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Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism
Reed contends that the road to a more just society for African Americans and everyone else is obstructed, in part, by a discourse that equates entrepreneurialism with freedom and independence. This, ultimately, insists on divorcing race and class. In the age of runaway inequality and Black Lives Matter, there is an emerging consensus that our society has failed to redress racial disparities. The culprit, however, is not the sway of a metaphysical racism or the modern survival of a primordial tribalism. Instead, it can be traced to far more comprehensible forces, such as the contradictions in access to New Deal era welfare programs, the blinders imposed by the Cold War, and Ronald Reagan's neoliberal assault on the half-century long Keynesian consensus.
202 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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August 28, 2023
This is a fantastic book, and I highly recommend it. There are several authors I’m excited to read anything they write: Toure Reed, Adolph Reed Jr., Cedric Johnson, Thomas Frank, Walter Benn Michaels, Karen and Barbara Fields to name a few. I read “Toward Freedom” a couple of months ago, and I can’t remember all the specifics of the book, but I’ve set myself a challenge to write reviews for all my listed books here on Goodreads. This will be a good activity because it shows what I remember about a book a week, a month, or several years after I’ve read it. This is important because if a book has staying power, if it’s expressed something important to you, you should be able to conceptualize the points that moved you or continue to inspire your thinking as you move through your life and away from the particular moment you read the book. In other words, if you’ve forgotten everything about the book two years after you’ve read it can’t verbally express what about the book--thematically, conceptually, politically, artistically--you enjoyed or what continues to inform your thinking or way of being in the world, then the book probably wasn’t very good. Or, more generously, it wasn’t very good for you.
“Toward Freedom” continues the project Toure Reed has been at for awhile (at least how I’ve come to understand his scholarship from articles I’ve read on Jacobin and elsewhere) of engaging critically with the nexus of class and race, specifically how black politics has changed over the last eighty years. It’s hard not to think about Toure Reed as the son of Adolph Reed Jr. because Adolph Reed Jr’s writing is so damn good. Toure Reed in a fantastic writer in many of the same ways his father is--powerful, intricate sentences; clear thinking; attention to detail and a grounding of scholarship in discrete historical circumstances; freedom from cant, generalizations or pandering of any kind. What Toure Reed does in this book is make a detailed accounting of the political economy of the United States at specific times and how black political struggle, political alliances (black and between various ascriptive groups), and political movements have been structured and disciplined by the discrete circumstances of various political eras. This is very similar to the work Cedric Johnson did in “From Revolutionaries to Race Leaders” and Adolph Reed Jr. has done in “Class Notes.” This is a worthwhile, powerful project that provides lesson after lesson for today for those of us on the Left.
Part of this project, perhaps the most important part, is disaggregating political movements and political blocks (of ascriptive groups) into their constituent parts as opposed to interacting rhetorically and discursively as though there is one black political movement or one black voting block. By doing this (ascribing to the black community in the US monolithic consistency and sameness)--even when it’s done by black and white commentators, scholars, writers, political theorists in good faith (meaning not trafficking in stereotypes; not sugar-coating racial violence in our nation’s past)--a reification of ascriptive identities is the upshot. The writer, scholar et al. is participating in a project of race essentialism and race reductionism (even when the project is ostensibly engaged in a counter-hegemonic project).
I’ve gone on an interesting sojourn vis-a-vis writings on race. I was trying to better understand what the Movement for Black Lives was about. This led me to all of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s great articles at The Atlantic, “Between the World and Me,” “White Rage” by Carol Anderson, “White Like Me” by Tim Wise, “White Fragility “ by Robin DiAngelo. I’m not going to disown these books or pretend they didn’t influence and shape my thinking at the time I was read them (especially “BTWAM”), but somewhere along the way I read Cedric Johnson’s critique of Coates in Jacobin and was off and running with Reed, pere and fils, Walter Benn Michaels, Karen and Barbara Fields and the like. Perhaps those earlier texts are way-stations, perhaps even necessary way-stations, for middle class white people (like me) who didn’t experience much diversity with their friend set growing up or in college; perhaps I had ingested racist stereotypes from family members; perhaps I came from a place of privilege (which is just a self-incriminating way to describe how the structural conditions of our society mystify and obscure what is really happening and to whom). The point being is that the essentializing and reification of the black experience (despite some moments of tension and points of contradiction in Coates’s writing where his essentialism of the black experience comes up against his concession that race is a social construct and the reification and essentialism of race as a social identity comes after and as a result of the exploitation that bring race to life) served a purpose for me.
It allowed me (and now I’m also thinking of the writing of Jelani Cobb, Hilton Als, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Michelle Alexander) to fully take and understand black lives, and by extension Latinx, Native-American, Asian-American, and whatever other ascriptive identity of person there exists here and abroad) as fully human, as fully complex human beings. In other words to think of those around me who didn’t have the economic privileges I’ve had; who don’t have the same skin shade as I have; who speak in with different accents; who celebrate different holidays and have different cultural practices as human beings just as complex as white people; genetically no different than I as far as “group” identity if concerned. It’s a little embarrassing to write this because these sentiments can be boiled down to “I realized we’re all the same as human beings,” but clearly a lot of people all over the world, and specifically in the United States, don’t feel we’re all the same as human beings. Anyway, this wasn’t only an intellectual realization but also a visceral, emotional and psychological realization, and ultimately, and most importantly, a political realization.
