Afro-American studies is not a unified theoretical approach, but is based on several shared premises: African-Americans have been subjected historically, or are today subjected to enslavement, discrimination, exploitation, domination, separation, expulsion, and segregation. Afro-Americans suffer, more than the dominant white population, from institutional economical, political, and cultural inequalities. Most of the social problems that exist in the USA are more pronounced in the Afro-American population.  

Research in African-Americans studies covers many important areas: theories of white-black relations; the history of the enslavement of African Americans; development and impacts of antiblack ideology; the creation of white wealth through the exploitation of black labor; the ideology of whiteness; racial discrimination in past and today; and possibilities for social change. In this article, we will first explore the work of some of the founders of African-American studies and later give an overview of some modern theorists and activists. The work of Black feminists will be presented in a separate article – Feminism, Afroamerican.

                                               Du Bois

American sociologist and historian William Du Bois (1868-1963) was one of the first to scientifically study the position and lives of African-Americans. His scientific and activist work was marked by the fact that he grew up as an African-American in the southern United States, immediately after the Civil War and the abolition of the institution of slavery. Du Bois received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1895 and later began working as a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, which allowed him to do a large urban ethnographic study of the lives of African Americans in Pennsylvania. Du Bois's theoretical contribution is manifold. As a student of William James, Du Bois studied the “self” of African Americans in a similar vein. That self is marked by "duality", double consciousness - "every African-American perceives himself as a black man", but also as an American.

Du Bois studied the resurgence of institutional racism in the American South, embodied in segregation laws popularly called Jim Crow Laws. After the end of the Civil War (1865), the proclamation of emancipation and the fifteenth amendment to the American Constitution guaranteed physical freedom, but also the political rights of African Americans. However, since 1877, laws requiring mandatory racial segregation in public places have been introduced in many southern states. Du Bois explains this renewal of official racism through economic and political macro-processes, inspired by theories of historical materialism. After the abolition of slavery, four million former slaves left the plantations, most of whom were illiterate and untrained for any other job. These former slaves made great efforts to make progress, but the structural circumstances did not help them. The economic crisis threatened the jobs of poor whites in the south, so they benefited economically from the introduction of segregation. Political conflicts between the two political currents have enabled a compromise to be reached between the north and the south over the introduction of segregation. Towards the end of his life, Du Bois began researching the influence of Africa on the political and economic history of the planet.

Du Bois was also very active in empowering African Americans. He advocated that as many of them as possible graduate from college so that they would have a positive impact on others. In 1910, he was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the most important organizations in the fight for African American rights; he organized several pan-African congresses; he was also the founder of two of the first African American newspapers Moon Illustrated Weekly (1905) and The Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line (1907-1910). His views on the best strategies for the advancement of African Americans differed from those of two other most important champions for the rights of African Americans –Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey.

                                         Franklin Frazier

American sociologist Franklin Frazier (1896-1962) based on case studies and statistics, performed a macro analysis of the family and social life of African Americans. His approach combined a diachronic (historical) and a structural perspective. One of his basic theoretical assumptions is that African Americans, having been brought to the American continent as slaves, did not retain the culture they had in Africa. The loss of culture is the result of a series of critical shocks: enslavement in Africa; boat trips to America; experiences of slavery; and the end of the social disorganization that followed the liberation. This means that the culture of African Americans is largely a product of the reaction to the conditions of slavery and the dominant culture. The culture that African Americans developed in the United States is mostly fatalistic because it represents "surrender" to white Americans, that is, acceptance of a subordinate position. The socio-cultural position of African Americans, as well as the peculiarity of their culture, led them to become a subordinate caste within the American social structure.

By the time Frazier began his research, the migration of a large number of African Americans from the rural south to the industrialized urban centers of the north had been going on for half a century. The difficulties that African Americans have experienced in adapting to living conditions in new environments are the cause of crime, vice, and delinquency among African Americans. In his opinion, the most important thing for the progress of African Americans is to build racial consciousness, which would not be aimed at glorifying "black" culture but would be directed toward the pragmatic goals of achieving socio-economic progress. Frazier believed that African Americans should not imitate the cultural patterns of whites, but that the process of socio-cultural assimilation should include a critical attitude towards the dominant culture.

