Books by Floyd W. Hayes, III

A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies / Forty Acres and a Mule: The Rape of Colored Americans

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Overview

Floyd W. Hayes, III, coordinator of programs and undergraduate studies—A senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Hayes is coordinator of programs and undergraduate studies in the Center for Africana Studies. His teaching and research interests include black politics and political philosophy, urban politics and public policy, educational policymaking and politics, leadership studies, and the politics of jazz. He is the author of numerous articles and the editor of A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies.

He is currently working on a book examining the social and political thought of Richard Wright, “Domination and Ressentiment: The Desperate Vision of Richard Wright.” Hayes earned a BA in French and political science from North Carolina Central University, an MA in African Area Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in government and politics from the University of Maryland.

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In his search for freedom, Wright’s rebel-nihilist breaks the laws of civil society, but he considers himself innocent.  He attempts to create and live by his own values.  Wright refers briefly to this figure as an ethical criminal.  There also is the district attorney, who is sworn to uphold the law, but who does not believe in the sanctity of the law.  Rather, he admires and identifies with those who break the rules of civil society, yet view themselves as innocent.  But can individuals, particularly black persons, actually escape the laws of a decadent American social order and create their own rules?  Can individuals live beyond good and evil?  Richard Wright and the Dilemma of the Ethical Criminal

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Floyd Hayes will speak on “Womanizing Richard Wright: Constructing The Black Feminine in The Outsider.” Tuesday, April 8^th 4-6pm Sherwood Room Levering Hall. WGS Program for the Study of Women, and co-sponsored with the Center for Africana Studies

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From Black Power to Africana Studies

Professor Hayes led UCLA's Black Student Union in its efforts to bring more black professors to the University

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Floyd W Hayes III

Squat at the MD State Powerlifting Championship

US Navy Open meet, Feb. 20, 2010.

Floyd W. Hayes, III sets a Master's record with this 391 pound squat

at the 2010 Maryland State Power lifting Championships and Navy Open.

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Table

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Given the present resurgence of antiblack racism and violence throughout America—as witnessed by lynchings in Virginia and Texas, recent white supremacist aggression at many college campuses, such as Miami University in Ohio and Cornell University in upstate New York, and the vicious right-wing assault on Affirmative Action policies—Kwame Toure’s commitment to contest and uproot all forms of cultural domination is important because it should inspire us to study and struggle against injustice, even to fight the racism and repression at Purdue. Indeed, he epitomizes the contours, questions, challenges, and struggles of our times. A Tribute to Kwame Toure

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Perhaps Richard Wright’s novel of ideas, The Outsider (1953), is his most sustained and compelling inquiry into the question of the possibility and quality of Black male freedom in an anti-Black American world.  Wright also is concerned with the issue of power and the knowledge that buttresses its performance.  Ultimately, he constructs the image of a self-possessed Black man, who is fearless, knowledgeable, and courageous.  Untamed by the culture of modern society, he is an intellectually authoritative existential-nihilist—a rebel-criminal who creates and tries to live by his own social rules (Hayes 1997). 

Significantly, to counteract prevailing literary notions of the Black man as ignorant and submissive, Wright was engaged in creating a new conception of the Black man.   Finally, The Outsider represents Wright’s disillusionment with the Communist Party and with the possibility of racial justice in America. The Cultural Politics of Paul Robeson and Richard Wright

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As an actor, singer, and scholar, Robeson became the most controversial Black figure in America and the most widely known around the world during the 1930s and 1940s.  As a writer of fiction and non-fiction during the same period, Wright almost single-handedly created new, progressive, and assertive images of Black people that challenged traditional racist stereotypes.  Both men left America for a period of time.  Robeson eventually returned with hope and optimism in the USA; Wright became a permanent exile in Paris after World War II, considering white supremacist America beyond redemption.  Although Robeson saw himself as a son of Africa, Wright considered himself a Black man who was the displaced offspring of the modern West.  Significantly, both men were knowledgeable, powerful, and courageous. The Cultural Politics of Paul Robeson and Richard Wright

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I dare say that even in your American political philosophy course, there might be a discussion of 4 or 5 black political thinkers, at best. Perhaps!  At worst, most of these courses include no black voice.  Why do conventional political philosophy professors ignore this profound voice of black opposition?  Presently, I am reading through many of the speeches that black people gave during and after the Holocaust of Black Enslavement.  Why aren't you reading them, too, in your American political philosophy course?  Philip Foner and Robert J. Branham have edited the numerous speeches of black women and men in Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900.  This book contains 925 pages; obviously, black people had something important to say! Ongoing Struggles in Black Academia

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For numerous historical reasons, particularly since the advent of modernity and the rise of the Enlightenment in Western Europe, the production of Africana cultural and literary discourse has been a political act.   In particular, African American culture—and black culture in Latin America and the Caribbean—emerged within the context of Western cultural domination—the Atlantic Slave Trade, chattel slavery, imperialism, colonialism, segregation, white supremacy, and antiblack hatred and violence.  These structures and processes of domination also served as the cultural milieu in which Western Europeans and Euro-Americans came to define and represent their African captives and their American descendants (throughout the Americas) as negative and inferior. 

