--- title: Touré on Baratunde Thurston and The New Black Irony description: A book titled How to Be Black throws down a delicious gauntlet. It tells you the author is deeply concerned with blackness but is going... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7133645/the-new-black-irony/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-03-01T13:27:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-22T07:32:19.379Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Touré on Baratunde Thurston and The New Black Irony og:description: A book titled How to Be Black throws down a delicious gauntlet. It tells you the author is deeply concerned with blackness but is going... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7133645/the-new-black-irony/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltad04ae0716eb8d92/698a91e0d075333874e76bbb/a120312130015.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 600 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: Black Irony og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Touré on Baratunde Thurston and The New Black Irony twitter:description: A book titled How to Be Black throws down a delicious gauntlet. It tells you the author is deeply concerned with blackness but is going... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltad04ae0716eb8d92/698a91e0d075333874e76bbb/a120312130015.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) # The New Black Irony > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Touré](https://time.com/author/toure/) Mar 1, 2012 1:27 PM UTC  Hank Willis Thomas by [Touré](https://time.com/author/toure/) Mar 1, 2012 1:27 PM UTC A book titled _How to Be Black_ throws down a delicious gauntlet. It tells you the author is deeply concerned with blackness but is going to be irreverent about our sacred identity and just might give up the secrets of our religion. Make no mistake: blackness is, for some, religious. There are sacraments, saints and sinners in the National Church of Holy Blackness. _How to Be Black_ is by a church member who doesn’t care: Baratunde Thurston, a comic who writes for the _Onion_, which loves slicing up sacred cows into burgers of funny. (He opens the chapter on his genealogy by saying, “My family has been black for a long, long time.”) But more than just making jokes, Thurston is tapping in to what might be called black irony. Read the full story (available free to subscribers) [here](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2108036,00.html). ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7133645/the-new-black-irony/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7133645/the-new-black-irony/"},"headline":"The New Black Irony","datePublished":"2012-03-01T13:27:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-22T07:32:19.379Z","description":"A book titled How to Be Black throws down a delicious gauntlet. 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