Desert Island Discourse
32 DID
Dr Kevin Hylton is a Reader in the Social Science of Sport, Leisure and PE in the Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education at Leeds Metropolitan University. Dr Hylton is also the Associate Director of the Centre for Diversity in the Professions at Leeds Met. His new book ‘Race’ and Sport: Critical Race Theory (2009, Routledge) uses critical race theory to explore racialised relations that produce, or reproduce, racial thinking and inequalities within sport and broader society.
The theme emerging through the more serious texts is the black experience and the black voice and, in particular, the black voice in the academy, challenging dominant views. So the people who have written the books I’ve chosen or who have contributed to them – Cornel West, bell hooks, John Howard Griffin, Richard Delgado – have all made a particular impression on me at a point in my life and in my career, where a light bulb has come on, a switch has been flicked and I’ve been given more momentum, more motivation to pursue an idea. So the theme is the black voice, the black experience and role models.
The books I’ve chosen are in no particular order but The System was first published in 1981 and written by Herman Ouseley, who was the chief executive of Lambeth Borough Council in London and who went on to become Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality. In The System, Ouseley talked about how racialised relations played out within a local government context, so he was using terminology like ‘institutionalised racism’ and talking about racism in a way that was critically reflective.
Ouseley was asking really important questions. But, at the same time, because of his position, it was a risk, because he was looking at his own organisation and many people who worked close to him would, I’m sure, have been able to locate themselves within his narrative. So for me The System was interesting because when I came across it, I was doing work around ‘race’ and ethnicity in sport and leisure and there was very little written around organisations. So for this high-level critical ‘other’ – because he wasn’t an academic – to be writing in this area for me was a big deal since I didn’t have those kinds of black voices as role models.
Breaking Bread is a dialogue between bell hooks and Cornel West, a series of conversations between these two world-renowned black academics talking about issues to do with ‘race’ consciousness, the academy, social theory, politics and the black experience. It’s important to me because the black voice is rarely heard in the academy so, for me, to not just read bell hooks or Cornel West but to ‘hear’ bell hooks and Cornel West was something totally different. It’s written in such a dynamic style so that you’re
almost a fly on the wall and in my book on Critical Race Theory (2009), in the chapter on researching ‘race,’ my starting point was Breaking Bread; that’s the style I wanted that chapter to be in. For example, the three writers that I identified in the book, although they weren’t interviewed together, were written up in the style of Breaking Bread so it would seem like a dynamic engagement between the four of us. So Breaking Bread, for me, was very important because it was an informal, fly-on-the-wall conversation between two world class black, ‘race’-conscious academics, and you rarely find that.
Well the sad thing is there’s no fiction in my list! I was thinking about whether to include To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, 1966, Heinemann Educational Publishers) or The Life of Pi (Martel, 2003, Cannongate) because I’ve read some great fiction in the recent past, but it’s not a consistent hobby for me because I sadly don’t have the time for it. Instead, the next book I’ve chosen is the closest thing to fiction I could think of. It’s a real-life account, although because it is written so well, it reads like fiction. John Howard Griffin was an investigative journalist who in the 1960s wanted to find out if the black experience was really as bad as people made out in America so he consulted a dermatologist about how he could turn his skin black.
The dermatologist tried to talk him out of it, not because of the risks to his health but because he believed he would put himself in danger as a black man, which I think is an interesting starting point. Despite these reservations, Howard Griffin decided he would do it. He got the support of his wife and sponsorship from his newspaper and although he was planning on writing a series of articles about his experiences, he ended up writing Black Like Me. He took a series of pills that made his skin darker and darker. His finishing touches make me laugh every time: he added boot polish to his fingers and other places where there were differences in his skin tone.
Your third text, Black Like Me (1969, E. P. Dutton & Co.), is an interesting choice.
For your second choice you’ve selected
Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991, South End Press). Tell us more about that choice. For your first choice you’ve chosen Herman Ouseley’s The System (1981, Runnymede Trust). Can you tell us why that appeals to you?
What is the theme that runs throughout your choices?
