Transcending color requires passing through it, not declaring color blindness.

Evidence

Close to ten years later in No Name in the Street, as he reflected on Black Power, Baldwin would state the point a bit differently, but with the same arc of intention. The point wasn’t to declare ourselves color blind. We would have to fight it out in order to finally rid ourselves of the assumptions about who was valued more than others. That may have to involve black people celebrating their blackness, because it shatters their interior agreement with the lie. In this sense, one can only transcend color by passing through it, and uprooting the lie along the way: As the black glories in his newfound color, which is his at last, and asserts, not always with the very greatest politeness, the unanswerable validity and power of his being-even in the shadow of death-the white is very often affronted and very often made afraid… — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 132

Categorization

• XREF: Recanonizes No Name in the Street, the late Baldwin text the reader wants to defend — a key ammunition passage.
• SEED: The claim that transcendence requires passing through, not ignoring, color could anchor an essay on the difference between Baldwin’s late position and colorblind-liberal pieties.