Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in Uplifting the Race by Kevin Gaines

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Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in Uplifting the Race by Kevin Gaines Uplifting the Race is a rather confusing yet stimulating study that goes over the rising idea and interests in the evolution of "racial uplift" ideology from the turn and through the twentieth century. In the first part of the book, Gaines analyzes the black elite obsession with racial uplift ideology and the tensions it produced among black intellectuals. Gaines argues for the most part that during the nineteenth-century racial uplift ideology was part of a "liberation theology" as stated by Gaines, which stressed a group struggle for freedom and social advancement. In this particular piece by Gaines, offers a close analysis of the racial, class, color, and gender dimensions of a very complex subject, yet it is also a provoking study. As stated in many of our classroom discussion that, it is a difficult read that employs complicated language and a fragmented organizational structure. For me as well as many others in the class, this piece required a dictionary on hand for a translation of the word choice used by Gaines. At times Gaines' analysis lacks any clear sense of flow and seems to be wandering from one unrelated point to another. In nine fully documented chapters with an excellent bibliography and index, Kevin K. Gaines develops his ideas with regard to an "uplift ideology." He begins at the turn of the century by examining violent racism as Reconstruction was dying and the civil-rights movement was born. From this historical mix emerges a new concept, "uplift," whereby the upper class, or elite blacks, believed that they could earn the rights and respect of whites by assuming bourgeois mores of self-help and service to the black ma... ... middle of paper ... ... using the works of the poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, W.E.B. Dubois's ideas on self-help in dealing with racism; and the works of Anna Julia Cooper in dealing with the feminist perspective, Hubert H. Harrison, and Alice Dunbar-Harrison. There were those in the upper class who demeaned those in the lower classes, Gaines asserts, and some black males ignored the situation of women, just as suffragists ignored the situation of blacks. This process, however, needs more work and research in order to be fully acceptable. Upon reflection, the author does leave the reader with a much better understanding of the paradox within "uplift," however; it is my belief that before you receive this understanding, one must read the book, several times. However, what seems to be clear is blacks attempted to join a society that to a considerable extent sought to define it by excluding them.

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