American Race Relations

“America’s Bicentennial Poem: Robert Hayden’s ‘American Journal’.” Presented May 23, 2015 by Christopher Buck during “Memorials of the Faithful” weekend. Desert Rose Baha’i Institute. Eloi, AZ. (May 23–24, 2015.)

During America’s Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1976, Hayden served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, in the first of his two-term tenure (1976–77 and 1977–78).

That same position later became known as “Poet Laureate of the United States” in 1985.

As America’s Bicentennial poet laureate and the first African American poet laureate, Hayden rose to the occasion by offering a poem about America.

That poem is “American Journal” (1976).

“American Journal” may thus be regarded as America’s “Bicentennial poem.”

Implicit in Robert Hayden’s “[American Journal]” is this thesis:
Social maturity is coefficient with human solidarity.

This thesis unifies the various kinds of identity that this compressed and kaleidoscopic poem treats.

As a literary tube of mirrors, “American Journal” implicitly describes social identities that render the American experience decidedly multidimensional.

Internal evidence suggests that Hayden treats American identity in nine dimensions:

(1) Landscape Identity;
(2) Alien (Individual) Identity;
(3) Racial Identity;
(4) Political Identity;
(5) Class Identity;
(6) Material Identity;
(7) Religious Identity;
(8) American (National) Identity;
(9) Human Identity.

In the modernist collage of anecdotal scenes and sustained ironies that comprise “American Journal,” these nine dimensions operate as a multifaceted prism of American mentality and potentiality.

On viewing Hayden’s “[American Journal]” through this dimensional prism, America emerges as a work-in-progress—episodically revised by crisis after crisis—an experiment through which the meaning of humanity may be universalized.

This “work” will progress until it reaches a stage in which the interplay of competing identities is seen as a stable matrix—an ideal array of integrative identities (reflecting Hayden’s general orientation as a Bahá’í).

This optic will apply to the inarticulate yet implicitly unitive moral of “American Journal”—a message in a bottle, as it were.

America, in the poet’s musing, is caught up in a socially adolescent identity crisis. America has yet to mature until it resolves its fundamental identity crisis. This, in the broader context, is a defining social problematic of the world at large.

Our special thesis is that “America” itself—as portrayed in “American Journal” and as analytically illuminated by the nine dimensions previously described—operates topically and tropically as an emblematic problematic in humanity.

The problem is not with any identity in particular. It is when particular identities alienate.

In composing “American Journal,” Hayden—who is acutely aware of this “strangering” or schisming dynamic—contrives a reconnaissance mission involving a fictive visit by a man from Mars.

An inverse of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched in 2005, Hayden launches his own probe of planet Earth, to explore American alienation through the eyes of an alien from outer space, who defines the core and refines the crux of American identity.

“Alain Locke in His Own Words: Three Essays.” Edited and annotated by Christopher Buck and Betty J. Fisher. World Order 36.3 (2005): 37–48. 

Features four previously unpublished works by Alain Locke:
(1) “The Moon Maiden” (37) •
(2) “The Gospel for the Twentieth Century” (39–42) •
(3) “Peace between Black and White in the United States” (42–45) •
(4) “Five Phases of Democracy” (45–48).

Also included: Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke: Race Leader, Social Philosopher, Baha’i Pluralist.” Special Issue: Alain Locke: Dean of the Harlem Renaissance and Baha’i Race-Amity Leader. World Order 36.3 (2005): 7–36. 

*This special issue of World Order won the Religion Communicators Council’s 2006 DeRose-Hinkhouse Memorial Award of Excellence for excellence in religion communications and public relations (Class B. Periodicals—Single Issue, Magazine, National (B-1)).

The Disney Studio has reaffirmed its reign with the financial and popular success of its latest animated feature, Frozen (2013). With its media machinery, economic empire and canon of films that continue to be popular with audiences, Disney has reflected and shaped to some extent American popular culture and ideology, leaving memorable images in our memory. What may come to mind is the beautiful white Disney princess.
The representation of race relations, imperialism, and the intersections between national and minority identities has been a very sensitive issue within Disney films. The depiction of African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos has suffered from mere absence to racial stereotypes, sometimes leading to controversies. However, with the Civil Rights movements’ heritage and the advent of multiculturalism in the 1990s, a new wave of films has offered a new perspective on these portrayals. The shift began in 1995 with Pocahontas, followed by Atlantis (2001), and most recently The Princess and the Frog (2009).
In this paper, I intend to examine the evolution of these representations of race from 1995 to the present, focusing on the film texts and their historical and cultural context, production history, and critical reception. I will argue that the messages of tolerance, the idealization of ‘Otherness’ and the promotion of the melting pot were accompanied and slowly replaced by the dilution of race and a revival of whiteness (Tangled, Frozen). These problematic portrayals were found in films that also dealt with sensitive historical issues in the United States, such as Jim Crow laws (The Princess and the Frog). It is through the most constructed of all moving images of race, minorities’ identities in animated films, that the most telling aspects of race relations, imperialism, and history as the subject of Hollywood iconography and American popular culture can be found.

Christopher Buck, “Harlem Renaissance.” Encyclopedia of African American History. Edited by Leslie Alexander & Walter Rucker. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Pp. 795–799 (Vol. 3). 

ABSTRACT

For all its failings, the Harlem Renaissance (1917–1934) (originally called the “Negro Renaissance”) was a spectacular success—spectacular because it was, in fact, a spectacle, a public exhibition of African American poetry, prose, drama, art, and music. This was not just “art for art’s sake,” but art to redraw the public image of “colored” people in America. Enjoying a “double audience” of black and white, the Harlem Renaissance was the fairest fruit of the New Negro movement, whose mission it was to bring about racial renewal through cultural diplomacy.

The Harlem Renaissance was not only a golden age of African American arts, but a valiant effort to remove the masks of racial stereotypes in order to put a new face on African Americans. To a certain degree, it not only improved race relations somewhat (a nearly impossible task, given the entrenched racial prejudices of the day), but instilled a racial pride and nobility among African Americans whose lives the Harlem Renaissance touched.

The chief strategist and “voice” of this cultural movement was philosopher Alain Locke (1885–1954), who edited the premiere and pivotal anthology of the Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925), which is described later. As the first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1907, Locke studied abroad in Oxford (1907–1910) and the University of Berlin (1910–1911), before receiving his PhD in philosophy from Harvard in 1918. Locke figures prominently in the Harlem Renaissance and served as its principal art critic, promoter, and power broker.

