Re-Imagining Blackness, Re-Imagining Nationalism Understanding Black Nationalism at the turn of the 21st Century

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 2: Blackness & College

Abstract

Black Nationalism is both a highly complicated and widely misunderstood concept (Cokley and Helm 2001). While theorists of Black Nationalism are careful to outline distinctions between several subtypes of Black Nationalism, empirical applications have often confused terminology and simplified a multidimensional concept into unidimensional scales where some aspects are discarded in favor of others for ease of questionnaires and scale creation (Charles et al. 2015; Ellison 1991; Ellison and Powers 1994; Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson 1989; Hall 1978; Jacobson 1977, 1979; Seeman 1975; Shingles 1979). Components of Black Nationalist attitudes have been linked to political participation, civic participation, voting behavior, interracial friendships, scholastic achievement, perceptions of discrimination, mental health outcomes, and career outlook (Brigham 1993; Bullock 1972; Campbell and Schuman 1968; Ellison and Powers 1994, 1994; Gay 2004; Gonlin and Campbell 2017; Graf, Paolini, and Rubin 2018; Schuman and Hatchett 1974; Thomas and Speight 1999; Thornton and Taylor 1988). This widespread use of Black Nationalism as both a causal indicator and an outcome variable across social science requires more rigorous attention be paid to how theoretical definitions are translated into questions and scales used to evaluate their presence in broader populations. I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshman (NLSF), a nationally representative data set of first year students entering selective colleges in 1999, to analyze the dimensionality of the Nationalist Subscale developed by Sellers et al. (1997). By establishing a cogent set of items meant to capture Black Nationalist attitudes, the MIBI’s Nationalist Subscale presents an apt opportunity to evaluate the relationship between theoretical definitions and the scales created to measure them.

Author

• Blaque Robinson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill