Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War

Sitkoff, Harvard

doi:10.2307/1893729

Cited by 83 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In response to the reports of growing tension, the Secretary of War created an Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies to investigate. Their report stated that “[d]isaffection among Negro soldiers continues to constitute an immediately serious problem.” In addition to numerous outbreaks of violence which had already occurred, the report continued, “[a]t many other stations there is a smoldering unrest which is quite likely to erupt at any time.” 4 Historian Harold Sitkoff notes that although the war department actively suppressed evidence of black revolt, labeling deaths due to such conflicts as “combat fatalities” or “motor vehicle accidents,” “army statisticians, nevertheless, reported an unusually high number of casualties suffered by white officers of Negro troops and at least fifty black soldiers killed in race riots in the United States” (Sitkoff 1971, 668). That the crushing pressure of military segregation had consequences for black servicemen’s physical and emotional health is readily apparent in such statistics as well as unintentionally refracted through the analysis of the medical literature.…”

Section: Black Men and Military Apartheid: “It Produced An Emotional mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Deep-seated Abnormality”: Military Psychiatry, Segregation, and Discourses of Black “Unfitness” in World War II

Aragón

2017

Men and Masculinities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

"Unfitness" This article examines the construction of "unfit" black masculinity in institutional and medical discourses of the American military during World War II. Examining the military medical literature on "maladjustment" in context of the armed forces practice of segregation, I argue that by ignoring the impact of segregation, military psychiatrists reproduced linkages between blackness and "defect." Despite the absence of direct assertions of racial hierarchy, these discourses thus implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, construed black manhood as alternately feeble and menacing, but above all as "abnormal" in both mind and body.Examining articles from psychiatric and military medical journals, as well as the internal documents of military officials, I investigate these claims in regard to the conceptualization and management of "constitutional defects" and psychosomatic illness.

show abstract

Section: Black Men and Military Apartheid: “It Produced An Emotional mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Deep-seated Abnormality”: Military Psychiatry, Segregation, and Discourses of Black “Unfitness” in World War II

Aragón

2017

Men and Masculinities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A total of 31 people, 25 of them black, were killed in rioting that lasted several days; police killed 17 of the black victims. There were 2 million dollars in property losses (Sitkoff 1971:674). In the riots that occurred in Harlem a few weeks later, 5 people were killed and 5 million dollars of property damage sustained (Swan 1971–1972:88).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“A General Separation of Colored and White”

Aragón

2015

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article uses archival research to explore important differences in the discursive and institutional positioning of Mexican American and African American men during World War II. Through the focal point of the riots that erupted in Los Angeles and other major cities in the summer of 1943, I examine the ways in which black and Mexican “rioters” were imagined in official and popular discourses. Though both groups of youth were often constructed as deviant and subversive, there were also divergences in the ways in which their supposed racial difference was discursively configured. I also consider the experiences of each group in the World War II military, a subject that has received little attention in previous work on the riots. Though both groups were subject to discrimination and brutality on the home front, only African Americans were segregated in the military—a fact that profoundly influenced the 1943 riots. Examining the very different conditions under which these men served, as well as the distinct ways in which their presence within the military and on the home front was interpreted and given meaning by press, law enforcement, and military officials, helps to illuminate the uneven and complex workings of racism in America, disrupting the common conceptualization of a definitive white/nonwhite color line.

show abstract

“…For instance, while 89% of movement‐initiated events were in the South during the early stages of the movement (1955–1960), by the movement's later stages (1966–1970) only 34% of events were in the South (McAdam ). Moreover, if we trace the origins of the movement prior to the mid‐1950s, as some historians insist we must (Korstad and Lichtenstein ; Sitkoff ), at times black protest was mainly Northern (Meier and Rudwick ). In sum, I am unconvinced that the litmus test for assessment of movement success resides exclusively in the Southern black population or that the 1968 data significantly underestimate national levels of black optimism.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful? Tracking and Understanding Black Views

Santoro

2015

Sociological Forum

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Was the modern civil rights movement successful? I depart from traditional approaches that judge success in terms of political inclusion and policy response and instead ask “ordinary” blacks what they thought. Using 1968 survey data, I find that while a slight majority (58%) believed that the movement successfully reduced racial discrimination, a sizable share (42%) saw failure. It seems most accurate to conclude that both perspectives resonated with large segments of the black population. I next examine who thought the movement a success and uncover that blacks of higher economic standing had the most faith in the movement's achievements. This result supports critics who thought that the poor were left behind by the movement's gains. Finally, while there was overall stability from 1968 to 2000 in opinion, the mid‐1980s represented the nadir in thinking the movement successful. This development appears to have been a reaction to the racially hostile Reagan administration and the worsening economic position of blacks in the 1980s. Views on the civil rights movement, thus, are a living memory that can be altered by contemporary deleterious developments. I conclude by arguing that conceptualizations of success should be grounded in how movements impact the everyday lives of their constituency.

show abstract

Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War

Cited by 83 publications

References 0 publications

“Deep-seated Abnormality”: Military Psychiatry, Segregation, and Discourses of Black “Unfitness” in World War II

“Deep-seated Abnormality”: Military Psychiatry, Segregation, and Discourses of Black “Unfitness” in World War II

“A General Separation of Colored and White”

Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful? Tracking and Understanding Black Views

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About