A Case for Race-Consciousness.

• "The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed that collection of myths to which white Americans cling." -- James Baldwin

To say that race makes a difference means more than simply identifying material disadvantages facing people of color in contemporary America. It also recognizes that race may have an influence on how members of society understand their worlds and each other, and how such understandings may serve to perpetuate racial inequalities in our society.Race matters. Race is among the first things that one notices about another individual. To be born black is to know an unchangeable fact about oneself that matters every day.  To be born white is to be free from confronting one's race on a daily, personal, interaction-by-interaction basis. Being white, it has been said, means not having to think about it. Understandably, white people have a hard time recognizing this difference. Most blacks have to overcome, when meeting whites, a set of assumptions older than this nation about one's abilities, one's marriageability, one's sexual desires, and one's morality. Most whites, when they are being honest with themselves, know that these racial understandings are part of their consciousness. Race matters with respect to the people we choose to spend time with or marry, the neighborhoods in which we choose to live, the houses of worship we join, our choice of schools for our children, the people for whom we vote, and the people we allow the state to execute. We make guesses about the race of telephone callers we do not know and about persons accused of crimes. While not every decision we make necessarily has a racial component, when race is present it almost invariably influences our judgments. We are intensely -- even if subconsciously -- race-conscious. [more]