                                           Oliver Cox

Trinidadian-American sociologist Oliver Cox (1901-1974) was very critical of the way the Chicago School of Sociology, especially how Park, Warner, and Frazier, treated race relations in America. He thought that the concept of caste, which had been used for white-black relations until then, was fallacious. Cox was also critical of the way Gunnar Myrdal and Ruth Benedict approached race and race relations. In addition, he realized that the cause of racism, unlike dominant opinion, is not in the attitudes of individuals, but in a capitalist society that profits from the existence of an oppressed group of people who can be easily exploited, so he concluded that racism arose alongside the growth of modern capitalism. According to Cox, racism in the United States is analogous to racism in Nazi Germany in relation to the Jews. He believed that the cause of racism towards Jews was not in the authoritarian personality of members of the working class. Fascism acts as a politically organized aspect of capitalist class consciousness, and it arose as a reaction to economic problems, and it served to divert the anger of workers from capitalists to the members of other races. Cox minutely studied the dynamics and nature of world capitalism and concluded that European capitalism was shaped by international trade and uneven global development. That course of research is the reason why he is considered a precursor to the theoretical approach of Immanuel Wallerstein.

                                          Franz Fanon

French philosopher and essayist Franz Fanon (1925-1961) is one of the most important researchers on the lives and status of black people in the Caribbean. He was born in Martinique, then a French colony, After the Second World War, he moved to France, where he graduated in psychiatry, and later worked as a psychiatrist in hospitals in France, Algeria, and Tunisia. The experience of colonialism and French domination shaped his views, and he was also influenced by the philosophical works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Marx, and Jean-Paul Sartre. In his book Black Skin, White Masks (1967, in French 1952), Fanon presents the consequences of French colonialization on the African population in Martinique. His approach contains an existentialist, psychological, and socio-economic analysis of colonial relations. Socio-economic inequalities and racist teachings about the backwardness of African culture have led to the development of low-value complexes among the black population of Martinique, but also to their need to "whitewash". Having been taught that black skin color indicates backwardness and that the Creole version of the French language is shameful, the African population of Martinique tended to wear "white masks". They suffered from insecurity, self-blame, and despair. In order to escape from such a psychological state, Africans aspired to adopt the French language and culture and to marry "white" women, in order to achieve a sense of self-worth.

In his book The Wretched of the Earth  (2004, in French 1961), Fanon presents a theory of liberation based on violent actions. Since colonization was introduced and carried out by force, only by force can liberation from the colonial chains be achieved. This tactic is also strategically effective, and at the same time provides a psychological sense of power. Instead of inferiority, despair, and passivity, the oppressed become fearless and their self-esteem returns. Freeing the mind from feelings of oppression leads to liberation from colonial rule. Only the poorest, those who have nothing to lose (wretched in the world) are the force that will achieve liberation.

                                          Cyril James

Trinidadian historian Cyril James (1901-1989), in his historical works, combines a Marxist approach and a pan-African perspective. He studied issues of race and racism, slavery, colonialism, inequality, and class relations. In the book The Black Jacobins (1938), James studies the revolt of African slaves on the island of Santa Domingo, which was a French colony, and the product of that revolt was the creation of the independent state of Haiti in 1803. He describes the political strength of different races, the relations between them, the circumstances that caused the rebellion, as well as the consequences of the revolution. He believes that the success of the uprising and the gaining of Haiti's independence had a great impact on the French and British empires, but also the United States. James also studied popular culture, so in his book, Beyond the Boundary (1963) he explored how cricket and calypso music influenced the creation and development of social institutions and ideologies in the Caribbean. He was a great advocate of anti-colonialism and the independence movements of the Caribbean states, and he hoped that they would unite into the West Indies Federation after gaining independence. He aspired to achieve a society based on socialist values, but also on the community values ​​of African societies.

