The Arc of a Bad Idea: Understanding and Transcending Race

193 Pages·2016·1.63 MB·English

by  Carlos Hoyt

advance praise for the arc of a bad idea: understanding and transcending race
“In The Arc of a Bad Idea, Carlos Hoyt attacks deeply ingrained notions of race,
racial identification, and racial politics. Attentive to the many ways in which
‘race’ matters, often to the detriment of racial minorities, particularly blacks,
Hoyt attacks conventional understandings of race consciousness in a radical,
informed, thoughtful way.”
Randall Kennedy, JD, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law,
Harvard Law School  
“Carlos Hoyt takes direct aim at the insidious ways we cling to race, raising crucial
questions about the Racial Identity Development Theory paradigm that governs the
pedagogy of race, and forces us to consider that there is another, profoundly more
logical and liberatory way to think about human difference and personal identity.
While vigorously upholding and advocating for the need to continue the fight
against racism in all its forms, Hoyt argues cogently that vanquishing racism
requires relinquishing the false consciousness of biological race, and presents,
through the narratives of individuals who eschew race as a meaningful aspect
of identity, and through painstaking analysis of the evolution of the concept of
race, compelling evidence that this is not only possible, but underway.
Race is our geocentric solar system, race is our flat earth, race is our Salem, race
is the great blunder and shame of our age. Carlos Hoyt shows us the way out of
the madness of race and into a critical consciousness that rejects the biological
falsehood that has held us in thrall for the last nearly three hundred years.”
Rainier Spencer, PhD, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs,
Associate Vice President for Diversity Initiatives,
and Chief Diversity Officer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“Is there a way to discuss race without, counter- productively, further strength-
ening its pernicious hold on American thought and action? Hoyt believes so, and
offers a roadmap for transcending race, an altogether subtler destination than
where the color- blind crowd would take us. No serious reader will finish this
book with the certainties they brought to it. In particular, reader with the con-
viction that identity politics is America’s way forward will benefit by hitting the
pause button for a few hours. Viewing our current convictions about race from a
fresh perspective won’t hurt; it might help.”
Kenneth Prewitt, PhD, MA, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs and
the Vice- President for Global Centers, Columbia University;
Director, Census Bureau (1998–2000)
“Perhaps not since Ashley Montagu’s revolutionary, Man’s Most Dangerous
Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942), has a more important work on the perni-
cious aspects of race and racialization been written. The Arc of a Bad Idea,
Understanding and Transcending Race, upends and debunks our conventional
thinking about race and ending racism.
Carlos Hoyt has written a timely and necessary balm for the wounds caused
by centuries of the false notion of race— an idea with no empirical or scientific
basis— but yet embraced worldwide. While Hoyt is by no means the first to engage
in the noble crusade to convince mankind to destroy this harmful mythology, he
is perhaps one of the few authors to lay out a concise and constructive vision on
how we can actually become a society free of racial taxonomies.
With the United States as his main focus, Hoyt examines racialization—
America’s original sin— and builds upon— with his own research on individuals
who eschew racialized identities— the work of racial identity theorists like Kerry
Anne Rockquemore and others to formulate a pathway to a future that can be
free of race and the insidious racism that necessarily accompanies it.
Hoyt is never afraid to critique the well- intentioned yet racialist discourses of
landmark court cases; census enumerations; esteemed historical scholars like
W.E.B. DuBois; mid- 20th century visionaries like Martin Luther King, Jr.; and
contemporary scholars like Eduardo Bonilla- Silva, Amy Gutmann, and others.
Hoyt, as evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves and racial meta- theorist Rainier
Spencer before him, adds to the literature what is destined to become an invalu-
able resource for scholar and layman alike.”
Steven F. Riley, Creator and Founder of MixedRaceStudies.org
“There have always been those who individually eschew racial categories even in
the face of strong collective racial hierarchies and inequalities. Instead of the typ-
ical popular and social scientific dismissal of such people and their way of seeing
the world, this smart book looks at racial transgressors and racial transcendence
head on – and the stakes are high. Controversial and critical, eloquently writ-
ten and deeply insightful, Hoyt carefully wields his scholarly and practitioner
scalpel to help readers deeply question the social, cultural, political, communal,
and disciplinary sacred cows in order to imagine a different alternative to the
ascription- subscription paradigm of racial identity through his interviews with
individuals who have developed a nonracial worldview. I look forward to the
discussion this book will surely bring.”
David L. Brunsma, PhD, Professor, Department of Sociology,
Virginia Tech
The Arc of a Bad Idea
Understanding and Transcending Race
CARLOS HOYT
1
1
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Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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© Oxford University Press 2016
First Edition published in 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoyt, Carlos A., author.
The arc of a bad idea : understanding and transcending race / Carlos Hoyt.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–938626–0 (alk. paper)
1. Race. 2. Ethnicity. 3. Racism. 4. Racism—United States.
5. United States—Race relations. I. Title.
HT1521.H69 2016
305.8—dc23
2015027475
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan, USA
To my parents, my partner, and my progeny
The present is accountable to the past and responsible for the future

Don’t call me nigger, whitey
Don’t call me whitey, nigger
—Sylvester Stewart, 1969
These are often difficult things to say
but I have come to see more and more
that it is necessary to utter the truth
in order to deal with the great problems
that we face in our society.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1967

CONTENTS
Gratitude xi
Preface: The Lethal Absurdity De Jour xiii
PART I Understanding Race
1. Similes, Metaphors, and Analogs for Race 3
2. Same World, Different Worldviews: Not All the Black Kids Sat
Together in the Cafeteria 16
3. The Arc of a Bad Idea: Race and Racialization in Five Epochs 33
PART II Transcending Race
4. Who Are the Race Transcenders? Narratives of Nonracial
Identity Development 65
5. Race Transcendence, Race Consciousness, and Postrace 94
PART III Implications of the Nonracial Worldview
6. Race Without Reification: Pedagogy, Practice, and Policy
from the Nonracial Worldview 109
7. Beyond the Panopticon: Liberating the Tragic Essentialist
and Promoting Racial Disobedience 134
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Race Transcender Study Preinterview Background
Information Form 151
Appendix B: Race Transcender Study Semistructured Open-Ended Interview
Questions and Interview Domains Matrix 153
References 155
Index 163