Review: Public Image Limited

Reviewed Work(s): Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism. by Michael

Eric Dyson: Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. by Michael Eric
Dyson: Claiming Earth: Race, Rage, Rape, Redemption; Blacks Seeking a Culture of
Enlightened Empowerment. by Haki R. Madhubuti: The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop
Culture That Shook the World. by Armond White
Review by: Eric Lott
Source: Transition , 1995, No. 68 (1995), pp. 50-65
Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the Hutchins Center for African
and African American Research at Harvard University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935292

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indiana University Press and are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Transition

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 TRANSITION ( Position

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED

Eric Lott

This is, by all accounts, the dawning of honorific. It also has a history that ought
the age of the black public intellectual. to have enlightened more of those ac-
Magazines as divergent as the Village Voice, quainted with it. The record is grim re-
the New Yorker, and Emerge have (diver- garding the crossover dream work of black
gently) noticed the aggregate arrival of intellectuals caught between a dominant
critics bent on speaking to a broad popular white audience on whom they inevitably
audience about everything from race mat- depend for prestige and power and the
Discussed in ters to the rights of Bosnians. Even the imagined community on behalf of whom
this essay normally slumbrous Atlantic Monthly sat they are obliged to speak. Michael Berube
up and surveyed the intellectual course of ("Public Academy," The New Yorker, 9
Reflecting Black: Afri-
can-American Cultural a group the magazine surmises is poised January 1995) and Adolph Reed ("What
Criticism, Michael Eric
to assume the position of the mid-century Are the Drums Saying, Booker?" Village
Dyson, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota New York Intellectuals-a prospect that Voice, 11 April 1995) are right to press
notably raised the smugly self-smitten on the political consequences of writing
Making Malcolm: The
Myth and Meaning of neoliberal hum of the New Republic to a between the rock and the hard place. Sell-
Malcolm X, Michael reactionary howl. Now there are lots of out, as Berube observes, alwayg lurks amid
Eric Dyson, New York:
Oxford
reasons to be suspicious of this recent me- points of connection between black in-
dia fetishism, beginning with the fact that tellectuals and white audiences, if it does
Claiming Earth: Race,
vogues of the Negro, recurring about ev- not, as Reed charges with much cogency,
Rage, Rape, Redemp-
tion; Blacks Seeking a ery twenty years since the 1840s, have wholly corrupt black minds governed by
Culture of Enlightened the main chance.
been distinctly uncertain in their political
Empowerment, Haki R.
Madhubuti, Chicago: outcomes. But perhaps the chief reason Even so, the lures and snares of coming
Third World
for doubt is that the rubric "black public up in public-or of opting out-could
The Resistance: Ten intellectual" names a deep cultural dilem- stand more scrutiny. In or out, there's no
Years of Pop Culture ma rather than a smooth shift in strategy, escaping acts of rhetorical and political
That Shook the World,
Armond White, New a racial conundrum (some would just say negotiation that would give Boutros Bou-
York: Overlook con), not a ready-to-wear professional tros-Ghali a headache. If public activity

50 TRANSITION ISSUE 68

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Michael Eric

Dyson
Marc Royce

puts extreme pressure on current black have been fatally compromised by its pub-
intellectual work, what options and what lication in the Voice. How does public
maneuvers are involved in facing that access (as Berube calls it) or public absence
pressure? It's not as if thoughts were sim- inflect, prod, and encumber the work of
ply ordained by one's cultural position- black cultural critics? What's gained and
ing-otherwise Reed's own article would lost when the "public" is embraced or

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED 51

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
refused, courted or drubbed, wheedled or sumptions; his review of Robert Anson's
subverted? Such issues get clearer with a Best Intentions: The Education and Killing
look at recent books by Michael Eric Dy- of Edmund Perry (1988) scores righteous
son, Haki R. Madhubuti, and Armond points against the tedious liberal habit of
White. These three critics offer a range first pitying "damaged" black selves and
of responses to a problem whose impor- then persecuting them for failing to get
tance and complexity are difficult to ac- over it and get over. Dyson also works
knowledge. against the liberal drift in providing a con-
By far the most visible of the three is text for (though not a sufficient reading
Michael Dyson, whose rising star over the of) white working-class racism while re-
fusing to let more prevalent and invidious
forms of middle-class racism off the hook.
Dyson is at his best In an unusual and winning burst of ven-
when trouncing liberal om, Dyson's essay on Spike Lee's Do the
Right Thing warns against those "smugly
presumptions
self-confident that they are not racists be-
cause they are not petit bourgeois Italian
last several years owes much to his walk- businessmen, because they don't call peo-
ons in venues from the New York Times ple 'niggers,' and because they are not
to National Public Radio. Indeed, the es- policemen who chokehold black men to
says collected in Reflecting Black reflect death." Elsewhere, declining to scapegoat
above all a willingness to enter the parlous Bensonhurst in the racist murder of Yusuf

