Who We Be (BOOK REVIEW)
Who We Be
The Colorization of America
by Jeff Chang
St. Martin’s
Press
Hardcover, $29.99
416 pages, Illustrated
ISBN: 978-0-312-57129-0
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“Race.
A four-letter word. The greatest social divide in American life, a half-century
ago and today. During that time, the United
States has seen the most dramatic demographic and
cultural shift in its history, what can be called the colorization of America…
How
do Americans see race now? After eras framed by words like ‘multicultural’ and
‘post-racial,’ do we see each other any more clearly?
From
the dream of integration to the reality of colorization, Who We Be remixes
comic strips and contemporary art, campus protests and corporate marketing
campaigns, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trayvon Martin into a powerful, unusual
and timely cultural history of the idea of racial progress.”
--
Excerpted from the Bookjacket
Each generation has its
share of visionaries. Long ago, William Faulkner warned that “The past is never
dead. It’s not even past.” In the Sixties, R. Buckminster Fuller conveyed the
critical insight that “Geniuses are just people who had good mothers,” while Marshall
McLuhan helped us understand exactly why “The medium is the message.” More
recently, Ray Kurzweil anticipated the age of spiritual machines where computers
lead and people follow.
“Who We Be”
is the work of a new sage thinker with his finger on the pulse. Don’t let
yourself be dissuaded by the grammatically-incorrect title of his opus, or it’s
Ebonics chapter headings like “I Am I Be” and “What You Got to Say?” for the actual
text isn’t written in inscrutable slang as implied, but rather offers a very
articulate analysis of the evolution of American culture from the March on
Washington to the present.
In fact,
the author isn’t even black, but Asian-American of Chinese and Hawaiian
extraction. Not one to be pigeonholed by his ethnicity, Jeff Chang previously
penned a couple of books about hip-hop, “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,” and “Total
Chaos.”
Here, however, he successfully
tackles subject-matter of much more depth and consequence in the process sharing
a cornucopia of profound insights on themes ranging from the rise of Obama to multiculturalism
to gentrification to the use of the N-word to Occupy Wall Street. For example,
in a blistering critique of the economic system, he opines:
“Capitalism
aspired not only to be the law, but morality, too. Freedom meant being free
even from responsibility or empathy. All values would bow before economic
value. Redemption would be redefined. Consumption would set the terms of the
social. Creditors ruled everything around us. Debtors—a category that included
almost everyone—were parasites. Capital and the state debased fundamental human
relations… It’s sociality itself that’s treated as abusive, criminal, demonic.”
Sobering! With the
help of a dizzying mix of evocative essays, anecdotes, quotes, quips and eye-catching
cartoons and photographs, he amply illustrates what he refers to as America’s
post-racial paradox. For although the country might be awash in a sort of
melting pot imagery suggested by popular movies, TV shows and rainbow coalition
commercials, that superficial symbolism flies in the face of the undeniable reality
of rising re-segregation in terms of housing and schooling.
Pearls of wisdom from an
Asian-American wannabe who deliberately employs double negatives, bad grammar,
incorrect syntax and even an occasional double positive for the sake of street
cred. Still, the Utne Reader saw right through that smokescreen and dubbed Jeff
Chang among the “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.”
Who he be?
He be a phat prophet! You feel me?
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