There seems to be this love-hate relationship with Black America. Its influence as a culture on American society cannot be denied, yet at the same time there is a reluctance to acknowledge that past, or even that present. It's uncomfortable for some people to talk about days of oppression in US history related to African Americans, because people don't want to acknowledge the connections of the past to the present.

Historian Pero Dagbovie surveys the contested, shifting grounds of Black history in modern American society - from struggles over the voices presenting the African American past in both academia and popular culture, to the ways history itself is taught and presented by institutions - and lived and understood by people in the 21st century.

Pero is author of Reclaiming the Black Past: The Use and Misuse of African American History in the Twenty-First Century from Verso.