The End of Blackness (Hardcover)

by Debra J. Dickerson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In order to make progress possible, blacks have to give up on the past-that's the core argument of this inflammatory, cogently written book. Dickerson, a lawyer and journalist, continues the examination of black self-reliance that she introduced in her first book, An American Story. This time, however, she leaves her own experiences out of it and focuses on breaking down racial myths, social concepts and prejudices with the help of statistics and citations by such figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin. Racism, according to the author, "is compounded by black cooperation and by fruitless black jousts with intransigence, while winnable victories are ignored because they do not center on whites and because they are unglamorous." Dismissing Afrocentrism as "self-eliminative and isolationist," Dickerson encourages blacks to focus on their own talents and ignore the expectations of whites and other blacks. She fearlessly condemns the black community for defending the actions of O.J. Simpson and Marion Barry, and for scorning "Uncle Tom" figures like Julian Abele, a black architect who designed Duke University in the 1920s despite its whites-only policy preventing him from ever visiting the campus. "The great architect never got to see his creation, but those for whom he left it in trust-knowledge seekers of all races and nationalities-do. Thank God he was an Uncle Tom," she writes. Few of the book's assertions are new or groundbreaking, but Dickerson updates and expands the arguments by using references to current television sitcoms, mass-mailed Internet jokes that reinforce stereotypes and the emergence of hip-hop artists as individualistic thinkers to back up her statements. Addressing an incendiary issue in a straightforward and un-self-serving manner, this polemic is likely to provoke thoughtful discussion.
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From The Washington Post

In her new book, journalist Debra Dickerson offers the welcome declaration that "blackness is collapsing under the weight of its contradictions, just as overt racism did." By way of illustration, she cites "black camps," where "affluent black parents pay to have their children spend time in the 'hood' " to get in touch with their blackness and be exposed to "African American vernacular and cultural references" they might have lost out on in their pursuit of such "generic" interests as classical music. This line of argument is not entirely new. Shelby Steele and others have argued that adherence to a black identity is, in part, a response of an uneasy black middle class to its own remarkable success in the post-civil rights era. Dickerson's take on the subject, although offering some food for thought, ends up collapsing under the weight of a few contradictions of its own.

Author of the prize-winning memoir An American Story, which told of her admirable rise from a family of former sharecroppers to Harvard Law School, Dickerson sets out to criticize contemporary approaches to race, whether they originate on the political left or right, and in doing so exhibits a praiseworthy independence of mind. Questioning everyone from the "Black Politburo" -- the civil rights establishment, which sets the tone of black politics -- to white apologists who still downplay the ravages of slavery, she argues that the civil rights movement remains incomplete as long as blacks continue to define themselves by the terms of blackness they have inherited.

A particular notion of black identity -- one that associates blackness with failure and inadequacy -- originated in white racism but has found a new lease on life in the ministrations of black politicians. Dickerson thinks most black leaders, unwilling to accept the reality of the civil rights movement's revolutionary accomplishments, are wedded to hopelessly outdated platforms. These leaders continue to see white oppression as the primary obstacle to the well-being of blacks and thus aim their complaints at whites rather than focusing on black self-betterment.

Dickerson grants that blacks still suffer from innumerable problems -- among them poor scholastic achievement, crime, family breakdown and infant mortality -- but she argues that these problems need to be considered in their own right and not simply in comparison with those of whites. For one thing, whites have their share of social problems and so should not necessarily be held up as the norm. For another, the appeal to whites to help solve black problems is based on outmoded assumptions. The idea that black behavior always -- and only -- implicates the racist past stands in the way of individual and group progress, she maintains: In the hands of many of its advocates, this racism-first analysis denies blacks' individual agency, choice and responsibility.

Echoing Steele, The End of Blackness argues that insecurity and ambivalence about their newfound success prevent the black middle and upper classes from letting go of older assumptions about racial identity. Exclusion and marginalization, once central facts of the black experience in America, became so crucial to black self-understanding that it is now difficult to conceive of any other way for African Americans to define themselves. Holding true to the movement seems to mean continuing to wave the bloody flag of white oppression.

To Dickerson, true loyalty to the civil rights movement's heroes and heroines, both black and white, would lead to full "civic self-actualization" -- full participation in the benefits and responsibilities of American citizenship -- in place of outsidership status. "Blacks often ask what their country can do for them, but never the converse," she writes, adding that simply to reverse the question this way is considered "scandalous."

