THE NATIONAL POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW EDITORS Michael Mitchell Arizona State University David Covin California State University-Sacramento BOOK REVIEW EDITOR/ASSOCIATE EDITOR Tiffany Willoughby-Herard University of California, Irvine EDITORIAL BOARD Georgia Persons K.C. Morrison Todd Shaw Georgia Institute of Technology Mississippi State University University of South Carolina Duchess Harris Robert Smith Melissa Nobles Macalester University San Francisco State University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lorenzo Morris Cheryl M. Miller Howard University University of Maryland- Lisa Aubrey Baltimore County Arizona State University Copyright © 2016 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, 10 Corporate Place South, Suite 102, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854. www.transactionpub.com This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2015024653 ISBN: 978-1-4128-6241-7 eBook: 978-1-4128-6196-0 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mitchell, Michael, 1944- | Covin, David, 1940- Title: Broadening the contours in the study of Black politics. Citizenship and popular culture / Michael Mitchell and David Covin, editors. Other titles: Citizenship and popular culture Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Transaction Publishers, 2015. | Volume 17:2 of National political science review. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2015024653 | ISBN 9781412862417 (acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: African Americans--Politics and government. | African Americans-- Civil rights. | Citizenship--United States. | African Americans in popular culture. | Popular culture--United States. | United States--Race relations--Political aspects. | United States-- Politics and government--1989- | Books--Reviews. Classification: LCC E185.615.B724 2015 | DDC 323.1196/073--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015024653 Contents Research Articles 1 “Who Will Survive in America?”: Gil Scott-Heron, 3 the Black Radical Tradition, and the Critique of Neoliberalism Daniel Robert McClure Are African Americans Really Americans?: 27 African American Ambivalence and the Plural Subject Theory of Political Obligation Camisha Russell Ratchet Politics: Moving Beyond Black Women’s 45 Bodies to Indict Institutions and Structures Nadia E. Brown and Lisa Young Holier than Thou: The Impact of Politico-Economic 57 Equality on Black Spirituality Major G. Coleman Symposium II 95 Black Women Political Scientists at WorkTM: A Conversation 97 with Nadia Brown and Wendy Smooth Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd Work in Progress 117 Assessing the Voting Rights Act: 119 Competing Analytical Paradigms David Blanding Trends 125 The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act 127 and the “Quiet Revolution” B. D’Andra Orey, Gloria J. Billingsley, and Athena M. King Book Review Forum 139 Forum on Urban Black Women and the Politics of Resistance, by Zenzele Isoke Book Review Forum: Essay 1 141 Tiffany Willoughby-Herard Book Review Forum: Essay 2 144 Duchess Harris Book Review Forum: Essay 3 147 Andreana Clay Book Review Forum: Essay 4 149 Grace Kyungwon Hong Book Review Forum: Essay 5 152 Keisha-Khan Y. Perry Book Review Forum: Essay 6 155 Cheryl Flores Book Review Forum: Essay 7 158 Khaalidah Sidney “Making Knowledge without Master’s Tools” 161 Zenzele Isoke Responds Book Reviews 165 Duchess Harris, Black Feminist Politics 167 from Kennedy to Obama, reviewed by Ange-Marie Hancock Andra Gillespie, The New Black Politician: 170 Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America, reviewed by Aiisha Harden Russell Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd, Gender, Race, 174 and Nationalism in Contemporary Black Politics, reviewed by Kiana Cox C. Riley Snorton, Nobody Is Supposed to Know, 178 reviewed by Saidah K. Isoke Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, eds., 180 The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, reviewed by Jennifer Gutierrez Julia Jordan-Zachery, Black Women, 183 Cultural Images and Social Policy, reviewed by Stephanie Hicks A Note on Passing: Michael B. Preston 187 A Note on Passing: Jewel Limar Prestage 189 Invitation to the Scholarly Community 191 Research Articles “Who Will Survive in America?”: Gil Scott-Heron, the Black Radical Tradition, and the Critique of Neoliberalism Daniel Robert McClure1 California State University, Fullerton Which brings me back to my convictions and being convicted for my beliefs ’cause I believe these smiles in three piece