Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity by John L. Jackson Jr - 2005-11-15

New. New York's urban neighborhoods are full of young would-be emcees who aspire to "keep it real" and restaurants like Sylvia's famous soul food eatery that offer a taste of "authentic" black culture. In these and other venues, authenticity is considered the best way to distinguish the real from the phony, the genuine from the fake. But in "Real Black", John L. Jackson Jr. proposes a new model for thinking about these issues - racial sincerity. Jackson argues that authenticity caricatures identity as something imposed on people, imprisoning them within stereotypes: an African American high school student who excels in the classroom, for instance, might be dismissed as "acting white." Sincerity, on the other hand, as Jackson defines it, imagines authenticity as an incomplete measuring stick, an analytical model that attempts to deny people agency in their search for identity. Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic… Read More

Univ of Chicago Pr, 2005. Hardcover. New. 1st edition. 288 pages. 9.00x6.25x1.00 inches.