Blutopia

Graham Lock's Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton is a thought-provoking and serious work in Jazz Studies. Anytime one can encounter a serious work on jazz that takes the musicians themselves seriously and endeavors to engage with their ideas should be applauded. Lock also manages to impressively integrate an analysis of Sun Ra and Anthony Braxton with Duke Ellington, despite vast differences in style, thought, and age among these titans of jazz. However, Lock raises more questions than he answers in much of the text. 

First, Sun Ra. It's been a number of years since I've read Szwed's Sun Ra book, but much of Lock's analysis felt 'new' or 'fresh' to me. In a literature class over the last several months, Sun Ra came up more than once and we discussed the parallels of his work with Negro spirituals, but because I know very little about spirituals, Lock connecting spirituals and Sun Ra's chants (in addition to the ring shout and the way the Arkestra moved counterclockwise around the audience) was informative. However, I was at times struck by how Lock seems to take Ra's mythology too much at face value, as if there are not several troubling implications from Sun Ra's Astro Black Mythology. I think Lock came closest to grappling with this issue by identifying Ra as someone who chose to identify with Pharaoh over Moses. 

Wilson J. Moses has written about the Pharaoh-Moses dialectic with regards to African American black nationalists and intellectuals, but it seems as if the despotic aspects of Pharaoh are left out of the discussion while the 'authoritarian collectivism' of Moses (and, by extension, Christianity) are rightfully included by Lock's discussion of Ra's opposition to Christianity. As a result, Sun Ra's ideas of the past and future, not to mention the present, are not fully considered since the Moses-Pharaoh conflict is never resolved or rejected (are African Americans stuck with only Moses or Pharaoh? What of Legba?). 

As for Duke Ellington, a composer I have not listened to seriously in probably 5 or 6 years, these two chapters were a breath of fresh air. Ellington's fight for jazz to be taken seriously and the complexity and nuance of African American music to escape essentialist and condescending treatment in the eyes of white America are still relevant, as are his attempts to fight minstrelsy, blackface, and 'Uncle Tom' depictions of black life in popular culture. I think Lock also hit the nail on the head about Duke Ellington's view of black America's history as (mostly) based in the US, and his race pride was inseparable from his patriotism. Such a sentiment is lacking in Sun Ra's revisions of the black past and black present, and Duke Ellington's views are probably the most 'mainstream' when it comes to African American perceptions of their nation. 

Nonetheless, I was a little surprised that Duke Ellington's middle-class background and support for respectability politics was not integrated into the two chapters (Duke believed African Americans must behave in ways that command respect, according to Lock, plus he opposed the confrontational aspects of the Civil Rights Movement). Given the climate around respectability politics among those in African American Studies today, what are the limitations of Duke Ellington's revisions of the past and future? How does his Blutopia fall short? In what ways are Duke Ellington's US-centered black history and future limited by exclusion of Africa? What do we make of the 'world music' aspirations of his later LPs?

Last but certainly the most confusing and perhaps less relevant to Blutopia, Anthony Braxton. I do not entirely buy the argument of Mackey about Legba's limp and jazz swing or syncopation. It seems too fanciful and impossible to 'prove,' plus it may neglect the ways in which Legba's limp may be more a product of dances and music rather than the other way around. I have no evidence for my own assertion either, but I remain skeptical of a Legba interpretation of Braxton's multiformity. Lock is right about Braxton's synesthesia and the heterogeneity of black creativity (not to mention the critiques of jazz critics), but the Legba interpretation and the chapter on Trillium operas was somewhat less successful or convincing. Braxton's 'vibrationism' and spirituality were fascinating, but one must visit his esoteric writings directly to get a more detailed 'feel' for his views. Lock, to his credit, admits this and acknowledges that the chapters on Braxton did not go in depth. 

Overall, however, this is a provocative and insightful reading of three significant jazz artists. Jazz musicians as intellectuals is a growing interest of mine, and Lock has increased my appreciation for artists like Ra, Braxton, and Ellington. Some recent readings of mine on AACM and Art Ensemble of Chicago have tangentially included Braxton, but I think an interesting project would be to focus solely on the differences between Braxton and Art Ensemble of Chicago's approach to "Great Black Music" and revisions of the past and future. Perhaps that will be my next rambling post?