suits with gracious, liberal demeanor took our movement off the streets and took us to the cleaners. In other words, we let up the pressure and that was all part of their plan and every day we allow to slip through our fingers is playing right into their hands. —Gil Scott-Heron, “The New Deal” (1978) Introduction Over a year before his untimely death in May 2011, sixty-year-old musician/poet Gil Scott-Heron released his anticipated comeback album, I’m New Here: Gil Scott- Heron, after a decade of struggle with substance abuse and repeated incarceration.2 The first official video for his release featured the song “Me and the Devil Blues,” with “Your Soul and Mine” added as a spoken word epilogue. The lyrics for “Me and the Devil Blues” derive from pre–World War II country bluesman Robert Johnson’s 1937 saga portraying a “Faustian bargain” with the Devil.3 In Scott Heron’s video, the Faustian bargain unfolds as a set of images depicting a vibrant Manhattan night, with folks hurriedly walking past prosperous businesses. The pedestrians’ sense of purpose and apparent status contrasts sharply with shots of poverty and homelessness, making the latter appear as misplaced specters from a bygone era. Another set of ghostly characters traverse the streets as well, navigating their way through twenty- first century wealth: young skateboarders, painted up as skeletons—or figures of death—skating energetically through the concrete and steel paradox of wealth and homeless squalor. The juxtaposition of the footage and lyrics in the video for “Me and the Devil Blues”/“Your Soul and Mine” (aka “The Vulture”) characterizes the 3 4 Broadening the Contours in the Study of Black Politics systemic outcome of the economic shift to neoliberalism that unfolded in tandem with Scott-Heron’s recording career. The use of New York City in 2010 as the background for the video is fitting. The metropolis represents not just Scott-Heron’s origin as a performing artist but also a structural space where the rise of neoliberalism took root in the US in the late 1970s. Like other urban centers in the 1960s, New York City increasingly faced budget issues that arose from the effects of deindustrialization and White flight.4 Alongside Nixon’s federal aid cuts to cities, the 1973–1974 recession aggravated an increasingly desperate situation; the urban crisis of the 1960s became the “urban fiscal crisis” of the 1970s.5 From this predicament, solutions coalesced around austere bud- geting measures primarily affecting municipal workers, racial minorities, the poor, and the governing liberal politicians. Less was said regarding overdevelopment of capital enterprises, the relationships between municipal borrowing and financial institutions, or planners omitting industrial development.6 The crisis of New York City provided an entry point for the adoption of what Business Week had offered in 1974 as a way out of the debt crisis. “Cities and states, the home mort- gage market, small business, and the consumer, will all get less than they want because the basic health of the US is based on the basic health of its corporations and banks: the biggest borrowers and the biggest lenders.”7 This suggestion—prophesying the next forty years of supply-side economics and the logic of corporate bailouts—emanated from the ideas of a Milton Friedman-led group of neoclassicist economists, or “neoliberals.” New York City became a symbolically important test case for implementing neoliberal policies. The resulting bailout deal between the New York City government and the financial industry replaced the prerogatives of publically accountable political institutions with those of private capital. This process marked a significant shift in the common sense of the post- World War II relationship between government and the economy. Social services (public health, education, and transportation) were cut, wages frozen, and public employment downsized. This restructuring, writ large from the 1970s through today, brought about a “restoration of class power” by conservatives and the business community after World War II, while amplifying the racial inequality gap.8 This new system of neoliberalism (the dominant set of economic ideas since the decline of the Jim Crow Keynesian welfare state) took root amidst the culture wars that erupted in the wake of civil rights gains in the 1960s and the drawn-out economic crisis that came to largely define the 1970s. Modus Operandi This article examines the rise of neoliberalism through the recorded work of Gil Scott-Heron, particularly his spoken word pieces. Scott-Heron is an