"The theologian Candice Marie Benbow, author of 'Red Lip Theology,' was 'livid' to learn that a white academic had published a book about the theology of trap feminism — an emerging philosophy that examines the intersection of feminist ideals, trap music and the Black southern hip-hop culture that gave rise to it. 'It matters that you have an academic text that would situate Black women’s lived experiences and Black women’s spirituality, and it’s not written by a Black woman,' she said....
In a statement, Wipf and Stock Publishers said... 'We humbly acknowledge that we failed Black women in particular, and we take full responsibility for the numerous failures of judgment that led to this moment.... Our critics are right.'
Among the objections raised, the publisher said, were the book’s cover, which features a young Black woman with natural hair, and which Benbow called intentionally misleading and 'profoundly racist,' and the lack of endorsement by Black experts.... [Sesali Bowen, a pioneer of the concept of trap feminism] found Buck’s use of Black vernacular 'weird and cringey'.... '[Trap queen'] is not what Black women from the hood call themselves,' Bowen said. 'The fact that she has latched onto that specific terminology is weird, and it speaks to a surface-level relationship that she has with this particular community.'"
From "A White Author’s Book About Black Feminism Was Pulled After a Social Media Outcry/The book 'Bad and Boujee' centers on Black women’s experience, but critics said it was written by a white professor and was flawed in its execution" (NYT).
Would you look at this cover and mistakenly believe that's a photo of the author?
Maybe not, because the title is putting down this person. That is in-your-face mean, but I doubt the author designed the book cover. It's no wonder the publisher has responded vigorously.
I'm interested in the small-print part of the title, "Toward a Trap Feminist Theology." That implies that the author is not merely writing about something other people are doing but is proposing and promoting her own way of thinking. Combined with the photograph, it does strongly suggest that the author is black. That is the publisher's fault.
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56 comments:
https://youtu.be/S-sJp1FfG7Q
This explains a lot- Bad and boujee
An anthem.
Had to look it up:
Boujee is hip-hop slang for something “luxurious in lifestyle yet humble in character,” influenced by and often interchanged with the slang bougie.
Now I see my youngest uses it all the time. Unfortunately, w/out the humility.
Blacks are ridiculous, is the usual reaction outside the woke community.
Judging not just a book by its cover, but also the author and publisher.
People who have their professions because of their race think race is very important.
... a white academic had published a book about the theology of trap feminism — an emerging philosophy that examines the intersection of feminist ideals, trap music and the Black southern hip-hop culture
Any White academic who writes anything about Black culture is foolish and reckless.
Stay completely away from that subject !
You are risking your academic career !!
The cover is definitely misleading- such works of non-fiction (and I am not even sure that description is apt for this kind of ridiculous subject- we need a new category next to fiction and non-fiction, like, for example, horseshit) often have the author on the cover itself.
Can we learn about others? We can read a book by a black feminist and understand it but we cannot write a book about our understanding? Then we don't understand, more, we can't understand. This is how the argument now stands. So then, why read about black feminists no matter who writes the book - we won't understand. Is it like men and women? Men can't really feel as a woman feels but they can understand a point a woman makes such as "you retire but I go go on making meals and doing dishes." After all I understand Thomas Sowell and Glenn Lowry or at any rate I understand the point Glenn Lowry is making about Roland Fryer and his bad treatment by Harvard.
"The theologian Candice Marie Benbow, author of 'Red Lip Theology,' was 'livid' to learn that a white academic had published a book about the theology of trap feminism..."
Anybody want to venture a guess at how long before we get a book from Candice Marie Benbow that explains white people to blacks? Because, you know, Candice Marie Benbow knows everything about white people.
Trying to be woke enough to satisfy both feminists and racialists must be exhausting. Glad I have no fucks to give about either group.
Wipf and Stock seems to be essentially a vanity press. Its primary clients are academics who pay the company to re-print their academic books that have gone out of print. Its secondary clients are academics who pay the company because they have not been able to get an academic publisher to publish their books. The company specializes in religious books.
Wipf and Stock describes itself as follows:
[quote]
In the 90s John Wipf of Archives Bookshop in Pasadena and Jon Stock of Windows Booksellers in Eugene noticed new, troubling trajectories in the academic book business: an increase in price and the rate at which academic books were going out of print. In 1995 Wipf and Stock Publishers was born as an answer to these problems and as a response to the demand for books otherwise unable to meet the stringent requirements of traditional publishers.