One can say that Alain Locke further democratized American democracy in paving the way for the Civil Rights movement. During the Jim Crow era of American apartheid, when civil rights were white rights (under Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate-but-equal” doctrine), Locke was the real genius behind the Harlem Renaissance, which David Levering Lewis (Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois) aptly characterized as a movement that sought to achieve “Civil Rights by Copyright.”

As the acknowledged “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance, Locke may well be regarded as the Martin Luther King of African American culture. Locke’s anthology, The New Negro, has been hailed as the first “national book” of African Americans. He ingeniously used culture as a strategy for ameliorating racism and for winning the respect of powerful white elites as potential agents for social and political transformation.

This essay examines the evolution of American antislavery literature. It shows that arguments against slavery had been circulating in the colonies since the end of the 17th century. Between 1688 and 1865, there were thousands of separately published titles, including works in every genre, from poems and novels, to slave narratives and children's books. The essay argues as well that for all their historical importance, many antislavery writings also have interest in their own as works of literature. Looking at the history and the evolution of these writings the essay shows how a first, primarily religious type of writing was replaced, after 1775, by a more secular, more literary and more nationalistic mode of writing, followed by a great surge in antislavery writing after 1820, with poetry or slave narratives assuming increasing importance during the years 1820 to 1850. And it is antislavery writing in all its forms and media which conditioned many Americans to view slavery as the essential issue at stake in the war that ensued. The essay concludes on the fact that the continued need for antislavery writing speaks to a painful truth: it was not slavery that was extraordinary, but rather the idea of freedom as the natural condition and universal right of mankind that marked a revolutionary turn.

LOCKE, ALAIN

Christopher Buck, “Locke, Alain.” Encyclopedia of African American History. Edited by Leslie Alexander & Walter Rucker. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Pp. 224–227 (Vol. 1). 

ABSTRACT

History remembers Alain Locke (1885–1954) as the first African American Rhodes Scholar (1907) and, more famously, as the “dean” of the Harlem Renaissance (1919– 1934). Locke edited The New Negro (1925), acclaimed as the “first national book” of African Americans. In this way, Locke’s role is analogous to that of Martin Luther King: whereas King championed the civil rights of African Americans through nonviolent civil disobedience, Locke did so through a process known as “civil rights by copyright.” In the Jim Crow era, when blacks had no effective political recourse, Locke used the arts as a strategy to win the respect of the white majority and to call to their attention the need to fully democratize democracy and Americanize America by extending full equality to all minorities.

Recent scholarship has brought Locke back to life, and his philosophy of democracy, in particular, lends him renewed importance. Harvard, Harlem, Haifa—place names that represent Locke’s special involvement in philosophy, art, and religion—are keys to understanding his life and thought. Harvard prepared Locke for distinction as the first black Rhodes Scholar in 1907 and, in 1918, awarded Locke his PhD in philosophy, thus securing his position as chair of the Department of Philosophy at Howard University from 1927 until his retirement in 1953. Harlem was the mecca of the Harlem Renaissance, whereby Locke, as a spokesman for his race, revitalized racial solidarity and fostered the group consciousness among African Americans that proved a necessary precondition of the Civil Rights movement. Haifa is the world center of the Bahá’í Faith, the religion to which Locke converted in 1918, the same year he received his doctorate from Harvard. Until recently, this has been the least understood aspect of Locke’s life.

During the Jim Crow era, at a time when black people saw little possibility of interracial harmony, this new religious movement offered hope through its “race amity” efforts, which Locke was instrumental in organizing. These three spheres of activity—the academy, the art world, and spiritual society—converge to create a composite picture of Locke as an integrationist whose model was not assimilation, but rather “unity through diversity” (the title of one of his Bahá’í World essays).

Christopher Buck, “Robert Hayden.” Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Edited by Jay Parini. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Vol. 2, 177–181.

ABSTRACT
Robert Hayden was made poet laureate of Senegal in 1966 and ten years later became America's first black poet laureate. Acclaimed as "People's Poet" early in his career, later he was severely criticized for refusing to call himself a "Negro poet," even though he wrote some of the most powerful "black history" poems in the English language. Hayden transcended the identity politics of what W. E. B. Du Bois called "art as propaganda"-something that elite African-American artists (the Talented Tenth) were expected to produce. On the principle that race divides while a higher identity unifies, Hayden presented himself as an American poet rather than as a black poet. His greatness is that he was really both, and that his art was a fusion music of the American experience.

For Hayden, craftsmanship was essential — a marriage between matter and manner, as Gwendolyn Brooks once described it. With missionary zeal, Hayden experimented with forms and techniques in an effort to arrive at what he characterized as something distinctively individual, patterned, yet wild and free. This even included expanding the language itself, with such neologisms as "soulscape," "snowlight," "lifeswawk," "mimosa's fancywork," and "Absolute Otherwhere." The reader encounters such expressions as "moonstruck trees," "auroral dark," "famine fields," "jazzbo strutting of a mouse," "totemic flowers," "paleocrystic ice," "elegiac lace," "glaucous poison jewels," and "blazonry of farewell scarlet."

Adaptation was Hayden's primary method of innovation. Form flowed from content. Protean in his technique, Hayden employed a range of poetic and rhetorical devices to evoke each experience he sought to create. He was a virtuoso of rhythm, tonality, repetition, irony, oxymoron, paradox, and symbolism. Using sense to intensify, Hayden primarily relied on visual and auditory images. His gift for visual imagery grew out of his handicapped sight. Sensitivity to sound, tone, and cadence sprang from a keen sense of hearing, which Hayden developed to compensate for his poor vision. His work is full of dramatic tension, edged by irony, and tempered by religious emotions as echoes of the human spirit.

As an American shaman, Hayden was an oracle mediating between gods and mortals. His poetry was medicinal. On a personal level, it provided psychic therapy, self-medication. Although he was not a confessional poet, his reminiscence poems were cathartic. Those Winter Sundays is the best example; at a number of his readings, people in the audience would be brought to tears by it. On a social level, his poems promoted racial healing.

The first African-American poet laureate, Hayden was decidedly transracial in that role at the American bicentennial. This is poignantly exemplified in the deliciously wry title poem of his last book, American Journal, in which the poet assumes the mask of an extraterrestrial, reporting his anthropological observations of Americans to his superiors, the Counselors. More human than racial, Hayden truly was an "alien, at home."

