague large numbers of Afro-Americans. Black Americans are still spatially segregated from the majority of the more affluent white citizenry and certain cultural values distinguish their family life in form and content from the middle-class, white Anglo-Saxon model.

Of all the races and varieties of men which have suffered from this feeling, the colored people of this country have endured most. They can resort to no disguises which will enable them to escape its deadly aim. They carry in front the evidence which marks them for persecution. They stand at the extreme point of difference from the Caucasian race, and their African origin

An examination of recent research on African-American women in higher education demonstrates that the literature holds a minority position not unlike that of African-American women in society. There is not a great deal of research on African-American women in higher education. Yet, the current and developing body of research on African-American women in higher education provides groundwork for realizing our history, dispelling myths, relating our experiences, formulating theoretical frameworks, and establishing our identity in higher education (and in the larger social structure). Why is there a lack of research about African-American women in higher education? In the introduction to their anthology of writings on AfricanAmerican women's studies, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave, Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (1982) affirm that the intellectual void surrounding African-American women is totally related to the politics of a white male society. This society does not recognize, and denies, the importance of African-American women's lives and contributions through racial, sexual, and class oppression. Hull et al. call for an examination of the lives and experience of ordinary, as well as exceptional African-American women from a pro

During his lifetime Martin Luther King, Jr. justifiably received numerous citations and recognition for his accomplishments to better the lot of oppressed people. Standing in the limelight of the Civil Rights struggle he became, during the 'fifties, one of the foremost Black leaders within America. Such acclaim, however, seems to overwhelm an equally deserving consideration, namely, the significance of King's written works. A mere handful of people bother to acknowledge that King wrote extensively during his lifetime; few dare to probe his writings seriously in terms of accuracy, perception, and prediction of the future with respect to the Black condition in a White America. Inasmuch as social scientists are inclined to cast leaders of a social movement into a "charismatic" mold, there is little likelihood of perceiving King other than as a maker of events and, upon death, a mere historical figure, for a certain moment of racial strife, who never gained, in spite of numerous publications, academic standing as a major interpreter of Black-White relations in America. This in spite of the fact that even revolutionaries, in articulating the realities of social oppression, often prove more perceptive than erstwhile

This research was motivated by curiosity about how AfroAmericans view the recent detente in Sino-American relations. As it has been known, the People's Republic of China perceives Afro-Americans as being "subjected to the ruthless oppression and exploitation of the United States monopoly capitalist class for a long time" (Peking Review, 1971). The Chinese have long regarded the problems of Afro-Americans as their own problems and accordingly show their concern. In the eyes of the Chinese, the white-dominated government and "monopoly capitalist class" of the United States appears to be not only the enemy of the Chinese people but also the oppressor of the Afro-American minority. However, almost all of a sudden, a ping pong ball cracked open the barrier of hostility between China and the United State. Within this situational context, how do Afro-Americans look upon this relaxation of tension between these two countries?

Reality is not directly available to inquiry. This is indeed no less true in the physical sciences as in the social sciences. Yet, particularly in the social sciences, reality becomes the documented product of our perceptions. As such, reality can be viewed as the consensually validated intersection of logic, axiology, and epistemology. Thus, even when existing evidence is contradictory, beliefs may continue to influence how we perceive certain phenomena. When such beliefs are further corroborated by erroneous facts, the sustained perpetuation of a distorted perception of reality is all but inescapable. This has been especially true relative to conceptions of the differential economic status of black males and females. In particular is the belief that slavery and oppression so structured the economic basis of black existence that the black man could not find work, making it necessary for the black woman to assume the economic responsibility for the black family (Moynihan, 1965).

A n area which has traditionally received least attention by black scholars is the study of the varied instruments of social welfare. Without much question, the system of public welfare persists in being one of the major sources from which money (despite its meagerness) consistently flows into the various black ghettos across this nation. In addition, it has become identified as one of the major social institutions which destroys, undermines aspirations, and perpetuates a condition of dependence. Through the provision of inadequate, inappropriate, and mislocated services, it systematically destroys the ability of black users to become self-reliant and in large measure modifies the ability of people to work for change. Although the systems of social welfare are predicated on the theme of temporary usage and are considered to be usable in special conditional emergencies, because of the pervasiveness of racism, structured discrimination, and oppression, blacks who have sought survival through attachment to one or another system of welfare help have found that they become inextricably bound to these systems of subsistence.