Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion: Essays 1964-2002

by Martin Duberman

"Despite our country’s bootstrap rhetoric, outsiders in this land of individualism rarely make a go of it alone. As the first essay in this collection—an analysis of the anti-slavery movement of the mid-nineteenth century—attempts to show, improving conditions for those who have been left out‚ hinges on the ability of the despised and downtrodden, and their allies, to band together in collective struggle and insist on their entitlements."—from the Introduction, Left Out The lives of "outsiders" have been the focus of Martin Duberman’s work as a public intellectual for the past four decades. Best known for his biography of Paul Robeson, Duberman highlights the "banding together" of the excluded in Left Out. These identity-based movements—black power, gay liberation, feminism—have created a vital and controversial change in American consciousness in recent decades. Duberman’s collected essays trace this evolution of thought in lively and engaging language. Available here for the first time in paperback, this edition includes three new essays. Presenting summations of Duberman’s views on such matters as race, foreign policy, gender, and sexuality, Left Out offers incisive analyses of the split between class-based and identity-based politics on the Left. As a white anti-racist, feminist man, socialist queer, and "godfather" of the gay studies movement, Duberman has taken many brave and prescient stands. His writing shows why he is considered a deeply moral and wise man. "No matter the topic, Martin Duberman’s thoughtful and nuanced essays are written with a humanity and optimism all too rare in our cynical times."—Susan Faludi "[Duberman] has engaged the greatest struggles of our times with an unflinching nerve, a wise heart and a brilliant intellect."—Jonathan Kozol

Genres: LGBT, Nonfiction, Essays, Queer

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Martin Bauml Duberman is a scholar and playwright. He graduated from Yale in 1952 and earned a Ph.D. in American history from Harvard in 1957. Duberman left his tenured position at Princeton University in 1971 to become Distinguished Professor of History at Lehman College in New York City.

Reviews

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew essentially nothing about Martin Duberman before starting this book, which I had bought 20 years ago on a whim at a book sale. This collection of essays spans several decades and a number of different topics. The essays on their own are largely engaging but the text as a whole feels like a grab bag of topics without a lot necessarily holding them together.

Duberman is a history professor, and did much pioneering work in LGBT studies back when this was far outside of mainstream studies. The essays in this book touch a number of left topics, however, not only LGBT issues. There are essays dealing largely with racial issues, foreign policy, and inter-left schisms within these areas.

I was really caught up in the first essay in the book, which is an examination of the abolitionist movement. Duberman compares public attitudes around those calling for the immediate the abolition of slavery and other anti-slavery groups that held a more "moderate" position of allowing slavery to theoretically die out slowly over time by choking off access to new slave states/technological innovation increasingly making slavery less necessary for the Southern economy. He makes some very cogent points about how seductive it is to adopt a worldview that recognizes a wrong in the world but insists that long term trends will solve the issue without any action or sacrifice in the near term.

That essay was the high point for me, though the rest of the book is always readable if not always necessarily compelling. The essays regarding the creation of early LGBT advocacy organizations in New York have a personal bent, as Duberman was personally involved; this section was a little too in the weeds for me and gets somewhat bogged down in questions about left purity that reminded me strongly about some of the meetings I have sat through in my younger days.

Duberman is always very conscious of himself as a white man and tries to be careful with his language and recognition of the privilege he has.

In the end, this was a book I liked but at the same time a hard book to recommend since it is so diffuse in its subject matter; if you are like me in that you enjoy cultivating a diverse taste in your reading material, you may find yourself enjoying this text as I did. But that's going to be a minority of readers.

Duberman is probably most interesting for those with a strong interest in gender and sexual studies, since that is where his focus seems to have evolved toward over the years. If you want a sampler of this thought, I guess this is a fine book for that. But for those wanting a deeper dive, he has a large collection of other books published over his career that are likely more rewarding reads.

[Corinne Blackmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

read

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Duberman is a good storyteller. Although the organization of the book was a bit too hodge-podge for me.