Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality

by Dwight A. McBride

Book Overview

Reflections on the ways discriminatory hiring practices and racist ad campaigns seep into American life

Why hate Abercrombie? In a world rife with human cruelty and oppression, why waste your scorn on a popular clothing retailer? The rationale, Dwight A. McBride argues, lies in "the banality of evil," or the quiet way discriminatory hiring practices and racist ad campaigns seep into and reflect malevolent undertones in American culture...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814756867
• ISBN13: 9780814756867
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Cellar

Not sure why people HATE Abercrombie per se... But maybe this will help. http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/2a5b52b523/the-cellar-tease

Getting Serious About Intersectional Analyses

Dwight McBride, in his book, Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch, pens a work that attempts to transform African American Studies while firmly positioning himself within it, arguing that it is crucial that black gay men and black lesbian be acknowledged and made visible parts of the black community. Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch is organized into three sections: the first proposes different applications for serious analyses of race and gender; the second foregrounds politics, particularly of the emerging field of black queer/gay and lesbian studies in relationship to the heretofore emphasis within African American Studies of race as a lens of analysis instead of a truly intersectional approach which also looks centrally at sexuality (along with gender and class); lastly, the third section focuses more specifically on McBride's theoretical and academic lineage of thinking about race and sexuality. Early in the book, McBride furthers his claims to the necessity of being able to hear the voices of black gay men and black lesbians by citing queer theory's latency in dealing with its own racism, as well as through a discussion of the politics of respectability, which for blacks foregrounds the conflicting desire for capital with the whiteness of capital. Ultimately, McBride's purpose is to radically transform the ways in which we think about race in order to effect change in the ways in which we (re-)imagine "the black community"; he is firm in his desire to get others to recognize the diversity that the black community already contains in our everyday realities, and to abandon the false perception of a monolithic black community. He makes evident his deep investment in "the black community" and to African American Studies, while also making clear his politics of location as a black gay man within white-dominated academia, offering a poignant and persuasive personal perspective, as well as a critical analysis for such change in African American Studies. While not all the essays in this book seem to me accessible to students in Introduction to African American Studies or Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Studies courses, a good number of essays are, and would be a great addition on syllabi.