See also: Christopher Buck, “Robert Hayden’s ‘[American Journal]’: A Multidimensional Analysis.” Online Journal of Baha’i Studies 2 (2008): 1–37. 

https://www.academia.edu/29603808/_Robert_Hayden_s_American_Journal_A_Multidimensional_Analysis_2008_

One of the most surprising connections of the American Revolutionary era emerged at the very beginning of the war between the African American poet Phillis Wheatley and the commander in chief of the American forces, George Washington. Wheatley's impact on Washington, though subtle, may well have contributed to one of the most important changes in his life.

Christopher Buck, “’Abdu’l-Baha’s 1912 Howard University Speech: A Civil War Myth for Interracial Emancipation.” ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Journey West: The Course of Human Solidarity. Edited by Negar Mottahedeh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. 111–144. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137032010.0009.

EXCERPT:

In his 1912 Howard University speech, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invoked the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation in essentialist terms, anchored in historical generalizations, as a rhetorical strategy for promoting interracial emancipation. Abolition of slavery was a first step in the progressive emancipation of African Americans within color-bound American society. Slavery’s roots run deep in American history, and are yet to be fully extirpated. They extend, in more subtle forms, down to the present. Racism is a ghost of the slaver’s psyche, and legislation alone cannot eradicate the problem. Something profoundly different is needed to significantly steer social history in a new direction. This is what makes ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 1912 sojourn in America of such historical import. . . .

To recapitulate, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his Howard University speech, emphasized the personal sacrifice of Northern whites for Southern blacks in the course of the Civil War, and that African Americans (as the descendants of emancipated slaves) should therefore be grateful to whites in kind. In so saying, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invoked history (or a certain view of it) in order to make history—by completing the unfinished work of the Emancipation Proclamation. . . .

And so it is that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tasked the whites with a mission equal to the objectives of the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction in achieving what was (and is) still undone, to “endeavor to promote your [i.e. African Americans’] advancement and enhance your honor.” Such interracial unity entails more than fostering interracial camaraderie. Advancement is required. Actual progress must be fostered, for it is this “advancement” that “will be the cause of love (sabab-i maḥabbat).” In other words, doing “good” (by tangible actions) is a precondition for “goodwill” (as an intangible feeling). This, indeed, was the mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, as an interracial endeavor. . . .

The advancement of African Americans was an integral element in the progress of America as a nation, and so there is a strong argument that the development of its own social capital was in the nation’s enlightened self-interest. Here, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s rhetorical strategy was to establish a clear basis, anchored in American history, for overcoming entrenched antagonisms in favor of reciprocal appreciation in the interests of interracial harmony and cooperation. In that sense, the accuracy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s historical generalizations is quite beside the point, as the focus was on fostering racial healing and solving America’s racial crisis. . . .

On February 1, 2012, Cornel West, professor of African American Studies and Religion, Princeton University, expressed his appreciation of the Bahá’í efforts to foster ideal race relations: “When you talk about race and the legacy of white supremacy, there’s no doubt that when the history is written, the true history is written, the history of this country, the Baha’i Faith will be one of the leaven in the American loaf that allowed the democratic loaf to expand because of the anti-racist witness of those of Baha’i faith.” (“Cornel West praises work of Baha’is in establishing Racial Unity” (February 1, 2012). Professor West here recognizes the leavening influence of the Bahá’ís in the history of race relations in America. . . .

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 1912 Howard University speech was for then, yet it has a message for us now as well: It could be said that in his Howard speech, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invited his audience to build on history by making history, in commencing a new era of global solidarity.

https://www.academia.edu/29904876/_Abdu_l-Baha_s_1912_Howard_University_Speech_A_Civil_War_Myth_for_Interracial_Emancipation_2013_

As southern states steadily seceded in the first months of 1861, the British press speculated that the Morrill Tariff's passage was an underlying cause of secession, or at least a barrier to reunion. Contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic were well aware that the tariff would greatly affect European diplomacy with both North and South, to the former's detriment and the latter's favor.Along with the northern blockade of the South, British recognition of southern belligerency in May 1861, the Trent Affair in November 1861, and the September 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, the South’s free trade argument and transatlantic propaganda created ambiguity, division, confusion, and southern support across the Atlantic, and further exacerbated already tense Union-British relations, aided by the Union’s initial refusal to tackle slavery. The South’s governmental and nongovernmental allies made good use of the Confederacy’s free trade diplomacy at the outset of the Civil War. The debate that followed the tariff’s passage created heated British editorial and parliamentary speculation concerning the primary causes of southern secession, with some politicians and numerous newspapers suggesting part or all of the blame lay with northern protectionism, thereby contributing to the looming possibility of British recognition of the South in the first  years of the war.

Christopher Buck, “New Negro Movement.” The African American Experience: The American Mosaic. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013. 

The New Negro Movement was a bold effort to transform American images of African Americans through art and literature while instilling race pride within the African American community itself. Pursuing racial renewal through cultural diplomacy, the New Negro Movement gave birth to the Harlem Renaissance from 1919 to 1934, a period of African American artistic blossoming. A golden age of African American cultural nationalism, the Harlem Renaissance was a grand response to the call of W. E. B. Du Bois, an African American civil rights leader who, in November 1920, wrote that an age of African American literature was due.

The artists, musicians and important contributors to the Harlem Renaissance—Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and others—were the leaders of the New Negro Movement. Collectively, the writers, artists, intellectuals, and performers were known as the "new Negroes," and their milieu would be called the Harlem Renaissance.

The term "new Negro" actually predates the New Negro Movement. Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African American literary critic and writer, has traced the use of this metaphor back to its origins. The term "new Negro" had been variously used to refer to transplanted Africans as slaves in the Americas, to newly emancipated slaves, and to African American political activists. In 1900, Booker T. Washington wrote A New Negro for A New Century. From 1905 to 1910, the Niagara Movement, an organization founded by Du Bois, became the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an interracial organization founded in Springfield, Illinois in 1909.

The term "new Negro" was already a social reality, and the New Negro Movement simply solidified the awareness of that new reality. The "new Negro" was really the product of the Great Migration from 1915 to 1920 where more than a million African Americans moved from the rural South to the urban North in search of prosperity. In Harlem, an African American middle class emerged, and a convergence of social forces made Harlem the cultural capital of African Americans from the 1920s to the mid-1930s.

