What interested me in reading your piece

was you suggesting that the historical experience of race was complicated in ways that might actually be liberatory, that might be breaking from the constraints. I mean, you start by talking about Karen and Robert Field's book, Racecraft, and the critique of race as such as a category of social imagination, of literary, of scientific. The figment of the pigment, you know, the thinking that the pigment is real, that's a mistake, according to this kind of argument. I think I got that from you. Yeah. Yeah. The figment of the pigment, which was actually I got from Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom in their book, America in Black and White. And I was critical of it at the time, perhaps overly so. And I juxtaposed, well, the figment of the pigment. What about the enigma of the stigma? Yes, that's right. We're going to play a rhyming game. Let's play a rhyming game. But I had a point. And the point, I think, comes up in the context of the personality, the librarian that you're referring to, which is she's able to pass notwithstanding her suave complexion because she persuades people that she's a portuguese descent which is to say she explains it persuades them that she's not a descendant of american slaves that was the thing that was most important not being a descendant of american slaves not being uh rather than uh having a northern european and hair color and whatnot. It was that, although Swarli, she's not a descendant of slaves, therefore escaping the enigma of the stigma, the stigma that attaches to slavery. And you could celebrate the heroism and independence of a life not constrained by the figment of the pigment, while at the same time recognizing that that liberatory move does nothing to subvert the enigma of the stigma. It doesn't relieve the society of the legacy of slavery that is etched into its very imagination, that is intrinsic to its very operation. It merely says that a person operating on the margins in terms of their morphology can move around and there's some room for maneuver. I'm glad there's some room for maneuver, but that doesn't exactly address the large scale political historical phenomenon. No,

not at all. And I just found that thinking about her and then thinking about the erstwhile head of the NAACP, Walter White, who physically basically was white, but, you know, used that to pass in the South in order to investigate lynchings. But up North, considered himself a Black person despite looking the way he did. Nevertheless, his second marriage is to a Jewish woman. It's a very interesting identity.

Walter White was married to a Jewish woman? He was married to a black woman

first, and then they divorced late in his life. And the love of his life had been this white Jewish woman, and they got married, and they were happily married. And so, but he considered himself a black man. And it's just, in both of those cases, he had neither one, he considered himself black, not just anything. And Belle Green considered herself white, not just anything. So it's not as if they were living what Barbara and Karen Field suggest, but they get me thinking that they show the possibilities of, they show how arbitrary sense of these things is. Now they did what they did because Bell didn't want to live as a black person. Walter White did it because he was raised among black people and didn't want to leave black people behind. These days, if we're going to get past race the way Barbara and Karen Fields think we should, stop thinking of it as a legitimate category in any way, I found myself thinking about those two because they did. It's hard for us to imagine really getting past it, but not them. And they weren't thinking about there being no race, but it was kind of a beginning. And both of them have always struck me as very queer in that way. You look like this and you're calling yourself that. But we need more of that if we're going to really stop perceiving race at all and get past the enigma of the stigma. Yeah. Very interesting figures. Walter White, there's going to be a documentary about him on PBS in a few weeks where you could actually see him walking and talking. That's later this month, right? February 25th, it premieres. I got sent a screener, which is what actually got me thinking about him at that same time. I was thinking about Belle Green because of the exhibition and the New Yorker article. So I threw it all together into one piece. That was one of my longer ones for the times, actually, but I wanted to really spin out some ideas. I hope I succeeded, but that was what that piece was about. And I read Racecraft, too. Well, congratulations on that. I have yet to read Ulysses. I know we were supposed to do it together, but I couldn't resist. No,

it's all good. It's all good. Because it had become

my Ulysses. Like, I felt ignorant not having read it. And I wanted to stop having to just kind of nod or to say I hadn't gotten to it. So I just wanted to get through it.

amongst black people, the colorism phenomenon, the prizing of the good hair and the light skin and all of that among people, all of whom agree we're black, but some of us are better looking and more desirable as sexual partners and neighbors and friends. I don't know if that's I, in my experience, I

feel like that's gone. I grew up in Philadelphia, not Mississippi. And so maybe it would have been different. I'm told by a friend of mine who did grow up in Mississippi, Black, that it has been different in his experience. But I haven't seen it. I haven't felt it. And I'm not that light. I'm the middle, red, as they call it. I always think of that as something from another time, paper bag test and all of that. But maybe I just don't travel in the right circles. I can definitely say quite honestly that I don't feel it. I did not internalize that growing up in Philadelphia in the 70s. But, you know, I know there are people who are on the edge of their seats telling me, oh, you just don't know this. And maybe they're right, especially if they're from the South. But, yeah, I think of it as something from another time. You're light-skinned and so you're better. Or you're prettier.

I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm older than you. And I coming up in the fifties and sixties, I think I was still in a world in which that was important, but I would have to acknowledge that as I look around and consider my own experiences and whatnot, it's not as salient a feature of African-American life in the year 2025 as it was in the year 1965, the year you were born. Yes. Oh, John, you've got a 60th birthday coming. No, not soon.

October. Okay. Eight months to not be 60, yeah well okay

we'll have to acknowledge that when it comes around though won't we're that's gonna be a big one yep all right this has been glenn lowry and john mcwater we're the black guys uh we do a podcast every other week at the glenn show we've done it this week talking about the end of race, which we view with a certain degree of trepidation, I think, but also a certain degree of anticipation. If

I may speak for you, John. You have spoken for me, definitely. Okay,

folks, see you in a couple of weeks. Thanks, John. Thank you, Glenn. See you, folks. See you.