Précis of book review I would have written were it not for the fact…

Walter Benn Michaels' The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality (2006)

It seems that many left progressives seem to be stuck on the concept of identity politics as it has been complicated by diversity initiatives or, worse, as they've come to understand the concept of identity politics from their armchairs. These narratives usually involve a “controversial” book with vision and myopic people of color who demand inclusion through guilt and liberal sympathy but leave the status quo and inequality largely untouched, and intellectually unexamined.

Within the expressed constraints of this academic subgenre, the protagonist (usually an English professor) is endowed with a spell-breaking and “visionary” acumen that enables him (the protagonist is usually male) to blame diversity, identity politics and political correctness for “true” inequality and the ensuing emergence of an extremely popular and literal conservatism that ultimately separates us all. Astoundingly, these modern day Delphic oracles pretend to be unaware of the ammunition they are providing to conservatives of all colors (as might be gleaned from the current banter that passes for political critique in the related video below.)

Most often, the expressed truth-bearing qualities of such exercises neglect to consider, much less ask, “people of color,” especially those whose lived and theoretical sophistication comes from direct community engagement, how the practice of "equality of opportunity" is experienced on various fronts. The self-proclaimed Delphic oracles are like Dostoyevskian leftists: they love humanity abstractly but presume to know the other better than she knows herself. In so doing, they avoid a series of ethical questions that would otherwise move them to consider the conditions under which the subaltern can speak and even talk back.

And so I propose a new subgenre of the review that refuses easy identifications with authors who claim to be saving democracy or liberating the working classes from the people of color who implicitly don’t know any better and who are coddled by the spineless sympathizers who should know better; the ones who, through their largesse, purportedly allow it all to happen.

(Also see: The Twilight of Affirmative Action or the Trappings of the WSJ's Rhetorical Storehouse of Editorials?)

And now, as promised, to the banter that attempts to pass for political critique...

Subaltern Body Politics: How the Right Uses "Colored" Bodies

"White supremacy, sensing the need to repackage itself for consumption in polite company, partially fills the demand for racist bile by outsourcing to mercenary writers of color." See Margret Kimberley's timely, "How the Right Uses People of Color to Foster Racism." My thanks to William Anthony Nericcio's post for alerting me to this.

The Latino Body: Moving to the Rhythms of Hip Hop

(left: Raquel Rivera, photo by Annabellie Rivera)

Raquel Rivera's New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (2003) is one of the first books to account for the synergy between Boricua hip hop and its more visible and lucrative African American expressions.

See Libero Della Piana's Interview with Raquel here where she's asked, "Why has the influence of Puerto Ricans on hip hop been so often overlooked and overshadowed in the public eye by the African American role in hip hop?"

Her poignant reply is telling, "The reasons are interrelated and there have been many. But there is one overriding reason above all others: We are all so used to accepting myths of cultural purity and ethnic separation, that its hard to see the truth even when its standing right in front of you. Ethnic groups have a history of struggle over 'cultural property' and this is no different. Take for example the longstanding argument among those that proclaim salsa to be 'really' Puerto Rican, or 'really' Cuban, or 'really' Latin American, or 'really' US Latino."

It would worthwhile to explore the Boricua hustle-dance scene as precursor to break-dancing, as well as the music that went with it, with the pan-ethnic forms of performance that developed into what is understood today as hip hop. Maybe my former student and hip hop scholar Wilfredo Gómez will write that book.

Antonio José Guzmán's Zero Gravity Installations

Antonio Guzmán's emphasis on "diaspora," in the context of Latino cultural production, seeks to link the Atlantic Crossing with the obviated history of Latino cultural identity in the United States, and its relation to the Black Atlantic polemic.



See his Hip-Hop Latino inquest, unanswered.

George López and Why "Latinos" Are "Different"

Are we so starved for nationally legitimated Latino cultural anchorings that we're willing to accept such uncreative identity scripts? Maybe we just need better comedians.

Queer Latinidades with the Incomparable Marga Gómez

La tremenda Marga Gómez plays off the dilution of Cuban American identity through spirits by demonstrating that mojitos, diluted with vodka, just miss the point...

Lolita Lebrón

The elusive dream of nation through "independence" in the Puerto Rican context moved me to write about the Latino body.