Barack Obama is not the end of history. Nor is our Hope the beginning of a brave and new post-racial future. Before we embrace the logic of a world beyond race, we'd like to invite those of us who will surely be remembered as the first 'post-racial' generation to have a different conversation.
The Audacity of ‘Post-Racism’ is a compendium of original essays and conversations in which 25 scholars under the age of 30 critically examine issues of race in the world they are set to inherit. Pushing the boundaries of a traditional anthology, it will include roundtable discussions, inter-generational dialogue, and after-essay commentary from selected contributors.
But we need your submissions first. We are looking for 1000-5000 words that tell a story; writing grounded in personal experience and appealing to academic ears. Writing that can transform a college classroom and steal your attention on the train. It may be a paper you wrote, a well-reasoned blog post, or a chapter from the book you hope to one day finish. We want you to write the kind of work you most enjoy reading.
Through narrative, scholarship, and/or expository writing, we’d like you to consider the questions: what about right now is so 'post-racial'? What is your story of race in America? By this, we mean to request works that:
• Bridge any divide between your personal and political lives.
• Explore the politics of your family conversations.
• Reflect on the shifting terrain of racial language -- what does it mean for our generation?
• Revisit something you have had to learn and un-learn about race in your lifetime.
• Imagine W.E.B. Du Bois in the age of Google. Then put him in conversation with Vijay Prashad.
• Respond to Arundhati Roy and Stephen Colbert in the same instant.
• Validate your non-expert expertise on the durability of race in America.
• Capture a snapshot of this moment for your children.
Or, if the above prompts don't compel you:
• We have a black president. Go.
Please direct all questions, comments, and submissions to postracism@gmail.com.
The Editor-in-Chief of The Audacity of 'Post-Racism' is Adam Mansbach (Author of Angry Black White Boy and The End of the Jews).