With just a binder and cutter, the company began in a bedroom, moved to a garage, and is now located in an old Edsel dealership in the heart of downtown Eugene, Oregon.
Over the course of working closely with authors and professors to provide custom reprints, Wipf and Stock began to receive requests to publish new content. Since 2000, we’ve done just that, publishing around one thousand new publications a year.
[end quote]
Here is a list of the religious books that the company has published.
farmgirl said... "https://youtu.be/S-sJp1FfG7Q This explains a lot- Bad and boujee An anthem."
Yes, that is discussed and linked in the NYT article.
I thought being Black was a state of mind. I mean, that's certainly the case for gender, so why not race? Look at Ward Churchill, Rachel Dolezal, Elizabeth Warren. And certainly it is possible to LOOK Black but not BE Black: look at the way Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell are categorized by the leaders of Prog thought.
But already I tire of this. Why is our culture devoting any bandwidth at all to this drivel?
I don't know this particular book, but I use Buck's Reframing the House as a book in my class that talks about the theology of the church.
I use it because it's a great example of a book with (relatively) conservative theological beliefs utilizing global feminist theologies that provide really interesting insights. That Buck writes from a Quaker perspective (one of the few Christian denominations who can't be accused of ignoring social problems at any time in their history) makes it a useful way of stirring my Evangelical student's minds without making them think they have to leave the core parts of their faith behind, like so many progressives do.
Which is to say, I've long respected Buck's work and suspect she didn't choose the cover. Both pop academia and culture discussions are filled with critiques from people who don't actually know or read the actual authors, but latch onto misinterpretations that can help them magnify their own voices. Don't know if that's what happened here, as I haven't read the book in question, but it's very common. Ruthless world, academia. But maybe their critiques are right. I don't want to dismiss them out of hand because that would be doing the same sort of thing as I suspect they are doing.
Wipf and Stock has published 14,160 books about religion
If you have written a book about religion and are willing to pay Wipf and Stock to publish it, then that company will publish your book.
It's been said often but needs frequent repetition-
Non-white people who bray about "cultural appropriation" will have attention paid when they stop "appropriating" electricity, internal combustion engines, computers, the English language, dollars, and Jesus from wypipo.
Until then, just a cacophonous braying of jackasses, to which no attention need be paid.
Jennifer M. Buck should come out as a black transgender woman. That'll shut them up. If someone argues, "But you're white!" she can respond, "That's what you say!" And if someone doubts her/his transgenderisn, she can respond, "You have no idea how hard it is to be a black trans woman in a white man's world!" Then, publish an article in the NYT about how all of her critics are bigots, including her black critics who have absorbed white supremacy, and how we have such a long journey to go before we can reach true equality. She should end the article with, "You ain't my Massah!"
Mike, your description of Wipf & Stock is incomplete. It has some aspects like that, there are some books it publishes that lean closer to a vanity press, but it's really much bigger than that and allows for a wide amount of publishing. Indeed, your mischaracterization is even bigger in light of the book being published under Wipf & Stock's Cascade imprint, which is as rigorous as any academic publisher in terms of managing the process and editing.
The key with Wipf & Stock is they take a different approach than many publishers, who tend to enforce more narrow ideological goals or will publish almost anything but then price them at exorbitant costs. Wipf & Stock is much more democratic, and will publish books that have gone out of print but are still important, books that may not have the market reach that some publishers demand, fit into a number of directions that may not ideologically align, or all kinds of other reasons.
That means that while there's a lot of variety of quality and depth, they really make up for it in providing a really useful forum that isn't a vanity press (Jennifer Buck is a qualified academic writer) with more attentiveness to the variety of the market and benefit of the author than most other publishers.
There's actually good reasons for someone who can get a book published with more established and prestigious publisher to go instead with Wipf & Stock (especially if the acquisitions editor thinks it would fit with Cascade).
Interestingly, in her CV, Buck lists the book as originally published by (or at least contracted with) Lexington/Fortress Academic.
Maybe more interesting, Wipf and Stock pulled the book from publication.
It looks to me like Buck's problem wasn't so much the content but her lack of engagement with the community she was writing about. She didn't have any relational cover.
Get your used copy while you can!
