White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race

by Stephen Duncombe (Editor), Maxwell Tremblay (Editor), James Spooner (Foreword)

From the Clash to Los Crudos, skinheads to afro-punks, the punk rock movement has been obsessed by race. And yet the connections have never been traced in a comprehensive way. White Riot is a definitive study of the subject, collecting first-person writing, lyrics, letters to zines, and analyses of punk history from across the globe. This book brings together writing from leading critics such as Greil Marcus and Dick Hebdige, personal reflections from punk pioneers such as Jimmy Pursey, Darryl Jenifer and Mimi Nguyen, and reports on punk scenes from Toronto to Jakarta.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Race, Punk, Politics, History, Art

391 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1wB9...

If you read my reviews frequently, you might have noticed that I am a punk nerd: I love reading about the subculture that shaped many facets of my mind, but I also know that this subculture is far from perfect and has a few blinds spots that ought to be addressed and worked on. The punk scene has (unfortunately) always been a white boys club, and anyone not fitting that description had to put up a fight to make their place in it. Everyone on the scene agrees that they are (at least in theory) antiracists, antisexists, antihomophobes – in other words, they want to be allies to groups that have been oppressed and marginalized, which is great. But it does beg the question: if they are such great allies, why do we still mostly see white dudes at shows and in bands?

As this book is a collection of essays, published at different times, in different publications and grouped by sub-themes, it’s a little uneven. But even if I have mixed feelings about some of the pieces included in this collection and how they are interpreted, they are all interesting and great food for thought.

“What emerges is a picture of punk as an angry critique of bourgeois conformity articulated in a profoundly White bourgeois register.” Alas, this is a statement that my experience has shown to be fairly accurate. The essay attached to this quote, “LA’s ‘White Minority’: Punk and the Contradictions of Self-Marginalization” by Daniel S. Traber is a very interesting dissection of the issues attached to the process of redefining their identity that many punk kids go through, and how that self-marginalization can be problematic. There is an enormous difference between choosing to reject a privilege, and never having had one to begin with – and no matter how well-intended the rejection is, the lived experience is never going to be the same. That essay is a harsh critic of the subculture, but it’s also important and gave me a lot to chew on because the criticism is perfectly legitimate. I was also very interested by the article penned by Lester Bangs in 1979, addressing the racism he sees in the scene, meaning the issues were identifiable very early on, and yet failed to be truly taken care of if we still notice them now.

I really loved the essays “A New Punk Manifesto” by Joel Olson and “Not Just Posing for the Postcard: a Discussion of Punk and the New Abolition”, which was penned anonymously and published in Clamor Magazine. These were written in the 90s and early 2000s, and maybe it’s because that was around the time I fell for the siren song of the Clash promising me that we could make the world a better and more just place (to my GR friends who saw them live, yes, I know, I’m a “wain”), but I felt like those two pieces totally captured the way I had always felt about the relationship between punk and race. It’s idealistic, no doubt, but that sentiment of rejecting the values of the white middle class you were born into also means (at least to me and to those two authors) being supportive of those who felt the oppression of that same white middle class. It’s not a perfect approach, of course, but it’s a good starting point, especially if it comes from a place of genuine compassion and open-mindedness.

I also especially loved Mimi Nguyen’s piece, “It’s (Not) A White World: Looking for Race in Punk”; her very articulate critique of the often lip-service and performative anti-racism of the scene is sharp but also gentle, because she gives clear advice on how people in the punk scene can actually help, as opposed to whatever they are doing. “(…) be aware of how you talk about race, gender, sexuality – it’s political. Examine all the categories you’re using at least twice for hidden assumptions, exclusions, erasures. Recognize power in all its forms, how it operates. Engage it, even use it strategically. And work with me, not for me.” Written in 1998, that advice is still valid today.

Of course, like any edited collections, some essays are not as good as others (for instance, the interview with Ian MacKaye is very old, he was about twenty-two when it was done, and I'd be curious to know what his thoughts about this are now), but overall, this is a solid exploration of the topic. Punk is far from perfect, it's trying and it - we - can do better. Thinking about these essays is as good a place to start thinking about it as any.

[Jessica Silk]

I am still reading this, but I wanted to share this review by Golnar Nikpour, which brings up some really important points:
http://maximumrocknroll.com/white-rio...

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I predict a riot.

I guess that now, with an alt-right (*cough*) rhetoric on the rise, raising awareness of racial issues in pop-culture (generally) and music (particularly) is becoming more and more crucial. Having had an interest in punk for most of my teenage and adult life, this book has been a bit of an eye-opener. My perception of punk had been influenced, mainly, by mid-to-late 2000s TV (notably VH1 and MTV2) - although not in a malign fashion, they did deliver the accepted 'whitestraightboy' discourse behind this music. And, lo and behold, there's so much more to it than meets the eye (and than what a 15-year old me refused to acknowledge at the time).

Going from the UK to the US via Indonesia and South America, this anthology is split into various chapters, depending on the main theme. There are quite a few historic pieces, and it's really interesting to see how, by and large, nowadays pop-culture had 'romaticized' the original punk movement, which was as racist as can get. In hindsight, now I completely understand why Joseph Corre (Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's son) decided to burn an insane amount of memorabilia a couple of months ago.

