{"id":121600,"date":"2019-01-24T11:34:39","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T16:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=121600"},"modified":"2026-02-19T09:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:51:12","slug":"five-social-justice-terms-we-heard-on-martin-luther-king-jr-day-at-bates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/01\/24\/five-social-justice-terms-we-heard-on-martin-luther-king-jr-day-at-bates\/","title":{"rendered":"We heard these six social justice terms on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Bates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Bates, words and terms related to social justice come fast and furious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of their meanings are self-evident (perhaps deceptively so). Other terms dig deep into the latest thinking on the intersection of issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are six we heard during the sessions on Monday, Jan. 21, and how they were used by presenters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Far from Finished<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

The work to achieve greater equity within the Bates community, for all members of our community, is an ongoing process. While this and other stories of MLK Day 2019 show progress and community engagement, we are mindful that much work remains ahead.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIntersectionality\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s MLK Day theme was \u201cLifting Every Voice: Intersectionality and Activism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one session, criminologist Chad Posick talked about how race, gender, and geography intersect in criminal sentencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it\u2019s well-known that black people tend to receive harsher sentences than whites who have committed comparable crimes, little is known about how those disparities play out between race and gender and across rural and urban settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Black females in rural areas were more likely than their urban counterparts to receive a sentence including incarceration.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Posick and co-author Brenda Blackwell have found that black females are sentenced to prison at a higher rate than white females.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, black females in rural areas were more likely than their urban counterparts to receive a sentence including incarceration\u2014 “highlighting an intersectional research strategy for exploring sentencing disparities in the U.S.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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Students come and go from MLK Day sessions held in Pettengill Hall on Jan. 21. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
\u201cActivism\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This deceptively simple word was the focus of a panel discussion featuring four Bates historians: Alexis Baldacci, Wes Chaney, Margaret Creighton, Joe Hall, and Patrick Otim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One definition of \u201cactivism\u201d is \u201cdoing something to change something,\u201d said Creighton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

When it comes to academic writing, \u201cwe are trapped, to some degree,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think Bates historians are pretty good activists in the classroom,\u201d she said, in the sense of awakening students\u2019 minds, \u201cbeing provocative, asking big questions that expose power structures, and helping students think about how the world we are given is made up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Professor of History Margaret Creighton took park in an MLK Day panel discussion about the intersection of activism and scholarship in the discipline of history. She is seen in 2017 during a Bates faculty discussion after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

But when it comes to academic writing, \u201cwe are trapped, to some degree,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe do wonderful analytic work \u2014 thousands of citations and footnotes \u2014 and we ground our sources in impressive ways and use the most post-, post-modern language and vernacular. We win friends on tenure and review committees \u2014 and we sell about 80 to 100 books.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She asked, \u201cIs that activism?\u201d Answering her own question, she said, \u201cWe could do better,\u201d by communicating scholarly ideas in ways that are more \u201caccessible and democratic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRespectability Politics\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This term was used in a session led by professors Charles Nero and Dale Chapman as they looked at the song \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing,\u201d popularly known as the Black National Anthem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nero explained that the phrase was coined by scholar Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and came to describe how \u201cblack activists always sought to put their best foot forward\u201d to counter negative black stereotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nero and Chapman talked about two record labels, Motown and Stax, and their different response to the Civil Rights Movement and to the \u201cimage of respectability politics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Charles Nero (left) and Dale Chapman discuss “Lift Every Voice and Sing” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the two, said Chapman, Motown has always been known for engaging respectability politics in order to \u201cappeal to a crossover audience\u201d of white consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in its approach to selling records, the Stax label tended to move \u201caway from that respectability politics and toward an embrace of black pride,\u201d drawing heavily on the sounds of gospel, urban blues, R&B, and, to some extent, country music. Stax, along with Atlantic Records, was where soul music was most prominently recorded and cultivated.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An example was the label\u2019s sponsorship of Wattstax, a benefit concern in Los Angeles in 1972 on the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots, which featured a funky, soulful, improvisational, rendition of \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing\u201d by Kim Weston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nero is the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies. Chapman is an associate professor of music. Both are members of the Program in African American Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBlack Formalism\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This term was also used in Nero and Chapman\u2019s discussion, and was coined by scholar Imani Perry, author of the book May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black formalism, said Nero, emerged \u201cat the nadir of black life\u201d in the late 19th century, explains Nero. That nadir came after \u201cseparate-but-equal became law of the land\u201d with Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em> and after \u201cAmerica said, \u2018We don\u2019t have to be concerned about black rights.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to \u201cintense white supremacy,” Nero said, “we see an increase in black churches and civic organizations and black sororities and fraternities in colleges.\u201d Perry describes the rituals that emerged to stitch together this social fabric as \u201cblack formalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, \u201cit is usually outside of the white gaze,\u201d he added. \u201cWhite people tended not to know about\u201d these organizations. \u201cThey are what black people are doing as a means to produce pride among themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A song like \u201cLift Every Voice\u201d becomes an example of this. Not just about respectability \u2014 \u2018Black people can do classical music, too\u2019 \u2014 but also about black people creating rituals for themselves beyond the white gaze.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDecolonial Feminism\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

AK Wright \u201917 used this term in a presentation that argues that America\u2019s racially biased criminal-justice system \u2014 one that particularly harms black transgender individuals \u2014 can only be solved through its abolishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne in two black transgender individuals has been incarcerated\u201d in America, said Wright. \u201cThat\u2019s a staggering number.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A doctoral student in feminist studies at the University of Minnesota, AK Wright ’17 discussed prison abolition and the experience of black transgender people in America’s carceral state. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A doctoral student in feminist studies at the University of Minnesota, Wright uses the tools of decolonial feminism to \u201cconnect the legacies that we see in race, gender, and sexuality today\u201d back to the origins of slavery in America and ideas about gender established by the continent\u2019s white colonizers and those who profited from colonization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, decolonial feminism \u201cunderstands that the root of gender- and race-based oppression lies in coloniality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAllyship\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This word was in the title of a session led by Trisha Kibugi \u201921 of Nairobi Kenya.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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Trisha Kibugi ’21, shown in 2018 making a spoken-word presentation at the Africana Fashion Show, led an MLK Day 2019 discussion about effective allyship. (Durotimi Akinkugbe ’18\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The workshop \u201cEffective Allyship\u201d taught participants that being an ally \u2014 which in this case means to support LGBTQ+ individuals \u2014 needs to be more than \u201csigning a petition and giving yourself that pat on the back,\u201d in the words of the session description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being effective at anything takes practice, the group learned. \u201cYou have to have real conversations,\u201d said Kim Trauceniek, associate dean of students for campus life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having a real conversation means overcoming fear of making a mistake, because we all do. \u201cI get things wrong every day,\u201d Trauceniek said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I keep trying.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn about these six terms: respectability politics, activism, intersectionality, decolonial feminism, allyship, and black formalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":121671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,130,175,224,11009],"tags":[5709],"class_list":["post-121600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-collaboration","category-justice-poverty","category-society-culture","category-the-college","tag-martin-luther-king-jr-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121600"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172048,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121600\/revisions\/172048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}