The Jesse Jackson Phenomon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics

"Because discussion of Afro-American affairs is so often dominated by a patronizing, exceptionalist bias that suspends norms of critical reflection and judgment, intrinsically absurd claims frequently attain currency" (29).

Adolph Reed's 1986 publication on the 1984 Jesse Jackson campaign, The Jesse Jackson Phenomon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics, retains its relevance to the state of black politics today. We still face the exceptionalist bias and essentialist reasoning that has kept brokerage politics alive for decades. Focusing on the 1984 campaign of Jackson reveals a persistent assumption of uniform black "racial interest," the conflict between the protest elite and the elected official elites vying for racial organic legitimation while mainly fighting for gains that disproportionately benefit upper income blacks. 

I also found Reed's contention with claims of black clergy as political leaders and the 'divine' rhetoric of the Jackson campaign persuasive, particularly as it is built on an exaggeration of black clergy and churches as leadership and political in nature, despite evidence for secular forces and leaders causing black churches to adopt more political stances. Nevertheless, Jackson exploited the claim of clerical political authority to assert his mass 'base' while never offering any concrete policy proposals or agenda beyond a seat at the table at the convention. In short, Jackson's campaign represented a thrust by the protest elite to reassert itself, while avoiding any fundamental break from racial authenticity appeals or the rise of neoliberalism among elected officials and protest elites. 

I fear some subsets of identitarians are wedded to the race management system of brokerage and emphasis on the upper income strata, as long as the protest elites and elected officials feature more women and LGBT individuals. What I wonder about now is how the 21st century iteration of this protest elite/elected elite dynamic plays out now in the midst of Black Lives Matter, calls for black leadership that are horizontal or privilege queer black women, and some resurgence of left social democratic or anti-austerity protests? Is Black Lives Matter, Campaign Zero, and other iterations another example of a nascent protest elite which, as Jackson did in the 1980s, legitimizes itself based on a "racial agenda" without any accountability as its links with foundations and neoliberal elected elites, black and white? Is it fair to refer to the transition of this newer, 'diverse' crop of black protest elites as wedging its role into black politics as brokerage and neoliberalism? I suppose it's hard to say in light of the decentralized nature of Black Lives Matter and its varying approach to electoral politics, albeit one in which incorporation into the Democratic 2016 apparatus appears almost complete.

Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

An interesting discussion between Barbara Fields and Coates on Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. In a provocative series of chapters by the Fields sisters, they compellingly argue that racism created race and compare the reproducing ideology of racism and race to belief in witchcraft in European and African contexts. Listening to this conversation and reading the book, I couldn't help but remember conversations with friends on these topics, particularly the ways in which our "folk conventions" of race reappear in science, despite the lack of any scientific basis for race as a valid concept of biology. From genetics to blood, we continue to reaffirm the notion of race as valid or appropriate in medicine, diagnosis, blood donations, and even pseudoscience on innate differences physical styles, athleticism and intelligence. 

A recent conversation with a friend of mine was an important moment of recognizing how so many people from all backgrounds continue to think of blood, race, and ethnicity as distinct races which can be grouped and differentiated from each other, a notion which quickly falls apart in cases such as sickle cell or ideas about which diseases black people are supposed to have. I was reminded of something Adolph Reed wrote about genetics and epigenetics, which seems like it could easily lead to another attempt to use genes and recent trends in science to rehash previous discourse of alleged racial and culture sources  as the main culprits for inequality. Sometimes it feels as if we are trapped in the Victorian era notions of class and inequality, occasionally mixing up the terminology of race, class, and genes.

Another issue touched upon in the book and this lecture is the multiracial movement, which Fields convincingly argues is multiracist and biracist, since its premised on notions of distinct, "pure" races. Referring to one estimate that found 24% of "whites" on the 1970 US census had "black" ancestors, it becomes quite clear how notions of "pure" races is a myth, yet the multiracial movement is pushing forward this agenda. This rears its ugly head in moments like claims of "authentic racial identity," as mentioned by the authors, which cannot exist when race is the product of racism, and there is huge internal diversity and other causal factors for so-called "black culture," such as racism and Jim Crow leading to some unique characteristics which appear among Afro-Americans, like "Black English." Arguing against ideas of African retention, the sisters suggest the main factor, racism and segregation, often led to these distinctive characteristics of "black culture," which has always been highly flexible evolving. 

