This paper explores a number of implications emerging from Appiah’s argument for American Blacks. I argue against the essentialist reification of race and agree that race operates as a metonym of culture at the price of ideology. However, I suggest that the postmodernist “epistemological fantasy of becoming multiplicity” (see Bordo) is not a viable alternative. I propose that in the United States, contemporary efforts to retain Du Bois’s notion of race-based communities of meaning while emphasizing diversity of experiences and individual histories reflect the efficacy of political strategies rather than a continuity of the biologization of ideology. In addition, I suggest that the emergence of debates over the utility of racial identities is partially conditioned by politics of a very personal nature in which individual theorists are situated at the intersection of class and racial boundaries where moving beyond and crossing over are palatable options. Finally, I juxtapose strategic essentialism to liberalism in order to emphasize the necessity of actualizing multivocality in the public sphere.