regions of white liberal and left-liberal Hawkins, Dyson espies (albeit too dis-
opinion; the great majority of the pieces tantly) the true centers of white gravity
come from the Times and the Chicago in the Capitol and in capital.
Tribune, Tikkun and Democratic Left, The Class matters are Dyson's most inter-
Nation and Z Magazine, and if these or- esting subject in Reflecting Black. A son of
gans all share a predominantly white au- black working-class Detroit who was or-
dience and orientation (however multi- dained as a Baptist minister before enter-
hued certain of them at times manage to ing the academy and thence going public,
be), their common interest in Dyson's Dyson is down with the world of nine-
work at least suggests a critic capable of to-five (and the welfare grind of none-to-
speaking broad sense to a range of polit- have). This makes him alive to various
ical sensibilities and of toting leftish in- kinds of class experience in black life, and
clinations to a fallow mainstream. Dyson his truest aperSus come in recording the
brings to these tasks a diligent if not dis- responses of intimates to minor and major
ciplined attention to black popular cul- predicaments. Returning to a Knoxville
ture, the politics of race, and black relig- barber shop to visit Ike, a favorite hair-
ious movements, and devotes himself to cutter, Dyson is informed by the shop's
race realities that rarely trouble your typ- owner of Ike's stabbing death by his
ical Times reader, not to mention your brother's hand in a drunken knife fight.
local democratic socialist. Dyson is in fact "Feeling my pain, Harold filled in the
at his best when trouncing liberal pre- details of Ike's last hours. Harold pro-

52 TRANSITION ISSUE 68

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
ceeded to cut my hair with a methodical timate crises attendant upon class and race
precision that was itself a temporary and identities in these United States.

all-too-thin refuge from the chaos of ar- Dyson occasionally threatens to make
bitrary death, a protest against the non- good use of such perceptions in essays on
linear progression of miseries that claim hip-hop culture, Michael Jordan, The
the lives of too many black men." Though Cosby Show, Boyz N the Hood, and other
Dyson doesn't dwell on it, this moment concerns. But Reflecting Black usually
does justice to forms of everyday black mutes its better impulses, and reveals, I
discipline and craft as stays against the think, how much the author's "public"
quotidian terrors of caste and class. In an- profile has been more burden than boon.
other instance, these terrors erupt be- Overall, sustained critical reflection is
tween Dyson and his son during a (for blunted by what I can only assume is the
black folk) routine credit card hassle. Get- need to furnish cautious analyses of the
ting no answers and so getting mad, Dy- Other half for the unknowing. Perhaps
son confirms the worst suspicions of the overwhelmed by the ignorance of much
racist bank manager who calls the cops of his audience, Dyson rests content with
and provokes Dyson to extreme unction: underwhelming surveys and cursory takes.
"I was tempted to vent my rage on his Original thoughts rarely detain the pages
defiant countenance, arrested only by the on rap music, which could enlighten only
vision terrible that flashed before my eyes those unfamiliar with the form and tend

as a chilling premonition of destruction: embarrassingly to plead its worth as an

I would assault the manager's neck; his alternative to gang violence and drug-
co-workers would join the fracas, as my running. Dyson has a suspicious habit of
son stood by horrified by his helplessness exhibiting the conspicuously edifying
to aid me; the police would come, and "progressive, education-oriented, mes-
abuse me even further, possibly harming sage-centered rap" of KRS-One and Pub-
my son in the process." The specificity of lic Enemy, not only drastically under-
Dyson's imagined assault nicely measures selling Public Enemy but also appealing
the velocity and precision of the writer's to his audience's worst prog-middlebrow
denunciation, but it also seems to register instincts-as though he himself were
how absurd such violence is made to ap- doubtful of rap's real value. Convincing
pear in the sanctums of middle-class life, people they ought to pay attention to
though it be eminently logical. The in- things they know not of is a bit of a mug's
ternalized strictures of that life for black game, and, while it's no doubt semi-use-
people are clear enough in the policing ful to somebody, it backs Dyson into prof-
function of the "arresting" vision itself, fering unearned enthusiasms and unpack-
as powerful as, and tantamount to, many ing self-evident contradictions. In one
men in blue. And especially in Dyson's piece he gets overheated about Anita Bak-
fear that his son will, all unequipped, feel er's slick bourgie mood music ("lush, fiery,
a troubling vulnerability on his normally and imaginative love songs" from her
respectable daddy's behalf-Dyson by "quadruple-platinum breakthrough al-
contrast appears unconcerned about his bum, Rapture"); in another he details the
own humiliation-one glimpses the in- rather obvious crossover dilemmas of

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED 53

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
contemporary gospel music (is it newjack (1967) for an instructive history of black
swing or updated evangelism?). The same radicalism disoriented by white militant
flattened perspective marks the whole of milieus. Faced with an earnest but largely
Reflecting Black, whether it is the even- unchallenging audience as far as race is
handed and unsurprising essay on black concerned, Dyson can-with perfect jus-
grassroots leaders or the elementary piece tification, of course-settle for less. So he
on race theory ("Progressive racial theory waxes earnest and unchallenging, and if
must also highlight the strengths of lib- what he writes is often (but not always)
eralism, neonationalism, and conserva- unobjectionable, it's also often banal and
tism, even as it avoids their weaknesses in occasionally sanctimonious. In one essay,
reconceiving race relations," etc., etc.). for example, Dyson is interested "to ex-
When Dyson's public stance issues in this plore two tensions that flow from" the
sort of steady equivocation, it amounts to lionizing of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
little more than a troglodyte's delight, a "while King's contributions were heroic
beacon only to the benighted. and significant, many African-Americans,
As you might expect, this version of particularly the working poor and the un-
negotiating the public sphere rather com- derclass, still suffer in important ways; and
promises Dyson's leftism. Having as- while King deserves great honor and praise
of a particular sort, he is indebted to
traditions of African-American religious
Dyson's repeated and protest, social criticism, and progressive
sincere but essentially democracy." These are relatively plain so-
cial facts dressed up as dialectical illumi-
pro forma exhortations
nations; I doubt they are unfamiliar to
against bad political
anybody who has briefly contemplated
attitudes amount to a
American life in the last thirty years. But
leftism of good they serve their purpose as talismanic
manners home truths meant to affirm collective

