Refusing to Identify by Race Re "Has "Caucasian" Lost Its Meaning?" (news analysis, Sunday Review, July 7): I recently completed a doctoral study at the Simmons School of Social Work about people who are commonly ascribed to the black/African-American, biracial or multiracial categories, but who do not themselves subscribe to any racial identity. These race transcenders refuse to self-racialize, while being fully conscious of the fact that they are and have been racialized by others since the Constitution mandated the census, making racialization legal and compulsory beginning in 1790. We have been knotted up in meaningless terms like Caucasian ever since. If we are ready to really pull at the terrible tangle of racialization, we will have to be prepared to interrogate the whole irrational bundle (black, white, Hispanic and so on). The participants in my study demonstrate the possibility of refusing to collude in self-racialization. The next necessary step in truly extricating ourselves from the problems of race and racism is to educate, empower and expect that we will stop racializing one another.