One More River to Cross: The Therapeutic Rhetoric of Race in the Post-Civil Rights Era - Softcover

Nigel I. Malcolm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761839607 ISBN 13: 9780761839606

Publisher: University Press of America, 2007

Synopsis

In One More River to Cross, Professor Nigel I. Malcolm argues that the rhetoric of W.E.B. Du Bois contributed to a sense of individual and group failure among African Americans. Du Bois also created a need to explain the reasons for the failure of the group, as well as that of individuals within the group, specifically those within a segment of the black population deemed the talented tenth. Professor Malcolms work explores not only the root causes of this sense of failure among Blacks, but also the way in which some members of the talented tenth seek to cope with failure.

Critiquing the writings of Derrick Bell, Randall Robinson, and Shelby Steele, Professor Malcolm reveals the ways in which these authors explain the choice of an individual or a society between consolation and/or compensation for perceived failures among Blacks. He argues that whether an author emphasizes the past or the present, the spiritual or the material, the self or the society, the inevitable result is a powerful rhetoric with implications for the future of race relations, as well as advancement among Blacks in America. The discussion of rhetoric is tied into the failure of the post-civil rights era and to W.E.B. Du Boiss earlier discussions of the talented tenth and its role among Blacks.

About this title

About the Author

Nigel I. Malcolm is Assistant Professor of Communication at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. Professor Malcolm was a recipient of the William Jared Knapp, Jr. Memorial Scholarship while at Yale University. At the University of South Florida, he received the Graduate Educational Opportunity Grant Fellowship to pursue his M.A., and received the Florida Education Fund's McKnight Doctoral Fellowship to pursue his Ph.D. In 2005, he received the Arthur P. Bochner Award in recognition of outstanding achievement in doctoral studies while working on this project at the University of South Florida.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of America
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761839607
• ISBN 13: 9780761839606
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 116