sympathies rather than further critical

analysis. Similarly, Dyson's repeated and
sumed the task of the translator, Dyson
sincere but essentially pro forma exhor-
tations against bad political attitudes-the
generally speaks without tooth to power.
This is so, despite the (white) leftsexism
orbit of some rap, the male supremacy
in which Dyson's work was partly of black nationalism-are uncontrover-
nour-
ished and which incidentally marks
sial one
at best, afterthoughts at worst, and
amount
line of fracture within the "public" that to a leftism of good manners.
is Dyson's demesne. Yet public apart Here indeed is where multicultural
idealism meets middlebrow imbecilism.
though that context may be, the unpleas-
ant fact is that the white Left mayDyson's
exerttentative grasp of a truly critical
egalitarianism
very familiar kinds of racial pressure on is most evident when he
the race criticism produced under slips into the mental habits of the high
its ae-
bourgeois. Dyson is not averse to un-
gis; one need only consult Harold Cruse's
guarded celebrations of black advance-
still-crucial Crisis of the Negro Intellectual

54 TRANSITION ISSUE 68

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ment (Papa Doc second Ron Brown is least, one might on the contrary submit
praised for becoming the "first black to the Great Educator's "sitcomity" to a bet-
head a major political party") or undue ter social standard derived from the col-

concern for ownership and property rights lective jones and sharp antibourgeois
(he's wary of sampling). The essay on Bill swing of the black working-class Cosby
Cosby contains a revealing instance of and (in this case) Dyson traduce.
Dyson's uncertain political instincts. Dy- Dyson pays better attention to prole-
son is onto Cosby's class complacency and tarian perspectives in Making Malcolm, his
Poussaintian evasions ("audiences tune in attempt to come to grips with the mean-
to be entertained, not to be confronted ing of Malcolm X's circulation in current
with social problems," quoth Alvin), but American culture. But I can't say the ef-
he succumbs to the same complacency in fort to bring Malcolm before a general
his suggested alternatives for the show: reading public has paid off with regard to
Dyson's political stance. The book, to be
Cosby could go a long way toward helping sure, aims at comprehensiveness; like Greil
America to see that many occupants of the Marcus's Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cul-
underclass are conscientiouspeople who are vic- tural Obsession (1991), Making Malcolm
timized, often by socioeconomicforces beyond tracks down a scattered score of recent
their immediate control. . . . Some indication usages, mentions, guest appearances, and
of the existence of lessfortunate blacks-some echoes of the reigning god of post-na-
visiting relative whose situation is desperate, tionalist discourse, and this has its inter-
some deserving youth whose intellectual bril- ests. I'mjust not sure this "Dead Malcolm"
liance is not matched by material resources- helps Dyson articulate the "new pro-
could both alert America to the vicious effects gressive black politics anchored in radical
of poverty on well-meaning people and send democracy" that he wants to advance. In
the message that the other side of the American making his subject the "ideological war-
Dreamfor many is the American Nightmare. fare over who Malcolm is, and to whom
he rightfully belongs," Dyson avoids
I still can't decide what's worse-the claiming this or that version of the "real"
Malcolm and immerses himself in very
commitment to helping "America" pity
the black poor (alas, they mean well)relevant
or conflicts in contemporary cul-
the utterly conventional view of the "un-
ture; but he seems too happy to refuse any
specific readings of Malcolm's political
derclass" (a word freighted with immense
bourgeois resignation) as downtrodden
legacy, as when he declares apropos of
one attempt to divine a usable Malcolm
and desperate but redeemed here and there
that "the nature of Malcolm's thought
by deserving youths bound for better
during
things. In outlook if not intention this is his last year was ambiguous and
nothing more than Cos's townhousejive,
making definite judgments about his di-
right down to the implicit validationrection
of is impossible." Maybe so; but the
upward mobility. Rather than demanding
strong whiff of disinterest in such a state-
ment conveys Dyson's willingness in
that Cosby merely acknowledge the good
"fortune" of the upper middle class,Making
an Malcolm to direct traffic in other
impoverished political desire to say the
people's perspectives rather than devise

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED 55

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 compelling post-Malcolm political anal- realness, and potent manhood. Dyson's
yses. Indeed, the book's long second chap- rebuking of, and subsequent reconcilia-
ter (one third of the entire text), a review tion with, these students forms the pre-
of most of the critics who've ever weighed face's drama, and while Dyson means it
in on Malcolm, features Dyson giving to exemplify post-nationalist cultural
thumbs up here and thumbs down there combat as well as his ambivalence about

until you feel you've wandered into some his students' position, there is neverthe-
New York Times Arts & Leisure essay of less a familiar act of authorial self-certi-

the eternal night. This sober middlebrow fication going on-for, specifically, "the
patrolling organizes much of the book, wider audience that he deserves." Refus-