                                        Orlando Patterson

Jamaican-American sociologist Orlando Patterson (1940-) is one of the most famous researchers of the historical, political, economic, and social aspects of slavery and racism. His doctoral dissertation, published under the title The Sociology of Slavery (1967), studies the history and consequences of slavery in the Caribbean, especially in Jamaica, where Paterson was born. This book examines the structure and functions of the Jamaican slave-owning society. Paterson explores the social relations of production and how the profits from slave labor were made. On the other hand, he studied the social institutions that existed to control slaves, but also the resistance offered by slaves. The aim was to investigate how social control and social order were maintained. He also studied the changes that have taken place over time in values ​​and social order.

In Slavery and Social Death (1982), Paterson presents a comparative study of slavery throughout history and across the planet, in sixty-six different societies. The societies covered in this study were at different levels of political and economic development, some were tribal, some were ancient states, and some represented cases of slavery in the modern age. He concludes that slavery existed before the emergence of written history, until the twentieth century; and that there is no area on the planet where slavery, in some form, did not exist at some point. Patterson wanted to explore the institutional patterns that enable slavery, as well as the very nature and internal dynamics of slavery. In all slave-owning societies, slaves are separated from the rest of society because they did not have a social life outside the property on which they work, and this represents their "social death". In addition, they are depersonalized, so slaves lost their identity and become mere property. Patterson wants to resolve the contradiction that arises from the fact that slavery has always existed, and that, on the other hand, the idea of ​​freedom was one of the most important in the development of civilization.

In his two-volume book Freedom (1991, 2006), Paterson explores all forms of freedom that have existed in history and that exist today and singles out several different forms of freedom: personal, sovereign, and civic. In the books The Ordeal of Integration (1997) and Rituals of Blood (1998), he studies the enormous problems that the history of slavery and racism has left in the United States. African-Americans have made tremendous progress in the field of civil and economic equality; however, the legacy of racism has affected the problems that exist in family and gender relations among African-Americans. A large number of illegitimate children, high divorce rates, and numerous single-parent households pose a major problem for the African-American population. According to Patterson, the main reason for the unsuccessful integration of African- Americans into the wider American society is not racial difference, but the poverty of this population. He criticizes both social scientists and African-American leaders who use the stereotypes of a racially polarized society, while not paying enough attention to the poverty of the black population, which is present even in households where two people are employed. He believes that changes in the economy and culture can lead to an improvement in the position of African-Americans, while, on the other hand, he remains very skeptical about the strategies of affirmative action. He is also very critical of the lyrics of hip-hop musicians because he believes that they are full of hatred and misogyny.

                                         William J. Wilson

American sociologist William Julius Wilson (1935-)  devoted his academic career to studying racial relations and poverty in the United States. In his book Power, Racism and Privilege (1973), he presents a historical-sociological theory of racism, comparing America and the Republic of South Africa. His theory is based on a conflict approach and creates a historical framework that explains the different ways of creating and maintaining a racial socio-economic hierarchy in both countries. In The Decline of the Significance of Race (1978), Wilson examines the importance of class affiliation and social mobility for racial relations in America. He concludes that African-Americans, who belong to the middle and upper classes, i.e., those who have graduated from college and are employed in highly paid professions, have resources for upward socio-economic mobility, while African-Americans who belong to the lower class do not have such resources. The African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s diminished the importance of race and enabled the creation of a large African-American middle class, so in the late 1970s, class affiliation affected life chances more than race.

