W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century utilizes Du Bois's thought and texts to develop an informed critical theory of contemporary society. This book broadens the base of critical theory, making it more multicultural, transethnic, transgender, and non-Western European philosophy focused by placing it in dialogue with theory and phenomena that had been heretofore woefully neglected. Taking the preeminent black intellectual of the twentieth century as his primary point of departure, Reiland Rabaka identifies and analyzes several key contributions that Du Bois and the black racial tradition offer to those interested in redeveloping and racially revising contemporary critical social theory. With chapters on critical race theory, postcolonial theory, feminism, and Marxism, this volume builds bridges from Africana Studies to disparate discursive communities, accessibly demonstrating Du Bois's, and the black radical tradition's, contributions to, and the potential impact on, a wide-range of new social scientific research and radical political struggles.

An analysis of how the conditions of race and racism in our culture have changed in our time and what this means for our future. “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,” W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1903, and his words have proven sadly prophetic. As we enter the twenty-first century, the problem remains—and yet it, and the line that defines it, have shifted in subtle but significant ways. This brief book speaks powerfully to the question of how the circumstances of race and racism have changed in our time—and how these changes will affect our future. Foremost among the book’s concerns are the contradictions and incoherence of a system that idealizes black celebrities in politics, popular culture, and sports even as it diminishes the average African-American citizen. The world of the assembly line, boxer Jack Johnson’s career, and The Birth of a Nation come under Thomas Holt’s scrutiny as he relates the malign progress of race and racism to the loss of industrial jobs and the rise of our modern consumer society. Understanding race as ideology, he describes the processes of consumerism and commodification that have transformed, but not necessarily improved, the place of black citizens in our society. As disturbing as it is enlightening, this timely work reveals the radical nature of change as it relates to race and its cultural phenomena. It offers conceptual tools and a new way to think and talk about racism as social reality. Praise for The Problem of Race in the Twenty-first Century “Debates about race often take the form of a mind game designed to establish whether or not a particular word or act is racially motivated . . . [This book] provides a compelling argument for rethinking our ideas about race.” —Frank Furedi, New Statesman “Holt rightly asserts that our racial legacy should be a point of departure—not a destination—in examining the enduring nature of racial enmity. As a nation and as individuals, we must imagine ourselves beyond, while remaining aware of, those forces that are at the root of the enmity.” —Vernon Ford, Booklist “[Readers] will benefit from Holt’s expert and careful examination of these “narratives of contradiction and incoherence” as he attempts to forecast the reigning racial ethos for the next millennium. . . . Holt writes in clear, precise prose . . . and makes an important contribution to both public and academic discussions of race and labor and their intersections in U.S. politics.” —Publishers Weekly

Environmental Justice in Contemporary US Narratives examines post-1929 US artistic interrogations of environmental disruption. Tracing themes of pollution, marine life, and agricultural production in the work of a number of historically significant writers including John Steinbeck, Ruth Ozeki, and Cherríe Moraga, this book outlines a series of incisive dialogues on transnational flows of capital and environmental justice. Texts ranging from The Grapes of Wrath (1939) to Body Toxic (2001) represent the body as vulnerable to a host of environmental risks. They identify "natural disasters" not just as environmental hazards and catastrophes, but also as events intertwined with socioeconomic issues. With careful textual analysis, Athanassakis shows how twentieth- and twenty-first-century US writers have sought to rethink traditional understandings of how the human being relates to ecological phenomena. Their work, and this study, offer new modes of creative engagement with environmental degradation – engagement that is proactive, ambivalent, and even playful. This book contributes to vital discussions about the importance of literature for social justice movements, food studies, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities. The core argument of the book is that artistically imaginative narratives of environmental disturbance can help humans contend with ostensibly uncontrollable, drastic planetary changes.