and it effectively throttles Dyson's polit- ing, quite reasonably, to be Malcolm's un-
ical commitments, which amount to sen- critical devotee, Dyson at the same time
timental banalities both in the assessment positions himself as not one of the young
of Malcolm's meaning and in the enun- male militants whose access to the public
ciation of a cultural politics. According to sphere is of course highly circumscribed.
Dyson, Malcolm's "most radical and orig- And yet part of Dyson's rebuke, as he says,
inal contribution rested in reconceiving stems from his feeling "excluded" by his
the possibility of being a worthful black students' resort to black experience and
human being in what he deemed a wicked identity in asserting possession of Mal-
white world"; enlarging on this deep colm X, since Dyson's early life (which
thought, Dyson proposes that "[b]lack he retails) clearly echoed Malcolm's own.
progressive intellectuals and activists must Dyson, that is, authenticates himself amid
view class, gender, and sex as crucial com- an argument against macho racial au-
ponents of a complex and insightful ex- thentication, and if this two-step captures
planation of the problems of black Amer- a certain lived black ambivalence, in this
ica." context it also has the effect of turning
At least part of the blame for Dyson's Dyson into a genuine yet genial native
hobbled politics belongs to his conception interpreter of Malcolm X. The resulting
of his "public" role. Making Malcolm's double bind of required moderation and
preface, self-conscious though it is, drops entry-level explanation hampers Dyson's
clues about the dance of position Dyson efforts to map the post-Malcolm land-
performs in his desire to "make Malcolm scape in politically challenging ways.
available to the wider audience that he Dyson resolves these demands of pub-
deserves without making him a puppetlic expression into an uneven mode of
for moderate, mainstream purposes, and inquiry that occasionally bucks the bur-
without freighting him with the earlyden of introduction only to haul out more
bigotries and blindnesses he grew to dis- old news. There is again a scripted survey
card." Dyson opens with a long story aboutof rap, with unexceptional reflections on
the disruption of his Brown UniversityMalcolm's place in it and its general debt
seminar on Malcolm X by some fiercelyto black nationalist ideology. Dyson use-
partisan black male students who closedfully reminds the reader of the middle-
down discussion in claiming Malcolm for class consolidation often undertaken in the
the side of authentic blackness, ghetto name of nationalism, but he also recycles

56 TRANSITION ISSUE 68

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
bromides about "the search for a secure political interventions. The same goes for
and empowering racial identity." His re- his brief foray into the now obligatory
view of forgettable movies such as New subject of blacks andJews, though Dyson
Jack City, Juice, and Straight Out of Brook- begins promisingly; he asks why it is a
lyn offers the opportunity to say impor- perennial media fetish and why it should
tant and interesting things about cine- be the privileged framework over a whole
matic black masculinism and resurgent host of American conflicts, while refusing
ghetto representation, despite an ingen- to soft-sell the U.S. history of successive
uous penchant for taking dubious soci- ethnic advancements on the backs of black
ology from bad film, as when he praises folk. But then he puts on the tired act of
Straight Out of Brooklyn for being true to
the "lifelessness of the ghetto" in its
"crude" amateurism. By the time Dyson Playing to the center,
swallows Spike Lee's Malcolm X in Chap-
Dyson too easily takes
ter 5 one has come to expect a certain
critical unreliability. But it still grates to
his eyes off the prize
have Dyson call Lee's epic mortuary an
"often impressive, occasionally stunning
achievement" without noting the dis- imploring black people to purge them-
tinctly equivocal political results of the selves of anti-Semitism and forge alliances
film's shallow chronological resume and with Jews, before turning to the safer is-
Lee's small-minded self-importance. Dy- sue of black-on-black violence for which
son broaches and quickly dismisses the he proposes a "political ethic of care." It's
pre-filming debate about Malcolm's leg- true that taking up such issues with any
acy between Lee and Amiri Baraka, and sustained seriousness might jeopardize
while some of their skirmishes were mis- Dyson's public reach, but a little imagi-

fires, Dyson could have used Baraka's nation might have helped unloosen the
skepticism about Lee's superficial petit- contradictory feelings and relations that
bourgeois opportunism. As Baraka wrote have knotted around this issue from Mal-
in "Malcolm as Ideology" (inJoe Wood's colm's time down to ours. What about
collection Malcolm X: In Our Own Image), the little-remarked photo contained in
"Spike's cry of 'independent' Black film- George Breitman's 1967 The Last Year of
maker has very quickly revealed itself as Malcolm X (a book Dyson spends too much
a marketing device, like the 'Blackness' time rebutting) in which a smiling Mal-
of his movies." colm stands by a Levy's Jewish Rye sign
For some reason Dyson's later political featuring a post-pickaninny black boy
remarks are more barbed, and it's pleasant taking a big bite with the slogan, "You
to imagine him causing squirms in gentle don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's"?
readers everywhere with his review of Bill What are we to make of this curious little
Clinton's racial hypocrisies (Sister Soul- composition, or of Malcolm's reported line
jah, Haiti, et al.). These too, though, are to Laurence Henry, "Take my picture by
stale tales by now, and their status as left- this sign. I like it"? What mix of cross-
liberal truisms dulls the force of Dyson's racial outreach, conventional lampoon

