I have been reading a book by Thomas Chatterton Williams. Before getting to the book I had read one of the articles by the author published in The Atlantic last year and found it very interesting and true (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/racism-without-racists/245361/). Googling up authors usually gives you information about an their personal life, appearances on RV and News etc. but this time I got straight to this book probably because Mr. Williams was still in the process of marketing the book.
It is a well-written book. He surprises us with his inside knowledge of the hip-hop culture, his own experiences and echoes of hip-hop music, and switches over seamlessly to deep introspection, exploring ideas of love, attachment and political voice, things that we don't associate with hip-hop anymore.
Living in Harlem, I myself was told by a lot of people in the neighborhood that hip-hop isn't what it used to be. There was a whole social-movement side of it that has completely disappeared. I may not have listened to James Brown as a teenager but I could see and feel the power of his music in its political statement.
The author argues that the black community has somehow consciously stuck itself in a gansta culture, devoid of social introspection, a world that is unreal. The black community, according to Mr. Williams, rejects education and adores dirty-cash. He may not be the first one to think that way. Public intellectuals and entertainers alike have often hinted at a certain bliss in ignorance. President Obama himself has talked many a times about something being fundamentally wrong on the streets of the US.
It is difficult to hold such a position simply because the lack of acceptance of education and other Western institutions itself is a reverberation of years of oppression. For one thing, blacks were not even allowed in colleges for a long time. Even though we do live in a time when pretty much every institution is open to all, the desire for education hasn't developed equally in all ethnicities. Mr. Williams account of his own experiences makes it appear as if his proximity with the cannon of Western literature had liberated him. In saying so, he seems to be arguing that Western Cannon itself is the only way to achieve true liberty - a thought that would be contended by many of contributors of the Western cannon themselves.
In this memoir he does express a certain frustration when his interests didn't align with his friends any more. He seems to blame the black community for not accepting Western means- its ideas of beauty and love - but chooses not to inspect the history of black and white relationship in the Americas as a factor that might have inhibited the dissemination of Western ideas to all its subjects.
Though the writing style is excellent and the realism of his account riveting, the author does limit his scope to raising questions, instead of trying to answer them. He is not a sociologist, he admits in the end. His honesty in rest of the book as well makes it a very interesting read.