Dark Witness - Hardcover

Wiley, Ralph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345400550 ISBN 13: 9780345400550

Publisher: One World/Ballantine, 1996

Synopsis

"You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. . . . Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped."
--Mark Twain
Like his literary forebears--Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and yes, Mark Twain--Ralph Wiley has some information to purvey. The news is not always good. But with Wiley's electrifying take on subjects from the black intelligentsia to The Bell Curve to O.J., Dark Witness is certain to outrage, entertain, and ultimately enlighten.
The titles of his chapters say it all: "One Day, When I Was On Exhibit." "Why Black People Are So Stupid." "Why Niggers Steal, Are Violent, and Stay on Welfare." "Where Negroes Got All That Rhythm." "Whoopi-Do and Hughes 2." "Sin and Juice." Behind the explosive flash of these phrases simmer the intense honesty and searing self-reflection of a man burning for justice. Taking to heart Douglass's words that "it is not light that is needed, but fire...not the gentle shower, but thunder," Wiley, heir to the long tradition of "writer as activist," examines some of the most hotly debated issues of black life today and turns them inside out:
Affirmative action: "Many times, it seemed the 'worst' black candidates were chosen in hopes that they would fail. People talked about increased productivity, but often they meant in the personal sense. When others succeeded or produced, they felt lessened--it is human nature to feel this, but for a 'white' man to feel inferior to a 'black' in America causes instant insanity."
O.J. Simpson: "Now I've heard it said that The Juice, owing to his choices in women and habitat, wanted to be 'white.' A bigger crock of crap I've never heard. Juice made 'whites' feel comfortable with his kind of 'blackness.' He didn't want to be 'white.' He wanted to be privileged. And he was."
Huck Finn: "There's a Mark Twain Middle School not three miles from my base camp. An administrative aide there, a 'black' man, had wanted to delete any reference to that archaic/contemporary word 'nigger' from Twain's book--the one place where such copious use of the word in society was first best put in perspective, where it was used to describe a condition, where it reflected on the speaker, not the subject. There is not one usage of nigger in Huck Finn that I consider inauthentic and I am hard to please that way."
No one writing today has the incisiveness, the fire to dissect the world the way Ralph Wiley does. In Dark Witness he proves once again that he is one the most gifted writers chronicling life in the crucible that is late-twentieth century America.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

n find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. . . . Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped."
--Mark Twain
Like his literary forebears--Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and yes, Mark Twain--Ralph Wiley has some information to purvey. The news is not always good. But with Wiley's electrifying take on subjects from the black intelligentsia to The Bell Curve to O.J., Dark Witness is certain to outrage, entertain, and ultimately enlighten.
The titles of his chapters say it all: "One Day, When I Was On Exhibit." "Why Black People Are So Stupid." "Why Niggers Steal, Are Violent, and Stay on Welfare." "Where Negroes Got All That Rhythm." "Whoopi-Do and Hughes 2." "Sin and Juice." Behind the explosive flash of these phrases simmer the intense honesty and sear

Reviews

Wiley (Why Black People Tend to Shout) arches his satirical barbs high. This "personal narrative about life and death at the fin de siecle" rambles self-indulgently at times but contains much that engages and entertains. In "One Day, When I Was on Exhibit," Wiley invokes Richard Pryor to dissect "the fallacy" of the Manhattan Whitney Museum's "Black Male" exhibit, muses on the suspicious syntax of embattled former NAACP leader Ben Chavis and wonders why American militia types ("these great Constitutionalists") cited the attack on Waco rather than the bombing of the black Philadelphia group MOVE in 1987. He visits with Cornell West, examines the genius of Wynton Marsalis and dissects the Hughes brothers' film Dead Presidents. A former sportswriter, Wiley brings personal ties and experience to a disturbing portrayal of O.J. Simpson, whose "surreal life" of lust and privilege, he argues, was encouraged by whites more than blacks. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A broad, often wildly funny examination of ``blackness'' in America, by the author of What Black People Should Do Now (1993). The quotation marks are Wiley's, and he uses them to raise questions about what the words ``black'' and ``white'' mean in America. In this regard, he approvingly cites the jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, who observes that ``United States Negro culture . . . includes all Americans.'' Wiley's larger interest, however, is in those who would exclude African-Americans from American culture. Warming to this task, he has a fine time poking indignant fun at the authors of The Bell Curve in an essay provocatively called ``Why Black People Are So Stupid,'' and sending up Saul Bellow, to whose question ``Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?'' Wiley responds, ``Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus--unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.'' Wiley's aim is sometimes scattershot; he fails to hit the mark in a too-cute, surreal reverie on the O.J. Simpson trial. He more than makes up for any lapses, however, with a long, sinuous, and altogether elegant essay called ``One Day, When I Was on Exhibit,'' which effortlessly glides from professional basketball to the woes of former NAACP president Benjamin Chavis to the question of self-governance for Washington, D.C., and scores big points at every turn. Equally pointed is Wiley's spirited defense of Mark Twain against those critics who deem him a racist; as he tells his young son, ``If you know a little math, can understand Mark Twain's writings and, most difficult of all, can avoid being a victim of ever-ominous Circumstance, you have a fighting chance; if you show some `heart' . . . then you pretty much have living in America licked.'' Humor is a formidable weapon, and Wiley puts it to outstanding use in this sharp-edged book. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Using personal anecdotes, satirical commentary on American life, and analyses of headline-making news stories, Wiley (What Black People Should Do Now, LJ 9/1/93) attacks the myths and stereotypes of racism head on. Focusing on the current mood of the black intelligentsia?he notes, for instance, that Cornel West is one of the few black intellectuals who see that blaming whites is not productive?Wiley forces readers to look beyond the front-page stories. He examines issues from O.J. Simpson to the Oklahoma bombing to get a better picture of the America psyche and what African Americans really think about themselves In this sharp-tongued and insightful work, Wiley makes his mark on the discussion of race in America.?Kevin Whalen, Union P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: One World/Ballantine
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345400550
• ISBN 13: 9780345400550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 334