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED 57

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
(non-Jewish means black), and racist af- assortment of Madhubuti's writings in
fection exists in the sign itself? Why did several genres that parallels Dyson's in-
Malcolm "like" it? Was he reciprocating terests in black leadership, black mascu-
an interracial embrace, mocking Harlem linity, and American cultural politics, is
colonialism, signifying on neo-minstrel- thus of interest for what it says about the
sy, or all of these at once? There are more discursive freedoms-and fatuities-

affective convolutions and ingrown social borne to a writer not bound to predom-
urgencies present in such a document than inantly white audiences though certainly
in reams of "balanced" liberal handwr- responsive to a particular portion of the
inging about all of us coming together on black American literary world.
this earth, and what we need is coura- Madhubuti can certainly afford to of-
geous critical exploration of a kind that fend. Having rejected any stake in a dom-
might go down hard with connoisseurs inant cultural or academic establish-
of ethnic glory stories. Playing to the cen- ment-white, multicult, or otherwise-
ter, Dyson too easily takes his eyes off the he's not inclined to kowtow to it, nor does
prize. he shrink from going after antagonists of
prominence (though one senses the envy

Haki Madhubuti can behind such attacks). One of these is

Transition's own Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
certainly afford to whom Madhubuti castigates for becom-
offend ing "the major voice for the anti-Black,
pro-white/Jewish wing of the academic
Haki Madhubuti's career can be read and political middle," a "modern day,
as an attempt to guard against precisely21st-century, updated Booker T. Wash-
this lure. The man formerly known as ington." It's too bad Madhubuti estab-
Don L. Lee has not sought conventionallishes his critical independence by way of
respectability, and persists in occupying de rigeur Afrocentric anti-Jewish cliches
an alternative public sphere constructedinstead of his own authority, because much
around black publishing ventures (such asof his essay on Gates develops an incisive
his own Third World Press) and black critique of the persona perforce adopted
cultural institutes (such as the Gwendolyn by certain black "public" intellectuals.
Brooks Center at Chicago State Univer-Madhubuti is right to suspect the domi-
sity, which he directs) and predicated onnant media of self-interest in perpetuating
a thriving black readership. His 1990 bookthe very framework of blacks-against-
Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? hasJews-as, for instance, in the New York
reportedly sold more than 200,000 cop- Times's blazoning of Gates's 1992 edito-
ies, and to ask why this title is not asrial decrying black anti-Semitism across
familiar as, say, Robert Bly's IronJohn (and, its entire op-ed page-that scapegoats
for that matter, why Madhubuti is neverblacks for the culture-wide problem of
mentioned in recent pieces on black pub-anti-Semitism at the same time it occludes
lic intellectuals) is to pinpoint the racialpressing and ever-increasing anti-black
cast(e) of the public to which Madhubuti feeling in this country. And I'm afraid
has refused to pander. Claiming Earth, anhe's right again to suspect Gates of self-

58 TRANSITION ISSUE 68

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
interest in distancing himself from what
he termed "black demagogues and pseu-
do-scholars" not in a black forum where

it might conceivably have hit its mark but

for the delectation of predominantly white
Times readers who were no doubt com-

forted by this spectacular and "coura-

geous" act of fealty. (It was unfortunately
left to others to complete Gates's work:
the Anti-Defamation League disingenu-
ously reprinted Gates's editorial as a full-
page advertisement in the black Brooklyn
newspaper the City Sun.) Of course Mad-
hubuti is mortally compromised in this
critique by the fact that Third World Press
has in recent years published such schol-
arly tomes as Michael Bradley's Chosen
People from the Caucasus: Jewish Origins,
Delusions, Deceptions and Historical Role in
the Slave Trade, Genocide and Cultural Col-
onization (1992), a volume I've read and
sort of enjoyed as a parody of sci-fi anti-
Jewish paranoia. Except it's no parody,
and it evinces the rhetoric that kills any
integrity Madhubuti might have had and
squanders the intellectual independence
it is (a la Louis Farrakhan) meant to assert.
The other side of Madhubuti's critical
Haki Madhubutl
liberty, in other words, is an insularity forthrightly against rape, for an audience
that indulges in such puerile games as one too often suspicious of the alleged (Ish-
of its rituals of cohesion. This insularity, mael Reedian) cabal of black and white
I would have to argue, isn't all bad: Mad- feminists and their white male sponsors.
hubuti's sense of immediate contact with Most surprisingly, especially given his
a black audience does encourage him to chosen political rhetoric, Madhubuti's in-
ignore conventional standards of literary sularity does not hinder his criticism
respectability in order to offer, say, self- (sympathetic though it is) of Farrakhan
help suggestions and ideas on black teen or Khalid Muhammad, with both of
sexuality if he damn well thinks it's im- whom Madhubuti has had a far closer re-

portant. Which is to say that there's a felt lationship than any of their mainstream
urgency to his work that does not trouble critics who obviously have little to lose.
some of its counterparts in the public That fact alone will not endear him to

sphere. The best use he makes of this fea- many, but it doesn't silence an at times
ture in Claiming Earth is in agitating highly critical voice positioned, signifi-

