ABSTRACT
The National Political Science Review (NPSR) is sponsored by an organization most of whose members share the social experience of being African American. The task of the NPSR is, if one may so summarize, partly to enhance the general professional understanding of the understanding that African Americans have of their own reality. There is an intellectual central tendency among African American political scientists that is different from the intellectual central tendency of other political scientists when the subject matter is the ill-defined phenomenon called "race." If no significant benefits and no significant burdens could be forecast by knowledge of the social identity called race, then the regime could be seen as nonracial. Contemporary students of American political thought might place more attention upon the intellectual foundations of the American racial regime. The regime has predicates, or doctrines, processes for decision making, institutions through which people act, and policies.
