Steve Biko returns and continues to illuminate the postapartheid social order. His contestation by various claimants for different reasons shows his continuing and lasting legacy. However he finds a special niche among a disenfranchised and frustrated township youth who are trapped in township struggles where they attempt to derive a meaning. More important is why these youth who neither saw nor participated in the struggle against apartheid are turning to an age old idea like Black Consciousness in a context of the pervasive influence of non-racialism, rainbowism and triumphalism of neo-liberalism. The realisation is that a human-centred society with a human face which Black Consciousness practitioners advocated and strove for is yet to be realised. This shows the anomalies and maladies of a postcolonial dispensation where ideals, principles and teleology of the liberation struggle are yet to be consummated. Thus Black Consciousness as a node in a long thread of black political thought in the country; and as a spirit, will always be both an emotion, and a motion that finds a new meaning with each generation.

Thesis (Ph.D. Communication Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2020 / Hair has been a marker of identity that communicates issues of race, acceptability, class and beauty. Evidence of this was during colonialism and apartheid where South African identities were defined by physical characteristics such as the texture of one’s hair, and the colour of one’s skin. Whiteness was the epitome of beauty which came with certain privileges. Non-White bodies were defined as part of a particular narrative that saw them as well as their hair as inferior to that of White bodies. Academic literature continues to engage African hair from the perspective of a colonial legacy through a postcolonial lens. This study, however, asserts a shift in engaging African hair and introduces an African identity which is re-empowered and liberated through agency and choice, and active participation in the construction of its own identity. This shift in engagement also relinquishes the African identity’s association with the dominant narrative of its conformity to a single European ideology of beauty and identity by introducing a (post)colonial, postmodern theory of a Multi-flex, Neo-hybrid identity which forms part of the theoretical framework of this study. This study draws on the theoretical positions of postmodern theory about the concepts of ‘self’ and identity. It engages interpretations of postmodernism and ‘self’ through the works of Kenneth Gergen and Robert Lifton who provide critical theoretical insight into postmodernism and identity. It also engages critical scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Franz Fanon, Kwame Appiah, Charles Ngwenya and Achille Mbembe, amongst others. Through this theoretical lens, I examine the role of the media in the presentation of the panoply of hair (styles) to South African women in the process of constructing a fluid, flexible and hybrid identity that decentres the ideology of rigid racial identity. I also critically investigate whether non-White women who lived during the colonial-apartheid era and those born in a free democratic era share this multi-flex, neo-hybrid identity of the postmodern woman. Thus this study aims to critically explore social narratives of South African women’s hair and how the media perpetuate the construction of a new postmodern African female identity within the backdrop of the commodification of hair and identity in a globalised market and media environment. Coupled with an interpretivist paradigm, a phenomenological v approach was adopted for this study. Data was collected from print media content material namely, DRUM Hair magazine (editions 2014-2019) due to the assortment of hairstyles and identities it provides for African women. Data was also collected in the form of semi-structured interviews/personal accounts/stories presented as phenomenological narratives from colonial-born Coloured and colonial-born Black female participants. Focus group interviews were conducted on post-apartheid/born-free Coloured and Black female South African participants to understand how these women construct their identities through hairstyle choices and the impact this has on the (re)presentation of their identities within the global beauty market environment. These diverse participants aged from 18 to 104 allow me to trace, if any, the changes in perception of hair and hairstyles from colonial-apartheid South Africa to the new and free post-apartheid South Africa. The results of the study show that media enable the African woman to construct a postmodern identity through the multiplicity of hairstyles/identities available to her. It also provides the African woman with the tools to create various identities for herself through the diversity of hairstyles available to her. The African woman who is exposed to an assortment of hairstyles can navigate from one identity to the next without being loyal to one identity which is typical of the postmodern self. Another finding is that coloniality seems to continue to shape the identities of women born during the colonial apartheid era. But for those born during the (post)colonial and post-apartheid era, they embrace a navigatory form of hybridity that is not loyal to one identity but explores various forms of identity, which the market place affords them and the media perpetuate in the construction of multi-flex, neo-hybrid and postmodern identities. The implication of this study is that it is liberating since it allows us to critically review our identity and what we deem as beautiful and to question the daily choices we make not only with our hairstyles but with fashion, food and other cultural elements that shape our performance of identities. / National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) and South African Humanities Deans Association (SAHUDA)

