Dec 2, 2021·edited Jun 26Liked by Free Black Thought
I'm really glad to see this idea grow roots. It's about time. The good news is that at the existential level, I'm sure there are abundant resources available that have been misappropriated by those who haven't had the benefit of thinking through what you're explaining. Just on the face of it, James Weldon Johnson immediately comes to mind. It's all in the title: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. What's funny is the depth at which such subterfuges can go. People who claim to be passing for white are actually just passing for passing. Just as people passing for black are passing for passing. An Oreo inside of a cue ball and its checkerboards and Dalmatians all the way down.
I LOVE that you mentioned JWJ. That is one of my favorite books. It does expose alternative philosophies of “race” for anyone looking. Are you familiar with Walter Benn Michaels essay on being a former ex-white man? Controversial and gold!
No but noted. Also Toni Morrison's Jazz is a journey through family betrayals. My absolute go-to expert was Adrian Piper who has something of the ultimate story as well as an airtight philosophical approach. Next to her is K. Anthony Appiah.
😍 Morrison is one of my FAV writers. Admittedly, I do have a lot of favorite writers. 🤣 The fourth chapter of my forthcoming book is dedicated to Morrison’s work and explores her philosophies of “race” as expressed through “Recitatif,” “Paradise,” & “Song of Solomon.” I use her countless interviews and other books as sources to expose the philosophical underpinnings. Also, Kwame Anthony Appiah is the rightful king of skepticism. 😍🙏🏽 He also makes a cameo in my book.
I know exactly what you mean. I have the same feeling when I publish. But your words meant something to me. This means that there are other people who think like you/us. So you/we are not alone.
Dr. Mason, I'm in awe of and so grateful for your work. This resonates with me because so many aspects of the "conversation" about "race" are distressing; not because as a pale, ethnic European I feel uncomfortable with people who don't look like me, but because so many of the character traits now ascribed to people who do look like me just aren't accurate or true (of me). And isn't that exactly the point? That attributing both negative AND positive *moral* value to people based on their phenotypical traits is just wrong, on every level?
I can imagine the kind of pushback you must receive, both from people who are "traditionally" racist and from people who are race(ist). I applaud your courage. And I'll be following your work from here on out.
Eric! Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. You’re right…on all fronts. I remain heartened, though, because the majority of people respond reasonably. That keeps me hopeful. Happy holidays!
I can’t tell you how much I love this perspective and hope it spreads more broadly! I am, however, left with a few elements of cognitive dissonance. We are here on the “Journal of Free Black Thought,” which elevates the voices of thinkers that challenge the mainstream thinking about race(ism) that is especially common within the group of people who either self-identify or are socially identified as “black,” focusing on heterodox thinkers from within this group. Is this journal reifying race by using this title and focusing on writers from this group? It does seem like there is value in exploring these topics specifically from a perspective which feels less likely to be accused of seeking to maintain a racial hierarchy with whites at the top. Feels like a paradox- though eliminating race would eliminate racial hierarchies, some could argue we’re currently too trapped in this hierarchy to trust the perspectives of people who benefit from it to be unbiased about studying it. I don’t agree with this take, but it feels latent in the appeal of seeking out “unconventional black thought” in the first place. How do we square this circle?
People are unique and race is a social concept, employed by the imagination of people to make our uniqueness the center of our differences. The more we accept our uniqueness as beauty instead of as inherited differences the sooner we can coexist with peace.
Race is the imposition of non-existent categories on a groups of people for no legitimate reason. Nazis classified Jews as a race, but we are not a race, but the world bought the lie. Blacks are not a race. There is no way to define race without so much overlap, that the categories collapse. And, if one decides to exclude people so that there finally one group of people which is so genetically similar to each other and different from all other humans, what do you have? Nothing! Maybe a family, maybe a tribe, but one certainly cannot divide up all humanity into different races since the vast majority of humans would not have sufficiently distinct genetic make-up.
How would one classify someone's race whose grandfather is part Iroquois, his great-grandmother was part Chinese and who had Ashkenazi on the father's side and Sephardic on the mother's side not to mention Dutch and English? One can be Jewish, which has nothing to do with race, because we have definite rules: (1) mother Jewish, (2) converted. The status as a Jew is identical whether it's (1) or (2).
Here's the real woker definition of "Black." People who will vote Dem if we promise them slavery reparations.
