Who We Be A Cultural History of Race in Post–Civil Rights America

by Chang, Jeff

• ISBN13: 9781250074898
• ISBN10: 1250074894
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-01-05
• Publisher: Picador

Summary

New York Times Editor’s Choice
Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Work in Popular Culture and American Culture
NAACP Image Award Finalist
Books for a Better Life Award Finalist
Northern California Book Award Finalist

Over the past half-century, the U.S. has seen profound demographic and cultural change. But racial progress still seems distant. After the faith of the civil rights movement, the fervor of multiculturalism, and even the brief euphoria of a “post-racial” moment, we remain a nation divided. Resegregation is the norm. The culture wars flare as hot as ever. How do Americans see race now? Do we see each other any more clearly than before? In a powerful, original, and timely telling, Jeff Chang—the award-winning author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation—looks anew at the tumultuous half-century from the peak of the civil rights era to the colorization and strife of the Obama years. He uncovers a hidden history of American arts, cultural, and social movements that have changed the ways we see each other. Who We Be is at once beautiful and shocking, disquieting and hopeful, even as it urges us to reconsider the yet-unanswered question of how we might all get along.

Author Biography

Jeff Chang's first book was the award-winning Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. He has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature and was named by The Utne Reader one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Seeing America
Part 1: A New Culture, 1963-1979
Chapter 1 Rainbow Power: Morrie Turner and the Kids
Chapter 2 After Jericho: The Struggle against Invisibility
Chapter 3 "The Real Thing": Lifestyling and Its Discontents
Chapter 4 Every Man an Artist, Every Artist a Priest: The Invention of
Multiculturalism
Chapter 5 Color Theory: Race Trouble in the Avant-Garde

Part 2: Who Are We? 1980-1993
Chapter 6 The End of the World as We Know It: Whiteness, the Rainbow, and
the Culture Wars
Chapter 7 Unity and Reconciliation: The Era of Identity
Chapter 8 Imagine/Ever Wanting/To Be: The Fall of Multiculturalism
Chapter 9 All the Colors in the World: The Mainstreaming of Multiculturalism
Chapter 10 We Are All Multiculturalists Now: Visions of One America

Part 3: The Colorization of America, 1993-2013
Chapter 11 Post Time: Identity in the New Millennium
Chapter 12 Demographobia: Racial Fears and Colorized Futures
Chapter 13 The Wave: The Hope of a New Cultural Majority
Chapter 14 Dis/Union: The Paradox of the Post-Racial Moment
Chapter 15 Who We Be: Debt, Community, and Colorization

Dreaming America