Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1009: #1009 - The Theory of Racelessness: Dr. Sheena Mason

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

The Theory of Racelessness argues that Race does not exist in nature. Race does not exist as a social construction. Everyone is raceless. Racism includes the belief in race as biological or a construction and the practice of racialization. Racism is not everywhere and is not the cause for every perceived “racial” disparity or negative interaction. Racism can be overcome. The Theory of Racelessness is the brain child of scholar, teacher, and writer Dr. Sheena Mason, who earned her Ph.D. in English literature “with distinction” in May 2021 from Howard University. She joined the faculty at SUNY Oneonta in Oneonta, NY, in August 2021, as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in African American literature. She has taught at the College of William and Mary, California Lutheran University, and Howard University. Her book titled Theory of Racelessness: A Case for Philosophies of Antirace(ism) is scheduled to be released by Palgrave Macmillan on September 23, 2022. Additionally, she co-authored “Harlem Renaissance: An Interpretation of Racialized Art and Ethics,” a chapter of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art examining what, if anything, is the proper role of race in the aesthetic productions of or about members of racialized populations. Find out more about The Theory of Racelessness at: https://www.theoryofracelessness.org 

Hey friends, I just want to invite you to consider joining the Theology in the Raw Patreon community. This is a group of followers who believe in the ministry and work of Theology in the Raw and want to support it financially. And honestly, I've been so impacted by the people who have chosen to support this podcast. Every month they send in a bunch of questions. A lot of them are really personal and I get to spend time responding to them in a private podcast. And we, you know, we'll message each other throughout the month and post responses to each other's questions. I'm actually going to start something new this fall, a monthly live Zoom chat with some of the members. And I'm super looking forward to actually seeing more of their faces every month. And there's other perks to come up like a free virtual

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in Iran community for a minimum of five bucks a month by going to patreon.com forward slash Theology in Iran. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in Raw community for a minimum of five bucks a month by going to patreon.com forward slash Theology in Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in Raw. The link is in the show notes. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Sheena Mason. Dr. Mason earned her PhD in English Literature with distinction from Howard University, and she's currently on the faculty as Assistant Professor of African American Literature with Distinction from Howard University. And she's currently on the faculty as assistant professor of African American literature at the State University of New York. And she recently released her book, Theory of Racelessness, a case for philosophies of anti-racism. The spelling there is actually really important. So you have to go check it out. It just

released a couple of months ago. And I came across Sheena through a mutual friend and was intrigued by this idea of racelessness. We all know, or most of us know, that race should not be considered a biological category. But most of us would say, but it is a social construct. Well, Sheena disagrees with both of those ideas. And she is incredibly thoughtful and brilliant. And this entire podcast was devoted to kind of unpacking her theory of racelessness. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Sheena Mason. Thank you, Shana, for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Just tell us a brief snapshot of who you are and how you... You're obviously an academic. I saw your CV.

You publish a lot of popular level stuff, but also some very academic kind of things. So tell us about your journey and how you fell into kind of a more academic field. Sure. Thinking of myself as an academic makes me giggle because it means so many things to different people. But how I got here. So I have always had a love for literature and education, broadly speaking. I grew up in a very abusive household, and I turned to school and reading in particular as a sort of safe spaces and safe havens. And it was through literature that I discovered that the world was vaster than

I had yet experienced. And by the time I got to be an undergraduate, I felt drawn to African American literature in particular, because the body of literature has always been defined as having to do with struggle and being a sort of response to struggle and also striving to end certain struggles, especially as it pertains to racism. And so I felt really connected to that because of the struggles that I had been through in my own life. And I had experienced explicit racism throughout my childhood. I felt that God's purpose for me was to do something greater and that I was destined

to turn my mess into a message, if you will. And I immersed myself into the study of African American literature, which meant that I studied everything race and racism. By the time I got to be a PhD student, I found myself falling into a sort of full-blown skepticism as it pertains to race that makes perfect sense how I actually got there intellectually and even emotionally and spiritually. Given my background as an undergraduate where I was very skeptical of this idea of authenticity or representation, this idea that there is a way to be Black, for example, because that defied reality. Like, you know, I was a person who was racialized as Black. I know a lot of people who are racialized as Black, and no one ever fit into the avatar of what Black

was supposed to be. So what is that thing? And that led me to my signature theory of racistness, a sort of recognition that through my study of the literature and the attending history, to undo racism, we have to undo our belief in race. And it hasn't been an easy journey. It's actually been a very challenging journey, even for myself. And Kimmy and I, when we first had a couple conversations about it, she at first also didn't understand. So she's going through her own journey of exploration and discovery. But I find that it's a necessary journey. And I'm just doing everything I can to spread the word and share information with as many people as possible. Well, thank you. That's a great summary. So I already I've got tons of questions. I think,

you know, I've read, I've watched some videos where you unpack the theory of racelessness. Can you unpack it for us here for people that are like, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? What do you mean they're raceless? What does that even mean? So give us the elevator pitch to your theory. The elevator pitch. Well, no, a longer version of it. I don't want to cut you short. It's complex. Yeah, that'll forever be my pain point. It's like, how can I make something that really is complex and vast into a sort of elevator pitch? But the short answer is that the theory of racistness is a framework. It is a way for us to talk about, think about, interpret, analyze all things race and racism. But when I say it's a framework, there are rules and there are tools to the theory that

help people explore the conversation as it pertains to racism and solution make and future make in a way that helps more people stop unintentionally upholding the same thing they're working to dismantle and critique. The rules of the theory are as follows. Race does not exist in nature. I agree with modern scientists that race is not biological. Race does not exist as a social construction. This is one of the harder tenets for people to grapple with. That's the most provocative one for me right there. Absolutely. The first one I'm on board with, the second one I was like, whoa, I haven't heard that before. So I'll put a pin in that one. I'm sure we'll come back and I can explain more. That leads us to the third tenet, which is that everyone is raceless. Racism includes the

belief in race and the act or practice of racialization. And racism is not everywhere, nor is it the cause for every perceived negative interaction or disparity. Finally, racism can be overcome. So I find that when people operate from these tenets, as it pertains to their study analysis or discussion of race and racism, it leads us into more fruitful territory, namely because it helps people stop the cause of racism in its tracks, as well as some of the unintended effects of racism. And long-term, if we think about what does it look like for American society, for example, to unify, reconcile, and heal,

