Race relations

The Trayvon Martin shooting of 2013 and the Michael Brown shooting of 2014 by a White security guard and White police officer sequentially led to the Black Lives Matter movement which has grown internationally to 40 chapters. Police agencies have responded with active community outreach programs to proactively reduce conflict. The question arises whether a language of peace such as Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication would be an effective tool to be used in instances of conflict similar to the carnage involving Black men and White police officers between 2013-2017. Local members of the Black community, Black Lives Matter, and law enforcement were interviewed asking the efficacy of Rosenberg’s NVC and deliberative dialogue as well. The study showed that since Blacks and Whites view racism differently, a more comprehensive approach is needed to address the challenges of racism and race relations. This thesis describes the possible use of a few models structured to discuss the racial conflict between all parties affected by racism.

This study argues that the interfaith symbolism present in the works of American author Jean Toomer undermines dominant Christian justifications for racism in the United States. It also discusses the ways in which Toomer's interfaith symbolism promotes the establishment of a race Toomer called the "American" race, a group of interracial, interreligious people whom Toomer hoped would change the way race was viewed in the United States. The multireligious references in Toomer's works challenge constricted definitions of both religion and race by highlighting interchangeable religious ideals from several world religions.

A progressive discourse on race is impeded by several factors: debates on the reality or unreality of the term race itself; discussions of ethnicity that tend to marginalize a discussion of race; the view by majority members of society that race is a topic for discussion principally by minorities; and the lack of models for non-confrontational public conversations on the subject. In the process, a discussion of racial change rarely enters the discourse beyond brief responses in opinion polls. This study proposed the Race and Change Dialogue Model to facilitate the exploration of how race operates in society on an interpersonal level in everyday lives of people across cultures and how changes in racial attitudes occur over time. Theories of race and ethnicity, language, effective communication strategies, and social change provided a starting point, but a "re-languaging" approach was used to advance the innovative nature of this work. In audiorecorded oral histories for public dissemination and interviews in a documentary series on public television, cross-cultural narrators were provided with a safe rhetorical space to tell their stories and to be heard, and a framework of "racenicity" allowed for the discussion of the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, class, and culture as fused aspects of the same issue. An environment was created that enhanced effective communication of a difficult subject. Despite the challenges that arose in the patterns of talk about racial change, the door has been opened to bring change into the dialogue in a more prominent way that moves the discourse on differences in more productive directions. An alternate model for public discussions on race as "racenicity" was created that has the potential to build coalition in the U.S. and has implications for other societies as well.

Scholars of the literary depictions of lynching have given the majority of their attention to the emasculation of the black male, but the representation of the black female lynch victim has been overlooked. My thesis examines the deaths of black women that had the same effect as lynching practices used against men. This specific literary form of lynching will concentrate on two plays: Mary P. Burrill's They That Sit in Darkness (1919) and Marita Bonner's Exit: An Illusion (1929) and two novels by Toni Morrison, Beloved and Sula. Considering the contours of these black female deaths we can expand the traditional definition of lynching to include the black female lynch victim. The aspects that make her death a lynching are encased in more subtleties than a traditional definition of lynching allows for, and less visible.