In the book The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), Wilson re-emphasizes the importance of race for the life chances of African Americans and presents data on the highly vulnerable position of urban poor African Americans. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African Americans began to move from the rural south to the industrialized north of the United States. Lacking qualifications, they performed the worst industrial jobs and had no chance of advancing. Their poverty and physical isolation in the ghettos led to an increase in white prejudice, which further worsened the position of African Americans. A further deterioration in the situation of a large number of African Americans occurred in the early 1960s, due to several structural factors. The decrease in the number of well-paid jobs in the manufacturing sector in cities, and at the same time the increase in low-paid service jobs, contributed to the reduction of employment, but also to the reduction of real wages of those who were employed. This led to impoverishment, so there was an increase in crime among the male population, as well as an increase in the number of people sentenced to prison terms. The consequence of that was an increased number of single-parent families, in which only the mother was present. On the other hand, African-Americans, who managed to finish college and find good jobs, left poor urban neighborhoods and thus, even more, increased the poverty of those neighborhoods. By creating a spatial and socio-economic distance between poor and middle-class or rich African-Americans, the social isolation of the former has been significantly increased, as the possibility of their upward class mobility has been drastically reduced. Impoverished urban neighborhoods did not have enough money for schools, so the quality of education dropped significantly. All of these factors contributed, not caused, to the development of a culture of poverty among African Americans that internalized feelings of despair and fatalism. Wilson believes that white Americans, partially consciously, socio-economically endangered poor African Americans, and that this was a reaction of whites dissatisfied with the success achieved by African Americans who became members of the middle and upper class. To more clearly define all these aspects of the urban poverty of African Americans, Wilson introduces the term "subclass" to emphasize the extreme socio-economic marginalization of this population, although he later rejected the term because of the negative connotations it received. Wilson re-examines urban poverty in When Work Disappears (1996) and provides a wealth of qualitative data on the lives of the urban poor.

Relevant authors who are in this encyclopedia: Collins Hill Patricia, Cox C. Oliver, Davis Y. Angela, Du Bois E. William, Fanon Franz, Frazier Edward Franklin, James R. L. Cyril, Patterson Orlando, Wilson Julian William.

Relevant authors who are not in this encyclopedia: Anderson Elijah, Aptheker Herbert,  Augustine Ira de Reid, Bobo Lawrence, Cayton Horace, Cooper Julia Anna, Douglas Frederick, Drake St. Claire, Garvey Marcus, Haynes Edmund George, Herskovits Melville,  Howard W. Odum, Hurston N. Zora, Johnson Spurgeon Charles, Locke Alain, Turner Dow Lorenzo, Washington T. Booker, Wells Ida, West Cornel, Williams Eric, Woodson G. Carter.

Books:

Alkalimat, Abdul. Africana Studies in the U.S. http://www.eblackstudies.org/su/complete.pdf. (2007);

Alkalimat, Abdul, et al. . Introduction to Afro-American Studies: A Peoples College Primer (1977);

Allen, Theodore W. The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control (1994);

America, Richard F. (ed.). The Wealth of Races: The Present Value of Benefits from Past Injustices (1990);

Ani, Marimba.  Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior (1994);

Asante, Molefi Kete. Afrocentricity (1988);

Bell, Derrick. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992);

Benjamin, Lois. The Black Elite: Facing the Color Line in the Twilight of the Twentieth Century (1991);

Blauner, Bob. Racial Oppression in America (1972);

Brodkin, Karen. How The Jews Became White Folks: And What That Says About Race in America (1998);

Brooks, Roy L. Integration or Separation? A Strategy for Racial Equality (1996);

Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles Hamilton. Black Power (1967);

Cox. Caste, Class and Race (1948);

     -     Jewish Self-Interest and Black Pluralism (1974);

Cross, Theodore. Black Power Imperative: Racial Inequality and the Politics of Nonviolence (1984);

Drake, St. Clair. Black Folk Here and There (1987);

Du Bois. The Study of the Negro Problems (1898);

     -     The Philadelphia Negro (1899);

     -     The Negro in Business (1899);

     -     The Souls of Black Folk (1903);

     -     The Negro (1915);

     -     The Gift of Black Folk (1924);

     -     Black Reconstruction in America (1935);

     -     What the Negro Has Done for the United States and Texas (1936);

     -     Black Folk: Then and Now (1939);

     -     Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945);

     -     The Encyclopedia of the Negro (1946);

Essed, Philomena. Everyday Racism: Reports from Women of Two Cultures (1990);

Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks (2008, in French 1952);

     -     A Dying Colonialism (1965, in French 1959);

     -     The Wretched of the Earth (1963, in French 1961);

     -     Toward the African Revolution (1969, in French 1964). 

