Book review: “Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?” and “Sister Citizen” - The Washington Post: I am just old enough to remember when having someone call you black, rather than Negro, was considered a serious slur. Still, when it did occur, my parents taught me, even then, to say “thank you” in response. This turned out to be a highly effective way to disarm the insult and the insulter. In this way, I learned the power of not letting others decide how I would be defined. I did not need James Brown to tell me to be black and proud. Decades later, Americans are still struggling with racial definitions. Is the president black or biracial? Are we Latino or Hispanic? Is the n-word an insult or an affectionate term? What does it mean to be authentically black? And does any of that matter anymore? Didn’t the 2008 election signal that the country that elected its first black president is now post-racial?Two new books take radically different approaches to these questions of race introspection — one academic, the other anecdotal. Both are mature and serious works that seek to get us past our laziest assumptions about race. Each managed to expand my notion of what it means to be black in America, and why it matters.
