Phil Christman, commenting on Blackness in an essay entitled “How to be White”:

We could say that Blackness is an oppressive fiction, and yet Black people rarely wish to have the designation itself lifted off them. It gives them a sense of commonality with other people, which is a useful thing to have in this world. The sense of surviving together the designation of Blackness makes a people where there was none before. Theologically, some have even said of Blackness—and the theological is an appropriate register in which to speak of it, given both the disproportionate religiosity of that community and the metaphysical weight of the crimes against it—what Joseph said of his brothers' crime against him: What you meant for evil, God meant for good.