In response to recent events that demonstrate the persistence of racial trauma, this essay revisits James Baldwin's claim that racism is a symptom of fundamental human tendencies and constraints. For Baldwin, we cannot understand the legacy of racism if we do not take seriously all too human attempts to evade, and deflect, death and its intimations. To flesh out this component of Baldwin's thought, I engage with the thought of Georges Bataille, an author who thinks generally about the fraught relationship between the preservation of life and our responsiveness to suffering. To test the insights that Baldwin provides on racial matters, this essay engages recent discussions in black studies and queer theory around futurity, racial difference, and the category of the human. I maintain that we must think “the human” and racial difference together, as a tension-filled relationship, in order to understand the limits and possibilities regarding our efforts to change the order of things.

中文翻译：

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与死亡赛跑

针对最近证明种族创伤持续存在的事件，本文重新审视了詹姆斯·鲍德温 (James Baldwin) 的主张，即种族主义是人类基本倾向和约束的症状。对于鲍德温来说，如果我们不认真对待逃避和转移死亡及其暗示的人类企图，我们就无法理解种族主义的遗产。为了充实鲍德温思想的这一组成部分，我与乔治·巴塔耶（Georges Bataille）的思想联系起来，他是一位作家，他对生命的保存与我们对痛苦的反应之间的紧张关系进行了总体思考。为了检验鲍德温在种族问题上的见解，本文围绕未来、种族差异和人类类别对黑人研究和酷儿理论进行了近期讨论。