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

Dwight McBride

Published by New York University Press 2005

Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch

Essays On Race and Sexuality

Dwight McBride

Volume 41 in the series Sexual Cultures

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814759950.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

McBride Dwight :

Dwight A. McBride is Daniel Hale Williams Professor of African American Studies, English, & Performance Studies at Northwestern University where he also serves as Dean of The Graduate School and Associate Provost for Graduate Education. He is the author of several groundbreaking works in African American Studies, including Impossible Witnesses and Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch.

Reviews

Michael Warner,Rutgers University:
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 Eric Dyson,author of The Michael Eric Dyson Reader:
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!

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

Possibly the best title of the season.

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

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Introduction: The New Black Studies, or beyond the Old “Race Man” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
Part I Queer Black Thought
1 Straight Black Studies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
2 Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
3 It’s a White Man’s World: Race in the Gay Marketplace of Desire Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
Part II Race and Sexuality on Occasion
4 On Race, Gender, and Power: The Case of Anita Hill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
5 Feel the Rage: A Personal Remembrance of the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
6 Ellen’s Coming Out: Media and Public Hype Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
7 Affirmative Action and White Rage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
Part III Straight Black Talk
8 Speaking the Unspeakable: On Toni Morrison, African American Intellectuals, and the Uses of Essentialist Rhetoric Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
9 Cornel West and the Rhetoric of Race-Transcending Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
10 Can the Queen Speak? Sexuality, Racial Essentialism, and the Problem of Authority Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: February 1, 2005
ISBN: 9780814759950