Fading Out Black and White: Racial Ambiguity in American Culture

Fading Out Black and White: Racial Ambiguity in American Culture

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
August 2018
224 pages
Trim: 6 x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78660-254-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78660-255-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78660-256-5

Lisa Simone Kingstone, Visiting Scholar, New School for Social Research, New York, New York; Associate Professor at Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey.

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.

In a nuanced reading of culture in a post Obama America, this book 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.

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.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • List of Illustrations
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • Overview of the book
  • Terminology
  • Chapter 1: Tracing Race: A tour of the Racial Binary
  • Chapter 2: The Trial of Rachel Dolezal: The First Transracial
  • Chapter 3: Obama as Racial Rorschach: The First Blank President
  • Chapter 4: Casting Color: Black Barbie and the Black Doll as Racial Barometer
  • Chapter 5: Really Black: Black-ish and the Black Sitcom as Racial Barometer
  • Chapter 6: Talking about Race: Black, White and Mixed Focus Groups
  • Coda
  • Appendix
  • Bibliography
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