In 2020, millions of people across the world posted black squares to their social media accounts, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Outraged by the shocking death of George Floyd at the hands of police, many expressed a desire to educate themselves about racial inequality.
Around this time, Nathalie Etoke was writing her book, Shades of Black, a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand current events in the US, and the historic and systemic injustices that brought us here.
“I wrote this book because I wanted to challenge our current conversation on identity politics and minority representation, while addressing the pitfalls of symbolism,” Nathalie explains.
“We celebrate the achievements of specific Black bourgeois individuals [such as Barack Obama and Kamala Harris] as a sign of progress for the country and the Black community. However, when you look at the statistics related to the facts of Black life in America, they are stubborn. They do not fit this narrative of American progress and success that we see in the news.
“Actually, that narrative silences the specific situations and the needs of the working-class Black people, the George Floyds of America, who at the end of the day are living in the socio-economic margins of our society.”
Drawing from her academic background in Francophone and Africana studies, and her own experiences as a French-born Cameroonian living in New York, Nathalie describes Shades of Black as “a trans-disciplinary essay that deconstructs Blackness in relation to the problem of freedom and capitalism in the United States of America”.
She says: “People who are interested in building a post-racist and anti-capitalist world that acknowledges humanity and the freedom of all could be interested in what I have to say. Those who disagree with my views could still learn something about Black existence in predominantly white countries.
“We need to find a way to create a better world for everyone… Unhappiness for some can no longer mean happiness for others.”
Shades of Black is available now in bookshops across Australia and New Zealand or buy it online here.
