I started a big firestorm at P6 the other day because I asked some questions. I have determined that it wasn't the nature of the questions, rather it was the fact that I was the one asking them. I have been informed that I am personna non-grata. The feeling is not mutual and I have invited any and all of them to engage here.
Anyway, since I haven't had any of my questions answered. I'll try again from a slightly different angle. You see I began speaking about blackness as an intellectual construct maintained by elites by making reference to a series of books that I read in order to inform and liberate myself. Nobody talked about those books at all. Nevertheless it was the very first paragraph I wrote:
Several years ago before blogging existed in any significant form, I was getting my writing fix from Amazon.com. Even there I rose in the critical sphere to an appreciable level, and doing so, I indulged in several exercises in intellectual blackness. They were Black Mental Liberation and For the Race Man. Wow. That seems so long ago.
I've been called more or less an arrogant prick for being argumentative about the subject of blackness. Unfortunately I'm just too thick skinned to care. I'll fumble around and flip around until I can get a constructive response. My intent to to get some answers. And if hurt feelings are the barrier to inquiry, then I simply assume that folks don't care enough about the answers if getting them causes offense or embarrassment, not that it is ever my intent to be offensive.
So I got my ideas about black politics and consciousness from the books listed in those two links. I've read many others but these are those I consider most central. So are these books out of date? Are they important? What do they represent?
Moreover what effect might books like these have on the future direction of black politics? Does anyone study race in this manner such that some intellectual synergy is forthcoming?
Here at Cobb, I have a collection of Negro Digest Covers. I don't think there is any magazine in circulation in America that addresses and updates the issues raised in those very pages. It may very well be because issues of anti-racism and blackness themselves are simply not as important any longer. It may be for any number of reasons.
I segue for a moment also to Spence because he has described a useful distinction between black politics and black cultural politics:
Where are the politics in hip-hop? Here Watkins provides some interesting anecdotes…but here’s where I become “conservative.” My quick definition of politics borrowed from Adolph Reed…politics refers to the process by which individuals and/or groups compete over state resources. Now in as much as any organization or sphere of influence allocates resources (be it material or non-material) there are politics in various spheres. Politics within an NBA team for example (players compete over playing time for example). But we’ve got to be real clear and make a distinction between politics and cultural politics.
With that in mind I am inclined to say that the battles over blackness are those of cultural politics. I certainly have made a great deal of hay over the matters of hiphop and the significance of Cosby, but they are not so much battles over resouces allocated. And it's reasonable to say that the significance of blacks in the Republican party are largely cultural too, and that there is a significant cultural gap between those (if I can generalize folks like myself) middle class and professional blacks educated at major universites, and those blackfolks on the other side of those same defining tracks.
I don't see either party engaged in a black agenda that hews close to an organically developed line of demands from African America. And only the Democrats bother to dole out rhetorical patronage. But the real patronage from the parties, I believe, is going to come from the same direction to the same kinds of targets. That is to say along the lines of broad mainstream ambition. A cursory piece will come in the form of entitlements such a 'perscription drug benefit', another in the form of 'middle class tax breaks' like the earned income credit, another piece in the form of relief for the rich and wealthy such as inheritance and capital gains tax abatements. Then there's the whole tangle of corporate tax evasions and subsidies and god only knows what whoring at the state block grant level. But if it can be said that the net demand of black politics is anti-racism, it doesn't seem apparent to me that either party is going to do anything beyond the normative at the EEOC, and US Attorney's office for enforcement of anti-discrimination law. That may be good enough for me, but certainly not for those whose experience with Class Three and Class Two Racism takes a bigger chunk out of their lives. (Class One, I think everybody gets a fair hearing). Nevertheless the emnity and opposition to those efforts at justice are minimal, and pushback doesn't come against the base (with the possible exception of Ward Connorly's crusade) but against the expansion of anti-discrimination towards uplift.
Bottom line, neither party is going to engage an agenda of black uplift. And when Connorly poops out we will be at a state of equilibrium. Except you know that cats like our friend at Discriminations will keep chipping away at Grutter etc. (I wonder where are the black legal bloggers).
At any rate I just wanted to get these last thoughts out and wondered if anyone would be so kind as to list some parallel books or make some comments on those I mentioned. I was going to leave the entire subject alone, but then I stumbled on something related which (argh) might have me giving Shelby Steele more credibility. I wrote this, way back when:
What if the only real difference between black and white is the persistence of perception along the lines Steele describes? What if blackfolk and whitefolk take on these roles uncritically? What if blackness is not an active, dynamic intellectual construct - that it is just an adopted set of attitudes one inherits blindly from their parents and the same for whiteness? Then whites no more stand for white supremacy than blacks stand for black cultural nationalism - they just expect *something* to operate those machines of advantage for them, and they retain the same attitudes as if something were going to change.
The bolded emphasis is mine. As little evidence as I have to the contrary, I still refuse to believe that blackness is as static as whiteness. At the same time, it's difficult for a layman like me to track the positive developments of black identity, especially if people largely concede that Hiphop is Black.
Speaking of which... nah I'll take that separately.
