The End of Blackness

Rating:
Summary: Seizing Opportunities
Review: "The End of Blackness" is a book of hope for young blacks. The book is not perfect...there are a number of generalities and easy platitudes that are a detraction. But the great value of the book is in its valid and cogent message of self-fulfillment. It is a call to young minorities to shake off the culture of being a victim and, disregarding the naysayers...both black and white, seize the opportunity to start fulfilling their potential. For further encouragement along the path to self-realization, read "Stanford Professor John McWhorter's 2000 book "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America."

Following is an excerpt from a review of Professor McWhorter's book by Dutch Martin, a black columnist and political activist:

"As a child, the greatest gift my dear-departed mother ever gave me was an appreciation of the value of an education. As one of six children, this appreciation helped me rise from our poor surroundings in inner city Cleveland to become the successful black professional that I am today."

"Heeding this lesson, however, was also the genesis of years of verbal abuse, ostracism and criticism I was forced to endure from other black people from elementary school through graduate school. During these years, I was accused by my black brethren of "acting white" for using correct English, making good grades and having a sincere love of learning for learning's sake."

"I could not understand why this happened until I read John McWhorter's 2000 book Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. To quote John 9:25, "Where once I was blind, now I see."

"In Losing the Race, Professor McWhorter outlines in surgical detail three aspects of modern day black American cultural mentality, or "cults," that hold us back as a people. First is the Cult of Victimology. In it, victimhood is not seen as a problem to be overcome but an identity to be nurtured. In the Cult of Separatism, the uniqueness of our history is used as a justification to exempt us from the rules that govern the rest of American society. Lastly, in the Cult of Anti-Intellectualism, an affinity toward education is seen as running counter to an "authentic" black identity. I have witnessed first-hand the manifestation of each cult and the masterful job each does in preventing blacks from realizing their full potential."

The message of these books is one of hope. Ignore the bricks and arrows of peers and black 'leaders.' Don't wait for someone else or the government to fix all the wrongs of the past before you can self-achieve.

Rating:
Summary: Seizing Opportunities
Review: "The End of Blackness" is a book of hope for young blacks. The book is not perfect...there are a number of generalities and easy platitudes that are a detraction. But the great value of the book is in its valid and cogent message of self-fulfillment. It is a call to young minorities to shake off the culture of being a victim and, disregarding the naysayers...both black and white, seize the opportunity to start fulfilling their potential. For further encouragement along the path to self-realization, read "Stanford Professor John McWhorter's 2000 book "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America."

Following is an excerpt from a review of Professor McWhorter's book by Dutch Martin, a black columnist and political activist:

"As a child, the greatest gift my dear-departed mother ever gave me was an appreciation of the value of an education. As one of six children, this appreciation helped me rise from our poor surroundings in inner city Cleveland to become the successful black professional that I am today."

"Heeding this lesson, however, was also the genesis of years of verbal abuse, ostracism and criticism I was forced to endure from other black people from elementary school through graduate school. During these years, I was accused by my black brethren of "acting white" for using correct English, making good grades and having a sincere love of learning for learning's sake."

"I could not understand why this happened until I read John McWhorter's 2000 book Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. To quote John 9:25, "Where once I was blind, now I see."

"In Losing the Race, Professor McWhorter outlines in surgical detail three aspects of modern day black American cultural mentality, or "cults," that hold us back as a people. First is the Cult of Victimology. In it, victimhood is not seen as a problem to be overcome but an identity to be nurtured. In the Cult of Separatism, the uniqueness of our history is used as a justification to exempt us from the rules that govern the rest of American society. Lastly, in the Cult of Anti-Intellectualism, an affinity toward education is seen as running counter to an "authentic" black identity. I have witnessed first-hand the manifestation of each cult and the masterful job each does in preventing blacks from realizing their full potential."

The message of these books is one of hope. Ignore the bricks and arrows of peers and black 'leaders.' Don't wait for someone else or the government to fix all the wrongs of the past before you can self-achieve.

Rating:
Summary: Debra Dickerson: Makes white people feel good!
Review: -

A wise, old, Black grandmother once remarked that, "Ain't nothin' done ruint more good Black men (and now women) than bad whiskey -- and Harvard!"

Dickerson was one of those Blacks statistically allowed into Harvard. And, she says, with that typical fallacy of Black individualism, Black exceptionalism, and Black tokenism, as well as racial incrementalism: '*I* did it! Why can't *you* lazy negroes!'

