black, brown, yellow, white
By shag carpet bomb • Jan 30th, 2008 • Category: Class, Racialization, The Missing Classred is missing there. Forgot to mention that I’d also picked up Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation Between African Americans and Hispanics by Earl Ofari Hutchinson. It was featured on the new book shelf and caught my eye — and turned out to be fascinating in light of the debates that erupted over remarks a Clinton campaign operative made re: black / brown relations. The book was a quick read, and I think cut short on its analysis because he might have been rushing for publication before the election cycle. But it was certainly eye-opening — especially in terms of racial violence, especially in NY and LA. I had no idea. Obviously, the campaign operative wasn’t completely speaking out of his ass — and just as obviously, they were trying to play a race card by doing exactly what a former Clinton adviser said was going to happen: force Obama to be about race when he’s been desperately trying not to be. Or, at the very least, using rhetoric open to multiple readings — rhetoric designed to slip slide along the signifying chain in a way to make that third-wayism possible.
Another book that I saw, that has also shed interesting ethnographic insight on black / brown / yellow / white relations is Katherine Newman’s and and Victor Tan Chen’s The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America. It’s pretty good, though often I wish sociologists would quit trying to be clever novelists — if they’re not that good at it. And the book disturbs me, so far, given Newman’s own critique of the culture of meritocracy. So far, she hasn’t raised a peep of such analysis. Maybe it comes later. Anyway, her research should prove enlightening. I have a whole bunch of books to finish reviewing, though, so I wont get to this for awhile. In the meantime, it’s a book I have on my book buffet to flip through and read as I grab a cuppa joe and ten minutes on the veranda after work.
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