The Shaping of Black Identities: Redefining the Generations Through the Legacy of Race and Culture (PB) (2025)

Turn the traditional generational groupings on their head through this examination of Black life, culture, and the struggle for racial justice in the United States.

The Shaping of Black Identities explores the generations of African Americans who have lived in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the impact that living in the United States has had on them. Jimmie R. Hawkins examines how identity is formed and shaped by internal and external forces. He investigates collective memory and the stories told to each succeeding generation about the lives of the preceding generations. But most of all, this book is about belonging.

Using the generational time frames established by the Pew Research Center, Hawkins proposes six new generational categories rooted in the Black experience: the New Negro, Motown, Black Power, Hip-Hop, #BlackLivesMatter, and Obama generations. He emphasizes the need for reexamination in distinguishing generational uniqueness with attention to disparate, nondominant groups. Given the history of racial and cultural discrimination against Blacks in the United States, such an examination of the ways in which Black life has taken its own unique shape among generations offers new ways to understand the transition in identity adopted by Blacks. Hawkins examines the historical contexts that shaped each generation and the general attitudes and perceptions of each generation as influenced by the cultural, political, and racial environment of the nation. Throughout, there is a unique focus on Black protest. With its attention to each generation of Blacks, The Shaping of Black Identities speaks to this active, liberative, and distinct historical attempt to define the self in the pivotal and ongoing search for meaning.