I view the theory of racistness as a necessary strategy for people to bring that to themselves and to then offer that gift to other people. Because as we've been doing what could be called anti-racism, we've been doing it in a way that has unfortunately ensured that we continue the problem of racism. So would you say your theory is, is it, I want to, I just, and if I use language wrongly, please correct me. Sometimes my questions come out in a way that's worded in a way that's not right.

But would you say your theory is directly trying to counter or offer an alternative to, and I think Abraham Kendi coined anti-racism. Is it his work or that idea of anti-racism as a thing that you're directly trying to counter? Or is it is that not really kind of what you have in the background of what you're addressing? Well, I feel like the answer is not so straightforward because my first inclination is to say, no, I've been studying race and racism for 20 years before Ibram X. Kendi was even a thing. And so my signature theory came into development before how to be an anti-racist, right? So if it precedes his work, then I don't view it as a counter. And yet it's my study of race and racism. And we could call every action against racism, anti-racism. I think that's fine.

It's a newer coinage. It's a newer term, but the fight against racism isn't new, right? You had abolitionism during slavery. You had people fighting against Jim Crow. You had the civil rights movement, et cetera. I view all of those efforts and movements as anti-racist efforts and movements. And I'm certainly countering how people have employed strategies against racism from each step. Can you give us an example? The belief in race was something that we inherited because Europeans wanted to justify the class system that they had on the ground. Chattel slavery was already in existence. And at the time, there are a lot of scholars who focus specifically on American slavery.

And they say that people generally did not have these beliefs in superiority and inferiority at that time. They did not look at people of African descent and think, hmm, these people are less than and so they deserve to be enslaved. That type of thinking and the racialization, the description of black and the description of white, those things came into being after chattel slavery was already centuries in the making. And it came into being because they saw the necessity of trying to justify and maintain the economic and social class systems that already existed. Well, how do you do that? Well, you build it into the system, you build it into the government, the media campaigns,

education system, that these people are inferior and these people are superior, and here's why. and these people are superior, and here's why. And as such, when you have abolitionists like Frederick Douglass rolling around in the 1800s fighting against slavery, he's asserting his being as a Black man, and yet he only thinks he's a Black man because he's told by his society that he is a Black man. And other so-called Black people are enslaved because they're inferior. And so-called white people are no longer enslaved or in indentured servitude because they're superior. And so the concept by design was to dehumanize people of more recent African descent. But anyone who comes in future generations and inherits that way, that worldview, that way of seeing oneself and he works to write his humanity into it and render his humanity visible to every person, including the slave owners. I see the irony of that project. Right. And I see how it has ensured that we continue to fall short in terms of where we could be

along the lines of unification and healing and reconciliation. The reason why we continue to be in this quagmire primarily is because we've inherited these belief systems. And even as people question the belief systems, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. Lader, Abraham X. Kennedy, Black Lives Matter, people are constantly questioning the belief systems, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X later, Abraham X. Kennedy, Black Lives Matter. People are constantly questioning the belief system. And yet we're doing it from within the belief system.

And we're we're giving credence to that way of color coding human beings that then leads to the unintentional continued dehumanization of those same human beings. And what does that mean? And what does that mean for our future if we continued along those lines? It's funny you say that. So I read Kendi's book, How to Be an Antiracist, maybe a year ago. And exactly what you said now, and you're an expert in this conversation, way smarter than me,

so it's really helpful for me to hear you say, because that's exactly kind of the thought that I had when I was reading it, because he did dismantle, if I remember, I forget how, but he said everything you said about race. This is a construct. I mean, okay, so you're going to push back

at even the social contract, but he said it's a social construct created by Europeans to classify and dehumanize African-Americans. And like, okay, so why are we still using it? And then he went on to say, and again, adult, I would have to go back and read it, but he's, I think he said something like, but this is still the categories in use today or something So we still have to address those Categories Or how they've been abused or something I don't know

He still it seemed ironic It seemed counterintuitive how he Is still using The same categories he said Are oppressive intrinsically It's like I'm like why not just do away with The categories then i don't remember exactly what he said and to address that but i didn't i wasn't convinced

when he kind of wiggled out of it i was like that doesn't seem to make as much sense to me but i don't know yeah am i represented i don't maybe i don't know if you're familiar with how he treated that or yeah no i see the same, especially because in his first book, Stamped from the Beginning, he makes the entire case for what I'm talking about. But then he doubles down on keeping race ideology. So there are a couple of reasons why this continues to happen. There are six philosophies of race that we each hold two of, but we get defaulted into those two positions. And we seldom hear about the philosophies of race that underpin the theory. So the Kendys of the world oftentimes don't even know that philosophy of race is an actual thing.

