Review of Dickersons End Of Blackness Essay example -- essays research

Debra Dickerson, a lawyer and journalist, sets out to inform blacks that they have to give up on the past. If they do not give up on the past, there will be no future for blacks in America. She opens her book, The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folks to Their Rightful Owners, by saying â€Å"this book will both prove and promote the idea that the concept of ‘blackness,’ as it has come to be understood, is rapidly losing its ability to describe, let alone predict or manipulate, the political and social behavior of African Americans† (p.3). My first thought after finishing this book was that she did not prove anything. Dickerson’s goal in this book, I gather, is to criticize contemporary approaches to race. She does this without leaving anything or anyone untouched. She questions the civil rights establishment, which sets the current tone of black politics to white apologists who continue to minimize the affects of slavery. One of her main arguments is that as long as blacks define themselves in terms of inherited blackness the civil rights movement will never be complete. Not only do blacks need to stop identifying with the past, they must surrender. According to Dickerson, â€Å"blacks must consciously give up on achieving racial justice† (p 16), is this a possibility? I do give credit to Dickerson for noting that blacks in America still face structural barriers to equality, among them poor scholastic achievement, crime, family breakdown and infant mortality; however, ...