Unfortunately, the influence of Durkheim, Pritchards, DuBois and Appiah is not explored as fully as in the text. The importance of witchcraft and understanding how, historically, Europeans of the not so recent past, and African societies of yesterday and today, can continue to believe in witches in a rational manner, is applicable to racecraft or racism and the creation of race, since both racecraft and witchcraft use similar invisible ontology. The analogy may not be as perfect as the authors wish, yet I found it an incredibly useful way to look at racism in the US context, lent further credence by the fact that both are unfounded by notions by science yet continue to operate in their respective societies. 

In spite of similarities to witchcraft and certain common processes of human social and religious thought, racecraft and racism is not an inevitable fact of human life. The text explains quite succinctly how racism evolved within particular social and economic conditions, a process taking the reader back to 17th century Virginia and its gradual development of slavery. Subsequently, notions of race and racism were still not grounded in "science" until the 19th century, despite Jefferson's fame as the US's first "racial pundit." Anyway, it is mistaken to blame "race" as the cause of slavery, when it was really racism and the need for labor that led to notions of race and perpetual servitude, not some psychological need to identify Africans as an inferior peoples on an ideology which only arose after decades of slavery and indentured labor. This is the weakness pounced upon by Fields in much of the scholarship on race among historians and sociologists, which often presupposes race before racism/racecraft. Thus, "race" is blamed for Jim Crow or a white police officer shooting a black police officer, instead of racism. It can be traced back to slavery and the circular logic or reasoning of some scholars who argue race led to slavery or racism.

Elucidating ideology as something not inherited like heirlooms but a constant process of reinvention, the idea of racism or racecraft persists, much to the detriment of addressing deeper inequality, as addressed in the final chapters of Racecraft. Lamentably, there are not enough remedies or prescriptions for how to uproot racecraft in US society, but the book offers some insight on how racism functions and infiltrates science, politics, and, dare I say it, African-American Studies and identity politics. Conflating "race," a product of racecraft, with "culture" and immutable or essentialized groups inhibits recognition of broader systemic issues in the face of austerity and declining real wages for all working-class and poor people. Although certainly not advocating for colorblindness, one can easily draw from left-leaning ideologies or programs as one avenue of redress, consistent with Verso Books. 

Robin D.G. Kelley

Gotta love Robin D.G. Kelley, public intellectual, jazz aficionado, and an academic unafraid to take a stance. I have read his excellent biography of Monk, enjoyed his take on cultural politics and discourses of race and class, was fascinated by Black Communists in Alabama during the Great Depression, and was enthralled by his analysis of exchanges between Africa and US in the lives of 4 understudied jazz artists. 

Largey's Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism

Michael Largey's Vodou Nation has been an exhilarating read. Given the lack of secondary sources on so much of Haitian classical music (and Haitian music more generally), as well as its importance in forging a Haitian national identity, broader black cultural nationalism (examined in the text through African-American operas about Haiti, Ouanga and Troubled Island) and shaping Haitian intellectual history, Largey's text is a must read. The last time I read something so moving in ethnomusicology was Averill's text on Haitian popular music. This book places the US occupation, Haitian class relations (elite vs. peasant dynamics), Haitian and African-American intellectual exchange and anthropology/ethnography (Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Jean Price-Mars, Dantes Bellegarde, Jacques Roumain), some music theory and debates on notating/arranging Haitian music (such as how one should notate the Haitian mereng), the tourism industry in post-WWII Haiti, Vodou and African-derived customs, and last, but certainly not least, a robust examination of the music, life, and ideology behind a few of Haiti's best composers (Occide Jeanty, Ludovic Lamothe, Justin Elie, and Werner Jaegerhuber).

