"So why must we always concentrate on color?" asks Paul Weiss, a white philosopher. He poses this rhetorical question to the black author and social critic James Baldwin on a 1968 episode of The Dick Cavett Show. In the context of the discussion, it is clear that Weiss is denying the relevance of race to an analysis of the social issues of the time. Following in Weiss' vein, in the 2010s white folks often similarly assert that people of color who...