And I think it's to the detriment of our human society. And that's also why I believe that people should know about it. So let me tell you about the philosophies of race. Okay. So there are three philosophies that speak to what a person thinks race is, and three that speak to what a person thinks should be done with race. with it. The first philosophy is something called naturalism. Naturalists believe that race is biological. Then there's constructionism. Constructionists believe that race is a social construction. It is not biological, but it's a man-made real phenomenon. Kendi fits into the social constructionist realm. The further back you go, the more naturalists you find, but there are still plenty of race naturalists nowadays. The third category that speaks to what a person thinks race is, that is seldom heard of, often misunderstood and

misconstrued, is something called skepticism. And this is where I lie. And thereby the fruits of my mind, the theory of racistness is coming from a skeptical place. Skeptics argue that race is not real biologically, nor is it real as a construction. And part of the problem for why it's challenging for people to grapple with what's the difference between skepticism and constructionism is because a lot of people misunderstand what it is to say something is a social construction. Constructionists tend to say things like race isn't real. It was made by man just illustrated by the, by the, you're paraphrasing of Kendi. Okay, but that's still saying it's real, because if it's made by man, you're still talking about a real phenomenon. You're just

acknowledging it's not biologically real. As a constructionist, I say it's not real at all. There's an illusion of race that people believe in, but as a skeptic, that doesn't make it real for me. My skepticism is rooted in my ability to translate race every single time it appears into something else, into culture, ethnicity, social or economic class, or racism itself. So to my mind, racism is a social construction, as Toni Morrison once said. Race is a fiction. It is not a social construction. It's not real. And just because people believe it's real doesn't make it real. And an analogy that your listeners might resonate with, but sort of from an opposite perspective, if I am an atheist, I disbelieve in the existence of a deity. I know as an atheist that religion exists, right? I know that there are plenty of people

who organize their entire calendar years around religious traditions, right? Practices, holidays, et cetera, rituals, and beliefs. But as an atheist, that doesn't make a deity real for me. Right. Because I disbelieve in the realness of the thing itself. And just because people believe doesn't make it real. Another example that Barbara and Karen Fields give in racecraft is witchcraft. People believed in the existence of witches. They persecuted. They literally burned people at the stakes, in the existence of witches. They persecuted, they literally burned people at the stakes, accusing them of being witches. But that didn't make witches real, right? To most people's minds, that doesn't make witches real. So in the same way, my theory

invites people to step into a skeptical position of race to better recognize the differences between a social construction and something that is truly not real and to translate culture and ethnicity class and racism itself appropriately and to stop mistranslating all of those things into race or evidence of race, because that's what also inspires the sort of Kendi and way of thinking that's that inspires the need or desire to keep race because you see it as conflated with all of these other things which have meaningful impacts on humans. The last three categories or philosophies of race that speak to what a person thinks should be done with race we get defaulted into a reconstructionist position reconstructionists argue that race the concept of race should be reconstructed candy is a reconstructionist

frederick douglas was a reconstructionist martin l King Jr. reconstructionist. All along the way, we've been programmed, really, to be reconstructionists about race. It's the idea that we can refashion it into something that inflicts less violence on the people. We can make it be more positive than what it was initially intended to be. We can write humanity into the meaning of Blackness in the context of the the states then there's something called conservationism that's as it sounds i want to keep the belief in race or the concept of race conservationists are more likely than not naturalists after all what can you do with nature except keep her right reconstructionists are more often than not Right. Reconstructionists are more often than not constructionists. And the last category and the last one that rounds out the theory of racistness is something called eliminativism.

This is something you will almost never hear about. Can you say that again? The word? Yes. Eliminativism. Eliminate. OK. Eliminativists argue that the concept of race or the belief in race should be thrown into the dustbins of forgotten history for a variety of reasons. It doesn't even have to be as serious as my reasoning, but for a variety of reasons. Some people say race is undefinable, right? Like there's no human society that actually agrees what race is. So it's a sort of useless category, we could throw it away. My contention, though, is because everything that people point to and say that's race or that's racial, because those things are actually something else, and because racism is hiding its face as race, that's the reason why we need to eliminate our belief in race, because we're allowing the violence of racism to continue. And for many people, it's unintentional, which I think makes it more nefarious. And so skeptical eliminativism is a thing, but one can also be a constructionist eliminativist. It just tends to be, I think,

But one can also be a constructionist eliminativist. It just tends to be, I think, rarer because, again, it's hard for constructionists to really get their heads around eliminating something that they believe is still real. Whereas if you can be skeptical about race, it seems actually a lot easier to agree that, yeah, it's something we should throw in the trash what okay so i this is super helpful and it i feel like i understood it for the most part when i watched you present it online and now this is actually even clearer so this is really helpful for me i'm i'm trying to play around with i love the analogy of like an atheist who doesn't believe God is real. And yet religion would still be, you would say like in that analogy, religion would be a legitimate social construct, right? Even though the thing that they are constructed around, let's just say for the sake of it, our atheist friends,

it's not real, but religion could be a legitimate social construct to the extent to where it's so embedded in our society that you can't have a theory of like religion lists or whatever right correct i'm just trying to think of a possible pushback that somebody could well well the the the that's a great um illustration of what I'm pointing to, right? Because the difference is an atheist would readily recognize the reality of religion. As you said, as a social construct, they would not recognize the reality of a God because of the reality of the religion. So if we, if, if some of my supporters have dubbed the term race atheist,

Some of my supporters have dubbed the term race atheist. So if you are a race atheist, then you recognize the reality of racism, the religion of racism. And people who know my work know that I spell racism with the word race in it. OK, you would not recognize the reality of race as a result of the reality of racism. And I think that's a really important distinction to draw out, too, because some people hear racelessness, the word, and because of how it's been misused, I think, up to this point, they think or presume that I'm saying racism isn't real or racism doesn't exist, right? presumed that I'm saying racism isn't real or racism doesn't exist, right? I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying, though, is that racism is different from what we think it is. And therefore, to solve the problem, we have to do something different from what we've been doing, which is

trying to reconstruct it into oblivion, right? And so, yeah, I love that. I love that that got teased out because I have to remember it for future conversations. An atheist would recognize the reality of religion, even the importance of it. Right. And some downsides of it. But that doesn't make what religion is organized around real foreign atheist. So, so, so to tease out the analogy, race stands in for kind of deity racism for the religion. So you would recognize that the religion slash racism is a social construct. And that is very, a real thing people, but it's oriented around something that's not real, namely race. Amen. Just as religion. Bring us to church. Okay namely race. Amen. Just as religion is oriented around the deity. Okay. Yes.