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED 59

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
cantly, close enough to the Nation of Is- haps the best recent proponent of an in-
lam's ranks to quite possibly help venti- dependent black critical stance as chal-
late its worst hothouse deliriums (Mad- lenging in its cultural judgments as it is
hubuti's public castigation by Khalid Mu- exacting in its political sensibility. White
hammad himself is evidence that his words has for the past decade staked out uncom-
have stung). Nevertheless, Claiming Earth promising, sometimes irascible, and often
peddles vast quantities of vacuous crap to brilliant positions on contemporary film,
its circle of readers, demonstrating that music, video, and theater, and much of
merely refusing the public doesn't give the best of that work has now been col-

you a worldview. Madhubuti leavens his lected in The Resistance. There is weight
cultural and political analyses with inspi- in this title, and I think White means it
rational verse, New Age-style specula- to capture the ability of pop culture at its
tion, and extended self-esteem edicts. He best to drive stakes into the decadent heart

specializes in the corny cult-nat enco- of white capitalist culture as the American
mium; the only person profiting from such century grinds to a close. Time and again
statements as "[t]he African/Black in us White discloses dissident attempts in the
is the water, earth, air, fire, and wind frankly commercialized languages of pop
forming the core that produces the fuel life to banish American culture's basest

energizing the spirits and souls that center instincts and offer glimpses of a better
our creation" is the man who's getting world. This is about as far as you can get
paid for "creating" them. These shade from critiques right and left of pop cul-
into therapeutic intimations on the order ture's corruption; White's investment in
of "[e]mpowerment at its root means be- an aesthetic dimension suggests his faith
ing a self-determining and self-reliant that pop culture will save us. It's also a
person who is secure in one's own per- great distance from cultural studies'
sonhood and who functions within a

knowledge base that is current, cutting

Alive to the emotional
edge, and expanding." The fumes of pet-
it-bourgeois self-satisfaction rise noi- complexity of political
somely from these pages, and despite desire, White also
Madhubuti's dismay about class hierarchy clarifies the political
his black-capitalist pronunciamentos ("If
force of imaginative
we have to work for large multi-national
action
corporations, we must never forget who
we are") make perfectly clear the class
complacency (not to mention intellectual
weakness for exhuming political portent
muddle) of cultural nationalism. from lifeless cultural artifacts, since for
This is not, safe to say, the only way
White there's no moving masses without
to slip the public yoke, and Armond
moving hearts and minds. White's chosen
White, arts editor and cultural critic for
location outside the purview of a main-
the aforementioned black Brooklyn
stream "public" (he too is never men-
weekly the City Sun and 1994 chair tioned
of in coverage of the black public in-
tellectuals) releases him from the obli-
the New York Film Critics Circle, is per-

60 TRANSITION ISSUE 68

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
gation to tone down, translate, or explain,
so he needn't worry about affronting the
imperial middle in the high demands he
places on everything from Prince to Pulp
Fiction. At the same time he does anything
but mollify his black audience, busting
sacred cows (e.g., Spike Lee) and vaunted
swine (e.g., the Wayans brothers) with-
out a flinch. For me the primary attribute
of White's work is its refusal to settle, to

accept the trivial for its passing pleasures

or the trend for its political promise, and
given that he possesses a near-faultless
bullshit detector, reading him can be a
bracing experience.
Like Dyson, a son of Detroit, White
grounds his political aesthetic in the world
of the black working class and shows what
it means to speak with politically-in-
formed moral seriousness without suc-

cumbing to the dominant culture's ob-

sessive demand that black intellectuals be- makes him as unparochial a critic as any- Arnond White

©1995 Chris Buck

come identity experts. Working without body writing. Criticized a few years ago
apology on the assumption that his po- by the Village Voice's Georgia Brown for
litical home base is, if not the only, then discussing a black text with reference to
a crucial, revolutionary subject of histo- European as well as African American an-
ry-his favorite art witnesses its world- tecedents (homies in the big house!),
view and serves its future-White takes White peeped the racist policing in such
it wherever he pleases, and he's not at all a critique and proclaimed himself a "cit-
bound by race in this enterprise. For while izen of the world," free to roam with
The Resistance suggests he's most at home roots intact. Intact enough, for sure, to
with hip-hop culture and independent spot political hypocrisy, as when, in re-
black film, White is as willing to go to sponse to critic Greil Marcus's charge that
Morrissey, Bernardo Bertolucci, Steven White was soft on rap music's sometimes
Spielberg, or Barbra Streisand for cultural dubious political underside, White ob-
illumination as he is to RuPaul, Charles served the contradiction between Mar-
Burnett, Haile Gerima, or Son of Bazerk. cus's long-standing indulgence of (white)
His politics inform rather than prescribe punk's occasionally foul rants and his out-
hisjudgments or his subjects, which makes rage over Public Enemy factotum Pro-
him not only authoritative but interest- fessor Griffs anti-Jewish rodomontade.
ing-and while the bite of White's black Combining such political astringency
socialism earns him enemies, his stunning with a passion for great mass art, White
range of reference and critical acuteness is superbly equipped to open up the moral

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED 61

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 complexity and emotional resonance of litical force of imaginative action. It takes
pop acts. White's grasp of these is usually occasions of this intellectual and artistic

so deep (notwithstanding his percussive, reach to convince White of their political

journalistic style) that he genuinely illu- worth; lesser instances, well-intended
minates untold realms of wit and imagi- though they may be, leave him very cold.
native intensity, which in White's work Condemning the "primitive look and
often themselves amount to an order of amateurish methods" of Matty Rich's
political insight beyond mere political Straight Out of Brooklyn, for example,
rhetoric or analysis. One choice moment White argues that the film
in The Resistance concerns the final cut of

Terence Trent D'Arby's debut album, In- brandishes poverty as the only truth. Rich is
troducing the Hardline According to Terence faking "slice-of-life" insight when thegreatest,
Trent D'Arby (1988). D'Arby first sings a most profoundly moving depictions of poverty
plaintive a cappella song about South Af- in movie fiction (Vittorio DeSica's Shoe-
rican black life under apartheid; he then shine, Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema,
stops, says, "Meanwhile, on the other side Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados, Satyajit Ray's
of the world ..." and charges into The Pather Panchali, Martin Ritt's Sounder)
Temptations' "Who's Loving You." have been the creation of enlightened sensibil-
White zooms in on this imaginative leap: ities and sophisticated craft.