This anthology demonstrates the longstanding, multifarious, and major role that race has played in the formation of knowledge. The authors demonstrate how race theory intersects with other bodies of knowledge by examining discursive records such as travelogues, literature, and historiography; theoretical structures such as common sense, pseudoscientific racism, and Eurocentrism; social structures of class, advancement, and identity; and politico-economic structures of capitalism, colonialism, and law.

Du Bois's Dialectics is doubly distinguished from other books on Du Bois because it is the first extended exploration of Du Bois's contributions to new critical theory and the first book-length treatment of his contributions to contemporary black radical politics and the developing discipline of Africana Studies. With chapters that undertake ideological critiques of education, religion, the politics of reparations, and the problematics of black radical politics in contemporary culture and society, Du Bois's Dialectics employs Du Bois as its critical theoretical point of departure and demonstrates his (and Africana Studies') contributions to, as well as contemporary critical theory's connections to, critical pedagogy, sociology of religion, and reparations theory. Rabaka offers the first critical theoretical treatment of the W. E. B. Du Bois_Booker T. Washington debate, which lucidly highlights Du Bois's transition from a bourgeois black liberal to a black radical and revolutionary democratic socialist. This book is primarily directed at scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students working in and associated with Africana Studies, American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Cultural Studies.

In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about the Talented Tenth in an influential essay of the same name. The concept exalted college-educated Blacks who Du Bois believed could provide the race with the guidance it needed to surmount slavery, segregation, and oppression in America. Although Du Bois eventually reassessed this idea, the rhetoric of the Talented Tenth resonated, still holding sway over a hundred years later. In Rethinking Racial Uplift: Rhetorics of Black Unity and Disunity in the Obama Era, author Nigel I. Malcolm asserts that in the post–civil rights era, racial uplift has been redefined not as Black public intellectuals lifting the masses but as individuals securing advantage for themselves and their children. Malcolm examines six best-selling books published during Obama’s presidency—including Randall Kennedy’s Sellout, Bill Cosby’s and Alvin Poussaint’s Come On, People, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me—and critically analyzes their rhetorics on Black unity, disunity, and the so-called “postracial” era. Based on these writings and the work of political and social scientists, Malcolm shows that a large, often-ignored, percentage of Blacks no longer see their fate as connected with that of other African Americans. While many Black intellectuals and activists seek to provide a justification for Black solidarity, not all agree. In Rethinking Racial Uplift, Malcolm takes contemporary Black public intellectual discourse seriously and shows that disunity among Blacks, a previously ignored topic, is worth exploring.

Tracing the roots of the modern American University in German philosophy and in the work of British thinkers such as Newman and Arnold, Bill Readings argues that the integrity of the modern University has been linked to the nation-state, which it has served by promoting and protecting the idea of a national culture. But now the nation-state is in decline, and national culture no longer needs to be either promoted or protected.

Interracialism, or marriage between members of different races, has formed, torn apart, defined and divided our nation since its earliest history. This collection explores the primary texts of interracialism as a means of addressing core issues in our racial identity. Ranging from Hannah Arendt to George Schuyler and from Pace v. Alabama to Loving v. Virginia, it provides extraordinary resources for faculty and students in English, American and Ethnic Studies as well as for general readers interested in race relations. By bringing together a selection of historically significant documents and of the best essays and scholarship on the subject of "miscegenation," Interracialism demonstrates that notions of race can be fruitfully approached from the vantage point of the denial of interracialism that typically informs racial ideologies.

Is there a new scramble for Africa involving China, Japan, and India in competition with each other and with the Western world? In the second half of the twentieth century, Mao’s China and Jawaharlal Nehru’s India were political players in Africa, while Japan limited itself to trade and investment in Africa. Africa and Asia have historically been allies against Western exploitation and have also been rivals as producers of raw materials. India and West Asia have led the way in the soft power of culture and religion in Africa while Japan and China have engaged in the harder disciplines of the economy and the construction of infrastructure. This book explores the historical and unfolding dynamic interactions among China, India, Japan, and Africa and their ramifications.