The authors make it clear that Toomer rejected the racist ideologies of both 'blackness' and 'whiteness':

"And he had lived among blacks, among whites, among Jews, and in groups organized without racial labels around a shared interest such as literature or psychology, moving freely from any one of these groups to any other. One mark of membership in the 'colored' group, he said, was acceptance of the 'color line' with its attendant expectations; neither his family nor he had ever been so bound. To be in the white group would also imply the exclusion of the other."

It's a great book!

This is a great book focusing on a man who had the courage to reject society's efforts to impose a "racial" identity upon him. He steadfastly refused to be labeled "colored" (black) or "white" and considered classification the nemesis of mankind, a reflection of intellectual empty-headedness. A quote from the book: "Thus Toomer propounded the rather unpopular view that the racial issue in America would be resolved only when white America could accept the fact that its racial 'purity' was a myth, that indeed its racial isolation produced blandness and lack of character. On the other hand, racial purity among blacks was just as much a myth and only encouraged defensiveness and unconscious imitation, like that of an adolescent who defines his revolt against his parents by the very values he is trying to renounce. Race, he said, was a fictional construct, of no use for understanding people." We need more people like Jean Toomer today!