Lawrence Public Library

In a shade of blue, pragmatism and the politics of Black America, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-176) and index

index present

non fiction

In a shade of blue

bibliography

74029223

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr

pragmatism and the politics of Black America

In this timely book, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., one of our nation's rising African American intellectuals, makes an impassioned plea for black America to address its social problems by recourse to experience and with an eye set on the promise and potential of the future, rather than the fixed ideas and categories of the past. Central to Glaude's mission is a rehabilitation of philosopher John Dewey, whose ideas, he argues, can be fruitfully applied to a renewal of African American politics. According to Glaude, Dewey's pragmatism, when attentive to the darker dimensions of life--or what we often speak of as the blues--can address many of the conceptual problems that plague contemporary African American discourse. How blacks think about themselves, how they imagine their own history, and how they conceive of their own actions can be rendered in ways that escape bad ways of thinking that assume a tendentious political unity among African Americans simply because they are black, or that short-circuit imaginative responses to problems confronting actual black people. Drawing deeply on black religious thought and literature, Glaude seeks to dislodge such crude and simplistic thinking, and replace it with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for black life in all its variety and intricacy. Only when black political leaders acknowledge such complexity, Glaude argues, can the real-life sufferings of many African Americans be remedied

In a shade of blue : an introduction -- Tragedy and moral experience : John Dewey and Toni Morrison's Beloved -- "Black and proud" : reconstructing black identity -- "Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God" : the problem of history in black theology -- Agency, slavery, and African American Christianity -- Explicating Black nationalism -- The eclipse of a black public and the challenge of a post-soul politics -- Epilogue : the covenant with Black America