Can Postmodern Blackness Exist Without an Understanding of History.
As abstract as the topic may be, it is of high importance to understand postmodern blackness and what it means to society. It includes the views and experiences of blacks after the Civil Rights movement. Holding high importance in present day society, it is much ignored and it needs to be better understood. A first step into understanding postmodern blackness is to give recognition to our history.
Many critics claim that today's generation does not credit its history and is in fact outright disrespectful and rebellious. This assumption does provide an easy scapegoat but this is truly not the matter. Changes in time yields changes in values. Bell Hooks announces some explication of the postmodern state in her essay, Postmodern Blackness:.
In the wake of the black power movement, after so rebels were slaughtered and lost, many of these voices were silenced by a repressive state; others became inarticulate. It has become necessary to find new avenues to transmit the messages of black liberation struggle, new ways to talk about racism and other politics of domination. (2479).
Presented here, is a discussion of some aspects that entail a black postmodern society in the 2002 Box Office hit comedy, Barbershop. The discussions that the characters have range from familial values to Civil Rights struggles and how the new generation interprets blackness.
Postmodern blackness opens new avenues.
Postmodernism does introduce new ways to look at blackness. Expansion of the black culture has forced other cultural groups to give it a new respect that has been much overdue. Hooks eloquently says that "the critique of essentialism" provoked by postmodernist theory "is useful for African-Americans concerned with reformulation outmoded notions of identity" (2482).
It is the strong identity of the black culture that has corrected ineptitudes placed on it by society.
