ENTERTAINING RACE

Theologian and public intellectual Dyson turns a gimlet eye on the stereotypes and authentic expressions of Black self-presentation.

The author begins on a disturbing note: A young Black girl on a slave ship is lashed to death because she refuses to dance for the crew. Since that day in 1792 and well before, Black men, women, and children have been bidden to perform. “Black folk only exist,” writes Dyson, “when they are forced to adopt a narrow philosophy of life that is part Descartes, part Nas: Ut praestare, ergo sum, I perform, therefore I am.” Some artists perform more or less on their own terms, as in the case of Prince. Some do so by following strange self-erasing paths, as in the case of Michael Jackson, whom Dyson likens to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Benjamin Button. As for Beyoncé, “the greatest entertainer in the world,” the author seems to locate her somewhere in the middle. Given the absence of both Prince and Jackson, “Beyoncé now reigns supreme, alone, atop a kingdom of performance that she inherited from a Prince and a King but which she has made even greater.” Dyson writes with a broad, well-learned view of Black history, drawing on the brilliant career of Kobe Bryant here and the sad death of George Floyd there to discuss representations of Black life in American culture, which, he writes, illustrate the words of a Baptist hymn often heard in his church: “Nobody told me that the road would be easy.” He is forgiving of certain aspects of White myopia, but he is a sharp critic, as when he assails Barack Obama for having not played the race card enough: “if whites won’t remind him that he’s Black, then he won’t remind them that they’re white.” As for that uneasy road? In a stirring conclusion, Dyson urges that we all follow it to fulfill the grand, incomplete promise of America.

A thoughtful, elegantly argued contribution to the literature of Black lives in America.