Post Black
How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity
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- US$12.99
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- US$12.99
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As a young journalist covering black life at large, author Ytasha L. Womack was caught unaware when she found herself straddling black culture's rarely acknowledged generation gaps and cultural divides. Traditional images show blacks unified culturally, politically, and socially, united by race at venues such as churches and community meetings. But in the "post black" era, even though individuals define themselves first as black, they do not necessarily define themselves by tradition as much as by personal interests, points of view, and lifestyle.
In Post Black: How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity, Womack takes a fresh look at dynamics shaping the lives of contemporary African Americans. Although grateful to generations that have paved the way, many cannot relate to the rhetoric of pundits who speak as ambassadors of black life any more than they see themselves in exaggerated hip-hop images. Combining interviews, opinions of experts, and extensive research, Post Black will open the eyes of some, validate the lives of others, and provide a realistic picture of the expanding community.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Using the 2008 election of Pres. Barack Obama as a springboard, Chicago writer and editor Womack (Beats, Rhymes and Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip-Hop) launches an engaging and ambitious discussion of African American identity in the 21st century. Rather than concentrate on the spectacular or "every pathological condition that ever existed in African American life," Womack shines a bright light on the ever broadening, increasingly visible black middle classes that remain largely unseen by white America: young black professionals, immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, LGBT members, community-based artists, and others. A chapter on generation gaps pinpoints key differences amongst successful black baby boomers ("the so-called defenders of black identity"), Gen Xers, and millennials, especially in their views on community and tradition (a common trait among boomers and millennials: disdain for Xer extravagance and solipsism). Womack also charts the practicalities and bizarre ironies of greater cultural exposure (one chapter addresses the awkwardness of encounters with people-friends and strangers-who ask the question "What are you?"). Adjusting the lens on black America, Womack focuses in on a population diversifying in a number of positive directions, making headway against those who would rather ignore change: "in shifting the paradigm, these outliers shift the power to define what being African American truly is."
