Patriotism toward the United States is a contentious topic among African Americans due to historical and present day racism. [1] As a result, different beliefs have formed, regarding the role of patriotism in the lives of African Americans.
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In 1847, when most African Americans were still enslaved, the influential abolitionist Frederick Douglass denounced patriotism, stating "I have no love for America, as such; I have no patriotism. I have no country. What country have I? The institutions of this country do not know me, do not recognize me as a man." [2]
In Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin advocated for constructive patriotism, claiming "I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." [3]
After interviewing African Americans on their beliefs regarding patriotism, Micah E. Johnson described four distinct profiles among African Americans, which Johnson labelled the bystander, the sycophant, the subverter, and the conscious patriot. [1]
Johnson describes bystanders as African Americans who lack patriotism for the United States and are detached from American history and values. [1] Furthermore, these individuals also tend to be detached from blackness and often espouse a color-blind, meritocratic understanding of society. [1]
Johnson describes sycophants as African Americans who downplay racial inequalities and priotitize assimilation into mainstream America. These individuals tend to deny the existence of institutional racism. [1]
Johnson describes subverters as African Americans who reject patriotism towards the United States and are aware of the racial inequality present in American society. One subverter expressed: [1]
"At what point in time in Americas history has America given the black man reason to be patriotic? On the contrary, America continuously shows the black man he has no rights that the white American has to respect."
Subverters usually express patriotism towards an alternative homeland such as Africa or a metaphorical black nation. [1] Several historical and contemporary black nationalist organisations have advocated for the creation of a separate black nation in the United States. [4]
Johnson describes conscious patriots as African Americans who feel attached to America and are willing to critique the social inequalities present in American society. [1] Johnson describes Martin Luther King as a conscious patriot. [1]
Among African-American respondents in a 2022 YouGov survey of 1,000 American adults: [5]
Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and sense of attachment to one's country. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings, language relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political or historical aspects. It encompasses a set of concepts closely related to nationalism, mostly civic nationalism and sometimes cultural nationalism.
Racism is discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices. The ideology underlying racist practices often assumes that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as inferior or superior. Racist ideology can become manifest in many aspects of social life. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, and related social phenomena.
White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and was a key justification for European colonialism.
Xenophobia is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression which is based on the perception that a conflict exists between an in-group and an out-group and it may manifest itself in suspicion of one group's activities by members of the other group, a desire to eliminate the presence of the group which is the target of suspicion, and fear of losing a national, ethnic, or racial identity.
Color blindness is a term that has been used by justices of the United States Supreme Court in several opinions relating to racial equality and social equity, particularly in public education. The term metaphorically references the medical phenomenon of color blindness. Beyond, psychology professionals also study the racial color blindness approach in social psychology and multicultural psychology.
The term "person of color" is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the United States; however, since the 2010s, it has been adopted elsewhere in the Anglosphere, including relatively limited usage in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and Singapore.
White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits.
Reverse racism, sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination, is a concept that affirmative action and similar color-conscious programs for redressing racial inequality are a form of anti-white racism. The concept is often associated with conservative social movements and reflects a belief that social and economic gains by black people cause social and economic disadvantages for white people.
Anti-patriotism is the ideology that opposes patriotism; it usually refers to those with cosmopolitan views and is usually of an internationalist and anti-nationalist nature as well. Normally, anti-patriotism stems from the belief that patriotism is wrong since people born in a country, whether they like it or not and regardless of their individuality, are encouraged to love the country or sacrifice themselves for it; consequently, people who oppose patriotism may oppose its perceived authoritarianism, while others may believe that patriotism may lead to war because of geopolitical disputes. Usually, this term is used in a pejorative way by those who defend patriotism or nationalism, and terms such as cosmopolitanism or world citizenship may be used to avoid the bias that comes from the typical usage of the words anti-nationalism or anti-nationalist. The idea of multiple cultures intertwined has also been questioned as anti-patriotic, but mainly in smaller social communities: colleges, universities, etc. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 were pieces of legislation in the United States that were passed after it entered World War I, to incriminate individuals who attempted to impede the war effort. Those who did so were punished and believed to be performing acts of anti-patriotism.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
Internalized racism is a form of internalized oppression, defined by sociologist Karen D. Pyke as the "internalization of racial oppression by the racially subordinated." In her study The Psychology of Racism, Robin Nicole Johnson emphasizes that internalized racism involves both "conscious and unconscious acceptance of a racial hierarchy in which whites are consistently ranked above people of color." These definitions encompass a wide range of instances, including, but not limited to, belief in negative stereotypes, adaptations to white cultural standards, and thinking that supports the status quo.
