
How Black Americans Became Imposters of Blackness
The Affirmative Action Myth is, in essence, a defense of a golden age of Black bourgeois culture, Black bourgeois morality, Black bourgeois striving, indeed, Black bourgeois reality. And being bourgeois here is not about a class, but an aspiration. Riley’s book is an account of how Black people made themselves American. And why not? America is the land of self-invention.