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

by Dwight McBride

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.

McBride maintains that issues of race and sexuality are often subtle and always messy, and his compelling new book does not offer simple answers. Instead, in a collection of essays about such diverse topics as biased marketing strategies, black gay media representations, the role of African American studies in higher education, gay personal ads, and pornography, he offers the evolving insights of one black gay male scholar.

As adept at analyzing affirmative action as dissecting Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, McBride employs a range of academic, journalistic, and autobiographical writing styles. Each chapter speaks a version of the truth about black gay male life, African American studies, and the black community. Original and astute, Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch is a powerful vision of a rapidly changing social landscape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814756850
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2005
Series:	Sexual Cultures , #41
Pages:	251
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Dwight A. McBride is President of The New School in New York City. Prior to his appointment at The New School, Dr. McBride was Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Emory University, where he also held the position of Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American Studies, Distinguished Affiliated Professor of English, and Associated Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. A leading scholar of race and literary studies, Dr. McBride's books include James Baldwin Now, Impossible Witnesses: Truth Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony, Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction, and A Melvin Dixon Critical Reader. His book Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: The New Black Studies, or beyond the Old “Race Man”
Part I Queer Black Thought
1 Straight Black Studies
2 Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch
3 It’s a White Man’s World: Race in the Gay Marketplace of Desire
Part II Race and Sexuality on Occasion
4 On Race, Gender, and Power: The Case of Anita Hill
5 Feel the Rage: A Personal Remembrance of the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising
ix6 Ellen’s Coming Out: Media and Public Hype
7 Afürmative Action and White Rage
Part III Straight Black Talk
8 Speaking the Unspeakable: On Toni Morrison, African American Intellectuals, and the Uses of Essentialist Rhetoric
9 Cornel West and the Rhetoric of Race-Transcending
10 Can the Queen Speak? Sexuality, Racial Essentialism, and the Problem of Authority
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Possibly the best title of the season.”
-Books to Watch out For

,

“A thrilling, imaginative, and brilliant reading of contemporary cultural politics from one of the freshest voices in the field today. Dwight McBride’s graceful prose, sharp wit, and sound judgments leap from every page. His essays sparkle with abundant intelligence—and a striking personal investment—as they lead the reader through a complex array of ideas, practices, and situations without losing sight of the ultimate intellectual and political liberation at which they aim. Bravo!"=”
-Michael Eric Dyson,author of The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

“A fair warning from an intelligent, well-informed writer.”
-Alter Magazine

,

“McBride has emerged as one of the most eloquent public voices in both queer studies and black studies. In this wide-ranging book—written with intelligence, passion, and humor—he brings the insights of each field to the blind spots of the other. We all have something to learn from him.”
-Michael Warner,Rutgers University

“McBride’s heady collection is an accessible think piece, starting with its agreeable title and its pointed essay of the same name.”
-Time Out New York

Editorial Reviews

"McBrides heady collection is an accessible think piece, starting with its agreeable title and its pointed essay of the same name."

Time Out New York

"A thrilling, imaginative, and brilliant reading of contemporary cultural politics from one of the freshest voices in the field today. Dwight McBrides graceful prose, sharp wit, and sound judgments leap from every page. His essays sparkle with abundant intelligenceand a striking personal investmentas they lead the reader through a complex array of ideas, practices, and situations without losing sight of the ultimate intellectual and political liberation at which they aim. Bravo!"

Michael Eric Dyson Michael Eric Dyson

"A fair warning from an intelligent, well-informed writer."

Alter Magazine

"McBride has emerged as one of the most eloquent public voices in both queer studies and black studies. In this wide-ranging bookwritten with intelligence, passion, and humorhe brings the insights of each field to the blind spots of the other. We all have something to learn from him."

Michael Warner

"Possibly the best title of the season."

Books to Watch out For

A thrilling, imaginative, and brilliant reading of contemporary cultural politics from one of the freshest voices in the field today. Dwight McBride’s graceful prose, sharp wit, and sound judgments leap from every page. His essays sparkle with abundant intelligence—and a striking personal investment—as they lead the reader through a complex array of ideas, practices, and situations without losing sight of the ultimate intellectual and political liberation at which they aim. Bravo!”=”
-Michael Eric Dyson,author of The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

“A fair warning from an intelligent, well-informed writer.”
• Alter Magazine

“McBride has emerged as one of the most eloquent public voices in both queer studies and black studies. In this wide-ranging book—written with intelligence, passion, and humor—he brings the insights of each field to the blind spots of the other. We all have something to learn from him.”
-Michael Warner,Rutgers University

“McBride’s heady collection is an accessible think piece, starting with its agreeable title and its pointed essay of the same name.”
• Time Out New York

“Possibly the best title of the season.”
• Books to Watch out For

From the Publisher

"Where does the black gay man go where he can see himself reflected back to himself in all the complex ways in which he exists in the world?" asks the chair of the African American Studies department at Northwestern University. In this collection of 10 smart, provocative essays, McBride explores, from varying vantage points (interracial gay male porn; the essays of Cornel West; the racial implications of Ellen DeGeneres's coming-out show; the way the hair and clothing guidelines for Abercrombie & Fitch employees ensure an almost all-white staff), the tenuous position of a clear, distinct, gay black male presence and voice in cultural discourse and argues for an end to the relative silence. Some of McBride's analysis is perceptive but unsurprising (e.g., his short piece on the role of rage and frustration in the 1995 Los Angeles riots), and his focus on the "bourgeois, well-educated, fairly cosmopolitan gay man" largely shrugs off discussions of class. But much of this collection breaks new ground for contemporary cultural criticism. McBride's look at homophobia in traditional African-American studies is an empathetic but penetrating critique of the discipline, and his explication of the ghettoization of black men in gay male porn (which moves into a more complicated discussion of online sex sites) is truly original work with ramifications well outside of queer studies. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"A thrilling, imaginative, and brilliant reading of contemporary cultural politics from one of the freshest voices in the field today. Dwight McBrides graceful prose, sharp wit, and sound judgments leap from every page. His essays sparkle with abundant intelligenceand a striking personal investmentas they lead the reader through a complex array of ideas, practices, and situations without losing sight of the ultimate intellectual and political liberation at which they aim. Bravo!"

Michael Eric Dyson