Very often we hear people say "I do not see color". Some on the cultural left laugh at them. No data to prove this, but I have the intuition that what many are saying, or trying to say, is that of course they see color but do not see race, yet lack the language to describe this liminal space, searching for something beyond what our long-lived constructions will conceptually and linguistically allow. I was introduced to this "raceless-ness" (but fulsome appreciation of ethnicity) through Crouch, and Murray, on whom I wrote a thesis. Murray sought to puncture the myth of race. He used the phrase "so-called black and white," he used "afro-american," he used "negro", perhaps as chord changes, signposts through which we may improvise our way, living with and confronting both "the cold hard facts of life," - race as currently understood - all the while searching for and perhaps building an Omni-American conception with its attendant language, with which this conversation surely consonant.
Very often we hear people say "I do not see color". Some on the cultural left laugh at them. No data to prove this, but I have the intuition that what many are saying, or trying to say, is that of course they see color but do not see race, yet lack the language to describe this liminal space, searching for something beyond what our long-lived constructions will conceptually and linguistically allow. I was introduced to this "raceless-ness" (but fulsome appreciation of ethnicity) through Crouch, and Murray, on whom I wrote a thesis. Murray sought to puncture the myth of race. He used the phrase "so-called black and white," he used "afro-american," he used "negro", perhaps as chord changes, signposts through which we may improvise our way, living with and confronting both "the cold hard facts of life," - race as currently understood - all the while searching for and perhaps building an Omni-American conception with its attendant language, with which this conversation surely consonant.