Martin Luther King, Jr., -- who could have gotten a very well-paying job in any governmental, academic, or private institution -- *rejected* this exceptionalism 'solution'.

As one political rap group's lyrics say, "Just 'cause some niggas made it, don't mean we *all* liberated!"

Let's see, how much time should I spend -- waste -- on this? Dickerson will be invited to make all the venerable rounds in the white media. She's telling most (or many) white people exactly what they want to hear: 'Yes, those whinin', shiftless negroes ain't no good! They're Black, they're lazy, we can't do nothing about it, and it's their own damn fault for being Black in the first place! And we white people don't owe them a damn thing! In fact, we white people have given them *way* too much already!'

Now these are the same "lazy", poor and working-class negroes that line up by the hundreds, or couple of thousands, around the block on a cold winter day, when even just a relative handful of actual, living-wage, blue-collar jobs are publicly announced in any city.

Dickerson's white-promoted and white-rewarded book is in the 'best, most honorable' stereotyping tradition of blatantly racist (except to racist) whites -- like Arthur Jensen (back in the '60's) and Charles Murray ("The Bell Curve", in the '90's) -- and white-promoted, self-serving people of color -- like D'nesh D'Souza, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, more recently, Bell Hooks, and other sellout or mentally reconditioned colored people of their ilk. Except for Hooks (so far), these are the same kind of people who have lied to you and falsely told you that MLK (and even Nelson Mandela) actually opposed affirmative action.

Dickerson's primary rhetorical device is the false dichotomy: Black intellectuals, she asserts, whine too much about the macro (socioeconomic governmental policies) instead of doing anything about the micro (real Black individuals). To argue this, she mixes elements of legitimate, community self-help examination with implicit sweeping racist stereotypes.

Dickerson tells us that if all those whinin', shiftless, lazy negroes in the ghetto would just get off their butts, they would realize that there is no particularly significant racism anymore, and they could make something of themselves: anything they want! "The prison cell door" of racism is unlocked, she proclaims! *Individual* initiative should take the place of political, institutional, structural, or socioeconomic policy changes in our nation. (The neoconservative title, "The End of Blackness", should tip you off.) And she has the nerve -- like most of these phonies -- to dedicate her thoughts, words, and book, in part, to Martin Luther King!

Dickerson was recently (Jan 18) on a major Berkeley radio station, but fortunately (or, rather, unfortunately for her) we in the Bay Area don't get intellectually chumped as easily as folks might in the white hinterland. I personally (but civilly) went head to head with her on the air, as did several other people. I was forthright: I called her discourse "an insult to the memory of Martin Luther King" -- given that she was interviewed on a white-hosted (so-called "progressive", at that) radio program "celebrating" King's birthday. Dickerson was reduced to a few lame remarks about how she wasn't saying what she was, indeed, saying. You know, when backed into an intellectual corner, these people simply lie about what they just said!

So, white racism will have us -- who are trying to eliminate racism -- running around once again, taking up all our time countering more racist drivel that can actually get people *hurt*, in terms of social policy. ('Ain't no point in giving them negroes decent schools, and if they turn to crime instead of college, then put them in the military to die in Iraq for Chevron and Halliburton, or put them in more awaiting prisons.')

One of Dickerson's primary neoconservative solutions: midnight basketball! Yeah, *that's* going to save all us negroes. (What about midnight math!?) Or token charter schools (some already discredited, and a proxy for vouchers, anyway). As Ice T rapped about the system in his song (available at his website), "New Jack Hustler": "The wound is *deep*, but they're givin' us *a band-aid*."

If you want to see all the fallacies in Dickerson's neoconservative book, then actually *read* King. Since we are once again at war, you can actually (I hope) *read* something short to start with -- his speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence". (Get it online.) Note the parts that talk about the necessity for the economic restructuring of America. Then you can actually *read* other King writings like his book (available at Amazon.com), "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community".

Read the writings of serious *white* anti-racist activists, essayists and public speakers like Tim Wise, straight outta of Nashville, or Berkeley librarian Paul Rockwell. (Check both online.) Rockwell supported King and was there at Riverside Church in Harlem, in 1967, when King gave one his three greatest -- and most trenchant -- speeches. ("The Dream" speech and "the Mountaintop" speech being the other two.) Learn something. And next time you hear Dickerson, you'll give her the appropriate yawn. Doesn't Amazon.com have a zero rating for this book?

