The End of Blackness

Categories: In the News , African American

Debra Dickerson is ubiquitous.

For the last two months she has been everywhere.  I have never really thought of her before although I have read a few of her articles on Salon and Slate.  Maybe I have heard her on NPR.  But after her article positing the question is Barack Obama black enough and then her article about raising her biracial children "aracial" I decided to pick up the book The End of Blackness.  I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about it at first or even if I wanted anyone --especially African Americans-- to see me reading it, fearing that my black card would be immediately revoked on the spot.

After reading the book I can't help thinking I want everyone to read it and I'm seriously thinking about passing the book out as Christmas and graduation gifts. The End of Blackness is not about finality of blackness as a culture but ending blackness as a political group and restructuring the confines that have been created to define "what black is". 

The book was published in 2004, a few months before Bill Cosby made his infamous statements that set black political wags and bloggers talking.  Michael Eric Dyson published his book, "Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind" which was answered by Juan William's "Enough : the phony leaders, dead-end movements, and culture of failure that are undermining Black America-- and what we can do about it ".  Dickerson's book has been ignored in the volley, but still a definitive work of early 21st century black thought.  As African Americans search to define themselves politically, culturally and racially in the kaleidescope of the new multiculturalism that is changing America's skin-colored landscape we need to ask ourselves the question posed on the back of Dickerson's book:

"Does racism work for you?"