Call it racial dialectics, but after having internalized the writings of Coates, Alexander, Cobb et al. and after having read Reed and Johnson for several months, I realized what’s missing from these liberal/progressive frameworks that focus on race is a robust, sustained critique of political economy. I don’t know if Adolph Reed Jr., Cedric Johnson, and Toure Reed call themselves Marxists or socialists and ultimately it doesn't matter because they, nor I, are leading the proletarian revolution at this time, but as scholars they are undertaking political projects that lead with class, that lead with a robust analysis of political economy. These other critiques only make passing comments about political economy and don’t examine in any coherent way the class forces involved in maintaining the structures that ensure black people are disproportionally among the poor and working poor. In other words what is elided is a sustained critique of capitalism and capital accumulation. The neoliberal order is taken as a given and therefore obscured in these authors’ critiques of racism, “systemic racism,” disparity in incarceration rates, disparity in earning power and mean family income, etc. The dialectic I refer to is moving through an internalization all humans are equal, all humans have the same basic needs and respond roughly the same ways when they or their families are deprived of these material needs, to examining capitalism (specifically the quickening of capital accumulation and mass immiseration during the neo-liberal era) as the system that organizes this brutally inegalitarian society. Is the problem just racism? Is it just discrimination of various ascriptive groups? No. But this is also not to say anti-discrimination policies shouldn’t be upheld and strengthened wherever these statutes are on the books at the state and federal level. But it is to say that a deep, robust critique of capital accumulation is necessary to get to the heart of conceptualizing the ways redistributive, universal programs can ameliorate the worst consequences of capitalism.
Toure Reed’s book look at particular moments in the 20th and 21st century where a multi-racial, working-class mass politics was stymied and/or slowed down by class contradictions within various movements--class contradictions that existed within the black community just as there are class contradiction within any ascriptive identity group. One of the historical moments Toure Reed looks at is the New Deal, and he provides an important corrective to the notion that’s become unassailable in recent elite scholarship that New Deal policies failed black Americans en masse. This was not the case. There were certain occupations that were not covered by social security and those occupations were disproportionately occupied by black Americans, but as far as gross numbers go whites were also hurt by sharecroppers being left out of social security. In short, the argument shouldn’t be (or at least the whole story shouldn’t be to the exclusion of appreciating the efficaciousness of redistributive programs in general) how these programs feel short because of their discriminatory nature, but how much they actually did help to pull black Americans out poverty. The lesson of redistributive programs (from the New Deal and Great Society) should not be that they failed because of discriminatory features and execution, but that advocating and organizing political commitments around a call for universal, redistributive programs is the best path forward. Means-testing and pitting one ascriptive group against the other (usually the upshot of mean-tested program) is not is not a strategy for political victories.
Toure Reed is a great scholar. I recommend reading everything you see with his name at the top of it. I can’t wait to read his next book.
“Toward Freedom” continues the project Toure Reed has been at for awhile (at least how I’ve come to understand his scholarship from articles I’ve read on Jacobin and elsewhere) of engaging critically with the nexus of class and race, specifically how black politics has changed over the last eighty years. It’s hard not to think about Toure Reed as the son of Adolph Reed Jr. because Adolph Reed Jr’s writing is so damn good. Toure Reed in a fantastic writer in many of the same ways his father is--powerful, intricate sentences; clear thinking; attention to detail and a grounding of scholarship in discrete historical circumstances; freedom from cant, generalizations or pandering of any kind. What Toure Reed does in this book is make a detailed accounting of the political economy of the United States at specific times and how black political struggle, political alliances (black and between various ascriptive groups), and political movements have been structured and disciplined by the discrete circumstances of various political eras. This is very similar to the work Cedric Johnson did in “From Revolutionaries to Race Leaders” and Adolph Reed Jr. has done in “Class Notes.” This is a worthwhile, powerful project that provides lesson after lesson for today for those of us on the Left.
Part of this project, perhaps the most important part, is disaggregating political movements and political blocks (of ascriptive groups) into their constituent parts as opposed to interacting rhetorically and discursively as though there is one black political movement or one black voting block. By doing this (ascribing to the black community in the US monolithic consistency and sameness)--even when it’s done by black and white commentators, scholars, writers, political theorists in good faith (meaning not trafficking in stereotypes; not sugar-coating racial violence in our nation’s past)--a reification of ascriptive identities is the upshot. The writer, scholar et al. is participating in a project of race essentialism and race reductionism (even when the project is ostensibly engaged in a counter-hegemonic project).
I’ve gone on an interesting sojourn vis-a-vis writings on race. I was trying to better understand what the Movement for Black Lives was about. This led me to all of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s great articles at The Atlantic, “Between the World and Me,” “White Rage” by Carol Anderson, “White Like Me” by Tim Wise, “White Fragility “ by Robin DiAngelo. I’m not going to disown these books or pretend they didn’t influence and shape my thinking at the time I was read them (especially “BTWAM”), but somewhere along the way I read Cedric Johnson’s critique of Coates in Jacobin and was off and running with Reed, pere and fils, Walter Benn Michaels, Karen and Barbara Fields and the like. Perhaps those earlier texts are way-stations, perhaps even necessary way-stations, for middle class white people (like me) who didn’t experience much diversity with their friend set growing up or in college; perhaps I had ingested racist stereotypes from family members; perhaps I came from a place of privilege (which is just a self-incriminating way to describe how the structural conditions of our society mystify and obscure what is really happening and to whom). The point being is that the essentializing and reification of the black experience (despite some moments of tension and points of contradiction in Coates’s writing where his essentialism of the black experience comes up against his concession that race is a social construct and the reification and essentialism of race as a social identity comes after and as a result of the exploitation that bring race to life) served a purpose for me.
It allowed me (and now I’m also thinking of the writing of Jelani Cobb, Hilton Als, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Michelle Alexander) to fully take and understand black lives, and by extension Latinx, Native-American, Asian-American, and whatever other ascriptive identity of person there exists here and abroad) as fully human, as fully complex human beings. In other words to think of those around me who didn’t have the economic privileges I’ve had; who don’t have the same skin shade as I have; who speak in with different accents; who celebrate different holidays and have different cultural practices as human beings just as complex as white people; genetically no different than I as far as “group” identity if concerned. It’s a little embarrassing to write this because these sentiments can be boiled down to “I realized we’re all the same as human beings,” but clearly a lot of people all over the world, and specifically in the United States, don’t feel we’re all the same as human beings. Anyway, this wasn’t only an intellectual realization but also a visceral, emotional and psychological realization, and ultimately, and most importantly, a political realization.