The contrast is a kick in the head. Within This passage is typical in its enlarging
these two songs D'Arby has encapsulated the frame of reference, which justifies White's
complete emotional range of the black African aesthetic and political demands. It is typ-
experience in the Western empire. If you've ical as well in its readiness to debunk what

ever loved a record by a black artist, you've got White perceives to be artistic fraudu-
to hear this moment; you've got to own up to lence, especially when it has accrued the
it. The juxtaposition of African/American, acclaim of a public eager to patronize black
native/exile, politics/romance makes clear sense artists and black lives.

of the South African struggle, but it also brings Yet White is equally ready to praise
a similar political consciousness to bear upon against the grain, and this boldness pro-
black achievement in this country. D'Arby duces some of his freshest and most strik-

helps one to understand Motown and r&b bet- ing commentary. Unlike those who dis-
ter than before as the cultural expression of a missed Madonna's video "Like a Prayer"
people's new identity-as a poignant, perhaps (1989) as a trumped-up Pepsi ad contro-
illusory, belief in thepromises of the new world versy or more recent observers who slam
(and the sixties Great Society). These ideas the pop scene-tourist for thieving the gos-
are still at the heart of any love song a black pel, White calls the work "the most ex-
American sings, so it's right that D'Arby in citing film (short of feature length) made
his two-part triumph be defiant and ardent in America in several years," celebrating
with equal intensity. its circumvention of white expropriation
through the "hot looks of sisterhood" ex-
Alive to the emotional complexity of po- changed between Madonna and lead choir
litical desire, White also clarifies the po- actress Patty Holley and terming its no-

62 TRANSITION ISSUE 68

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
torious footage of Madonna singing in a their talent, and the white world sur-
field of burning crosses "a scene of ab- rounding them") and even his own face
solute moral authority and female sexual ("the ultimate critique/reversal of the
aggression" whose "complexity is just blackface tradition"). The political peak
plain thrilling." Thrilling also to White, of this self-consciousness, for White,
surprisingly, is Steven Spielberg's The comes inJackson's extended video "Black
Color Purple (1985), which White praises or White," that globe-trotting paean to
for its uncondescending approach to black global unity (complete with morphing se-
characterization-"a vivid panoply of quence fading race into race) that offend-
black faces, well lighted and without ex- ed many with its seemingly accommo-
oticism, treated as natural screen images dationist refrain, "If you're thinking about
just as white faces always have been"- being my brother it don't matter if you're
and its creation of "new black arche- black or white." White finds in it a roots-

reclaiming piece of "music video philol-

types." White's remarks on Madonna and
ogy" whose implacable militancy, he says,
is "badder than all of Ice Cube's vaunted
White's intrepidity profanities," especially in its silent closing
increases as he minutes (almost immediately cut due to
sponsor and viewer outrage) of furious
approaches the rough
crotch-grabbing window-smashing dance,
political questions which root the one-world idealism of the
popular art ought video's first half in social embitterment
to raise and thereby earn it. White's terrific read-
ing restores to "Black or White" the un-
precedented cultural-political ambitions
that most viewers, convinced ofJackson's
Spielberg convey his interest in the po-
harmlessness, missed.
litical opportunities opened up by the
magnificent pop gesture and its attendantIf anything, White's intrepidity in-
machinery of myth and melodrama-a
creases as he approaches the rough polit-
perspective clinched in perhaps my ical
fa- questions popular art ought to raise;
he makes use of his cultivated indepen-
vorite revisionary pieces in The Resistance,
those on the unfairly maligned Michael
dence. One of the most daring and thrill-
ing pieces in The Resistance honors ex-
Jackson. White's deeply sympathetic and
deeply smart essays on Jacko will con-
Geto Boy Willie D's incendiary rap song
vince you that, as James Brown puts it"Fuck
in Rodney King" with an amazing
Hammer's lame video "Too Legit close
to reading that sustains the song's vi-
Quit," "the gloved one is not a chump."
sion of justified spontaneous rebellion in
1992 Los Angeles in response to police
White brilliantly demonstrates Jackson's
self-consciousness on the album Bad about
repression and understands its anger at
Rodney King for becoming a City Hall
his own artistic and racial identity ("when
Jackson uses the word 'bad' he givesposter
it boy ("Can we all just get along?").
layers of emotion and shrewdness about
There are a high seriousness and depth of
how black people perceive themselves,
commitment in this piece thatjustifyJohn

