Technology and the African-American Experience

Technology and the African-American Experience PDF Author: Bruce Sinclair
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262195041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The intersection of race and technology: blackcreativity and the economic and social functions of the myth ofdisengenuity.

Technology and the African-American Experience

Technology and the African-American Experience PDF Author: Bruce Sinclair
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262195041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The intersection of race and technology: blackcreativity and the economic and social functions of the myth ofdisengenuity.

A Hammer in Their Hands

A Hammer in Their Hands PDF Author: Carroll Pursell
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262661993
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Scholars working at the intersection of African-American history and the history of technology are redefining the idea of technology to include the work of the skilled artisan and the ingenuity of the self-taught inventor. Although denied access through most of American history to many new technologies and to the privileged education of the engineer, African-Americans have been engaged with a range of technologies, as makers and as users, since the colonial era. A Hammer in Their Hands (the title comes from the famous song about John Henry, "the steel-driving man" who beat the steam drill) collects newspaper and magazine articles, advertisements for runaway slaves, letters, folklore, excerpts from biography and fiction, legal patents, protest pamphlets, and other primary sources to document the technological achievements of African-Americans. Included in this rich and varied collection are a letter from Cotton Mather describing an early method of smallpox inoculation brought from Africa by a slave; selections from Frederick Douglass's autobiography and Uncle Tom's Cabin; the Confederate Patent Act, which barred slaves from holding patents; articles from 1904 by Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, debating the issue of industrial education for African-Americans; a 1924 article from Negro World, "Automobiles and Jim Crow Regulations"; a photograph of an all-black World War II combat squadron; and a 1998 presidential executive order on environmental justice. A Hammer in Their Hands and its companion volume of essays, Technology and the African-American Experience (MIT Press, 2004) will be essential references in an emerging area of study.

The African American Experience during World War II

The African American Experience during World War II PDF Author: Neil A. Wynn
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442200170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Neil A. Wynn combines narrative history and primary sources as he locates the World War II years within the long-term struggle for African Americans' equal rights. It is now widely accepted that these years were crucial in the development of the emerging Civil Rights movement through the economic and social impact of the war, as well as the military service itself. Wynn examines the period within the broader context of the New Deal era of the 1930s and the Cold War of the 1950s, concluding that the war years were neither simply a continuation of earlier developments nor a prelude to later change. Rather, this period was characterized by an intense transformation of black hopes and expectations, encouraged by real socio-economic shifts and departures in federal policy. Black self consciousness at a national level found powerful expression in new movements, from the demand for equality in the military service to changes in the shop floor to the "Double V" campaign that linked the fight for democracy at home for the fight for democracy abroad. As the nation played a new world role in the developing Cold War, the tensions between America's stated beliefs and actual practices emphasized these issues and brought new forces into play. More than a half century later, this book presents a much-needed up-to-date, short and readable interpretation of existing scholarship. Accessible to general and student readers, it tells the story without jargon or theory while including the historiography and debate on particular issues.

Technology and the Dream

Technology and the Dream PDF Author: Clarence G. Williams
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262731577
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1060

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Book Description
Transcripts of more than seventy-five oral history interviews in which the interviewees assess their MIT experience and reflect on the role of blacks at MIT and beyond. This book grew out of the Blacks at MIT History Project, whose mission is to document the black presence at MIT. The main body of the text consists of transcripts of more than seventy-five oral history interviews, in which the interviewees assess their MIT experience and reflect on the role of blacks at MIT and beyond. Although most of the interviewees are present or former students, black faculty, administrators, and staff are also represented, as are nonblack faculty and administrators who have had an impact on blacks at MIT. The interviewees were selected with an eye to presenting the broadest range of issues and personalities, as well as a representative cross section by time period and category. Each interviewee was asked to discuss family background; education; role models and mentors; experiences of racism and race-related issues; choice of field and career; goals; adjustment to the MIT environment; best and worst MIT experiences; experience with MIT support services; relationships with MIT students, faculty, and staff; advice to present or potential MIT students; and advice to the MIT administration. A recurrent theme is that MIT's rigorous teaching instills the confidence to deal with just about any hurdle in professional life, and that an MIT degree opens many doors and supplies instant credibility. Each interview includes biographical notes and pictures. The book also includes a general introduction, a glossary, and appendixes describing the project's methodology.