Yes. 100%. I don't even know. Are you religious? Are you a believer, Christian or not, or agnostic? It doesn't matter for the sake of this podcast. I'm curious. I'm Christian. You said something about God in your testimony, so I wasn't sure.

I'm Christian. Okay. My beliefs are complicated, though. I grew up Roman Catholic. I went through a period of, am I agnostic? Am I atheist? But my belief in something greater than myself was too strong, and it was something that I couldn't dismiss. So I call that God.

Right. But my conception of who or what God is or how God is, is going to be different from, I'm sure, many other Christians. Okay. I love that behind you. I want to believe. A picture of a UFO. The words, I want to believe. Do you know what that's from i i it looks familiar

where we're the x files molder molder has it in his office and i'm obsessed with x files and then i think it's hilarious because of my skepticism so are you a gen xer x files that's i think so yeah i think gen X is my generation. I always have to look it up to see, or no, maybe I'm a millennial. Honestly, I don't remember. I always have to look it up to see the difference. It's getting easier that I think millennial

is like under 40, is kind of the broad... There it is. Yes, I'm a millennial. That's a good way to think about it. I'm curious, who are some of, as you were developing this theory, who are some of the forerunners to it? Even, you know, you said you started reading lots of African-American literature.

Were there some older thinkers that planted the seed for this? And maybe even some contemporary thinkers that you would say, yeah, I really draw on these thinkers? You know what's really funny to me about this aspect of the conversation? I wish I had been exposed to thinkers who would have unlocked the keys for me a little faster or in a more perhaps straightforward way. But it was like only recently at the end of my dissertation and even increasingly after my dissertation as I started doing the work people were like oh have you heard of this writer this writer and I was like oh my god where were these people when I was actually in it but yeah it's

the the most interesting part and perhaps the most um compelling aspect of this is i started to see these philosophies and i started to see the tenets of my theory in in the literature that other people had always interpreted um as saying something else as saying something close more closely aligned with uh critical race theory or candy or um black feminism etc and it was like my brain just just picked up on the codes of the of the text and the history in ways that because i did it for such a sustained period of time and because i was open to whatever possibilities were going to be shown, I always just had a different way of interpreting what I read. And because I didn't run away from that difference and because I embraced it and I was always open to proving myself wrong and

learning constantly, the theory became clearer. And I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Jacoby Carter at Howard University, the chair of the philosophy department. As I was progressing through my PhD program, I got connected with him and he taught me philosophies of race. And I learned that he was a constructionist eliminativist. And that's when I learned that at that time I was a constructionist eliminativist. He has been invaluable. And I just wish I had known him for longer because I probably would have had some less struggles against my own mind. I was like Smeagol in Lord of the Rings talking to myself at times um but once i met him it became easier and the floodgates have opened and now now i i'm reading um actually there's this oh you would

actually probably really find this book interesting it's a book called racisms from the crusades to the 20th century by francisco bethencourt oh i've heard the name. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's not even a new publication. It's like 2015, but I'm excited to read it because I like how it's racism's plural, because I think one problem of racialist ideology in our society includes the fact that we tend to, because we racialize everything in the ways that we do, we look at the rest of the world and we just indiscriminately racialize everything and indiscriminately see what's called anti-Blackness or white supremacy everywhere. And it's just not what it is. Once you know about race and racism and philosophies, it's just not what it is.

So I'm excited to read that book. Jacoby Carter's work himself has been invaluable. And his mentor is Leonard Harris. And he's the one I quoted actually at the beginning when I said, throw race into the dustbins of forgotten history. He's a skeptical eliminativist, a philosopher at Purdue. In terms of really interesting figures to study, so some people will be familiar with Thomas Sowell. Admittedly, I haven't read any of his work, but I became aware of him because of the work that I do. George Schuyler is another really interesting figure. There's a collection of essays called Racing to the Right with the word race in it. His ideas on race predate mine 100 plus years. He was definitely a skeptical eliminativist and he was definitely very

radical in his thinking for his time. And Elaine Locke is the other person I want to plug, Elaine Locke. But my book is probably the best bibliography there, right? My first book, anyone I mention, it's really presenting a sort of journey of racelessness through African-American literature across a generation. So that's another really good resource. I should have asked this earlier, but, you know, there's the whole idea of colorblindness. People say, I don't see color, you know, everybody's just's just human whatever and that's pretty frowned upon to say that today would and i i wanted to bring this up earlier i totally forgot because when people hear racelessness i would assume a lot of people listening are thinking oh is she just advocating for colorblindness is that can you explain the similarities and differences there and i have no clue what you're going to say. So I don't even know if I'm framing that right. Yeah. So this is the most asked question that I get. Oh, good. Okay.

