Description
Book SynopsisOne might say that the womb of deaththe Middle Passage, slavery, and colonizationgave birth to Black populations. Taking this observation as her point of departure, Nathalie Etoke examines Black existence today in her riveting new book, Shades of Black. In a white supremacist world, Black bodies hold a specific position, invested with a range of meaning that maintains them in a fixed role, with a script they did not write. The white world has invented and defined the Black person according to its own interests, endowing her with a bereaved humanity. The Black person is confronted with an essential paradoxexist as Black or as a human being? Does the Black person exist for herself or for the other? In the white world, is the Black race the embodiment of a sub-humanity? Situated at the crossroads of three countriesCameroon, France, and, now, the United StatesNathalie Etoke is uniquely positioned for this polyphonic reflection on race. She examines what happens when race obliterates histor
Trade Review"Etoke’s Cameroonian, French, and US background provides her with interesting and insightful perspectives to study the African diaspora and the 'capitalist behemoth’s' role in helping shape and sustain today’s race relations. Etoke examines white/Black relations, the nativist perceptions of ADOS (American descendants of slavery) and their interactions with Black immigrants from the Caribbean (descendants of slavery but excluded from ADOS) and sub-Saharan Africa, and the social and economic disparities within the non-ADOS population. This divisiveness is contrary to the pan-African liberation dream of W. E. B. Du Bois, Stokely Carmichael, and others. The exceptional ADOS individuals who achieve visibility and acceptability are those who serve as 'fetishes of diversity'; Etoke writes that they cannot transform the system because they are part of it, rather acting like fig leaves hiding systemic racism. This charade is produced by the 'diversity industry' in addition to slave tourism, 'racist antiracism,' and other activities and ideologies that support white American masculinity (MAGA’s 'color of nostalgia' is white). Adeptly translated from Etoke’s French by Walker, this is an important reflection on the role of race, gender, and nationality in US society, politics, and culture. . . .Recommended." * Choice *
Table of Contents1. LIVING IN BLACK AND WHITE
2. TO BE SITUATED
2.1 Where Are You From?
2.2. Black Immigrant Woman
3. SHADES OF BLACK: “ADOS” VERSUS BLACK NON-DESCENDANTS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY
3.1 Barack Obama: Symbolic Power of Evocation and Denial of the Black Condition
3.2 Kamala Harris: Black Identity and Political Opportunism
3.3 Black Screen: Brits versus ADOS
3.4 Capitalism, the American Dream, and Liberation
4. DECOLONIZING FREEDOM
5. EPILOGUE: George Floyd