The present study integrated Critical Multiracial Theory (MultiCrit) and Minority Stress Theory and examined the associations between racial identity invalidation, a racial stressorunique to biracial or multiracial individuals, internalized racial oppression and self-esteem in a sample of 211 biracial Asian-White emerging adults. The study specifically explored four domains of internalized racial oppression unique to biracial individuals (internalized racial inferiority, minority identity shame, distancing from minority identity, colorism). The study also sought to examine whether racial socializations strategies unique to multiracial families(multiracial identity socialization, navigating multiple heritages socialization, preparation for monoracism socialization, and race-conscious socialization) moderated the relationship between racial identity invalidation and internalized racial oppression. Results from a path analysis indicated that there was a significant positive relationship between racial identity invalidation and minority identity shame, a significant positive relationship between internalized racial inferiority and self-esteem, and a significant negative relationship between minority identity shame and self-esteem. Minority identity shame also significantly mediated the relationship between racial identity invalidation and self-esteem. Preparation for monoracism socialization significantly moderated the relationship between racial identity invalidation and minority identity shame. Implications for future research and clinical practice with biracial Asian-White individuals are discussed.

This narrative inquiry study explored the lived experiences of five Black male music educators in the New York Metropolitan area. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of how Black male music educators theorized Blackness, disrupted anti-Blackness, and cultivated Black Joy within predominantly White K-12 learning spaces.This study sought to provide Black male music educators space to narratively display their genius, restore their humanity, and celebrate their Blackness and Black Joy. The researcher conducted two semi-structured interviews with each participant, focused on their identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and joy. This study used Abolitionist Pedagogy, Gholdy Muhammad’s Culturally and Historically Responsive Education Model, and Black Critical Theory frameworks as lenses to interpret the lived experiences. This study took place in two phases over four months, beginning October 2023 through January 2024. The participants’ responses to the interview questions helped generate the findings, narratives, and themes of their lived experiences within predominantly White K-12 learning spaces. The Black Male music educators in this study offered several ways on how they celebrate their Blackness and Black Joy, in the face of anti-Black sentiment. Their daily presence in their learning spaces, despite being the only Black male in some instances, was a conscious act of defying the inherent structures created to keep them out. Their overflowing expressions of Black Joy through family, faith, culture, and strength created learning spaces that support intersectional justice and uplifts the humanity of others.

This qualitative arts-based narrative inquiry explored and analyzed the experiences of five Black women dance educators who teach with micro-interventions of care, love, and mentorship toward racial uplift in Black youth. This inquiry’s data collection included participants’ journal entries, sent weekly via email; one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with the women; and roundtable sista’ circles convened within community dialogues. Participants were prompted to share stories of their lived experiences as community members, artists, educators, and scholars. The collected data was analyzed using thematic and narrative methods, beginning with deductive coding and continuing with chunked comparisons of the women’s narratives. This study’s findings revealed that the women’s narratives as educators, persons, and community leaders, centered Blackness, care and love for themselves and their community, and Afrofuturity extant in their dance education practices. The narratives themselves revealed anecdotes of community, artistry, spirituality, culture, and healing, told and retold in the form of storytelling and poetry. This study sheds light on the unique experiences and perspectives of Black women dance educators, highlighting the importance of their contributions to the field. This study also proposes future considerations for research and practice in unearthing more stories of dance education as a micro-intervention of care, love, and mentorship toward racial uplift in Black youth. The inquiry and its results hold ramifications for and suggest a new vision for Black youth as well as educators that is a joyful Afrofuturistic dance education praxis rooted in peace, love, harmony, and #JOY.

The path of Cuba’s cultural economy and patrimony deviated substantially during the “Special Period in the Time of Peace” (1991-1999), including the collapse of state sponsorship for the arts and the opening of the Cuban economy to foreign investment. This opening was slight but significant. Artists found themselves in a position where their work no longer solely existed as patrimony of the state but as personal methods of success and survival. My dissertation analyzes how three Black Cuban artists, René Peña, Belkis Ayón, and Elio Rodríguez, engineer and manipulate self-portraiture as a critical tool through which they can explore issues of belonging and place in connection to the Cuban national project. I attest that each artist positions representations of themselves, or their avatars, within their work to examine what it means to be Cuban, Black, and human. I begin my project by establishing how the figure of the White, hyper-masculine man has served as the ideal Cuban citizen following the revolution and independence. Cuban artists have explored themes of national identity and belonging since the mid-nineteenth century, in many instances reflecting on race and the presence of African descendants in Cuban society. The continued discourse on “racelessness” and the supposed eradication of racism in the country made the potential to be both Black and Cuban impossible. Official discourses on race after the 1959 revolution attempted to erase, and in many senses, whitewash, the historical legacy of racism in Cuba through the expressly public abolishment of discrimination and difference in Cuban society. An attempt to erase all forms of difference, or the visibility of difference, within Cuban society accompanied advances in equal opportunity to jobs, education, and housing for the Black Cuban community after the revolution. My project focuses on how Peña, Ayón, and Rodriguez contest the long-established hierarchy of race and gender in official cubanía [Cubanness] through visual discourses. I argue that the works of Peña, Ayón, and Rodríguez are not examples of a hybrid, creolized synthesis but instead working products of investigation and play. Considering identity as a process and project always in flux, I contend that these three artists use aesthetic strategies to represent Cubanness and Blackness as not mutually exclusive but simultaneously iterative and dynamic. Considering their artistic practices as performances of Blackness and self, I present these artists as critical interlocutors of the cultural moment. I argue that Peña, Rodríguez, and Ayón mobilize the Afro-diasporic conception of the self as external and multiple through their avatars as a form of self-fashioning. An avatar functions as a proxy for a person, acting as an extension of their self, traversing locations and discourses otherwise inaccessible to the primary self. Avatars blur the boundaries between the material and the virtual world and muddle the distinctions between subject and object, flesh and body. Peña, Rodríguez, and Ayón create portraits of their “other selves” to assert their subjectivity and personhood in realms that otherwise negate their presence. Through a close visual analysis of the work created by Peña, Ayón, and Rodríguez, I show how their use of alter-egos elucidates their experiences of the materiality of Blackness and the multiplicity of being. I argue that this is mainly present in the material processes inherent in the print-making and performative productions included in each. For example, in terms of color, Peña and Ayón use black and white critically, manipulating the various gray scales between the two tones to illustrate the many potentialities of cubanía. Rodríguez has interestingly moved into soft sculptural forms of blacks and whites, but the works discussed here use fixed colors to create a humorous play with traditional Cuban aesthetics. Each artist uses color differently, but through their processes, they imbue their works with a sense of materiality and personhood that is only possible through print. For these artists, the work’s creation becomes a performance of self-definition that parallels the many ways we perform race, nationhood, and belonging.

