BSA Network 102 Summer 2009 DID Kevin Hy
32 DID
Desert Island Discourse
© Melanie Lang, BSA
For your first choice you’ve chosen
Herman Ouseley’s The System (1981,
Runnymede Trust). Can you tell us why
that appeals to you?
Dr Kevin Hylton
Dr Kevin Hylton is a Reader in the
Social Science of Sport, Leisure and
PE in the Carnegie Faculty of Sport
and Education at Leeds Metropolitan
University. Dr Hylton is also the
Associate Director of the Centre
for Diversity in the Professions at
Leeds Met. His new book ‘Race’ and
Sport: Critical Race Theory (2009,
Routledge) uses critical race theory
to explore racialised relations that
produce, or reproduce, racial thinking
and inequalities within sport and
broader society.
What is the theme that runs
throughout your choices?
The theme emerging through the more
serious texts is the black experience and the
black voice and, in particular, the black voice
in the academy, challenging dominant views.
So the people who have written the books
I’ve chosen or who have contributed to them
– Cornel West, bell hooks, John Howard
Griffin, Richard Delgado – have all made a
particular impression on me at a point in
my life and in my career, where a light bulb
has come on, a switch has been flicked
and I’ve been given more momentum,
more motivation to pursue an idea. So
the theme is the black voice, the black
experience and role models.
The books I’ve chosen are in no particular
order but The System was first published
in 1981 and written by Herman Ouseley,
who was the chief executive of Lambeth
Borough Council in London and who went
on to become Chair of the Commission
for Racial Equality. In The System,
Ouseley talked about how racialised
relations played out within a local
government context, so he was using
terminology like ‘institutionalised racism’
and talking about racism in a way that
was critically reflective.
Ouseley was asking really important
questions. But, at the same time, because
of his position, it was a risk, because he
was looking at his own organisation and
many people who worked close to him
would, I’m sure, have been able to locate
themselves within his narrative. So for me
The System was interesting because when
I came across it, I was doing work around
‘race’ and ethnicity in sport and leisure
and there was very little written around
organisations. So for this high-level critical
‘other’ – because he wasn’t an academic
– to be writing in this area for me was a
big deal since I didn’t have those kinds of
black voices as role models.
For your second choice you’ve selected
Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black
Intellectual Life (1991, South End Press).
Tell us more about that choice.
Breaking Bread is a dialogue between
bell hooks and Cornel West, a series of
conversations between these two worldrenowned black academics talking about
issues to do with ‘race’ consciousness,
the academy, social theory, politics and
the black experience. It’s important to me
because the black voice is rarely heard
in the academy so, for me, to not just
read bell hooks or Cornel West but to
‘hear’ bell hooks and Cornel West was
something totally different. It’s written
in such a dynamic style so that you’re
Network Newsletter of the British Sociological Association. Summer 2009
almost a fly on the wall and in my book
on Critical Race Theory (2009), in the
chapter on researching ‘race,’ my starting
point was Breaking Bread; that’s the style I
wanted that chapter to be in. For example,
the three writers that I identified in the
book, although they weren’t interviewed
together, were written up in the style of
Breaking Bread so it would seem like a
dynamic engagement between the four
of us. So Breaking Bread, for me, was
very important because it was an informal,
fly-on-the-wall conversation between
two world class black, ‘race’-conscious
academics, and you rarely find that.
Your third text, Black Like Me (1969, E. P.
Dutton & Co.), is an interesting choice.
Well the sad thing is there’s no fiction in
my list! I was thinking about whether to
include To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, 1966,
Heinemann Educational Publishers) or
The Life of Pi (Martel, 2003, Cannongate)
because I’ve read some great fiction in the
recent past, but it’s not a consistent hobby
for me because I sadly don’t have the time
for it. Instead, the next book I’ve chosen is
the closest thing to fiction I could think of.
It’s a real-life account, although because
it is written so well, it reads like fiction.
John Howard Griffin was an investigative
journalist who in the 1960s wanted to find
out if the black experience was really as
bad as people made out in America so he
consulted a dermatologist about how he
could turn his skin black.
The dermatologist tried to talk him out of it,
not because of the risks to his health but
because he believed he would put himself
in danger as a black man, which I think is
an interesting starting point. Despite these
reservations, Howard Griffin decided he
would do it. He got the support of his wife
and sponsorship from his newspaper and
although he was planning on writing a
series of articles about his experiences, he
ended up writing Black Like Me. He took
a series of pills that made his skin darker
and darker. His finishing touches make me
laugh every time: he added boot polish to
his fingers and other places where there
were differences in his skin tone.
DID 33
becomes racialised and ghettoised without
the use of overt force. He really was on the
inside; he’d got to a point where he was
sick of being treated this way and then the
smallest things set him off, so he began to
avoid certain people, he didn’t want to go
out at night as a black man.
