In Who We Be: The Colorization of America (forthcoming Fall 2013), Jeff Chang (Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Stanford) carefully analyzes the gaps between what we see and what we think. He asks us to consider, how did multiculturalists, in fact, win the culture wars? And despite the change in our visual culture and the proliferation of representations of people of color (a process Chang so aptly describes as “colorization”), why do we still not have frank conversations about race?
On April 18, Chang was joined in conversation by Kiese Laymon (Long Division [June 2013] and How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America [August 2013]) about the post-civil rights movement, the paradox of the post-racial, and the implications of the rapidly changing national demographics on culture and politics. DJ Rekha provided the introduction.