“I felt that Jews, unlike Negroes, had made something out of their suffering--something distinct, rich, and literary, to which I wanted to belong. For a long time I knew more about the suffering of the Jews than I did about being a Negro gentleman.”

—from Hilton Als' “The Overcoat”

 

TRANSITION 73: Table of Contents

 

EDITORIAL____________________

White Skin, White Masks
For an international conversation on the white race.

POSITIONS____________________

The Overcoat
Soured, starched, and stylized, William S. Burroughs evoked the Harlemite and the Hasid in equal measure. Hilton Als muses on the politics of longing and the demands of kinship.

The Shirley Temple of My Familiar
No figure symbolized the wholesome appeal of whiteness like Shirley Temple — and none more potently pathologized blackness. Ann duCille revisits her own vexed relationship to the pint-sized princess of Depression-era film.

Ethnic Hash
If you are what you eat, and you’re a lobster-eater, does that make you a blue-blood? A white person? A lobster? Patricia J. Williams details the secret relationship between race and food.

The Yellow Negro
Like their white American counterparts, Japanese kids dig hip-hop, graffiti, and break dancing. In the clubs of Tokyo’s Roppongi district, however, what separates the real from the poser is blackface: darkened skin and curls. Joe Wood wonders whether the Japanese minstrels are trying to be Janet Jackson . . . or Al Jolson.

The Little Revenge From the Periphery
Why is Thomas Jefferson the most important man in United States history? Jamaica Kincaid unbundles the myth of America.

Africans of European Descent
The annals of white barbarism in Africa are not yet complete, but there are signs that the continent’s five million white-colored people are making a fitful peace with their adoptive homelands. Michael Chege considers the destiny of the white Africans.

Along the Color Bar
White mother, Indian father — African son? Klaus de Albuquerque remembers growing up mixed in colonial Kenya.

White Like Canada
Canada prides itself on being the antithesis of America — clean, well-mannered, liberal, unracist. But the strange story of race in Canada suggests otherwise. George Elliott Clarke debunks the niceness of whiteness.

The Mercenary Position
For nearly forty years, the white mercenary has been a fixture of African politics — a lethal, inscrutable, romantic figure, the very emblem of neocolonial intrigue. Howard French considers the curious case of Bob Denard, a soldier of fortune who learned to love the scent of ylang-ylang.

Autobiography of an Ex-White Man
If race is a social construction, what’s the difference between passing for white and being white? Walter Benn Michaels analyzes the predicament of race.

UNDER REVIEW____________________

The White Mother
For white women with black children, parenting is a political act. France Winddance Twine examines the sentimental literature of the new abolitionism.

The Feminazi Mystique
How can Hitler’s most successful propagandist be a feminist hero? bell hooks ponders the legacy of Leni Riefenstahl.

How to Make Love to a White Man
For a black boy growing up in the segregated sixties, the danger that white men represented was cause for allure, as well as alarm. Don Belton investigates the hidden investments of black masculinity.

CONVERSATIONS____________________

I’m Ofay, You’re Ofay
Can class consciousness destroy the white race? Can rap music save it? White hip-hopper William “Upski” Wimsatt, race traitor #1 Noel Ignatiev, and Transition’s own Cornel West talk about — and argue over — what is to be done.

Pale Face, Red Neck
Is racism really reducible to hate? Might liberals be more dangerous than Nazis? Darius James talks about color, class, and Yankee liberalism with Jim Goad, author of The Redneck Manifesto.

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