Post Black : How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity ISBN: 9781569765395 Platform/Publisher: PQ ebrary / Independent Publishers Group Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a time Subjects: African Americans : Race identity.;
Using the 2008 election of Pres. Barack Obama as a springboard, Chicago writer and editor Womack (Beats, Rhymes and Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip-Hop) launches an engaging and ambitious discussion of African American identity in the 21st century. Rather than concentrate on the spectacular or "every pathological condition that ever existed in African American life," Womack shines a bright light on the ever broadening, increasingly visible black middle classes that remain largely unseen by white America: young black professionals, immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, LGBT members, community-based artists, and others. A chapter on generation gaps pinpoints key differences amongst successful black baby boomers ("the so-called defenders of black identity"), Gen Xers, and millennials, especially in their views on community and tradition (a common trait among boomers and millennials: disdain for Xer extravagance and solipsism). Womack also charts the practicalities and bizarre ironies of greater cultural exposure (one chapter addresses the awkwardness of encounters with people-friends and strangers-who ask the question "What are you?"). Adjusting the lens on black America, Womack focuses in on a population diversifying in a number of positive directions, making headway against those who would rather ignore change: "in shifting the paradigm, these outliers shift the power to define what being African American truly is." (Jan.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Ytasha L. Womack is a journalist, a filmmaker, and the coeditor of the award-winning anthology Beats, Rhymes, and Life. She is the director and producer of several award-winning films, including The Engagement, Love Shorts, and Tupac. A current guest editor with NV Magazine and frequent contributor to Ebony, she is a former editor at Upscale and former staff writer for the Chicago Defender. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Emerge, Essence, Honey, King, VIBE, and XXL, as well as the comic book Delete. She lives in Chicago. Derek T. Dingle is the senior vice president and editor in chief of Black Enterprise magazine.