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED 63

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Lydon/Johnny Rotten's axiom, "Anger Killer" controversy (Ice-T oK'd the song's
is an energy." Raising up the black ver- censorship) because of his overattention
nacular and laying low political collabo- to the bottom line in bowing to corporate
rators, White works on two fronts to am- dictate. Unserious vendors of opposition-
plify Willie D's radical tropes (killing al romance rub White the wrong way,
Rodney King in revolutionary effigy) and and he is merciless on Menace II Society's
his raucous aspersions against "so-called Uzi-pimping as well as the film's critical
black leaders" too ready to speak for the friends (Stanley Crouch, Gates again) who
black masses they're paid to misrepresent promoted it in slack venues such as the
(White makes pointed cultural analogies Washington Post and the New Yorker.
to Gates, Cornel West, Shelby Steele, and White is no less unyielding on black-
others in this charge). White shows with Jewish conflicts. His brilliant study of ear-
great force why Willie D's off-putting ly and late Barbra Streisand's propulsive,
and even offensive rap is more attuned to even violent, and fundamentally political
the social legitimacy and emotional in- appropriations of standards and show tunes
tricacy of black working-class distemper suggests the acuity and generosity he
than either Dr. Dre's nihilism or Spike brings to ethnic notions. He is quick to
Lee's tepid use in Malcolm X of George appreciate the "shtetl consciousness" of
Holliday's video of the King beating. In- Martin Ritt's moving narrative of south-
deed, reading this piece you know why ern black sharecropping life, Sounder
White is properly impatient with the stol- (1972), and, as with most of Spielberg,
id protest aesthetic of Lee's film, which White gives Schindler's List its due. But
stifles the political punch White finds very the straitened documentary standards he
much alive in Lee's Do the Right Thing. sees as having fueled the widespread pub-
lic embrace of that film-its reduction
from a work of vision and emotional

The price of power to an act of "witness"-arouse his

ire not only because they understate Spiel-
commitment may be
berg's humanism but also because they
confinement to
point to the sanctimonious social uses to
the margins which the film was put. White at some
length adumbrates Spielberg's imagina-
tive achievement in Schindler's List with
reference both to the director's own vo-
(Though White is especially hard on Lee,
luminous work and to other cinematic
he manages to say engrossing things about
treatments of the Holocaust and World
his work, as in his very perceptive neg-
ative review of Crooklyn.) White's dis-
War II. He captures very well Spielberg's
cernment in these matters owes to his fix-
ability to enhance primal emotions
ation on the moral basis of pop cultural
through narrative vigor, as in the scene
sallies rather than their shock value or where hundreds of mothers rush after their

swagger; so, for example, he punctures abducted children. He's thus in a position
Ice-T's pretensions to martyrdom instead to rebuke those who celebrated Schindler's
of Time-Warner's timidity in the "Cop List for simply confirming the Holocaust,

64 TRANSITION ISSUE 68

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
which, as White argues, is "imaginatively feminist ideology is sometimes lost on
a small accomplishment"-as banal and him, as when he falls back on the old
reverential as Spike Lee's documentation canard about Alice Walker's "hatred of
of Malcolm X's historical existence. From men." Also, his work tends to be pro-
here it was a small step to the misguided duced under a journalist's deadline and
and patronizing decision by certain black sometimes has a stacatto abruptness that
public schools to show the film to student cuts the corners of its own arguments. His
bodies in the cause of ethnic sensitivity bum-rushing, take-ho-prisoners argu-
(itself perversely reminiscent of Lee's mentative mode, so fitting when raising
commercially sound demand that on Mal- heroes or dissing scum, could here and
colm X's opening day kids skip school to there use extra elaboration. But these lim-
see it). This decision was, of course, wide- itations are worth putting up with in a
ly publicized, as was the subsequent in- critic whose wariness of the public sphere
cident in which several black kids re- has only meant a more principled, spir-
portedly laughed during one of the film's ited, and tenacious engagement with it.
depictions of violence againstJews-more The price of such commitment may
evidence, to an eager mainstream press, be confinement to the margins. Sure,
of black anti-Semitism. But in his City White has often enough gone open field
Sun review of the film, White questioned in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pre-
the obsession with such instances, of a miere, and the Village Voice, and it hasn't
piece with the constricted terms of en- seemed to damage him any; the public
dearment for Schindler's List, and went so only corrupts you if you're willing to meet
far as to wonder whether that laughter it halfway. White's trips there and Dy-
might not have been less derision than son's best moments suggest it's a place you
nervous recognition and even identifica- can visit respectably enough though (as
tion, the sympathetic reaction of the sim- in Dyson's worst moments) not for long
ilarly embattled; far from Spielberg's worst survive, and lord knows Madhubuti's re-
audience, those kids might have been his moval from it hasn't automatically re-
best. It is this kind of penetrating if un- lieved him of futile gestures. Yet White's
sanitized responsiveness that White pro- development as a critic at a paper like the
motes and exemplifies, and, if it altogeth- City Sun and the predictable exclusion of
er eludes the public voices of responsible him from all the lists of "black public
opinion, it nonetheless pays art such as intellectuals" aren't exactly signs of "pub-
Spielberg's the better respect. lic" cultural promise. As we slide thicker
Like any great critic, White has his into a white revanchism that likely won't
enabling flaws. Always provocative, his abate until century twenty-one, if ever, I
political judgments can be limited on myself don't expect a happy conversion
questions of feminism; good as White is in public culture through criticism too
on gay male sexuality (he's one of the Pet invested in catching white liberalism's ear.
Shop Boys' best critics and writes wittily Better, with White, to stay on the edge
and movingly about RuPaul, Erasure, Tom while demanding the most of American
Kalin's Swoon) as well as certain powerful culture, true to the resistance that may
female artists (Madonna, Neneh Cherry), one day liberate it.

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED 65

This content downloaded from

85.96.48.3 on Sat, 08 Feb 2025 13:16:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms