At heart, what is at stake here is understanding blackness as a complex identity that carries different meanings depending on its time and place. Rather than attempting to determine exactly who possesses an "authentically black" socioeconomic and/or political background, for example, we can and should address differences between different black individuals with an eye to aggregating around shared concerns and causes. In other words, we might all be better off changing the question from 'What is blackness?' to 'When and where is blackness??