This issue invites original contributions to scholarly research on ideologies of racial uplift in slave and post-slave societies from the late eighteenth century onward. As Slaveries & Post-Slaveries is an interdisciplinary journal, contributions may draw upon one or more fields within the social sciences (history, sociology, political science, ethnography, etc.).
Dear colleagues,
The journal Slaveries & Post-Slaveries is pleased to share with you the call for contributions for issue 17 (Spring 2018), whose provisional title is “Racial Uplift and Political Struggles in Slave and Post-Slave Societies.” You will find the full text of the call below and attached, in both French and English.
Proposals for article abstracts, with a maximum length of 5,000 characters (excluding bibliography), should also include your name and institutional affiliation, as well as a short biographical and bibliographical note. They should be sent to the journal’s editorial committee (ciresc.redaction@cnrs.fr) by December 1, 2026. The detailed schedule can be found in the text of the call.
Please feel free to circulate this call widely among your networks.
We thank you in advance for your contributions.
Theme of this Issue
What the English language refers to as racial uplift may be translated into French as “élévation de la race.” Without always designating exactly the same thing, related notions include respectability politics (Higginbotham 1993), racial advancement, racial reform or moral reform, self-help, and even uplift suasion (Kendi 2016). These political ideologies share a common objective: promoting the improvement or advancement of a racialized—and therefore stigmatized—group through a set of practices aimed at resisting racial oppression by elevating both the self and the group in an upward movement toward racial equality and democratic justice (Gaines 1996).
Generally speaking, ideologies of racial uplift propose a dual strategy (Martin-Breteau 2024). Internally, within the community, they seek to strengthen self-esteem and racial pride, and more broadly self-confidence, as a means of protecting individuals from the abjection imposed by the social order. The goal is to transform the negative dispositions internalized through contact with a violently hostile society, and to build the inner confidence necessary to overcome social contempt, encourage courageous action, and achieve justice. In this first sense, racial uplift constitutes a politics of dignity. Externally, beyond the community, ideologies of racial uplift aim to overturn racial “prejudices,” that is, the degrading representations that the dominant group—most often racialized as white—maintains about those considered nonwhite. From this perspective, racial uplift constitutes a symbolic struggle for recognition (Honneth 1995; Lamont 2023), seeking to impose positive representations of nonwhite people against the falsehoods of dominant social representations. In this second sense, racial uplift constitutes a politics of truth.
From a historical perspective, the various ideologies of racial uplift thus developed through a dual movement of social protection and political protest. Contrary to a widespread assumption, they did not emerge at the end of the nineteenth century. Rather, these ideologies appear to have been systematized at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries within the framework of the slave institution, particularly in the United States and the Caribbean (Cooper 1972; Gaines 1993; Rael 2002). In the United States, these ideologies exerted their greatest influence during periods of intensified racial oppression: at the height of racial slavery (1830–1860) and, following abolition in 1865, during the establishment of racial segregation (1880–1920) (Brooks 2017). Nevertheless, they remain relevant today (Blume Oeur 2018).
Geographically speaking, tactics of racial uplift have been studied most extensively in the context of U.S. society—a disproportion in scholarly production that may suggest their marginality elsewhere. Yet in the Caribbean, these ideologies also took shape as more or less systematized tactics in the form of what McGraw calls “recognition work.” Indeed, these ideologies and practices of self-elevation circulated throughout the Black Atlantic and beyond. The circulation of the values and ideas of the Haitian Revolution, for example, contributed to the diffusion of certain forms of racial uplift (Byrd 2019; Alexander 2022). Likewise, the Universal Negro Improvement Association founded by Marcus Garvey, originally from Jamaica, became the largest Black political organization of the early twentieth century, with a presence throughout the Atlantic world and an ambition centered on Black “improvement” (Stephens & Ewing 2026).
From a sociological perspective, finally, ideologies of racial uplift were initially promoted by the political, economic, and cultural elites of the Black world, who sought to “guide” their communities along the path toward equality and justice. Those whom W. E. B. Du Bois called the Talented Tenth (Du Bois), and who have also been described as “aristocrats of color” (Gatewood 1990), were in fact the leading advocates of these “equalization strategies” (Lamont & Fleming 2005) between Black and white elites. In the Caribbean, these movements are sometimes referred to as elite reform or middle-class nationalism. Within the framework of the nineteenth-century reform movement in the English-speaking Atlantic world, Black women and their political organizations played a central role in promoting these ideologies (Giddings 1984; Higginbotham 1993; Wolcott 1997; 2001; Parker 2016; Cooper 2017; Pavlevitch 2022). Until today, these ideologies have concerned not only Black people but also other racialized groups, including populations perceived as Arab/Muslim or Asian (Jun 2011; Dazey 2021b).
These ideologies sought to improve the collective condition of the community through social practices aimed at a threefold moral, intellectual, and physical perfection. They proposed an ideal of excellence encouraging individuals to better themselves along these three dimensions through forms of “practice” and “care of the self” (Foucault 2001). As a result, religion (Wheeler 1986; Miller 2003), education (Edmondson 2009; Schenbeck 2012), and self-presentation were probably the three most important domains of social activity for uplifters. The use of photography (Wallace & Smith 2012), clothing (Miller 2009; Miller et al. 2025), cosmetics (Gill 2010), and sport (Martin-Breteau 2024) all served as means of promoting new forms of self-presentation. Economic success could itself be presented as proof of the triple perfection expected of members of the community (Weber 1958). Media outlets, especially the press (Fultz 1995; Anderson 2015; Haywood 2018), served as powerful vehicles for these political tactics.
