>And Patterson's binary reduction between "personal responsibility" and
>"deterministic explanations [entitlement] and moral justifications
>[victimization]" seems rather dangerously at times to mirror the
>structure of Gingrich's own formation. Though Patterson is infinitely,
>shall we say, more sophisticated and savvy in his approach.
>Has anybody else read much Patterson, and would they care to add to
>this?
-Alec
I've read all of Patterson's scholarly work and most of his journalism. Much of his scholarly work on slavery (*Slavery and Social Death* for example) is smart, interesting, and useful--although I am critical of alot of it. Most of his journalism is none of the above. His thinking is even more consistently in line with Gingrich et al's take on "personal responsibility" than the material that you excerpted indicates. His general take on the problems of the black "underclass," for example, is consistent with the most reactionary writing gathered around that topic and he is especially virulent and uninformative in his diatribes against black women who are single parents--especially poor black women. His pull-themselves-up-by-the-bootstrap theory hones in particularly on the independence of middle-class black women (ultimately, in his eyes, anti-social and anti-family) and the moral corruption and welfare dependency of poor black women. In his view, since middle-class single parent black women choose to be single (either by virtue of divorce or deciding not to marry) and poor single- parent black women can't get their boyfriends to marry them, or are unable to find enough responsible poor black men, or find the generosity of the state a good enough substitute, then both the black middle-class and the black underclass are in a kind of cultural trouble with which they cannot be helped by political struggle or by state assistance.
During the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, he wrote an egregiously stupid op-ed on the particularities of black sexual culture and behavior.
Wahneema L.
****************************************************************** Wahneema Lubiano Duke University, Program in Literature PHONE: (919) 681-2843 FAX: (919) 684-3598 [Note new e-mail address: wah at acpub.duke.edu]