Turning the tables in the question of race

Black Genius: African American Solutions to African American Problems Edited by Walter Mosley and others (Norton, #16.95); White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America Edited by Shirley R Steinberg, Nelson M Rodriguez and others (Macmillan, #30) At a time when the British government is contributing, by an illegal and cowardly bombing campaign, to a flood of refugees, and admitting only a trickle of them, it is plain dishonesty to suggest that racist attacks in London reflect the warped mentality of a few extremists.

When a state disrespects others so deeply and glorifies violence so readily then the net of responsibility has to be flung wider than a handful of certifiable crazies. The White Wolves may be black sheep - but their outrage has a context and a history, and is sanctioned by official policy. In Scotland, we may say racism is "nae problem", but it's a white lie for a culture that gave birth to the Klan.

In a telling moment in The Commitments, Roddy Doyle's novella about the teething troubles of an Irish soul band, the manager declares that: "The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads ... An' Dubliners are the niggers of Ireland ... An the northside Dubliners are the niggers o' Dublin. Say it loud, I'm black an' I'm proud". The word "niggers" was replaced by "blacks" in the film version, but the copyright theft of black music and black power remained the same. The Commitments are "wannabe blacks", "white niggers", or "wiggers". Doyle is saying if you're poor, then you can also be black - a statement which is the opposite of the truth. Which is, if you're black, you are poor. Just as post-industrialism is a way of talking about class without addressing class, post-colonialism has become a euphemism for race. There was a time when it was popular to look at marginalised "Others" - gays, blacks, women, Irish - either to objectify them, or identify with them. The critical gaze is now shifting from minorities to hitherto unexplored identities such as Englishness, masculinity, and whiteness. You could say there are two kinds of whiteness. There's a blue whiteness that resents being looked at the way that non-whites have been looked at for centuries, and an off-white that wishes it were darker. White Reign is a book that deconstructs white mythologies and opens up a space between anger and appropriation. This turn towards whiteness as a socially constructed racial category is matched by another table-turning strategy that entails taking terms traditionally applied to white people and making them fit the other foot. Black Genius is a collection of individual success stories, including Spike Lee, the black filmmaker whose key phrase is "doability", Walter Mosley, creator of Easy Rawlins, and bell hooks, aka Gloria Watkins, who is arguably the most imaginative cultural critic writing today, though her essay here on the ethos of simple living isn't her best. The strongest contribution comes from Angela Davis, an abolitionist who sees imprisonment as the new slavery. Davis, once so popular that she made it on to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, points out that the total number of people enmeshed in America's "prison- industrial complex" is larger than the entire population of Scotland (5.4 million in jail, on parole, or on probation). The idea of genius has always been bound up with race, deriving from gens or genus. But this racialised notion of talent hasn't been acknowledged. To do so would reveal its partisan nature. Where white culture takes privilege and calls it genius, black critics are doing it for themselves. Behind every black genius is a struggle against the odds. In a land of unequal opportunities, filmmaker Spike Lee insists that "any successful black person knows that she or he has got to be ten times better". According to another contributor: "To be African-American and to survive ... with at least a modicum of sanity, is at times intrinsically genius". Walter Mosley, who sees young blacks "idled by unemployment and jailed for the privilege", thinks otherwise: "Maybe survival isn't our goal anymore. Maybe we can aim at success". It is almost 50 years since Frantz Fanon faced up to "the fact of blackness" in Black Skin, White Masks. It has taken this long for the double bind of that title to be undone. These compelling books present positive and negative poles of the same project. Black Genius affirms an identity that has been denigrated, while White Reign attempts to incorporate whiteness into future discussions of race. White is a colour too, albeit fading amid the flagging fortunes of Empire. It remains to be seen whether white critics will take up the challenge of their black counterparts, or if they will like what they see in the mirror. The editors of White Reign want to see the emergence of "progressive, non-racist" expressions of whiteness, and speak of "the necessity of creating a positive, proud, attractive, anti-racist white identity". Those of us who hang our head in shame when atrocities are committed in our name can look forward to the day when we can say it loud, I'm white an' I'm proud!

Copyright 1999
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