Reconstructing the "Problem" of Race.

How should the "problem" of race be conceptualized? This essay attempts to widen our understanding of the problem of race in American political discourse by examining its productive function in grounding the meaning of American liberalism. By tracing this relationship in W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk, Woodrow Wilson's 1913 Gettysburg Reunion Speech, Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America, and Rogers M. Smith's Civic Ideals, the author argues that as long as race is conceived as the negative referent of American liberal identity, the problem of race will continue to obscure the possibilities for transformative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]