{"id":38820,"date":"2014-12-13T21:18:04","date_gmt":"2014-12-13T21:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38820"},"modified":"2014-12-13T21:18:04","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T21:18:04","slug":"who-we-be-by-jeff-chang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38820","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Who We Be,\u2019 by Jeff Chang"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Who We Be,\u2019 by Jeff Chang<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Sunday Book Review<\/a>
\nThe New York Times<\/a>
\n2014-12-12<\/p>\n

Tricia Rose<\/strong><\/a>, Director
\nCenter for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
\nBrown \u00adUniversity, Providence, Rhode Island<\/em><\/p>\n

Who We Be: The Colorization of America<\/em><\/a>. By Jeff Chang<\/a>. Illustrated. 403 pp. St. Martin\u2019s Press. $32.99.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The dramatic changes spurred by the civil rights \u00admovement and other 1960s social upheavals are often chronicled as a time line of catalytic legal victories that ended anti-black segregation. Jeff Chang\u2019s<\/a> \u201cWho We Be: The Colorization of America<\/a>\u201d claims that cultural changes were equally important in transforming American society, and that both the legal and cultural forms of desegregation faced a sustained hostile response that continues today.<\/p>\n

According to Chang, the author of \u201cCan\u2019t Stop Won\u2019t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation<\/a>,\u201d multiculturalism challenged who and what defined America, going straight to the heart of who \u201cwe\u201d thought we were and who \u201cwe\u201d aspired to be. Attacks on exclusions by multicultural scholars and artists were taking place everywhere. University battles raged over whether the Western literature canon should continue to be elevated, or imagined \u00adoutside the politics of racial hierarchies. Artists confronted the nearly all-white and all-male elite art world. Chang even \u00addescribes Coca-Cola\u2019s<\/a> influential 1971 \u201cI\u2019d like to teach the world to sing<\/a>\u201d advertisement as a signal of how profitable a \u201charmonious\u201d multicultural marketing plan could be. But over the next several decades, all the way through Obama\u2019s<\/a> elections, powerful counterattacks were launched, increasingly in racially oblique language. \u201cBoth sides understood that battles over culture were high-stakes,\u201d Chang writes. \u201cThe struggle between restoration and transformation, retrenchment and change, began in culture.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Surely our national fabric is more racially diverse than ever before, and a few more people of color have access to powerful cultural institutions. At the same time, \u201cWho We Be\u201d left me wondering about the resilience of power. It is possible but not inevitable that multiculturalism will fuel the creation of an anti-racist and fully inclusive society. But it is also possible that we could \u00adbecome the kind of multiracial society that keeps its darker-skinned people at the bottom to provide cultural raw material to a powerful white elite that celebrates the diversity on which it depends…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Who We Be,\u2019 by Jeff Chang Sunday Book Review The New York Times 2014-12-12 Tricia Rose, Director Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America Brown \u00adUniversity, Providence, Rhode Island Who We Be: The Colorization of America. By Jeff Chang. Illustrated. 403 pp. St. Martin\u2019s Press. $32.99. The dramatic changes spurred by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8413,8,20],"tags":[18718,2640,18723,2327,18722],"class_list":["post-38820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-jeff-chang","tag-new-york-times","tag-sunday-book-review","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-tricia-rose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}