Authenticity

Being Black & from poverty, I am what white Americans imagine they are learning about and 'standing in solidarity' with when they imbibe popular culture’s Black offerings. But it never occurs to them that [most black culture-creators] come from a very different class to begin with, and are not...

Black people certainly don’t all ‘feel’ or ‘experience’ the same things. Nor do they all ‘experience’ the same event in an identical way. Finally, even when their experiences are similar, they don’t all think about or interpret their experiences in the same way.

The call to “listen to the most affected” or “centre the most marginalized” is ubiquitous in many academic and activist circles. But it’s never sat well with me. In my experience, when people say they need to “listen to the most affected”, it isn’t because they intend to set up Skype calls to...

I don’t capitalize “black” or “white” in my writing because it promotes essentialism while minimizing individuality. I understand the thoughts and sentiments behind capitalizing Black; to many, it reflects dignity and empowerment. But its constitutive nature may reinforce an illusion. This...

[I]s the black individual a necessary casualty of the current culture war? If one sees black essentialism as a powerful tool for bringing about racial justice, the answer is probably a resounding yes. Gayatri Spivak calls this the embrace of “strategic essentialism,” the deliberate projection of a...

Apparently, only white people are allowed to be individuals: black people have to abide by certain criteria that determine authenticity. Academics with the critical tools to know better are some of the loudest and most consistent offenders in this. White people have heard a one-dimensional account...

It’s a perennial question: Can you really tell? The great black jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge once made a wager with the critic Leonard Feather that he could distinguish white musicians from black ones — blindfolded. Mr. Feather duly dropped the needle onto a variety of record albums whose titles and...