A Colony in a Nation

by Chris Hayes

Race defines the boundaries of the Colony and the Nation, but race itself is a porous and shifting concept. Whiteness is nonexistent, yet it confers enormous benefits. Blackness is a conjured fiction, yet it is so real it can kill. In their brilliant 2012 collection of essays, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, Karen and Barbara Fields trace the semantic trick of racial vocabulary, which invents categories for the purpose of oppression while appearing to describe things that already exist out in the world. Over time these categories shift, both as reflections of those in power and as expressions of solidarity and resistance in the face of white supremacy. Because our racial categories are always shifting, morphing, disappearing, and reappearing, so too are the borders between the Colony and the Nation. In many places, the two territories alternate block by block, in a patchwork of unmarked boundaries and detours that are known only by those who live within them.