I’m sympathetic to the emotional roots of Touré’s conception of “post-blackness” and I find the concept kind of ridiculous. Not just because whiteness, rather than blackness, has historically been the more exclusive ethnic identity but because even Touré writes stuff like this:
All of that is why, to me, Vick seems to have a deeply African-American approach to the game. I’m not saying that a black QB who stands in the pocket ain’t playing black. I’m saying Vick’s style is so badass, so artistic, so fluid, so flamboyant, so relentless — so representative of black athletic style — that if there were a stat for swagger points, Vick would be the No. 1 quarterback in the league by far.
Touré wants to “to banish from the collective mind the bankrupt, fraudulent concept of ‘authentic’ Blackness,” but he nevertheless believes that your “swagger points” somehow define whether or not you have a “deeply African-American approach to the game.” You can’t really have it both ways–a blackness without borders and one in which we can identify, with any sense of meaning, traits that make something “deeply African-American.” It’s pretty easy to find a happy medium between denying that blackness has some kind of coherent cultural meaning and excommunicating people for putting mayo on their sandwiches.
