Class Notes: Posing As Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene

Eschewing both left-wing political clichés and stereotyped opinions derived from the 1960s civil rights era, Adolph Reed Jr. has forged his own intellectual path. In this impressive collection of essays, Reed turns his keen intellect on a variety of issues, many of which revolve around the decline of the American Left since the '60s and the rise of race-based demagogues like Louis Farrakhan. He also examines what he sees as the hopeless nihilism expressed in hip-hop music, debunks the belief that black anti-Semitism is on the rise, and analyzes the phenomenon of black intellectuals acting as cultural gatekeepers for whites all the way back to Booker T. Washington. A political science professor at New York City's New School of Social Research and the author of W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought and Stirrings in the Jug, Reed confronts fellow thinkers such as Robin D.G. Kelley, William Julius Wilson, and others on the topic of American poverty in a firm, though respectful, way. Reed has carefully observed what has been going on in the United States for nearly 35 years and is capable of expressing cultural highs and lows with admirable clarity and sensitivity. "The failure of disciplined strategic thinking on the left is a serious problem," he writes. "It reflects and stems from the extreme demoralization and isolation that has plagued us for two decades. We'll never be able to build the kind of movement we need unless the left can find its moorings and approach politics once again as an instrumental, rather than an expressive, activity." --Eugene Holley Jr.