Chang - We Gon Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation

In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang ( Cant Stop Wont Stop, Who We Be ) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism. Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of diversity, the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. He argues that resegregation is the unexamined condition of our time, the undoing of which is key to moving the nation forward to racial justice and cultural equity.

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Review

"There is history and analysis in these pages, and there is life and experience, too, but neither form of storytelling overpowers the other. Instead, what comes through most clearly is a versatile mind in the service of a painful and protracted story, an author who ranges widely before drawing tough conclusions and one who, despite the books optimistic title, appears deeply pessimistic about things getting any better, much less becoming all right...The limits of representation come alive in the authors unforgettable discussion of the Asian American experience." The Washington Post

"In the song that inspired the authors title, Kendrick Lamar repeatedly asks his listeners, 'Do you feel me?' Changs text, in essence, poses the same question. Enriched and stimulated as much by his passion as his ideas, Im pleased to answer with a resounding yes."Jabari Asim, Bookforum

When absorbed individually, the author's incisive essays will educate and inform readers. Collectively, Chang creates a chain-linked manifesto arguing for an end to racially charged violence and discrimination and urging global open-mindedness to the struggle of the oppressed. A compelling and intellectually thought-provoking exploration of the quagmire of race relations. Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"[Carries] the conversation about race in America right into 2016. Each essay is both critically sharp and deeply affectingboth heavy with statistics and rich with evocative descriptions."*East Bay Express *

"Incredible! It's a small book, but it packs a big punch." BookRiot

With simple, elegant prose coupled with remarkable scholarship, Jeff Changs We Gon' Be Alright , moves us beyond autobiography into an illuminated landscape of penetrating facts and underlining unavoidable truths. In these pages, one learns the meaning and devastating effects of resegregation, inequity, and the systems of power that maintain them. Connecting the dots from federal housing policies of the 1960's and the sparks of Ferguson to the political rise of Donald Trump and the bittersweet sorrow of Beyoncs Lemonade , We Gon' Be Alright captures the crisis of this historical moment even as it propels us toward action for a future we can only imagine. Its been a long while since 'just the facts, please' was a real page-turner. For anyone interested in the realities shaping the cultural landscape, read it and share it. The clarity of vision is unparalleled. Chang has truly nailed it! Carrie Mae Weems, visual artist

Race has been fraught since its invention; this is to be expected of an enduring fiction that draws real blood. When it comes to navigating the minefields of raceits myths and material consequences, its currents and contradictionsJeff Chang is a maestro. With eloquence and urgency, We Gon Be Alright reveals a country whose deepening racial oppression and inequality is shrouded by myths of colorblindness and postracial triumphalism. Diversity trumps equity, racial innocence trumps history, gentrification trumps resegregation, performance trumps power, and a Trump America trumps any possibility of a liberated America. But reversing course, Chang tells us, requires truth and reconciliation, struggle and transfiguration, and a movement governed by love and full of grace. Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

There is no more fitting writer to chronicle an unprecedented moment in American history than Jeff Chang. We Gon Be Alright is a seminal work about now, about who we are and who we are becoming. Jose Antonio Vargas, Founder and CEO of Define American

Jeff Changs We Gon Be Alright is an astonishing and thorough account of how decades of struggle and protest have led us to Ferguson, to Black Lives Matter, to questions of equity and diversity, and to a country that is more segregated than ever. In the midst of our tense racial debates, this book is required reading. We would do well to heed its lessons.Michael Eric Dyson

"Changs prose is disarming, provocative, and sure to inspire further thought and research." Booklist

About the Author

JEFF CHANG is the author of Cant Stop Wont Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation and Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in PostCivil Rights America . He has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature and the winner of the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. He is the executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University.

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In appreciation of all the young people who would not bow down

We are living in serious times. Since 2012, the names of the fallenTrayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, the list never seems to ceasehave catalyzed collective outrage and grief. In the waning years of a Black presidency, we saw a proliferation of images of Black people killed in the streets and the rise of a national justice movement to affirm that Black lives matter.

Young people who grew up exemplars of post-1965 American diversity while attending schools that were dramatically resegregating have taken to the streets and the university quads to march against their own invisibility and demand a renewed attention to questions of equity.

And even the machines of our culture industries, which for the past twenty years have tried to assure us that our rainbow nation is indeed a happy one, have found their gears ground down by popular protests led by people of color against their lack of access, representation, and power.

In Who We Be , I wrote about visual culture and what I called the paradox of the post-racial momentthat while our images depict a nation moving toward desegregation, our indices reveal growing resegregation and inequity. The book was published a month before the announcement of the non-indictment of officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Since then, the idea that there had ever been a post-racial moment has come to seem naive, even desperately so.