Blackwards

The iconoclastic Black Republican strategist calls out leaders who fan the flames of racial rhetoric and sabotage a post-racial America The euphoria surrounding Barack Obama's historic election had commentators naïvely trumpeting the beginning of a "post-racial America." In Blackwards, Ron Christie shows that not only is the opposite true, but black leadership today is effectively working against this goal by advancing an extremist agenda of separatism and special rights that threatens to point us backward to the days before Brown v. Board of Education. The motto E pluribus unum ("Out of one, many") speaks to the idea of a melting pot in which Americans of all backgrounds come together to form a strong, unified nation. But in the race politics of today, Christie argues the American melting pot is threatened by what Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned was the "cult of ethnicity," in which social divisions are deepened rather than transcended. Christie takes on such sacred cows as affirmative action and other race-based educational policies and campus programs that, in the words of former NAACP officer Michael Meyers, place "figurative black-only signs over certain doorways at America's colleges [while] only confirming and reinforcing pernicious racial stereotypes." Meanwhile, the author argues any open debate about such issues has been hijacked by such self-appointed spokesmen for black America as Al Sharpton, who co-opt the public narrative merely by being outspoken and charging racism against anyone who would speak against their political agendas and public grandstanding. Tellingly, it is within this context that then–presidential candidate Obama famously declared he could not disown Reverend Jeremiah Wright for his racist and anti-American sermons any more "than I can disown the black community." Perhaps most important, Christie reveals how a separatist mind-set has led to a form of selective, skin-based jurisprudence in the federal government, including: • Attempts by the Congressional Black Caucus to shield black members found to have committed ethics violations • The Justice Department's sudden dropping of charges against New Black Panther Party members for voter intimidation during the 2008 presidential election • A former trial attorney's admission that Americans "would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against non-white defendants on behalf of white victims" As African Americans face skyrocketing rates of single-parent families and high-school dropouts, the author urges black American communities to shun the limits of the monolithic politics of victimhood and embrace an open debate of many voices en route to the goal not of a separate "Black America" but of constructive inclusion in the American melting pot.

Tired of feeling like you don’t belong? Join the club. It’s called the Section. You’d think a spot to chill, chat, and find community would be much easier to come by for nerdy, queer punks. But when four longtime, bookish BFFs—Lika, Amor, Lala, and Tony—can’t find what they need, they take matters into their own hands and create a space where they can be a hundred percent who they are: Black, queer, and weird. The group puts a call out for all awkward Black folks to come on down to the community center to connect. But low attendance and IRL run-ins with trolls of all kinds only rock everybody with anxiety. As our protagonists start to question the merits of their vision, a lifetime of insecurities—about not being good enough or Black enough—bubbles to the surface. Will they find a way to turn it around in time for their radical brainchild, the Blackward Zine Fest? Lawrence Lindell’s characters pop from the page in playful Technicolor. From mental health to romance, micro—and macro—aggressions to joy, our crew tackles everything life throws at them in this heartwarming tale about building a place to belong and the power of community.

"This volume brings together an innovative set of readings of complex interactions between Australian Aboriginal people and colonisers. It has its origins in 2003 when Mark Hannah, then a doctoral student in the Centre for Cross Cultural Research at The Australian National University, invited a group of early career scholars to meet in Canberra. They brought their diverse social science and humanities backgrounds to the uncovering of creative Indigenous responses to the colonial encounter in Australia, and fresh ways of writing about these. Their studies were focused in diverse parts of Australia and on different time periods, but shared a common interest in developing critical re-assessments of Australian colonial and anti-colonial histories. Their meeting encouraged face-to-face exchanges that could short-circuit the isolation often experienced by cross-disciplinary, original scholars. It also emphasised writerly aspects of creative thinking, promoting the portrayal of character, alternative prose styles and inventive narrative forms. The authors' responses to these invitations have flavoured the commissioned papers presented here. The critical and creative drives which inform them shines out in their writing. They are exciting and sometimes surprising in the angles they take, and the cross-overs of genre or subject that they offer."--Provided by publisher.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, Black Power coalesced as activists advocated a more oppositional approach to fighting racial oppression, emphasizing racial pride, asserting black political, cultural, and economic autonomy, and challenging white power. In Concrete Demands, Rhonda Y. Williams provides a rich, deeply researched history that sheds new light on this important social and political movement, and shows that the era of expansive Black Power politics that emerged in the 1960s had long roots and diverse trajectories within the 20th century. Looking at the struggle from the grassroots level, Williams highlights the role of ordinary people as well as more famous historical actors, and demonstrates that women activists were central to Black Power. Vivid and highly readable, Concrete Demands is a perfect introduction to Black Power in the twentieth century for anyone interested in the history of black liberation movements.

In this comprehensive history of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), Chicago native Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the city's Black Power movement was both a response to and an extension of the city's civil rights movement. Williams focuses on the life and violent death of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader who served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and continued to pursue a civil rights agenda when he became chairman of the revolutionary Chicago-based Black Panther Party. Framing the story of Hampton and the ILBPP as a social and political history and using, for the first time, sealed secret police files in Chicago and interviews conducted with often reticent former members of the ILBPP, Williams explores how Hampton helped develop racial coalitions between the ILBPP and other local activists and organizations. Williams also recounts the history of the original Rainbow Coalition, created in response to Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine, to show how the Panthers worked to create an antiracist, anticlass coalition to fight urban renewal, political corruption, and police brutality.

Microphone Fiends, a collection of original essays and interviews, brings together some of the best known scholars, critics, journalists and performers to focus on the contemporary scene. It includes theoretical discussions of musical history along with social commentaries about genres like disco, metal and rap music, and case histories of specific movements like the Riot Grrls, funk clubbing in Rio de Janeiro, and the British rave scene.

African American Republican Ron Christie argues that black leadership is working against equality by advancing an extremist agenda of separatism and special rights.

William Grimshaw offers an insider's chronicle of the tangled relationship between the black community and the Chicago Democratic machine from its Great Depression origins to 1991. What emerges is a myth-busting account not of a monolithic organization but of several distinct party regimes, each with a unique relationship to black voters and leaders.