Ann Coulter seriously reminded Vivek Ramaswamy that he wasn't white enough to get her vote despite his advocacy for civil nationalism. White nationalism is still alive and well. The white card is an allusion.
I appreciate your perspective, and I do think racial skepticism provides a good foundation for anti-racism.
However I must respectfully disagree that the idea of race should be abolished. I guess it’s more that I don’t think it would matter. Whether we call it race, lineage, ethnicity, or ancestry, there exists a legitimate empirical notion of common geographical origin of and biological lineage. My brothers and I share the same parents, and my parents each share their parents, and their aunts and uncles, etc, with their siblings, and so on, and that ancestry tree goes back and back and branches intertwine.
People who are called “black” and “white” intertwine with my branches sooner with me than people who are called “asian”. While the genetic similarities between me and any particular “black” or “white” person may in fact be theoretically not as significant as any particular “asian” person, the biological lineage isn’t something that I can really discount rationally.
The fact that such lineages exist, and that such lineages are inclined to produce individuals who more visually resemble one another, means people will be vulnerable to developing bigotry based on those lineages.
A prominent form of “racism” in my mind is simply bigotry connected to those perceived lineages. And my conception of racism has historical precedent. Thus I see no reason to radically alter my conception.
The words racism and racist have a connotation of moral badness — thus it is understandable why people like that man with European ancestry would be compelled to define the denotation of it in a way that would exclude all people not with exclusive European ancestry (ignore if that is actually something that can exist) from responsibility for racism if he feels that doing so would provide himself personally with some sort of higher moral virtue for what he thinks is sympathy toward non “white” people. Regardless of his emotional motivations though I think that is nonsense to do so given the historical and cultural precedent of the word, and even if we did define racism in the way he suggests, it would not absolve people not “white” from any bigotry they have toward “white” people, nor would that bigotry be any less morally blameworthy than the bigotry exemplified by the newly defined word racism.
Likewise, eliminating racism by eliminating race through fashioning a particular definition of race I think would have no substantial effect on the bigotry people develop toward people they perceive as having particular broad biological ancestry. Whether we call the bigotry that fueled the violent massacre of Tutsis by Hutus “racism” or we call the Tutsis a race or an ethnic group or a tribe or whatever, doesn’t alter the moral calculations. The same logic applies to bigotries held by people Americans call “white” and “black”.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. A lot of what you reference is ethnicity, not “race.” There is an important distinction. That’s part of the work we do at TR. We help folks stop conflating “race” with everything else (i.e., culture & ethnicity, etc.).
I agree, but I might suggest that you need to confront that race as it's understood in colloquial terms doesn't actually depend on biology/phenotype, but is really understood as describing groups with a common ancestry. So the average kid in the U.S. understands that there are five "races" in our society: whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and native Americans. That there are Hispanics who are phenotypically black or that Guatemalans look a lot more like Cambodians, than either do Iranians doesn't really matter much. The point is that they share known common ancestry, and it's not a social construct, they really do share known common ancestry!
Ancestry is definitely important! We reproduce sexually, after all. But our "folk category" of race does not correspond very well with the biological facts about ancestry. See this book by a geneticist who studies the DNA of ancient humans:
My point is that the "folk category" of race doesn't have anything to do with DNA or biologically determined categories. It has to do with people who trace their ancestry/lineage to a common origin. It's actually a more accurate version of "race" than the "scientific" definition that tried to categorize humanity biologically. Anthropologists would probably call it "ethnicity" but it's not exactly that either, as we tend to think of ethnicities in terms of nations and races in terms of continents. But the thought is essentially the same, just scaled up. I think you're attacking a straw man if you limit your analysis strictly to the scientific, biological, "DNA" definition of race. Outside of the woke, very few subscribe to that these days.
Point taken, thanks for the clarification! It's precisely the popular, unscientific idea of ancestry/lineage and a common origin that DNA (which tells us who our ancestors *really* are) calls into question. Seen from that vantage point, many of our assumptions about our ancestors, their belonging to a "race," and their localization on this or that continent fall apart.
We probably agree that people have pretty strong intuitions about their race, and they think that their "race" captures some truth about their ancestors. But, again, these are the intuitions that deep DNA research calls into question.
