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A review by hilaryreadsbooks
Who We Be: The Colorization of America by Jeff Chang
5.0
How can we reconcile the election of a Black president with increasing cultural divides?
This is the question Jeff Chang's WHO WE BE contemplates. Reading through this book is no small feat. Bold text is interspersed with reprinted works of art, comic strips, magazine covers, and photographs; detailed moments chronicle a thorough cultural history of race in America.
Culture is continuous, "the narrative we are immersed in every day," and how we see and perceive race is enmeshed in this narrative. Social realism, used by artists to critique systems of oppression and invisibility, was appropriated by capitalist realism to tame representation and draw communities of color into consumerism. The invention of multiculturalism, together with Third World Activism, provoked student-constructed Ethnic Studies programs and identity-driven art but faced backlash citing "colorblindness." White anxiety and repackaged racial codes emerged as the monster that is culture wars.
And yet, why were some calling these times "post-racial"?
Perhaps no part of this book sums up the paradox as well as this one: "While our images showed a mostly optimistic nation moving toward cultural desegregation and racial equality, our modes of living together reflected distancing and blindness, rancor and silence; our politics bespoke deep pessimism and a desire for disengagement; and our social indexes revealed increasing social resegregation and racial inequality."
Full review: https://www.instagram.com/p/CW3bsJpvGbX/
This is the question Jeff Chang's WHO WE BE contemplates. Reading through this book is no small feat. Bold text is interspersed with reprinted works of art, comic strips, magazine covers, and photographs; detailed moments chronicle a thorough cultural history of race in America.
Culture is continuous, "the narrative we are immersed in every day," and how we see and perceive race is enmeshed in this narrative. Social realism, used by artists to critique systems of oppression and invisibility, was appropriated by capitalist realism to tame representation and draw communities of color into consumerism. The invention of multiculturalism, together with Third World Activism, provoked student-constructed Ethnic Studies programs and identity-driven art but faced backlash citing "colorblindness." White anxiety and repackaged racial codes emerged as the monster that is culture wars.
And yet, why were some calling these times "post-racial"?
Perhaps no part of this book sums up the paradox as well as this one: "While our images showed a mostly optimistic nation moving toward cultural desegregation and racial equality, our modes of living together reflected distancing and blindness, rancor and silence; our politics bespoke deep pessimism and a desire for disengagement; and our social indexes revealed increasing social resegregation and racial inequality."
Full review: https://www.instagram.com/p/CW3bsJpvGbX/