Journal of Black Studies

This meta-analysis of 42 studies examines the relationship between parental involvement and the academic achievement and school behavior of African American pre-kindergarten through college freshman school children. Analyses determined the effect sizes for parental involvement overall and specific categories of involvement. Results indicate a significant relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement and overall outcomes, but not for school behavior. This relationship between involvement and academics existed both for younger (pre-elementary and elementary school) and older (secondary school and college freshman) students, as well as for certain specific components of parental involvement. Parental involvement, as a whole, was associated with better school outcomes by nearly .4 of a standard deviation unit. The significance of these results is discussed.

Perhaps nowhere else in southern Africa has liberation war memories had such a stranglehold on political developments than in Zimbabwe post 2000. In this period, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) devised and operationalized the Third Chimurenga—a cache of anti-colonial, anti-West, and anti-opposition narratives that essentially re-constructs political power as inextricably bound up with the liberation struggle, for long an exclusive site of the party’s claims to political legitimacy. The Third Chimurenga often manifested in the form of political rhetoric by political leaders and reinforced by an array of cultural performances such as song and other forms of spectacular dramaturgy such as national commemorations. The literary text is the latest participant in the Third Chimurenga politics and aesthetics. In this article, I read Mashingaidze Gomo’s novel A Fine Madness as a Third Chimurenga literary narrative, centering on how its representations of the post-2000 political and economic crisis relates to the underlying counter-discourse of the empirical Third Chimurenga. This article dialogues with the nature of the connection between Gomo’s novel and the empirical Third Chimurenga. This reading reveals how the literary text exploits the affective and aesthetic dimensions of creative art to portray a vivid picture of the Third Chimurenga, which can move the reader to a new consciousness of issues around Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle and the contemporary land politics.

Paul Robeson is one of the greatest yet most unknown figures of the 20th century. This article goes beyond the traditional bibliographic style of documenting this great life, toward constructing a usable philosophical framework from it. Utilizing Robeson’s own works, and building on the small critical literature already in existence, I present his philosophical framework - comprised of anti-colonialism, socialism, and human rights. I present these dense, interconnected, and ever-expansive philosophical stances into a form of communication that can be easily understood, evaluated, taught, and compared. Understanding the philosophies, actions, and examples of his ideological framework will provide the appropriate contextual background for understanding (to play off the title of Robeson’s 1958 book, Here I Stand) where Paul Robeson philosophically stood.

This article conceptualizes visual and textual iteration as a means of storytelling in the work of Elizabeth Catlett. Catlett addresses social change and has been associated with several artistic and political periods, including Social Realism, the Mexican School, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Arts Movement—a testament to her extensive range in championing marginalized peoples via prints and sculpture. The dominant figures in her work reflect not only inequalities inherent in systemic racism and instances of violence toward African Americans, but also beauty of Black and indigenous bodies and hope for the future. The role repetition plays in her artistic vocabulary, here inclusive of the written word and images, prove that “intertextuality” can occur within the frame of a single illustration.

The reality television show Love and Hip Hop New York enjoyed immense popularity during its fourth season. The show, which profiles the love and relationship experiences of its Black and Latino cast, overwhelmingly perpetuates stereotypes of people of color through a narrow lens of Black masculinity and femininity. This article uses critical discourse analysis to unveil the ways in which the show invites its cast members to create hegemonic representations of themselves. It also argues against the effects model in hip-hop scholarship—which dogmatically asserts that these types of representations are inherently harmful to Black youth. Using audience analysis, the article works to add complexity to the findings of the critical discourse analysis by inviting young Black women to talk back to the representations transmitted by the show.