I think I get what you're saying, which is that while DNA doesn't determine "race", it can tell us that what we aren't necessarily descended from exactly who we might have thought we were. That may be true! But I don't know that it matters for purposes of this essay, which I'm interpreting as calling on us to recognize that race is a biological fallacy, and thus should play no role in how we conceive of ourselves and our place in society. Human beings bonding together based on (perceived at least) common ancestry is about as "real" as a thing could possibly be, just read the Old Testament and you can see that it's fundamental to how we operate. In my view, it's more something to be negotiated around in the interest of building a common national purpose than it is something to be denied. Eventually, I think we'll become the "American" race, but that's probably decades if not centuries away.
"Eventually, I think we'll become the "American" race": This is what some of us at FBT advocate for. We figure we'd better get started making it happen! Check out the two videos linked here dedicated to trying to create an "omni-American" future: https://twitter.com/FreeBlckThought/status/1452805639818809347
Yes, and ethnicity can easily cross what we normally call race lines. Jews are a prime example. Just because most Americans are familiar with Ashkenzai does not mean that the other Jews do not exist.
I do tend to that conception of “race” in my work. I inevitably say, “Biology, phenotype, and ancestry….” All of which, of course, are still disprove to be “race.” People imagine that the one-drop rule exists. That doesn’t mean it exists, in other words, not in the way people imagine or assert race. Ethnicity, on the other hand, exists. That includes DNA, ancestry, etc., as well as countless groupings…none having to do with the neat five categories of “race.”
Thanks for commenting and affording me space to clarify.
Yeah, and my only contribution really is that if ethnicity exists then so does race, but only conceived of as a sort of "continent-based ethnicity". I think if you pretend that that's not how most people use the concept of race, then you might be addressing a straw man more than the actuality of what's out there.
We'll let Sheena answer you herself, but we think her point is precisely to help people understand that the way they currently do in fact use the concept of race (1) doesn't correspond to anything that actually exists independently, out there in the world, and (2) "socially constructs" the very phenomenon it purports merely to describe, and (3) thereby makes discrimination on the basis of race possible and perhaps inevitable.
Yeah she responded also thanks. I get it, there certainly are people doing everything they can to reinforce the false essential nature of race, based really in a fallacious and racist biological misconception, which is certainly not helpful in reducing racism. But I do think you also start to veer from reality when you fail to understand "race" as merely a synonym for how anthropologists would understand ethnicity, just scaled to continents, which I would maintain is how it's actually used in our society. And I think we're all in agreement that ethnicity is both real and not necessarily inherently associated with racism, or any sort of bigotry.
There are countless ethnicities (usually associated with nations and sometimes many within a nation). Thus, that’s not “race” and shouldn’t be conflated for many well researched and well understood reasons. We help people with that. There are geneticists, MD, sociologists, psychologists, historians, philosophers…you name it…who approach us. They want help because their fields know “race” doesn’t exist but treat it as if it does. Thus, helpful research and discoveries are delayed or denied in the name of maintaining the unicorn of “race,” not because it’s useful or exists but because people are more comfortable with it existing. There’s a reason for that. And, again, we help people know the difference and why the difference matters, something that shouldn’t be diminished or devalued, as it has an overwhelmingly positive effect on people’s understanding of themselves, their nation, and others. And if liberates them from race(ism)…of which their is nothing positive.
Thank you for this fascinating essay. There are now several public intellectuals who have embraced the idea of racelessness. Libertarian Kmele Foster is one example. One push back that comes from At least some geneticists is that while the common social use of race may be incorrect there are population groups that share some genetic traits. While it may be possible using genetic analysis to identify population groups, the boundaries between groups overlap considerably. It also appears that it is not always obvious to discern what the genetic differences between population groups mean.
I know that I am taking one sentence out of context, somewhat, for my own purposes, but here it goes. The author wrote
-- Still, this assigning of “race” to people as indicative of their permanent, yes, their fixed status in society exemplifies a conviction embraced by too many people. --
I will use this sentence to point out the secret which Wokers do not want others to know. Those who OVERCOME discrimination usually end up far ahead of where they would be without discrimination. While racists may want to make servitude permanent, in the long run they fail. Along the way, the discriminated group can suffer unspeakable horrors like the Holocaust and slavery, but those who continue to strive and who OVERCOME end up far better people than those who were deprived of being discriminated against. Becoming better people tramples merely becoming wealthier.
I know this idea may sound like I encourage oppression or that I am advocating some absurd "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" while you're being lynched or gassed. Rather, I am referring to something that I and Michael have noticed in a variety of contexts including mundane life. Since we were both gym rats, we both noticed that there were a lot, but not all, Black guys at the gym who were extraordinarily nice. I mean a degree of openness and decency which was of an order higher than others .
By portraying Blacks are permanent victims, Wokers are perniciously depriving Blacks of something vital. Yes, America is far from perfect, but no group has OVERCOME more than Blacks in such a short period of time. Insisting that Blacks cannot overcome and are permanent victims without the hand outs from the Wokers perpetuates the worst part of the myth of race.
Jews have been around longer, and thus, we have a few extra millennia at overcoming. After all we left being slaves in Egypt 3,500 years ago. I believe that this why so many Jews admired Blacks in the 1940's, 1950's, etc. until Wokeism took over and everyone was mandated to see Blacks as only hapless victims. Wokeism is merely one more obstacle like slavery and Jim Crow to overcome. To think that Blacks cannot overcome Wokeism is another form of low expectations based on the illusion of race.
Not off-topic at all! "Indigenous" is merely a descriptor meaning "native and original to a place." So, there are indigenous Australians (the Aborigines), indigenous Americans (the Native Americans) and so on, but there's no sense in which all these peoples are a "race." It's also slightly misleading to call these peoples "indigenous," given that the only place to which humans are "indigenous" is east Africa. Anywhere else you find humans, they moved there sometime over the last 60,000 years, and often displaced some group that was there before them.
I'm really glad to see this idea grow roots. It's about time. The good news is that at the existential level, I'm sure there are abundant resources available that have been misappropriated by those who haven't had the benefit of thinking through what you're explaining. Just on the face of it, James Weldon Johnson immediately comes to mind. It's all in the title: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. What's funny is the depth at which such subterfuges can go. People who claim to be passing for white are actually just passing for passing. Just as people passing for black are passing for passing. An Oreo inside of a cue ball and its checkerboards and Dalmatians all the way down.
I LOVE that you mentioned JWJ. That is one of my favorite books. It does expose alternative philosophies of “race” for anyone looking. Are you familiar with Walter Benn Michaels essay on being a former ex-white man? Controversial and gold!
No but noted. Also Toni Morrison's Jazz is a journey through family betrayals. My absolute go-to expert was Adrian Piper who has something of the ultimate story as well as an airtight philosophical approach. Next to her is K. Anthony Appiah.
😍 Morrison is one of my FAV writers. Admittedly, I do have a lot of favorite writers. 🤣 The fourth chapter of my forthcoming book is dedicated to Morrison’s work and explores her philosophies of “race” as expressed through “Recitatif,” “Paradise,” & “Song of Solomon.” I use her countless interviews and other books as sources to expose the philosophical underpinnings. Also, Kwame Anthony Appiah is the rightful king of skepticism. 😍🙏🏽 He also makes a cameo in my book.
Thank you for this great essay! Intelligent and very necessary.
Thank YOU for reading it. I sometimes fear talking into (and to) the abyss. LOL Love and light!
I know exactly what you mean. I have the same feeling when I publish. But your words meant something to me. This means that there are other people who think like you/us. So you/we are not alone.
Dr. Mason, I'm in awe of and so grateful for your work. This resonates with me because so many aspects of the "conversation" about "race" are distressing; not because as a pale, ethnic European I feel uncomfortable with people who don't look like me, but because so many of the character traits now ascribed to people who do look like me just aren't accurate or true (of me). And isn't that exactly the point? That attributing both negative AND positive *moral* value to people based on their phenotypical traits is just wrong, on every level?
I can imagine the kind of pushback you must receive, both from people who are "traditionally" racist and from people who are race(ist). I applaud your courage. And I'll be following your work from here on out.
Eric! Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. You’re right…on all fronts. I remain heartened, though, because the majority of people respond reasonably. That keeps me hopeful. Happy holidays!
The case for antirace(sm) is bound to be won in no time!
Thanks, Charles! Love & light.
I can’t tell you how much I love this perspective and hope it spreads more broadly! I am, however, left with a few elements of cognitive dissonance. We are here on the “Journal of Free Black Thought,” which elevates the voices of thinkers that challenge the mainstream thinking about race(ism) that is especially common within the group of people who either self-identify or are socially identified as “black,” focusing on heterodox thinkers from within this group. Is this journal reifying race by using this title and focusing on writers from this group? It does seem like there is value in exploring these topics specifically from a perspective which feels less likely to be accused of seeking to maintain a racial hierarchy with whites at the top. Feels like a paradox- though eliminating race would eliminate racial hierarchies, some could argue we’re currently too trapped in this hierarchy to trust the perspectives of people who benefit from it to be unbiased about studying it. I don’t agree with this take, but it feels latent in the appeal of seeking out “unconventional black thought” in the first place. How do we square this circle?
Race is real and people are different. The sooner we accept this as a natural fact, the sooner we can move towards the solutions of coexistence
People are unique and race is a social concept, employed by the imagination of people to make our uniqueness the center of our differences. The more we accept our uniqueness as beauty instead of as inherited differences the sooner we can coexist with peace.
So, you’re just going to casually drop some poetry & drop the mic, Tenisha?
😂 I had too ❤️
#oneproudprof
People are different. Race(ism) is real.
Race is the imposition of non-existent categories on a groups of people for no legitimate reason. Nazis classified Jews as a race, but we are not a race, but the world bought the lie. Blacks are not a race. There is no way to define race without so much overlap, that the categories collapse. And, if one decides to exclude people so that there finally one group of people which is so genetically similar to each other and different from all other humans, what do you have? Nothing! Maybe a family, maybe a tribe, but one certainly cannot divide up all humanity into different races since the vast majority of humans would not have sufficiently distinct genetic make-up.
How would one classify someone's race whose grandfather is part Iroquois, his great-grandmother was part Chinese and who had Ashkenazi on the father's side and Sephardic on the mother's side not to mention Dutch and English? One can be Jewish, which has nothing to do with race, because we have definite rules: (1) mother Jewish, (2) converted. The status as a Jew is identical whether it's (1) or (2).
Here's the real woker definition of "Black." People who will vote Dem if we promise them slavery reparations.
Ann Coulter seriously reminded Vivek Ramaswamy that he wasn't white enough to get her vote despite his advocacy for civil nationalism. White nationalism is still alive and well. The white card is an allusion.
Excellent. I wish everyone would absorb this and rethink their world view.
That’s an entire mood. 💛
This was really excellent - thank you!
💛
fantastic work
Thank you, Josh!
Well done.
💛
I appreciate your perspective, and I do think racial skepticism provides a good foundation for anti-racism.
However I must respectfully disagree that the idea of race should be abolished. I guess it’s more that I don’t think it would matter. Whether we call it race, lineage, ethnicity, or ancestry, there exists a legitimate empirical notion of common geographical origin of and biological lineage. My brothers and I share the same parents, and my parents each share their parents, and their aunts and uncles, etc, with their siblings, and so on, and that ancestry tree goes back and back and branches intertwine.
People who are called “black” and “white” intertwine with my branches sooner with me than people who are called “asian”. While the genetic similarities between me and any particular “black” or “white” person may in fact be theoretically not as significant as any particular “asian” person, the biological lineage isn’t something that I can really discount rationally.
The fact that such lineages exist, and that such lineages are inclined to produce individuals who more visually resemble one another, means people will be vulnerable to developing bigotry based on those lineages.
A prominent form of “racism” in my mind is simply bigotry connected to those perceived lineages. And my conception of racism has historical precedent. Thus I see no reason to radically alter my conception.
The words racism and racist have a connotation of moral badness — thus it is understandable why people like that man with European ancestry would be compelled to define the denotation of it in a way that would exclude all people not with exclusive European ancestry (ignore if that is actually something that can exist) from responsibility for racism if he feels that doing so would provide himself personally with some sort of higher moral virtue for what he thinks is sympathy toward non “white” people. Regardless of his emotional motivations though I think that is nonsense to do so given the historical and cultural precedent of the word, and even if we did define racism in the way he suggests, it would not absolve people not “white” from any bigotry they have toward “white” people, nor would that bigotry be any less morally blameworthy than the bigotry exemplified by the newly defined word racism.
