Anyone who has ever thought in any depth about the ways in which American society is structured has to have considered the ways in which race is one of the most important structuring mechanisms of our society. This paper addresses the ways in which race divides and unites us as Americans, in which it has created one kind of American community and not others. One of the most trenchant thinkers about race in American today is Glenn Loury, who argues, that the continuing divide among American racial groups exists (and does not change essentially in its strength from one generation to the next) because the state of race relations in America has relatively little to do with racial discrimination, which Loury (2002) defines in fairly overt terms, such as laws and practices that bar African-American families from buying homes in certain neighborhoods. Rather, he argues that the reason both for the continuing de facto segregation that occurs in so many elements of American society as well as the continuing sanction for acts of racial discrimination both arise from the fact that Americans of all races see race as a fundamental characteristic of each individual's identity - more enduring and more essential than any number of other characteristics, such as religion, class, intelligence, or gender. This association of race with identity (not as one element among many equal elements of identity but as the overriding element in an individual's identity) creates what Loury believes is a racial stigma that affects (and might even be said to determine) how people feel about themselves
Cornell West makes much the same argument, noting that while a number of black leaders have been successful in improving the lives of African-Americans up to a certain point by addressing the problem of racial discrimination, their efforts have been in large measure halted in recent decades because they have focused on the problem too narrowly. By seeking to improve t...