How To Be Black

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COUNTERCULTURE is a topical interview show hosted by Kweli Washington that values cosmopolitanism, thoughtful dialogue and soul. Guests on the show are thought leaders and newsmakers with a rich perspective on the culture in which we live. This week we interviewed comedian, tech evangelist, and political commentator, Baratunde Thurston about Twitter, the economy, the Presidential race, his hair and why he gave up on the NFL football for premiership soccer.

“Thurston is at his best when chronicling his experiences as the child of a single mother in Washington, D.C., whose father died during a drug deal, and his subsequent adventures as a young nerd at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School and later Harvard. These chapters serve to underscore Thurston’s authority on blackness. He has, after all, been to Africa. His name is kind of African, too.”

via the San Francisco Chronicle review

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Baratunde talks about How To Be Black on NPR’s Fresh Air.

“It’s no coincidence that Baratunde Thurston’s new memoir and satirical self-help book How to Be Black was slated for release on the first day of Black History Month.

“I feel great about that,” Thurston tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I think we have a moment every year in our country where everyone buys black stamps and thinks more explicitly about black people and blackness, so it was a perfect month to release a book on this subject.”

Read NPR’s full write-up here: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/01/146198412/baratunde-thurston-explains-how-to-be-black

“He made an example. He pointed to a kid across the way and said, ‘That kid’s an Oreo.’ And I didn’t know the kid’s name at the time — I saw this nerdy black kid with glasses hanging out with white friends … And that was the first introduction of this concept, inauthentic blackness because you’re comfortable around whiteness.”

Baratunde Thurston on the term ‘oreo’ (via nprfreshair). So exciting!!!

(via nprfreshair)

Reblogged from NPR Fresh Air