ABSTRACT
The homespun proverbs abound: "to make bricks without straw," "to make a way out of no way." Only singers, poets, and a few intellectuals have had the wit to name it. Du Bois called it "double consciousness"; Ralph Ellison hailed "the harsh discipline" of African-American cultural life. Thomas C. Holt’s advice to his daughter—with children like his daughter urged to refuse racialization as "black" while simultaneously retaining "their blackness"—may seem contradictory, so Holt seeks to clarify his meaning by introducing the following distinction: "They [black children] must not confound race with peoplehood. Holt's strategy for achieving the first of these steps—severing blackness from race—is apparent in his assertion that, rather than "deny their blackness," black children "must deny the meanings attributed to being black". By separating blackness from the meanings of race and linking it, instead, to the experiences of peoplehood, Holt's work echoes much criticism that has advocated replacing race and racism with a celebration of cultural difference.
