Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question [Paperback]

While acknowledging Hannah Arendt's keen philosophical and political insights, Kathryn T. Gines claims that there are some problematic assertions and oversights regarding Arendts treatment of the Negro question. Gines focuses on Arendt's reaction to the desegregation of Little Rock schools, to laws making mixed marriages illegal, and to the growing civil rights movement in the south. Reading them alongside Arendt's writings on revolution, the human condition, violence, and responses to the Eichmann war crimes trial, Gines provides a systematic analysis of anti-black racism in Arendts work.

Hannah Arendt: political progressive and committed anti-racist theorist? Think again. As Kathryn Gines makes inescapably clear, for Arendt the Negro was the problem, whether in the form of savage primitives inseparable from Heart-of-Darkness Africa, social climbers trying to get their kids into white schools, or unqualified black university students dragging down academic standards. Gines boldly revisionist text reassesses the German thinkers categories and frameworks.Gines has delivered an intellectually challenging book, that presents one of the most important figures in Western philosophy of the 2nd half of the 20th century in a different and, perhaps, somewhat less favorable perspective.On the whole, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question offers a wealth of research that will be valuable to scholars and graduate students interested in how racial bias operates in Arendt's major works. Gines's writing style is lucid and to the point, and her engagement with secondary sources is comprehensive.Gines carefully moves through Arendt scholarship and Arendt's texts to argue persuasively that explicit discussions of the 'Negro question' point up the limitations of her thinking.

Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question
1. The Girl, Obviously, Was Asked to Be a Hero
2. The Most Outrageous Law of Southern States  thelS!