Graduate Program

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

Spring 2024

Thesis Director

Niall Nance-Carroll

Thesis Committee Member

Tim Engles

Thesis Committee Member

Jeannie Ludlow

Abstract

This thesis highlights young adults’ assumptions that social performance and certain cultural proficiencies validate one’s Blackness. I discuss cultural expressions and differences and social behaviors and why such markers and differences are insufficient to define and authenticate Black identity. I posit that the primary determinant of Blackness is a matter of biology and a shared historical context. I begin by reviewing historical and contemporary perspectives on the racial identity of African Americans and Black Africans across various eras in the United States. This is followed by analyzing the ways in which young people question their Black identities—ethnic, cultural, social, and collective—and the many discrepancies occasioned by defining Blackness only by these parameters. As examples, I analyze three stories in Ibi Zoboi’s anthology Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America. In looking at Varian Johnson’s “Black Enough,” I focus on the limitations of defining Blackness by social behaviors. Using Brandy Colbert’s “Oreo,” I discuss why social hybridity is assumed to “unauthenticate” an individual’s Blackness, concluding that Blackness is not dependent on one’s dominant social milieu. To address some disparities between the African American culture and the Black African culture, I look to Black African’s social and cultural misconceptions about African American Blackness in Tochi Onyebuchi’s “Samson and The Delilahs.” Ultimately, I argue for greater attention to the complexity of Black identities. This study encourages a more inclusive understanding of what it means to be Black in the U.S. context.

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