Come join a special event hosted by AACRE and Hyphen on November 11!

The AACRE network is hosting a special presentation by award-winning author Jeff Chang on his new book Who We Be: The Colorization of America.

You may have seen Jeff this past weekend on MSNBC, or you may be familiar with his first book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, which garnered many honors, including the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award.

In Who We Be, Jeff takes on questions regarding race and culture over the past half-century and today: How do Americans see race now? How has that changed? After eras framed by words like “multicultural” and “post-racial,” do we see each other any more clearly?

I think there is a particular reason we need history, even recent history. In the United States of America, we still tend to begin each conversation about race as if it were new, from a willed presumption of what might be called racial innocence, as if we have lived nothing and learned nothing. […]

 The story of the colorization of America is a story worth telling because, even as it reminds us that only a painful process of illusion-burning can bring us to see things anew, it also suggests our faith in democracy is renewable.

From Ferguson, MO to the White House, immigration policy to civic participation, City Hall to San Francisco Chinatown, we know that race still matters. Who We Be explores the how, why, and where we go from here.

Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality will host this event, with door donations benefiting Hyphen magazine.

RSVP at http://bit.ly/WhoWeBeAACRE.