The Black Jacobeans: Jackie Kay’s Trumpet

Chapter 3 reads Jackie Kay’s influential novel Trumpet (1998) in the light of its historical moment: the aftermath of the 1997 referendum on a Scottish parliament and the post-Thatcher context of British neoliberal governance. Trumpet provides clear evidence of the way that Black writing is recuperated into a narrative of Britishness at a key moment for the Union, which the chapter illustrates via critical readings of Kay’s work by C. L. Innes, Alan Rice, and Peter Clandfield. Against the prevailing tendency to read Trumpet as an endorsement of a fluid and post-racial Britishness, the chapter argues for its Scottish national and Black political character, drawing out its relationship with British constitutional history and Black radicalism.

Introduction

This introduction lays the conceptual and theoretical groundwork for the book by engaging Haitian studies, Francophone literary studies, postcolonial studies, and studies of Black radicalism. It also provides a historical overview of the post-independence period in Haiti.

A Marxist critique of Sean Walton’s defence of the Critical Race Theory concept of ‘White supremacy’ as explaining all forms of racism, and some comments on Critical Race Theory, Black Radical and socialist futures

In the context of the ongoing debate between Critical Race Theorists and (neo-) Marxists over the Critical Race Theory concept of ‘White supremacy’, this paper extends the analysis to Black Radicalism in an attempt to further develop the neo-Marxist critique of ‘White supremacy’ deployed as a general descriptor of racism in Western societies. Specifically, the case is made that the neo-Marxist concepts of institutional racism and racialisation are better placed to understand forms of racism such as those beyond the Black/White binary, namely racism that impacts on non-Black people of colour, non-colour-coded racism and hybridist racism. Finally, futures as articulated by Critical Race Theory, Black Radicalism and neo-Marxism are addressed.

Why the critical race theory concept of ‘White supremacy’ should not be dismissed by neo-Marxists: Lessons from contemporary Black radicalism

Since entering the field of education studies, critical race theory has had an uneasy relationship with Marxism. One particular point of disagreement between Marxists and critical race theory scholars centres on the critical race theory concept of ‘White supremacy’. Some Marxist scholars suggest that, because of its reliance on ‘White supremacy’, critical race theory is unable to explain the prevalence of racism in Western, capitalist societies. These Marxists also argue that ‘White supremacy’ as understood within CRT is actively damaging to radical, emancipatory movements because the concept misrepresents the position of the White working class as the beneficiaries of racism, and in doing so, it alienates White workers from their Black counterparts. Some neo-Marxist thinkers have sought to replace the concept of ‘White supremacy’ with ‘racialisation’, a concept which is grounded in capitalist modes of production and has a historical, political and economic basis. Drawing on arguments from critical race theory, Marxism and Black radicalism, this paper argues that the critical race theory concept of ‘White supremacy’ is itself grounded in historical, political and economic reality and should not be dismissed by neo-Marxists. Incorporating ‘White supremacy’ into a neo-Marxist account of racism makes it more appealing to a broader (Black) radical audience.

Labor Pains

Labor Pains: New Deal Fictions of Race, Work and Sex in the South is about southern modernist fictions centered on the imagined lives of black folk workers from the 1930s to the 1960s. This period encompasses the clashes surrounding New Deal-era policy reforms and their legacies as well as a surge in Popular Front artistic expressions from the Depression, to World War II, to the Civil Rights era and following. Labor Pains sets out to show that black working-class representations of the Popular Front have not only been about the stakes of race and labor but also call upon an imagined black folk to do other work. The book considers tropes of black folk workers across genres of southern literature to demonstrate the reach of black radicalism and how the black folk worker was used to engage the representative feelings we think we know and the affective feelings that remained unsaid. Labor Pains emphasizes feeling, namely the sensual and the sexual, imbued in narratives by George Wylie Henderson, William Attaway, Eudora Welty, and Sarah Elizabeth Wright. Each employs tropes of black folk workers to get a fuller picture of gender and desire during this time. As a result, a glimpse into feminist and gender-aware aspects of the outgrowths of black radicalism come into view.