The paradox of black patriotism: double consciousness

This study explores the double consciousness of black American patriotism in the modern era marked by publicized police killings of blacks, widespread antiracism protests, and concern for racially motivated violence. This analysis provides timely ethnographic insights into black identities that vividly captures black voices; fuses classical and contemporary race theories and extends them into the literature on patriotism; and proposes a model for understanding how double consciousness is negotiated in personal identity construction. I conducted twenty-two in-depth interviews of black Americans. I explored three questions: (1) how they interpret patriotism; (2) whether their interpretations affirm or defy their black identity; and (3) how tensions between race and nation manifest in their patriotic identity development. Many denounced hegemonic patriotism and constructed alternative patriotic brands. These brands are situated on an “Axis of Identities”, which is comprised of four profiles: the bystander, the sycophant, the subverter, and the conscious patriot.     

Polish Lebensraum: the colonial ambition to expand on racial terms

Lebensraum – the space a state believes is required for its natural expansion – has a pivotal role in the global expansion projects. Whenever this concept is discussed, it is almost exclusively reduced to the Imperial Russia’s domination of less-stately countries in Central and Eastern Europe; the British exploration and colonization of territories in Africa and Asia; the French settlements in parts of the Caribbean Islands and Africa; the German experimentation in South-West Africa, and the Dutch seaborne competing with the Spanish and Portuguese’s expansionism. Study related to Poland’s attempted acquisition of colonial territories outside Europe is rarely discussed. Drawing on the activities of the Polish Colonial Society, this article contends that the building blocks of colonization were not confined solely to European imperial powers. As colonization forged ahead in the twentieth century, Poland seemed to be the country where colonialism played a significant role in both national and transnational politics.     

The intersectional,structuralist, and anti-geneticism centres of Black Lives Matter

The paradoxes, ironies, and juxtapositions of Black Lives Matter (BLM) have not been lost on those in, around, and outside of the movement: Using a philosophical and historical lens of black political thought informing the movement, Christopher J. Lebron gives voice to the tensions that arise because of the hypocrisy of devaluing black lives in a civil society that holds the equality of diverse people central to its foundation. The culmination of Lebron’s effort provides an opportunity to enhance current thinking on our contemporary social movements since he does a responsible job of handling the chorus of exigent voices that have contributed to a black radical tradition from which the Movement for Black Lives, the policy component of BLM, is branded. Lebron’s approach, however, would have benefitted from a more careful consideration of critical intersectionality, structuralist theories, and biological racism.