The New Negro Movement stood in tense opposition to separatist Jim Crow laws that regulated African American society after the Civil War. In December 1924,Vanity Fair magazine heralded the advent of the "new Negro." A Mexican caricaturist drew striking images of African Americans that radically departed from the old stereotypes, and Eric Walrond, an African American writer, wrote the captions. In the Vanity Fair feature, Walrond proclaimed the demise of artistic stereotypes of the "old Negro." At this time when African Americans had virtually no political recourse, their voice could best be heard through their distinctive music, poetry and art—a creative and humanistic effort to achieve the goal of civil rights by producing positive images of African Americans and promoting activism through arts and culture.

In its heyday, the effective leader of the New Negro Movement was philosopher Alain Locke, whose roles as both intellectual leader and cultural pluralist proved a rare combination. As the first African American Rhodes Scholar, his education abroad at Oxford and in Germany and his Harvard doctorate in philosophy prepared him to become the most prominent African American intellectual between Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr. As the spokesman and chief strategist of the New Negro Movement during the Harlem Renaissance period and beyond, Locke resolved to sweep away the disparaging stereotypes of the "old Negro" through the change of ideas and the visual rhetoric of art, music, drama, and literature.

The most spectacular cultural product of the New Negro Movement was the Harlem Renaissance. The ideology of the New Negro Movement expressed itself through the Harlem Renaissance, which sparked a new pride in everything African American, and presented, to both white and black audiences, the artistic and literary gifts of the "talented tenth"—the vanguard of the African American elite who could best represent the new image of African Americans to America at large.

This was a watershed period in African American history because the Harlem Renaissance achieved a major objective of the New Negro Movement and instilled pride in African Americans and a corresponding respect for African Americans by mainstream America. The Harlem Renaissance presented itself as a  "self-portraiture" of African American culture to the United States and to the world. Locke had believed that art ought to contribute to the improvement of life and the New Negro Movement transfused African American consciousness by shaping a new self-image through powerful literary and artistic images.

Buck, Christopher. “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism.” Search for Values: Ethics in Baha’i Thought. Edited by Seena Fazel and John Danesh. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004. Pp. 94–158.

African American philosopher Alain Locke is arguably the most profound and important Western Bahá’í philosopher to date. Except for one 1979 article in a Bahá’í periodical, scholarship on Locke has neither seriously taken into account his Bahá’í identity nor the Faith’s influence on his work. The present study, based largely on archival sources, contributes to research on this “missing” dimension of Locke’s complex life and thought. It examines Locke’s worldview as a Bahá’í, his secular perspective as a philosopher, and the synergy between his confessional and professional essays. This study also argues that Locke had a fluid hierarchy of values—of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, cultural relativism and pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”)—and that this hierarchy represents a progression and application of quintessentially Bahá’í ideals. Locke’s distinction as a “Bahá’í philosopher” may therefore be justified on ideological as well as historical grounds. Locke “translated” Bahá’í ideals “into more secular terms” so that “a greater practical range will be opened up for the application and final vindication of the Bahá’í principles” in order to achieve “a positive multiplication of spiritual power.”

The LGBT youth population is one of the most marginalized and diverse groups in America. The complex challenges they face, both internal and external vary amongst them and are manifested in myriad ways. Some of those challenges, such as understanding one’s identity, are exacerbated by the struggles inherent in transitioning into and out of adolescence; other trials, such as those faced by transgender youth, are directly due to the onset of puberty and the inability to reconcile one’s internal sensations with one’s new physical manifestations. This paper examines those struggles and offers suggestions on how counselors and other support persons such as teachers, family members and clinical therapists can assist them in negotiating confusion and anxiety often associated with the coming out process, revising ways of connecting in social contexts, increasing their sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem, while staying safe in schools and their communities.

God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America
by Christopher Buck
Kingston, NY: Educator's International Press, 2015

Contents
Introduction, by J. Gordon Melton
Chapter 1: America: Nation and Notion
Chapter 2: Native American Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 3: Protestant Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 4: The Christian Right’s Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 5: Catholic Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 6: Jewish Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 7: Mormon Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 8: Christian Identity Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 9: Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 10: Contemporary Muslim Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 11: Buddhist Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 12: Baha’i Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 13: Conclusion: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role

Two sample chapters (by publisher's permission):
1.  Native American Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 2)
2.  Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 9)

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Apple-Pie-Religious-Visions/dp/1891928155/

Introduction by J. Gordon Melton,
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University

Far from being an interesting additional topic for the religious dilettante, the discussion around the theological reality that is America, periodically bursts forth as an important item on the nation's agenda, from the place of prayer services in the White House, to the issuance of an annual government report on religious persecution, to the rise of contemporary terrorism. As one traces radical Islam, for example, one arrives at the writings of one Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who spent some of his younger years in America, and came away with his own vision of a country mired in sin and decadence. He would posit America as the image of everything he hoped to escape in promoting the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, in all honesty, I must admit that over the years as I encountered all of the intriguing, even fascinating, ideas about America in the great cosmic scheme of things, I never got around to systematically gathering the different visions and trying to make sense of them in any detailed fashion. Thus, I have been more than happy to receive, and now with this modest introduction, pass along to my scholarly colleagues and the reading public the work of Christopher Buck.

During his years of observation and research, Buck has surveyed the spectrum of visions of America that have energized and motivated the America's religious community, and has selected from among them a sample that both (1) represents the spectrum of opinion about America and its importance, and (2) highlights the more important visions of America that have shaped and are continuing to shape the way we understand this country we call home. His work calls us to become self-conscious about the assumptions we use in our day-to-day movements that massage the ways we approach our neighbors, our colleagues at work, and the politicians for whom we vote.

Buck begins with the visions of America present at the founding of the nation, aspects of which still strongly permeate the culture today, and have found a new home among conservative Protestants in their innovative idea of Christian America. Amid the Protestant context, we often forget the role of the Roman Catholic Church, which became the largest religious body in America in the 1840s and is now three times larger than its nearest competitor. At the end of the nineteenth century, a controversy on Americanism would erupt around Catholic visions of their place in a changing world that would drive it from participation in the nation's public square for a half-century, and molded its reentrance after World War II.

And then there are all the other-than-Christian religions, from Ahmadiyya Muslims to Zoroastrians, all of which possess their its own vision of America that shapes their appropriation of life in the United States and guides their development as their place in the nation was challenged, then accepted, and most recently affirmed and even celebrated by the nation as a whole. We have watched as Buddhists have carved out a place as cultural peacemakers, Muslims have struggled with separation of religion and government, and Baha'is have tried to understand the communication of their founder, Baha'u'llah, with the presidents of the Americas collectively, and with 'Abdu'l-Baha's statements about the destiny of America in particular. All of this occurs in the ebb and flow of religious life. One day we envision the possible unity of America's religions only to be thrown up against the many harsh divisions, which motivates us once more to seek realms of agreement, which again highlights the array of issues that can drive wedges between those who accept the label "American" as part of their self-identity.

