“The most patient of animals,next to the ass:” Jan Smuts,Howard University,and African American Leadership, 1930

Former South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts’s 1930 European and North American tour included a series of interactions with diasporic African and African American activists and intelligentsia. Among Smuts’s many remarks stands a particular speech he delivered in New York City, when he called Africans “the most patient of all animals, next to the ass.” Naturally, this and other comments touched off a firestorm of controversy surrounding Smuts, his visit, and segregationist South Africa’s laws. Utilizing news coverage, correspondence, and recollections of the trip, this article uses his visit as a lens into both African American relations with Africa and white American foundation work toward the continent and, especially, South Africa. It argues that the 1930 visit represents an early example of black internationalism and solidarity, reflecting a shift from sociocultural connections between Africa and the diaspora to creating political movements on behalf of African people. To contextualize this visit, we assess events surrounding a meeting that the Phelps-Stokes Fund organized for Smuts at Howard University, using this as a lens into the two disparate, yet interlocked, communities.     

Stability and Change in Positive Development During Young Adulthood

Calls have been made for a greater focus on successful development and how positive functioning can be conceptualized in theory and empirical research. Drawing on a large Australian community sample (N = 890; 61.7% female), this article examines the structure and stability of positive development at two time points during young adulthood. Previously, we developed and empirically tested a model of positive development at 19–20 years comprised of five first-order constructs (civic action and engagement, trust and tolerance of others, trust in authorities and organisations, social competence, and life satisfaction) and a second-order positive development construct. In the current study, we replicated this model at 23–24 years and found that it was again a good fit for the data, and was equally applicable for young men and women. Hence, positive development can be conceptualized according to five important dimensions at both ages. While variable-oriented tests suggested continuity in levels of positive development, person-oriented analyses revealed four distinct patterns of positive development over time—two reflecting stability (stable high [34.5%] and stable very low [11.6%]) and two characterized by change (low/average increasing [30.4%] and average decreasing [23.5%]). There were significant differences in the gender composition of these groups, with young women overrepresented in the more favourable groups. Thus, despite mean level stability, positive development is characterized by change for many young people, suggesting the importance of identifying factors that support young people’s capacity for positive functioning over this transitional period. The current findings contribute to our understanding of the nature and course of positive development over this important period.     

Routine activities and victimization at school: the significance of gender

Routine activities theory has not fully considered the role of gender in shaping victimization and yet, the research literature clearly demonstrates that gender is associated with an individual's risk of victimization. In addition to the pervasive effect of gender on victimization, gender shapes an individual's daily routines and thus may create a gender-specific relationship with victimization. This article explores the importance of gender in understanding the relationship between student's participation in extracurricular routine activities (e.g., student government, clubs, sports, and etc.) and the risk of victimization. From the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, a sample of 10th-grade students was drawn for analyses. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling was employed to explore the role of gender in the relationship between extracurricular routine activities and victimization at school. The results reveal that students' gender indeed interacts with several of the extracurricular routine activities creating gender-specific risks of victimization. This article highlights the importance of gender in explaining victimization and suggests researchers should consider how gender may interact with other routine activities and victimization.