If Race Doesn't Exist, It Can't Be Discriminated Against

There are lots of terms in racial discourse that I dislike; “people of colour,” “whiteness,” “systemic racism,” “black bodies,” but chief among them is “race.”

Admittedly, this is a bit of a pickle for a “race writer.”

My problem stems from the fact that “race”, as most people think of it, doesn’t exist. The idea that people can be divided into groups based on skin colour has been widely debunked for decades. Yet it lives on because the intuition that people who look the same are the same feels correct if you don’t think about it too hard. 

In my article, Affirmative Action’s “Race” Problem, I pointed out that affirmative action suffers from a similar problem. Its focus on skin colour as a defining characteristic works against the people, black and otherwise, who most need help. The assumptions it was built on, decades ago, don’t hold today.

Celine seemed to believe this was a linguistic problem.

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Celine:

Race is what causes racial discrimination. Without this man-made definition of race, there will be no racial discrimination.

As long as we continue to focus on race and not the real underlying economic hardship, accessibility to high quality high school education, stable and secured family support, community support, poverty will stay with us for centuries.

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Steve QJ:

“Race is what causes racial discrimination. Without this man-made definition of race, there will be no racial discrimination.”

I'm not sure it's quite as simple as that. If I were to convince a klan member that race doesn't really exist, do you imagine his discrimination would disappear?

Racism is built on tribalism and fear as well as ignorance.

But I agree with the sentiment. I think we'd be better off in all kinds of ways if more people understood how silly it is to believe that people who happen to have a similar skin colour are all the same “race.”.

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Celine:

If the Klan member was never taught anything about race, he or she will not be able to discriminate against others based on race. I am not saying there will not be other forms of discriminations. There will be. As humans, we always discriminate others, for one reason or another.

It has been proven that children have no sense of race. They do not see the physical differences as reasons to discriminate others. Unfortunately, children are taught those differences as they grow older and all the discriminatory references associated with the differences.

So, yes, I believe the sooner we drop all notions of race, the sooner we could rid this nation of racism. Won't happen to those who are already grown. But to the future generations, racism can only be overcome by one of two things (1) race differentiation does not exist (2) massive interracial marriages producing over 70% of mixed race populations.

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Steve QJ:

“If the Klan member was never taught anything about race, he or she will not be able to discriminate against others based on race.”

Yeah, I'm saying that I don't think the concept of race itself is the issue. Most people, especially racist people, don't think about it that deeply.

"Your skin is a different colour to mine so you are different to me."

That's as far as most people seem to go. They don't need to call it race to have the fear that comes with difference. In fact, long before we talked about "races" this kind of discrimination still existed.

Children get a lot of things right. I wish we could retain more of that wisdom as we grow. It helps that they generally live in a world without competition or stress or concerns about how they're going to provide for themselves.

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Celine:

Discrimination is in human DNA. It is a way to survive. When people see something as different, they see danger or risk. People will always discriminate against something, religion, food culture, music culture, dance culture, work culture, wealth culture, sexual culture and many more. Race is but one of them.

There is no future that I could see where humans no longer discriminate about some things or some people or some animals or some plants. However, if we want to overcome race discrimination, it can be done. If race does not exist, then it cannot be discriminated against.

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“If race does not exist, then it cannot be discriminated against.”

I took the third repetition of this line, as my cue to let this one go. After all, the only way race can “not exist” in many people’s minds, especially racist people’s minds, is if everybody looks the same. That’s not the solution I’m hoping for.

The problem isn’t that there’s a thing called “racism.” Or even that there’s a concept known as “race.” The problem is that human beings still discriminate against each other over meaningless, immutable characteristics.

As I’ve said many times before, I like to believe that one day we’ll get past this instinct to judge people by the colour of their skin or their reproductive role or who they like to have sex with. But sadly, I suspect we’ll be finding things to divide ourselves over for quite some time to come.

So my slightly more realistic hope is that we learn to judge each other based on meaningful qualities. Things like shared values and a common sense of decency and a willingness to stand up against injustice.

These aren’t the kinds of things you can tell about somebody at a glance. And that’s as it should be. After all, it takes a little more effort to judge somebody by the content of their character.