Who We Be: The Colorization of America by Jeff Chang

Who We Be: The Colorization of America Reviews

• 
  Jeff Chang

  It was amazing! What more can I say?
• 
  Leigh Patel

  oh, no big deal, just provide a primer and treatise on race in the now majority minority U.S., including how silly but apt that phrase is for the nation's collective consciousness.
  
  Chang does what he sets out to do in the introduction: to act as a selective, educated, and thoughtful curator of moments and contextual backdrops for how race has shape-shifted to remain as salient a social organizer as it ever was. Highlights include the context around multiculturalism, which makes its deep irrelevance and functionality even more gaping and the ways that the Southern Solution has been repurposed into debates around immigration.
  
  This book, along with Perry's More Beautiful and More Terrible, and Takaki's Strangers from Another Shore should be mandatory reads in our quest to not start over and over again in understanding race as a political construct.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Perri

  A dense, scholarly book but accessible to the layman; the author examines race relations in America from 1963 through today. The ambitious study of race through culture includes music, TV, politics, printed media and high profiled news with art photos and comic strips throughout the book. My impression is the author is reporting a a cornucopia history of events, and the reader is left to draw conclusions.
  An ARC book
• 
  Josiah Hatfield

  In a nut shell, "Who We Be" is about...
  
  "The book then moves on to look at how demographic change has impacted American arts, cultural politics, and electoral politics. It asks: Why, after colorization, has racial and cultural inequality remained largely unseen and undiscussed? It asks us to consider the fate of this still emerging cultural majority, and the fate of the nation itself" (p. 11).
  
  I find myself interested in both the distinct issues of race and cultural movements, particularly of the United States, as well as their intersection. The book moves through along chronologically from 1963 until 2013 (being published in 2014), analyzing everything from advertising to the fine arts to graffiti art.
  
  Unfortunately (for me), the root of the author's expertise is in the fine arts and the majority of the 1960's-80's material reflects that. So a good chunk of the book landed outside my frame of reference. That said, I loved the commentary on some comics of the 1960's, TV programming in the late 1990's, and the creation of Obama's "Hope" posters.
  
  Chang does an expert job at giving the larger political, cultural, and socioeconomic picture surrounding each of the time periods as well.
  
  Overall, good book, especially for those concerned with how art and (pop) culture has intersected with race.
• 
  Susan

  I really wanted to like this book! We have come to a critical junction in race relations in the US-- opposing trends of electing our first President of color and citizens energized to protest police brutality with "Black Lives Matter" vs. the current WASP choices for President and ethnic slurs in speeches and "debates" by both political parties. I have lived through all three phases of "colorization" that Chang describes and yet there was a lot of information new to me in his text so I'm glad I read it.
  
  SOME of his writing is completely engaging and read like good feature articles-- but not nearly enough!! Most is excessively verbose and digs too deeply into his area of expertise-- the arts-- without bigger picture context or perspectives from other fields like sports and media.
  
  This will seem petty to some readers, but I felt frustrated with the book's design. It has beautiful glossy paper to display paintings in detail and rich color. But it also uses a sans serif font throughout, the kind used for headlines and captions, that strained my eyes and made the text seem even denser than its words alone conveyed. I could have read it in half the time if I didn't need to rest my eyes every chapter or two.
• 
  Chris Bloise

  The insights in this book are interesting, but my rating of two stars is for the dry scholarly manner in which Chang bored my way through this entire book. I agree with most of his arguments, but I thought that this book would be a more engaging tour through this period and these often overlooked groups.
• 
  Joe T.

  Jeff Chang does it again! Who We Be is an important book because it shows a cultural history of race in America and how it is perpetuated by arts and cultural institutions. Most importantly it also shows artist and cultural workers resisting through protest and artistic and cultural production in this moment of the colorization of America.
• 
  Kevin

  An amazing look at how the cultural image of American went from white to one of many colors. A joy, a treat, an education. In all the best ways.
• 
  April

  This was an interesting look at art and culture and how they affect politics. Basically, how cultural shifts--largely due to artistic expression and the idea of identity by people of color--create political shifts, leading up to the election of our first Black President of the United States. I wish more of the art that was discussed could be shown on the pages. I do wonder how the discussion in this book would differ if it were written after this year's election results. How could the U.S. go backwards instead of forward? What were the cultural shifts or events that occurred during the past four years that brought us to elect a hate-supporting, anti-women, capitalism-monger who wants to bring the country back to when segregation reigned and the people in power were only one color and one gender? How could this happen when our country is as colorful as it currently is, with women achieving just as much as men? I think I can understand it intellectually, but not emotionally. I had higher hopes in the people of this country. I am disappointed in us.
  
