Houston A. Baker

Provocative, Wide-Ranging, and Readable

I wanted this book because I cannot get into the mindset of American Blacks, apart from those in my limited geographic circle, and this looked like the way to go. “In the 60s, a more assertive black replaced the conciliatory negro, and fifty years later, black intellectuals are pondering post black” - is the intriguing starting point. The book is a collection of essays by mostly black intellectuals ruminating mostly on Touré and his Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?. They tear him limb from limb, dissecting his ideas, methods, language and even his tweets. He makes a good whipping post for ideas contrary. It is also a weakness because there is far more to being black than Touré, and I would have thought there would be as least as much criticism of the first black president, who only gets his in the last essay and the conclusion. Another weakness is that the essays only represent highly intellectual, academic discourse, often very personal. There are a lot of five dollar words, obscure, unexplained references and a lot of its own prejudice, but that is a vital part of the story.

By far the best essay is The World is a Ghetto by Patrice Rankine. Using Holland, Michigan as its starting point, it traces racism’s unending presence through all kinds of direct experience, references to other books and quotations, through hip-hop and The Invisible Man, and to Jamaica and Brazil. It is the most readable and accessible, and deserves reprinting elsewhere. Rankine’s scope spans far more than the other authors, while evoking far more imagery, detail, empathy and disappointment. He writes with style and verve. He scores points by getting under your skin rather than pointing a finger in your face.

For reasons unknown to me, I find I have reviewed four such books in the past year. They cover Asian racism in the excellent Yellow Peril!, progress among elite women in The XX Factor, the unending search to define Canadian in Reclaiming Canadian Bodies, and now The Trouble With Post Blackness. Together, they reinforce the idea that all races, creeds, sexes and economic classes discriminate, including (if not especially) through institutional violence, both literal and figurative. It is all ignorant, cruel and counterproductive, but also apparently innate, ingrained and enduring. And while American blacks torture themselves over their ancestry as slaves (completely ignoring it while vacationing at all-inclusive resorts in Jamaica and Ghana), the UN says there are now 26 million slaves in the world, and number increases annually.

“The world is a ghetto. Racial constructions regarding what blackness is and is not, and what whiteness is and is not, can be constricting and, in fact, often constitute racism itself.” –Patrice Rankine

David Wineberg… (mais)

Betrayal of the Black Majority

When in 2004 while commemorating the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Bill Cosby said: "I can't even talk the way these people talk... 'Why you ain't, Where you is? ...Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads", or later when he said: "Stop beating up on your women because you can't find a job" (p99), it showed how divided America is on the race issue and how even more divided the race issue is among African Americans.

This is the topic of Houston Baker Jr's latest book, "Betrayal". To be clear, Baker's views are in line with those of the most radical black liberation theologians such as those of Rev. Wright or the NAACP activists such as the Rev. Al Sharpton. The same kind of views that led to the trigger-finger happy premature condemnations of the Duke Lacrosse team. Baker though, is not a preacher, he is a Professor, a literary scholar, and an intellectual who through textual analysis attempts to deconstruct the arguments made by certain black public intellectuals who according to Baker have betrayed the African American majority and the spirit of the Civil Rights movements.

Baker discusses the major themes since the 1960s landmark rulings of the Voting Rights Act including the "white counter-culture", "Mister Backlash", and "white flight" of which the roots of the neoconservative movement were founded on and furthered by the Reagan-Bush coalition. The rise of the black public intellectual in this era of neoconservatism according to Baker has produced a false sense of progress. These "black neoconservatives" have adopted white values, disavowed their links to the African American majority, and whitewash the prior sins of White America under the apologetic guise of "white guilt" and proclaim the end of racial injustice.

Which brings us back to Bill Cosby. The "black neoconservatives" who Baker singles out in Michael Eric Dyson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, Shelby Steele and Stephen Carter, preach that the "black urban ghetto" of today is a sole result of the behavioral issues within the African American community. The ebonics, the gangtsa rap, welfare queens, etc... But Baker goes further in his polemic, he accuses these centrists of nihilism and shamefully profiting on their betrayal at the expense of the African American majority.

So why does Baker feel these centrists betrayed their own community? They scapegoat the behavioral causes as the primary reason for the issues within the African American majority for their own self-preservation and justification of their ascension to black aristocracy. Because advocating for real structural change would see them essentially removed by the White establishment. White America is more than happy to have African Americans doing their dirty work. This is what angers Baker the most, that these "black intellectuals" are the ones doing the whitewasing, the ultimate betrayal.

Baker does a good job discussing the legacies and achievements of Martin Luther King Jr. and W.E.B Du Bois of whom he accuses these "black neoconservatives" of betraying. Baker makes the interesting observation of the whitewashing of King and Du Bois; in particular with King by reducing his influential contributions and activism on behalf of the African American majority with that of the false enduring image of "I have a dream". It is in fact King's work after 1963, as one of the first to protest the war and to join with the Black Power movement in the fight for economic justice that are most significant. But White America doesn't want to remember King the agitator, the intellectual critic, they along with their "black neoconservative" counterparts would rather King's legacy be of the "happy negro", the one that dreamed of unity.

Baker, like King is a structuralist. That until fundamental social reform is implemented to reverse the gross inequalities created since Reagan which have allowed the structural violence that exaggerate the racial discriminations that exist today, "urban black ghettos", "prison industrial-complex", and other institutions of White American enslavement of the African American majority will continue unabated. To Baker, affirmative action is his crucible.

As Barak Obama nears the final stages of his campaign to become the President, it is all the more important to understand the roots of white and black relations which remains the most fundamental social issue in America today. Whether you agree with Baker or not, he not only explores the major intellectual debates on the race issue but also how and why they are conducted. These deep racial divisions will not go away tomorrow, irregardless of Obama and his campaign for the Presidency. This is why in my opinion, "Betrayal" is one of the most important books of the year.… (mais)