I'm glad you asked it. So, and it needs to be addressed. So a couple of things. Firstly, some people find colorblindness problematic because sometimes with colorblindness, there has been a history of denying the problem of racism, right? Which I've said from the outset is not what I'm doing. How can I be working to resolve racism if I believe that racism doesn't exist? So there's that. So I'm addressing racism full on.

And in fact, I'm offering people a toolkit to actually start solving racism and healing from it as opposed to continuing it and suffering from it or causing other people to suffer from it. But then there's also this belief that underpins colorblindness. If we can step away from the criticism of colorblindness denies the reality of racism, criticism of colorblindness denies the reality of racism. A lot of very well-intended people aspire to be colorblind because they think that I can see your race, right? I can see it through your phenotype, how you look. I can see it, which means I can translate how you look into your race and I can then ignore it and just treat you like a good human being. But my theory is intervening into this belief that there's something I can translate about you

that tells me what your race is. Because if I'm pointing to the unreality of race, there then is nothing I can translate about you that would tell me what your race is, because race is a fiction, it's a mythology. and so part of why i think colorblindness as a strategy fails includes the fact that it's this it's a different side of the same racialist ideological coin right it's still believing in race still continuing the belief in race by having it infused in our education system, in our media, in our government. Every time you go to a doctor, every time you start a new school, you got to check the box of race. It's still upholding that, which for me is how racism is systemic. And it doesn't, it's unsuccessful because even the most well-intended good-hearted people

fall into the trap of believing in race which carries with it automatically some type of hierarchy and we cannot run away from the hierarchy and we can certainly do our best to have these biases in our in the back of our minds, but still treat people fairly. But even the best of us, right, we still suffer from these biases. And sometimes it's a personal suffering. Sometimes it's not even something that we inflict on other people. Sometimes it's just how we see ourselves in relationship with other people. The theory is working to disrupt all of that and to help people stop thinking that they can see race because then we start to understand what race is. Race is the dehumanization process, period. And in every society where racialization happens or ethnicization happens, it's always bad, right? The Nazis did it to the Jews in Rwanda,

the Hutus, Tutsis, and Tiwas. And we were talking about Rwandan genocide. Every society where racialization happens, where people are created to be the other and race is part of that way of thinking, the hierarchy is carried with it and it's imposed. So colorblindness falls short in those ways. And I would like to invite any listeners who up until this point haven't embraced a sort of colorblind ethos to step into the theory of

racistness because it provides a sort of liberation that colorblindness doesn't. And so long as we continue to believe in race, even if we work to treat people fairly, people will still suffer because of the belief in race and the practice of racialization. So we really should intervene. So even the concept of colorblindness is still giving life to race as a thing. Even as it tries to deny that it has affected them, it's still acknowledging that it's real. That's right. You can't be blind to something that's not real.

So they're still giving life to that concept. That's right. And missing the entire point of what race is, you know, skin color is not race. Even if that's what people think can tell you what race is, that's not what race is. Race, as I'm talking about it, the thing that needs to be undone in terms of our belief system is dehumanization. That's it. And you can't see dehumanization, right?

But you can enact it. That's a good piece of clarity for people that maybe aren't even on board with race isn't biological. And I think there's some listeners that very innocently, it's not like they're just like, wait a minute, what do you mean race doesn't exist? There's Black people, there's Asian people, there's white people.

Like, how can you say we don't exist or whatever? But you're using race as how it was originally used to organize people and oppress people and dehumanize people based on their skin color or based on their ethnicity or both. And what would be skin color? It's kind of all there above. It's not it wasn't even skin color. And I argue it's still not skin color. I argue that in the U.S., a lot of ideas about race still are rooted in ancestry. You know, the one drop rule Americans believe really strongly in that to where people are expected to announce their race if they look one way but if internally they have black blood right in quotation marks i mean if you know about american slavery then you know that a person's blackness was calculated folks like thomas jefferson tried to calculate to see at what point does a person stop being black and become white

um and and the reason for those kinds of pseudo that kind of pseudoscientific thinking was they wanted to know when a person was rightfully enslaved. And if you were Black because of the one-drop rule, then you were rightfully in your place as a slave. And if there was a possibility that at any point a generation could be white because of enough white ancestors then they wouldn't want that person to be enslaved because that would disrupt the whole the whole point of of racialist ideology so in our society i just think it's also more complicated because ancestry has a lot to do with

it even for constructionists which is also why i invite people into skepticism because people will say it's a construction all day but they'll decide your race depending on who your parents are right and how your parents are racialized yeah man it's a quagmire that we have not successfully been able to get out because it's so the belief system is so entrenched and people believe in the biological reality of race because in our school systems we teach young people that there are five biological races we still do this and then at some age, maybe high school, maybe undergraduate, then we start to change the language and say, oh, race is the social construction. And nobody ever goes along to undo the science that they were taught with science

in elementary school and onward. And so when you start to have conversations with undergraduates and ask them, like, how is it a social construction? What does it mean? What is race? Then you find that they're actually biological realists about race. And that makes it that infinitely harder to help more people see the need for eliminativism because they really believe it's biological, even as they call it a construction. And in my first book, I say it's one of the shortcomings of being defaulted into these philosophies because we don't do enough work to help people really understand and grapple with what's happening. I'm curious, as a fellow academic, how did your dissertation defense go? You did your PhD, was it at Howard?

