cover image Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures

Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures

Paul Gilroy. Serpent's Tail, $25.99 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-85242-298-1

Critics of multiculturalism and of calls for ``diversity'' often cite absolutist and exclusionary trends within the movement as evidence that its adherents are taking destructive aim at the liberal ideal of pluralist democracy. But ``multiculturalism'' is more complex than that and the questions raised by diversity's champions about democracy, national identity and our increasingly multinational culture are increasingly inescapable ones. Gilroy ( Ain't No Black in the Union Jack ), a British cultural critic who is also black, transcends the common multiculturalist concept of ideal, essential racial cultures. He also aims trenchant criticism at the movement's more narrow-minded adherents. For him, black culture is itself becoming increasingly international. Pointing to rap music's hybridization of inner-city and Jamaican culture, he asks, ``Why is rap discussed as if it sprang intact from the entrails of the blues? What is it about Afro-America's writing elite which means that they need to claim this diasporic cultural form in such an assertively nationalist way?'' Though the prose is sometimes stiff, unnecessarily obscure and academic, and the book's photos add little, the essays, which include art reviews, speeches and interviews with bell hooks, Toni Morrison and black British filmmaker Isaac Julien, successfully broaden the scope of multiculturalist cultural criticism. Photos. (Apr.)