Hence, the life experiences of native black Americans have been characterized by intense political, social, and cultural struggle.  Black American creative artists have themselves engaged in various forms of resistance in the historic and monumental battle for black freedom, human rights, and self-determination.  In many ways, reflecting black people’s experiences with the underside of modern American culture, beboppers and their complex and improvisational music might be considered counter-modernists, as they both embraced and challenged modernist American culture. Bebop Modernism and Change

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Reasoning that poor education ultimately would hurt black and white working class children in the Nation’s capitol, community leaders called for neither racial integration nor segregation; rather, they demanded quality education.  Washington, D. C. community activists defined this educational goal unambiguously: (1) the distribution and mastery of the fundamental tools of learning: reading, writing, computational skills, and thinking; (2) academic motivation; and (3) positive character-development.  Each of these elements was supposed to advance as students matriculated from elementary through high school.

Like residents of so many other urban areas, Washington, D. C.’s black community lost the political struggle for quality education.  In 1967, the celebrated Hobson v. Hansen case terminated the school system’s tracking policy, but the court claimed that racial integration automatically improved the educational performance of black students.  Liberal civil rights leaders and educational managerial elites won the day and began to implement various racial integration policies—racial-balance using, magnet school programs, and other education experiments.  Because integration is not an end in itself but only a means to achieve an end, the contradictions and dilemmas quickly became apparent. The Collapse of Urban Public Schooling

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Some think that by setting aside a month or two to honor the contributions of African Americans trivializes it. However, this commemoration does not trivialize it, though  sometimes the way it is implemented in a school curriculum, for example, does trivialize it. It’s what James Banks, a prominent educator, calls the “Contributions Approach” to integration of diverse content into one’s curriculum. Its emphasis is on merely inserting the heroes and events and other cultural components into the curriculum without studying them in their historical context. This type of addition usually results in a superficial understanding of this racial group and serves to reinforce stereotypes and misconceptions. One example of an African American personality who has been trivialized is Martin Luther King, who has been reduced to that of a dreamer. Most young people, if they know anything at all about King, have heard of his “I Have a Dream” speech. However, King was a remarkable scholar who has produced volumes of books and speeches. Letters in Support of Black History Months

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Although Shelby’s call for pragmatic black solidarity seems to be persuasive, his argument is unconvincing, especially in view of the growing segment of young and affluent African Americans who are joining the ranks of the ultra-right wing Republican Party.  Chief among those shifting to the right is a significant segment of the black church, which is being effectively co-opted by the Bush regime’s faith-based initiatives.  This trend toward increasing religious, political, and class differentiation and fragmentation within the black population shows every sign of rendering impossible any form of mass black political unity—pragmatic solidarity or otherwise. Pragmatic Solidarity

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BLACK CLASSIC BOOKS   BCP Digital Printing

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The Katrina Papers, by Jerry W. Ward, Jr. $18.95  /  The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008)

Dear Jerry, The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008) is a marvelous resource! It's not like any encyclopedia I've seen before. Already, I have spent hours reading through the various entries. So much is there: people, themes, issues, events, bibliographies, etc., related to Wright. Yours is a monumental contribution! The more I read Wright (and about him), the more I am amazed at the depth and breadth of his work and its impact on the worlds of literature, philosophy, politics, sociology, history, psychology, etc. He was formidable! Floyd W. Hayes

Dear Jerry,
 
I received my copy of The Katrina Papers this past weekend. I had to order it directly from UNO Press. This is a formidable volume! You write with such eloquence, passion, insight, and power. As survivor and raconteur of Katrina's devastation, you give the reader your reflections on this event; you also provide us with informed commentaries about a broad variety of other issues that attract your attention and the people with whom you interact. As a student of politics, I guess I am just overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of your critical observations. Reading this volume and The Richard Wright Encyclopedia, I can comprehend not only the centrality of Richard Wright to your scholarly project, but I also can grasp your own intellectual power and clear vision. For example, your critique of Robert Lashley' rant about Wright's LAWD TODAY is the model of the art of critique. Marvelous!
 
Thanks for your generous comment on my paper on Robeson and Wright. I continue to read both of your books. As always, Floyd W. Hayes

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posted 19 February 2008