Feagin, Joe R. Racist America (2000);

Feagin, Joe, and Melvin P. Sikes. Living with Racism: The Black Middle Class Experience (1994);

Feagin, Joe R., and Hernan Vera. White Racism: The Basics (1995);

Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (1993);

Frazier. The Negro Family in Chicago (1932);

     -     The Negro Family in the United States (1939);

     -     Negro Youth at the Crossways: Their Personality Development in the Middle States (1940);

     -     „Sociological Theory and Race Relations”, in American Sociological Review (1947);

     -     Black Bourgeoisie (1957);

     -     Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World (1957);

Fredrickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (1971);

Gallup Organization. Black/White Relations in the United States (1997);

Gordon, Milton. Assimilation in American Life (1964);

Guinier, Lani. The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy (1994);

Hall, Perry A. Paradigms in Black Studies. In Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies, eds. Delores P. Aldridge and Carlene Young (2000);

Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (eds.). All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (1982);

Herskovits, Melville. On the Relation Between Negro-White Mixture and Standing in Intelligence Tests (1926);

     -     The American Negro (1928);

     -     The Myth of the Negro Past (1941);

Higginbotham, A. Leon. In the Matter of Color (1978);

James C. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938);

     -     Beyond a Boundary (1963);

Jaynes, Gerald D., and Robin Williams, Jr. (eds.). A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society (1989);

Karenga, Maulana. Introduction to Black Studies (1982); 

Krieger, Nancy, and Stephen Sidney. ‘‘Racial Discrimination and Blood Pressure.’’ American Journal of Public Health (1996);

Marketti, James. ‘‘Estimated Present Value of Income Diverted during Slavery.’’ In Richard F. America, ed., The Wealth of Races: The Present Value of Benefits from Past Injustices (1990);

Marable, Manning. Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience (2000);

Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (1993);

Morris, Aldon D. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (1984):

Patterson. The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (1967);

     -     Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (1982);

     -     Freedom: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, vol. 1. (1991);

     -     The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s „Racial“ Crisis (1997);

     -     Rituals of Blood: The Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries (1998);

     -     Freedom: Freedom in the Modern World, vol 2. (2006);

     -     The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (2015);

Perea, Juan F. ‘‘The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race: The ‘Normal Science’ of American Racial Thought.’’ California Law Review (1997);

Ringer, Benjamin B. ‘‘We the People’’ and Others (1983);

Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness (1991);

Rooks, Noliwe M. White Money Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education (2006);

Scott, Kesho Y. The Habit of Surviving: Black Women’s Strategies for Life (1991);

Sitkoff, Harvard. A New Deal for Blacks (1978);

Sleeper, Jim. The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York (1990);

Snowden, Frank. Color Prejudice (1983);

Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture (1987);

Swinton, David H. ‘‘Racial Inequality and Reparations.’’ In Richard F. America, ed., The Wealth of Races: The Present Value of Benefits from Past Injustices (1990);

Takaki, Ronald. Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th Century America (1990);

Williams, Patricia. The Alchemy of Race and Rights (1991);

     -     ‘‘Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights’’, in Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Review (1987);

Wilson J. W. Power, Racism, and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and Sociohistorical Perspectives (1973);

     -     The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (1978);

     -     The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner-City, The Underclass, and Public Policy (1987);

     -     When Work Disappears (1996);

     -     The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics (1999);

     -     America Becoming: Racial Trends and their Consequences (2001);

     -     More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (2009).