African Americans in the New Jim Crow Era, 1968-present

Catalog description

An examination of Black political, economic, social, and cultural life in America from the era of colonization to 1905. AFAM 212 African Americans in the New Jim Crow Era, 1968-present (3) (US) This course covers the Black experience after the 1960s and the post-World War II Civil Rights Movement ended in the late 1960s. It begins with a brief overview of the major events and achievements of the Civil Rights Movement and its waning that followed in the wake of the Vietnam War and the social upheaval of the late 1960s. The course focuses on the the Black experience during the rightward shift in American politics, culture, and society in the last one third of the 20th century and the beginning decades of the 21st century. We look at the disintegration of the Democratic Party that grew out of the party's support of the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty, and the Vietnam War. We discuss the recreation of the Republican Party that followed a southern strategy to rebuild the party on the racism and discontent of white people in the southern rim and in white suburbia throughout the nation. The new Republican Party pursued a new state's rights philosophy that fused with a growing libertarianism that rejected a strong federal government and was hostile to any efforts to address social justice issues in American society. We discuss the efforts of the New Right Republicans and the newly formed Democratic Leadership Conference of the Democratic Party to dismantle many of the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, focusing on welfare reform, new sentencing laws,the privatization of the prison system and public education, all changes that forged a New Jim Crow society. We look at the role of black elected officials in this process, discussing the various differences between black members of the Democratic Leadership Conference, and those of the Progressive Black political groups. There were major political achievements in terms of more black elected officials, the Jesse Jackson Presidential Campaign, and the election of Barack Obama. However, the late 20th and early 21st Centuries were marked by growing class and racial inequality, perhaps made most visible by Hurricane Katrina when the entire world saw the consequences of decades of conservative policies that favored the rich over the poor. We discuss the popular notion of a post-racial and color blind society and the contradictions it embodies. The course ends with a discussion of newly emerging grassroots efforts to address issues such as environmental racism, school inequality and the schoolhouse to jailhouse track, police brutality, and the prison industrial complex. We discuss how African Americans today may build on the struggles and insights from the past to forge a stronger and more just future.