Matthew W . Hughey

Secret and private organizations, in the form of Greek-letter organizations, mutual aid societies, and civic orders, together possess a storied and often-romanticized place in popular culture. While much has been made of these groups’ glamorous origins and influence—such as the Freemasons’ genesis in King Solomon’s temple or the belief in the Illuminati’s control of modern geo-politics—few have explicitly examined the role of race and ethnicity in organizing and perpetuating these cloistered orders. This volume directly addresses the inattention paid to the salience of race in secret societies. Through an examination of the Historically Black and White Fraternities and Sororities, the Ku Klux Klan in the US, the Ekpe and Abakuj secret societies of Africa and the West Indies, Gypsies in the United Kingdom, Black and White Temperance Lodges, and African American Order of the Elks, this book traces the use of racial and ethnic identity in these organizations.

This important contribution examines how such orders are both cause and consequence of colonization, segregation, and subjugation, as well as their varied roles as both catalysts and impediments to developing personal excellence, creating fictive kinship ties, and fostering racial uplift, nationalism, and cohesion.

"On November 5, 2008, the nation awoke to a New York Times headline that read triumphantly: “OBAMA.  Racial Barrier Falls in Heavy Turnout.” But new events quickly muted the exuberant declarations of a postracial era in America: from claims that Obama was born in Kenya and that he is not a true American, to depictions of Obama as a “Lyin African” and conservative cartoons that showed the new president surrounded by racist stereotypes like watermelons and fried chicken.

Despite the utopian proclamations that we are now live in a color-blind, postracial country, the grim reality is that implicit racial biases are more entrenched than ever. In Wrongs of the Right, Matthew W. Hughey and Gregory S. Parks set postracial claims into relief against a background of pre- and post-election racial animus directed at Obama, his administration, and African Americans. They provide an analysis of the political Right and their opposition to Obama from the vantage point of their rhetoric, a history of the evolution of the two-party system in relation to race, social scientific research on race and political ideology, and how racial fears, coded language, and implicit racism are drawn upon and manipulated by the political Right. Racial meanings are reservoirs rich in political currency, and the Right’s replaying of the race card remains a potent resource for othering the first black president in a context rife with Nativism, xenophobia, white racial fatigue, and serious racial inequality. And as Hughey and Parks show, race trumps politics and policies when it comes to political conservatives’ hostility toward Obama."

The cinematic trope of the white savior film-think of Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves, or Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai-features messianic characters in unfamiliar or hostile settings discovering something about themselves and their culture in the process of saving members of other races from terrible fates.

In The White Savior Film, Matthew Hughey provides a cogent, multipronged analysis of this subgenre of films to investigate the underpinnings of the Hollywood-constructed images of idealized (and often idealistic) white Americans.

Hughey considers the production, distribution, and consumption of white savior films to show how the dominant messages of sacrifice, suffering, and redemption are perceived by both critics and audiences. Examining the content of fifty films, nearly 3,000 reviews, and interviews with viewer focus groups, he accounts for the popularity of this subgenre and its portrayal of "racial progress."

The White Savior Film shows how we as a society create and understand these films and how they reflect the political and cultural contexts of their time.

"Discussions of race are inevitably fraught with tension, both in opinion and positioning. Too frequently, debates are framed as clear points of opposition—us versus them. And when considering white racial identity, a split between progressive movements and a neoconservative backlash is all too frequently assumed. Taken at face value, it would seem that whites are splintering into antagonistic groups, with differing worldviews, values, and ideological stances.

White Bound investigates these dividing lines, questioning the very notion of a fracturing whiteness, and in so doing offers a unique view of white racial identity. Matthew Hughey spent over a year attending the meetings, reading the literature, and interviewing members of two white organizations—a white nationalist group and a white antiracist group. Though he found immediate political differences, he observed surprising similarities. Both groups make meaning of whiteness through a reliance on similar racist and reactionary stories and worldviews.

On the whole, this book puts abstract beliefs and theoretical projection about the supposed fracturing of whiteness into relief against the realities of two groups never before directly compared with this much breadth and depth. By examining the similarities and differences between seemingly antithetical white groups, we see not just the many ways of being white, but how these actors make meaning of whiteness in ways that collectively reproduce both white identity and, ultimately, white supremacy."

"The United States has taken a long and winding road to racial equality, especially as it pertains to relations between blacks and whites. On November 4, 2008, when Barack Hussein Obama was elected as the forty-fourth President of the United States and first black person to occupy the highest office in the land, many wondered whether that road had finally come to an end. Do we now live in a post-racial nation?

According to this book's contributors, a more nuanced and contemporary analysis and measurement of racial attitudes undercuts this assumption. They contend that despite the election of the first black President and rise of his family as possibly the most recognized family in the world, race remains a salient issue-particularly in the United States. Looking beyond public behaviors and how people describe their own attitudes, the contributors draw from the latest research to show how, despite the Obama family's rapid rise to national prominence, many Americans continue to harbor unconscious, anti-black biases. But there are whispers of change. The Obama family's position may yet undermine, at the unconscious level, anti-black attitudes in the United States and abroad. The prominence of the Obamas on the world stage and the image they project may hasten the day when America is indeed post-racial, even at the implicit level."

"When Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was questioned by the police on the front porch of his home in an affluent section of Cambridge, many people across the country reacted with surprise and disbelief. But African American men from coast to coast experienced painful recognition; “Gatesgate” was merely the very public manifestation of a phenomenon many black men experience regularly.

In Twelve Angry Men, a dozen eloquent authors tell their own personal versions of this story. Among others, we hear from a Harvard law school student who was tackled by security guards on the streets of Manhattan; a federal prosecutor who was detained while walking in his own neighborhood in Washington, D.C.; a high school student in Colorado who was arrested for “loitering” in the subway station as he waited for the train home; a bike rider trailed by police cars in Austin, Texas; a professor at a Big Ten university in Iowa; a New York Times reporter; and the head of the ACLU’s racial profiling initiative, who was pursued by National Guardsmen after arriving on the red-eye in Boston’s Logan Airport. Here we have the full spectrum of African American men sharing the predicament of being law-abiding black men in America today.

By turns angry, funny, bitter, and rueful, the effect of these first-person accounts is staggering, and will open the eyes of anyone who thinks we live in a “postracial” or “color-blind” America."

“On one hand, the 'hood (brotherhood) positively shaped my undergraduate experience, deepening my commitment to community service and establishing lifelong bonds of camaraderie, fellowship, and love. On the other hand, as my dedication to progressive politics grew after college, I found myself increasingly troubled by the elements of elitism, factionalism, and homophobia that remain endemic to African American fraternities and sororities, nowhere more acutely than at historically black institutions like Howard. I have always yearned for more critical, scholarly engagement of Black Greek Letter Organizations and their role in shaping political consciousness, cultural identity, and social activism in our society. This significant volume, part of an emerging literature on BGLOs, richly supplies the kind of critical assessment of 'Black Greeks' that I have craved since first sporting my 'letters' on the fabled Howard yard in spring 1995." - Russell Rickford, Assistant Professor of History, Dartmouth College