Call it racial dialectics, but after having internalized the writings of Coates, Alexander, Cobb et al. and after having read Reed and Johnson for several months, I realized what’s missing from these liberal/progressive frameworks that focus on race is a robust, sustained critique of political economy. I don’t know if Adolph Reed Jr., Cedric Johnson, and Toure Reed call themselves Marxists or socialists and ultimately it doesn't matter because they, nor I, are leading the proletarian revolution at this time, but as scholars they are undertaking political projects that lead with class, that lead with a robust analysis of political economy. These other critiques only make passing comments about political economy and don’t examine in any coherent way the class forces involved in maintaining the structures that ensure black people are disproportionally among the poor and working poor. In other words what is elided is a sustained critique of capitalism and capital accumulation. The neoliberal order is taken as a given and therefore obscured in these authors’ critiques of racism, “systemic racism,” disparity in incarceration rates, disparity in earning power and mean family income, etc. The dialectic I refer to is moving through an internalization all humans are equal, all humans have the same basic needs and respond roughly the same ways when they or their families are deprived of these material needs, to examining capitalism (specifically the quickening of capital accumulation and mass immiseration during the neo-liberal era) as the system that organizes this brutally inegalitarian society. Is the problem just racism? Is it just discrimination of various ascriptive groups? No. But this is also not to say anti-discrimination policies shouldn’t be upheld and strengthened wherever these statutes are on the books at the state and federal level. But it is to say that a deep, robust critique of capital accumulation is necessary to get to the heart of conceptualizing the ways redistributive, universal programs can ameliorate the worst consequences of capitalism.
Toure Reed’s book look at particular moments in the 20th and 21st century where a multi-racial, working-class mass politics was stymied and/or slowed down by class contradictions within various movements--class contradictions that existed within the black community just as there are class contradiction within any ascriptive identity group. One of the historical moments Toure Reed looks at is the New Deal, and he provides an important corrective to the notion that’s become unassailable in recent elite scholarship that New Deal policies failed black Americans en masse. This was not the case. There were certain occupations that were not covered by social security and those occupations were disproportionately occupied by black Americans, but as far as gross numbers go whites were also hurt by sharecroppers being left out of social security. In short, the argument shouldn’t be (or at least the whole story shouldn’t be to the exclusion of appreciating the efficaciousness of redistributive programs in general) how these programs feel short because of their discriminatory nature, but how much they actually did help to pull black Americans out poverty. The lesson of redistributive programs (from the New Deal and Great Society) should not be that they failed because of discriminatory features and execution, but that advocating and organizing political commitments around a call for universal, redistributive programs is the best path forward. Means-testing and pitting one ascriptive group against the other (usually the upshot of mean-tested program) is not is not a strategy for political victories.
Toure Reed is a great scholar. I recommend reading everything you see with his name at the top of it. I can’t wait to read his next book.
June 21, 2020
Reed's argument with the brutal reductions of racializing politics is the most sustained when his gaze is focused on his contemporaries such as Barack Obama and Ta-Nehisi Coates, and his investigation of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's legacy of conflicted interpretations is also fascinating. I found the introductory material more unfocused and dense, without a corresponding clarity of purpose. Across the whole book, Reed pursues his laudable convictions in common-good political action as a preferable strategy to the forms of identity-based abstractions which, to his eyes, produce division even as they yield scattered benefits. Or, as he puts it,
As the quotation suggests, Reed at his best is precise and accessible, and he mixes his critical observations with a quick irony. His broadsides against easy sophistries such as reparations (Coates), postracism, or underclass discourse are full of fire and well supported with close-marshalled evidence.
In summary: quite a book! I strongly recommend it.
The bottom line is that the fate of poor and working-class African Americans - who are unquestionably overrepresented among neoliberalism's victims - is linked to that of other poor and working-class Americans. Our road to a more just society for African Americans and everyone else is obstructed, in part, by a discourse that declares the New Deal to be the root of all modern racial ills (despite the fact that the New Deal helped lay the foundation for the civil rights movement), that derides unions as racist (despite blacks' overrepresentation among unionists), that equates 'working class' with crusty old white men while equating entrepreneurialism with freedom and independence (like Black Belt slaveholders weren't petty capitalists) and that, ultimately, insists upon divorcing race from class.
As the quotation suggests, Reed at his best is precise and accessible, and he mixes his critical observations with a quick irony. His broadsides against easy sophistries such as reparations (Coates), postracism, or underclass discourse are full of fire and well supported with close-marshalled evidence.
In summary: quite a book! I strongly recommend it.
February 5, 2021
Almost feels conspiratorial in its bold rejection of the accepted truths of our current discourse around race and politics. Unlike the majority who have been fooled by the treacherous rhetoric of their neoliberal hegemons at the DNC, Reed recognizes that economic and racial equality in American society are inextricably linked; that, in spite of those who have been taught by party line parrots to scoff at the very idea, a rising tide does indeed lift all boats, inasmuch as genuinely redistributive and pro-labor economic policies are concerned. A concise and well-argued book that puts to rest the racial fatalism of Ta-Nehisi Coates et al. that has inspired the current wave of obsessive, self-flagellating antiracism that is stymying the American left, and proposes concrete solutions for addressing the economic disparities that are at the heart of black/brown inequality.