Speaking of Harvard..., CNIC Henry Louis "Skippy" Gates is peddling this "racism is over (it's economics)" stuff, too often, on the radio too.

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You can hear Dickerson's drivel, and hear me take her on, at www.kpfa.org/archives/archives.php?id=22

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Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for saying...
Review: ...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. So what?

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.

It is time, and past time for us to stop pretending that we exist outside of American society. 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 don't... your call, but we ought not wait for the approval of that other person to feel good about ourselves.

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

Rating:
Summary: Quite Controversial
Review: 1/11/05 This "library borrow" was more than a "current affairs in African American Studies" as promised on its "back jacket" ..It contained much info on "African American legends", many pages from the last 50 years of civil rights struggles and even sections paroding "ebonics" .

Rating:
Summary: No New Scholarship Offered - lacking evidence
Review: A dissapointing read lacking new or thoughful ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Critics help make her case
Review: As a Black American it's refreshing to read from someone who actually cares about Black America really 'keeping in real' and backing up the sentiments with quotes and references from the likes of F. Douglass,Albert Murry, Carter Woodson & Franklin Frazier. She does a good job of invoking the wisdom of our ancestors, then playing her own riffs. Instead of the stale categoris of Social Science research, she relies on her intellectual ancestors, her life experience and her own common sense to explain life as she sees it.

The critics that scurry out from the usual ideological corners to attack her only proves her point that it's Blacks that want to narrowly define and limit other Blacks.

Implying that having whites enjoy her book proves that what she writes doesn't have merit is nonsense, avoids the premise and misses the fact that she invokes quotes from Black ancestory who weren't Uncle Toms.

The critics that rely heavily on traditional liberal vs conservative labels also misses the point by saying she's a retread. Her propensity for the references seems to imply that she isn't claiming any new information only her take on perspectives that need to continue as part of national dialogue. The emotional knee-jerk simplistic label of neo-con. is a coward's ploy to censor voices within the 'Black community' voices that aren't in the pockets of the liberal community.

Voices like Debra need to be a part of the national dialoque. One implication from her book is that sadly many Blacks find more power in victimization. Her critics make her case.

Rating:
Summary: Dickerson makes a compelling point
Review: As I read the End of Blackness,I started to agree with many of her points, this is not a liberal or conservative book, she quotes African - Americans across the political spectrum (read the dedication in the preface) and uses common sense notions of human nature to explain the concept of Blackness is a battle we are losing in this country from multi-racial marraiges (from which dickerson is involved from a such union)to the benign neglect from the majority society and the retreat of those programs and a leadership stuck in neutral she argues for a surrender of a strategy of cosmic justice in which i agree, from ever expecting white people or amerikkka in general to deliver justice or reconcilation between the races in this country and to embrace our citizenship. She indicts both liberals for their paternalistic attitudes and conservatives for the ritualistic condesension toward black folks. But she saves her greatest volleys towards our modern Black Leaders (liberal and conservative )who has misled the massess for their own political and economic benefits while USING A STRATEGY THAT HAS BEEN OUTDATED IN 2004.This is not a neo-conservative tract as some black reviewers nor a blame the victim as your white conservative reviwers have have argued but a progressive manifesto that argues that while we have to fight the good fight against racism we have to let whites go and develop our own instutions if the educational system miseducates young blacks we should start charter schools,a need to develop our own instutions is central to our survival in this country. As dickerson states black surrender is not defeat but a mature acknowlegdement that real Black Power lies not in shouting matches or marches but a reflection that amerikkka has done all it is going to do in the racial justice arena to this point. (SHE STATES THE CIVIL WAR DID NOT END WITH APPROMATTOX NOR HAS CIVIL RIGHTS ENDED AFTER 1964)But there has great been great progress and she states we have to finish the job ourselves regardless of how the rest of society looks at us instead of wanting whites(or other amerikkans) to like African - Americans maybe the best to expect is just "grugding acceptance" OR WE WILL LOOK LIKE THE ANNOYING KID BROTHER YOUR FAMILY TOLERATES if we keep asking for this society to give us our humanity in which has been the strategy in a zero-sum racial game as she writes in a later chapter all it has led to is greater racial exploitation by the right and the left. This book 320 pages of great writing from someone who is cut form the true meaning of a black woman who loves black people and wants to see us succeed.