Anyway, I digress. This book is worth a read if you want your believes challenged - it wasn't easy, at times, to come to terms with the fact that punk (or what's left of it) is still a male-dominated, occasionally racist and at times homophobic world. Will it ever change? Who the fuck knows.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 4 out of 5]

An academic-leaning collection constructed around two pillars: 1)punk is self-consciously a white movement that seeks to either be in solidarity with people of color or in opposition, and, 2)punk is a mainly white movement that doesn't acknowledge its whiteness in a self-serving attempt at so-called color blindness.

Of course, these two pillars are not the only monoliths seen in punk's city-scape, but they are the core of the collection, which runs from the seventies up to, roughly, the present. Many of the pieces are academic and/or from observers rather than participants. I would have liked to read more personal accounts but those are harder to fit in when looking at generalities and power structures.*

I responded to many of the pieces in here, as I either agreed or disagreed to whatever degree and had my own take on the ideas and conclusions--thus the book is thought-provoking and worth anybody's time. I had read barely any of the stuff covering 70's punk and found I had read quite a bit of the stuff reprinted from the 1990's and so on. Here is where punk--always present in other countries beside the U.S. and Great Britain--really goes international with a vengeance thanks to the internet and other forces. This is where the book should have had more or at least another volume. The questions raised in the last couple pieces about how punk is exported/imported and appropriated or transformed by punks in other countries is fascinating.

At any rate, this is totally worth reading.



*One of the more frustrating things that came up in several of the essays was that the author would specify the time and place and people he was talking about--punk rock in L.A. circa '79, for instance--then proceed to make declarations about punk rock and what punks believe, extrapolating from the specified grouping without providing over-arching evidence.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good read that explored, in depth, the way that race is perceived and dealt with in the punk subculture. This is structured as a reader, so there are many different writers and writing styles in this book. There are many excerpts from books, letters and interviews as well. The writings are from various time periods ranging from the mid 70's to the 2000's. It offers much insight to events and situations that one may not even think about when thinking of punk. Today, most think of punk as rather anti-racist with some factions of racist skin-head types, but there is much more to it than that. I would recommend this book to people who are interested in punk subculture and who also are into cultural studies and sociological type readings.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

so i get it. this book tries. it really does. i, for some reason or another, had no idea this was an anthology, i guess i was hoping for a different book structurally. its thematic structure is problematic to me, if only because it was really difficult to get through a section called "white power" and not want to puke. there are some really great pieces in here, but i feel like they lack sufficient context and introduction – i want more explanation as to why these pieces are important and how they all work together to reach the book's aim. i wanted more from this than i got, but it's a good starting point.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I skimmed/eventually skipped some articles and stuck for others. I wanted to get this out of the way because it kept sitting on my "currently reading" shelf for I don't even know how long now.

I don't know too much about punk, admittedly, but honestly, it probably should have been a red flag that two white men were editing a volume on race and punk.

[Andrew Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly uneven, some of the analyses are pretty lacking. Mimi Nguyen's essay is as indispensable now as it was over a decade ago and needs to be read by everyone.

Hard to get a sense of who the target reader is of this book.

[Kristof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read, would seriously translate it into german if someone pays me <3

[Darcysmom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a light read. It is absolutely compelling and worth taking time with.
I love a book that makes me think. I love it even more when it has academic chops and hefty end notes/documentation (in this case about 30 pages).
The academic writing was balanced with personal narrative and popular articles. This balance makes for an accessible read.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pulls from a broad range of sources from the first and third worlds to examine racial elements of punk music and culture. Fascinating reading for those who love either.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The structure of this book is eh. Some of the ideas that connect the pieces included are ok but some are pretty eh.

This review explains it better than I could:
http://maximumrocknroll.com/white-rio...

Despite it's shortcomings there's a lot of eye-opening interviews here. Great stuff to process.

[Augusto Delgado · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a very enlightening reading, this book. What's more it even clarified several prejudices I had about Punk (mainly the impossibility of being another thing but working class English, not necessarily colourless but above that as preached by comrade Strummer)
What surprised me was the indelible link to African music and culture, forcefully denied or overlooked by the white supremacy knobheadsd and gobshites, and that it dates way before Norman Mailer manifesto or Patti Smith's rock'n'roll Nigger.

And, the fact that there could be punk elsewhere on the surface of the planet, spikes and safety pins, fanzines spread across unsuspected places and corners of the blue globe, from Singapur to a favela, a mexicano in Chicago, why not punkekes in Perú.

It's a bit of a stretch though, I reckon, to include that Colombian chick Echeverry, and the likes, which definitely are not punk, are not even rock, they are some radicalised pose of that ugly and despicable pop-latino shite, it's all yank manufactured up in Miami so, no.

I feel that they sort of wasted a great opportunity on taking notice of '' la Movida Limeña de los 80 y picos'' and take advantage of what it did actually offer, that very scenario of struggle between the Pitupunks versuss Misiopunks (Posh vs skint punks) is worth a chapter on its own as it includes class and skin colour (a very peruvian feat) divisions. Listen to "Púdrete pituco reconchatumadre" by that band "SdM"and you could have a foggy London scenery back to Lima's hotfog but for our natives in punk attitude chords and shared instruments exposing the poshies pose.

Very good book, well constructed and written.