Or I know you were at Howard. Were people skeptical, pushing back? Or did you gain some followers during your defense? Or how did that go? Well, of course, my committee was 100% supportive. And I mean, they're the primary people whose opinions matter at the defense. And anyone who came was a staunch supporter of me so even if they didn't know um like what my dissertation was or anything they had some idea

of the difference of my way of thinking so they weren't shocked right it was virtual that was kind of a bummer because of the of the pandemic and so there definitely weren't random people that didn't know me right and just had no idea what they were in for there um and i passed with distinction which i think speaks to not just the strength of my work but also the strength of the support that my committee had for for my work and we're talking about leading scholars both both in African-American literary studies and in comparative studies and in philosophy. And to pass with distinction, I had committee members tell me, you know, in their decades of working at Howard, they hadn't been on a committee where anyone earned with distinction. So it happens very infrequently for anyone who isn't familiar with that. And it's

something like less than 1% globally of PhDs in the humanities that earn with distinction. So, you know, not to toot my own horn, but the strength of my scholarship speaks for itself. And people who read my first book, Theory of Racistness, will hopefully see that and find the evidence there. I think the fact that I earned it from Howard also should say something to people. I don't know what it should say to people, but it should say something. Because it's funny, the presumption is, oh my gosh, an HBCU, they're definitely not going to agree or co-sign this or anything like that. But it's like the exact opposite. So what does that tell you, listeners?

What does that tell you? That was, yeah, when I read the theory as you presented it, and then I saw you went to Howard. Yeah, I had the same assumption. I don't, I know very little about Howard, but I had this maybe assumption that they were maybe largely, you know, Kendi disciples or rather more.

I don't know what the brand is, but just kind of the kind of mainstream approaches to race and yours didn't seem mainstream at all. And so I was wondering, wow, that's interesting. But you're saying there's there's a lot more diversity of thought regarding race at Howard University. And I mean, I'm sure many other places. thought regarding race at howard university and i mean i'm sure many other places um yeah that's that's part of um racialist ideologies it makes it it washes over and homogenizes people based on um how they are racialized in ways that reality belies. And that's one, just one reason why when I started my study of African-American literature in particular as an undergraduate, and I was studying this idea of authenticity and representation, I came across not just a plethora of different voices within a body of literature that's often interpreted in ways that seem homogenous on the surface. But I experienced it real time at Howard University,

where people don't think the same, you know. And even if people still had questions, because mind you, that was at a very early stage of my development of my theory. My learning curve in the last year has been fast. So I've continued to develop it and develop my language and be more precise. But even at those early stages, and even people would disagree with my conclusions, what they couldn't disagree with was my evidence and was was how I painted the story. Right. I think that speaks to the the integrity of my dissertation committee and the faculty, broadly speaking, because I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there are horror stories out there. Well, actually, people have told me like, oh, I study X and my dissertation committee wouldn't let me write about racistness at all.

And I was like, oh, you know what I'm saying? So there are plenty of institutions that would put a block, right, and try to get you to do things their way. But fortunately, that was not my experience. And I have nothing but love and admiration and respect for my mentors who I'm still close with and who I still learn from. They say they learn stuff from me,

but that remains to be seen. We'll see. I'm curious. I hate even asking this question because i fundamentally don't even agree with the premise but i the race conversation has become so politicized so that you have for lack of better terms i don't know well we've already said you know kendy on on the kind of the far left and oh who should we put on the far right? Maybe Candace Owens or something, you know,

like does your theory fit? And the reason why I don't even like asking the question is because I don't even like those, that spectrum we're all supposed to line up on, you know, like when people say, are you left or you're right? I say, I'm green. Like, I don't even recognize those categories as like the options like what are you even asking me you know that that's just so prevalent in in how politicized the race conversation is assuming just for a second some legitimacy to that political spectrum does your theory

sit anywhere on there or is it just so contrarian that it's just not, you can't put it on the left, right, middle perspective? Does that make sense? Yeah, that's a great question. The theory itself is nonpartisan in the work I do through my consulting firm. Theory of racistness is not staunchly nonpartisan necessarily. So i think any anything that someone is offering humanity and this is my this is my own bias um it shouldn't be political and it shouldn't be about politics to my mind so i i sort of indiscriminately criticize anyone anyone's, regardless of their politics, as it pertains, especially as it pertains to racism and those conversations, because by my analysis, just about everyone is getting it wrong, right? I talked with my students about about I sometimes identify Candace Owens as a sort of like a skeptic.

And I personally think if she knew more, she would probably be an eliminativist because some things that she says and when she rejects to be seen as herself, as a raceless human being, right? As a person who is limitlessness and freed from the structures of racism. And so I like to talk with my students about that and help them like listen through interviews and stuff like that and parse through like what are her philosophies? And then we could just as easily look at Nicole Hannah-Jones or Ibram X. Kendi or Robin D'Angelo, their interviews, their philosophies of race, and find some evidence for why a woman nativism should be our end goal, ultimately. And for how they're also, they've got it wrong you know everyone gets criticized equally in my world and necessarily because for me it's not about politics it's about freedom from the strictures that racism tries to impose onto all of us i define racism so i said this earlier but probably i should restate it. My definition of racism is that

it includes the belief in race and the practice of racialization. So when I say racism, that's what I'm talking about. Our belief in race and our practice of racializing ourselves and other people and allowing people to racialize us, that has detrimental impacts on every single one of us. us, that has detrimental impacts on every single one of us. And so far, I have yet to come across another thinker such as myself who I just agree 100% with. It doesn't matter what their politics are. Are you familiar with Glenn Lowry or Coleman Hughes? They're two I really appreciate because they're just independent, kind of contrarian super thoughtful thinkers

which i i appreciate if somebody is so tribalistically oriented that they're just end up repeating the same mantra i know they will never go against their tribe or whatever left or right to me it just becomes really uninteresting to me but people that you can't really pin down kind of politically i feel like i'm i'm just more interested in hearing their ideas because they're not just so tribalistically controlled you know like do you like coleman and glenn do you feel like they could get on well i so i've had a conversation with coleman on my own podcast i love coleman i love glenn um haven't had as much success um getting in touch with him but i hope to he's's been talking with friends and people I know in the racist space.