In regards to Haitian and black cultural nationalism, Largey's thesis is quite convincing, particularly his excellent use of a variety of sources, ranging from white anthropologists and writers, such as Herskovits, to local Haitian academics, ethnographers, and scholars. Furthermore, his text reveals the depths to which recombinant mythology have shaped how popular classes have perceived political elites (and vice versa). In addition, Largey shows how African-Americans (such as Langston Hughes and William Grant Still) have related to Haitian class relations, how African-American cultural nationalism looked to Haiti as a source due to the country's reputation as the reservoir of the 'purest' African cultural retentions), how Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois influenced Haitian intellectuals, such as Jean-Price Mars to look to the Haitian rural majority to strengthen Haiti, and how specifically Haitian classical composers used Vodou and peasant music to construct a palatable Haitian art music for international and elite audiences while occupying a broader Black Atlantic. 

Surely, the influence of DuBois's assertions on the power of the spiritual and African-American folk forms played a role here for Haitian elites, just as the US Occupation and the omnipotence of Haitian peasant culture pervaded all parts of Haiti, including urban Haiti and elite neighborhoods and towns. Indeed, the constant flow of rural Haitians to and from the towns probably explains why Occide Jeanty's "Zizipan" reflects rara influence. Or why Haitian elites were exposed to Haitian popular folklore and culture through dance, Carnival, the occasional Vodou ceremony, and mingling with the lower classes through concerts (such as the free and public performances of fanfares for the military or politicians), intellectual movements (indigenist and noirist being significant examples from the 20th century), political purposes (such as patronage or legitimizing oneself with rural Haitians), and cross-class nationalism (an excellent example being Occide Jeanty's "1804" sparking a riot and contributing to an outpouring of Haitian patriotism).

Moreover, Haitian classical composers such as Elie and Lamothe reveal the differing approaches to explaining Haitian cultural and symbolic ancestry, such as the importance of African or Arawak influences. Clearly, Elie's compositions and promotion of himself as an expert on 'Indian' music (even though he never studied indigenous musics of the Americas, nor were there any demonstrable indigenous influences in Haitian music), partly due to expectations and stereotypes from his American audiences in New York, belongs in a tradition of indigenism or Indianist thought dating back to Nau and 19th century Haitian ideas. Indeed, the resonance of the indigenous peoples of Haiti resisting encroachment from European colonists appealed to much to Haitians of all classes that the cacos resisting the US Occupation traced their name back to the caciques of the Taino. Lamothe, on the other hand, focused on the more obvious African cultural retentions in Vodou music (even writing about the subject), just as Jaegerhuber focused on the music and rhythms of Vodou in a context of a growing tourism industry (which preyed on the cultural capital of Haitian peasant culture) and folkloric movement (a contentious area for Haitian intellectuals in the aftermath of the US Occupation, since some intellectuals, such as Bellegarde, resisted any attempt to focus on or celebrate the 'superstitions' and African customs of the Haitian peasantry).

Of course, there are moments where one does not see any irrefutable evidence for some of Largey's assertions. Indeed, the anecdote quoted to explain a possible connection between Jeanty and Vodou is perplexing, although balanced well with perceptions of Jeanty as an 'Ogou' public figure. This book would have been better served with a companion CD, so readers could listen to examples of various Haitian mereng and classical music, especially to note specific moments or instances of "vaudouesque" influences permeating the works of Jeanty, Jaegerhuber, Lamothe, Elie, and other sources. Nevertheless, the book remains essential for foregrounding Haiti's classical tradition to reveal the significance of Haitian classical music as both a cause and effect of Haitian nationalism. Largey seems to believe that the Haitian general population is not interested, for the most part, in the island's long legacy of classical music, but clearly it was a large factor in a broader Haitian social relations that, at times, exploded on the scene (Lamothe's "Nibo,"  and the slow mereng like "Choucoune" became standard cross-class material, as well as an example of a Haitian popular genre representative of all Haitians. 

"Choucoune" in particular, based on Durand's poem which used Kreyol, reflected on the beauty of a Haitian woman, which, as Largey states, often symbolized a nation at large. According to Largey, Oswald Durand would don the dress of a peasant and perform the piece, which is not unlike other Haitian composers, like Jaegerhuber, who would transcribe Vodou ritual music and folk songs, but present it in a context that is divorced from its original meaning. Intriguingly, such a concept has long been en vogue with European classical composers and literature, such as Grimm tales of Germany, which were not based on actual interviews of German peasants, but through middle-class and often Huguenot interlopers). Indeed, the influence of French and German classical and intellectual traditions could not be understated, particularly given the French and German training Jaegerhuber, Jeanty, Elie, and Lamothe experienced.

