Sublime

Whether at a dinner table or in grand theories, the false choice between black-black and worthy black is a trap. It poses that ending blackness was the goal of anti-racist work when the real goal has always been and should always be ending whiteness.

This skewed demography is only now being corrected as nonprofessionals migrate to join families, as economic and/or political refugees; as workers in the transportation, lodging, and other trades; and as small businessmen (running shops, motels, and so on). Ignoring these facts of South Asian America, D’Souza asks, “why can’t an African American be

At this time, the colonial leaders enacted a system of racial classification that would elevate European immigrants and their descendants as “White” and all others classified as non-White and African. For Africans, this came with a destiny of servitude in perpetuity and even applied to those who lived free in the colonies for several generations.

than be slaves to market forces (Du Bois 1933b).

In a tragic coda to this early story of eugenics, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was still enmeshed in the controversy over eugenics as recently as January 2019, this time through the disgraceful racist utterances of Nobel laureate James D. Watson, cofounder of the DNA double helix and one of the laboratory’s longtime fellows, whom they stripped of

Thus this move toward separating work from compensation could be a radically progressive one, were it coupled with a call for a new definition of rights in terms of human needs. Rather than a “right to work,” one would speak of a right to all the basic necessities of life: food and shelter, healthcare and retirement benefits, access to education,

these communities are also amputated from the collective imagination of the nation.