"Maybe more interesting, Wipf and Stock pulled the book from publication."
That's what the NYT article is about too: "In response to the criticism, the book’s publisher, Wipf and Stock Publishers, decided on Wednesday that it would pull the title from circulation." We don't need a second link to establish that fact.
I didn't overly stress that point, but it's in the article headline that I've quoted: "A White Author’s Book About Black Feminism Was Pulled..."
"Maybe not, because the title is putting down this person."
I disagree. In this context, both "bad" and "boujee" are considered positive traits and the author analyzes and celebrates those in the book.
Would you look at this cover and mistakenly believe that's a photo of the author?
No, bc it's my impression that pics of authors are only featured on book covers after they are famous. Otherwise, the cover art is meant to depict the general sense of the book and the author's pic is on the back cover, if it appears at all.
Sorry for the second link. I can't usually read NY Times articles without a pay wall warning so often don't click through and have to find other accessible links for topics
Paddy O, yeah, you are probably correct- I shouldn't label the book horseshit without having read it. Buck may well do a good job explaining and critiquing the subject- my reaction is more related to why would anyone bother doing such a book, black or white.
''It matters that you have an academic text that would situate Black women’s lived experiences...'
'Situate?' Who writes like this.
Black people can talk about cultural appropriation the moment they stop driving cars, stop using phones, stop flying in planes, and stop writing missives on the internet.
Until then, STFU...
I've done several minutes of deep research online and can confidently dismiss this as a Bitch Fight.
All these three seem to have in common is shallow jargon and large egos (among other things).
How long until the two B/black women are booked for The View?
the objection though is that a white person is writing about black people, not just the cover photo. How dare she?
It's my bet that the cover model is a fabrication.
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/category/portrait#image=1154991
I'm fluent in English and Spanish.
Is that Cultural appropriation?
I also identify as Puerto Rican. Does that excuse my bilingualism or make me doubly evil?
I would note that there are some loonies who think that "no true Puerto Rican" will even know how to speak any language other than Spanish
John LGKTQ Henry
Is it generational? Plenty of White women could be writing about Du Bois, King, Hurston, Morrison. If they want to write about little-known aspects of Black youth culture it's harder to pull that off. The more contemporary and the more intimate a topic the more one has to belong to the group one is writing about. We take that further now, but the assumption has been around for some time.
Hey! When clicking on famrgirl’s link, I first got an advertisement being pitched by a black woman for some kind of app to teach good grammar to college students… isn’t THAT cultural appropriation??
"it speaks to a surface-level relationship that she has with this particular community"
Now do any other person performing writing books about a specific, currently PC, group-identity demographic. They are all just like that. The person is an author, not the subject of the book.
Heh. "... widely condemned on social media as poorly executed ...". So she hit the nail square on the head, did she?
'It matters that you have an academic text that would situate Black women’s lived experiences and Black women’s spirituality, ...'
"situate". Why do they do that? In her case, it could be stupidity, or just mimicry, but it is common among the academic griftoisie, this intentional misuse of verbs. They're always "interrogating" something that can't speak, or "situating" it without specifying where. They think it makes them sound particularly adept at "discourse". And it does, too, in a way. You wouldn't have thought to put it that way. But that's because you speak English.
As Glen Greenwald has said, democrats religion now is "censorship". Every issue is subjected to it.
T\
I like the quotes around 'livid'. Something whites can be, that Blacks can't. Besides uncapitalized.
I guess free expression is free expression. But, I am disgusted at the idea that the Author couldn't know because she wasn't...
Should I stop reading this blog because the Blogmistress spent her early school years in North Jersey and I spent mine in South Jersey and thus she could not possibly know what my life was like?
Just about the time I regain hope for this great nation, someone does something to diminish it.
I thought Patty O's comments, and his reasoning, at 4/16/22, 10:26 AM was spot on. Thank you.
Regards — Cliff
So what is "trap feminism"? Is this, perchance, a notion that feminism is a trap? Or the trap of thinking feminism is a trap? I suppose I'll have to google it. Pretty sure Google won't be suppressing misinformation about trap feminism.
Ah, here we have it; "Bowen’s work approaches a theoretical discourse through the accessible and nuanced lens of trap music – which she uses without centering the men who dominate the genre’s “bros before everybody else” public image." Yeah, you probably don't want to center them too much, if you're claiming to be some species of feminist. Black America is not ready for "Ho Feminism".