In conclusion, I can, as a scholar, reflect on the contribution that this book, Religious Myths and Visions of America: God and Apple Pie, is making to our understanding of the American mosaic and how various segments of the religious community have found their way to being American. As an informed citizen I welcome its information that allows me to empathize with and make informed decisions relative to those with whom I might align (or oppose) as I sally forth in the public square. And on a personal level, I welcome the author's invitation for me to meet anew the residents of my neighborhood, those who shop in the same stores I do, send their children to the same schools my grandchildren attend, and diligently work toward their own appropriation of the American dream.

J. Gordon Melton
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History
Baylor University

January 2015 — This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Erfan Sabeti, Ph.D., translator. Persian translation of: Christopher Buck, “The Interracial ‘Bahá’í Movement’ and the Black Intelligentsia: The Case of W. E. B. Du Bois.” Journal of Religious History 36.4 (December 2012): 542–562. (Special Issue: Bahá’í History, guest-edited by Todd Lawson.) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2012.01230.x. Published online: http://aasoo.org/articles/93/.

Christopher Buck, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2005. Pub date: July 3, 2005. ISBN-13: 978-1890688387. ISBN-10: 189068838X. L

In print. (Order from Kalimat Press: http://www.kalimat.com/Locke.html.)

REVIEWS
•  Derik Smith. World Order 38.3 (2006/2007): 42–48. (Published in 2008.): ”Christopher Buck’s recent book, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy, is a welcome addition to the literature on early twentieth-century American and African American culture. But, perhaps more important, Buck’s study is a significant contribution to scholarship on the history of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. … Any future study of Locke must necessarily make its way through Christopher Buck’s Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. The scholar forcefully proves his thesis that, in Locke’s thinking, philosophy and religious belief operated as synergistic terms. He has shown that the Bahá’í Faith was integral to Locke’s life and ideology. …  Yet, after reading Buck’s work, it is difficult to imagine Locke the philosopher rapt in prayer. Of course, this is not a shortcoming of the book. Rather it is an indication that, while he may have wanted to portray a more pious figure, Buck maintains the vow he made in his introduction to Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy “to constrain any grandiose claims on Locke as a Bahá’í.”

• M. Anthony Fitchue. Journal of African American History 92.1 (Winter 2007): 131–133: “But the jewels in this book are unmistakable. … Clearly, Buck has given voice to the men and women who not only put the Baha’i faith first in their lives, but also left key documents, personal letters, notes, and memoranda related to the life of philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke for future researchers to ponder and use for years to come.”

• William P. Collins. Insights (Library of Congress Professional Association Newsletter) 38.1–3 (Jan–Oct 2006): 10–12: “Both of these books [Lights of the Spirit and Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy] go a long way toward correcting the historians’ failure to note the important role played by the Bahá’í Faith and prominent African-American Bahá’ís in the struggle for racial equality in the United States.”

Because some have alleged that Ellen White’s early statements on the amalgamation of man and beast denigrate the Negro race, it is important that we carefully evaluate her statements.

The following excerpt from Journeying to the Same Heaven is a careful analysis of Ellen White's statements on amalgamation.

Buck, Christopher. “The Baha’i ‘Race Amity’ Movement and the Black Intelligentsia in Jim Crow America: Alain Locke and Robert S. Abbott.” Baha’i Studies Review 17 (2011): 3–46. [Published September 2012.]

EPIGRAPH:

I attended every session, day and night ... Many times throughout the meetings did with much effort restrain my tears. My heart leaped and throbbed and many times almost burst within my breast. I am a colored man ... My race as a whole, I believe, is quite ready to welcome the glad day when all will be brothers. ... The trouble is nearly unilateral. God give us the day.

— M. F. Harris, audience member at the ‘Convention for Amity Between the Colored and White Races Based on Heavenly Teachings’ (19–21 May 1921)

ABSTRACT:

This study demonstrates how the Baha’i ‘Race Amity’ efforts effectively reached the black intelligentsia during the Jim Crow era, attracting the interest and involvement of two influential giants of the period — Alain Leroy Locke, PhD (1885–1954) and Robert S. Abbott, LLB (1870–1940). Locke affiliated with the Baha’i Faith in 1918, and Abbott formally joined the Baha’i religion in 1934.

Another towering figure in the black intelligentsia, W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) – whose first wife, Nina Du Bois (d. 1950), was a member of the New York Baha’i community — had sustained, for a period of time, considerable interest in the Baha’i movement, as documented in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Religious History, guest edited by Todd Lawson. These illustrious figures — W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain L. Locke and Robert S. Abbott — are ranked as the 4th, 36th and 41st most influential African Americans in American history. It is not so much the intrinsic message of the Baha’i religion that attracted the interest of the black intelligentsia, but rather the Baha’i emphasis on ‘race amity’ — representing what, by Jim Crow standards, may be regarded as a socially audacious, even radical — application of the Baha’i ethic of world unity, from family relations to international relations, to the prevailing American social crisis.

EXCERPT:

On February 1, 2012, Cornel West, Professor of African American Studies and Religion, Princeton University, paid tribute to the historic Baha’i efforts to foster ideal race relations in America:

“When you talk about race and the legacy of white supremacy, there’s no doubt that when the history is written, the true history is written, the history of this country, the Baha’i Faith will be one of the leaven in the American loaf that allowed the democratic loaf to expand because of the anti-racist witness of those of Baha’i faith.”

[“Towards Oneness - Cornel West” (1 February 2012). Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbEDC8wAWiI [updated link, accessed May 17, 2018.]

If and when, as suggested by Cornel West, a revisionist history of the Jim Crow era is written, the contribution of the Baha’i ‘race amity’ initiatives — envisioned and mandated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá himself — should take its rightful place in the annals of American history.

Christopher Buck, “Robert Hayden’s ‘[American Journal]’: A Multidimensional Analysis.” Online Journal of Baha’i Studies 2 (2008): 1–37. 