Likewise, eliminating racism by eliminating race through fashioning a particular definition of race I think would have no substantial effect on the bigotry people develop toward people they perceive as having particular broad biological ancestry. Whether we call the bigotry that fueled the violent massacre of Tutsis by Hutus “racism” or we call the Tutsis a race or an ethnic group or a tribe or whatever, doesn’t alter the moral calculations. The same logic applies to bigotries held by people Americans call “white” and “black”.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. A lot of what you reference is ethnicity, not “race.” There is an important distinction. That’s part of the work we do at TR. We help folks stop conflating “race” with everything else (i.e., culture & ethnicity, etc.).
I agree, but I might suggest that you need to confront that race as it's understood in colloquial terms doesn't actually depend on biology/phenotype, but is really understood as describing groups with a common ancestry. So the average kid in the U.S. understands that there are five "races" in our society: whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and native Americans. That there are Hispanics who are phenotypically black or that Guatemalans look a lot more like Cambodians, than either do Iranians doesn't really matter much. The point is that they share known common ancestry, and it's not a social construct, they really do share known common ancestry!
Ancestry is definitely important! We reproduce sexually, after all. But our "folk category" of race does not correspond very well with the biological facts about ancestry. See this book by a geneticist who studies the DNA of ancient humans:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/247850/who-we-are-and-how-we-got-here-by-david-reich/
My point is that the "folk category" of race doesn't have anything to do with DNA or biologically determined categories. It has to do with people who trace their ancestry/lineage to a common origin. It's actually a more accurate version of "race" than the "scientific" definition that tried to categorize humanity biologically. Anthropologists would probably call it "ethnicity" but it's not exactly that either, as we tend to think of ethnicities in terms of nations and races in terms of continents. But the thought is essentially the same, just scaled up. I think you're attacking a straw man if you limit your analysis strictly to the scientific, biological, "DNA" definition of race. Outside of the woke, very few subscribe to that these days.
Point taken, thanks for the clarification! It's precisely the popular, unscientific idea of ancestry/lineage and a common origin that DNA (which tells us who our ancestors *really* are) calls into question. Seen from that vantage point, many of our assumptions about our ancestors, their belonging to a "race," and their localization on this or that continent fall apart.
We probably agree that people have pretty strong intuitions about their race, and they think that their "race" captures some truth about their ancestors. But, again, these are the intuitions that deep DNA research calls into question.
I think I get what you're saying, which is that while DNA doesn't determine "race", it can tell us that what we aren't necessarily descended from exactly who we might have thought we were. That may be true! But I don't know that it matters for purposes of this essay, which I'm interpreting as calling on us to recognize that race is a biological fallacy, and thus should play no role in how we conceive of ourselves and our place in society. Human beings bonding together based on (perceived at least) common ancestry is about as "real" as a thing could possibly be, just read the Old Testament and you can see that it's fundamental to how we operate. In my view, it's more something to be negotiated around in the interest of building a common national purpose than it is something to be denied. Eventually, I think we'll become the "American" race, but that's probably decades if not centuries away.
"Eventually, I think we'll become the "American" race": This is what some of us at FBT advocate for. We figure we'd better get started making it happen! Check out the two videos linked here dedicated to trying to create an "omni-American" future: https://twitter.com/FreeBlckThought/status/1452805639818809347
Yes! I actually know at least one of the participants in that, Pamela Paretsky. Good stuff!
Yes, and ethnicity can easily cross what we normally call race lines. Jews are a prime example. Just because most Americans are familiar with Ashkenzai does not mean that the other Jews do not exist.
I do tend to that conception of “race” in my work. I inevitably say, “Biology, phenotype, and ancestry….” All of which, of course, are still disprove to be “race.” People imagine that the one-drop rule exists. That doesn’t mean it exists, in other words, not in the way people imagine or assert race. Ethnicity, on the other hand, exists. That includes DNA, ancestry, etc., as well as countless groupings…none having to do with the neat five categories of “race.”
Thanks for commenting and affording me space to clarify.
Yeah, and my only contribution really is that if ethnicity exists then so does race, but only conceived of as a sort of "continent-based ethnicity". I think if you pretend that that's not how most people use the concept of race, then you might be addressing a straw man more than the actuality of what's out there.
We'll let Sheena answer you herself, but we think her point is precisely to help people understand that the way they currently do in fact use the concept of race (1) doesn't correspond to anything that actually exists independently, out there in the world, and (2) "socially constructs" the very phenomenon it purports merely to describe, and (3) thereby makes discrimination on the basis of race possible and perhaps inevitable.