February 26, 2020
The strongest point of the book is his critique of Coats and Obama. The weakest is chapter one, his histography of Black people benefiting from the New Deal and interracial coalition. The author confuses what is often abstract academic liberal/intersectional performative analysis on race as "black nationalism". The author also false to see the long history of independent Black institutions pressuring both government and unions/labor left as a necessary precondition for the interracial coalitions the author promotes. Many scholars such as Harold Cruse would fundamentally contest his historical analysis around the NAACP and notions that Black radicalism was catalyzed by New Deal/labor organizing. Also, the author ignores long history of Black radical mobilizations outside the labor left (Michael Dawson). A solid attempt to critique neoliberalism's co-options of race as an issue to deploy against radical notions of redistribution which unfortunately falls to often into painting the broad diverse Black radical struggle as capitulating to capitalism vision of freedom and the ideological vision of Daniel Patrick Moynahan.
May 18, 2021
A short but remarkable book, balancing guiding principles with history and empirical fact.
September 4, 2023
The rooting in specifics of discourse in the great satan sometimes went over my head here, but this is both historically v astute on 'universalism' in the New Deal semi-welfare state, and bitchily funny.
June 18, 2020
The author makes well-executed complex arguments and he's funny! What?! One must read the footnotes, humorous gems are found there too.
February 23, 2021
had a harder time with the denser first half of the book, which was focused on the New Deal, Oscar Handlin, and the Moynihan report. the analysis and criticism of Obama and Coates in the book’s second half was really worthwhile
July 30, 2020
An excellent, concise history (and argument) both of 1) the relationship between race and class in the effects of U.S. policy making on the economic welfare of black populations during the 20th century and 2) the development of race reductionism as a conservative, inegalitarian, pro-capitalist tendency and force embraced by liberals in race-focused discourse and advocacy from the 1980s onward; published months before nationwide mass demonstrations against the ghastly police murder of George Floyd drove liberals to embrace and celebrate “diversity trainer” and ‘White Fragility’ author Robin DiAngelo’s grim, dead end race-essentialism in their flailing efforts to learn how to relate with and support their oppressed neighbors of color.
March 12, 2024
Toure Reed makes the case against what he terms "Race Reductionism," which views all of the negative life experiences of Black Americans as consequences of the longstanding racist attitudes and practices of the white majority. Instead he offers a more complex economic argument, asserting that racist policies have functioned as part of an economic system that has consistently militated against Black economic advancement. I hesitate even to summarize the detailed historical arguments that he makes (such as showing how the New Deal disproportionately benefitted Black workers), or the insightful criticisms of the "post-racial" Obama presidency and the "post-post racial" writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates. We hear a lot about Bayard Rustin, including his economic philosophy and skepticism about Great Society initiatives, and a bit about Bernie Sanders. This book is a helpful tonic for those of us who think corporate diversity initiatives and implicit bias training are pretty thin gruel to sustain a drive for meaningful change.
I would like to add that it is the best book I have ever read in which the author thanks his colleagues at the Orleans Parish Sewer and Water Board.
I would like to add that it is the best book I have ever read in which the author thanks his colleagues at the Orleans Parish Sewer and Water Board.
March 10, 2021
Legally forbidden to have an opinion.
December 14, 2024
I’m putting this on my shelf next to Ta-Nehisi Coates because, amongst other things, Reed presents a well-reasoned critique of him in the latter chapters. As much as I have learned from Coates and admire him, it’s edifying to read something about him that is not laudatory, or narrowly focused on his “pessimism.” It opens up new avenues for discussion, research, and political mobilization. I would love to see Coates and Reed debate or see if Coates has addressed Reed-like critiques in writing. In short, Reed accuses Coates (and others like Obama) of race-reductionism by ignoring the larger context of political economy to the determinant of sustained structural progress.
Part of this critique involves the legacy of New Deal universal programs. Reed claims that African-Americans benefited from them and that liberals, contrary to Coates’s misreading of history, abandoned them. In other words when Coates claims that class-based social policies don’t work for African-Americans he is misguided because in the post-war period the US never fully adopted them in the first place. From at least the Johnson administration forward, neoliberalism has been the reigning orthodoxy for Democrats and Republicans alike.
Johnson’s war on poverty pursued policies promoting social diversity and economic expansion (a rising tide raises all boats mentality) as opposed to interventions in the labor market and income redistribution. The trend only accelerated with Reagan and Clinton. Obama did the bare minimum to keep the country afloat during the financial crisis while adopting the same economic assumptions of his predecessors and promoting a “underclass” ideology that placed more blame on individual decisions and alleged cultural factors than the root causes of black (and white) poverty - the generations long inadequate responses to deindustrialization and automatization.
Trump’s victory in 2016, therefore, owes more to failed policies that hurt black and white alike, then to an uncompromising racism. This explains the white Obama voters who voted for Trump and the depressed voter turnout across all racial categories. While reading this section of the book I was reminded of a New York York Times story published right after the 2016 election. The author interviewed black barbers in Milwaukee who didn’t vote on the grounds that “nothing changes.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us...
I’m in no position to adjudicate the historical arguments raised by Reed but I’m glad he raised them. Something has clearly not worked. Reed’s analysis provides a digestible and historically grounded explanations of why.
Part of this critique involves the legacy of New Deal universal programs. Reed claims that African-Americans benefited from them and that liberals, contrary to Coates’s misreading of history, abandoned them. In other words when Coates claims that class-based social policies don’t work for African-Americans he is misguided because in the post-war period the US never fully adopted them in the first place. From at least the Johnson administration forward, neoliberalism has been the reigning orthodoxy for Democrats and Republicans alike.
Johnson’s war on poverty pursued policies promoting social diversity and economic expansion (a rising tide raises all boats mentality) as opposed to interventions in the labor market and income redistribution. The trend only accelerated with Reagan and Clinton. Obama did the bare minimum to keep the country afloat during the financial crisis while adopting the same economic assumptions of his predecessors and promoting a “underclass” ideology that placed more blame on individual decisions and alleged cultural factors than the root causes of black (and white) poverty - the generations long inadequate responses to deindustrialization and automatization.
