Authentically Black Essays for the Black Silent Majority

by McWhorter, John

• ISBN13: 9781592400010
• ISBN10: 1592400019
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-27
• Publisher: Gotham

Summary

Picking up where the bestselling Losing the Raceleft off, this penetrating and profound collection of essays by the controversial thinker and passionate advocate for racial enlightenment and achievement explores what it means to be black in America today. According to the author, nearly forty years after the Civil Rights Act, African-Americans in this country still remain "a race apart." He feels that modern black Americans have internalized a tacit message: "authentically black" people stress initiative in private but cloak the race in victimhood in public in order to protect black people from an ever-looming white backlash. He terms this the "New Double Consciousness" in homage to W.E.B. DuBois' description of a different kind of double consciousness in blacks a century ago. Within this context McWhorter takes the reader on a guided tour through the race issues dominant in our moment: racial profiling, getting past race, the reparations movement, black stereotypes in film and television, hip-hop, diversity, affirmative action, the word nigger, and Cornel West's resignation from Harvard. With his fierce intelligence and fervent eloquence, McWhorter makes a powerful case for the advancement of true racial equality. A timely and important work about issues that must be addressed by blacks and whites alike, Authentically Blackis a book for Americans of every racial, social, political, and economic persuasion.

Author Biography

John McWhorter is the author of the bestseller Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, and four other books. He is associate professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor to The City Journal and The New Republic. He has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has appeared on Dateline NBC, Politically Incorrect, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
The New Black Double Consciousness	1	(35)
Profiling and ``Getting Past Race''	36	(28)
``What Have You Done for Me Lately?''	64	(40)
The Reparations Movement
The ``Can You Find the Stereotype?'' Game	104	(34)
Blacks on Television
``Aren't You in Favor of Diversity?''	138	(25)
White Guilt and University Admissions
The Unbearable Lightness of ``The `N' Word''	163	(13)
``We Don't Learn Our History!''	176	(46)
Black Academics and Doing the Right Thing	222	(14)
``They Don't Care What You Know Till They Know That You Care''?
The New Black Leadership	236	(29)
Afterword	265