The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folk to Their Rightful Owners

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Chapter 1: Taking the Words Out Of Black Mouths
Black people are not crazy. They're not paranoid. They're punch-drunk, or as Carter G. Woodson put it, 'the Negro's mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor. The problem of holding the Negro down, therefore, is easily solved.

Chapter 1: Narcissism
What is racism but a fascination with oneself? Why, a seventeenth-century European newly arrived in Africa must have mused, are these odd creatures not pale, not straight-haired, not freckled, not wearing filthy pantaloons, and not praying to two pieces

Debra Dickerson pulls no punches in this electrifying manifesto. Outspoken journalist and author of the critically acclaimed memoir An American Story, she challenges black Americans to stop obsessing about racism and start focusing on problems they can fix. The way out of the ghetto, she asserts, is to take a good, hard look in the mirror. Get angry, Dickerson says, but use that anger to fuel excellence and civic participation rather than crime or drug addiction. Drawing richly on black history and thought, as well as her own hard-won wisdom, she urges blacks to let go of the past and claim their full freedom. It's only by shaping their own future, she argues, that blacks will finally abolish the myth of white superiority.

Debra J. Dickerson was educated at the University of Maryland, St. Mary's University, and Harvard Law School. She has been both a senior editor and a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, and her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, The New Republic, Slate, The Village Voice, and Essence. She lives in Albany, New York.

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