When he had turned his skin black, Griffin
made contact with a black man who
worked as a shoeshine. When he was
a white man, he would sit with a black
man who worked as a shoeshine and
talk, so when he got to a point where he
had ‘become black’, he went to see the
shoeshine. But the man didn’t recognise
him right away, so Howard Griffin recounted
part of a conversation he’d had with
the shoeshine several weeks earlier and
the shoeshine did a double-take. The
shoeshine, as an ‘insider,’ told Griffin he
wasn’t quite a black insider yet as his
speech and some of his mannerisms
weren’t quite right, so he schooled Howard
Griffin into ‘passing into the black world’.
What Griffin found was that some areas,
particularly the more cosmopolitan areas
like New Orleans, were more tolerant of
his black self than others, so it was less
problematic being black. Finally, Howard
Griffin went to the deep South and that’s
when he encountered real problems, the
real issues. It was at that point that he
started to manifest mental health problems
because of the consistent barrage of microaggressions that were heaped upon him
from people who he’d met when he was
white but who suddenly related to him
in a totally different way because he was
black. Another time, he couldn’t get served
in a bar and he had to go round the back
entrance – you see this was at the time of
Jim Crow in the States. In another case,
the usually nice woman who served him (I
think at the train station) gave him what he
called ‘the hate stare’ – a stare that said to
him, ‘I’m not going to serve you, so don’t
come any closer’ and that Griffin interpreted
without her having to say anything; he
knew couldn’t go into that space. So Griffin
was effectively talking about how space
Howard Griffin lived as a black man for a
few months and eventually reverted back
to a white man to write up his account.
That’s what makes Black Like Me so
significant for me. Whoever read it had
to accept that there was a level of rigour
associated with the work and that his
study was robust, and it’s ironic that his
voice is a re-telling of the black experience
as opposed to black people being trusted
to do it themselves.
Your next choice is the edited
collection, Critical Race Theory: The
Cutting Edge (Delgado (ed.), 1995,
Philadelphia, Temple University
Press). Why have you selected that
book in particular?
When I started to look at Critical Race
Theory for my PhD, very few people in the
UK had heard of it and I had to do the
readings for myself and for my Director
of Studies, Pete Bramham. Richard
Delgado is one of the key writers in this
area and he contributed a chapter that
asked the question, ‘Why do we all tell
the same stories?’ I think what he meant
by that is that the black experience has
similarities wherever you’re based, so if
I’m in Leeds talking about issues to do
with ‘race,’ racism, alienation and microaggressions, there’s somebody in Iowa
who’s talking about those same things
and then somebody in North Africa talking
about similar things and, having just
come back from Australia, there were
indigenous Australians there talking about
similar racialised relations. It’s not about a
black-and-white binary; it’s about negative
racialised relations. Delgado and others
raised interesting ideas that I pursued
for my PhD, so it was an important book
for me at the time I found it and it clearly
informed my ideas.
– but although I still have the Bible I was
christened with, it’s not something I read.
Shakespeare is something I can take or
leave, although it’s no surprise, I think, that
my favourite work is Othello (laughs). So
as far as an anthology, I was thinking the
Tom Waits anthology would’ve been great
because I love Tom Waits’ lyrics and I like
to play along on the guitar. The Blackadder
scripts also would’ve been fantastic
because I could do all the parts and keep
myself amused. Similarly, I thought about
the Frazier scripts because I grew up with
that show. In the end, though, I’ve chosen
the Seinfeld scripts (Seinfeld & David,
1998, Harper Collins), which I have at home
and are quite a hefty tome, because it just
has the edge in terms of quality for me and I
could keep myself amused for ages with it.
And what would you take as your
luxury item?
It’d have to be the Oakwood acoustic
guitar I had made for me in 1994. Actually,
it was a choice between a guitar and an
iPhone, which has got so much on it – you
can play movies, music, you can even read
documents on it – but it would’ve been a
cheat really and I wondered whether I’d
get a signal on an island! I’ve been playing
guitar since around 1983 and I’d pick that
as you can play anything you want at any
time, so I could play Tom Waits one day
and I could play Bob Marley the next day;
it’s so versatile. I don’t want to think about
what would happen when I run out of
strings though!
Melanie Lang
Leeds University
Kevin Hylton’s
Choices
Herman Ouseley
The System
bell hooks and Cornell West
Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black
Intellectual Life
John Howard Griffin
Black Like Me
And instead of the Bible
or Shakespeare?
Richard Delgado (ed.)
Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge
I come from a spiritual family – my mother
is a regular churchgoer and my grandfather
was a Methodist minister for Montego Bay
Gerry Seinfeld & Larry David
Seinfeld Scripts
Newsletter of the British Sociological Association. Summer 2009 Network
Desert Island Discourse
© Melanie Lang, BSA
For your first choice you’ve chosen
Herman Ouseley’s The System (1981,
Runnymede Trust). Can you tell us why
that appeals to you?
Dr Kevin Hylton
Dr Kevin Hylton is a Reader in the
Social Science of Sport, Leisure and
PE in the Carnegie Faculty of Sport
and Education at Leeds Metropolitan
University. Dr Hylton is also the
Associate Director of the Centre
for Diversity in the Professions at
Leeds Met. His new book ‘Race’ and
Sport: Critical Race Theory (2009,
Routledge) uses critical race theory
to explore racialised relations that
produce, or reproduce, racial thinking
and inequalities within sport and
broader society.
What is the theme that runs
throughout your choices?
The theme emerging through the more
serious texts is the black experience and the
black voice and, in particular, the black voice
in the academy, challenging dominant views.
So the people who have written the books
I’ve chosen or who have contributed to them
– Cornel West, bell hooks, John Howard
Griffin, Richard Delgado – have all made a
particular impression on me at a point in
my life and in my career, where a light bulb
has come on, a switch has been flicked
and I’ve been given more momentum,
more motivation to pursue an idea. So
the theme is the black voice, the black
experience and role models.
The books I’ve chosen are in no particular
order but The System was first published
in 1981 and written by Herman Ouseley,
who was the chief executive of Lambeth
Borough Council in London and who went
on to become Chair of the Commission
for Racial Equality. In The System,
Ouseley talked about how racialised
relations played out within a local
government context, so he was using
terminology like ‘institutionalised racism’
and talking about racism in a way that
was critically reflective.
Ouseley was asking really important
questions. But, at the same time, because
of his position, it was a risk, because he
was looking at his own organisation and
many people who worked close to him
would, I’m sure, have been able to locate
themselves within his narrative. So for me
The System was interesting because when
I came across it, I was doing work around
‘race’ and ethnicity in sport and leisure
and there was very little written around
organisations. So for this high-level critical
‘other’ – because he wasn’t an academic
– to be writing in this area for me was a
big deal since I didn’t have those kinds of
black voices as role models.
For your second choice you’ve selected
Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black
Intellectual Life (1991, South End Press).
Tell us more about that choice.
Breaking Bread is a dialogue between
bell hooks and Cornel West, a series of
conversations between these two worldrenowned black academics talking about
issues to do with ‘race’ consciousness,
the academy, social theory, politics and
the black experience. It’s important to me
because the black voice is rarely heard
in the academy so, for me, to not just
read bell hooks or Cornel West but to
‘hear’ bell hooks and Cornel West was
something totally different. It’s written
in such a dynamic style so that you’re
Network Newsletter of the British Sociological Association. Summer 2009
almost a fly on the wall and in my book
on Critical Race Theory (2009), in the
chapter on researching ‘race,’ my starting
point was Breaking Bread; that’s the style I
wanted that chapter to be in. For example,
the three writers that I identified in the
book, although they weren’t interviewed
together, were written up in the style of
Breaking Bread so it would seem like a
dynamic engagement between the four
of us. So Breaking Bread, for me, was
very important because it was an informal,
fly-on-the-wall conversation between
two world class black, ‘race’-conscious
academics, and you rarely find that.
Your third text, Black Like Me (1969, E. P.
Dutton & Co.), is an interesting choice.
Well the sad thing is there’s no fiction in
my list! I was thinking about whether to
include To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, 1966,
Heinemann Educational Publishers) or
The Life of Pi (Martel, 2003, Cannongate)
because I’ve read some great fiction in the
recent past, but it’s not a consistent hobby
for me because I sadly don’t have the time
for it. Instead, the next book I’ve chosen is
the closest thing to fiction I could think of.
It’s a real-life account, although because
it is written so well, it reads like fiction.
John Howard Griffin was an investigative
journalist who in the 1960s wanted to find
out if the black experience was really as
bad as people made out in America so he
consulted a dermatologist about how he
could turn his skin black.
The dermatologist tried to talk him out of it,
not because of the risks to his health but
because he believed he would put himself
in danger as a black man, which I think is
an interesting starting point. Despite these
reservations, Howard Griffin decided he
would do it. He got the support of his wife
and sponsorship from his newspaper and
although he was planning on writing a
series of articles about his experiences, he
ended up writing Black Like Me. He took
a series of pills that made his skin darker
and darker. His finishing touches make me
laugh every time: he added boot polish to
his fingers and other places where there
were differences in his skin tone.
DID 33
becomes racialised and ghettoised without
the use of overt force. He really was on the
inside; he’d got to a point where he was
sick of being treated this way and then the
smallest things set him off, so he began to
avoid certain people, he didn’t want to go
out at night as a black man.
