Over the past half-century, the U.S. has seen profound demographic and cultural change. But racial progress still seems distant. After the faith of the civil rights movement, the fervor of multiculturalism, and even the brief euphoria of a “post-racial” moment, we remain a nation divided. Resegregation is the norm.
The culture wars flare as hot as ever. How do Americans see race now? Do we see each other any more clearly than before?
In Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America, Jeff Chang, the award-winning author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, looks anew at the tumultuous half-century from the peak of the civil rights era to the colorization and strife of the Obama years.