Trump’s victory in 2016, therefore, owes more to failed policies that hurt black and white alike, then to an uncompromising racism. This explains the white Obama voters who voted for Trump and the depressed voter turnout across all racial categories. While reading this section of the book I was reminded of a New York York Times story published right after the 2016 election. The author interviewed black barbers in Milwaukee who didn’t vote on the grounds that “nothing changes.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us...
I’m in no position to adjudicate the historical arguments raised by Reed but I’m glad he raised them. Something has clearly not worked. Reed’s analysis provides a digestible and historically grounded explanations of why.
March 24, 2025
"Toward Freedom" by Toure F. Reed is yet another great little book on race for me to review, specifically, per the subtitle, 'The Case Against Race Reductionism'.
Reed, a black American professor, follows in his father's footsteps warning against race reductionism while carving his own academic path. I came across his father, Adolph Reed Jr., when a union colleague, objecting to my quoting a conservative told me to 'check out a real leftist' like Reed Jr.
I am glad I have now read both men, along with Reed Jr. co-author Walter Benn Michaels (see my review of his "The Trouble with Diversity"). All three advance arguments that are currently unfashionable, but all three swim powerfully against the tide.
Reed the younger's book is an excellent introduction to the notion of 'race reductionism'. To quote his father, interviewed at JSTOR Daily, "race reductionism is ultimately a couple of things. One of them is a presumption that race as a category can explain social phenomena. The other is that every grievance, injustice, beef that in any way affects a person of color, or a person of non-color, can be reduced to race, or can be reduced causally to race or to racism".
Reed's book builds on this concept. Divided into four chapters, with a conclusion and an introduction that describes Reed's optimism around the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, specifically that "neoliberalism's grip on the electorate's political imagination had weakened" (p. 7), only to see Democrats and the identitarian left attack Sanders, revealing "a deeply rooted reactionary tendency in contemporary liberal discourse related to race and inequality".
To explore this tendency, Toure begins with a chapter entitled "When Black Progressives Didn't Separate Race from Class". He looks at the Reagan presidency, and Reagan's pivotal role in the neoliberal movement that followed the postwar 'Keynesian consensus' which emphasized government intervention in the economy to ensure stable growth and full employment. He contrasts this with New Deal programs, which while admittedly flawed, that provided material benefits to the poor and the working class, blacks among them.
The neoliberal turn precipitated by Reagan and Thatcher came to capture the gestalt, and Reed's analysis is most biting when he analyzes former president Barak Obama as a fundamentally neoliberal political actor. Clearly, Obama, the Clintons and other Democrats viewed race and racism as major issues, but the neoliberal turn allowed them to resort to 'race reductionism' as explanatory, rather than a class-based analysis that explores the material conditions allowing racism to flourish in the first place.
This, to both Reeds, is a neat, reactionary dodge - we can now pathologize the racists and address them separately from class issues - an impossibility for Marxists like the Reeds. Chapter two outlines how this came to be, focusing on the work of historian Oscar Handlin, who employed a lens of 'ethnic pluralism' to explore the Black American experience.
Per this lens, explorations of other 'outsider' groups that assimilated into the American mainstream charts a path forward for black Americans. Unfortunately, Reed notes that the historical context was different, as New Deal policies that benefited these groups started to fade in the face of conservative pushback in the Cold War era.
By focusing on the distinct 'cultural essence' of different ethnic groups, Handlin and other pluralists like Daniel Patrick Moynihan attributed ills such as poverty and racism to "the cultural deficiencies of the disadvantaged and the attitudes of the privileged" which empowered a "conservative, culturalist turn in African American politics in the form of the Black Power movement" (p. 69).
Reed references Bayard Rustin, who during the 60s "warned that Black Power's emphasis on racial group representation would ultimately serve the interests of an aspirant African American political and managerial class at the expense of the vast majority of poor and working-class blacks", ultimately leading down a path towards "neoliberalism's equation of entrepreneurialism with freedom and its related anti-unionism" (p. 73).
Chapter 3, "The Tragedy of the Moynihan Report" explains why the War on Poverty failed, and illustrates how Moynihan's rise illustrates "the triumph of market ideology and neoliberal antistatism" (p. 90) at the expense of programs proven to reduce inequality.
Chapter 4 "Obama and Coates: Postracialism's and Post-Postracialism's Yin-Yang Twins of Neoliberal Benign Neglect" is the one that will generate the most controversy. Reed's brief history thus far is thoughtful, well-sourced and cogently-argued historical analysis - and therefore tough to argue. His contention that Obama is neoliberal, more akin therefore to Reagan than FDR, is a tough pill for some in-denial Obama apologists.
He is right, of course. He gives examples of Obama's race-reductionism when he describes the former president's habit of lecturing poor black men with an "up by the bootstraps" message that omits the material economic realities facing these men and their poor white counterparts, thus enabling neoliberalism.
So if Obama is post-race, popular contemporary academic Ta-Nehesi Coates is post-post race, so no longer 'I don't see colour' but rather 'colour is all I see'. Reed is a touch kinder towards Coates - who he views as being well-intentioned - than Obama, who he sees as an opportunistic elite.
Reed dismantles Coates' arguments for reparations for black Americans with remarkable ease, evincing the flimsiness of much 'academic' wokeness. He charges him with offering "his white, white-collar, cosmopolitan readers absolution" while legitimizing contempt for the white working class (p. 154), and concludes that Coates' insistence on treating race separately from capitalism makes him "neoliberalism's most visible black emissary of the post-postracial era" (p. 158).
This, is Marxist circles, is a mic-drop. Reed concludes with parting shots taken at neoliberals like Ezra Klein who "like so many others" look "past the fact that both parties have coalesced around explicitly racialized narratives about economic inequality that would necessarily foster racial tribalism" (p. 163-4).
