The Omni-American Vision and Developmental Politics

Two powerful ways of seeing “race” and improving lives

A pivotal step in creating a better America, especially around the knotty and ever-perplexing topic of “race,” and improving people’s lives is expanding our view: inventing new ways of seeing that unlock stuck conversations and open possibilities for action.

In this essay, I invite you to consider two perspectives that have influenced my understanding of this country and its future: the Omni-American vision and developmental politics. Each perspective offers news ways of seeing that expand our view. Each provides an aspirational vision that complements the constructively critical stance of the anti-race antiracist that I wrote about here in the spring.

From antiracist enthusiasm to backlash to collective fatigue…toward an expanded view

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, an antiracist movement centered around Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo picked up steam. (For my take on DiAngelo, see here). Then came an anti-antiracist backlash from a mix of thoughtful critics and stubborn reactionaries. In the two years since, the enormous burst of energy that carried both urgent aims and misguided ideological straightjacketing, has largely dissipated. In its place are a lot of folks who are simply tired—or, to quote the civil rights leader, Fannie Lou Hammer, “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

In the midst of this fatigue, a group of writers have been issuing calls to reframe the debate — to add new ways of seeing that expand our view. One such call that drew me in is the case for deracializing people — continuing to talk about inequality and racism but without assigning false categories to people based on supposed biological and genetic differences. From Carlos Hoyt, Jr. came an urge to end racialization, both in how we see people and how we track data through the U.S. Census. Sheena Mason issued a provocative case for “racelessness.” Greg Thomas suggested focusing on culture, not race, and crystallized the power of the blues idiom wisdom derived from the Black American experience (with “Black American” used to define a culture based on shared experiences and practices, not a “race” derived from biology).

Addressing confusions around deracialization

As I joined this conversation and began to advocate for something similar, I noticed many people getting stuck around the word “race.” Some interpreted deracialization as exiting the conversation around inequality and injustice (or what I call “race as topic”). Some thought it meant erasing the culture of black-identified Americans (“race as culture.”) Still others wondered whether being anti-race meant ceasing the practice of identifying and treating disease based on DNA (“race as ancestry.”) I had soaked up the wisdom of Hoyt, Mason, and Thomas enough to know that these assumptions were off the mark. Yet they were real, understandable, and the cause of enormous confusion. This led me, last, spring to write an ebook called How to Be An Anti-race Antiracist (available for free here) and a related series of essays on Medium.

My goal in this writing was to two-fold: first, to explore why deracializing people is essential to combating racism and creating a better America; two, to show how to do this while simultaneously honoring culture and ancestry and staying in the conversation about racism. It was a “have your cake and eat it, too” argument. Some readers found it illuminating. Many remained troubled by the concerns that I addressed at length in the ebook; but who reads books anymore? :-) The result here and on Twitter was a series of constructive and sometimes heated exchanges.

The Omni-American vision and developmental politics

Recently, I discovered in my files a section of writing that was in early drafts of How to Be An Anti-race Antiracist. It adds to the mix two new perspectives: the Omni-American vision and developmental politics. You can be an anti-race antiracist without embracing either of these perspectives, which is one reason they ended up on the editing room floor. Yet these views are pivotal to understanding what’s happening in the country today and creating a better future.

They expand our views.

That’s the beauty of both the Omni-American vision and developmental politics: they are aspirational. There is no “anti” in their name — and certainly not two! This makes them potentially attractive to people who have no tolerance for racism yet are tired of the debate between antiracists and anti-antiracists and long for something to be for.

Lets start by understanding the source of these terms. “Omni-American” comes from The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy, a 1970 book by Albert Murray. Murray was an American writer and close colleague of Ralph Ellison. Henry Louis Gates called him the “King of Cats” and said the book was “so pissed-off, jaw-jutting, and unapologetic that it demanded to be taken seriously.” For valuable background on Murray and his ideas, see Greg Thomas’s piece in the New Republic or my podcast interview with Greg.

Developmental Politics is a book written in 2020 by Steve McIntosh that addresses the rift and hyperpolarization in American politics. McIntosh suggests forging a new common cause for the country by integrating the best elements of different worldviews present in our culture today. (For a conference panel recording on this topic featuring Steve, Greg Thomas, Jewel Kinch-Thomas, and me, see here).

The Omni-American vision and developmental politics offer ways of seeing that are both different from and compatible with anti-race antiracism. Think of them less as competing alternatives than rich supplements—much like I built upon the partial truths of White Fragility by adding ten supplemental perspectives.

To expand your views, add new ways of seeing.

What the anti-race antiracist sees

Before describing what these perspectives add to the anti-race antiracist mix, let’s recall what that mix itself is all about. It combines ways of seeing of healthy antiracism with ways of seeing that deracialize people. Again, the intent here is undermine race as a biological classification while retaining race as topic, culture, and ancestry. Here’s the equation:

Anti-race antiracism = antiracist ways of seeing + anti-race ways of seeing

Let’s look at each part of the equation in turn.

In the ebook, I describe eight ways of seeing in the healthy antiracist stance. For example:

• Racial stereotypes exist as ideas and cognitive biases in many people.
• They also exist as patterned responses in the body.
• The history taught in schools has long excluded and/or distorted crucial episodes like the Middle Passage, slavery, Reconstruction and its dissolution, and lynchings.
• Many so-called “white” Americans don’t want to see these things, have difficulty talking about them, and wish they weren’t true.

