Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! : Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America

In this vibrant, thought-provoking book, Kelley, "the preeminant historian of black popular culture writing today" (Cornel West) shows how the multicolored urban working class is the solution to the ills of American cities. He undermines widespread misunderstandings of black culture and shows how they have contributed to the failure of social policy to save our cities. Noted historian Robin D. G. Kelley is tired of people talking about his mama and folks like her. He's tired of victim-blaming critics and policies that pin most of our social ills on the black urban poor. In Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Kelley fights back. In this provocative and timely book, he examines how scholars, activists, policy makers, and displaced working people themselves have made sense of the contemporary ghetto. At the same time, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! gives voice to the very urban populations rendered silent by their attackers. He asks us to see culture and community as more than responses to, or products of, oppression. Ultimately, this is a hopeful book. Kelley reveals how new multiracial social movements emerging today have the potential of transforming the nation. In this vibrant, thought-provoking book, Kelley,'the preeminant historian of black popular culture writing today'(Cornel West) shows how the multicolored urban working class is the solution to the ills of American cities. He undermines widespread misunderstandings of black culture and shows how they have contributed to the failure of social policy to save our cities.From the Trade Paperback edition.