  ". . .America's race problem came from something deeper. For whites, historically, skin tone and physiognomy signaled not only difference, but notions of superiority and inferiority. This was the way racial power worked. It went further than merely perceiving difference. It sorted difference into vast systems of freedom and slavery, commitment and neglect, investment and abandonment, mobility and containment." pg. 3
  
  "Culture is the realm of images, ideas, sounds, and stories. It is our shared space. It is the narrative we are immersed in every day. It is where people find community, and express their deepest-held values, where, as Eduardo Galeano put it, 'the collective symbols of identity and memory: the testimonies of what we are, the prophecies of the imagination, the denunciations of what prevents us from being' are circulated." pg. 5
  
  "Here is where artists and those who work and play in the culture enter. They help people to see what cannot yet be seen, hear the unheard, tell the untold. They make change feel not just possible, but inevitable. Every moment of major social change requires a collective leap of imagination. Change presents itself not only in spontaneous and organized expressions of unrest and risk, but in explosions of mass creativity. So those interested in transforming society might assert: cultural change always precedes political change. Put another way, political change is the last manifestation of cultural shifts that have already occurred. Obama could not have been pictured as a symbol of hope if the seeds of that hope had not been planted in the culture long before." pg. 6
  
  "Social realism had depicted images of everyday people to urge a better future. It moved the unseen into the frame in order to mobilize disenchantment with inequality. Capitalist realism reappropriated this radical act of seeing in order to induce trust and satisfaction. The idea was that all our aspirations could be contained within the frame." pg. 61
  
  "Mad that they put in basketball courts and not tennis courts at your local park? Angry your school-age kids were being bused to the inner city? Suspicious your hard-earned money was going to support welfare moms, junkies, and gays? Certain the job at the downsizing plant went to an unqualified person of color over you because of affirmative action? Atwater was saying: we feel your pain. And he understood: defunding legal services and food stamps might slam poor whites, too, but if they thought it hurt minorities more, that might be enough to make them vote Republican. In this way the 1960s divide between Wallace voters and Nixon voters--those comfortable with naked racial appeals versus those who were not--was reconciled. South strategy 2.0 meant never having to say 'White Power.'" pg. 104
  
  "Negotiating identity between the formalists who wanted their art colorblind and multiculturalists who wanted their art uplifting had been the burden of Golden's and Ligon's generation." pg. 219
  
  "For a quarter-century, California had been the bleeding edge of the cultural generation gap. The 1978 passage of Proposition 13--ten years after the triumph of Nixon's Southern strategy and two before the Reagan Revolution--defined cultural generation gap politics. This anti-property tax initiative effectively revoked the Golden State's expansive postwar social contract, an act of civic white flight." pg. 245
  
  "But by the late 1970s, a new era had begun. As wages began to stagnate dramatically in relation to productivity, popular movements shifted from claiming the rights of national citizenship to claiming access to capitalism. Neoliberalism meant the financialization of everything, including notions of credit and debt, resistance and freedom." pg. 292
  
  "You could try to change the images people saw, but how could you change the images people already held of you in their minds?" pg. 311
  
• 
  Amy

  This book is about the rise and fall (or evolution) of multiculturalism in America, but uniquely examined through the lens of visual images. Yes, there are parts about laws, politics, presidential campaigns, school board decisions, etc, but a lot of attention is paid to the art world, and exhibits deemed controversial or unsuccessful at the time of their unveiling, and to advertising and the use of race to sell products/create an idea of a racial utopia.
• 
  Bookworm

  A look at race, art, pop culture and more. I had been under the impression this was his other book which I understand is about the rise of hip-hop. No matter, because this was a fascinating read.
   
  Chang takes us through a partial history of the US (from the 60's) through almost present day (2014) as viewed through the eyes of art, music, political movements, ads, etc. It's a really interesting view of the societal, political, demographic changes through these lenses, rather than as a general historical look by events. And it is how people of color have shaped these movements, changes, and developments.
   
  From the first African American syndicated cartoonist to the influence of the Old Spice 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like' ads and more. I have to say, some of the commentary and background was really fascinating: breaking down topics like the Old Spice commercial and whether the appeal of Isiah Mustafah came because he fit certain parameters (and because he is shirtless in all his ads) to the once numerous sitcoms and TV shows filled with black actors suddenly gone after networks decided they didn't need those anymore, etc.
   
  It's a dense read and it's something I'd have to chew on for later consumption. I also had trouble with some areas: the author tends to jump back and forth in time and that can make it somewhat difficult to follow. He also talks quite a bit about general art, and as that is not something that interests me I could feel my eyes glaze over.
   
