1. Between the World and Me has been called a book about race, but the author argues that race itself is a flawed, if not useless, concept—it is, if anything, nothing more than a pretext for racism. Early in the book he writes, “Race, is the child of racism, not the father.”  The idea of race has been so important in the history of America and in the self-identification of its people—and racial designations have literally marked the difference between life and death in some i