Talk:Houston A. Baker, Jr.

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Can we please get some more information on Baker? 90 percent of this article focuses on his response to one (relatively minor) event in 2006. He was a noted literary scholar for thirty years before that happened, and he's an important thinker in African American Studies.

I can't add to it myself because I don't know enough about his work, but surely someone can. Michial 22:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

No more info on him as needed, as the guy has no notability except for his very vocal involvement in the Duke lacrosse case. Edrigu 14:56, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that is amazingly inaccurate. Professor Baker is one of the most notable litterary scholars in the United States. His comments during the aftermath of the Duke case were inexcusable, but his scholarship is beyond question. Catesby42 14:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

For an intelligent assessment of his literary merit, see the Terry Teachout article listed in the references. --Anthon.Eff 01:36, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). Αργυριου (talk) 21:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scholarly contributions

To User: Stevietheman: achieving NPOV is not achieved by erasing sourced text that tells a part of the story that you think is overemphasized. It is achieved by entering sourced text that tells a part of the story that you think is neglected. I will reintroduce my sourced text--I was careful to use the exact words of Terry Teachout, an important mainstream critic (take a look at who publishes his stuff!) whose judgment is respected by most other mainstream critics, thus avoiding the problem of libeling a living person. If you think the article is one-sided then get to work!--find your own sources, write your own paragraph! And you might check the previous discussion regarding this article, at User_talk:Gamaliel#Houston_A._Baker_Jr., where you will find these two sentences:

"You are certainly welcome to insert contrary opinions, provided they are cited from reliable sources. But there clearly is a POV problem with the article if it does not include and reflect this information from mainstream reliable sources."

--Anthon.Eff 21:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, so I looked up Terry Teachout after reading this thread. "Important mainstream critic"! You must be joking. I follow US literary criticism reasonably closely and I had not heard of him. I spen a few hours looking up his articles and reading them, and he I did not find anything even vaguely important and if this kind of right wing pandering is mainstream, well, I suppose the right wing fanatics do control American media. But enough time spent on the trivial. 12.151.151.3 21:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm permanently objecting to this material, as it is obvious POV and empty trashing by one critic. Glorification of the flowery language of a cultural critic is useless material for an encyclopedia. You'll need to bring in Third Opinion, as I refuse to relent. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 22:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I requested a third opinion. In the meantime, since it is clear that you have strong feelings about this article, why don't you write something about HAB's scholarly contributions? Find someone reputable who said something nice about him--it's not hard, look at the blurbs on his books, lots of academics gush about his work. Once you get things going, I'll add my bit (and I promise not to react by erasing wholesale whatever you submit). --Anthon.Eff 23:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any objection to criticism by Teachout, a notable fellow, being included, but this isn't the way to go about it. Dropping in a large, very negative blockquote attacking Baker's scholarly contributions, when the article makes no more than a token effort to describe those contributions, is inappropriate. While I share your dislike of drive-by taggers who do nothing but complain and delete, you simply can't drop in a chunk of negative text and expect other people to balance it out. Every edit we make should strive for neutrality. Gamaliel (Angry Mastodon! Run!) 20:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I have to agree. Now, Stevie, it's up to you (and the anon from Durham, if he's lurking)-I look forward to seeing what you can do. Let me know if I can help! --Anthon.Eff 21:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Highly partisan and misleading article

I second opinion of those who have pointed out how biased this article is in its depiction of Baker. Baker is one of the most prominent scholars of American (including African American) literature and African American culture in the United States. The section titled "Scholarly contributions" basically states nothing besides claiming that Baker holds an extremely pessimistic view of social progress in the US. A similarly reductive statement would be to say that Stephen Jay Gould was a famous baseball fan. Baker's corpus of important publications reaches back into the early 1980s. The bibliography section lists only one of his numerous books. The overemphasis of Baker's involvement in last year's Duke Lacrosse incident as the primary event of Baker's career is blatantly inflammatory--the writer is purposely trying to sling mud without even a cursory attempt at making this look like a legitimate summary of Baker's relevance in academics and general intellectual life.

So write it yourself! What's wrong with you guys? Seems like no one writes articles anymore--they just run around slapping down POV tags, whining about what other people are doing. If you think "Baker's corpus of important publications" should be cataloged here, then do it! --Anthon.Eff 01:44, 9 August 2007 (UTC)