The End of Race as We Know It

Gerald Early has an interesting article on The Chronicle Review on the question of race, the U.S. presidential race and the use (abuse?) of America’s original sin. To read more follow the link. Below is an excerpt:

But the irony of our anti-Americanism was that it masked our yearning for inclusion, which is why we were attending white colleges and universities in the first place. We grasped an identity of "blackness," of the superficially non-Western, in our confused hunt to fit into somebody's scheme and our reflexive fear that we would certainly not fit into a Western or white scheme. We did not want to be, in James Baldwin's words, "bastards of the West," but the very nature of our identity quest was propelled by the fact that we knew, inescapably, we were just that.

Gerald L. Early is a professor of African and African-American studies and American-culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as director of its Center for the Humanities.