In summation, read this book if you're interested in black cultural nationalism, ethnomusicology, Haitian music, Haitian intellectual history, and Caribbean studies. One will learn much more than to appreciate the social context of elite Haitian music. I was even surprised to read about the Vodou implications of "Panama m Tombe" and Merisier Jeannis, the ancestor of my great-aunt's husband. Anyway, for anyone interested in Haitian mereng, here is a great link. 

Henry Louis Gates's Many Rivers: The Black Atlantic

Ugh, in only the first minute of the program, we, per usual, hear Gates ask some Africans if any of them inherited wealth from the slave trade. Again! It's as if Gates want place the blame for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade entirely on Africans, something he claimed in a New York Times op-ed would complicate the notion of reparations to descendants of black slaves. And Bank of America is the sponsor? Dear Lord, a bank that probably profited off or helped perpetuate I watched it here at this blog I follow, and it really goes to show one how black intellectuals can be so easily bought and sold like Gates. The man, who I once met in person and find an overall pleasant guy, seems to always have this urge to ease and please white folks. I guess that's what happens when you're caught up in neoliberal education and offering yourself to the highest bidder, much as Gates recently did in securing a wealthy white benefactor to donate to Harvard's African American Studies program. When black intellectual warfare against mainstream white supremacism in academia and other institutions can be bought and sold so easily, and our 'premier' black scholars perpetuate garbage or half-truths and stereotypes to much larger audiences to assuage whites, we know we're in trouble.

Anywho, the program begins before the arrival of blacks in the English colony of Virginia in 1619, focusing on early black slaves and auxiliaries of the Spanish conquerors and explores. He did get James H. Sweet to appear on the show, though. Sweet has written a lot about Central Africa (Angola), Brazil, and slavery, and because I am familiar with his work and attended a university he teaches at, do appreciate that. Anywho, Antonio 'the Negro,' one of the first black residents, 'earned' his freedom from indentured servitude after his service on the farm of a white man. Antonio Johnson even had white indentured servants and an African slave of his own! Soon enough, the growth of tobacco agriculture and the need for labor, led to increasingly racialized slavery and forced labor in Virginia. Now, none of this is exactly groundbreaking news, we all probably learned this in high school history courses on the development of slavery in the English colonies. Indeed, a similar process from white indentured servitude in Barbados to black slavery occurred. Sweet does remind the viewer of the interesting fact that most of the major cities in the Americas in the early 1600s had more Africans than Europeans, including Lima, Mexico City, etc. The interesting question of studies of colonial urban centres in the western hemisphere certainly deserves its own long documentary series.

Moving back to Africa, Gates goes to Sierra Leone and spends time among the Temne people. He is critical of romanticized notions of Africa, rightly so, but then takes time to talk to descendants of slave traders in Sierra Leone, poor black folks whose ancestors are not the ones who made the black ancestors of Gates live through hell under racial slavery and Jim Crow in the US. One elder who claims his family once owned 500 slaves is interviewed by Gates, but Gates never takes the time to explain the nuances of slavery within African societies. Anyone with half a brain would know the Temne and Mende did not historically consider themselves to both be 'black,' but that's because nearly everyone in Sierra Leone is 'black.' Yet Gates continues to feel some sense of loyalty (perhaps because of his "mulatto" ancestors, he is very public and interested in his family's white/European roots) to whites and 'defends' their role by overemphasizing the blame on the part of Africans for selling captives and slaves to whites.

Furthermore, Christopher Brown, who attributes to Europeans the 'novelty' of using race as a marker for deserved enslavement for Africans, probably should read some of the writings of Arab, Persian, and Turkish scholars from the same period. Some of the ideas and views expressed by intellectuals from those lands stinks or racism or 'proto-racism' against darker-hued Africans. That said, Gates does a good thing showing the remains of a slave fort on Bunce Island, where at least 50,000 Africans were sold into slavery in the Americas. Priscilla, one individual whose life is used to put a human face onto the misery that took place in the Middle Passage and Bunce Island, was a slave woman who entered the US through Charleston, the major slave port of the US. The horrors of the Middle Passage are described in disgusting detail, though probably not enough to give a more accurate depiction of the lack of humanity Europeans and European-descended Americans showed toward black folks. Indeed, death was so common on slaveships, sharks followed to feast on corpses thrown overboard, as Gates says.

