Have you ever, when reading something, seen a reference to another book that makes you want to read it? Then when you get around to reading it, you realize that, with the first reference, you learned everything you wanted to know about the book? That was my experience with this book. I don't even remember where I read a reference to Robin D.G. Kelley's Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, but I know my life would not be less rich had I not read it.
This is not to say it's a bad book. It's a book that serves a function, fills a niche. Kelley writes as an academic (professor of history and Africana studies at NYU at the time of publication, now professor of American studies and ethnicity and history at USC), so the book is heavy on documentation and light on readability. (For 227 pages of text, there are 65 pages of end notes, a 37 page bibliography, and a 15 page index. But who's counting.) With that tone and purpose in mind, the reader can still glean an interesting take on civil rights and black history in the U.S.
In a relatively small space, Kelley covers a lot of ground. I enjoyed his recounting of, in a sense, the underbelly of the civil rights movement. We all know about Martin Luther King, the march on Washington, and the high-profile civil rights leaders. Kelley reveals the under-the-radar civil rights movement. Many workers, whether domestics, dock workers, field workers, etc., performed their own small acts of workplace rebellion, including industrial sabotage, workplace theft, and simple loafing. By doing so, they claimed ownership of their own time and persons, rejecting the role of slave.
I particularly liked the description of domestic workers taking, with the implied consent of their employers, food ("pan-toting"), clothing and utensils for their own use. One worker said, "We don't steal; we just 'take' things--they are part of the oral contract, exprest [sic] or implied. We understand it, and most of the white folks understand it." I was reminded of the biblical practice of gleaning, which required farmers to leave the corners of the field unharvested, or leave some grapes or olives ungathered, so that the poor can gather some for their own use.
Another favorite part was the description of the ongoing, decentralized bus protests, specifically in Birmingham. Give Rosa Parks her due, of course, but she was by no means the first, and certainly not the only one to thwart the bus segregation policy. Many did, on a daily basis. Particularly troubling was the treatment of black servicemen, who fought against racist policies overseas, only to come home and be told to move to the back of the bus.
Later on, as the civil rights movement became tied to the Communist Party, I began to lose a sense of solidarity. I can appreciate the point, that many African Americans do not share a commitment to American values, given the way they have been treated historically and in the present day, but it seems like African Americans should look at the alternatives: Communism, which oppresses all people as a matter of course, or American democracy, which has unfairly oppressed a minority but has taken great strides towards true equality. I have little patience for those who side with Communism, black or white.
I also did not enjoy Kelley's laudatory analysis of "gansta rap." I understand, as best a white man can, that blacks suffer from unfair treatment, and that there are discriminatory practices in law enforcement (see my review of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow), and that places like South Central L.A. have become occupied territories under police rule. But gangsta rap, when it celebrates cop killers, lauds illegal activity, and then demeans women, should be condemned, not praised, even if it is a heart-felt expression of the experiences of poor, inner-city blacks.
As a country, we are a long way from being free of contentious race discussions in our public discourse. Race Rebels reminds us that, even though church leaders and middle class and wealthy blacks may dominate discussions of race, the working class and poor blacks in our nation are the ones who really move the culture toward racial equality.
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