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The present dissertation is a case study in applied phenomenology, specifically the postcolonial phenomenology of racism theorized by Lewis Gordon and applied to scholarly studies conducted on African American Jews and their kinfolk. My thesis is the following: Presumptively ontological human natures cannot function axiomatically for humanistic research on African American Jews. A humanistic science of Africana Jews must foreground the lived social worlds that permit such Jews to appear as ordinary expressions of humanity. The basic premise here is that subaltern (or denied) humanity exists in a neocolonial social world by virtue of an ordinariness that supervenes on humanity. For example, the more historians consider Africana Jews as ordinary, the more Africana Jews' humanity will appear. And the more human Africana Jews appear, the more inhuman their extraordinary appearance appears. This symbiosis constitutes a basic existential condition. When research on Africana Jews ignores this condition, it succumbs to ontological Jewishnness and other concepts rooted in what postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon calls the "colonial natural attitude. / Religion

As women began to establish themselves in the United States workforce in the first half of the twentieth century, one especial group of career women, women writers, began to use the space of their self-authored life writing narratives to inscribe their own understanding of themselves. Roundly criticized for not adhering to conventional autobiographical standards, these women writers used purposeful political strategies of resistance to craft self-authored life writing works that varied widely from the genre of autobiography. Rather than employ the usual ways critiquing autobiographical texts, I explore a deeper understanding of what these prescient women sought to do. Through revision of the terminology of the field and in consideration of a wide variety of critics and approaches, I argue that these women intentionally employed resistance in their writings. In Dust Tracks on A Road (1942), Zora Neale Hurston successfully established her own sense of herself as a black woman, who could also comment on political issues. Her fellow Southerner, Eudora Welty in One Writer’s Beginnings (1984), used orality to deliberately showcase her view of her own life. Another Southern writer, Lillian Smith in Killers of the Dream, employed an overtly social science approach to tell the life narrative of all white Christian Southerners, and described how she felt the problems of racism should be overcome. Anzia Yezierska, a Russian émigré to the United States, used an Old World European understanding of storytelling to refashion an understanding of herself as a writer and at the same time critiqued the United States in her work, Red Ribbon on a White Horse (1950). Mary Austin, a Western woman writer, saw Earth Horizon as an opportunity to reclaim the fragmentation of a woman’s life as a positive, rather than a negative space.

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In recent times, the issues surrounding the "67 borders" have become part of the public debate. In recent speeches, President Obama has suggested that Israel should return to pre-1967 borders with "land-swaps" in exchange for some form of peace with the Palestinians living within current Israeli territory. The validity of Obama's suggestion has been questioned by both members of the political left and right and in the opinion of this author, with considerable merit. However, the ultimate judgment on the validity of Obama's suggestion should be based on a study encompassing the decisions, both correct and flawed, of the leaders during the 1967 war. For this, a study of collective misperceptions, decision making, and the eventual consequences such decisions brought is necessary. That is the purpose of this thesis. For a proper analysis of the misperceptions and decision making surrounding the 1967 war, its proper to review the source material. In that light, there is no shortage of material written about the 1967 war; American, Israel, and Arab authors have all contributed to the historical records. However, much of the material is focused on a historical perspective and not on the decision-making process. There are not many exceptions. Therefore, it becomes important to compare the newer analyzed material against the primary source material and discuss the discrepancies. At the end, it will be determined whether the collective governmental decisions based upon misperceptions accelerated, decelerated, or had a neutral effect on the outbreak of the war. Comparing the source material and viewing it through the filter of newly released information will constitute the methodology whenever possible. The results of this study have revealed a mixed bag of results depending on the nation in question. This was to be expected because individual nations are subject to different misperceptions.; Nations falling under the spell of different misperceptions experience different consequences and outcomes than those who do not. Additionally, even if two separate nations are exposed to the same stimulus, their response may be completely different. In terms of the 1967 war, it can be stated that Israeli misperceptions staved off the start of the 1967 War, whereas Soviet and Arab misperceptions served to accelerate it. By contrast American misperceptions seemed to have little if any affect whatsoever. The purpose of thesis is to expose and documents misperceptions and the resulting consequences that arose from them. It is not designed to make judgments about the current political situation. However, it is the sincere hope of this author that when a situation runs parallel to the events of the 1967, some of the same mistakes can be avoided. Exactly what runs parallel, and what is significant in today's world, is left to the reader's own judgment.

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