public service announcement

When the end of the world comes -- which, judging by the current pace of things, shouldn't be that far off -- this is what locusts look like. FYI.

(For now this pestilence can be found destroying crops in north and west Africa. Hmm. How surprising.)

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I haven't had a chance to pick up Norman Kelley's new book yet, The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics. To be honest, I don't really know much about Kelley (besides being a contributor to various alternative weeklies he's written a book on the political economy of black music and a novel called A Phat Death. No comment) and can't recall reading any reviews of the book (which dropped earlier this summer) outside of these. The book's title is predictably inflamatory and Kelley's style, judging from this recent piece putting Cornel West on blast, is to blend informed critique with a certain kind of nastiness that strikes me as the intellectual equivalent of And1 streetball (crowd-pleasing gimmickry [??] that's guaranteed to win some 'ooohs' and 'ahhhs' but that 9 times of 10 doesn't actually get one anywhere any faster and counts for the same two points as Timmy D.'s 12-foot bankshot. Not to come off sounding like all those old-school sportswriters decrying the death-knell of American basketball because Team USA might not even medal because that's another discussion for another time).

In "The Continuous Decline of the West," ostensibly a review of West's Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, Kelley lands all kinds of haymakers on (not-so) poor Cornel. Kelley describes West as "a false prophet" who's "essentially produced no qualitative work in almost 20 years and has instead coasted on best-selling anemic projects like Race Matters or his spoken-word projects, Sketches of My Culture or Street Knowledge." He calls Democracy Matters "a narcissistic piece of work from a man who has nothing to say in regard to either American foreign policy or this country’s democratic practices." Tell us how you really feel, Norm. Ultimately, most of Kelley's critiques of West, and the position he's garnered as a public intellectual, are on point even if they need to be washed down with a tall glass of haterade. But West is a straw man in so many ways. The only target easier to knock down than black intellectuals is probably black leaders and Kelley is on that case, too.

In this recent LA Weekly piece on black folk, Kerry and the Democratic Party, Kelley lays out what I assume to be the main elements of his "HNIC" thesis: blacks remain beholden to the Democratic Party even though we get little in return for our seven decades of party loyalty; black leaders just want to get in good with the white man and don't cultivate an independent power base; an over-reliance on charismatic preacher figures, etc. My question is, don't we know this already? What part of this is news in 2004? The lessons of '84 and '88 are right in front of us, aren't they?

What is Kelley's vision for cultivating a new generation of black leadership and how does electoral politics fit into that? Where do black folks' needs fit with a larger progressive movement to break up or break away from the Democratic Party? What about Latinos and other people of color? Who would win in a fight between Barack Obama and Harold Ford, Jr.? (Harry definitely need his ass whupped. Not sure of Barack is the man to serve it up though).

While many of these questions are probably taken up in Kelley's book, I have the strong suspicion that reading it is going to leave me thoroughly unsatisfied. Not unlike watching consecutive episodes of Streetball on the Deuce.