"We All Have Identity at the Table": Negotiating Difference in a Southern African American Environmental Justice Network |
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Authors: | Melissa Checker |
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Institution: | Department of Anthropology , University of Memphis , Memphis, Tennessee, USA |
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Abstract: | This article focuses on conflicts and resolutions among members of a south-wide environmental justice network as they negotiated their collective goals, identities, and strategies. I find that the process of building and advancing this network raised a host of questions about what it means to be a Black activist in the post-civil rights-era, as well as how to resolve multiple and divergent ideas about contemporary African American identity and the implications of claiming race as a primary basis of identification in social movement organizing. As activists' debates grew heated, they tended to frame their disagreements in class terms; however, I argue that class discourses were flexible and contingent, and reflected important organizing values. In part, due to the flexibility of these categories, I find that, ultimately, activists were able to reframe their differences as a larger problem of racism and move forward as a collectivity. |
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Keywords: | Race Class United States Environmental Justice Social Movements |
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