When he had turned his skin black, Griffin
made contact with a black man who
worked as a shoeshine. When he was
a white man, he would sit with a black
man who worked as a shoeshine and
talk, so when he got to a point where he
had ‘become black’, he went to see the
shoeshine. But the man didn’t recognise
him right away, so Howard Griffin recounted
part of a conversation he’d had with
the shoeshine several weeks earlier and
the shoeshine did a double-take. The
shoeshine, as an ‘insider,’ told Griffin he
wasn’t quite a black insider yet as his
speech and some of his mannerisms
weren’t quite right, so he schooled Howard
Griffin into ‘passing into the black world’.
What Griffin found was that some areas,
particularly the more cosmopolitan areas
like New Orleans, were more tolerant of
his black self than others, so it was less
problematic being black. Finally, Howard
Griffin went to the deep South and that’s
when he encountered real problems, the
real issues. It was at that point that he
started to manifest mental health problems
because of the consistent barrage of microaggressions that were heaped upon him
from people who he’d met when he was
white but who suddenly related to him
in a totally different way because he was
black. Another time, he couldn’t get served
in a bar and he had to go round the back
entrance – you see this was at the time of
Jim Crow in the States. In another case,
the usually nice woman who served him (I
think at the train station) gave him what he
called ‘the hate stare’ – a stare that said to
him, ‘I’m not going to serve you, so don’t
come any closer’ and that Griffin interpreted
without her having to say anything; he
knew couldn’t go into that space. So Griffin
was effectively talking about how space
Howard Griffin lived as a black man for a
few months and eventually reverted back
to a white man to write up his account.
That’s what makes Black Like Me so
significant for me. Whoever read it had
to accept that there was a level of rigour
associated with the work and that his
study was robust, and it’s ironic that his
voice is a re-telling of the black experience
as opposed to black people being trusted
to do it themselves.
Your next choice is the edited
collection, Critical Race Theory: The
Cutting Edge (Delgado (ed.), 1995,
Philadelphia, Temple University
Press). Why have you selected that
book in particular?
When I started to look at Critical Race
Theory for my PhD, very few people in the
UK had heard of it and I had to do the
readings for myself and for my Director
of Studies, Pete Bramham. Richard
Delgado is one of the key writers in this
area and he contributed a chapter that
asked the question, ‘Why do we all tell
the same stories?’ I think what he meant
by that is that the black experience has
similarities wherever you’re based, so if
I’m in Leeds talking about issues to do
with ‘race,’ racism, alienation and microaggressions, there’s somebody in Iowa
who’s talking about those same things
and then somebody in North Africa talking
about similar things and, having just
come back from Australia, there were
indigenous Australians there talking about
similar racialised relations. It’s not about a
black-and-white binary; it’s about negative
racialised relations. Delgado and others
raised interesting ideas that I pursued
for my PhD, so it was an important book
for me at the time I found it and it clearly
informed my ideas.
– but although I still have the Bible I was
christened with, it’s not something I read.
Shakespeare is something I can take or
leave, although it’s no surprise, I think, that
my favourite work is Othello (laughs). So
as far as an anthology, I was thinking the
Tom Waits anthology would’ve been great
because I love Tom Waits’ lyrics and I like
to play along on the guitar. The Blackadder
scripts also would’ve been fantastic
because I could do all the parts and keep
myself amused. Similarly, I thought about
the Frazier scripts because I grew up with
that show. In the end, though, I’ve chosen
the Seinfeld scripts (Seinfeld & David,
1998, Harper Collins), which I have at home
and are quite a hefty tome, because it just
has the edge in terms of quality for me and I
could keep myself amused for ages with it.
And what would you take as your
luxury item?
It’d have to be the Oakwood acoustic
guitar I had made for me in 1994. Actually,
it was a choice between a guitar and an
iPhone, which has got so much on it – you
can play movies, music, you can even read
documents on it – but it would’ve been a
cheat really and I wondered whether I’d
get a signal on an island! I’ve been playing
guitar since around 1983 and I’d pick that
as you can play anything you want at any
time, so I could play Tom Waits one day
and I could play Bob Marley the next day;
it’s so versatile. I don’t want to think about
what would happen when I run out of
strings though!
Melanie Lang
Leeds University
Kevin Hylton’s
Choices
Herman Ouseley
The System
bell hooks and Cornell West
Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black
Intellectual Life
John Howard Griffin
Black Like Me
And instead of the Bible
or Shakespeare?
Richard Delgado (ed.)
Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge
I come from a spiritual family – my mother
is a regular churchgoer and my grandfather
was a Methodist minister for Montego Bay
Gerry Seinfeld & Larry David
Seinfeld Scripts
Newsletter of the British Sociological Association. Summer 2009 Network