The Negro category is a white invention that confines black lives.

Evidence

No, Negroes referred to something more complex. I came to understand that Madhubuti was talking about the categories that set the limits of our lives and secured the cage within which we were trapped. Madhubuti and Baraka spent a lifetime imagining black art and culture, engaging in black politics, in ways they hoped would break the stranglehold of that categorization. Perhaps they thought they buried “the Negro,” that figment of the white imagination, for good, only to find themselves confronted in unprecedented ways by the category’s overbearing presence today. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 626

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what Madhubuti meant by ‘Negroes’ — the category of the white imagination, not race loyalty.