Rating:
Summary: Take the blue pill
Review: Considering my above average interest in this subject as a white guy, I learned a lot about our nations black history that I did not know. Thus my recommendation to all whites, we simply don't learn this stuff. To blacks who are not already brain washed into believing that change need only occur in whites for you to reach the promised land I also highly recommend this reading.

Ms. Dickerson spends equal time bashing whites and blacks for past and current behaviors but lays responsibility for the future more squarely in the laps of Black Americans. As she says the last plantation needing to be escaped is in the black mind.

The truth is that as a black in todays America you have an incredible advantage to succeed if you can overcome many of the obstacles placed in your path via your enviroment. If you can get the degree and avoid the evil doers and nay sayers you can make for yourself reality the vision of those who sacraficed so much before you as exampled in this book.

Coming to terms with that success in a community which both shuns you as a sellout yet requests that you contribute back may be the final river you have to cross. The final underground railroad may be the one escaping from the community/unity mental plantation and taking you to the individual success reality.

No one can tell you what the Matrix is, you must see it for yourself. -Morpheus

Rating:
Summary: interesting title, but NOT an interesting book
Review: Debra Dickerson has a misguided and jaded view of what is it to be Black in the United States, specifically African-American. The book is a poorly organized and reinforces several stereotypes instead of trying to break them down. Dickerson comes across as if she is a soothsayer and expert on "Black" culture and the "Black" experience in America. The book is very divisive, essentially breaking down African-Americans into two groups: the poverty-stricken, uneducated, criminal and disease-laiden supported by misguided liberal 40 acres and mule seeking neomilitant democrats AND the misunderstood, conflicted,upwardly mobile, conservatively moderate republicans. I personally found the book to be quite irritating because it is too polarized and often inaccurate.

Firstly, I was annoyed that the title of the book is "The End of Blackness," yet the book only addresses her skewed dichotomy of African-Americans. All Black people are NOT African-Americans and the term African-American itself is a misnomer. (This is a point that should have been addressed.) There is a Black diaspora and Black people come from many countries with many different cultures. Where do Black Hispanics/ Latinos fit in? Where do Black Asians and Black Europeans fit in? (yes, these people do exist) Are West Indians also plagued with the same problems? Is there a difference between Black immigrants, 1st generation, 2nd generation, and African-Americans? Her book makes it too easy to label Black people in terms of good or bad, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, educated or miseducated, liberal orconservative, democrat or republican. There is a PLURALIZED Black experience in America and I frankly don't know what possessed her to write this book, besides the prospect of making a profit. How can so-called Blackness end if only African-Americans are addressed?

The second thing that thoroughly annoyed me about this book was her emphasize on the black vs. white dichotomy. America is a multi-cultural society. There must be a discourse that is all-inclusive because progress will not occur without everyone's participation. Many of the attributes that Dickerson assigns to African-Americans can be just as easily applied to Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Whites, and other racial and ethnic groups in the same socio-economic bracket. I honestly cannot figure out what her message/ thesis/ proposal in this book is. However, whatever message she is trying to convey should NOT only be geared towards Black and White people because America is not a nation of only Black and White people.

The third aspect of this book that has prompted me to return it to the bookstore is that Dickerson repeatedly contradicts herself. This book perpetuates the self-hatred in "Blacks" that it criticizes/ critiques. If Dickerson would like to see improvement in the status and condition of African-Americans, why are we even discussing/ proposing the end of Blackness in the first place? Blackness or the concept of Blackness does NOT have to end in order for progress and societal change to be made. There is no problem with racial mixing and diversity, however, racial mixing does NOT and has NOT solved the so-called problem of Blackness. All of the Spanish-speaking countries in the Western Hemisphere are comprised of mixed peoples. Yet, a racial/ skin color hierarchy still exists. Differences will always exist. With differences come discrimination. People always want to feel superior at the expense of others. This also happens frequently in Asia and the Pacific Islands, i.e. the caste system in India. It's naive, illogical, and just plain dumb to think that racial mixing will "end Blackness." The system of oppression and discrimination is already in place and it merely adjusts over time to suit its needs. Besides, isn't wanting to end Blackness really just another manifestation of self-hatred?

The last thing I wanted to point out is the chapter on the internet Black/ ghetto jokes. I am a Black woman and I have NEVER received nor have I ever seen any of those jokes. I honestly could not relate to them either. They are not representative of "Black" culture and were put in the middle of her book as a filler to compensate for her lack of original ideas. I thought they were pathetic and Dickerson should have dedicated more time to thinking over her thesis and writing something with more substance.