THE RACELESS ANTIRACIST

A provocative contribution to antiracist literature.

Sheena Michele Mason (Theory of Racelessness: A Case for Antirace(ism), 2022) offers readers the “togetherness wayfinder,” a tool for understanding and eliminating the root causes of racism. The majority of current antiracist thought and action fails, Mason argues, because it provides a superficial fix to the scientifically debunked category of race. In other words, “trying to reform or reconstruct race/ism is like trying to fix a house with a rotten structure by throwing a new coat of paint over it.” For Mason, the only way forward is racelessness, or, “the undoing of our belief in human ‘races’ and our practice of assigning ‘races’ to humans.” Mason positions herself as “a registered independent…as far to the left as you can be without being completely off of the spectrum” and her argument as “the furthest logical conclusion” of the more familiar work of critical race theorists and “my antiracist contemporaries, such as Ibram X. Kendi.” Aware that a call for racelessness is controversial and has the potential to be misinterpreted, Mason repeatedly distinguishes her approach from “colorblindness” (as frequently invoked by the political right) and admonishes those who would willfully misuse her arguments. Mason has good reason to do so; her discussion of race and police violence could be easily co-opted by those with no vested interest in antiracism. At times, Mason writes in an accessible, direct manner—“Stay with me, reader, this is not your typical antiracist book…”—and yet the analysis that predominates in the book’s second half make it best suited to an academic audience. Similarly, the “45-Day Guide” in the appendix includes several activities that few readers, outside of a classroom, would be inclined to undertake.

A considered but ultimately unpersuasive argument for racelessness as the future of antiracism.