Adene Zawdu Gebyanesh presents the Afropessimist school, and with its advantages and disadvantages examines how it can be used to address the paucity of discussion on race and color in Israel, while referring to research on the Ethiopian community. The article has two main sections: First, it discusses the disadvantages of Afro-pessimistic thought via the traditional phenomenological research of blackness and the multiple modernities approach; and then it shows how the advantages of this approach highlight analytical failings at the heart of the conceptualization and use of the categories of color and race in Israeli research. The article concludes with a discussion of the benefits for research of a prism that emphasizes the role of localism in the formation of social difference.