The Counterpublic Papers vol. 2 no. 2

Class starts tomorrow. This semester I’m teaching American Racial Politics at the graduate level and Introduction to Urban Politics at the undergrad level.

(I know. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this semester as there is absolutely nothing going on either on the racial or the urban politics terrain worth teaching. We’ve been in a post-racial and post-urban moment for a while, you’d think I’d just toss both courses and come up with something, I don’t know….more….pertinent.)

But seriously I’m looking forward to both classes. I tend to teach the graduate course as a running critique of the American Politics subfield. The question that undergirds it is a simple one—what would American Politics look like if it took it’s own history seriously? Now this question can be asked of Political Science in general—did you know the absolute first journal of international relations was the journal of race development? But I’m focusing on American Politics. The introduction to urban politics course should be a good one as well, particularly what’s going on in Baltimore with the election, with Port Covington, and with the police. What I’d really like to do one semester is see if I can get a big group of us across the country to team-teach it. Imagine if, say, Michael Leo Owens at Emory, Melissa Marschall at Rice, and Chrissie Greer at Fordham taught the same literature and every now and then we brought students from Atlanta, Houston, NYC, and Baltimore together virtually? 

It’d be a pain in the ass to coordinate, but I think it’d be dope.

Anyway. 

….

I know they’re two very different books but Underground Airlines blew away Angels of Detroit in a single sentence about Brightmoor (a working class black neighborhood in Detroit). Now just as a reminder, Underground Airlines is alternative history novel that revolves around a single (perhaps the single) change in American history—what if slavery never ended? It’s a throwaway sentence—the protagonist talks about  

(And yes, while I don’t generally go all Ralph Tresvant on stuff like this—in fact I distinctly remember creating a 1990 era voice message “if you’re looking for a man who’s sensitive, you’ve reached….the wrong number” —I’m sensitive about this.)

Anyway, the book revolves around a modern day black runaway slave catcher in the employ of the US Marshals and his attempt to return a runaway to a cotton corporation situated in one of the Hard Four (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Carolina—the four states that never abolished slavery), and in so doing uncovers a larger conspiracy.  The trick with alt-history novels is to give the reader just enough to see our world in the alternative one…while showing how a few changes can radically change the tapestry. Michael Jackson is still Michael Jackson, in fact his music provides a soundtrack of sorts, and James Brown is still James Brown…but Brown performs in Canada as a dissident. Jesse Owens still obliterated the 1936 Olympics, but did so as a PB—Person Bound to Labor— and defected to the Soviet Union afterwards). The NFL still exists, but several teams employ PBs. 21st Century US tech is a bit behind—the car the protagonist drives has a tape-deck because CDs haven’t made it to the US yet, as a result of the European Consensus—but their racial technology is sophisticated (employing 172 different skin tones in identifying runaways). The Black Panthers are a domestic terrorist group. 

A quick, good, read…with a nice twist near the end. (I’d tell you where the author uses Brightmoor but that’d give away part of the twist.)

One thing though. 

In order for the alt-history world, the world of the book, to be believable, the author has to come up with a plausible story as to how the world ended up different. How’d slavery never end? For Winters the answer lie in six 1860 Constitutional amendments that maintained slavery culminating in an 18th amendment that prevented the previous amendments from being amended.

A series of unamendable amendments.

What’s interesting about this move, is that Ben Winters didn’t have to go this far. He could’ve relied on actual history. Legislators proposed a 13th amendment (the Corwin Amendment) in 1861. It received support from both houses of Congress as well as from President Lincoln. But by then several states had already seceded and the die was cast.         

….

Hatch Detroit is one of several entities created in the wake of Detroit’s bankruptcy to kickstart the next stage of the city’s development through entrepreneurialism. For the past several years they’ve given out tens of thousands of dollars to help small business owners. Here’s a page featuring some of Hatch’s alums. Here’s a page featuring Hatch’s staff. Here’s their board of directors.

(You know where I’m going with this.)

…and here’s the finalists (and winner). 

Bridge gets it almost all the way right. I write “almost all the way” because even if Hatch and other similar entities only awarded black small business owners Detroit would still have high levels of income and racial inequality. The solution to the city isn’t found in entrepreneurialism of any sort. But to the extent this is the game in town, that game should have more black people in it. 

(Along similar lines check out this story by Luke Broadwater. He does an excellent job of placing Baltimore’s Port Covington project in historical perspective. Port Covington is yet another tragic example of how powerful forces use crises—in this case the Baltimore Uprising—to promote their interests.)

…

One more thing before I go.

Every year the Baltimore City Paper puts out a Best of Baltimore issue, giving readers a chance to vote on everything from Best baltimore DJ to Best baltimore Restaurant. This year it looks like I got one. I don’t know what it’s for, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t for being the best bedroom DJ, but rather for the book. They’re having a blowout party this Thursday. If you want in—free food and an open bar—come. Here’s a link for the party…and if you use the code BESTOFFRIENDS by tonight at 11:59pm you can get 50% off of the ticket.  

I know at least some of you are from Baltimore. It’d be good to put faces to the anonymous emails that show up in the tinyletter feed. 

See you. The weather’s changing soon. Get outside while you can.