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

by Adolph L. Reed Jr.

Book Overview

The classic and deeply prescient collection that explores the multifaceted nature of race, class, and identity in America, from one of our most insightful and iconoclastic intellectuals

Hailed by Publishers Weekly for its "forceful" and "bracing opinions on race and politics," Class Notes is a collection of critic Adolph Reed Jr.'s clearest thinking on matters of race, class, and other American dilemmas. With barbed wit,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565846753
• ISBN13: 9781565846753
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

refreshingly intelligent

It's really wondeful to read someone who is committed to both class-based politics and electoral politics. Though I did have my disagreements with some of his arguments, I appreciated reading someone who was neither blithe nor bleak about the possibility of social change.

Class Notes: Posing as Politics

Adolph Reed looks at issues, getting past media representations and demagoguery to consistently, doggedly return the reader to the fact that poverty is not the fault of the poor, and the only way to improve things is to do the hard work of organizing active political bodies and force change. He is succinct, accurate, and appropriately scathing. Give this book to someone who gets their politics via the major media; it should at least make him or her angry.

Forceful and Honest

"Class Notes" should be read by everyone, especially those who identify with the left and care about the state of black politics. Reed maintains that he is toward the statist end of the left and he debunks the current conservative ideology that "Big government" is a failure. But Reed saves his best ammunition for so-called black leaders and intellectuals such as Louis Farrakhan,Jesse Jackson,Cornel West,and Henry Louis Gates Jr. In order for any progressive movement to succeced it needs to be class-based, but with a concern for those still suffering discrimination. This book is essential reading.