Here is a thought-provoking account of that "bros before everybody else" thing, and its relation to, or perhaps intersection with, the feminine.
farmgirl said...
https://youtu.be/S-sJp1FfG7Q
This explains a lot- Bad and boujee
An anthem.
*****************
Over ONE BILLION views.
Most-often repeated comment: "This song never (sic) get old."
Steely Dan had it right fifty years ago, when they wrote in "Babylon Sisters": "Turn that jungle music down".
We are well and truly fucked.
The book would not be my pot of tea, but at least the author cared about the subject enough to write a book about it.
What troubles me is this is a kind of story I have seen before. The white woman in Central Park who became afraid on encountering a stranger (sounds like a reasonable fear). Or the white girl in Tennessee (I think) who used a bad word on social media, and someone used it to ruin her a couple of years later.
It's this public ritual shaming of white women (or girls) who have violated some racial taboo.
Paddy O at 10:43 AM
Mike, your description of Wipf & Stock is incomplete. It has some aspects like that, there are some books it publishes that lean closer to a vanity press, but it's really much bigger than that and allows for a wide amount of publishing. .... There's actually good reasons for someone who can get a book published with more established and prestigious publisher to go instead with Wipf & Stock (especially if the acquisitions editor thinks it would fit with Cascade)
Thanks for your clarification, Paddy.
It's not a very good cover. It looks like the cover from some really cheap, teen novel. Plus, the groveling by the publisher is over the top.
I don't think that it's right, but we've come to a place where you can't write a book about an ethnic topic without actually being a part of that ethnic group. It used to be that young writers were advised to "write about what you know." That has expanded into: You are only allowed to write about your own race and culture. The really sad part is that life is not like that. Where I live we constantly have overlapping race and culture interactions. So does that mean that a book written about where I live needs multiple authors to insure its racial and cultural authenticity?
A book with an Afro-wearing Negress on the cover with a face that says "I have an attitude" is not gonna be on my reading list.
Diversity. Per chance rabid.
Wikipedia on "trap music": "Trap music uses synthesized drums and is characterized by complex hi-hat patterns, tuned kick drums with a long decay (originally from the Roland TR-808 drum machine), and lyrical content that often focuses on drug use and urban violence. It utilizes very few instruments and focuses almost exclusively on snare drums and double- or triple-timed hi-hats."
So what is a Trap feminist philosophy or point-of-view? One in which feminists focus on hi-hats and snare drums? A philosophy that focuses on feminine drug use and urban violence?
This almost seems like a version of that game where you choose a adjective, noun, noun (or adjective adjective noun) to describe a philosophy Hegelian Communist Gangster, Libertarian Republican Racist, Left-leaning woke feminist, Trap feminist theologian.
Niche theology. Yawn.
'It matters that you have an academic text that would situate Black women’s lived experiences and Black women’s spirituality, and it’s not written by a Black woman,'
==========
so is the hieratic come in a different dialect/flavor for black and white?
'It matters that you have an academic text that would situate Black women’s lived experiences and Black women’s spirituality, ...”
Question.
Is the apostrophe in the correct place? Women being plural, shouldn’t the apostrophe come after the ‘s’?
@farmgirl ...
after the 's' if the plural noun already ends with s which women does not
so correctly women's
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"[Sesali Bowen, a pioneer of the concept of trap feminism] found Buck’s use of Black vernacular 'weird and cringey'...."
I think that there's no doubt that "cringey" is a word likely formulated and doubtless popularized by young white women and their effete male allies. So while it might be off limits for aging white men like myself (heartbreaking of course), it's also cultural appropriation for black women to use it. Back off Sesali!
What about the millions of copies already sold?
So I just clicked on the movie, Roadhouse, on youtube (a guilty pleasure, like the movie, Desperado) and it reminded me of where I previously saw that pink font.
Cheesy 80s movies. (I told you that the cover art of the book was bad.)
I actually saw the movie, Desperado, in a movie theater in Orange California when it came out. The crowd was overwhelmingly Latino and a good time was had by all. It's like a martial arts film...but with guns instead of martial arts.
I just love it when Steve Buscemi says, "And in walked the BIGGEST Mexican I have ever seen." Antonio Banderas is 5'-9". He's not short, but he's not really large.
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