Journal of Black Studies

African intellectuals are debating the future of knowledge construction in the wake of the collapse of colonization, European settlerism, and apartheid. Tawanda Sydesky Nyawasha has posited the debate between Afrocentricity and Eurocentrism in his paper “I am of Popper; I am of Asante: The Polemics of Scholarship in South Africa” published in Studies in Philosophy and Education as an expression of this contested ground. This response article argues that Africans have a duty to interrogate their own epistemological discourses in order to understand the history of knowledge construction on the continent of Africa. As the construction of the first pyramid at Sakkara was a consolidating event of human study, detailed investigations, elaboration of ideas, and advancement of the sciences and arts around 2700 BCE, clearly, African studies should stand at the head of the discourses about knowledge. Therefore, in this response, the author challenges Nyawasha’s understanding of Afrocentricity and criticizes the marginalization of African perspectives as just another assertion of Eurocentric ideas as universal when in fact they arise from a specific history and culture.

This article seeks to examine the role of the police in African American film. Looking at the last three decades of filmmaking, five films stand out as important examples for this study: Do the Right Thing, Boyz n the Hood, Set it Off, Training Day, and Get Out. These films are both consistent in the message regarding the police and African American communities, and are separated by time to demonstrate the distinct differences in how that message has been shown. An examination of the real-world relationship between the two groups is also studied, to better understand the accuracy of the films. The gendering of film and police brutality is a further discussion within the article in regard to the lack of female African American directors in Hollywood and the less frequently discussed police violence against African American women. These issues are addressed through a combination of film analysis and secondary source data on the police interaction and brutality in the African American community.

While the prevalence and adverse effects of violence in hip-hop music and music videos have been studied extensively, hip-hop entertainment journalism, which reports on hip-hop news and events, has been largely unexplored. The purpose of this study was to examine violent trends in hip-hop journalism. We conducted a content analysis on a random sample of 970 news articles, 218 interview articles and the accompanying photographs from three hip-hop themed websites, and 56 radio interviews from hip-hop themed FM radio stations. Content was coded for type of violence, reality status, narrative sequence, and tone. The findings suggest that a significant portion of hip-hop journalism communications contain violence. More than half of all articles (52.3%; n = 663) contained violence. The prevalence of violence was higher for interview articles (73.4%, n = 218) than for news articles (45.9%, n = 445). The most common categories were violent metaphors, weapons, feuding (e.g., verbal aggression), and fighting. Almost 70% of radio interviews (n = 37) contained at least one mention of violence and the most common types of violence were fighting/physical assault and feuding. Furthermore, the majority of violence for all articles and radio content were reported as real and were presented from the performer sequence. News articles depicted more consequences, whereas interview articles and radio interviews depicted more positive portrayals. Potential implications for youth exposure hip-hop journalism are discussed.

In the United States, generations of young Black males, ages 15 to 24 years, are prematurely dying from homicide and suicide. Between 1950 and 2010, the average death rate for young Black males due to homicide was 81.7 per 100,000 and suicide was 11.8 per 100,000. Ages 15 to 24 years are the intersecting developmental stages of adolescence and young adulthood when premature death should not be expected. The trauma and ceased procreation prospects stemming from Black males’ premature deaths represent a public health crisis in America. Heightened public health approaches are needed to bring attention to a young racial-gender group that is dying five to six decades prior to their life expectancy. The mass suicide-homicide killings, premature deaths, and death disparities among young Black males, ages 15 to 24, in the United States is not a paranoid propaganda. It is undeniably a disturbing public health crisis that requires an urgent national response to reverse and ultimately eradicate the premature death of young Black males.