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Oral History as a Means of Moral Repair: Jim Crow Racism and the Mexican Americans of San Antonio, Texas
Title
Oral History as a Means of Moral Repair: Jim Crow Racism and the Mexican Americans of San Antonio, Texas.
Creator
Dominguez-Karimi, Rebecca, Norman, Sandra, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature
Abstract/Description
Oral history’s purposes have metamorphosed from a record of lifeways and stories of the elite to a means of healing for minority communities oppressed by trauma. This dissertation focuses on the power of oral history to catalyze the restorative justice process of moral repair for victims—in this case the Mexican Americans of Texas—who were traumatized by the Jim Crow laws and practices prior to 1965. I researched the racial, socio-cultural history of Texas from its colonial days up to the Jim...
Show moreOral history’s purposes have metamorphosed from a record of lifeways and stories of the elite to a means of healing for minority communities oppressed by trauma. This dissertation focuses on the power of oral history to catalyze the restorative justice process of moral repair for victims—in this case the Mexican Americans of Texas—who were traumatized by the Jim Crow laws and practices prior to 1965. I researched the racial, socio-cultural history of Texas from its colonial days up to the Jim Crow historical era of 1876-1965 and utilized archival, legal, and historical sources for my study. Additionally, I explore theories and frameworks of trauma, structural violence, and restorative justice, and analyze twenty-eight oral histories from the Voces Oral History Collection (University of Texas, Austin). Lastly, I apply oral history methodology to collect seventeen oral histories for my own project, Project Aztlan. My findings reveal a community suffering from structural violence—a theory that argues unjust laws harm individuals as much as physical violence. The oral histories unearth several issues: first, both groups of narrators were victims of structural violence as a result of traumatic racism. I anticipated finding traumatic racism, but not on such a broad scale. The results reveal it occurred in all four corners of Texas. Second, these Jim Crow laws and practices targeted members individually and collectively through racially restrictive housing covenants, segregation of schools/public facilities, job discrimination, and disfranchisement or poll taxes. Thirdly, the oral histories demonstrate and legitimize the fact that the Mexican American community deserves atonement, apology and reparation from historically guilty institutions. The State of Texas battered them with mass lynchings, disfranchisement, racially restrictive housing covenants, school segregation, and discrimination, oppressing them for over 100 years. My dissertation concludes that the oral history process helps victims attain moral repair because, similar to moral repair, it also allows them the space to voice their stories of injustice. In turn, the oral historian validates their claims and reconciliation occurs when narrators received vindication through this reparatory process. This acknowledgment fuses broken moral bonds by equalizing members of society.
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Date Issued
2018
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00005963
Subject Headings
Mexican Americans--Texas--San Antonio, Oral histories, Jim Crowism, Racism
Format
Document (PDF)
Vision of Theophilus
Title
The Vision of Theophilus: resistance through orality among the persecuted Copts.
Creator
Guirguis, Fatin Morris., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature
Abstract/Description
This study is a literary and ethnographic examination of The Vision of Theophilus, a fourth century Coptic narrative, as influential counter-narrative and source of counterdiscourse against the narrative created by the historically dominant Egyptian Arab Muslim state. It shows that The Vision has provided the Copts with the means to articulate their identity as different from their oppressors through its function as a repository of Coptic ideology, history and knowledge. Specifically, it has...
Show moreThis study is a literary and ethnographic examination of The Vision of Theophilus, a fourth century Coptic narrative, as influential counter-narrative and source of counterdiscourse against the narrative created by the historically dominant Egyptian Arab Muslim state. It shows that The Vision has provided the Copts with the means to articulate their identity as different from their oppressors through its function as a repository of Coptic ideology, history and knowledge. Specifically, it has helped them resist the erosion of those aspects of their cultural identity targeted by colonial practices through its promotion of the Coptic language, pride in Coptic history, and Christianization of the landscape. This study also suggests that The Vision tradition has helped alleviate the conditions of material and economic oppression of Copts. Drawing upon theories of Foucauldian genealogy and postcolonialism my research examines the development of Coptic identity and subjectivity in relation to assimilation practices. Using oral studies and ethnopoetics, this study traces the process of composition, transmission, stabilization and systemization of The Vision over sixteen hundred years and its dispersion over a wide geographic region from Egypt to Ethiopia, Syria, and the US. My research suggests that the resilience and effectiveness of The Vision as oral tradition lies in the stability of its core message and its ability to absorb and adapt peripheral changes to the needs of each given historical period. Close analysis of this core message as gleaned through comparative manuscript study also supports important revisions to its datation, and enables us to claim its Coptic authenticity. Previously, the only academic scholarly work concerning The Vision centered on its diffused Syrian and Ethiopian variants while its Coptic manuscript history remained largely unknown., This study, which emphasizes the specifically Coptic origins, history and significance of The Vision of Theophilus, therefore fills a vital scholarly gap: Locating cultural resistance and agency in orality, this study shows how The Vision has historically acted (and still acts today) as a repository of Coptic history and culture enabling Copts to articulate a separate identity over long periods of time, and amidst a wide range of historical and socio-economic factors.
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Date Issued
2010
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/1927607
Subject Headings
Copts, History, Oral tradition, Religion and politics, Persecution, History, Copts, Ethnic identity, Ethnic relations, Social aspects
Format
Document (PDF)