“It is not the African American female, through her economic independence, tat emasculates the black male, but social programs that encourage the bastardization of our children.”

—Derrick Bell in “The Crisis of African American Gender Relations”

 

TRANSITION 66: Table of Contents

 

POSITIONS____________________

Race Publics
When even the Democrats run campaigns tailor-made to the prejudices of “white ethnics”, it might be time to take a harder look at why the Reagan Democrats left in the first place. Investigating the idea of a “race-neutral” public sphere, John Brenkman suggests that race is still where civic liberals spook.

UNDER REVIEW____________________

Abuses of Haiti
Surveying the troubled history of American policy toward Haitian refugees, Geoffrey Wisner argues that American perceptions of Haitian “ungovernability” may go back to Africa.

Word Bullets
European languages may be the coin of the post-colonial realm, but the Jamaican creole called “nation langauge” refuses to knuckle under. G.A. Elmer Griffin considers the prospects for dub poetry.

 The Color of Money
“Culture” has become the safe response of many conservatives to the riddle of the Bell Curve. Who has what it takes to succeed as a group, and why? Is is in the genes, or in the environment? Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests we may be asking the wrong questions.

SYMPOSIUM____________________

The Crisis of African American Gender Relations
Is the black family to blame for the crisis in black America? Why can't African American men and women just get along? Or is the “crisis” and its attendant pathologies — everything from welfare mothers, male/female income disparities, child abuse, gangsta posturing, to bad sex — largely the invention of journalists, demagogues, and academics? Fifteen commentators reply to Orlando Patterson's essay, “Blacklash; the crisis of gender relations among African Americans.”

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