Summary

Here is the superb second edition of the annual anthology devoted to the best nonfiction writing by African American authors-provocative works from an unprecedented and unforgettable year when truth was stranger (and more inspiring) than fiction. The galvanizing election of Barack Obama was on the minds-and the pages-of authors everywhere.Best African American Essays 2010features the insights of writers from Juan Williams to Kelefa Sanneh and even Obama himself (his seminal speech on race is included here in its entirety). Ta-Nehisi Coates, in The Nation, proclaims that the president has "redefined blackness for white America," while Adolph Reed, Jr., in The Progressive, calls him a "vacuous opportunist" and Colson Whitehead, inThe New York Times,lightheartedly revels in the election of "someone who looked like me . . . slim." The First Lady is considered, too, as Lauren Collins, in The New Yorker, assesses the radical quality of Michelle Obama's very normalcy. ButBest African American Essays 2010goes beyond the Obamas with brilliant pieces from such journals as The Washington Post and The Atlantic, in which Hua Hsu declares the end of white America in "a new cultural mainstream which prizes diversity above all else"; Henry Louis Gates researches his family tree, adding to the "young discipline" that is Africann American history; and Jelani Cobb dares to defend George W. Bush. There are thoughtful and heartfelt tributes to living legends, including Bill Cosby (and an analysis of his famous "pound cake" speech, which promoted black responsibility, empowerment, and self-esteem), and remembrances of those who have passed, including Miriam Makeba, Isaac Hayes, Eartha Kitt, and Michael Jackson. Selected by guest editor Randall Kennedy, a leading intellectual and legal scholar, the wide-ranging pieces inBest African American Essays 2010comprise a thrilling collection that anyone who wishes to understand the meaning of the new America must own.

Author Biography

Gerald Early, a noted essayist and cultural critic, is a professor of English, African, and African American Studies and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of several books, including The Culture of Bruising, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. xvii
The Presidential Election of 2008
ôA More Perfect Union"	p. 3
ôA Deeper Black"	p. 15
ôObama No"	p. 23
ôWho Died and Made Tavis King?"	p. 28
ôWhat Obama Means to the World"	p. 31
ôFinally, a Thin President"	p. 38
ôJudge Obama on Performance Alone"	p. 41
ôObama, the Instability of Color Lines, and the Promise of a Postethnic Future"	p. 44
Our Michelle
ôWhat Michelle Can Teach Us"	p. 55
ôMovinÆ On Up"	p. 58
ôThe Other Obama: Michelle Obama and the Politics of Candor"	p. 60
Reverend Wright Revisited
ôProject Trinity: The Perilous Mission of Obama's Church"	p. 83
ôRev Jeremiah Wright Isn't the Problem"	p. 96
The United States, Past and Present
ôAmerica's Greatest Hits"	p. 105
ôThe End of the Black American Narrative"	p. 111
ôIn Defense of George Bushö	p. 123
ôThe End of White America?"	p. 134
Personalities
ôAmy Winehouse and the (Black) Art of Appropriation"	p. 151
ôThis Is How We Lost to the White Man"	p. 156
ôBefore Griefö	p. 173
Profiles
ôThe Other Black President"	p. 179
ôFamily Matters"	p. 188
ôThe Purrrfect Diva: Eartha Kitt Had a Taste For the Best Things in Life"	p. 198
ôMiriam Makeba: In Troubled Times, She Was the Voice of Country"	p. 201
ôIsaac Hayes: Unshackled by History's Chains"	p. 203
Excerpt from Pig Candy	p. 206
Race Talk
ôTalking About Not Talking About Race"	p. 221
ôOn Black History Month"	p. 224
ôOn Race, Blacks Are Cowards, Too"	p. 230
ôWhat Is the Race Card?"	p. 233
ôCreature Features: A Two-Part Invention on Racial Profilingö	p. 237
ôThis Machine Kills Fascistsö	p. 246
Sports
ôObama Victory Raises Social Significance of Basketball"	p. 265
ôJoe Louis Moment"	p. 267
ôStill Crazy After All These years"	p. 270
ôEthical Treatment for a Quarterback"	p. 276
Rita Dove
ôThe Fire This Time"	p. 281
ôOn Rita Dove"	p. 293
African American Literature
ôChester Himes: Exile & 125th Street"	p. 303
Racial Identity, Enslavement, and the Law
ôMultiracialism and the Social Construction of Race: The Story of Hudgins v. Wrights"	p. 311
In Memoriam: John Hope Franklin
ôThe Dilemma of the American Negro Scholar"	p. 343
Acknowledgments	p. 357
Notable Essays	p. 359
Permissions and Credits	p. 361
About the Editors	p. 367
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

A More Perfect Union

Barack Obama

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution—a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part—through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk—to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign—to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together—unless we perfect our union by

understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction—towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners—an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts—that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populatio

Excerpted from Best African American Essays 2010 by Gerald Early
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