Daily Circuit Blog

Five great thinkers about race

We asked our Friday Roundtable guests who they are turning to for thoughts about race and identity.

Alexs Pate: James Baldwin's "The Price of the Ticket" is "still ahead of us by 10 years in terms of understanding and thinking about and talking about race."

(James Baldwin and Marlon Brando. Credit: National Archives and Records Administration)

Pate also thinks "Black Skin, White Masks," the 1952 classic by Frantz Fanon, is worth a read. "It's about the way that we look at each other," he said.

Leola Johnson: "I am really interested in Ella Baker, the unheralded leader of the civil rights movement, and Essie Robeson, the wife of Paul Robeson. I am more and more thinking about how cutting edge these women were."

Jose Santos: Check out the casta paintings that depict the mixing of races and the caste system in Spanish colonies. Santos also recommends reading Octavio Paz, who wrote about "mestizos" and how a mix of races "means that there is a necessary conflict in the idea of Mexico."

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(MEXICO CITY, MEXICO: A photo dated 16 December 1991 of Mexican poet and philosopher Octavio Paz in Paris. Paz died in Mexico 19 April at the age of 84. JOEL ROBINE/AFP/Getty Images)