Schools and the formation of Black identity during the Civil Rights Movement: Change and resistance in Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1964--1974

Desegregation of social and public spaces was the most visible result of the Civil Rights Movement. After 1960, the integration of schools in Mississippi became a source of conflict. The social change of Civil Rights attacked the social order of White Resistance that supported the state superstructure. The public schools were a place for the discovery of identity for Blacks. The integrated on of the schools caused many Whites to leave rather than be integrated with Blacks. Desegregation of schools was also a slow process because the local and state government could not enforce the decisions of the US Courts, leading Blacks to realize their place in American society could only be secured through individual action. ^ This work explains the role of schooling during the integration of the Holly Springs Separate School System. The process of forging a new identity by local Blacks is examined against the forces of social change and resistance. I addition, this work examines the perils for the Blacks as they faced the uncertainty of change in the crucial Civil Rights years between 1964 and 1974. ^ This work analyzes how the Black community dealt with the problems triggered by the desegregation of the school system in Holly Springs, of a constructed social condition, a psychological state of being, the realities of racism and segregation, and the change and resistance between the individual and the collective. It is based on six months of field work investigation. Although the schools were a crucial aspect of community life for Blacks and Whites, Blacks did form their identity in them. Other institutions, such churches were more crucial. Second, the aspect of politeness and belief in law made the experience in Holly Springs unique to that place, and thus, warrants further study to determine its place within the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, while the political and economic control of Holly Springs remained with Whites, desegregation led to the resegregation of the public schools: as Whites left to private schools. ^

History education and the construction of national identity in Iran

This study examined the representation of national and religious dimensions of Iranian history and identity in Iranian middle school history textbooks. Furthermore, through a qualitative case study in a school in the capital city of Tehran, teachers' use of textbooks in classrooms, students' response, their perceptions of the country's past, and their definitions of national identity is studied. The study follows a critical discourse analysis framework by focusing on the subjectivity of the text and examining how specific concepts, in this case collective identities, are constructed through historical narratives and how social actors, in this case students, interact with , and make sense of, the process. My definition of national identity is based on the ethnosymbolism paradigm (Smith, 2003) that accommodates both pre-modern cultural roots of a nation and the development and trajectory of modern political institutions. Two qualitative approaches of discourse analysis and case study were employed. The textbooks selected were those published by the Ministry of Education; universally used in all middle schools across the country in 2009. The case study was conducted in a girls' school in Tehran. The students who participated in the study were ninth grade students who were in their first year of high school and had just finished a complete course of Iranian history in middle school. Observations were done in history classes in all three grades of the middle school. The study findings show that textbooks present a generally negative discourse of Iran's long history as being dominated by foreign invasions and incompetent kings. At the same time, the role of Islam and Muslim clergy gradually elevates in salvaging the country from its despair throughout history, becomes prominent in modern times, and finally culminates in the Islamic Revolution as the ultimate point of victory for the Iranian people. Throughout this representation, Islam becomes increasingly dominant in the textbooks' narrative of Iranian identity and by the time of the Islamic Revolution morphs into its single most prominent element. On the other hand, the students have created their own image of Iran's history and Iranian identity that diverges from that of the textbooks especially in their recollection of modern times. They have internalized the generally negative narrative of textbooks, but have not accepted the positive role of Islam and Muslim clergy. Their notion of Iranian identity is dominated by feelings of defeat and failure, anecdotal elements of pride in the very ancient history, and a sense of passivity and helplessness.

The discursive construction of Japanese identity and its haunting others

This dissertation examined the formation of Japanese identity politics after World War II. Since World War II, Japan has had to deal with a contradictory image of its national self. On the one hand, as a nation responsible for colonizing fellow Asian countries in the 1930s and 1940s, Japan has struggled with an image/identity as a regional aggressor. On the other hand, having faced the harsh realities of defeat after the war, Japan has seen itself depicted as a victim. By employing the technique of discourse analysis as a way to study identity formation through official foreign policy documents and news media narratives, this study reconceptualized Japanese foreign policy as a set of discursive practices that attempt to produce renewed images of Japan's national self. The dissertation employed case studies to analyze two key sites of Japanese postwar identity formation: (1) the case of Okinawa, an island/territory integral to postwar relations between Japan and the United States and marked by a series of US military rapes of native Okinawan girls; and (2) the case of comfort women in Japan and East Asia, which has led to Japan being blamed for its wartime sexual enslavement of Asian women. These case studies found that it was through coping with the haunting ghost of its wartime past that Japan sought to produce "postwar Japan" as an identity distinct from "wartime imperial Japan" or from "defeated, emasculated Japan" and, thus, hoped to emerge as a "reborn" moral and pacifist nation. The research showed that Japan struggled to invent a new self in a way that mobilized gendered dichotomies and, furthermore, created "others" who were not just spatially located (the United States, Asian neighboring nations) but also temporally marked ("old Japan"). The dissertation concluded that Japanese foreign policy is an ongoing struggle to define the Japanese national self vis-à-vis both spatial and historical "others," and that, consequently, postwar Japan has always been haunted by its past self, no matter how much Japan's foreign policy discourses were trying to make this past self into a distant or forgotten other.

