This study is premised on the assumption that within the Akan of West Africa, proverbs function not merely as linguistic artifacts but as epistemic resources that articulate how knowledge is sought, validated, and enacted within society. Using qualitative content analysis, we identify five knowing types (individual, spirituo‑centric, collaborative, experiential, and traditional) and three epistemic nuances (excess, limits, and opacity) reflected in 285 Akan proverbs. The findings highlight the pluralistic and externally situated nature of Akan knowing. By foregrounding proverbs as an empirical source of epistemic insight, this paper contributes to broader efforts to document Indigenous African knowledge systems.
This study examines how second-generation Ethiopian Americans in the United States construct panethnic identities. Drawing on ethnoracialization theory and qualitative data from 51 participants (focusing on 13 who identify as panethnic), the research explores factors that contribute to panethnic identity formation, the lived experiences associated with this identity, and the broader implications for understanding Black diversity in the United States. Findings highlight the influence of socioeconomic status, neighborhood context, shared exposure to prejudice, and cultural ties, and demonstrate how these factors intersect and foster both solidarity and subgroup diversity within Black America. The lived experiences of these individuals deepen our understanding of Black identity in the post-1960s United States, illuminating a panethnicity defined by recognition of subgroup diversity alongside a broader sense of solidarity.
This study is a “raciolinguistic genealogy” that theorizes the analytic category white-duplicity , which refers to instances in which Black speakerhood is paradoxically both affirmed and negated. I first trace the problem named by “white-duplicity” within a genealogy of Black thinkers, utilizing the discussion as a springboard to investigating white-duplicity in three discursive contexts: early modern ideologies of language and speakerhood as exemplified in “Enlightenment” origin of language theories, acts of enslavement through deceit, and surveillance of the slave ship. From the initial analysis, I conclude that anti-Black erasure is characteristically attended by the affirmation or recognition of Black speaker/personhood. Afterward, I engage in a “reconfiguration” of the events surrounding Rachel Jeantel’s testimony in the trial of George Zimmerman. The reconfiguration demonstrates how instances of white-duplicity are productive of “illegitimate” subject-positions from which a praxis of “listening from below” can be mobilized to critique the binary oppositions which underwrite “raciolinguistic ideologies of anti-Blackness” and other master narratives of modernity. Overall, the analysis indicates how a response to anti-Black erasure which exploits the conditions for unsettling erasure is preferable to the production of “vindicationist narratives.”
How do Black women’s intersecting racial and gender identities shape their political experiences, relationships with colleagues and constituents, and policy priorities in the Deep South? Drawing on Nadia Brown’s representational identity theory—which links who a legislator is to what she does—I analyze a focus group of five Black women serving in elected and appointed roles in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, supplemented by six months of participant observation. Four themes emerge: interpersonal dynamics governed by controlling images, particularly the Sapphire, or “angry Black woman,” trope; tenuous relationships with authority rooted in patriarchal gatekeeping that operates within Black political networks as well as across racial lines; cultural forces shaped by intergenerational trauma and Southern religious tradition; and structural barriers of racism, classism, and institutional inequality. I argue that these identities function not as background characteristics but as active forces that drive both the barriers participants face and the substantive representation they provide. This study contributes to scholarship on Black women’s political leadership in the American South, where race, gender, and regional conservatism combine to create a distinctly challenging environment for Black women in public service.
