What a powerful construction race is. Powerful enough to consume us. And it comes for us early. But for all that life shaping power, race is a mirage, which doesn’t lessen its force. We are what we see ourselves as whether what we see exists or not. We are what people see us as, whether what they see exists or not. What people see in themselves and others has meaning and manifests itself in ideas, in actions, in policies, even if what they are seeing is an illusion. Race is a mirage, but one that we do well to see while never forgetting it is a mirage. Never forgetting that it is the powerful light of racist power that makes the mirage.