Through passionate appeal, Dickerson attempts to shake readers from their complacency and show them how much of current thinking about race still suffers from old terms of racial identity. Her argument is most compelling when she quotes writers like Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, all standout contrarians on race in their times. To support her suggestion that true freedom for African Americans would be freedom from identification with inherited, negative notions of blackness, she turns to Ellison's eloquent reference to his "struggle to stare down the deadly and hypnotic temptation to interpret the world and all its devices in terms of race." Unfortunately, the ultimate impact of this line of argument -- as daring and as promising as it first appears, and as daring and promising as Ellison's vision still is -- meets with dramatic curtailment in Dickerson's rendering. What begins as a stirring endorsement of a new marriage of responsible civic individualism and dedication to the collective good often ends up sounding like a stale reiteration of black separatism.

Dickerson's entire argument -- that blacks need to let go of old notions of black identity and the forms of identity politics and racial grievance at their core -- is subverted early in the book by a surprising chapter on "white intransigence" in which she presents a litany of complaints against whites. Here she lumps all whites together -- just the thing she opposes in the case of blacks -- and casts them as still in denial about the nation's racial crimes. Taking the occasional bigoted remark -- the kind usually vilified and exposed in the press today -- as indicative of late-20th-century white opinion, she undermines her own argument in the previous chapter that the civil rights movement brought revolutionary change. After urging blacks to forsake old patterns of complaint and redress for a newly courageous civic participation, dedication to the common good and individual flourishing, she invokes the usual culprit -- white supremacy -- as if it were an unmitigated and eternal force. Earlier faulting blacks for wrongly feeling excluded from America, she later says that blacks "find themselves defined out of America." Well, which is it?

Other parts of the book are equally baffling. One page has her praising the ways in which black women "are beginning to free themselves," for example through intermarriage with whites, and another one finds her condemning whites as "societally short-tempered and rage-filled" and steeped in denial. On one page she says that whites who have children with blacks define their children as biracial or multiracial instead of black because they see "blackness as always and only something less than," while on another she seems to celebrate the notion of racial intermixture. She faults black leaders for imposing an orthodoxy of opinion, casting dissenters as Uncle Toms, and elsewhere attacks middle-class blacks' acceptance of the notion of transcending race as a negative sign of their having assimilated to white norms that deny the racial past. She criticizes those who cannot abide blacks who dissent from mainstream views on race but describes whites who criticize "political correctness" as trying to change the subject away from oppression. She summarily lumps the whites who worry about racial balkanization today with opponents of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1866, who saw an organization dedicated to the well-being of former slaves as racially divisive.

In the end, this book exemplifies the problems we still encounter on race more than it illuminates them or offers any kind of way out. Far more perceptive analyses are available from other writers -- from journalist Jim Sleeper and sociologist Orlando Patterson, to name just two -- on the very issues raised in this book. The reader would be best served by reading their works instead.

Further, the nation would be better served by beginning to pay serious attention to their sage advice, the rich essence of which is only hinted at in the best parts of Dickerson's book: It is time that we put racial differences, always a lie and fabrication, behind us. Only if we move beyond the temptation to keep renewing old habits of racial thinking -- the temptation to which Dickerson inexplicably falls prey -- will we have a second chance at a more inspiring vision of American citizenship for all Americans.

Reviewed by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (January 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375421572
• ISBN-13: 978-0375421570
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #851,575 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great no-prisoner take on racism, blackness, July 2, 2004

By	Scott Woods (Columbus, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Dickerson's body blow-dealing introduction is enough to wither most black intellectuals where they stand. Taken by itself, one would think the remaining 275 pages were a primer on how to get your butt-whupped at the company picnic of the NAACP. After plainly and deftly laying out in the first sentence the purpose of her book, she jabs, kicks and otherwise pounds on the kufi-donned heads of any black person donning race baggage without breaking a lip sweat, with such haymakers as:

"[Blacks] have not been left out of America; they affect rejecting it while availing themselves of every morsel of its benefits."

Ouch. Or how about:

"If an upheaval on the scale of the civil rights movement couldn't do it, it is hard to know what it will take to satisfy the `woe is me' race men that they are citizens; perhaps a giant Hallmark card signed by every Caucasian in America."

Are your cowry shells ringing yet?

Dickerson, however, isn't a simple race baiter. She just as easily spends the next 25 pages running white folks through the ringer, detailing the developmental history of slavery and racism as it has nurtured and been so nurtured in the west. From there, the rest of the book is open season on anybody without an open mind.