This qualitative mixed methods study examines how six participants- three Black college-level art students and three accomplished Black artists-educators, respond to curated installations designed to probe their understandings of and reactions to depictions of Black Americans in examples of visual culture from the United States of America (US), namely early film and television. The participants viewed and responded to two presentations designed from two contextual analyses. Exhibition Part 1 featured popular early US American films, animated movies, and a television sitcom from 1915 to 1979. Exhibition Part 2 displayed artistic, historical, and scholarly materials from 1903 to the present, which related to the content in Exhibition Part 1 to examine the enduring presence and implications of the famous media. Specifically, this study addressed the following questions: Given that stereotypical depictions of Black people in popular American visual culture have historically influenced societal perceptions of Black people and how these stereotypes can manifest into racial propaganda for capitalist means, what might we learn about the enduring nature of racial stereotypes from the responses of six Black participants to a curated visual arts exhibition based on the theme racial stereotyping? Given a specifically created visual arts exhibition embedding several racist tropes, how do three Black college art educators and three Black college art students recognize the stereotypes embedded in the exhibition and know anything about their origins and histories? What have participants' experiences been with the stereotypes they recognize, and in what different forms and settings? If some of the racial stereotypes embedded in the visual installation are unrecognized, how do participants account for this? The data analysis, especially cross-examinations, revealed participants' assessments of the exhibitions, which centered on their observances of media created by White US American artists that spotlighted fictional Black characters in creative storylines and how these endeavors sought to control and define Black Americans. When discussing Exhibition Part 1, participants had unfavorable reactions to the content and witnessed unfavorable depictions that reminded them of unfavorable lived experiences. When answering questions about Exhibition Part 2, their remarks primarily cited control, gains, and trauma as examples of racial propaganda for capitalist means. The concluding discussion of the significant takeaways from this study centered on six salient implications for art and art education: 1. Artistic Racism and Art as Racial Capitalism in popular American visual culture 2. Action-oriented, racially conscious educational practices 3. The fundamental need for Black Intellectual Thought 4. Subsequent scholarly work for the researcher 5. Black Research Throughout this study, I evoked the Black gaze, meaning I approached and tackled this scholarly work from my perspective as a Black queen, a proud descendant of and advocate for African people and the Black Race. I lead with a culturally informed Black stance and dare to do so in academia. It is for readers who are the same. Despite identifying differently, it is also for those who can decenter themselves to acknowledge and consider information about African Americans, the Black Race, and viewpoints of Black individuals to appreciate this study and its suggestions. KEYWORDS:artistic racism, the Black gaze, the Black Race, Blackness, depictions, education, film, media, lived experiences, perceptions, Race, racial bias, racial capitalism, racial gaslighting, racial propaganda, racial stereotypes, racism, representations in early US media, research, social and racial implications, social assumptions, teaching, visual art, visual culture, US American history

This study investigated the communication rules in the family structures of the Maasai and the Akamba cultures with the aim of comparing the core symbols emanating from the rules. The researcher used the qualitative design to identify and compare the communication rules of the rural Maasai of the Rift Valley Province and the rural Akamba of the Eastern Province of Kenya. The study focused on male and female adult individuals in family situations who were familiar with the traditional expectations of their cultures. Data was collected through focus group and in-depth interviews. From the data it was concluded that although the Maasai and the Akamba are from two different ethnic groups of Africa, namely the Nilo-Hamitic and Bantu respectively, the core symbols of their communication rules that are similar far outnumber those that are different. This phenomenon was noted when comparing the different levels of relationship within the family structures, namely, communication between spouses, communication between parents and children, and communication between siblings. One of the important findings of this study is that there are more similarities than differences in the cultures of the Maasai and the Akamba at family level. Therefore, the similarities of core symbols could imply that ethnic differences should not lead to the assumption that cultural practices will be significantly different. However, similar cultural practices or core symbols might not necessarily rule out conflict, as was indeed the case with the Maasai and the Akamba.Another finding was that the most outstanding core symbol in both cultures was respect, which was the fulcrum of most of the other core symbols in the communication rules. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication)

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This thesis is not structured as a conventional empirical study (theoretical background, method, results, discussion), but instead consists of an iterative series of attempts at making sense of same-race prejudice – hopefully systematically homing in on a richer and more acute understanding of the phenomenon. The chapters are grouped together in pairs or triplets – each grouping addressing different but related perspectives on the problem. Chapters 1 and 2 are contextual, setting the scene historically and conceptually. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 introduce three different perspectives on using phenomenology as a means of approaching the issue of same-race prejudice. Chapters 6 and 7 are dedicated to looking at the themes of same-race prejudice, a critical interrogation of the themes from the interview discussions, the literature and how same-race prejudice is experienced, played out and sustained. Chapter 8 links back to Chapter 1 by casting another look at sensitivity and responsiveness to same-race prejudice by organisations whose work is supposedly on prejudice eradication. The chapter further links with both Chapters 3 and 4 by calling upon a phenomenological understanding to humanity as what can bring a liveable change to humanity regarding same-race prejudice. Chapter 9 serves as a summary of all the chapters, what each individually and collectively hoped to achieve, and the general findings and statements about same-race prejudice from the chapters’ theoretical discussions, research interviews, and critical interrogation of both the mundane and theoretical understanding. / Psychology / D. Phil. (Psychology)