The Discursive Construction of Japanese Identity and its Haunting Others

This dissertation examined the formation of Japanese identity politics after World War II. Since World War II, Japan has had to deal with a contradictory image of its national self. On the one hand, as a nation responsible for colonizing fellow Asian countries in the 1930s and 1940s, Japan has struggled with an image/identity as a regional aggressor. On the other hand, having faced the harsh realities of defeat after the war, Japan has seen itself depicted as a victim. By employing the technique of discourse analysis as a way to study identity formation through official foreign policy documents and news media narratives, this study reconceptualized Japanese foreign policy as a set of discursive practices that attempt to produce renewed images of Japan’s national self. The dissertation employed case studies to analyze two key sites of Japanese postwar identity formation: (1) the case of Okinawa, an island/territory integral to postwar relations between Japan and the United States and marked by a series of US military rapes of native Okinawan girls; and (2) the case of comfort women in Japan and East Asia, which has led to Japan being blamed for its wartime sexual enslavement of Asian women. These case studies found that it was through coping with the haunting ghost of its wartime past that Japan sought to produce “postwar Japan” as an identity distinct from “wartime imperial Japan” or from “defeated, emasculated Japan” and, thus, hoped to emerge as a “reborn” moral and pacifist nation. The research showed that Japan struggled to invent a new self in a way that mobilized gendered dichotomies and, furthermore, created “others” who were not just spatially located (the United States, Asian neighboring nations) but also temporally marked (“old Japan”). The dissertation concluded that Japanese foreign policy is an ongoing struggle to define the Japanese national self vis-à-vis both spatial and historical “others,” and that, consequently, postwar Japan has always been haunted by its past self, no matter how much Japan’s foreign policy discourses were trying to make this past self into a distant or forgotten other.

African History and Identity: A Case Study of Black British Students in London

Through the administration of questionnaires and interviews in six of London’s secondary schools, this case study seeks to investigate Black Britons’ self-concepts and attitudes toward curricular depictions of continental and diasporan Africans and the extent to which the African Union’s (A.U.) Pan-African outreach agenda may be advanced or challenged.

On the developmental continuity /discontinuity of early adolescent patterns of racial identity salience: Relations with later identities and psychosocial adjustment

Given the significant amount of attention placed upon race within our society, racial identity long has been nominated as a meaningful influence upon human development (Cross, 1971; Sellers et al., 1998). Scholars investigating aspects of racial identity have largely pursued one of two lines of research: (a) describing factors and processes that contribute to the development of racial identities, or (b) empirically documenting associations between particular racial identities and key adjustment outcomes. However, few studies have integrated these two approaches to simultaneously evaluate developmental and related adjustment aspects of racial identity among minority youth. Consequently, relations between early racial identity developmental processes and correlated adjustment outcomes remain ambiguous. Even less is known regarding the direction and function of these relationships during adolescence. To address this gap, the present study examined key multivariate associations between (a) distinct profiles of racial identity salience and (b) adjustment outcomes within a community sample of African-American youth. Specifically, a person-centered analytic approach (i.e., cluster analysis) was employed to conduct a secondary analysis of two archived databases containing longitudinal data measuring levels of racial identity salience and indices of psychosocial adjustment among youth at four different measurement occasions.^ Four separate groups of analyses were conducted to investigate (a) the existence of within-group differences in levels of racial identity salience, (b) shifts among distinct racial identity types between contiguous times of measurement, (c) adjustment correlates of racial identity types at each time of measurement, and (d) predictive relations between racial identity clusters and adjustment outcomes, respectively. Results indicated significant heterogeneity in patterns of racial identity salience among these African-American youth as well as significant discontinuity in the patterns of shifts among identity profiles between contiguous measurement occasions. In addition, within developmental stages, levels of racial identity salience were associated with several adjustment outcomes, suggesting the protective value of high levels of endorsement or internalization of racial identity among the sampled youth. Collectively, these results illustrated the significance of racial identity salience as a meaningful developmental construct in the lives of African-American adolescents, the implications of which are discussed for racial identity and practice-related research literatures. ^