Clovis Semmes extends Afrocentric social theory by formulating the problem of structured inequality for African Americans in terms of cultural hegemony. Cultural Hegemony and African American Development challenges oppositional and segmented analyses that look at Black inequality in terms of either economic dislocation or racial oppression, and introduces the idea that what is at stake are the issues of progressive cultural adaptation, cultural reconstruction, and institutional development. What emerges is a new way of seeing and understanding the intellectual tradition and body of...

Historical, sociological, and ecological analyses reveal that the health of a people is broadly determined by the strength, resilience, and vitality of their culture. The destructive effects of oppression and exploitation on health linger and are difficult to transcend when systemic attacks on the institutional stability of a people persist. Normative cultural destabilization produces added and abnormal challenges to the health status of African Americans. The pursuit of health becomes both a goal and a tool of liberation. Better health builds and releases mental, physical, and spiritual...

The uniqueness, sweeping content, and timing of "Negro Digest/Black World" give it enormous historical and scholarly importance. The most influential and widely read Black literary magazine in the 1960s, "Negro Digest" played a critical role in the era's Black Arts and Black Consciousness movement and is the most complete voice of that movement. Renamed "Black World" in 1970, the magazine gave voice to scholars coining and developing the concept of Afrocentric and African-centered analysis. An analysis of Afrocentric methods and discourse would not be complete without an examination of...

Clovis Semmes extends Afrocentric social theory by formulating the problem of structured inequality for African Americans in terms of cultural hegemony. Cultural Hegemony and African American Development challenges oppositional and segmented analyses that look at Black inequality in terms of either economic dislocation or racial oppression, and introduces the idea that what is at stake are the issues of progressive cultural adaptation, cultural reconstruction, and institutional development. What emerges is a new way of seeing and understanding the intellectual tradition and body of...

Historical, sociological, and ecological analyses reveal that the health of a people is broadly determined by the strength, resilience, and vitality of their culture. The destructive effects of oppression and exploitation on health linger and are difficult to transcend when systemic attacks on the institutional stability of a people persist. Normative cultural destabilization produces added and abnormal challenges to the health status of African Americans. The pursuit of health becomes both a goal and a tool of liberation. Better health builds and releases mental, physical, and spiritual...

Following a history of racial oppression and segregation, Black Americans were able to move in greater numbers into previously all- or predominantly-White colleges and universities. However, they encountered normative structures that excluded or distorted the Black experience and denied Black perspectives. As a result, Black studies grew up reconstructing the humanity of a historically oppressed, devalued, and exploited group. Knowledge production in Black studies offers distinct insights into the strength and resiliency of the human spirit and poses exemplary models for enlightened social...