As America’s “Bicentennial poem,” poet-laureate Robert Hayden’s “American Journal” reveals much about the poet’s treatment of American identity, and of his tropical use of “America” as well. The artifice of “American Journal” is quite interesting: “American Journal” purports to be the field notes of a Martian observer who, by his shape-shifting powers, disguises himself in an array of human personas, and who then reports his findings to his superiors, “the Counselors.” "American Journal” introduces the unlikely figure of an alien observer from outer space, whose field-notes are reported in the poem itself. The alien‘s journal about America (hence the title, “American Journal”) is recorded in truncated form—largely by the poetic device known as brachylogy (condensed expression; laconic speech), as in “oceans deserts mountains grain fields canyons / forests variousness of landscapes weathers / sun light moon light as at home much here is / beautiful dream like vistas reminding me of / home.”

A close reading of “American Journal” assumes that these American social identities act as superegos that overarch and refract on individual identities, to which individual identities may be subaltern. In the opening lines of the poem, the poet describes “the americans this baffling / multi people.” Yet, at the end of the poem, the poet is at a loss to adequately account for “their variousness their ingenuity / their elan vital and that some thing essence / quiddity i cannot penetrate or name.” Nevertheless, internal evidence suggests that Hayden treats American identity in nine dimensions: (1) Landscape Identity; (2) Alien (Individual) Identity; (3) Racial Identity; (4) Political Identity; (5) Class Identity; (6) Material Identity; (7) Religious Identity; (8) American (National) Identity; (9) Human Identity.

Citation: Christopher Buck, "Robert Hayden's 'American Journal": A Multidimensional Analysis." Online Journal of Baha’i Studies 2 (2008): 1–37.

Christopher Buck, “Chapter 13: Baha’i Faith.” The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice. Edited by Michael D. Palmer and Stanley M. Burgess. Malden, MA / Oxford, UK; Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Pp. 210–223. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444355390.ch13.

ABSTRACT

The Bahá’í religion had established ethical and social principles for the ennobling of individuals and the ordering of societies well before “social justice” emerged as a dominant value in modern democracies. Indeed, the Bahá’í Faith claims to be a religion “endowed with a system of law, precept, and institutions capable of bringing into existence a global commonwealth ordered by principles of social justice” (Bahá’í World Centre, 1993: 107). In the Bahá’í hierarchy of moral values, social justice ranks as a central and guiding principle. The distinctively pragmatic Bahá’í approach is to promote social justice through coordinated initiatives of “social action.”

Bahá’ís generally prefer to speak of “social action” rather than “social justice” because they view the former as proactive and the latter as reactive. Social action, as they speak of it, anticipates social issues and addresses them prospectively; social justice aims at remediating injustices that have already occurred. Seen in this light, engaging in social action could be expected to reduce the need to redress social injustices. If “social justice” is conceived broadly (i.e., not simply as remedial or corrective), then “social action” is the name that Bahá’ís use to articulate a proactive model for achieving social justice. This proactive orientation to social justice involves acting on the basis of a vision and core values to reorder society by means of a multifaceted, systematic, and progressive plan of social engagement: multifaceted in that it involves undertaking different kinds of initiatives and projects simultaneously around the world; systematic in that it involves coordinating complementary initiatives and programs; and progressive in that it extends successful local and regional initiatives to communities around the globe.

The centrality of justice in Bahá’í thought is evident in the declarations of the religion’s early leaders. Its founder, Bahá’u’lláh (1817–1892), elevated justice by linking it in several ways to God and by citing its practical utility: “The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice . . . turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee.” “By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor.” “Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes” (Bahá’u’lláh, 1978: 37). ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844–1921), Bahá’u’lláh’s son and appointed successor, who led the religion from 1892–1921, also accorded justice a special status: “Justice . . . is a universal quality”; and “justice must be sacred, and the rights of all the people must be considered” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, 1969: 159).

But social justice is not an end in itself. In the Bahá’í hierarchy of values, social justice directs thought and action to a higher principle and to a grand vision of a future world commonwealth. “The purpose of justice,” Bahá’u’lláh declared, “is the appearance of unity among men” (Bahá’u’lláh, 1978: 67). In other words, social justice is a means to a higher end, unity, which Bahá’ís view as an organizing principle for their entire system of community norms and practices, which will, in turn, transform society on a global scale. They describe this unity not as rigid uniformity or slavish conformity but as “unity in diversity” – a social culture in which diversity can flourish.

Special Issue: Alain Locke: Dean of the Harlem Renaissance and Baha’i Race-Amity Leader. World Order 36.3 (2005): 7–36. 

Winner of the 2006 DeRose-Hinkhouse Memorial Award of Excellence: Class B. Periodicals—Single Issue, Magazine, National (B-1), for excellence in religion communications and public relations. Awarded to:

(1) Dr. Betty J. Fisher, Editor;
(2) World Order magazine; and
(3) the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.

See http://www.religioncommunicators.org/assets/documents/derosehinkhouseawardwinners2006.pdf

SELECTED CONTENTS
Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke: Race Leader, Social Philosopher, Baha’i Pluralist.” Special Issue: Alain Locke: Dean of the Harlem Renaissance and Baha’i Race-Amity Leader. World Order 36.3 (2005): 7–36. 

Alain Locke, “Alain Locke in His Own Words: Three Essays.” Edited and annotated by Christopher Buck and Betty J. Fisher. World Order 36.3 (2005): 37–48. 

Features four previously unpublished works by Alain Locke:
• “The Moon Maiden” (37);
• “The Gospel for the Twentieth Century” (39–42);
• “Peace between Black and White in the United States” (42–45);
• “Five Phases of Democracy” (45–48).

Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke.” American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Supplement XIV. Edited by Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Scribner’s Reference/The Gale Group, 2004. Pp. 195–219. (Available in the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) database.)  

ABSTRACT
ALAIN LEROY LOCKE—philosopher, race leader, art critic, adult educator, essayist, and anthologist—was the leading African American intellectual of his day after W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963). A social genius, Locke was the mastermind behind the Harlem Renaissance, that explosion in the 1920s and 1930s of “New Negro” literature, drama, music, and art that bolstered black pride and earned reciprocal white respect on a national scale never before achieved. The December 1925 publication of Locke’s anthology, The New Negro, was a stellar event in American cultural history. A volume that spoke volumes, The New Negro: An Interpretation was art as manifesto—a secular liberation theology. For this and other reasons Columbus Salley, in The Black 100 (1999), ranks Locke as the thirty-sixth most influential African American in history. Alain Leroy Locke is the Martin Luther King Jr. of American culture.

