With Maybelline Mocha and an Afro wig, white author explores 'Blackness' in a new book

Sam Forster expected some pushback online when he announced his latest book, Seven Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern America.

Detailed accounts of America’s racial divide are nothing new, and particularly in the years since the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, there has been renewed interest in the topic.

But the key difference between Forster’s account and those written by others is that Forster, a white man, said he “disguised” himself as Black — donning an Afro wig and dark foundation — to get a firsthand account of modern life as a person of color.