Newsletter of the British Sociological Association. Summer 2009
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Melanie
Lang,
BSA
When he had turned his skin black, Griffin made contact with a black man who worked as a shoeshine. When he was a white man, he would sit with a black man who worked as a shoeshine and talk, so when he got to a point where he had ‘become black’, he went to see the shoeshine. But the man didn’t recognise him right away, so Howard Griffin recounted part of a conversation he’d had with the shoeshine several weeks earlier and the shoeshine did a double-take. The shoeshine, as an ‘insider,’ told Griffin he wasn’t quite a black insider yet as his speech and some of his mannerisms weren’t quite right, so he schooled Howard Griffin into ‘passing into the black world’. What Griffin found was that some areas, particularly the more cosmopolitan areas like New Orleans, were more tolerant of his black self than others, so it was less problematic being black. Finally, Howard Griffin went to the deep South and that’s when he encountered real problems, the real issues. It was at that point that he started to manifest mental health problems because of the consistent barrage of micro-aggressions that were heaped upon him from people who he’d met when he was white but who suddenly related to him in a totally different way because he was black. Another time, he couldn’t get served in a bar and he had to go round the back entrance – you see this was at the time of Jim Crow in the States. In another case, the usually nice woman who served him (I think at the train station) gave him what he called ‘the hate stare’ – a stare that said to him, ‘I’m not going to serve you, so don’t come any closer’ and that Griffin interpreted without her having to say anything; he knew couldn’t go into that space. So Griffin was effectively talking about how space
becomes racialised and ghettoised without the use of overt force. He really was on the inside; he’d got to a point where he was sick of being treated this way and then the smallest things set him off, so he began to avoid certain people, he didn’t want to go out at night as a black man.
Howard Griffin lived as a black man for a few months and eventually reverted back to a white man to write up his account. That’s what makes Black Like Me so significant for me. Whoever read it had to accept that there was a level of rigour associated with the work and that his study was robust, and it’s ironic that his voice is a re-telling of the black experience as opposed to black people being trusted to do it themselves.
When I started to look at Critical Race Theory for my PhD, very few people in the UK had heard of it and I had to do the readings for myself and for my Director of Studies, Pete Bramham. Richard Delgado is one of the key writers in this area and he contributed a chapter that asked the question, ‘Why do we all tell the same stories?’ I think what he meant by that is that the black experience has similarities wherever you’re based, so if I’m in Leeds talking about issues to do with ‘race,’ racism, alienation and micro-aggressions, there’s somebody in Iowa who’s talking about those same things and then somebody in North Africa talking about similar things and, having just come back from Australia, there were indigenous Australians there talking about similar racialised relations. It’s not about a black-and-white binary; it’s about negative racialised relations. Delgado and others raised interesting ideas that I pursued for my PhD, so it was an important book for me at the time I found it and it clearly informed my ideas.
I come from a spiritual family – my mother is a regular churchgoer and my grandfather was a Methodist minister for Montego Bay
– but although I still have the Bible I was christened with, it’s not something I read. Shakespeare is something I can take or leave, although it’s no surprise, I think, that my favourite work is Othello (laughs). So as far as an anthology, I was thinking the Tom Waits anthology would’ve been great because I love Tom Waits’ lyrics and I like to play along on the guitar. The Blackadder scripts also would’ve been fantastic because I could do all the parts and keep myself amused. Similarly, I thought about the Frazier scripts because I grew up with that show. In the end, though, I’ve chosen the Seinfeld scripts (Seinfeld & David, 1998, Harper Collins), which I have at home and are quite a hefty tome, because it just has the edge in terms of quality for me and I could keep myself amused for ages with it.
It’d have to be the Oakwood acoustic guitar I had made for me in 1994. Actually, it was a choice between a guitar and an iPhone, which has got so much on it – you can play movies, music, you can even read documents on it – but it would’ve been a cheat really and I wondered whether I’d get a signal on an island! I’ve been playing guitar since around 1983 and I’d pick that as you can play anything you want at any time, so I could play Tom Waits one day and I could play Bob Marley the next day; it’s so versatile. I don’t want to think about what would happen when I run out of strings though!
Melanie Lang
Leeds University
DID 33
Kevin Hylton’s
Choices
Herman Ouseley
The System
bell hooks and Cornell West
Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life
John Howard Griffin
Black Like Me
Richard Delgado (ed.)
Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge
Gerry Seinfeld & Larry David
Seinfeld Scripts
Your next choice is the edited collection, Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Delgado (ed.), 1995, Philadelphia, Temple University Press). Why have you selected that book in particular?
And instead of the Bible or Shakespeare?
And what would you take as your luxury item?
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