I’m warning you, once you open this compact collection of six
razor-sharp essays, you’re going to have to stand back! Black, White,
Yellow, Brown, Red, male, female, straight, gay, college-educated,
streetwise, conservative, liberal, whatever – it doesn’t matter. From
the initial essay detailing Robin D. G. Kelley’s take on how
traditional social scientists construct the ghetto, “Looking for the
‘Real’ Nigga,” to the final take, “Looking B[l]ackward: 2097-1997,”
readers of Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! are literally compelled by the
strength of Kelley’s arguments to identify and/or re-think their
positions in the contemporary “culture wars” fray.
Readers must realize one thing from the outset, however: The taunt
in the title is not an indictment. It is a retort. The “Yo’ mama”
castigated on the cover is not your mama, but the mama of those who
perpetrate and perpetuate racial stigma, inequality, and bias. This
book attacks – or rather, corrects – the mother(s) of all racism,
sexism, economic exploitation, homophobia, and discrimination. And it
does so with power, passion, and penetrating analysis.
Of course, Kelley’s purpose is not to blast anybody’s mama in
particular. His title is not a slam or a cute cut to the dozens when
more substantial words fail. It is a re-orienting expression, and the
book provides an alternative reading of the “official story” on African
American culture and history.
Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! presents a tight, terse skeletalizing of
most, if not all, of the misrepresentations that warp Western society’s
perceptions of non-White, non-male, non-heterosexual images. And boy,
does Kelley pick the bones clean.
A gifted young historian and commanding critic of contemporary Black
culture, Kelley skillfully details the ways that people of color, other
minority groups, and women historically have been placed on the margins
of America’s health, wealth, and power structures. He also deconstructs
the creative and unprecedented ways these groups have reacted to
marginalized status and stigma.
His second essay, “Looking to Get Paid,” focuses on the significant
and under-examined aspects of Black youth culture. In it, Kelley posits
that Black youth, particularly young Black men, have struggled “for
survival and pleasure inside capitalism” despite “representations of
race that generate terror” in the hearts and minds of most Americans.
He points out, however, that modern Black youth have even put these
negative social constructions of themselves to work – hip-hop and their
disproportionate participation in sports being prime examples.
Still, he claims, Black youth remain victims of a terrible
contradiction that commodities and posits their images and bodies
alternatively as menaces to society or near-deities on the basketball
court, gridiron, or in the boxing ring. It is a contradiction, he
concludes, that compels White America to want to either jail them all
or kiss the feet on which they put their $200 Nikes.
