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

A "must read for thinking leftists" (Katha Pollitt of The Nation) from one of America's most insightful intellectuals. Hailed by Publishers Weekly for its "forceful" and "bracing opinions on race and politics," Class Notes is critic Adolph Reed, Jr.'s latest blast of clear thinking on matters of race, class, and other American dilemmas. The book begins with a consideration of the theoretical and practical strategies of the US left over the last three decades: Reed argues against the solipsistic approaches of cultural or identity politics, and in favor of class-based political interpretation and action. Class Notes moves on to tackle race relations, ethnic studies, family values, welfare reform, the so-called underclass, and black public intellectuals in essays called "head-spinning" and "brilliantly executed" by David Levering Lewis. Adolph Reed, Jr. has earned a national reputation for his controversial evaluations of American politics. These essays illustrate why people like Katha Pollitt consider Reed "the smartest person of any race, class, or gender writing on race, class, and gender."

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.