Earn Why I Hate Abercrombie Fitch: Essays On Race And Sexuality By Dwight A. McBride Format Kindle

seen this book floating around on bookshelves and torrent sites for the better part of a decade and ive always meant to pick it up at one point or another because it seemed like the type of thing id read.
its provocative title really does invite one to explore whats inside, after all, but as i started reading the very first page on the train, i knew i was going to be conflicted about this book.
on one hand, its very well written, still ridiculously relevant, and thought provoking, on the other, it wasnt what i expected, but i think thats my fault,

if you do pick up this book, its important that you know what it is about, and what it isnt, it is about: black male sexuality and the asssplitting truth, it isnt about: abercrombie and fitch,

dr. dwight mcbride is an academic, and despite the books inviting, provocative title, this book was written, whether he wants to admit it or not, for other academics, i am not an academic, as much as i love to say that theory is for everyone, certain kinds of theory specifically, marxist theory is working class and therefore more accessible, whereas other kinds of theory are the sort of thing one sees in the ivory tower of the academy.
this is not dr. mcbrides fault whatsoever. but this book was quite a challenge in many places, particularly when we get to chapter nine: speaking the unspeakable, i absolutely could not read that chapter no matter how hard i tried, it was dense beyond belief, to the point where i found myself shamefully admitting defeat and skipping through several pages at a time.


another issue i took with the book was

simply the format of the nonfiction essay compilation itself, some parts become repetitive, literally appearing multiple times in different parts of the book, while i tolerated this with my previous read audre lorde's i am your sister, which is actually posthumously collected works by the great poet, there were parts where i felt downright weary seeing dr.
mcbride both refer to previous chapters while copying verbatim what was said, i understand it cant be helped, yet some of these chapters i had read only hours prior and it was slightly grating seeing the same words over and over.


a lesser criticism i have with this book and the real reason im giving it three is its politics, not that i have any problem with it, and this is the issue: i dont, far from it. dr. mcbride has awesome politics. but if you are even remotely active in any sort of social justice movement of the day, reading the entire book becomes unnecessary.
so i cannot recommend the entire book in good conscious, because there is simply too much redundant information in it, and if it were easier to read i would recommend it in a heartbeat but dr, mcbride has written this for fellow academics, not the average prole, i do say this with the same caveats as he presents in one of the earlier essays about race and class, that those of us who do get a black middle class come up are still tethered to our working class origins no matter how far we go, geographically speaking or otherwise.
so this is absolutely not a criticism of mcbride himself, but this book explains some important concepts that need to be heard such as the aforementioned connection to race and capital in very dense ways.
hence, im unwilling to recommend this to others,

i wont say i didnt enjoy reading this book, there were many moments were i gasped out loud on the train and got some much needed insight on race and class and sexuality.
dr mcbrides style is what ive referred to so far as academic but it is also deeply personal, especially in chapter five: feel the rage.
his desire for the 'asssplitting truth to be told' is intense, real, raw, i know that desire.

i did like this book, dont mind my tone. i have tired eyes these days, i think most will get something out of this book, i promise, Loved the article on the Gay Marketplace of Desire twas greatness! While it's the title that attracted me as a postfashion queer, the essays are actually fairly broadranging in topic, while generally centering around issues in Black studies.


For me the highlight was "Can the Queen Speak: Sexuality, Racial Essentialism, and the Problem of Authority, " I've long been a fan of Essex Hemphill's essay "If Freud Had Been a Neurotic Colored Woman: Reading Dr, Frances Cress Welsing," which McBride builds on here,

Maybe if I'd read Toni Morrison more recently than my college English classyears ago, I would have absorbed the chapter on her better.
The chapter on Cornell West did make me want to read his writing,

I just wonder if this is being read by nonqueers, Any nonqueer readers care to speak up, Dwight McBride in this three part essays compilation questions the credibility of the African American Studies on the exclusion of the Black homosexual community from its work assembly and lets out a desperate plea for the need of a strong voice for the black LGBT.
The compositions highlight the dilemma of the black LGBT community to thrive and find acceptance not only in the American society but also in their own AfricanAmerican communities.


McBride a homosexual himself relates incidents wherein his white counterparts get asked out and he himself is just an experiment of sexual fantasy without being considered as a serious mate.
What disheartens McBride even more are all the vile stares and gossips that he and his dates especially black are subjected to on regular basis.
Aggravated with these prospects one can see McBrides anger and annoyance when he pens down his thoughts on the “invisibility” status of the Black homosexuals in the society.
Dissecting the utopianism of the white gay community the quintessential white, blonde, rich and cleancut image, McBride debates the existing gay stereotypes solidified by the Abercrombie amp Fitch marketing and recruitment ethics.
Furthermore emphasizing the prevalence of homophobia in the AfricanAmerican community, McBride questions the authority and literary wisdom of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Cornel West for being the voice of the Black community without revealing the “asssplitting truth”.


