"Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness: What it Means to Be Black Now" by Touré. Simon & Schuster. 251 pages. $25.
The meaning of blackness in America is slippery. The definition has been debated over centuries from legal restrictions circumscribing societal place created by white men to the ever-evolving definitions created within the community, both in reaction to and in exception of those created by America at large. Who makes the cut as black? Who has the right to the mantle of true blackness, or does such a mantle exist? These are the questions Touré asks in his latest exploratory work, "Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness."
Writer, pundit, critic, media propagator and social connector, Touré has a great deal of experience confronting large issues, and it is with this experience that he embarks upon his latest expansive quest. He arms himself with interviews with 105 notable blacks -- those he admires and those to whom he has access. They hail from politics, activism, corporate America, entertainment, sports and, in the most represented cases, from the arts or academic arenas.
This sample, drawing from some of those considered the most successful today, represents a community in which Touré travels. It is not truly representative of all Americans who fall within the wide spectrum of socioeconomic success and educational attainment that would be found in a broader sampling of interviewees.
To each of his subjects, he poses a relatively uniform set of questions about the black experience and the meaning of color in America. He then uses the interviews in a multifaceted quilt of ideas that forms the proof to his arguments. He unfortunately does not provide full access to the depth and breadth of these notables' responses, some of which can only be found in a series of "outtakes" published in the book's appendix. In this way, we do lose some of the narrative richness found in other similar interview projects like "The Black List."
While not an academic himself, Touré approaches this much as a scholarly work, setting forth his intellectual framework and theoretical approach, drawing largely from the art world and the concept of post-blackness that emerged from Glenn Ligon and Thelma Golden's work that culminated in the seminal "Freestyle" exhibit at The Studio Museum in Harlem.
He takes care in distinguishing post-black from post-racial ideologies and then takes this conceptual underpinning to present an exploration of the many hues within the black community from skin color to educational achievement to chosen home geography, family structure and faith affiliation.
However, while this book implies representation of this multitude of experiences, much of the narrative draws from Touré's first-person accounts of his own life, particularly his typical path from being seemingly outside the pressure to conform racially to feeling the stings of accusations of oreo-ness to a full embracement of cultural mores to eventual comfort with a fluid sense of racial self. These long passages serve both to prove his point and to justify his choices with this philosophy.
Some of his most engaging analysis comes from paying homage to those he believes to be leading the way in the march to a post-black world. These include comedian Dave Chappelle, intellectuals Henry Louis Gates and Michael Eric Dyson, who also penned the book's introduction, and of course Barack Obama, as defining the new model for political power, one that projects the individual to be "more American than black" -- a problematic position in itself.
He also does a fine job analyzing the internal struggles and conflicts within self about roles and responsibilities and offers a partner clarion call to end narrow definitions that lead to such conflicts, in many cases, reinforcing standards of underachievement. These passages, while well done, also read in part as a catharsis for the writer and a soothing elixir for others who have experienced such dilemmas.
And in these strong portions lie the book's greatest weakness: the lack of a universal audience. While Touré's writing style is certainly accessible, his references far-reaching and punchy, his comfort and mastery of the medium apparent, his topic in this format does not lend itself to such egalitarian access. This volume may be instructive for the liberal white seeking a glimpse into the black experience, and it may offer validation to those in the community who, through introspective and likely educational advantage, find themselves described on its pages. But it does not go far to reach the myriad other Americans who do not fall into these relatively narrow groups.
To do so would no doubt be an enormous undertaking, perhaps one beyond the scope of this project. Hopefully this space for expansion will encourage another writer, or perhaps Touré himself, to take the charge and develop a more complete presentation that will reach a broader audience, and in that way it will offer hope and acceptance for a true new American culture unafraid of post-blackness.
Adera Causey is curator of education at the Hunter Museum of American Art.