Rating: 
Summary: She can't say that!
Review: I just read this book and I was blown away. She is one brave woman. The PC crowd is going to smack her around good, you watch and see. They do this to anyone who tries to leave their plantation of orthodoxies. She says we black folk got to move beyond the old civil rights paradigms because they just don't make sense anymore. Worse than that, they're keeping black people down. It's hard to let go of what's comfortable, but it's the only way we can climb higher. It truly can be said of Ms. Dickerson, she says what we've all been thinking, in our heart of hearts.
Rating: 
Summary: Why Legitimize Stereotypes by Publishing Email Jokes?
Review: I really wanted to like this book. The author's previous tome was inspiring because she refused to be put in the box that society had prescribed for her. I liked the fact that she went from a dull bank job to the military to Harvard Law School. However, her current book is a disappointment. My main criticism is that she legitimizes stereotypes by publishing email jokes. The fact that these jokes are now in book form gives them a legitimacy that they never would have had when merely passed around as email jokes.
Rating: 
Summary: I actually read the book
Review: I think a lot of people made up their minds before they actually read this book. End of Blacknes just might be the most challenging thing you read this year. It's a disturbing "in-your-face creation but there are whole chapters in this thing that are downright profound. Okay, I did not agree with everything Ms. Dickerson is saying here and yes, she strikes me as the kind of person who would verbally slice a fool to shreds but she makes a huge, bold point with this book: Why not live your life as you see fit? Why not do things that the Soul Patrol doesn't sanction? Why not? I'm not going to say that I loved the book becuase I didn't but I can't dismiss something this important either.
Rating:
Summary: Turned away
Review: I thought fate had led me to buy this book because within one weekend's time I had stumbled on three televised interviews with the author. My feelings seemed to be in-line with hers so I went to the local bookstore and thumbed through the pages. It seems the book was written for a very narrow audience; I could hardly keep up with it. Finishing a sentence left me breathless (not amazed, but actually gasping for air). Forget about anyone with less than a doctorate degree reading and gaining anything from this book. The author has succeeded in turning me away.
Rating:
Summary: Turned away
Review: I thought fate had led me to buy this book because within one weekend's time I had stumbled on three televised interviews with the author. My feelings seemed to be in-line with hers so I went to the local bookstore and thumbed through the pages. It seems the book was written for a very narrow audience; I could hardly keep up with it. Finishing a sentence left me breathless (not amazed, but actually gasping for air). Forget about anyone with less than a doctorate degree reading and gaining anything from this book. The author has succeeded in turning me away.
Rating: 
Summary: A provocative, flawed work by a misunderstood author.
Review: 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 which 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Dont Give DD So Much Credit
Review: I would give the book one star but because of the ridiculous nature of the attacks on the author I'll make it two. End of Blackness is simply a bad book. It is bad, bad, bad. I'm not sure how it got published in the first place but here we are. I leave it to readers to figure out for themselves. Why then do reviewers here feel the need to make personal ad hominem attacks on the author's domestic life. You're only falling into her trap and in a perverse way proving the "point" of her poor confused crappy book.
Rating:
Summary: Debra Dickerson - Black Neo-Conservative Retread
Review: Inadvertently, kavakidd's review (below) makes one useful suggestion: read Thomas Sowell. If you do, you will realize that nothing Debra Dickerson says in this book is new or useful -- neocon Blacks like Sowell have been trotting out these platitudes for a long, long time. Dickerson (and her supporters here) would have us drop "counterproductive" liberal efforts that "haven't worked." Like what? The resoundingly successful Head Start, breakfast programs, health screening, and the like? They also oppose "counterintuitive" liberal ideas -- quality schools with resources equal to the best white public schools, small classrooms with well-paid teachers, urban neighborhoods as well-maintained by cities as white neighborhoods, and police who actually live in and care about the urban communities they serve in. Why? All of those things (which have never been properly tried, thanks to opposition by conservatives) would cost money, when it's obvious that our national priority is funneling all of our resources into war and military spending -- and enriching the few and the well-connected. Better to blame Blacks for their own plight, then, and offer more "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps" solutions that haven't led anywhere. Contrary to what the "Russian-Kazakh American" reviewer here claims, Dickerson's book contains no analysis (eloquent or otherwise) and no expose -- just reformulated platitudes guaranteed to earn her a seat at the pundits' table when race is being discussed in the mainstream media. She may be brimming with self-confidence, but it's because she realizes she's just gained a meal ticket for life. The prior review by Joseph Anderson (click on the link below for earlier reviews) captures the weaknesses of Dickerson's book in greater detail than I care to go into. Suffice it to say Dickerson isn't breaking any new ground -- she's treading a well-worn neo-con path while whistling a "liberal" tune.
Rating:
Summary: Written by Birth of a Nation's mulatto maid!
Review: Instead of anger, I really feel sorry for the author. Those of you are not familiar with her, read her semi-fiction autobiography, also available on amazon.com. (Search hint: sometimes the author uses her middle initial as in Debra J. Dickerson, sometimes she doesn't.)In her previous book, this mulatto boot-licking author was raped in the military while sucking up to a bunch of White males -- tragic poetic justice, I suppose. As for this book, the author's writing ability is a joke. I can't believe she sells herself as a college graduate. As to content, she describes every negative image of African Americans that we are ALL familiar with -- nothing new. The book title, is nothing more than a marketing ploy to maximize profits from White readers. Next, the author is a hypocrite for she attacks the hair maintenance choice of Black women yet she recently appeared on the 10 pm news here in southern Calif (to sell this same book) wearing a straight (aka caucasian hairstyle). Here's the REAL clincher -- Debra Dickerson is married to an UNDER-EMPLOYED, lesser-educated white male and bred two children by him. He rarely appears in public with her. The author writes books like these to financially support her husband. She is little better than a well-dressed WELFARE mother. To you non-Blacks who seem to like what she says so much I ask you "Would you like someone like Debra J. Dickerson to marry into YOUR family?" Finally, based on 2 books by this author this is my conclusion: the book is nothing new and poorly written. Ms. Dickerson really needs professional help to overcome her hideous childhood problems which motivated her to write this book. Comedian Richard Pryor said it best: "A Harvard education has ruined the minds of more Negroes than bad whiskey." Here's to you, Ms. Dickerson! Say hi to your husband for me -- if you can find him.
Rating:
Summary: A great book (if you have intellectual integrity)
Review: No doubt, the self-anointed "gatekeepers of Black Culture" will respond to this book with the same TIRED routine that any Black who dares to think differently from them receives: personal attacks, scornful irrational accusations, dogmatic self-serving misdirection of facts, mean-spirited insults, clumsy psycho-analysis of the author and speechifying about nonsense. What they will NOT do is admit - much less intelligently discuss -- how we as Blacks can help ourselves IN SPITE OF (not in the absence of) racism -- in any other way than demanding White people to change their minds about us. In fact, anyone who even dares to broach the subject is either a 'sellout' or 'horribly self loathing'. At any rate, there is a rising tide of Black professionals who can definitely relate to what Dickerson and others like her are saying. We have acknowledged, mourned, and buried our dead, and and are now carving out a space for ourselves in America in the honor of those who came before us -- without the permission of you self-anointed definers of our culture, thank you very much. We succeed IN SPITE OF (not in the absence of) other Blacks calling us Oreos and sellouts. We succeed IN SPITE OF (not in the absence of) the isolation and rejection that comes from Black naysayers. Because we know that these same folk will be back to demand that we 'give back' to the community as soon as we cash our paychecks. See you on payday.
| 