These ideologies were vigorously criticized, particularly during the eras of the Black Power movement and Black Lives Matter (Frazier 1957; Kendi 2016; Taylor 2016; Malcolm 2022). Far from constituting a politics of emancipation, the pursuit of “respectability” associated with ideologies of racial uplift has been described as a set of bourgeois, paternalistic, conservative, authoritarian, or even reactionary political tactics—which consequently are relatively understudied in the social sciences despite their historical and sociological importance (Rhodes & Joseph 2016). The main criticism holds that racial uplift ignores the sociological, rather than psychological, origins of racial inequality: the prejudices of dominant groups are not the causes but the consequences of racial oppression, which relativizes—or even nullifies—any strategy of liberation based on moral persuasion. Ideologies of racial uplift have also been criticized for their inability to subvert dominant white norms. Since they require the oppressed to prove their humanity in order to obtain equality, they condition justice upon a standard of excellence that is often unattainable. Moreover, this demand contributes to the extension of dominant norms, thereby intensifying relations of domination over the most vulnerable members of stigmatized communities (Lopez Bunyasi & Smith 2019).
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that racial uplift was not a political tactic defended solely by conservative or bourgeois groups. Even in the 1950s-1970s United States, racial uplift was adopted in different forms as a tactic of resistance and survival within a racist society, both by activists in the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and by followers of the Nation of Islam (Curtis 2002; Matlin 2006). Although they favored different, if not opposing, political tactics, the lives and actions of W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington (Moore 2003), as well as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., were largely structured around this perfectionist demand for self-elevation. Reading their autobiographies reveals the same determination to elevate themselves in order to protect themselves from racist violence and, insofar as possible, eradicate it (Washington 1901; Malcolm X 1999). The reason is that racial uplift did not primarily seek to imitate or flatter the white majority in order to persuade it of its mistaken judgments about nonwhite people; rather, it sought to strengthen what Toni Morrison called the self-regard of Black people—that is, their self-love, understood as a prerequisite for any struggle for liberation.
This special issue therefore aims to propose a historical and geographical genealogy of the ideologies and practices of racial uplift. Rather than portraying the various forms of racial uplift as either heroic or naive, the objective is to analyze, in a methodical and contextualized manner, their intrinsic ambivalence as sets of practices simultaneously adapting to and contesting the established social and racial order (Dazey 2021a; Martin-Breteau 2024). These tactics could thus both challenge and reinforce dominant norms. Although central to the contemporary history of struggles for racial liberation, these ideologies remain relatively understudied in their historical and geographical coherence beyond the United States and even beyond the English-speaking world.
Themes
Contributions may in particular address the following issues:
- The question of distinctions and hierarchies of class, gender, age, nationality, etc., among both the promoters and the intended recipients of ideologies of racial uplift. Were those advocating racial uplift merely “elites”? Or can one also identify a powerful lineage of these ideologies and practices within the working classes themselves? What forms did they take in those contexts? What were the specific characteristics of racial uplift when promoted by women? To what extent were majority groups themselves concerned with forms of racial uplift, as in what has been called white uplift (Newman 2012; Spahn 2024)?
- The question of the highly diverse modalities of racial uplift tactics, grounded in an ethic of excellence supporting a range of practices of dignity and truth. In what sense can Black excellence—and more broadly subaltern excellence—historically be understood as a form of resistance? In which domains of social activity did this tactic develop most specifically, and why? Did these tactics not almost always combine a threefold aspiration toward moral, intellectual, and physical excellence? If not, why?
- The question of the political effectiveness of tactics of racial uplift. Racial uplift is indeed widely regarded as a conservative political tactic. Yet the elevation of the self and the group remains a central framework for forms of primary and secondary socialization aimed at resisting racial abjection and oppression. Why, despite often justified criticisms, does this tactic remain relevant today? Do these tactics consist solely of symbolic and moral struggles for recognition? Do they not also seek the redistribution of economic and political power? Does the theoretical distinction between these two paradigms truly make sense?
We welcome original contributions to scholarly research on ideologies of racial uplift in slave and post-slave societies from the late eighteenth century onward, and that engage with the themes of this call. As Slaveries & Post-Slaveries is an interdisciplinary journal, contributions may draw upon one or more fields within the social sciences (history, sociology, political science, ethnography, etc.).
Submission Procedures
Proposals for article abstracts (in French or English), with a maximum length of 5,000 characters (excluding bibliography), should also include your name and institutional affiliation, as well as a short biographical and bibliographical note. They should be sent to the journal’s editorial committee (ciresc.redaction@cnrs.fr) by December 1, 2026. Feedback on proposals will be provided by January 15, 2027.
Completed articles, of approximately 45,000 characters (including notes and spaces), should be submitted by May 3, 2027. Each article will undergo anonymous peer review by a member of the editorial board and by an external reviewer. Final versions of accepted articles must be completed by December 2027.
Practical guidelines for authors are available here: https://journals.openedition.org/slaveries/2173?file=1
Publication of issue 17 of the journal Slaveries & Post-Slaveries: Spring 2028.
Coordination:
Audrey Célestine, New-York University
Nicolas Martin-Breteau, Université de Lille
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Date
- Tuesday, 1 December 2026
Attachments
Keywords
- slavery, post-slavery, history, sociology, political sciences, ethnography