Locke was a “prophet of democracy,” whose grand (though not systematic) theory of democracy sequenced local, moral, political, economic, and cultural stages of democracy as they arced through history, with racial, social, spiritual, and world democracy completing the trajectory. Adjunct notions of natural, practical, progressive, creative, intellectual, equalitarian democracy crystallized the paradigm. Seeing America as “a unique social experiment,” Locke’s larger goal was to “Americanize Americans,” with the simple yet profound message that equality benefits everyone and that democracy itself is at stake. The essence of Locke’s philosophy of democracy is captured in the title “Cultural Pluralism: A New Americanism,” a public lecture he gave at Howard University on November 8, 1950. In raising democracy to a new level of consciousness, Locke internationalized the race issue, making the crucial connection between American race relations and international relations. Racial justice, he predicted, would serve as a social catalyst of world peace. Thus there are two major streams of thought in Locke’s work—the African American historical, cultural, and intellectual tradition, and a cosmopolitan, global outlook intensified by the Bahá’í principles he embraced. Locke is both a “race man” (cultural racialist) and a philosopher (cultural pluralist). How Locke should be read depends on which of these two roles predominates.

History has both immortalized and obscured Locke. Given his cynicism toward it in later life, it is ironic, although not surprising, that Locke should forever be associated with the Harlem Renaissance, much to the exclusion of his broader role as a cultural pluralist. With new information that has come to light regarding his Bahá’í identity, it is now possible to understand how Locke could function simultaneously as a cultural racialist and cultural pluralist. Together the two combine to produce “unity through diversity”—the Bahá’í principle that Locke held sacred. Locke’ s philosophy of democracy, which previous literature never holistically described, is the key to integrating the various facets of his thought. As a philosopher Locke had no appreciable impact in his own lifetime. In the end, however, he may enjoy a delayed influence. That will depend largely on whether the new information that recent scholarship has provided can bring Locke back to influential life as a prophet of democracy.

Buck, Christopher. “The Interracial ‘Baha’i Movement’ and the Black Intelligentsia: The Case of W. E. B. Du Bois.” Journal of Religious History 36.4 (December 2012): 542–562. (Special Issue: Baha’i History, guest-edited by Todd Lawson.) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2012.01230.x.

Journal of Religious History
Volume 36, Issue 4 p. 542-562
ARTICLE
The Interracial “Baha'i Movement” and the Black Intelligentsia: The Case of W. E. B. Du Bois
CHRISTOPHER BUCK
First published: 13 December 2012
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2012.01230.x

Abstract
This article surveys W. E. B. Du Bois's encounters with the Baha'i religion, from 1910 to 1953. Sections one and two focus on Du Bois and ‘Abdu'l-Baha (1844–1921), while section three treats Du Bois's indirect connection to the New York Baha'i community through Nina Du Bois's documented affiliation with that group. Section four chronicles the 1937 Nashville incident involving reportedly segregated Baha'i meetings, and section five looks at Du Bois's later Baha'i contacts, completing the trajectory. Originally attracted to Baha'i teachings on interracial unity — with Du Bois prominently featuring ‘Abdu'l-Baha with full-page photograph in Du Bois's “Men of the Month” column — Du Bois later waxed indignant, openly criticizing the Baha'i movement in a Pittsburgh Courier editorial. Drawing on press reports, Baha'i records, and archival correspondence between members of the Baha'i community and Du Bois, primary sources establish that Du Bois's righteous indignation was based on misinformation.

This article analyzes a conception of and political approach to antisemitism that, while now defunct, once exercised nearly unrivaled hegemony over American Jewish institutions before imploding in a blaze of communal conflict during the immediate postwar decades. An examination of its final institutional advocate, the American Council for Judaism, highlights this paradigm’s embeddedness in the pre-civil-rights American racial order and traces its obsolescence to the epochal social transformations of the 1960s. Central to the Council’s view of antisemitism, and to earlier iterations of the paradigm in question, was an understanding of Zionism as a racializing force. Established in the waning years of Jim Crow, the Council and its affluent leadership waged a rearguard battle against American Zionism and its ethnonational conception of Jewish identity, in an effort—as they saw it—to safeguard American Jews against antisemitism. The closing section sketches the development of the communal antisemitism paradigm that emerged hegemonic in the wake of the Council’s downfall—the so-called “new antisemitism” paradigm—and highlights the role of reconstituted racial anxieties in its own formulation. Both the “new antisemitism” paradigm and the paradigm advanced by the Council link race, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism in a unique ideological assemblage intended to advance the interests of its adherents. Juxtaposing the two shows the American racial order as a persistent structuring force in intra-Jewish contests over the relationship between (anti-)Zionism and antisemitism.

GOD & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America

Two sample chapters (by publisher's permission):
1.  Native American Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 2)
2.  Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 9)

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Apple-Pie-Religious-Visions/dp/1891928155/

From the Inside Flap;

GOD & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America

Christopher Buck

Introduction by J. Gordon Melton,
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University

This book is about an unusual religious topic: the United States of America ("America").
"America" is, at once, nation and notion, country and creed, republic and rhetoric. This book is about Providence and principle--the relationship of the supernatural world to the world's superpower. "America" is not in the Bible, nor in the Qur'an. Yet "America" today pulsates with religious significance. "America" is a word that has taken on mythic proportions.

Eleven religions have been selected for their distinctive perspectives on America: (1) Native American religion (Iroquois); (2) Protestant Christianity (the Puritans); (3) the Christian Right; (4) Roman Catholicism; (5) Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist); (6) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons); (7) Christian Identity (White nationalists); (8) Nation of Islam (Black nationalists); (9) Islam (especially Radical Islamists and Progressive Muslims); (10) Buddhism (Tibetan and Soka Gakkai); and (11) the Baha'i Faith.

Over the course of American history, religious myths and visions of America tend to reflect an ever-changing American civil society, whether as a function of its social evolution or as a catalyst of it. The result is: Religions re-mythologize America. And: Religions re-envision America.

God & Apple Pie invites serious reflection on what it means to be an American, particularly from a religious perspective.

The East Asian region is the most economically dynamic in the world. China, a major nuclear power and possessing the largest army in the region, is experiencing explosive economic growth coupled with an increase in military modernization; this situation has created concern among her neighbours. There is the complex pattern of rising tensions between china and Taiwan; increasing militarism in the South China Sea; ongoing hostilities between North and South Korea and anxiety over North Korea’s stability and its nuclear capability.
Thus the nations in this region face many obstacles over disputed territories that could hinder their co-operation in regional economic and security problems; these disputes remain sources of tension, suspicion, and misunderstandings. China’s rapid economic development is accompanied by an increasingly active foreign policy and growing military might. Because of the defence modernization, the increase of the defence budget and disputes in the region, for some China is a military threat.
In this paper I will look at whether the rise of china will increase the risk of conflict or whether it would improve stability in the region. I will look briefly at the disputes in this region, the arms build-up and better relationship institutions.

In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement moved to the fore. Many Americans understood for the first time that racism persists in countless aspects of American society and that the legacy of our past is deep and structural. The legal academy, and higher education more broadly, responded by hiring more racialized scholars and making curricular changes. While I salute this effort, I argue that law schools chose to take the easiest path, instead of seizing the opportunity to question, and challenge, the structure and nature of legal education. I consider the structural characteristics of legal education that contribute to the exclusion of racialized and historically marginalized groups. I conclude that meaningfully advancing equity in our law schools, and responding to the Black Lives Matter movement, will remain hindered by the structure and nature of legal education – its soul. To truly challenge the legacy of racism, we will need to challenge the soul of legal education.

Christopher Buck & Nahzy Abadi Buck, 
‘Abdu'l-Bahá's 1912 Howard University Speech:
A Civil War Discourse for Interracial Emancipation.
Grand Canyon Baha’i Conference. Phoenix, AZ.
(December 22, 2012.)

Based on:

Christopher Buck, “’Abdu’l-Baha’s 1912 Howard University Speech: A Civil War Myth for Interracial Emancipation.” ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Journey West: The Course of Human Solidarity. Edited by Negar Mottahedeh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. 111–144.

https://www.academia.edu/29904876/_Abdu_l-Baha_s_1912_Howard_University_Speech_A_Civil_War_Myth_for_Interracial_Emancipation_2013_

Everything in Holocaust history began to crumble with the Berlin Wall. The world was given access to what amounted to more than half the documentary evidence and historical sites. The WWII generation in Germany began to die away, and sources and evidence once closely guarded became available. As such, our understanding of The Holocaust is evolving and maturing. The Eugenics Anthology book series addresses the vast gaps in now outdated Holocaust history. It is based on original archival research, most of which has gone unnoticed, unaddressed, and unpublished.

Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke.” The American Mosaic: The African American Experience, ABC-CLIO. Edited by Marian Perales, Spencer R. Crew, and Joe E. Watkins. (Online database.) https://africanamerican.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1477693. [Entry ID: 1477693, as of Feb. 19, 2023.]

This essay answers the question 'What is systemic racism?' by answering two more basic questions: (1) What is a social system? And (2) How can a social system be racist? Understanding the nature of institutions and social structures helps answer question (1). Question (2) is answered by distinguishing three general ways that a social system can contribute to racial oppression.

Author profile: “Christopher Buck.” Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields. Vol. 285. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2010. Pp. 56–58. (Biography. Length: 1313 words. Updated: Jan. 9, 2017.) Databases: Gale eBooks (June, 2015); Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors (2017); Gale In Context: Biography. (Gale Document Number: GALE|H1000188543.)  (Updated Aug. 3, 2021, courtesy of Jennifer Stock.)

Christopher Buck,
Review of Jacoby Adeshai Carter and Leonard Harris (eds.),
Philosophic Values and World Citizenship: Locke to Obama and Beyond
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010).
Baha’i Studies Review 18 (2012): 172–178.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/bsr.18.1.153_5.
(Published June 23, 2015)

ABSTRACT
Philosophic Values and World Citizenship (‘World Citizenship’), as the title indicates, aims at connecting the values philosophy of Alain Locke (1885–1954) and peers with the global ethic of world citizenship. To what extent does this volume deliver on its promise?

World Citizenship is effectively the proceedings volume of a 2008 conference of the Alain Locke Society held at George Washington University. This multi-author work succeeds in catapulting Locke into the limelight as a cosmopolitan, by showcasing Locke as an advocate of world citizenship, as no other previous publication on Locke has done.

Indeed, prior to this, Locke, for the most part, had been frozen in time as the 1925 editor of The New Negro: An Interpretation, thus privileging Locke as a ‘race man’. World Citizenship features Locke as a man of the human race.

This paper has two related aims: first, to highlight the privileging of academic knowledges within United States critical whiteness studies (with an understanding that such knowledge is not wholly distinguishable from other forms of knowledge); second, to underscore the necessity of recognising and engaging with the activist roots of critical studies of US whiteness, particularly those within black freedom efforts. Reflecting an understanding that personal experiences often serve as the building blocks of knowledge, I envelope my own experiences as a white racial justice activist and academic into my arguments. I illustrate the significance of activist knowledges on whiteness by examining the contributions of two black freedom activists—Douglass Fitch, a black reverend, and Bob Terry, a white minister—who lived and were active in Detroit in the late 1960s and early 70s. By asking how these activists came to interrogate whiteness and how they understood it, I demonstrate that they prefigured many of critical whiteness studies’ key tenets developed from the early 1990s on. Without incorporating and building off of these activist knowledges, I argue that the field not only moves at the snail’s pace of the academic imaginary, but also reproduces the racial power relations that the field as a whole attempts to challenge.

“Black Plato: Alain Locke and the Baha’i Faith.”
Presented by Christopher Buck and Nahzy Abadi Buck.

With video & audio links.

“Memorials of the Faithful” weekend (May 23–24, 2015). Desert Rose Baha’i Institute. Eloi, AZ.
(May 24, 2015, morning and afternoon sessions.)

This paper examines the existence of Jazz as black-American music, from the perspective of current-day black artists. It is the goal of this ethnomusicological study, which will survey not only the particulars, and narratives, but also the interpretives of the matter, to expose various perspectives on jazz and black-American music within current-day society, in hopes of shedding more light on an ongoing conversation regarding race relations.

This study proposed an investigation of how segregation laws in the beginning of the twentieth century impacted the urban development of Belmont-DeVilliers area in the city of Pensacola, Florida. The research explored the progression of Belmont-De Villiers neighborhood from a center where African American musicians and entertainers performed during the segregation years between the 1940s and 1970s to the current project of revitalization of the area after a period of abandonment and progressive violence that started during the 1950s. Photographic examination presented past and current pictures of local business that contributed to the formation of the cultural distinctiveness of this area. In addition to photo inquiry, data from this study relied on archival research, compiled oral stories, and public record documents.