In South Carolina now, Gates visits the former site of Priscilla's enslavement, rice plantations in South Carolina. A descendant of the planter who purchased her shows Gates around the area where the young woman, Priscilla, became property of the Ball family. Surprisingly, Gates chooses to pass over the advanced skills of West Africans in rice cultivation, the very reason why there was a "Rice Coast" of Sierra Leone and why so many of South Carolina's slaves came from the Senegambia and Sierra Leone areas of West Africa. A shame, really, Gates missed out on a great opportunity to discuss how so much of the agricultural techniques, innovation and material culture of the US South was an imported African civilization. I suppose he does mention how slaves built roads, bridges, factories and farms, but there is a lot of specific examples and details not mentioned, except an example of an 18th century meal for how distinct African influences appeared in the cuisine of the South. Now, food and cuisine obviously shapes culture and society, so that's big, I guess, but only one example.

As for St. Augustine, Gates again omits the presence of Saint Dominguan Spanish auxiliaries who chose to stay in service to the Spanish crown rather than unite under Toussaint for the French Republic during the Haitian Revolution. This could be due to it's much later date into the late 18th and early 19th century, but at least an 'honorable mention' of Saint Dominguan blacks in Spanish St. Augustine would have been of some interest to viewers for showing how much African-American slaves were tied into a broader "Black Atlantic" world. However, I suppose he does a good job covering the importance of Spanish Florida as a a runaway haven. Since I don't know enough about Stono's Rebellion, I cannot speak to how accurate or troubling Gates's portrayal might be.

His praise for the 'greatest champion of freedom,' George Washington, is certainly a cringe-worthy moment of the program though! I suppose uttering such absurd notions comes with the territory in catering to mainstream white America. One cannot go all "Malcolm X" or 'angry black' man lest one wishes to lose ties to the monied interests that could be tapped to support black studies. Later, Gates 'saves' himself by emphasizing the contradictions of the American War of Independence, and he does mention the Haitian Revolution near the end of the program as an example of another world for people of African descent, as well as becoming a beacon of hope to those toiling in bondage in the 'land of the free.'

But perhaps I am being too critical and expecting too much. It's a struggle just getting anything about black history out there in the mainstream, and though it's far from perfect, like Black in Latin America, it's a useful introduction. Let's see how long my patience lasts me and I will try to evaluate the remainder of the series.

Kelley's Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!

Finally read Kelley's Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!, a fascinating but rather short book on the 'culture wars' and the complexities of race and class in American society and its relevance to sociological discourse, government policy, academia, and the urban underclass. Kelley, himself a product of this 'ghetto' underclass, the son of a Jamaican working class woman who grew up in Harlem and Washington Heights in the 1960s and 1970s, makes it quite clear that he sets out to dismantle the myth of the 'culture of poverty' thesis, coined by Moynihan and other white academics and policymakers who sought to pathologize working-class black urban life, make absurd generalizations, and obscure the role of racism, economic restructuring, and anti-poor policies (from the War on Drugs to welfare reform and tax cuts for the rich) in the creation and maintenance of racial inequality in the United States.

In addition, Kelley, whose biography of Thelonious Monk I thoroughly enjoyed two years ago, includes some humorous references to black popular culture and history, such as 'the dozens' (particularly how academics mistakenly reduce it to some form of ritualized tradition), Clinton (George, that is), and the practices of play, entertainment, alternative forms of labor, and the gender dynamics of these aforementioned aspects of Black Urban America. Of course, Kelley is quick to nuance his claims and endeavors to avoid essentialism, much to his benefit as an academic and scholar attempting to 'defend' the 'underclass' and his roots. What struck me the most about his book are some interesting insights and claims backed by various forms of evidence from statistics, sociology, and history to buttress his perhaps idealistic and naive hope for a much stronger, united Left cognizant of the nuances of race, class, gender, and sexuality. I will share two of the most interesting points below.

