The End of Blackness by Debra J Dickson - Book Report/Review Example

The notion of "blackness" has to be refurbished if black Americans are to countenance the future with confidence.

For too long, the writer argues, blacks have tried to mangle shame and get an endorsement from whites, when they ought to be striving for black excellence despite white opinion. If you think you know what comes after that a request for blacks to drag themselves up by their boot-straps and totally join in mainstream American society - you're right, fairly. Even though Debra Dickson gives emphasis to black accountability and intra-community black fortify, her endeavor is not to disembowel fellow blacks for their supposed failings.

Nor does she allow whites off the hook. Their racism against blacks, she asserts, "has been defined out of existence and repackaged so that whites retain its perks. It has undergone existential plastic surgery." Therefore, she concludes, "many whites believe that nonwhites have no right to criticize them since whites are superior and alone responsible for the success of America." (Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, 2004)For more or less anyone recognized with any kind of political ideology, Dickerson's analysis is a sour pill to swallow.

Sorry to say, the book tops out at just that. For all her flame-throwing, caustic criticisms as well as grenade lobbing, Dickerson does almost nothing to understand her important thesis--the claim that "black" is one way or another sadly inadequate way of recounting African-Americans. That's for the reason that, for all its harangue and anger, Blackness never comes out as much more than an aimless rage. Dickerson simply makes a generalization and states it as an unquestionable truth. "Blacks often ask what their country can do for them, but never the converse," writes Dickerson.

This would arrive as news to the thousands of African Americans in the armed services as well as African Americans who have died in all major American wars, even with no basic guarantees of citizenship. Even when turning into the monarchy of history, Dickerson can't defy the enticement to take very complex problems and diminish them to two dimensions. She asserts that Africa was the source of the slave trade for the reason that it was "the least urbanized continent" also was "defenseless." There are reams of scholarship devoted to discriminating why one of Africa's chief exports became slaves.

Dickerson has, clearly, consulted none of it. That's for the reason that she has no need for scholars or scholarship, also the lion's share of her references are authors who are dead. The consequence is that Blackness feels tremendously dated. Without a doubt, it's commendable that Dickerson is not obliged to any particular principles. However, in her efforts to not be pinned down, Dickerson builds up an academic parched earth campaign and never settles down to keep watch on any ground of her own.

This possibly will not be information to as many people as Dickerson or, for that matter, her critics--visualize. In her acknowledgments, Dickerson moves up and down to the "intellectual and political fervor emanating from the hip-hop generation," which, as is usual among younger folks, wishes to bust open and revolutionize conventional social as well as a political discourse among African-Americans. Many will carry on in thinking of The End of Blackness as part of the problem. However, no one must be surprised if the future way out can trace their emotional groundwork to Dickerson's all-inclusive crankiness.

Certainly, the finest thing a book like The End of Blackness can do is lend a hand in making is "what blacks must do next" genre obsolete.