Overview

American culture loves blackness. From music and fashion to activism and language, black culture constantly achieves worldwide influence. Yet, when it comes to who is allowed to thrive from black hipness, the pioneers are usually left behind as black aesthetics are converted into mainstream success--and white profit. Weaving together narrative, scholarship, and critique, Lauren Michele Jackson reveals why cultural appropriation--something that's become embedded in our daily lives--deserves serious attention. It is a blueprint for taking wealth and power, and ultimately exacerbates the economic, political, and social inequity that persists in America. She unravels the racial contradictions lurking behind American culture as we know it--from shapeshifting celebrities and memes gone viral to brazen poets, loveable potheads, and faulty political leaders. An audacious debut, White Negroes brilliantly summons a re-interrogation of Norman Mailer's infamous 1957 essay of a similar name. It also introduces a bold new voice in Jackson. Piercing, curious, and bursting with pop-cultural touchstones, White Negroes is a dispatch in awe of black creativity everywhere and an urgent call for our thoughtful consumption.

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9781974989621

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Lauren Michele Jackson is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago and will be on the faculty in the Department of English at Northwestern University starting in the fall of 2019. Her writing about race and culture has appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Essence, the New Republic, Teen Vogue, New York magazine, and other venues. She lives in Chicago. Connect with her at laurjackson.com and on Twitter (@proseb4bros). Adenrele Ojo is an experienced audiobook narrator and actor. A self-described theater brat, she spent many late nights as a young child falling asleep on theatre chairs as her dad directed and her mother performed. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Philadelphia, she received her bachelor of arts in theater from Hunter College in New York.

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