Flipping the Script: The Usurpation of Black Racial Politics How Concepts of Usurpational Idealism Supplant and Duplicitously Reinterpret Representations of Black American Belonging and Identity
Abstract
Scholars in fields that explore Black historiographies have examined the various relationships between African Americans and identity formation and the ways in which African Americans crafted meaning between the concept of Americanness and belonging. The exploration of the lives of African descended peoples throughout the Diaspora beyond narrow interpretations has facilitated an epistemological body of knowledge that underscores the vast contributions peoples of African descent have made globally. From a perspective primarily situated on the experiences of African Americans in the United States, this research contributes to the body of scholarship within the field of Black Studies in that it furthers our understanding of how African Americans demonstrated agency by defining and exercising their rightful belonging within American society.
Whether it be redefining identity and belonging through the facilitation of concepts such as racial colorblindness, convening conferences to strategize and leverage their desires, or an exploration of those who ignored rigid boundaries that limited the accessibility of exercising legal entities, this research highlights the experiences of African Americans who fought for and redefined American identity while also maintaining a solid connection to their Blackness.
Further, this research aims to explore various ways African descended peoples in the United States resisted legal and social subjugation and, as a means of forging beyond liminal belonging, constructed identities legible within the nation-state. Understanding their relationship to American belonging as precarious, African Americans crafted and navigated their identities in myriad ways to gain access to what should have been rightfully theirs, although not always legally or socially extended to them.