The anti-race antiracist stance includes all of these ways of seeing and adds ten more in a “transcend and include” fashion. The additions include:

• Race as a biological concept is meaningless.
• Classifying people by biological race makes racism possible.
• All of us are racialized during the process of socialization.
• All of us construct biological race anew each time we call someone “black” or “white,” because these words purport to capture something essential about that person’s biology or character.
• The human mind is built to categorize. We need better categories.
• It’s possible to talk about racial discrimination, racial bias, and other forms of racism without essentializing race. We can do this by referring to someone as “nominally black” or “so-called white.”

Again, the anti-race antiracist stance both includes and transcends the healthy antiracist ways of seeing.

Again, all of this was in the ebook, essays, and debate that transpired in the spring.

Now, let’s bring in something new: the Omni-American vision and developmental politics. Each of these perspectives adds additional ways of seeing that build upon and enrich those summarized above. Doing this expands our capacity to reimagine American identity and confront large public challenges.

What the Omni-American also sees

Let’s expand our equation.

Omni-American anti-race antiracism = antiracist ways of seeing + anti-race ways of seeing + Omni-American ways of seeing

As an Omni-American⁠ anti-race antiracist, I see everything that the antiracist and anti-race antiracist see. I also see that

• American culture is composite. Everything from music and dance to sports and humor has developed through an interweaving of influences between different cultural groups. To be American today is to have each of these cultural forms within us to one degree or another. In this sense, whether we know it or not, we are all Omni-Americans.
• There is an American character that is distinct from the character of other countries and peoples. Yes, it contains enormous diversity. Yes, it’s misleading to ignore all its particular forms. Yet there is a universal character that both blends and transcends these particular forms.
• Black Americans (the cultural group defined by shared experiences and practices, not biology) are as American as anyone else. As Ralph Ellison writes in “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks,”⁠ there would be no American culture without Black American culture, nor American history without Black American history.
• The promise of American democracy has often been more visible in culture than in politics. For example, Black Americans contributed enormously to American culture even when excluded politically and economically.
• In addition to the folklore of white supremacy, there what Albert Murray calls the fakelore of black pathology. This includes social science research that blames poverty on supposedly unique dysfunction in the Black American family. It also includes national media that highlights Black Americans’ suffering as though it completely defines their experience.
• Talking exclusively about the ways Black Americans have been dehumanized without honoring their agency, resilience and grace — and flaws — is itself dehumanizing because it ignores the complexity of every human being.
• We can legitimately describe the Black American experience as a heroine and hero’s journey. It is a story of overcoming adversity, rising to enormous challenges against long odds, and challenging the country to live up to its democratic ideals.

What the advocate of developmental politics also sees

And, now, for the largest equation permitted in this space.

Omni-American anti-race antiracist advocate of developmental politics = antiracist ways of seeing + anti-race ways of seeing + Omni-American ways of seeing + developmental politics ways of seeing

As an Omni-American anti-race antiracist who embraces developmental politics (yes, a mouthful!), I see everything described above. I also see that

• The way people make sense of all of this is affected by their underlying worldviews — in particular, the mix within each person of the traditional, modern, and postmodern worldviews. (For more on these worldviews, see this piece by Steve McIntosh.)
• People who inhabit largely traditional worldviews often see people different from them as threatening. In so-called “white” Americans, this can show up as xenophobia, efforts to protect “us” against “them,” and, in the extreme form, unapologetic white supremacist ideas and actions. In Black Americans (as cultural group, not “race”), this can show up as in-group pride and distrust of so-called “whites.”
• People who inhabit largely modern worldviews celebrate progress made over the years, are committed to equal opportunity and fair treatment, and believe that they make decisions rationally and through evidence. Many see themselves as “colorblind.” Even if they acknowledge racism and the suffering it causes, these phenomena show up as facts “out there” rather than something they experience on an interior level.
• People who inhabit largely postmodern worldviews are drawn to the antiracist ways of seeing described above. They tend to see the “anti-race” stance as a distraction from fighting oppression, if not a cause of that oppression. To them, the word “Omni-American” sounds utopian and counterproductive.
• Each worldview arises in the world to address problems that prior worldviews can’t solve, partly because those very worldviews give rise to the problems. The modern worldview’s emphasis on equal opportunity and fair treatment is a response to the tribalism and xenophobia emerging from the tradition worldview. Yet the very emphasis on fairness intrinsic to the modern worldview also can lead to “colorblindness” and racial bypassing — the assumption that we’ve progressed beyond racial categories and therefore racism. It’s all good news. No bad news is permitted. The modern worldview also focuses on exterior structures — laws, policies, metrics — and neglects people’s interior experience, like the emotional and psychological impact of being ignored or belittled — or seeing video of yet another instance of police brutality against a black-identified American. The postmodern worldview arises to address these problems. It draws attention to the bad news of history and the injustices of today. It also invites empathy for people who have been harmed, excluded, and unfairly treated.
• Each of these worldviews comes in healthy and unhealthy forms. As Steve McIntosh writes in Developmental Politics, “Each value pole is composed of attractive values that almost everyone shares to some extent, as well as pathologies that the other poles find particularly repulsive…Once the positive values of each pole are differentiated from its abiding negatives, it becomes easier to sympathize with the positive aspirations of that position.”

Remember the aim

As we add new ways of seeing to the mix, it’s important to remember what this is all about. For me, it’s about creating a better America and, evem more specifically, improving people’s lives.

This is one limitation I find in the very language of “antiracism” that has swept the country and that I’m perpetuating here. The goal is to oppose racism, not improve people’s lives. What does this suggest about policies that aren’t explicitly “antiracist”—or racially-oriented at all — yet empirically improve the lives of black-identified Americans? There are thousands of such policies at every level of government and in the practices of organizations of every size.

So, let’s expand our view. And let’s do so to improve people’s lives, using whatever paths get us there.