1. Did you know the origins of the 'afro' as a popular 20th century hairstyle actually begin in the black feminine urban chic and bohemian circles? Black bohemian woman artists, such as Odetta and Nina Simone began sporting afros in the late 1950s and early 1960s, well before afros were incorporated within the masculinist black nationalist discourse of the late 1960s and Black Power. Indeed, some of the earliest black women who wore their hair in natural afros actually found a more receptive crowd in whites than blacks, too! I suppose it's not that interesting, but it really does show how easily styles can be shifted or appropriated into other forms and have their meaning twisted.

2. Kelley's commentary on the pitfalls of much of the critiques of identity politics around in the late 1980s and early 1990s was very insightful and reminiscent of much of my experiences with some white self-proclaimed progressives and socialists in Madison. Though they rarely alluded to any form of 'neo-Enlightenment' radical universalism, the sentiment of the white authors, nearly all white men (gee, no surprise there!) often complained about 'identity politics' or 'the politics of identity,' and scoffed or dismissed notions such as 'white privilege' (all the while expressing some personal discomfort or feeling of exclusion in the caricatures of 'identity politics' they reduced anti-racist and feminist fields of thought and activism). Kelley's criticism is on point, in my humble opinion, since he demonstrates how so often these white leftists, nearly all white men who, in the works reviewed by Kelley, actually sought to blame 'identity politics' (in the form of black nationalism or feminism) of the late 1960s as the cause for the balkanization and failure of the Left! Can you believe it? That absurd argument survives in a much smaller form by some of these white (mostly male) leftists, though many are aware of the obvious fact that class is hardly the universal banner some make it to be. Indeed, one of the great points that Kelley and some friends of mine have made is how often people ignore how experiences of class in the US are tied to race, ethnicity and gender, and class itself is an identity based not only on statistics or numbers, but self-perception, culture, occupation, and various other 'identities.'

Don't get me wrong, Kelley is not saying 'identity politics' is the solution to dismantling the importance of markets in determining human outcomes and creating some form of utopian society. He is merely challenging many of the unproven and contradictory claims made by disproportionately white male critics of 'identity politics,' often falsely attributing some extreme reductionist notion to black feminists for instance, while ignoring how black women's organizations have been some of the most pro-working class, pro-union, and interested in abolishing all potential forms of oppression (as one black feminist organization adopted in its slogan!). Also, by ignoring how class is raced and gendered, these white leftists overlook the long existence of racism within working-class white communities, unions, and how many white working-class unions and groups were tied to specific ethnic identities, such as the The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Unions roots with Jewish and other white ethnics in New York. In fact, this union was teaching black and Puerto Rican woman Yiddish in the 1950s, that's how tied that union was to an ethnic/racial identity! So, obviously class is raced and gendered and class unity couldn't convince white Southerners to side with ex-slaves during Reconstruction or Jim Crow, and neither could white feminism include black and other women of color.

Shockingly, so often are these white critics of 'identity politics' often guilty of the very crimes they attribute to feminists and people of color organizations and theories. They generalize the vast forms of feminist and racial justice thought, when such a thing as 'black nationalism' varies in strands from the conservative Nation of Islam to socialist, pro-labor unions such as DRUM in Detroit. Instead of being so dismissive or ignoring the work of many strands of 'identity politics,' white progressives should welcome the wide array of contributions to understanding social relations they make in the hopes of forming long-lasting, inclusive coalitions rooted in communities, labor, and organizing to avoid making the same mistakes of the past. Indeed, some even go as far to assert the weakening labor movement to the continued emphasis on whites and males in a rapidly changing labor force where African-Americans, women, and other people of color are more likely to be working-class, in a union, or engaged in labor struggles.

Overall, a good book and well-researched. Instead of a white and/or academic gaze on the black poor and working masses, Kelley succeeds in giving the reader an insider's look that is inclusive of various forms of leftist, feminist, and black nationalist perspectives. Read this, my next Kelley book will be his most recent work. Besides this, check out Hammer and Hoe for a look at black Southern Communists in Alabama during the Great Depression. I read that about two or three years ago for an African-American 20th Century History course and thoroughly enjoyed it.