The Art of Being Black explores how young black Britons create their cultural identities. Claire Alexander rejects the common tendency to view black communities in terms of conflict, or as the focus of a problem; she offers a fresh exploration of the strengths and ambiguities of black youth representations as they are imagined and lived through, focusing in particular on community, "class," social life, and masculinity.
Young black men have been typecast as hostile and culturally confused, alienated from their parents and from society; as "folk devils" (the stock images of the black...