The classifications that we claim to derive from nature and then ascribe to people and groups are confining to any human spirit: We are all injured by racism.

To begin to undo the work of racecraft is to insist on the subjective—on one’s own individuality, and that of all others. After all, racism’s most insidious wounds are not of policy, economics, or even life and limb, though those do of course hurt, but of the psyche. The classifications that we claim to derive from nature and then ascribe to people and groups are confining to any human spirit: We are all injured by racism. So in that way, calling for the end of white supremacy necessitates calling for the end of whiteness itself, which, thankfully, might be well understood nowadays. In the fullness of time, we may also come to understand, in a life-giving manner, that the end of whiteness must also mean the end of blackness, brownness, and any other colorness.

Matthew McKnight, “Black as We Wanna Be,” The Nation, September 15, 2016. https://www.thenation.com/article/black-as-we-wanna-be/.

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