Damn! I was hoping to stay out of this for awhile

So, the author of "The End of Blackness" now deigns to tell us the difference between black and "black". And while I have endlessly delayed reading this book (really waiting for the avalanche of parallel books from other cultures to sweep the market; still waiting for that The End of Jewishness to reach the charts), I have to say that her division of the descendants of slaves from modern day immigrants to the US from Africa is perfectly appropriate and really nothing earth-shattering.

One wishes that the writer had taken time to visit MOAD - perhaps it would have enhanced her descriptive metaphors.


But what this commentary does highlight - inadvertently, of course - is the author's own rejection of Pan-African philosophy. This is not surprising from again - the author of The End of Blackness. While one rarely hears white intellectuals posit the wholesale rejection of Western thought such as from the Age of Enlightenment, it seems as though the best way to be published as a black author today is to reject the very concept of collective black action, as though it is okay and perfectly appropriate for white people to establish social organizations and communities, from which they proceed to act in their collective interests, but for black people to embrace Afrocentrism or express any inclination to form social collectives violates some principle of "individualism" that must be the basis of all Black success. It is as though there is this coterie of black authors who somehow figured out that Ayn Rand was really talking to us.

Whatever.

Dickerson cannot unequivocally support Barack Obama because she is uncertain about the necessity for collective black action. This causes her to hesitantly crab walk toward what his candidacy means at the same time as she skitters away from the very idea of why she as a black pundit must have an opinion on a black presidential candidate. Only when the scales fall away will she be able to see that the Obama candidacy is an unalloyed good - for black people and all citizens of this nation. It is precisely because Obama is a member of yet another migration from Africa (back to MOAD) that his story can be one to lead us all away from this endless game of musical chairs that has ensnared former slaves and former slave owners for these many centuries.

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