In other words, divide and conquer the poor and the working class. "The bottom line is that the fate of poor and working-class African Americans - who are unquestionably overrepresented among neoliberalism's victims - is linked to that of other poor and working-class Americans" (p. 172).
Reed's greatest strength here is his illustrating the toxicity of neoliberalism while revealing post-post racialism (wokeness) to be an inherently neoliberal project; class-warfare, if you will. I recommend this book for all interested in a modern Marxist analysis of race relations, including those repelled by the name Marx. This is no naive application of 19th century thinking to 21st century reality, but rather a short, punchy argument for "no politics but class politics".
Reed, a black American professor, follows in his father's footsteps warning against race reductionism while carving his own academic path. I came across his father, Adolph Reed Jr., when a union colleague, objecting to my quoting a conservative told me to 'check out a real leftist' like Reed Jr.
I am glad I have now read both men, along with Reed Jr. co-author Walter Benn Michaels (see my review of his "The Trouble with Diversity"). All three advance arguments that are currently unfashionable, but all three swim powerfully against the tide.
Reed the younger's book is an excellent introduction to the notion of 'race reductionism'. To quote his father, interviewed at JSTOR Daily, "race reductionism is ultimately a couple of things. One of them is a presumption that race as a category can explain social phenomena. The other is that every grievance, injustice, beef that in any way affects a person of color, or a person of non-color, can be reduced to race, or can be reduced causally to race or to racism".
Reed's book builds on this concept. Divided into four chapters, with a conclusion and an introduction that describes Reed's optimism around the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, specifically that "neoliberalism's grip on the electorate's political imagination had weakened" (p. 7), only to see Democrats and the identitarian left attack Sanders, revealing "a deeply rooted reactionary tendency in contemporary liberal discourse related to race and inequality".
To explore this tendency, Toure begins with a chapter entitled "When Black Progressives Didn't Separate Race from Class". He looks at the Reagan presidency, and Reagan's pivotal role in the neoliberal movement that followed the postwar 'Keynesian consensus' which emphasized government intervention in the economy to ensure stable growth and full employment. He contrasts this with New Deal programs, which while admittedly flawed, that provided material benefits to the poor and the working class, blacks among them.
The neoliberal turn precipitated by Reagan and Thatcher came to capture the gestalt, and Reed's analysis is most biting when he analyzes former president Barak Obama as a fundamentally neoliberal political actor. Clearly, Obama, the Clintons and other Democrats viewed race and racism as major issues, but the neoliberal turn allowed them to resort to 'race reductionism' as explanatory, rather than a class-based analysis that explores the material conditions allowing racism to flourish in the first place.
This, to both Reeds, is a neat, reactionary dodge - we can now pathologize the racists and address them separately from class issues - an impossibility for Marxists like the Reeds. Chapter two outlines how this came to be, focusing on the work of historian Oscar Handlin, who employed a lens of 'ethnic pluralism' to explore the Black American experience.
Per this lens, explorations of other 'outsider' groups that assimilated into the American mainstream charts a path forward for black Americans. Unfortunately, Reed notes that the historical context was different, as New Deal policies that benefited these groups started to fade in the face of conservative pushback in the Cold War era.
By focusing on the distinct 'cultural essence' of different ethnic groups, Handlin and other pluralists like Daniel Patrick Moynihan attributed ills such as poverty and racism to "the cultural deficiencies of the disadvantaged and the attitudes of the privileged" which empowered a "conservative, culturalist turn in African American politics in the form of the Black Power movement" (p. 69).
Reed references Bayard Rustin, who during the 60s "warned that Black Power's emphasis on racial group representation would ultimately serve the interests of an aspirant African American political and managerial class at the expense of the vast majority of poor and working-class blacks", ultimately leading down a path towards "neoliberalism's equation of entrepreneurialism with freedom and its related anti-unionism" (p. 73).
Chapter 3, "The Tragedy of the Moynihan Report" explains why the War on Poverty failed, and illustrates how Moynihan's rise illustrates "the triumph of market ideology and neoliberal antistatism" (p. 90) at the expense of programs proven to reduce inequality.
Chapter 4 "Obama and Coates: Postracialism's and Post-Postracialism's Yin-Yang Twins of Neoliberal Benign Neglect" is the one that will generate the most controversy. Reed's brief history thus far is thoughtful, well-sourced and cogently-argued historical analysis - and therefore tough to argue. His contention that Obama is neoliberal, more akin therefore to Reagan than FDR, is a tough pill for some in-denial Obama apologists.
He is right, of course. He gives examples of Obama's race-reductionism when he describes the former president's habit of lecturing poor black men with an "up by the bootstraps" message that omits the material economic realities facing these men and their poor white counterparts, thus enabling neoliberalism.
So if Obama is post-race, popular contemporary academic Ta-Nehesi Coates is post-post race, so no longer 'I don't see colour' but rather 'colour is all I see'. Reed is a touch kinder towards Coates - who he views as being well-intentioned - than Obama, who he sees as an opportunistic elite.
Reed dismantles Coates' arguments for reparations for black Americans with remarkable ease, evincing the flimsiness of much 'academic' wokeness. He charges him with offering "his white, white-collar, cosmopolitan readers absolution" while legitimizing contempt for the white working class (p. 154), and concludes that Coates' insistence on treating race separately from capitalism makes him "neoliberalism's most visible black emissary of the post-postracial era" (p. 158).
This, is Marxist circles, is a mic-drop. Reed concludes with parting shots taken at neoliberals like Ezra Klein who "like so many others" look "past the fact that both parties have coalesced around explicitly racialized narratives about economic inequality that would necessarily foster racial tribalism" (p. 163-4).
In other words, divide and conquer the poor and the working class. "The bottom line is that the fate of poor and working-class African Americans - who are unquestionably overrepresented among neoliberalism's victims - is linked to that of other poor and working-class Americans" (p. 172).
