Read Online How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ibram X. Kendi
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The most important fact of life on this Earth is our common humanity.”
No one told me the defining investigation in modern human history was unfolding behind the racial wars of the 1990s. It was arguably one of the most important scientific announcements ever made by a sitting head of state—perhaps as important to humans as landing on the moon—but the news of our fundamental equality was quickly overtaken by more-familiar arguments.
“Scientistsplanning the next phase of the human genome project are being forced to confront a treacherous issue: the genetic differences between human races,” science writer Nicholas Wade reported in The New York Times not long after Clinton’s announcement. In his 2014 bestseller, A Troublesome Inheritance, Wade made the case that “there is a genetic component to human social behavior.” This connecting of biology to behavior is the cradle of biological racism—it leads to biological ranking of the races and the supposition that the biology of certain races yields superior behavioral traits, like intelligence.
But there is no such thing as racial ancestry. Ethnic ancestry does exist. Camara Jones, a prominent medical researcher of health disparities, explained it this way to bioethics scholar Dorothy Roberts: “People are born with ancestry that comes from their parents but are assigned a race.” People from the same ethnic groups that are native to certain geographic regions typically share the same genetic profile. Geneticists call them “populations.” When geneticists compare these ethnic populations, they find there ismore genetic diversity between populations within Africa than between Africa and the rest of the world. Ethnic groups in Western Africa are more genetically similar to ethnic groups in Western Europe than to ethnic groups in Eastern Africa. Race is a genetic mirage.
Segregationists like Nicholas Wade figure if humans are 99.9 percent genetically alike, then they must be 0.1 percent distinct. And this distinction must be racial. And that 0.1 percent of racial distinction has grown exponentially over the millennia. And it is their job to search heaven and earth for these exponentially distinct races.
Assimilationists have accepted a different job, which has been in the works for decades. “What should we be teaching inside our churches and beyond their four walls?” Christian fundamentalist Ken Ham, the co-author of One Race One Blood, asked in an op-ed in 2017. “For one, point out the common ground of both evolutionists and creationists:the mapping of the human genome concluded that there is only one race, the human race.”
Singular-race makers push for the end of categorizing and identifying by race. They wag their fingers at people like me identifying as Black—but the unfortunate truth is that their well-meaning post-racial strategy makes no sense in our racist world. Race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways. Imagining away the existence of races in a racist world is as conserving and harmful as imagining away classes in a capitalistic world—it allows the ruling races and classes to keep on ruling.
Assimilationists believe in the post-racial myth that talking about race constitutes racism, or that if we stop identifying by race, then racism will miraculously go away. They fail to realize that if we stop using racial categories, then we will not be able to identify racial inequity. If we cannot identify racial inequity, then we will not be able to identify racist policies. If we cannot identify racist policies, then we cannot challenge racist policies. If we cannot challenge racist policies, then racist power’s final solution will be achieved: a world of inequity none of us can see, let alone resist. Terminating racial categories is potentially the last, not the first, step in the antiracist struggle.
The segregationist sees six biologically distinct races. The assimilationist sees one biological
No one told me the defining investigation in modern human history was unfolding behind the racial wars of the 1990s. It was arguably one of the most important scientific announcements ever made by a sitting head of state—perhaps as important to humans as landing on the moon—but the news of our fundamental equality was quickly overtaken by more-familiar arguments.
“Scientistsplanning the next phase of the human genome project are being forced to confront a treacherous issue: the genetic differences between human races,” science writer Nicholas Wade reported in The New York Times not long after Clinton’s announcement. In his 2014 bestseller, A Troublesome Inheritance, Wade made the case that “there is a genetic component to human social behavior.” This connecting of biology to behavior is the cradle of biological racism—it leads to biological ranking of the races and the supposition that the biology of certain races yields superior behavioral traits, like intelligence.
But there is no such thing as racial ancestry. Ethnic ancestry does exist. Camara Jones, a prominent medical researcher of health disparities, explained it this way to bioethics scholar Dorothy Roberts: “People are born with ancestry that comes from their parents but are assigned a race.” People from the same ethnic groups that are native to certain geographic regions typically share the same genetic profile. Geneticists call them “populations.” When geneticists compare these ethnic populations, they find there ismore genetic diversity between populations within Africa than between Africa and the rest of the world. Ethnic groups in Western Africa are more genetically similar to ethnic groups in Western Europe than to ethnic groups in Eastern Africa. Race is a genetic mirage.
Segregationists like Nicholas Wade figure if humans are 99.9 percent genetically alike, then they must be 0.1 percent distinct. And this distinction must be racial. And that 0.1 percent of racial distinction has grown exponentially over the millennia. And it is their job to search heaven and earth for these exponentially distinct races.
Assimilationists have accepted a different job, which has been in the works for decades. “What should we be teaching inside our churches and beyond their four walls?” Christian fundamentalist Ken Ham, the co-author of One Race One Blood, asked in an op-ed in 2017. “For one, point out the common ground of both evolutionists and creationists:the mapping of the human genome concluded that there is only one race, the human race.”
Singular-race makers push for the end of categorizing and identifying by race. They wag their fingers at people like me identifying as Black—but the unfortunate truth is that their well-meaning post-racial strategy makes no sense in our racist world. Race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways. Imagining away the existence of races in a racist world is as conserving and harmful as imagining away classes in a capitalistic world—it allows the ruling races and classes to keep on ruling.
Assimilationists believe in the post-racial myth that talking about race constitutes racism, or that if we stop identifying by race, then racism will miraculously go away. They fail to realize that if we stop using racial categories, then we will not be able to identify racial inequity. If we cannot identify racial inequity, then we will not be able to identify racist policies. If we cannot identify racist policies, then we cannot challenge racist policies. If we cannot challenge racist policies, then racist power’s final solution will be achieved: a world of inequity none of us can see, let alone resist. Terminating racial categories is potentially the last, not the first, step in the antiracist struggle.
The segregationist sees six biologically distinct races. The assimilationist sees one biological
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