Changing the Face of Engineering

Changing the Face of Engineering PDF Author: John Brooks Slaughter
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421418150
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
How can academic institutions, corporations, and policymakers foster African American participation and advancement in engineering? For much of America’s history, African Americans were discouraged or aggressively prevented from becoming scientists and engineers. Those who did enter STEM fields found that their inventions and discoveries were often neither recognized nor valued. Even today, particularly in the field of engineering, the participation of African American men and women is shockingly low, and some evidence indicates that the situation might be getting worse. In Changing the Face of Engineering, twenty-four eminent scholars address the underrepresentation of African Americans in engineering from a wide variety of disciplinary and professional perspectives while proposing workable classroom solutions and public policy initiatives. They combine robust statistical analyses with personal narratives of African American engineers and STEM instructors who, by taking evidenced-based approaches, have found success in graduating African American engineers. Changing the Face of Engineering argues that the continued underrepresentation of African Americans in engineering impairs the ability of the United States to compete successfully in the global marketplace. This volume will be of interest to STEM scholars and students, as well as policymakers, corporations, and higher education institutions.

Railroads in the African American Experience

Railroads in the African American Experience PDF Author: Theodore Kornweibel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
"For over a century, railroading provided the most important industrial occupation for blacks. Brakemen, firemen, porters, chefs, mechanics, laborers - African American men and women have been essential to the daily operation and success of American railroads. The connections between railroads and African Americans extend well beyond employment. Civil rights protests beginning in the late 19th century challenged railroad segregation and job discrimination; the major waves of black migration to the North depended almost entirely on railroads; and railroad themes and imagery penetrated deep into black art, literature, drama, folklore, and music."--Page 2 of cover.

Black Software

Black Software PDF Author: Charlton D. McIlwain
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190863854
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Activists, pundits, politicians, and the press frequently proclaim today's digitally mediated racial justice activism the new civil rights movement. As Charlton D. McIlwain shows in this book, the story of racial justice movement organizing online is much longer and varied than most people know. In fact, it spans nearly five decades and involves a varied group of engineers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, journalists, and activists. But this is a history that is virtually unknown even in our current age of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Black Lives Matter. Beginning with the simultaneous rise of civil rights and computer revolutions in the 1960s, McIlwain, for the first time, chronicles the long relationship between African Americans, computing technology, and the Internet. In turn, he argues that the forgotten figures who worked to make black politics central to the Internet's birth and evolution paved the way for today's explosion of racial justice activism. From the 1960s to present, the book examines how computing technology has been used to neutralize the threat that black people pose to the existing racial order, but also how black people seized these new computing tools to build community, wealth, and wage a war for racial justice.Through archival sources and the voices of many of those who lived and made this history, Black Software centralizes African Americans' role in the Internet's creation and evolution, illuminating both the limits and possibilities for using digital technology to push for racial justice in the United States and across the globe.

The African American Experience

The African American Experience PDF Author: Salman Akhtar
Publisher: Jason Aronson
ISBN: 0765708353
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
This book compiles the contributions of mental health professionals, and scholars of humanities, to offer a multifaceted perspective on the transgenerational trauma of slavery, the hardship of single parent families, the ruthlessness of anti-black racism, and the burden of poverty and social disenfranchisement on the African American individual.

Distributed Blackness

Distributed Blackness PDF Author: André Brock, Jr.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479820377
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
An explanation of the digital practices of the black Internet From BlackPlanet to #BlackGirlMagic, Distributed Blackness places blackness at the very center of internet culture. André Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices (from Black Twitter to Instagram, YouTube, and app development) to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability, bringing together discourse analysis with a close reading of technological interfaces to develop nuanced arguments about how “blackness” gets worked out in various technological domains. As Brock demonstrates, there’s nothing niche or subcultural about expressions of blackness on social media: internet use and practice now set the terms for what constitutes normative participation. Drawing on critical race theory, linguistics, rhetoric, information studies, and science and technology studies, Brock tabs between black-dominated technologies, websites, and social media to build a set of black beliefs about technology. In explaining black relationships with and alongside technology, Brock centers the unique joy and sense of community in being black online now.

Modern Sport and the African American Experience

Modern Sport and the African American Experience PDF Author: Gary Sailes
Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781631893872
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Modern Sport and the African American Experience is a collection of essays from some of America's most brilliant and vibrant sport sociologists and race scholars. This text highlights more of the experiences of African Americans in modern sport than any of its kind. Among its diverse topics, this book examines predictions about African American sports performance and participation in the 21st century, discusses the role of sport in African American culture, and gives a candid look at the experiences of African American athletes attending America's predominantly white colleges and universities. It also discusses the experiences of African American women in these environments, a largely ignored topic. A book of this type would not be complete without also examining racism, discrimination, and the conflict black athletes and coaches encounter with the white establishment. This volume is a representation of Dr. Gary Sailes' well-known, much-respected scholarship and work as a consultant in American commercial sports.