Dickerson possesses a cool hand when it comes to capturing not only the academic side of the racial shebang, but is particularly stunning at pointing out the ridiculous foibles of a people who want freedom by as few means as necessary. Her codification and critique of popular public-passed emails such as "You Know You're Ghetto Corporate If..." and "Ghetto Resume" puts her research firmly in the front lines of the debate, and yet, just when you think she's Clarence Thomas in a dress, she lambasts whites for contributing politely to much of the same crimes of ignorance and fear-based rhetoric as blacks. A great example, among many, is the section on Africa-bashing by whites to slip under the radar of the homegrown racism they claim to no longer possess as it relates to Africa's American stepchildren.

Dickerson plays for keeps, and despite what must be an obvious and careful noting of just-enough cases to make the points she wishes to make, she writes this book with more courage and brawn than any Dyson book, and with more on-ramps into her worldview than Cornel West has ever offered. You may not like what she has to say, but chances are if the rock hit you, well, you were the one in the pack she was aiming for. The question isn't how back is Dickerson. The question is, how black are blacks, and what does that mean 40 years out of the civil rights movement?

This book reads as though Dickerson wrote it like it might be her only one. Hopefully, we'll not have to wait long for another dose of her medicine. It goes down tough, but you'll be better in the morning.

(Review from KISO Books)

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A provocative, flawed work by a misunderstood author., July 20, 2004

By	namepeace "namepeace" (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews

I too was inspired to buy this book after seeing the author on Bill Maher. I was very much looking forward to a frank, honest and convincing deconstruction of the essence of the black experience in America and a proposal to reform our ideas of race and identity in America. I finished the book not completely satisfied but consider the book worth a look.

Ms. Dickerson obviously is a well-educated, intelligent woman who has given much thought and study to issues of race. She does a good job of dissecting the underpinnings of white racism and "blackness," and our misperceptions about both. She seems to imply that blackness is borne of a reflexive, defiant attitude towards white racism that has been an effective "defense mechanism" but not a basis for true development within the black community. She dismisses the notions of blackness, identity and "realness" that have permeated our culture since the Civil Rights Movement. And she concludes with a call for black people to "disarm" themselves of such thought processes and attitudes so we can attain full membership in American society.

It is a powerful,counter-intuitive manifesto. But it has its drawbacks.

1. The book is not as well-written as I would have expected. At times, it reads like a string of personal and historical anecdotes and block quotes from other works which don't flow very well.

2. The author seems to want to ignore the virtues of black identity and culture, one of the most unique cultures in the history of the world.

3. By excoriating figures like Ms. Vanzant, the author engages in exactly the kind of behavior she seeks to eliminate. She mistakes personal judgments for valid criticism, and at times, she makes ad hominem attacks on those with whom she disagrees.

But this book's strength lies in the fact that it represents an alternative perspective on blackness and a provocative thesis that, at the very least, helps you think through your own philosophy on race and identity. Any book that makes you think can't be all bad.

47 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars for saying..., February 11, 2004

By	Gunfighter (Northern Virginia) - See all my reviews

...some of the tough things that we, as black Americans, should have been saying for many many years.

Ms Dickerson deserves full marks for having the courage to skewer many of the sacred cows that we have been praying to for so many years. Further, she doesn't shrink from taking stab at today's almost-useless civil rights leaders.

It is time, and past time for us to be proud of who we are for what we are and what we have done in this country. Not because white people will acknowledge it... some will, some won't, but so what? The acknowledgement of others shouldn't be the goal of ethnic pride. That said, it should also be said that ethnic pride shouldn't be a bar to the pride that comes from being an American.

It is time, and past time for us to stop seeing ourselves only in comparison to how we are treated by white people... or any other people, including other black people. Black Americans have done remarkable things. We are inseparably woven into the fabric of American history and society.

It is time, and past time for us to stop pretending that we exist outside of American society. We don't. This is our country, we are full citizens... let's act like it. We should walk tall, be proud, look others in the eye and smile, or not..., but not because of hostility, but because we are sure of ourselves and our great role in the building, and the success of this country. We ought not wait for the approval of other people to feel good about ourselves. This is childish behavior.

This book could have been written better, and I don't agree with every word that is printed here, but what Dickerson wrote needed to be said.

Dickerson is right... the mind truly is the last plantation, and all we need do is walk out through the open gate and decide to opt in.