Blackness

See also: blackness

English

Proper noun

Blackness

1. An area in Dundee, Dundee council area, Scotland.
2. A small coastal village in Falkirk council area, Scotland; a nearby headland is named Black Ness (OS grid ref NT0580).
3. A hamlet in Westham parish, Wealden district, East Sussex, England (OS grid ref TQ6104).
4. A suburb of Crowborough, Wealden district, East Sussex (OS grid ref TQ5230).

Noun

Blackness (uncountable)

1. Alternative letter-case form of blackness (“state of being of African descent; culture of African-Americans”).
   • 1999, Alfonso de Toro, Fernando de Toro, Jorge Luis Borges: Thought and Knowledge in the XXth Century, page 180:

     It is Blackless, hence it shares that very quality, Blacklessness, with Whiteness; and it is Whiteless, hence it shares Whitelessness with Blackness.

   • 2000, "Ghetto fabulous" in Geneva Smitherman, Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner, Houghton Mifflin Books, →ISBN, page 145:

     Describes a person or thing that is authentic, the height of something, according to the authentic, natural, ‘keepin-it-real’ standards of Blackness that are believed to exist in ghetto communities. Also ghetto fab.

   • 2018, Elisabeth Militz, Affective Nationalism:

     It is a question of 'what we invest ourselves in' (Grosz 1995, 184) and how people live Blackness, Whiteness, Azerbaijaniness, Germanness, femaleness or maleness.

   • 2019, Nina Eidsheim, Katherine Meizel, The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies, page 217:

     The soundingness of Blackness only achieves recognition in a sociopolitical context where the very fact of Blackness holds significant meaning. In other words, the acoustic markers of Blackness are not just about differentiating the vocal utterings and tonal inclinations of particular cultures.

   • 2020, Clifford Mason, Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America from the Beginning to Raisin in the Sun‎^[1][2], New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN:

     In one sense, the tragic mulatto heroine is baboon—babooness, if you will—since she has to deny, or at least denigrate, her Blackness in order to be tragic.

   • 2020, Jennifer Sieck, "Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum: Octavia E. Butler's Typewriter as Time Machine", The Washington Informer, 17 September 2020 - 23 September 2020, page 38:

     From Afrofuturism to hopepunk, many continue to draw on Butler's vision of a future where Blackness and Black people not only persist, but help bring worlds into being.

   • 2021, Abbie E. Goldberg, Genny Beemyn, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, SAGE Publications, Incorporated, →ISBN, page 237:

     [S]ocial authorities generally design and disseminate selective versions of science, religion, and media that emphasize some elements of social life (e.g., cis experience, hetero- and monosexuality, upper=class experience, endosex [i.e., non-intersex] categorization and downplay or otherwise erase other aspects of social life (e.g., Blackness or other non-white racial experience, trans experience, […]

   • 2021 March 15, Kovie Biakolo, “The Bachelor’s “Groundbreaking” Season Was a Representation Nightmare”, in Vanity Fair‎^[3]:

     Like those, James’s season still gave noticeably less screen time to its Black contestants—and because of James’s Blackness, the colorism that has always plagued The Bachelor became more visible. Darker-skinned and/or monoracial-presenting Black women were sent home earlier; none even made it to the hometown dating rounds.

   • 2022 April 25, Jacqueline Rhodes, Jonathan Alexander, The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, Routledge, →ISBN:

     In the same ways queerness and Appalachianness cannot be separated for some, Blackness and queer Appalachianness cannot be separated for others.

   • 2022 October 3, Ariane Resnick, “Media—But It's Not Exactly Harmless”, in Byrdie‎^[4], Dotdash Meredith:

     While there are some POC clean girl ambassadors like Selena Gomez and Zoe Kravitz, clean girls of color are few and far between. Social media has accepted that clean girls are generally white: A Twitter post entitled "'Clean Girl' aesthetic but make it black" published in May received over 90,000 likes, which exemplifies the fact that Blackness is not inherently accepted as part of the look.