Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
by Tom Wolfe
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom WolfeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-10-05
ISBN: 0553380621
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
Book Review: Mau-Mauing predicted the future pushing out of other less pushy groups
Summary: 5 Stars
You didn't have to "be there" during the timespan which Mau Mauing speaks of - you are still there today, if anything more so. Think back to those times when groups were clamoring for recognition. The marquis causes were those of people of color and people with disabilities. In the motherlode of these ideas was Berkeley, and in Berkeley the cutting edge for disability rights was embodied in a powerful disabled human rights organization, The Berkeley Center for Independent Living. This center served as the template for similar organizations statewide and nationwide.
Gradually, very gradually, the rights of the disabled were pushed aside on the political agendas of the liberal movement. Why? Well for one thing there was the issue of race and of color. It is a truism that in our country then, before and now, the vast majority of the poor and the uneducated are Caucasians, not African-Americans, not Latinos, not Asians, not Native Americans - in sheer numbers disadvantaged white people outnumbered all of these racial groups combined due to the sheer number of whites living in this country by comparison to the minority population.
The particular fact has hardly ever seen the light of public examination because of, well, Mau-Mauing practices - bring the subject up before a mixed race audience and know for certain that however much truth was on your side you would be shouted down for speaking that particular proof.
I speak from personal experience as a card-carrying member of the poor-white-trash nation, whose own attempts to climb out of my background of family poverty somehow was never seen in the way which the journeys of either my fellow poor people of color were, or even as dramatically as that of the many middle class African-American young people, many of whom were simply following in the footsteps of their parent-professionals.
In any event, just as poor whites have tended to be tossed aside, so have other disadvantaged groups with similar demographics - chief among those groups have been the disabled people in our country, who again are largely white based upon the country's demographics.
I can remember during my years at sleepy UC Davis in the early seventies, the Disability Center there pulsed with activity. I know because I tried several times to get a job there because I liked that energy, but the competition was fierce. In a final trn-down interview with the director, I saw that he was in a wheelchair but did not see until it was 'too late' that when I extended a hand to shake hands, the director had no hands, only flippers. And I reached far across the desk to shake his flipper, something he said that no more than a handful of people had ever done in his life.
Fast forward 30 years, when my son, having just finished submitting his applications for college was in a horrendous crash which left him in a coma for 8 days thanks to head injuries he'd sustained and blood loss.
Following a near Herculean path, re-learning to sit, to walk, to control his bowels, to talk, 9 months after sustaining his injuries he was insistent that he go to his Mom & Dad's alma mater, UC Davis as originally planned. With my ancient memories of UC Davis' high regard for disabled students, we felt as comfortable as possible saying goodbye to him at his dorm.
That day, after learning that the Student Disability Center was still at the same older building it had been in the 70s, we went there but could not find the Disability Center, which had nearly fully occupied several floors of the old on-campus residence. We finally got directions and discovered that the Student Disability Center had shrunk to several small rooms in the back of the same building, and was being run by a single person and a few part-timers.
The services offered for disabled students were non-existent, amounting to obtaining access "if there is room" to the Campus Diversity Center, a place where not a single disabled person was on staff nor was there a single disabled student, Caucasian or of color, enrolled, nor any Caucasians even among the able-bodied.
The change reflected what had actually been Tom Wolfe's prediction for the future - in a system where "Mau MAuing" with huge Samoan lobbyists held sway, people with personal disabilities, physically or cognitively, did not stand a chance of maintaining their seat at the table.
Most schools have "diversity officers" who comb the high schools recruiting people of color. I've spoken with several of them and none had ever actively recruited disabled students to increase campus diversity. Actually, they'd never even had it suggested to them.
Summary of Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
The phrase radical chic was coined by Tom Wolfe in 1970 when Leonard Bernstein gave a party for the Black Panthers at his duplex apartment on Park Avenue. That incongrous scene is re-created here in high fidelity as is another meeting ground between militant minorities and the liberal white establishment.
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