Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Adolph Reed looks at issues, getting past media representations and demagoguery to consistently, doggedly return the reader to the fact that poverty is not the fault of the poor, and the only way to improve things is to do the hard work of organizing active political bodies and force change. He is succinct, accurate, and appropriately scathing. Give this book to someone who gets their politics via the major media; it should at least make him or her angry.

"Class Notes" should be read by everyone, especially those who identify with the left and care about the state of black politics. Reed maintains that he is toward the statist end of the left and he debunks the current conservative ideology that "Big government" is a failure. But Reed saves his best ammunition for so-called black leaders and intellectuals such as Louis Farrakhan,Jesse Jackson,Cornel West,and Henry Louis Gates Jr. In order for any progressive movement to succeced it needs to be class-based, but with a concern for those still suffering discrimination. This book is essential reading.

It's really wondeful to read someone who is committed to both class-based politics and electoral politics. Though I did have my disagreements with some of his arguments, I appreciated reading someone who was neither blithe nor bleak about the possibility of social change.

Highly recommended reading whether you agree with the author or not. A revealing quote from this book: "I do not want to hear another word about drugs or crime without hearing in the same breath about decent jobs, adequate housing and egalitarian education." Those are all addressed together, from the opposing point of view, in Heather MacDonald's "The Burden of Bad Ideas." Read them together and form your own opinion as to the cause of failure in urban America. Reed argues well but I think MacDonald wins in this debate.