A glance at issue 81/82 of "Transition": Fascism and black nationalism
Paul Gilroy, a visiting professor of sociology and African-American studies at Yale University, examines the role that fascist politics and tactics have played in the black nationalist movement over the last century. Mr. Gilroy first concedes that the word "'fascism' is a modern invention, an imprecise term seemingly remote from the concerns of black cultural politics." It is fittingly imprecise, he writes, since the race struggle itself is so murky and complex: The notions of race and culture have been "grounded in biological half-truths"; black people have been divided by the separation of the wealthy from the poor; and black nationalists like Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad preferred the politics of "the Nazi and the Klansman ... to the liberal because they are open and honest about their racialized beliefs." (Adds Mr. Gilroy, "At least you know where you are with a Klansman.") The divisiveness doesn't stop there, he adds. Black nationalism itself has been divided, with a "putatively streetwise, working-class and male" conception on one side, and an "assertively feminist, bourgeois, moralistic" conception on the other. This conflict over the radically conservative stance of racial separatism proves yet again, Mr. Gilroy writes, that "[t]he conjunction of `race' and `culture' is essential -- and yet it is so brittle that it is always in jeopardy." The article is not available online, but more information about the journal may be found at http://web-dubois.fas.harvard.edu/transition
http://www.gsu.edu/information/academe-today/msg00523.html
AGAINST RACE Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line PAUL GILROY
Paul Gilroy, whose Black Atlantic broke through the nation-specific context of race politics, has written a powerful, albeit minoritarian defense of the position that racial thinking--not just racism--is a key obstacle to human freedom (an aspiration, he sadly notes, that has virtually disappeared from political discourse). In his analysis of the origins and uses of racial thinking Gilroy spares from his critique neither black pride nor black separatism, let alone racism's most virulent forms, fascism and colonialism...The result is that he has offered one of the most impressive refutations of race as an anthropological concept since the publication of Ashley Montagu's Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race more than fifty years ago...Gilroy's reach is dazzling, his analysis acute and insightful, but in the end he recognizes that, lacking a political constituency for his planetary humanism, his ideas remain not a program but a utopian hope...At the end of the day, Against Race remains the brilliant jeremiad of an out-of-step intellectual whose main weapon is criticism. There are few who do it better.
--Stanley Aronowitz, The Nation
Readers used to Paul Gilroy's incisive political and cultural analysis will be highly impressed with Against Race. Those not familiar with his previous writings will be so impressed that they are bound to look for them. Gilroy is an erudite scholar and this is an imperative reading not only for those coming to grips with political culture beyond the color line but for any serious scholar interested in 'cosmopolitan cultures,' or in questions of identity.
--Nuruddin Farah, author of Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora
As with his past work, Paul Gilroy continues to disturb settled ways of thinking in a fundamentally creative way. Here, he challenges us to explore the dangers of race-thinking, whether 'race' be an imposed or an insurgent identity.
--Mahmood Mamdani, author of Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
Paul Gilroy is Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University.
OTHER HARVARD BOOKS BY PAUL GILROY The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness http://www.hup.harvard.edu/reviews/GILAGA_R.html American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century Gary Gerstle "This informed and well-argued study is a strong addition to the literature on race, multiculturalism, and citizenship in the U.S . . . Gerstle [has] in this engrossing, powerfully argued study . . . a meticulous eye for detail."--Publishers Weekly American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century Gary Gerstle Cloth | 2001 | $29.95 / £19.95 325 pp. | 6 x 9 | 25 illus.
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This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow reserved for those who are white and of the "right" ancestry? Gary Gerstle traces the forces of civic and racial nationalism, arguing that both profoundly shaped our society.
After Theodore Roosevelt led his Rough Riders to victory during the Spanish American War, he boasted of the diversity of his men's origins- from the Kentucky backwoods to the Irish, Italian, and Jewish neighborhoods of northeastern cities. Roosevelt's vision of a hybrid and superior "American race," strengthened by war, would inspire the social, diplomatic, and economic policies of American liberals for decades. And yet, for all of its appeal to the civic principles of inclusion, this liberal legacy was grounded in "Anglo-Saxon" culture, making it difficult in particular for Jews and Italians and especially for Asians and African Americans to gain acceptance.
Gerstle weaves a compelling story of events, institutions, and ideas that played on perceptions of ethnic/racial difference, from the world wars and the labor movement to the New Deal and Hollywood to the Cold War and the civil rights movement. We witness the remnants of racial thinking among such liberals as FDR and LBJ; we see how Italians and Jews from Frank Capra to the creators of Superman perpetuated the New Deal philosophy while suppressing their own ethnicity; we feel the frustrations of African-American servicemen denied the opportunity to fight for their country and the moral outrage of more recent black activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and Malcolm X.
Gerstle argues that the civil rights movement and Vietnam broke the liberal nation apart, and his analysis of this upheaval leads him to assess Reagan's and Clinton's attempts to resurrect nationalism. Can the United States ever live up to its civic creed? For anyone who views racism as an aberration from the liberal premises of the republic, this book is must reading.
Gary Gerstle is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Working-Class Americanism, a coauthor of Liberty, Equality, and Power: A History of the American People, and the coeditor of The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (Princeton) and E Pluribus Unum? Immigrants, Civic Life, and Political Incorporation (forthcoming).
Reviews: "This informed and well-argued study is a strong addition to the literature on race, multiculturalism, and citizenship in the U.S . . . Gerstle [has] in this engrossing, powerfully argued study . . . a meticulous eye for detail."--Publishers Weekly "This tightly argued historical synthesis is likely to be . . . influential to understanding the evolution of American nationalism in the past 100 years. . . ."--Library Journal
"American Crucible is an illuminating addition to what has become a vibrant academic cottage industry, the study of nationalism. . . . [A] confident and elegantly written narrative. . . ."--John T. McGreevy, Chicago Tribune
"A fresh and accessible book that fully examines [a] fundamental American paradox. He has credibly and fascinatingly, traced the odd mixture of high ideals and base doubts that shaped race and immigration policy over the last century."--Joseph Dolman, The New Leader
"The most probing and thought-provoking history of American nationalism ever written."--James Green, The Boston Globe
Endorsements: "Historians and social scientists have been longing for ambitious syntheses that take into account recent contributions to social history and studies of culture while reinvigorating key themes in political history. This book's rich and learned assessment of the complexities of twentieth-century America and its appraisal of change provide just such a powerful diagnostic and temporal framework. Showing how civic and racial ideals have entwined to produce both expansive and restrictive results, American Crucible is thoughtfully instructive and lovely to read."--Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University. "In American Crucible, Gary Gerstle traces the fundamental tension between the American belief in equality and the deeply rooted tradition of racial nationalism-the most significant and most sustained conflict throughout the history of the United States. Gerstle's angle of vision allows him to illuminate and place in larger context such seemingly diverse events and developments as World War I and multiculturalism, immigration policy and the Christian right, Teddy Roosevelt's reform agenda and the social upheavals of the 1960s. American Crucible provides invaluable insight into the shape and structure of contemporary American society through its unique exploration of the nation's past."--Thomas Byrne Edsall, Washington Post
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7020.html