Essay Database

When W.E.B. Du Bois announced in his marvelous work Souls of Black Folk, that the "problem of the 20th Century is the color line . . ." immediately he set out a social and analytical paradigm that instantly recognized that the major racial problem in America was that existing between Blacks and Whites. Nevertheless, we are still, at the end of the 20th Century, struggling with the question of what kind of democratic society we are, …

…just for black people, but for everyone. The right wing has in a certain sense understood the challenge of "reimagining" race, for it has clearly articulated a particular vision of the meaning of race in a conservative democratic society. This is the concept of "color-blindness." Undeniably this vision has a certain appeal, not only as a cover for the perpetuation of white supremacy, but as a plausible reinvention of fundamental elements of national ideology: indi