Whos Afraid of Post-Blackness?: The Spectrum & Specter of Blackness in Post-Racial America

3 units

In 2001, Thelma Golden, the Director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, boldly claimed that a new generation of African Diasporic artists had officially heralded a new day in post-black art. Six years later a young presidential candidate, born from a White mother from Kansas and a Kenyan father, motivated a Black writer for Time magazine to ask, Is Obama Black enough? Since 2001, and in the wake of America's first Black president, both public and scholarly discourse on Blackness has virtually exploded. New terms and ideas about the end of Blackness-as conservative Debra Dickerson put it-seem to enter the popular and scholarly lexicon everyday. It is now quite common to hear the phrases disintegration, post-racial, biracial, post-Blackness, and even the end of Black politics. This course will explore this expanding discourse and attempt to pinpoint what scholars, pundits and cultural critics mean when they employ these terms. It will also unpack the socio-historical context that has given birth to these terms, asking why now? Has the social and political landscape of America changed so much that we are indeed living in a post-racial society? Or does the specter of Blackness still loom large, haunting American politics, popular culture, sexuality, media discourse, punitive measures, political economy and our understanding of Africa in African-American and African diaspora? Through the use of fictional texts, history, cultural essays and films this course will explore the intra-racial spectrum that characterizes Black America, while paying particular attention to issues of class, sexuality, ethnicity, ancestry, diaspora formation and global migration