Reed's greatest strength here is his illustrating the toxicity of neoliberalism while revealing post-post racialism (wokeness) to be an inherently neoliberal project; class-warfare, if you will. I recommend this book for all interested in a modern Marxist analysis of race relations, including those repelled by the name Marx. This is no naive application of 19th century thinking to 21st century reality, but rather a short, punchy argument for "no politics but class politics".
July 16, 2020
Occasionally you read a book that gives you a sigh of relief, something that's able to cogently articulate your conscious, latent, and intuitive opinions on an issue. Touré Reed's Toward Freedom is a necessary tonic to so many misguided discussions - and solutions - regarding racial inequity. Reed is able to crystallize the complexity of this issue in the proper historical and political-economic framework, correctly avoiding the seductive, ontological pitfalls of liberal-identitarian commentaries on race. Chapters 3 and 4 are, simply put, necessary reading for progressives, whatever their stripe. In the current political moment, I'm just relieved this book exists. Read it.
For a version of Chapter 4, see Touré Reed, "Between Obama and Coates," Catalyst Vol. 1, No. 4 (Winter 2018).
For a survey of some of the arguments in Toward Freedom, see Reed's recent appearances on Stay At Home #12: "The Pitfalls of Liberal Antiracism and Woke Neoliberalism," Weekends with Ana and Michael, and TMBS.
For a version of Chapter 4, see Touré Reed, "Between Obama and Coates," Catalyst Vol. 1, No. 4 (Winter 2018).
For a survey of some of the arguments in Toward Freedom, see Reed's recent appearances on Stay At Home #12: "The Pitfalls of Liberal Antiracism and Woke Neoliberalism," Weekends with Ana and Michael, and TMBS.
May 24, 2021
This is a timely book that punches through the haze and mystification surrounding racial discourse in American politics. Its arguments are provocative and well-substantiated. Reed takes aim at figures as diverse as Daniel Patrick Moynihan,Lindon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Joy-Ann Reid, making fair and thoughtful critiques that nevertheless say what they mean to without prevaricating. This is worth the read for anyone wishing to understand the complex relationship between race and class from a heterodox perspective.
January 5, 2021
Toure synthesizes the argument that his dad's been making for quite some time, that the conversion of Black movement activism into an elite-driven, race-centered politics from the late 60s onward has served to negate the egalitarian goals articulated best by Civil Rights leaders Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph.
Reed is part of a loose coalition of thinkers who rebuke the practice of disaggregating race and class, most of whom have been published at least once over at Nonsite (Cedric Johnson, Adolph Reed Jr., Walter Been Michaels). The general premise is that the Civil Rights movement made a pivot around 1964 from race/class conscious/labor rights radicalism to a more narrow race-central framing.
According to Reed, this pivot has led to decades of activism that provides a barrier to addressing inequality, as it is allowed to co-exist alongside the growth politics that continue to pose barriers to upward mobility. In their view, race affinity, while demonstrating some utility in consolidating small BIPOC communities, nevertheless suffers from singling out culturalist theories of coalition building, while generally putting aside ideas of egalitarian restructuring. As a result, activism of this sort tends to be atomized, obfuscates solutions, and is generally antithetical to multi-ethnic coalition building.
Critiques of this perspective are more than fair: yearning for a class uprising is overly backward-looking, myopically hung up on some limited gains made by Blacks in the New Deal era, and their hostility to culturalist race-centered identity politics ignores what has historically motivated people.
Nostalgia aside, the critique of Reed that he engages with directly is that he is simply is engaging in “class reductionism,” no matter how much he acknowledges the lived reality of systemic discrimination. Of the few who have bothered to acknowledge Reed's book, critics dismiss the book's focus on neutral rhetoric of equity, and reject that there is solid evidence of multi-ethnic solidarity having ever led to real change. Seeing that the evidence shows “the more volatile claim” of racism is the motivating factor with the most potential to induce radical action, any claims otherwise are illusory.
Nevertheless, it's useful to look at how Reed challenges the utility of solutions that flow from a race-based approach. Reed often takes pains to remind his readers that the “Freedom Budget for All” agenda of Randolph and Rustin has mostly been black-holed, as well as the full policy agenda behind the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with the historical record more often than not leaving the “Jobs” part out.
The tragedy according to Reed was that actual change was within our reach, with calls for public works programs and a broad redistributive anti-poverty agenda that would have directly addressed the material sources of racial disparities. But ultimately the Johnson administration abandoned a public good model of governance in favor of a growth-oriented agenda, launching the neoliberal consensus that takes us all the way up to the present day.
There's a case to be made that Reed's socialist take may be essentialist in its own right. While Reed claims to be balancing economic structuralist critiques against how communities actually perceive themselves and each other (through culturalist and ontological theories of race), the thrust of his argument tends to be premised primarily on material interests. And as much as he claims to be sympathetic to the real world traumas and gravity of racial injustice, Reed has penned a polemic, which by nature takes the shape of Maslow’s hammer.
Reed is part of a loose coalition of thinkers who rebuke the practice of disaggregating race and class, most of whom have been published at least once over at Nonsite (Cedric Johnson, Adolph Reed Jr., Walter Been Michaels). The general premise is that the Civil Rights movement made a pivot around 1964 from race/class conscious/labor rights radicalism to a more narrow race-central framing.
According to Reed, this pivot has led to decades of activism that provides a barrier to addressing inequality, as it is allowed to co-exist alongside the growth politics that continue to pose barriers to upward mobility. In their view, race affinity, while demonstrating some utility in consolidating small BIPOC communities, nevertheless suffers from singling out culturalist theories of coalition building, while generally putting aside ideas of egalitarian restructuring. As a result, activism of this sort tends to be atomized, obfuscates solutions, and is generally antithetical to multi-ethnic coalition building.
