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May 1 - May 16, 2019
Race applied to human beings is a political division: it is a system of governing people that classifies them into a social hierarchy based on invented biological demarcations.
But the only way we know which racial designation to assign each person is by referring to the invented rules we have been taught since we were infants. And the only reason we engage in this exercise is the enormous social consequences of classifying people in this way. So we force the mélange of physical features and social clues into a code that tells us how to categorize each person—so as to know where each person fits in our society.
Race is not a biological category that is politically charged. It is a political category that has been disguised as a biological one.
race is not imaginary. Race is very real as a political grouping of human beings and has actual consequences for people’s health, wealth, social status, reputation, and opportunities in life.
If race is a natural division, it is easy to dismiss the glaring differences in people’s welfare as fair and even insurmountable; even liberals could feel comfortable with the current pace of racial progress, which leaves huge gaps between white and nonwhite well-being. But if race is a political system, then we must use political means to end its harmful impact on our society. So we cannot ditch the concept of race altogether. Paying attention to race as a political system—which is what it really is—is essential to fighting racism.
Who qualifies as white, black, and Indian has been the matter of countless rule changes and judicial decisions. These racial reclassifications did not occur in response to scientific advances in human biology, but in response to sociopolitical imperatives.
There is no biological test for whiteness. White means belonging to the group of people who are entitled to claim white privilege.
the legal construction of racial categories was a means of implementing the white supremacist regime.
Perhaps the most compelling evidence that race is a political category is its instability.
the definitions, criteria, and boundary lines that determine racial categories have constantly shifted over the course of U.S. history.
If races are fixed biological groupings, how can the test defining who belongs in each group change? If a person’s race is inscribed in her genes, how can a judge officially assign (and reassign) it according to a legal classification system? If race is written in nature, how can people rewrite the rules?
The changes in defining America’s racial groups are not just a matter of adding or subtracting options. Rather, they reflect shifts in the rules the government employs to categorize people by race.
my genetic makeup remains the same no matter where I was born. But my race, along with all the privileges and disadvantages that go with it, differs depending on which country I am born in or travel to, because race is a political category that is defined according to invented rules.
Biological difference was essential to justifying the enslavement of Africans in a nation founded on a radical commitment to liberty, equality, and natural rights. White Americans had to explain black subjugation as a natural condition, not one they imposed by brute force for the nation’s economic profit.
race is not imaginary—it is a very real way our society categorizes people—its intrinsic origin in biology is. Race is not an illusion. Rather, the belief in intrinsic racial difference is a delusion. The diabolical genius of making this political system seem biological is that the very unequal conditions it produces become an excuse for racial injustice. Whites pointed to sickness, fatigue, and illiteracy among the Africans they exploited as evidence of black biological inferiority rather than white inhumanity.
Scientists made race seem like a natural condition they had discovered about human beings rather than a system of governance imposed on human beings.
