Abstract

Abstract:

This essay explores how Black Americans have deployed the notion of the racial sellout since the turn of the twenty-first century. First, it revisits Barack Obama's iconic presidency, examining how Obama and his critics each imagined the trap of "selling out." Next, it turns to Paul Beatty's Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sellout, which interrogates the supposedly postracial America that Obama left behind. Through its ironic performance of segregation, Beatty's novel exposes the real sellouts in contemporary America: those public leaders who defend "colorblind" discourse while refusing to recognize the nation's enduring racial inequities.

pdf

Share