The All-American Skin Game, or Decoy of Race

October 2, 1995
In speeches, essays and reviews from publications like the New Republic, Crouch (Notes of a Hanging Judge) offers eloquent, pungent takes on racial politics, literature, film and music. The author made his name as a jazz critic, and he invokes jazz to proclaim that our society's ``multiple miscegenations'' are proof and source of enduring vitality and renewal. Thus, he has no truck with racial balkanizers or those who claim rapsters as the soul of black authenticity. A disciple of Ralph Ellison, he hails the recently departed writer as ``a citizen of this nation'' and argues that black filmmakers must develop a more nuanced American vision. Crouch's deconstruction of Miles Davis, his sympathy for Quentin Tarantino, his celebration of novelist Leon Forrest--all make good reading. So what's missing? Crouch's view of a practical politics to engage and enhance his oft-invoked democratic vistas.