ABSTRACT
The imperative to pursue racial rhapsody has emerged in the work of recent critics who consider it necessary for achieving—as Future of Minority Studies (FMS) cofounder Linda Martín Alcoff has phrased it— "black identity in the full sense". Racial Rhapsody remains engaged with this larger question of racial identity and in particular with the gradual historical processes through which literary works and the criticism of those works have collaborated in institutionalizing a commitment to viewing persons in terms of racial identity. This chapter demonstrates classical analytic aesthetics mode to apply to both black and white racial identities, but despites this apparent parity in racial rhapsody. The chapter conclude with the critical observation that classical analytic aesthetic mode of understanding racial identity perpetuates not only a belief in races but also a color line distinguishing who is and who is not genuinely "one of them" and thus whose experiences of racial rhapsody can be considered adequately aesthetically informed.
