Tommie Shelby

When the eminent sociologist Orlando Patterson says that someone is “a sparkling new talent with all the boldness and intellectual self-assurance necessary” to pursue “critical reflections on African-American identity”, it makes sense to pay attention. This is how he describes Tommie Shelby in his review of Shelby’s new book, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity. (Shelby and I went to graduate school together.)

Here’s Patterson’s description of the book:

Although black Americans have led the way in practical matters, insightful theoretical reflections on identity politics are still wanting. Shelby’s “We Who Are Dark” is respectful of such politics, but severely critical as well. His book contests the movement’s central claims at a level of sociophilosophical sophistication that one rarely encounters….

He maintains that the black power call to collective action based on exclusive black organizations is now inappropriate because of the economic and regional heterogeneity of the black population. It is also, he says, politically counterproductive since it risks alienating badly needed progressive allies among the nonblack population….

Shelby’s powerful critique of black cultural particularism incorporates and supersedes all previous discussions of the subject. He identifies eight basic tenets of this tradition: blacks have a distinctive culture; they should collectively and consciously reclaim that culture; they should take pride in conserving and reproducing it; unlike white culture, it provides a valuable foundation for their individual and communal identities; it is an emancipatory tool in resisting white hegemony, providing an alternate set of ideals to live by; it should be accorded public recognition by the state; blacks, as the main producers of this culture, should benefit from it in financial and other ways; and as “owners” of this culture, blacks should be the foremost authorities and interpreters of it.

We hear these arguments all the time, sometimes subtly, often crudely. Most non-blacks are either contemptuous of them or quietly dumbfounded. Many simply turn a blindly patronizing eye. Shelby takes the arguments seriously, and meticulously demolishes them all. He does not deny that there are distinctive forms of Afro-American culture. Far from it. His concern, rather, is with the ways black spokesmen think about this heritage and the chauvinistic claims commonly made about it, beginning with the questionable view that being black means one is, or ought to be, culturally black….

What is needed, Shelby says, is a pragmatic nationalism that encourages “individual blacks to maintain solidarity with one another regardless of the racial composition of the political organizations in which each participates.” Solidarity of this sort – identification, special concern, loyalty and trust – has to be black rather than part of a wider program of color-blind liberal or radical reform, because blacks suffered a unique history of injustice under slavery and Jim Crow, and continue to do so through patterns of institutional discrimination and more subtle forms of personal racism. But it cannot be too black, since this risks entrapment in the manifold errors of thick identity. And it has to be thin because blacks have got to come to terms with the fact that most of the socioeconomic challenges they face in modern America have little to do with their blackness. Yet it cannot be too thin, or it becomes mere shallow rhetoric.

Frankly, I wouldn’t have expected anything less from him – a thoughtful and insightful book written for grown-ups.