The Counterpublic Papers vol. 9 no. 3

Open and close your eyes and all of a sudden you’re a month into the new semester. Thoughts.

I wrote in the last issue that putting down most of the things I’ve been working on the past few years—just turned in the final report for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar—lifted a weight off of my shoulders. That feeling’s still there. I’ll have to serve on something like the Senate again, but hopefully not too soon. 

Both classes are going well—to me anyway. I should’ve taught Urban Politics at the grad level a long time ago, if for no other reason than for giving me the chance to reread the works that lay the groundwork for the field. First week we read Who Governs? alongside The Community Power Structure. Second week we read City Limits. Last week we read City Trenches. This week we’re reading Urban Fortunes. Most Urban Politics texts written up until the late seventies or so either take the economic system for granted, or think the economic system determines the politics. WIth Urban Fortunes we see a more sophisticated account. American capitalism creates a system in which local municipalities have primary authority and responsibility for their fiscal circumstances. This makes struggles over land values primary. But what happens in those struggles is contingent. We can’t simply predict what happens in any given struggle based on what capital wants.   

American Racial Politics is a joy. Over two decades ago, Desmond King and Rogers Smith came up with the concept of “racial orders” in order to assert the primary of political forces in producing racial politics, this against the marxist claim that race was economics all the way down, and against the left sociologist claim that race was intellectual forces all the way down. The concept becomes a pretty good way to think through political development across time—as well as the transformative abilities of racially based political movements. What we’re now seeing with Trump, for instance, can be understood as being different from (even as it is connected to) the order led by Ronald Reagan a few decades ago. And one way it’s different—a way that points to development and by “development” I mean “change”—is that it is no longer beholden to what could be called “anti-racism.” I talked about racial orders the third week and last week I addressed the census. This week I talked about the law, using shifts in the law in 17^th century Virginia, miscegenation laws in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and finally immigration law to talk about how orders use the law to shape racial common sense in ways that make racial categories durable means of classifying populations. 

As the concept of race is, even now to an extent, a concept based in heredity—I’m black because my parents were black—race automatically involves gender and sex. In 17^th century Virginia we see the law used to prevent and criminalize inter-racial sex and marriage because doing so would complicate Virginia’s increasingly racial hierarchy. We see miscegenation laws banning marriage between blacks and whites as well as between whites and Asian Americans sweep the country beginning in the west because of growing Chinese immigration. But one of the reasons the law is created in the first place in these instances is because people are already engaging in the behavior the law is designed to stop. Furthermore in many instances the miscegenation laws were tossed out as unconstitutional. In other instances they were repealed. At the very least these instances suggest what could be called counter-orders that work to create new forms of common sense that are more progressive and humane. 

(James Earl Jones passed away last week. I began last week’s class with a conversation about Darth Vader. David Prowse played the physical character but they used Jones’ voice because Prowse supposedly didn’t have the voice for the role. I suggest that it’s now Prowse’s voice but Jones’ race that really does the heavy lifting—even though the entire series begins “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away” there’s no way in hell you can have a “black” Darth Vader parenting a “white” Luke and a “white” Leia. I don’t explicitly deal with popular culture in the class, but racial common sense isn’t just created by the law, it is also created and in instances changed by popular culture. In at least two other instances, James Earl Jones took on roles that arguably shifted racial common sense in important ways—here I’m thinking about Jack Johnson in “The Great White Hope” and President Douglas Dilman in “The Man”.)

It’s all too possible that this feeling will pass, but given how unexpected it is, I think I’ll just bask in it for a bit. 

….

I was originally scheduled to give a talk in Europe at the end of October—my third DJd lecture. I decided against it because while it sounded like a good idea in January, it didn’t sound like a good idea when I saw the polls. Instead it looks like I’m going to Philadelphia to knock on doors. I just found out that Hamtramck (Mi.) Mayor Amer Ghalib supported Trump. Long a Polish enclave (one I spent a lot of time in—it’s right next door to my father’s old neighborhood), over the past two decades it has become approximately 40% Arab American.  Going back to the concept of racial orders one of its benefits is that it allows us to consider reasons for joining the order other than simple racism on the one hand or pure economic interests on the other. I see the mayor’s support coming from Trump’s anti-LGBTQ policies and to an extent Biden’s stance on the devastation in Gaza, rather than from a desire to stand with Trump’s racial commitments. But whatever the case, this likely makes the race in Michigan even closer…and as I can’t get there as easily as I can get to Philadelphia, I’ll be in Pennsylvania rather than Mälmo University. 

…. 

Before Biden dropped out of the race, I made a few phone calls to my friends in the different fraternities and sororities. While I know Maryland is going to vote for the democratic candidate no matter what, as I note above I have been concerned with Michigan. So I try to think about what civil society based organizations I can reach out to that I can work with, even if it’s just Zoom…and the fraternities and sororities are the best thing I come up. We have the infrastructure and can theoretically do the work of organizing and mobilizing that political parties are supposed to do…and given the threat Trump poses to black people in particular we have the interest. (Remember, this is before Biden dropped out and Harris becomes the candidate.) 

After I made Michigan calls, I called two political scientists (who like me are in fraternities) to get their help. I first call my fraternity brother D’Andre Orey in Jackson State, but I really just call him to get Boris Ricks’ number, because Ricks is in a different fraternity and we can be parochial. I figure that if I can get Ricks help I can get him to talk to the Kappas while I talk to my fraternity.  

When I call him he tells me he’d just given a set of lectures to the National Baptist Convention on Project 2025. He basically said “say less.”

So fast forward a few weeks later. I’m in Philadelphia at the American Political Science Association Conference. I’m literally walking to the panel I’m supposed to serve as Chair and Discussant on, a panel on black political theory. One of my friends comes up to me and asks if I’d heard what happened to Ricks. 

He passed away the night before, after having complained of pains at the gym. Even though Orey and Ricks were in different fraternities, Orey probably talked to Ricks once a day for the past three decades or so. I didn’t cry like a baby—like I said, I was minutes away from having to chair a panel. But I did cry. Again, I started this newsletter knowing that it would take a life of its own, would take up themes and issues I hadn’t thought of. I really didn’t think death would be so prominent. 

But it is what it is. 

….

Was able to make it out to see my friend Brett Dancer play over the past weekend. There’s a longer story there but I don’t think I’ll tell it here. What I will do is share one of the best shots of the night. Be well. See you soon.