By 1994 audiences were well aware of Prince’s resistance to being put in a box even if it still left many scratching their bopping heads…“Am I black or white?” On his 15th full-length studio album, Come, Prince revisits identity, a recurring theme in his artistry and lyrics, on the track, Race. He continues to draw attention to his humanity above all else through the song’s refrain, “Race in the space, I mark human…” However, this track is an important point in the evolution of Prince’s lyrical political consciousness as he explicitly names, racism and his views on mitigating it. In this presentation, I situate the lyrics of Race within Black Intellectual Thought to illustrate how Prince’s message converged and diverged with this tradition and implications for how society, specifically within education, addresses race and racism.

Crystal N. Wise is an assistant professor in literacy education at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include the historical and contemporary language and literacy practices of African-Americans as acts of liberation and resistance. Her publications on Prince, “(A)Political Prince: An Analysis of Prince’s Political Consciousness” and “It’s All About What’s In Your Mind: The Origins of Prince’s Political Consciousness” explore his evolving world views and (a)political identities represented in his lyrics.