Invention of Race: Black Culture and the Politics of Representation

Argues that many forms of African-American cultural expression display resistance through appropriation, and reconstitution, of denigrating representations fostered by the dominant racist culture. Beginning with "King Kong Lives: Racist Discourse and the Negro-Ape Metaphor", he goes on in subsequent chapters to discuss slavery, cultural identity, art, music, and film, engaging in a wide variety of issues pertaining to the politics of representation. Several chapters focus on social and political issues surrounding various conceptions of African-American culture, while others are devoted to more specific questions regarding the aesthetics and politics of various forms of African-American cultural expression. DuBois is a key figure here. His ideas, as traced in the title essay "DuBois on the Invention of Race", inform Lott's nonessentialist position in the chapter "A No-Theory Theory of Black Cinema". Alain Locke is another important voice for the author, as seen in his study "Black Consciousness in the Art of Sargent John son" (the Harlem Renaissance artist). There is also coverage of resistance in rap music, both with an eye to black cultural norms proscribing minstrelsy ("Black Vernacular Representation and Cultural Malpractice"), as well as to the social conditions of the so-called black underclass ("Marooned in America: Black Urban Youth Culture and Social Pathology").