{"id":59525,"date":"2020-02-13T16:26:01","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T16:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59525"},"modified":"2020-02-13T16:26:01","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T16:26:01","slug":"what-if-we-just-forgot-about-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59525","title":{"rendered":"What if We Just Forgot about Race?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2020\/02\/what-if-we-just-forgot-about-race\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>What if We Just Forgot about Race?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Review<\/a><br \/>\n2020-02-11<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/@rkylesmith\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Kyle Smith<\/strong><\/a>, Critic-at-Large<\/p>\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"550\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2020\/02\/what-if-we-just-forgot-about-race\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.nationalreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/black-lives-matter.jpg?w=2000&amp;ssl=1\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<small>Opponents of a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/White_nationalism\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">white nationalist<\/a>-led rally hold a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_Lives_Matter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Black Lives Matter<\/a> flag in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Downtown_(Washington,_D.C.)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">downtown Washington, D.C.<\/a>, August 12, 2018. <em>(Leah Millis\/Reuters)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><strong>Thomas Chatterton Williams, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58090\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race<\/em><\/a> (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>In his beautifully written new book, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thomaschattwill\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Thomas Chatterton Williams<\/a> disputes the notion that his blackness should be central to his identity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Picture a graph of American racial preoccupation over time. Over the last 50 years, the downward trend is unmistakable. After the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Civil_rights_movement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">civil-rights era<\/a>, anger and frustration and dismay diminished in the Seventies. It diminished more in the Eighties and the Nineties and the Aughts. Then, after the election of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Barack Obama<\/a>, which was presented as the final victory of post-racial thinking, what? A steady increase in focus on race. Today everything is racialized. Race is inescapable. There is no sociopolitical subject that can be discussed without a prominent voice insisting \u201cActually, this is about race.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s exhausting. It\u2019s hard to see how we bend the curve of race anguish down again. But then again, it\u2019s a mistake to think that present trends must carry on indefinitely. Attitudes do evolve, adapt, grow. What if we dropped our fascination with race?&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read or listen to the entire review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2020\/02\/what-if-we-just-forgot-about-race\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his beautifully written new book, Thomas Chatterton Williams disputes the notion that his blackness should be central to his identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,6941,394],"tags":[30761,30760,4725],"class_list":["post-59525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-philosophy","category-socialscience","tag-kyle-smith","tag-national-review","tag-thomas-chatterton-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59526,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59525\/revisions\/59526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}