I'm sorry, IMHO this whole article is extremely pissy and wrong. Gate's crime was that he's been "pushing the line" that "race is a social construct?" And that he embraces feminism? Wow. What a pussy.
........
Let's look at this a little more closely.
Here's the relevant snippet form the piece:
Prior to the late eighties, Gates’ tough love exhortations were aimed at racism in the halls of academe, but then he signed on to downtown feminist reasoning that racism was a black male problem.
[...]
Whatever Reed's faults and whatever faults mar this essay, he can't be accused of denouncing Gates *because* he "embraced feminism". Reed is criticizing Gates for adopting one of the tenets of a *particular flavor* of feminism, one which ultra-pathologized black male behavior.
As I've probably written a thousand times before, I think it's a real pity more list members did not take full advantage of the resource shag created when she opened blog "Bitchlab" for business. Her readers not only benefited from shag's close readings of new and classic texts of feminist theory but also had a chance to witness -- almost in real time -- the cracks and fissures that divide the various feminist camps from each other and white feminists from their 'women of color' colleagues.
My god, the epic battles waged over class distinctions alone could fill a book!
What Reed calls "downtown feminism" does indeed exist and does indeed nurture denunciations of black and Latino men as especially misogynistic (the implication being that white men, while still pigs, are pigs of a somewhat higher order).
Shag can provide links to texts (some no doubt in the archives of her own blog) if anyone cares to chase that rabbit.
So sure, maybe Reed is pissy and suffering from a case of que es mas macho? but Gates *did* volunteer for the 'let's endlessly lecture poor black people for being awful' program and deserves to be body slammed because of it. If not by Reed, than surely by Thulani Davis who's mentioned in the piece.
I don't know, Gates' "tough lover" routine -- like the eco-racism of peak oilist JH Kunstler which all of my 'sustainability' focused white friends miss and nearly all my equally green thinking black and tan friends immediately see -- may be one of those things you have to be black to quickly detect.
Or maybe not.
But I do see exactly what Reed's pointing at in Gates.
.d.