Beyond the White Negro

Empathy and Anti-Racist Reading

Kimberly Chabot Davis

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780252096310
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Critics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or "White Negroes, " who romanticized black culture as anarchic and sexually potent. In Beyond the White Negro, Kimberly Chabot Davis claims such a view fails to describe the varied politics of racial crossover in the past fifteen years.
 
Davis analyzes how white engagement with African American novels, film narratives, and hip-hop can help form anti-racist attitudes that may catalyze social change and racial justice. Though acknowledging past failures to establish cross-racial empathy, she focuses on examples that show avenues for future progress and change. Her study of ethnographic data from book clubs and college classrooms shows how engagement with African American culture and pedagogical support can lead to the kinds of white self-examination that make empathy possible. The result is a groundbreaking text that challenges the trend of focusing on society's failures in achieving cross-racial empathy and instead explores possible avenues for change.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Cross-Racial Empathy: Viewing the White Self through Black Eyes
• 1. Wiggers or White Allies? White Hip-Hop Culture and Racial Sincerity
• 2. Oprah, Book Clubs, and the Promise and Limitations of Empathy
• 3. Reading Race and Place: Boston Book Clubs and Post-Soul Fiction
• 4. Deconstructing White Ways of Seeing: Interracial-Conflict Films and College-Student Viewers
• Conclusion. Black Cultural Encounters as a Catalyst for Divestment in White Privilege
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author