Adolph Reed

[Rakesh Bhandari]

In the message before this, Kenny simply asserts that revolution will be
made if the left can get the church to share our issues. What about the
Oakland teacher's strike? Black church leaders sided with the
administration and insinuated that teachers were racist for striking?
After breaking the strike, the administration then turned around to
propose another reform--Ebonics. In International Labor and Working Class
History a couple years ago, Eric Arnesen argued that Black Churches have
often been supported by employers for discouraging black workers from
joining in workplace actions and encouraging instead  black community
projects. What about the Nation of Islam and the misogyny and the
self-flaggelation it supports (by the way, what did you think of the
Marable/Reed debate in New Politics about the *Nation of Islam* and
Farrakhan?) No, the Church will not easily be brought
under the hegemony of the left. Revolutionary or simply progressive forces
often have to make it impossible for the church's reactionary opinion to
matter on social or public policy matters. 

Now Kenny's arguments against Reed verge on the incomprehensible, and are
at best undeveloped.

Reed's Jackson critique is sectarian--how?
anyone who disagrees with Reed is an individual--what? (Reed attempts to
analyze the formation of a self-conscious black petit bourgeois elite; for
example, he notes Jackson's willingness to pull out of support for a labor
strike to get corporate support for black businessmen. Reed also analyzed
the weaknesses of Operation Push.)

As for Reed's critique of black popular intellectuals (I don't have the
essay with me).

Reed is said to have downplayed Hooks' and West's contributions in the
80s--which was what? Kenny doesn't say

Reed was critiqued by Adell and Spiller's, though we learn nothing of
substance here about those counter-critiques, except that they are useful. 

Reed should not have published criticism of black intellectuals playing to
white audiences in a white supremacist rag (the Village Voice); of course
this misrepresents Reed's argument, which was about how black
intellectuals often confirm the assumption that the black experience,
opaque to whites, can only and has to be crystallized for them by
exceptional putatively representative blacks. Reed's critique was as much
of the white racist impulse to have the black experience reduced for them
in economical form as it was of black intellectuals. What better place for
such a critique than the Village Voice, though I liked Reed's criticism of
the new black
nostalgia for segregation even better. 

Now to DuBois:
Reed dismisses any philosophical influence on DuBois except American
pragmatism. I'll have to check this (book's not with me); while Reed
argues that DuBois was not influenced by Hegel, this is not the same as
Kenny's claim, which I am pretty sure is flat and absurdly wrong. 

Reed's academic world faded twenty years ago. This is ridiculous. The book
ends with a chapter on Gates' and Baker's recent work. Anyways, in The
Bubbling Cauldron, Reed haswritten one of the most incisive chapters on
the failures of black mayoral rule in several major cities. 

Kenny makes the fantastic claim that Reed finds nothing useful in DuBois
after 1903, which is of course not an answer to the criticisms Reed makes
of DuBois.

Kenny says "the more interesting text" is Dusk of Dawn, but does not say
how Reed misinterprets it. 

The nastiness of my reply followed from Kenny calling Adolph an idiot; now
he suggest Reed may not have read any DuBois, that all Reed can do is cry
about it, that Reed is a lightweight.

The best case made for Reed so far is your criticism Kenny.
best, Rakesh