  Still, it's an excellent read and I'm glad I picked it up. It's not a beach read (really, the book is heavy). However I'd strongly recommend picking it up if you have any interest at all in the topics Chang covers.
• 
  Ryan Mishap

  A discipline spanning examination that drops like a breakdown in the songs of the culture wars. Looks at how the culture of people of color interacts with, opposes, collaborates with, informs, changes, and gets assimilated by our society. Gets deeper philosophically than most, though, while also staying real with the nitty-gritty of politics and people's lives.
  
  There's not much else out there like this, so get a copy and read.
  
  I struggled at the beginning of this. The unusual angle Chang comes at us threw me at first. When he made an assertion that racist caricature in cartoons went underground as Warner Bros. animal characters, I thought he was reaching too far; trying to make connections that weren't there and this effected how I read the following pages. I think that still might be a miss, but the rest of the book is intriguing, insightful, and awesome.
• 
  Rich

  I had mixed emotions about this book. I really enjoyed "Can't Stop Won't Stop" and the reviews on this one were great. At the start it was very engaging, and it seemed like the goal was to write a People's History about race.
  
  But in the middle it completely bogged down, addressing a laundry list of names in the art world, and multi-culturalism. I was avoiding reading, so I skipped a number of pages, and considered not finishing. My initial thought was that such a vast attempt to write on race becomes dated very quickly. But that wasn't all of it...I just didn't see the connection in the entire middle of the book.
  
  I stuck with it and it ended fine. To anyone who is socially conscious, much if this will be treated along the lines of "oh yeah...that happened" -- and for me, that was barely enough.
• 
  Jeff Scott

  Our perceptions are often shaped by the media. From newspaper cartoons to art to television and the movies, we are inundated with the opinions and thoughts of a few. It's only those who choose to break the stereotypes and challenge the ideas of those few do those perceptions change. Jeff Chang seeks to document how society has changed in regard to race in the media. Morrie Turner's newspaper cartoon WeePals would break down racial stereotypes and mock those who would cling to them. Chang brilliantly documents the change in the media even down to a few small months here in there. It's in these small items that big ideas and social change come from. 
  
  
• 
  David Lamb

  I won a free copy of this book through a Goodreads Giveaway. Jeff Chang presents a fantastic pop-history narrative of race relations in the United States. I appreciated hearing from the perspective of artists of color and about their identity struggles. As a white male who grew up on the south in a household where Fox News played on a daily basis, I now seek out alternative (real) perspectives. Reading through the history presented of the early 90s was particularly eye opening, granting a view into the world around me as I was growing up in America. Highly recommended read.
• 
  Nuha

  I'm continually impressed by Chang's ability to weave between different aspects of social life such as art and politics and present precise causations I could have never figured out. As a Cornell alum, the parts about the Willard Straight Hall Takeover and the Latino Studies Program founding were particularly interesting and useful to see in the context of broader race relations at the time. The presentation of the book, with beautiful and provocative photos, lends it a more art history type feel, though this book is of course much much more.
• 
  Erin

  i have so many thoughts about how good this was, but my best representation of those feelings is me wanting to come home every night to read this before i went to bed, the MOST EXCITED i was about any part of my day.
• 
  biscuit

  One of the best books I have ever read, this book looks at the history of the U.S. through the complex intertwining of politics, policy, high and pop culture. A subject so myriad in complexities skillfully distilled into a deceptively easy read.
  
  Highly recommend.
• 
  Lisa

  Written on the eve of Obama's final term in office, this book is smart and no-nonsense as it takes a scalpel to the rise and fall of American racism, multiculturalism, and post-racial dogma. A must read to understand the absurdity of the phrase: "I don't see color, just people."
• 
  Fei

  Very detailed and rich in knowledge. I did have trouble following at times because I kept putting it down and picking it up again, had to make a conscious effort to read in larger chunks to get the full picture. May need to read again to get everything to sink in.
• 
  Phil Overeem

  ESSENTIAL READING RIGHT NOW.
• 
  Tuyen

  Hands down, a must read. Examines our multicultural society in a multi-faceted approach. Read it.
• 
  Karen Ashmore

  A fascinating intellectual discourse of race expressed in art, politics, and culture.
• 
  River

  I was a big fan of "Can't Stop Won't Stop," but this book didn't click right for me. The underlying analysis was fine, I just got bogged down in its discussion of art and art museums.
• 
  Alex

  Interesting cultural history
• 
  Rachel

  Content just isn't engaging. The title is a bit misleading, imo.