Thick: And Other Essays

Whiteness is an elastic concept that can change over time. In contrast, Blackness is a static counterweight to Whiteness. “Black Is Over (Or, Special Black)” opens with someone at a meeting telling McMillan Cottom that “Black is over” (131). The occasion is a meeting of professors of color, all women, working on a project for students. One of the professors declares that society has moved past Black and White. McMillan Cottom is uncomfortable with this and highlights how it shows the kind of Black woman she is perceived to be. Blackness is not a fixed thing: It varies by political affiliation, economic status, and the diaspora, to name a few potential factors. She recalls being a teenager and dating a Dominican boy, whose brother says that she is too dark for him to date. McMillan Cottom concludes that she is a Black person, but that her Blackness has shifted depending on what is “being offered to me or denied me” (131).

Within Blackness, both culture and class matter. Black people who are not the descendants of the enslaved and did not experience the Great Migration are called “Black ethnics.” This category challenges Blackness as a fixed imaginary.