Jesse Algeron Rhines's Blog: Dr. RHINES' Excerpts

My BLACK HARVARD/BLACK YALE @ 50% discount in preparation for my new book BLUE SKY FOR BLACK AMERICA that I hope to publish early 2014.

$12 paper $4 Kindle

Go to https://www.createspace.com/3615992
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008CHKYVI
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I'm offering my BLACK HARVARD/BLACK YALE at a 50% discount in preparation for my new book BLUE SKY FOR BLACK AMERICA that I hope to publish early 2014.
Go to https://www.createspace.com/3615992

Blue Sky 4 Black America explores and contrasts the way a century of Black and non-Black utopian authors have imagined the role Blacks might play in America’s long-term future and how one actor, hip hop mogul, Russell Simmons, has begun to design and create a path towards America’s multi-cultural future.

It is the first comprehensive analysis of the use of the concept of race in utopian writings. Although scholars have addressed themes in utopian writings, feminism for example, on a regular basis no work has approached these writings to determine how their authors have constructed the continuation of racial difference within the utopian society. Two articles have taken on this task in a very limited way. Nichols and Henry say one reason for this dearth of attention is that utopian authors have neglected the dimension of race in their fictional creations. Another reason they point to is that non-white authors, African Americans specifically, have produced very few utopian works. More recently, however, Gulia Fabi has compared the use of race in Edward Bellamy's influential Looking Backward, with recently discovered African American works of the late 1800s, Iola Leroy and Imperium In Imperio. Neither of these articles is designed to trace the development of race in utopia over the long haul nor to compare it with the political aspirations of real world minorities. My book will do both these. In so doing I will determine to what extent utopian thinkers are in-step with the expressed political desires of the popular masses of African America.

Utopias are generally thought to be flights of fancy rather than blue prints for policy making. Their power, however, lies in their ability to stir the imagination and point it in the direction of sustained, structural, society wide improvement in living conditions. Where oppositional ethnic or national groups are concerned the term 'heterotopia', as defined by Kevin Hetherington in The Badlands Of Modernity, may be applied: The explicit definition of the society(ies) to be addressed arises. Does the utopian society break off from the existing society or does the existing society change to one more inclusive. From the 1950s and well into the 1990s this dichotomy played large among white and African Americans. Perhaps the earliest work of the period to address this issue was the television series, Star Trek. The original television series regularly integrated three races--Caucasian, African and Asian--on the bridge of the starship, Enterprise. These disparate character roles challenged the centuries old, near total cultural and media dominance of the Anglo-Saxon, a Caucasian subgroup. For the first time regular, salutary, non-white peoples appeared before a majority white audience. Films like Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing (1989) also placed this question in relief when the group Public Enemy's sound track for the film pointedly questioned the value of the integrationist sentiment displayed in Star Trek.

What solutions to this dilemma do utopian fictions propose? To what extent do they track the political aspirations espoused by African Americans? These are the questions to be addressed in this book.(less)

180 pages
Expected publication: 2014
edition language
English

SAVING KATE
--A pean for downtown LA--
By Jesse RHINES, Ph. D., 2011

A small dog, HERO, lopes downtown Los Angeles sniffing a paint pan used on welcome murals for newlyweds, Prince Will and Princess “Kate” Catherine. “Hey, get that dog out of here,” someone yells. “He’ll get hair in the paint.” Hero gets some red paint on his nose before he’s shooed away. “Here doggie, come here doggie,” a painter beckons, “so I can wipe your nose.” She bends with a hankie but falls flat when Hero jerks from a stark standstill to between her legs. “Ufff!” she cries. Co-workers’ laugh, “Smart dog. He timed that dash just right.”

Shabby, Homeless Tim balls up the headline, “Wills and Kate Land Today!” as Hero coughs sniffing Tim’s black-crusted feet. Then, “But wait, hmmm, this may be just the thing,” Tim muses as Hero sneaks behind him and chomps the sandwich. “Hey, give that back!” Tim grabs most but Hero swallows a mouthful and runs.

Rudely awakened next windy morn, Hero opens one eye as a modest car arrives at Grand Central Market. Princess Catherine, accompanied by two bodyguards, emerges saying, “My, I didn’t expect such a wind.” She reaches up to feel her hat blow down the street. Instantly, Hero chases it with one guard in tow. Hero times it perfectly and jumps high in the air to snatch the hat long before it can touch the ground. He trots back toward the hat’s owner but the guard blocks his path crooning, “Here doggie, I’ll take that.” Hero turns to the left. The guard turns blocking Hero’s path again so Hero jerks right but is blocked now by the other guard. Finally, Hero zigzags between them both so that the guards ram each other and both fall to the ground. Hero jumps over them and prances up to a stooping Kate whom he allows to take the hat from his mouth.

Kate hugs and pets Hero who licks her face. She says, “You are indeed a very smart and wily dog and you are my hero second only to my husband.” Ogling the red paint still on his face she says, “Hmmm, I think you’ve mussed your lipstick. Let’s have that off now.” She gently nips the offended hairs.

Brushing their suites the guards return begging forgiveness as a crowd forms. Kate’s been recognized. Kate rises and says to Hero, “You wait here and I’ll have an appropriate prize for you when I return.” Hero licks his chops, walks beside Kate until at the market entry he walks thrice a tiny circle then flops down to resume his siesta. Kate and her guards giggle at Hero’s antics.

To be continued...