Critiques of this perspective are more than fair: yearning for a class uprising is overly backward-looking, myopically hung up on some limited gains made by Blacks in the New Deal era, and their hostility to culturalist race-centered identity politics ignores what has historically motivated people.
Nostalgia aside, the critique of Reed that he engages with directly is that he is simply is engaging in “class reductionism,” no matter how much he acknowledges the lived reality of systemic discrimination. Of the few who have bothered to acknowledge Reed's book, critics dismiss the book's focus on neutral rhetoric of equity, and reject that there is solid evidence of multi-ethnic solidarity having ever led to real change. Seeing that the evidence shows “the more volatile claim” of racism is the motivating factor with the most potential to induce radical action, any claims otherwise are illusory.
Nevertheless, it's useful to look at how Reed challenges the utility of solutions that flow from a race-based approach. Reed often takes pains to remind his readers that the “Freedom Budget for All” agenda of Randolph and Rustin has mostly been black-holed, as well as the full policy agenda behind the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with the historical record more often than not leaving the “Jobs” part out.
The tragedy according to Reed was that actual change was within our reach, with calls for public works programs and a broad redistributive anti-poverty agenda that would have directly addressed the material sources of racial disparities. But ultimately the Johnson administration abandoned a public good model of governance in favor of a growth-oriented agenda, launching the neoliberal consensus that takes us all the way up to the present day.
There's a case to be made that Reed's socialist take may be essentialist in its own right. While Reed claims to be balancing economic structuralist critiques against how communities actually perceive themselves and each other (through culturalist and ontological theories of race), the thrust of his argument tends to be premised primarily on material interests. And as much as he claims to be sympathetic to the real world traumas and gravity of racial injustice, Reed has penned a polemic, which by nature takes the shape of Maslow’s hammer.
September 18, 2020
The choice of enemies is appropriate — 'race reductionism' has probably even accelerated in popularity since the publication of this book — and he successfully puts Coates through the wringer. The criticism to be lobbed here is not that of 'class reductionism,' but rather its (honestly, rather infuriating) refusal to step outside the bounds of a left-liberalism. I'm sorry, but the 'political economic' determinants of race formation and economic 'inequalities' are not 'automation' and 'deindustrialization.' Anyone serious about their Marxism would know the old man spent about four-hundred pages on how alterations in the process of production can give different forms of appearance to capitalist social relations without altering their essential characteristics whatsoever. Go after capitalism itself! It is this — and its therefore attendant 'solutions' that remain bounded by what is oddly called a 'public-good framework' (?) in opposition to 'growth politics' (??) — that render even its effective critique of neoliberalism ultimately insufficient. Probably wouldn't care as much if it wasn't published by Jacobin, which should push the ball harder.
December 4, 2023
This was such a fascinating book. I had started my dive into the subject by reading “Racecraft” by Karen and Barbara Fields (AMAZING book by the way - HIGHLY recommend). That book laid out the historical foundations for Toward Freedom. Then, I read an article by Reed’s father (The Trouble with Disparity by Walter Ben Michaels and Adolph Reed Jr). That article basically ends with “there is no solution”. But there is! That’s where this book comes in! Reed does an excellent job portraying the historical effects of race reductionism while also bringing it forth in a modern context that you and I can understand. I love the solutions he has portrayed and believe his methods are solid. My only question left for this book is: Does Capitalism get in the way of Reed’s suggestion? Or does he intend to destroy capitalism through this method? Other than that, I’d say it is a fantastic book! Amazing!
October 11, 2020
It was a little hard to read at times but very insightful. Toure Reed does a great job comparing and contrasting the works of Ta-hisi Coates and others to give us a breakdown as to why specific funding programs have not helped to alleviate African American poverty in the US. A worthwhile read if you want to understand how Race and Class are intertwined. The historical examination on how the deindustrialization of the US in the 60s did not allow the African American poor to participate in the emerging economy that favored higher skilled workers was especially interesting. There is just too much to try and explain so I'll just recommend that you read the book instead.
May 7, 2023
Just happened to pick it up in a charity shop, then actually looked at it later and was like oh god I hope this isn't a really racist book that I've picked up but then when I actually read it I realised it was a book by some old white man who doesn't believe race is real but rather from the perspective of race AND class, and through more of a leftist rather than (Neo) liberal lens. As a dyslexic I did find it quite hard to read so would recommend an audio book version if such exists. I was a really interesting and educational read, though did drag on at some points and I found the conclusion to be the most interesting parts. For such a small book it did take me rather a long time to read.
October 26, 2020
I read this immediately after reading "White Fragility" by Robin Diangelo. Needless to say, it was a much different view on race relations in the United States.
Dr. Reed's focus on economic relationships AND race was excellent. He does not shy away from confronting racism in the U.S. but he puts it in the context of structural economic issues.
I highly recommend this book for it's detailed examination of race and class in the U.S.
Dr. Reed's focus on economic relationships AND race was excellent. He does not shy away from confronting racism in the U.S. but he puts it in the context of structural economic issues.
I highly recommend this book for it's detailed examination of race and class in the U.S.
February 19, 2021
Concise, clear eyed, well thought out argument here. The great thing about this book is how it touches on historical policies and events and finally culminates in the best part of the whole book, which is a pretty analytical and fair critique of Obama's and Coates' writings, speeches, and policies on race.
July 5, 2020
Incredibly informative
August 12, 2020
Timely and great companion book to racecraft by field sisters.
December 25, 2020
A concise, incisive criticism of race reductionism, as manifested by Obama and by Coates, and a clarion call for an analysis that touches both race and class, and policy prescriptions that follow
March 1, 2021
Easily the best book on race and/or class issues that I've ever read.
Read
May 31, 2021💯💯💯
June 16, 2021
Brilliant, Everyone should read this book
September 11, 2021
you can't deny that toure goes hard
Read
October 24, 2024... I
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