Yeah she responded also thanks. I get it, there certainly are people doing everything they can to reinforce the false essential nature of race, based really in a fallacious and racist biological misconception, which is certainly not helpful in reducing racism. But I do think you also start to veer from reality when you fail to understand "race" as merely a synonym for how anthropologists would understand ethnicity, just scaled to continents, which I would maintain is how it's actually used in our society. And I think we're all in agreement that ethnicity is both real and not necessarily inherently associated with racism, or any sort of bigotry.
There are countless ethnicities (usually associated with nations and sometimes many within a nation). Thus, that’s not “race” and shouldn’t be conflated for many well researched and well understood reasons. We help people with that. There are geneticists, MD, sociologists, psychologists, historians, philosophers…you name it…who approach us. They want help because their fields know “race” doesn’t exist but treat it as if it does. Thus, helpful research and discoveries are delayed or denied in the name of maintaining the unicorn of “race,” not because it’s useful or exists but because people are more comfortable with it existing. There’s a reason for that. And, again, we help people know the difference and why the difference matters, something that shouldn’t be diminished or devalued, as it has an overwhelmingly positive effect on people’s understanding of themselves, their nation, and others. And if liberates them from race(ism)…of which their is nothing positive.
Sounds like we all have large areas of overlap here, with different areas of emphasis, and some quibbling about details!
Indeed!
Thank you for this fascinating essay. There are now several public intellectuals who have embraced the idea of racelessness. Libertarian Kmele Foster is one example. One push back that comes from At least some geneticists is that while the common social use of race may be incorrect there are population groups that share some genetic traits. While it may be possible using genetic analysis to identify population groups, the boundaries between groups overlap considerably. It also appears that it is not always obvious to discern what the genetic differences between population groups mean.
I know that I am taking one sentence out of context, somewhat, for my own purposes, but here it goes. The author wrote
-- Still, this assigning of “race” to people as indicative of their permanent, yes, their fixed status in society exemplifies a conviction embraced by too many people. --
I will use this sentence to point out the secret which Wokers do not want others to know. Those who OVERCOME discrimination usually end up far ahead of where they would be without discrimination. While racists may want to make servitude permanent, in the long run they fail. Along the way, the discriminated group can suffer unspeakable horrors like the Holocaust and slavery, but those who continue to strive and who OVERCOME end up far better people than those who were deprived of being discriminated against. Becoming better people tramples merely becoming wealthier.
I know this idea may sound like I encourage oppression or that I am advocating some absurd "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" while you're being lynched or gassed. Rather, I am referring to something that I and Michael have noticed in a variety of contexts including mundane life. Since we were both gym rats, we both noticed that there were a lot, but not all, Black guys at the gym who were extraordinarily nice. I mean a degree of openness and decency which was of an order higher than others .
By portraying Blacks are permanent victims, Wokers are perniciously depriving Blacks of something vital. Yes, America is far from perfect, but no group has OVERCOME more than Blacks in such a short period of time. Insisting that Blacks cannot overcome and are permanent victims without the hand outs from the Wokers perpetuates the worst part of the myth of race.
Jews have been around longer, and thus, we have a few extra millennia at overcoming. After all we left being slaves in Egypt 3,500 years ago. I believe that this why so many Jews admired Blacks in the 1940's, 1950's, etc. until Wokeism took over and everyone was mandated to see Blacks as only hapless victims. Wokeism is merely one more obstacle like slavery and Jim Crow to overcome. To think that Blacks cannot overcome Wokeism is another form of low expectations based on the illusion of race.
Indeed!
Just learned about you through FAIR Leadership. I am excited to learn from you at our next chapter meeting!
Cheers!
Jenny
Interesting thoughts ...This maybe off topic...what of indigenous peoples ? Is this another name for race ...
Not off-topic at all! "Indigenous" is merely a descriptor meaning "native and original to a place." So, there are indigenous Australians (the Aborigines), indigenous Americans (the Native Americans) and so on, but there's no sense in which all these peoples are a "race." It's also slightly misleading to call these peoples "indigenous," given that the only place to which humans are "indigenous" is east Africa. Anywhere else you find humans, they moved there sometime over the last 60,000 years, and often displaced some group that was there before them.
I don't agree with...‘The Garden of Eden’ hypothesis ... but thanks for your feedback.