But the funny thing for me is I noticed a trend in our society where I feel like a lot of people will identify Glenn Lowry or Coleman Hughes and others as as heterodox. That's a common term that gets thrown around or as, as critical thinkers. But when I consider their work, I still see them as firmly right-leaning. I don't see them. And even, even as I would certainly agree with a lot of their positions, I still see it as a very right-leaning thing. And that, to me, that might be a slur to some people. That's not a bad thing for me. If you're right-leaning, you're right-leaning. And it is what it is.

And that's cool. I love you, too. I personally am an independent. And I'm an independent for a reason. Right. I personally am an independent and I'm an independent for a reason. And I think that actually helps me strengthen my theory because I expose myself to all of the voices, regardless of what the politics are. And then I make my own opinions. There are organizations who claim to be nonpartisan in a way that people might identify like Hughes as as nonpartisan. might identify like Hughes as nonpartisan. But to me, I'm like, they're so evidently right-leaning.

And it's a pain point for me because it gives me the impression that a lot of people who count themselves as political conservatives are in the tribe of thinking that their tribe isn't tribal and thinking that their tribe is, is they're the critical thinkers and they're the, they're the ones who've unlocked the codes to humanity. And I think it's ironic because then you come to something like the theory of racistness and no, I'm saying you're wrong too. Right. And here, and here's how, and so it's just,

it's just one of those matrices where I'm like, man, I wish more people could talk about that in a generative way, right? And not as a sort of assault on any person. being able to do that right but when a person is so so sure that they are the best type of thinker about anything then i feel like i feel like that's where we just run into trouble as a human society period because everyone is so sure that their way is the right way make no mistake there are similarities between the left and the right where you just I'm just scratching my head as a sort of outsider. And I'm just like, how do y'all not see the similarities? Like we are way more alike than we are different, period. But we just firmly believe in what we believe in. And sometimes that's different from what the other believes in, but it's the same coin, just different sides, you know, for better, for better or for worse, I would say. So it's funny because when I started my work and this has been a strategy actually in African

American literary studies, people have dismissed thinkers like George Schuyler, who I mentioned earlier because of his conservatism. And when I say dismissed i mean these people their writings will go out of print you they're not canonized so you won't even learn about them um only the people that are canonized who agree with racialist ideology in a very particular way get taught and heard about and learned about. And, and you have to really get out of the fishbowl into the ocean to find the George Skylers or go to a place like Howard, where you learn about George Skyler. But it's, it's interesting to, to analyze because one could look at George Skyler

and say, well, it's because of his conservatism that he was marginalized or excluded. And a lot of people have that way of thinking. They say it about soul. They say it about any sort of major conservative figure who is a person racialized as Black. But by my analysis, it's actually, it's not because of their politics that they're left out of the conversation because Martin Luther King Jr. was conservative. You know, there are plenty of other figures who are revered who are conservative frederick douglas was conservative but it's because of how he complicated and and disagreed with racialist ideology to my mind that's why he gets that's why he gets outed. He doesn't help maintain the status quo. And the interconnection between racialization and politics, it's so apparent, I think, probably to

most people listening, the connection between politics and racialization. It's easy to miss the role of racialization with that marginalization and exclusion as it pertains to how a person thinks about race. And because I feel like I'm talking in the abstract, I'm going to try to pin this down. There's a certain sense in which if a person is conservative or leans right, but they agree with race ideology in some way in the existence of it so they're not candy but they're colorblind or they aspire to be colorblind they don't often get thrown into the dustbins of forgotten history their writings will still exist maybe they're not the most popular figures, but they're still figures. They exist. If that same person speaks out against racism, then despite the fact that they're that they checked that, as you said, two binary of a box in terms of their politics, they're still going to be paid attention to and revered in some circles at at minimum they're not going to be dismissed but if the those same people come out and speak out against the the strictures around blackness race then all of a

sudden it's blasphemy like when coleman hughes does his blasphemy song. To me, the blasphemy that he's accused of doing or participating in is because he doesn't uphold the mainstream ideas about race. Right. If you believe in race and you should believe in reparations, for example, this is how people think. And because he doesn't think like that, he's on and blasphemy, one of my favorite lines. And because people have a tendency to have this avatar of a poor, racialized Black person, you know, in the hood, and that to them is what it is to be a so-called Black person. Hughes is committing blasphemy because he's not subscribing to the archetype of what being Black is supposed to be. And once you break a certain economic class barrier, you're supposed to only talk about that working class avatar, poor Black person in the arts. That's how it's been. And so time and time again, it's the people who speak out against racialization, the results of racialization, regardless of their politics that get marginalized. And people have tried to do it to me, though, obviously unsuccessfully. They've tried to pin

me as a conservative because they hear my ideas about racism. For whatever reason, there's a mental block for them. And so the easiest way to dismiss and make a person's ideas a sort of non-factor in the mainstream is by saying, oh, they're conservative. But really, it's the fact that I'm speaking out against racialization in a way that's different from how they view it. That's what's getting me dismissed. It's not my politics because I'm not a conservative. Right. I mean, that's what I absolutely can't stand.