Racism in North America and the state of race relations there are described in this article. Racism manifests itself in different ways and severities throughout North America depending on the country. Colonial processes shaped the continent culturally, demographically, religiously, economically, and linguistically. Racism was part of that process and is exemplified throughout North America today but varies regionally.
The article describes the state of race relations and racism in South America. Racism of various forms is found worldwide. Racism is widely condemned throughout the world, with 170 states signatories of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by August 8, 2006. In different countries, the forms that racism takes may be different for historic, cultural, religious, economic or demographic reasons.
Racism in Cuba refers to racial discrimination in Cuba. In Cuba, dark skinned Afro-Cubans are the only group on the island referred to as black while lighter skinned, mixed race, Afro-Cuban mulattos are often not characterized as fully black or fully white. Race conceptions in Cuba are unique because of its long history of racial mixing and appeals to a "raceless" society. The Cuban census reports that 65% of the population is white while foreign figures report an estimate of the number of whites at anywhere from 40 to 45 percent. This is likely due to the self-identifying mulattos who are sometimes designated officially as white. A common myth in Cuba is that every Cuban has at least some African ancestry, influenced by historical mestizaje nationalism. Given the high number of immigrants from Europe in the 20th century, this is far from true. Several pivotal events have impacted race relations on the island. Using the historic race-blind nationalism first established around the time of independence, Cuba has navigated the abolition of slavery, the suppression of black clubs and political parties, the revolution and its aftermath, and the special period.
Racism in the Arab world covers an array of forms of intolerance against non-Arabs and the expat majority of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf coming from South Asian groups as well as Black, European, and Asian groups that are Muslim; non-Arab ethnic minorities such as Armenians, Africans, the Saqaliba, Southeast Asians, Jews, Kurds, and Coptic Christians, Assyrians, Persians, Turks, and other Turkic peoples, and South Asians living in Arab countries of the Middle East.
Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race, and seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. Black nationalist activism revolves around the social, political, and economic empowerment of black communities and people, especially to resist their cultural assimilation into white culture, and maintain a distinct black identity.
Racism has been present in Brazil since its colonial period and is pointed as one of the major and most widespread types of discrimination, if not the most, in the country by several anthropologists, sociologists, jurists, historians and others. The myth of a Racial Democracy, a term originally coined by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre in his 1933 work Casa-Grande & Senzala, is used by many people in the country to deny or downplay the existence and/or the broad extension of racism in Brazil.
Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to provide equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination and/or working to change personal racial biases. Major contemporary anti-racism efforts include the Black Lives Matter movement and workplace anti-racism.
White defensiveness is a term to describe defensive responses by white people to discussions of societal discrimination, structural racism, and white privilege. The term has been applied to characterize the responses of white people to portrayals of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization, or scholarship on the legacy of those systems in modern society. Academics and historians have identified multiple forms of white defensiveness, including white denial, white diversion, and white fragility, the last of which was popularized by scholar Robin DiAngelo.
The Conscious Community, also known as the Black Conscious Community and the African Conscious Community, is a loose affiliation of allied groups composed of individuals from the African diaspora and from Africa. Pan-Africanism, Afrocentrism, Afrofuturism, Black Nationalism, and Black Liberation Religion/Spirituality are foundational sources for the ideologies found among individuals in the Black Conscious Community.
