But that omnipresent image of a powerful, untouchable black man reinvigorated a rage and fear of blackness as old as the nation itself. He represents an erudite, sophisticated blackness that mainstream culture has historically derided or dismissed. To the subject at hand: It is safe to say that Barack Obama may be the most famous African-American man who has ever lived. How are we to reconcile these truths? Is the attention to black male writing merely a fleeting moment, or is it a revolution? Thus, it is possible for the Sacramento police to murder a black man holding a cellphone in his grandmother’s backyard and for Whitehead to win the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award within a year. Even as African-American writing currently experiences unprecedented mainstream appeal and critical recognition, the focus on black expression has another, uglier face: a deadly obsession with black bodies. Hysterical racism throughout the country has spawned an epidemic of police violence so unbearable, so ongoing, that if I listed the names of the dead today, it would likely be incomplete by next month. Four days before Lamar received his Pulitzer, a white man in a Michigan suburb opened fire on a 14-year-old black boy when he knocked on his door to ask for directions after missing the school bus. In that same essay, Baldwin also wrote: “This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.” Now, in 2018, blackness is as lethal to black people as it ever was. The sale was a triumph: A black multimillionaire bought a black artist’s painting for the highest sum ever paid for the work of a living African-American artist. In May, Sean “Diddy” Combs outbid a rival to purchase a Kerry James Marshall painting for $21.1 million at Sotheby’s. Last spring, “ Black Panther,” with its nearly all-black cast, surpassed a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales. On the same day, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was nominated for the prize for drama (he was also nominated in 2016). And so they were: Canedy is the first black woman to hold her post, and Lamar - or “Pulitzer Kenny,” as he now delightfully, and delightedly, calls himself - is the first hip-hop artist to win the award.
“We’re both making history right now,” she said. At the ceremony, the prize’s administrator, Dana Canedy, greeted Lamar on the steps of Columbia University. That’s old news, but it’ll never get old to me: Black male rappers have been so maligned as to render his award almost unimaginable to those of us who have loved the music for decades. LAST APRIL, KENDRICK Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for music.