When people have this binary left-right kind of category and they assume one is righteous and the other is unrighteous so if you don't line up on this way of thinking on every level then you must be that category because those are the only two options and this is where i don't i mean you know coleman better than i do i i wouldn't he doesn't strike me as right leaning i guess it depends on what we mean by that i mean he's what pro-choice, voted for Biden, pro-universal healthcare. Like he checks off a lot of classical liberal kind of boxes, I think. But he's just, and he said, even from the time he was a kid, he was just a contrarian thinker and he grew up in a very liberal kind of environment. So he constantly said, well,

how do we know that? Like he kept kind of thinking heterodoxly so because he doesn't line up on the mainstream left people say or they assume well the only other option is this other horrible tribe over here he's like why can't we just think freely around these issues in a thoughtful way um but again that's my i just listened to this podcast. Yeah, I feel like there's something I read with his bio, and it indicated that he was right-leaning in some way, but I can't recall what it is. Well, he writes for City Journal, which I believe is a more conservative outlet, I think.

Yeah, I don't know. But truth be told, just like you said, it doesn't matter. That actually doesn't matter to me. But I think as you were kind of explaining, it made me get mixed up. And I love even you said, like, oh, this person's right leaning and that's whatever. It's fine with me. Like it's not, it's let's deal with the issues at hand. Let's think through them. Yeah. That's, that's to me is the most interesting when, well, you're an academic too. I mean, academics are better at this typically that, you know, let's look at the issues at hand, wrestle with them thoughtfully and not just rely on some tribal identity to tell us the right answer. You know, to me, that's just so uninteresting.

Yeah, I think, you know, before I'm an academic, I'm a human and just the kind of person I am, which is inspired by and informed by a lot of the adversity that I faced. by and informed by a lot of the adversity that I faced, I am a firm believer that everything is possible and that every person is worthy and deserving of unconditional love. The labels that we attach to ourselves, if we call it identity politics or whatever, the labels that we attach to ourselves are uplifting in some ways and damaging and damaging in other words in other ways and that's the paradox um anthony apia calls it the lies that bind and he talks about how the different labels including race um that we attach to ourselves are paradoxically meant to put certain groupings of people on the fringes or on the margins forever and always but then um and this has happened with race in in american society oftentimes what happens is the group that's supposed to be at the bottom of whatever hierarchy embraces the label and uses it in their fight

and resistance of the hierarchy. In that way, they end up thriving instead of just surviving or instead of being annihilated altogether. So it's this tension between being able to recognize that on the other side of whatever label, whether it's politics, whether it's racialization, gender, there is a human being. And all of us are so much more complex and nuanced and indeed heterodox than the labels give us credit for. It's something I've been coming into thinking lately is the problem of the term heterodox and this idea that because it makes it seem like not a lot of people have thought in a particular way as it pertains to race specifically.

But my study shows me that plenty of people, you know, easily, like we could say 50% thought this way and 50% thought more in this direction in terms of a spectrum. And it's like, the reason why it doesn't seem like that is because these other voices and ways of thinking haven't been able to get into the mainstream. That's it. We haven't been canonized. There's an anthropologist, Montague Cobb, who wrote over a thousand papers and gave so many lectures, lived a very long life. I think he lived almost to a hundred. And he showed the unreality of race throughout his illustrious career. And anthropologists don't even learn about it, right? It's like, we are so deep in maintaining the status quo as it pertains to this race thing, which means we're deep in maintaining racism in ways that we could easily recognize and make a

different choice. I think it's part of the damaging cycle of the sort of changing same that keeps us thinking that when a voice does appear, even if they don't make it into the mainstream, that complicates our racialist thinking. because we're supposed to think they're kind of a statistical minority, right? A statistical minority of people who can possibly think in that way, which means they're not a threat to the status quo. But if we actually did a survey of like every person, every voting age person in the U.S., we would come to find that it's way more complicated than that and that more people actually think like that than not. You know what I'm saying?

What I'm trying to say. But it's like I think the labeling just prevents us from being able to see that more readily. And the labeling keeps us in the quagmire because the mainstream and the traditionally accepted ideas about any topic, they really are holding the cards. And I'm trying to get into the mainstream. I'm trying to get my ideas into the mainstream because I recognize how crucial that is. You've used the phrase twice now, racialized as Black. Is that how you describe yourself? Like if somebody says, Sheena, are you Black? Would you say, well, I've been racialized as Black? I'm just curious. It's not how I describe myself personally, but when I talk about what people call race and specifically want to talk about racism to indicate that race isn't of nature, right?

And that racialization is part of the racism that creates the belief in race. I use the term racialization to describe the imposition of the category of race onto a human being. You've mentioned this in some of my podcasts. I used to say racialized Black or racialized White or racialized Asian, but I have pushed my language even further to say something like a person who is racialized as black so that I'm putting the person, the human first. Right. Because that to me is the entire premise of the of the operation. So, yeah, I do that strategically when I describe myself. I don't talk about racialization or or anything like that because I refuse to let racism define me, even as I recognize that other people will racialize me. And that's what that that's what that is. They're going to racialize me. They're going to look at me and

they're going to say I'm black. Right. But I don't have to do that, too. I don't have to participate. And I can, in fact, critique and question their racialization of me because I'm a human being, first and foremost, period. So even the phrase, I am why I am black carries probably near my, I mean, too much ontological weight or even just ontological wrongness, if you will, about how you understand human nature. Sheena, thank you so much. This has been fascinating. I took a lot. I usually don't take a ton of notes when I'm doing podcasting because I'm too busy talking, but here I took a lot of notes.

Where can people find your work? I mean, your website, social media stuff. Where can people find out more about who you are? Thank you so much for having me, Preston. It's been a pleasure. I hope this is one of many conversations. Folks can find me at theoryofracistness.org. And all my social media, podcasts, publications, everything is there.

So that's the sort of hub. Awesome. Thanks so much for being on the show, Sheena. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.