What happens to a country that was built on race when the boundaries of black and white have started to fade? Not only is the literal face of America changing where white will no longer be the majority, but the belief in the firmness of these categories and the boundaries that have been drawn is also disintegrating.
GIRL BEING FED IN A
HUMAN ZOO 1950’S
Book Reviews
In a nuanced reading of culture in a post Obama America, Fading out Black and White, asks what will become of the racial categories of black and white in an increasingly multi-ethnic, racially ambiguous, and culturally fluid country. Through readings of sites of cultural friction such as the media frenzy around ‘transracial’ Rachel Dolezal, the new popularity of racially ambiguous dolls, and the confusion over Obama’s race, Fading Out Black and White explores the contemporary construction of race.
Is the concept of “race” fading out?
A new generation of Americans, millennials and younger, are exposing the myth of the black/white divide and seeing identity as fluid rather than fixed and self-determined rather than ascribed. These old narratives are now splintering - perforated by social movements like Black Lives Matter and #taketheknee. Black directors and writers have now been given more opportunity to share alternative viewpoints in film, television and literature. There is also a new ambiguity in our narratives about what makes someone black and what makes someone white. Even as some Americans continue to defend rigid categories, such as white nationalists and social justice warriors, many others are scrutinizing the notion of race and redefining racial identity for themselves.
What is driving this change?
We are at a tipping point in thinking about concepts of black and white for a complex intersection of reasons. White is no longer the majority and the growing number of “racially mixed” people are claiming all parts of their identity. White privilege is being seen and dismantled through changes in core curriculum and scholarship that exposes systemic racism in law, education, and medicine. Led by the LGBQIA community, gender is beginning to be seen as a continuum, not a binary which has paved the way for changing how we look at race. Readily available DNA testing has debunked the notion of pure racial categories and exposed the performative aspect of whiteness and blackness. Finally, public figures have brought these debates to the front. Former President Barack Obama in his autobiography exposes how he chose blackness; and ‘transracial’ Rachel Dolezal stepped over the colorline creating a media frenzy.
AVAILABLE NOW
FADING OUT BLACK
AND WHITE
This insightful, provocative glimpse at identity formation in the US reviews the new frontier of race and looks back at the archaism of the one-drop rule that is unique to America.
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