This is a must read especially for those heterosexuals who assume that by glamorizing various progay laws and regulations make them liberal towards the LGBT community and yet adhere to bigotry in their own hypocritical ways
McBride writes with turgid, unnecessarily convoluted academic prose.
It almost reads like a parody of critical analysis, However, almost a third of this book are quotes from other people's writings, which were interesting, Thanks to this book, I've been reminded to read more sitelinkToni Morrison, bell hooks, James Baldwin, and Essex Hemphill particularly sitelinkCeremonies.
He also has some interesting anecdotes about being simultaneously black, male, and queera hard combination, This collection of essays was extremely valuable to me in the issues it brought up and made me confront and wrestle with I was at times a bit disappointed, however, in a certain lack of depth in the analysis and dissection of the topics at hand.
The title essaywhat an attention grabber!describes the "whiteness" blatantly pushed in AampF's notorious advertising and lays bare the inherent racism in the retailer's hiring practices, but it circles around but somehow never quite takes on exactly why this particular lifestyle branding appealed so intensely to gay men particularly white gay men.
On the other hand, I was really fascinated by the long essay "Straight Black Studies," McBride's interrogation of "Black Studies" and its marginalization of queer voices, filtered through a multifaceted examination of the legacy of James Baldwin.
McBride's style is generally accessible and makes a good introduction to a number of these topics, but ultimately it serves as more of a starting point than the final word.


"Abercrombie and Fitch has devised a very clear marketing and advertising strategy that celebrates whitenessa particularly privileged and leisureclass whitenessand makes use of it as a 'lifestyle' that it commodifies to sell otherwise extremely dull, uninspiring, and ordinary clothing.
" I learned a lot from this book, It is true at times there were a couple of chapters that the writing was too conceptual and academic, However, many things I understood and I loved to read and learn about, Also because it is such a niche topic, that it is both interesting and curious to acknowledge, Race is everywhere, we need to start leaving this concept behind and embrace it together with the multiple dimensions that surrounds us as human beings: sexuality, gender, age, culture, and so on, form part of the race debate.
No matter how much sense this makes, that the author is able to suggest how many streams of race have been: utterly judged by our current white supremacist society, and how have we overlooked such dimensions of it.
Put simply, I wish I had read this book three years ago, . . Far reaching in its scope, these essays show how racism is bound up in the most intimate parts of ourselves from our rhetoric, to gender and of the ways blackness and whiteness is rein scribes in our talks of sexuality.
Great book indeed. is there a way for a book to influence so much yet not really age very well I don't mean that McBride's work is horribly dated it is, as of me writing this a decade old but rather that the parts of his work that seem more relevant are his pieces on race rather than his pieces on queer theory although none of it is wrong.
This is probably aorstar book in another context i, e. one in which elaborations of sexuality and race were not a hot cachet for publishers but simultaneously stultifying in their inability to really say much more than, for example, McBride says here i.
e. what is the point to articulating the fuzzy intersections of race/gender/sexuality if yr purpose is to carve out an autonomous niche a project that, especially in his reading of Cornell West, McBride is critical of.
I think what really is worthwhile in this is the personal investment of McBride in articulating the personal ways in which the circulation of desire and whiteness operate in ways that are deeply alienating which has been taken up as a paintbynumbers part of academic queer theory rather than a point of inquiry which, again, is not what i think he is gesturing towards.
Like this is the stage setting for a number of questions some of which would maybe be considered limited in scope ten years later like his investment in a binary gender regarding what constitutes race and what constitutes sexuality and how they interact but also how they can be transcended which comes up in his readings of West and Morrison in therd section.
I dunno, i rant a lot about books, this is a really good book like the three reflect more how a number of his questions have been taken as points to reiterate rather than points of departure in the field rather than like a judgement of academic merit McBride has a great narrative voice.
I resonated with some of his essays more than others ones that centered on gay blackness contrasted to generalized blackness, I enjoyed his pinpointing the susceptibility of violence experienced by gay black men through vicarious cultural traumas, as well as the lack of understanding on gay black queerness.
McBride broaden my horizon as well as challenged my prior understandings of racial concepts, This book really gives you a full scale look at life and how it feels to be in the extreme minority, Great sociology book! Why hate Abercrombie In a world rife with human cruelty and oppression, why waste your scorn on a popular clothing retailer The rationale, Dwight A.
McBride argues, lies in "the banality of evil," or the quiet way discriminatory hiring practices and racist ad campaigns seep into and reflect malevolent undertones in American culture.

McBride maintains that issues of race and sexuality are often subtle and always messy, and his compelling new book does not offer simple answers.
Instead, in a collection of essays about such diverse topics as biased marketing strategies, black gay media representations, the role of African American studies in higher education, gay personal ads, and pornography, he offers the evolving insights of one black gay male scholar.

As adept at analyzing affirmative action as dissecting Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, McBride employs a range of academic, journalistic, and autobiographical writing styles.
Each chapter speaks a version of the truth about black gay male life, African American studies, and the black community, Original and astute, Why I Hate Abercrombie amp Fitch is a powerful vision of a rapidly changing social landscape, .