Fading Out Black And White

What happens to a country that was built on race when the boundaries of black and white have started to fade? Not only is the literal face of America changing where white will no longer be the majority, but the belief in the firmness of these categories and the boundaries that have been drawn is also disintegrating.

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GIRL BEING FED IN A
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Book Reviews

Mapping and re-mapping the cultural geography of race and identity are some of the critical, yet most complex endeavors of our time. Lisa Kingstone gives us the tools to navigate this thorny area across both recent history and contemporary culture. It is a forensically crafted masterclass of clarity – essential reading for anyone who is as confused as I am.

Dr. Gus Casely-Hayford, OBE, Historian and Curator

Beautifully written, compellingly argued, and exceptionally well-structured. Lisa Kingstone frames her richly illuminating, vital and groundbreaking questions in wonderfully theoretically incisive ways by asking, “what do our reactions and changing representations of black and white say about either our shifting perceptions or the firmness of racial categories?”

Celeste-Marie Bernier, Personal Chair in English Literature and Professor of Black Studies at the University of Edinburgh

Lisa Kingstone’s book challenges people on both sides who are entrenched and invested in the traditional binary of race. She unpacks the concept and explores the exemplars of the moment – Rachel Dolezal and President Obama – and ongoing cultural targets of analysis like children’s dolls and popular media. In her original research using focus groups, she helps us see cracks in the system and how far we have to go if we have any hope to unleash human richness, complexity, and ambiguity beyond binary.

Anita Foeman, Founder and Primary Investigator of the DNA Discussion Project and Professor of Communication Studies, West Chester University

Cultural narratives around the black/white binary in America are changing. Lisa Kingstone takes different kinds of representation, including the response to Rachel Dolezal’s racial construction, to explore the tensions between persistent essentialism and notions of emerging racial fluidity. To this complex territory, she brings analytical acuity and insight in this highly readable and beautifully written book. It will be widely read.

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent

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In a nuanced reading of culture in a post Obama America, Fading out Black and White, asks what will become of the racial categories of black and white in an increasingly multi-ethnic, racially ambiguous, and culturally fluid country. Through readings of sites of cultural friction such as the media frenzy around ‘transracial’ Rachel Dolezal, the new popularity of racially ambiguous dolls, and the confusion over Obama’s race, Fading Out Black and White explores the contemporary construction of race.
Is the concept of “race” fading out?
A new generation of Americans, millennials and younger, are exposing the myth of the black/white divide and seeing identity as fluid rather than fixed and self-determined rather than ascribed. These old narratives are now splintering - perforated by social movements like Black Lives Matter and #taketheknee. Black directors and writers have now been given more opportunity to share alternative viewpoints in film,  television and literature. There is also a new ambiguity in our narratives about what makes someone black and what makes someone white. Even as some Americans continue to defend rigid categories, such as white nationalists and social justice warriors, many others are scrutinizing the notion of race and redefining racial identity for themselves.
What is driving this change?
We are at a tipping point in thinking about concepts of black and white for a complex intersection of reasons. White is no longer the majority and the growing number of “racially mixed” people are claiming all parts of their identity. White privilege is being seen and dismantled through changes in core curriculum and scholarship that exposes systemic racism in law, education, and medicine. Led by the LGBQIA community, gender is beginning to be seen as a continuum, not a binary which has paved the way for changing how we look at race. Readily available DNA testing has debunked the notion of pure racial categories and exposed the performative aspect of whiteness and blackness. Finally, public figures have brought these debates to the front. Former President Barack Obama in his autobiography exposes how he chose blackness; and ‘transracial’ Rachel Dolezal stepped over the colorline creating a media frenzy.
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FADING OUT BLACK
AND WHITE

This insightful, provocative glimpse at identity formation in the US reviews the new frontier of race and looks back at the archaism of the one-drop rule that is unique to America.

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