Why Deracializing People Is Essential to Combating Racism—Part One
Regular readers of this blog know that I identify, politically, as a “radical moderate.” But you may not know the more radical side of that term’s meaning.
The vast majority of people born in the United States grow up with race as a default norm of personal and group identity, reinforced every day in mainstream and social media, and via most forms that we fill out related to health care, insurance, the census, etc., where one is faced with the question of what “racial” category to self-identity as. Therefore, it’s fair to say that being against the very idea of race and the categorical process of racialization and racial essentialism is a radical idea. My colleague Amiel Handelsman and I are actively positing and proposing that individuals consider very seriously the option of deracializing themselves and others.
What is deracialization and how is it related to fighting racism, something that most people think and believe is a moral failure and a clear wrong? Is it possible to be against race (anti-race) and to be against racism (antiracist)? Amiel published an entire ebook answering such questions, which you can sign up for and get a free copy of by clicking the image below.
This post and the next features excerpts from that work.
The solutions to America’s social problems are more complex than what leading antiracist thinkers like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo propose. The moral vision needed to enact these solutions is wider, the policy solutions more ambitious, and the leadership even more inclusive.
One way to think bigger is to address racism at its source: the very notion that humans can be divided into biological races with distinct and essential characteristics. This belief is one of the few things that otherwise opposed political camps agree on. White supremacists swear by it. Antiracists treat it as real, if not central to their cause. People critical of antiracists won’t lay a glove on it. Everyone else accepts it without a second thought.
Such “racial essentialism” has no support in science. Experts in disciplines ranging from genetics to anthropology report that racial classification is biologically meaningless. Although humanity contains a multitude of cultures and ancestries, there is only one human race. You, I and the other 7.8 billion inhabitants of the planet share 99.9 percent of our genetic material. The handful of genes that code for skin color and facial features tell you nothing about a person’s character, intelligence, or athletic ability. In the words of journalist Isabel Wilkerson, skin color is like a birth mark that covers the entire body.
The history of racial essentialism is not pretty. Southern plantation owners used it to justify the enslavement of human beings. Many people think that racism created slavery, but it’s the other way around. Chattel slavery (ownership for one’s lifetime) had existed for decades as a profitable enterprise before state legislatures created legal racial categories to justify it. They did this because slavery ran afoul of the country’s democratic ideals. How can you keep human beings in bondage doing unpaid labor yet claim to believe that “all men are created equal?” Simple: declare that enslaved people are a different and inferior race. In an instant, all forms of brutal treatment become permissible.
Most Americans today abhor such brutality yet go along with the racial essentialism that undergirds it. Every day, in families, workplaces, and public spaces, Americans act as though biological races are real. Referring to someone as “white” or “black” is as natural as calling them “tall” or “short” and feels just as true. Race is also embedded in how we talk about public problems. Consider, for example, statistics about health, income, and crime. Although we may disagree about what these data mean, we unquestionably accept the racial categories in which they are reported. “Race” also appears on official documents that confer legitimacy to it. What could be more legitimate than the U.S. Census?
The Costs of Racial Essentialism
The widespread practice of racial essentialism carries substantial costs:
Every time we racialize another person by calling them “black” or “white,” we stop seeing their full humanity. We assume things to be true about them rather than recognizing their unique individuality.
Racial essentialism keeps racism alive. The more entrenched racial categories are in the public mind, the easier it is for white power advocates to use them for their own nefarious purposes—and for the rest of us to slip into old stereotypes and cognitive biases.
The American conversation around race and racism is stuck. One big reason: we haven’t untangled ourselves from this false and divisive concept.
Neither mainstream antiracists nor their critics talk about these costs. Meanwhile, white power advocates see them not as problems, but as opportunities. Polarization and racialization fuel their movement.
More Than One Way to be Antiracist
When you look around at the landscape, there doesn’t appear to be an alternative to embracing racial essentialism. Antiracists who accept it have big megaphones and large audiences. If you’re not totally down with their program, it can feel like you have no place to go.
Fortunately, there is way out. The first step is to realize that there is more than one way to combat racism, more than one way to be antiracist.
You can stand up for dignity and against injustice while honoring each person’s humanity as a unique raceless individual. You can dedicate yourself to improving people’s lives without going along with racial essentialism. You can appreciate someone’s cultural heritage and ancestry without confusing either with false biological categories. Doing these things requires seeing the world with fresh eyes and stretching yourself into new habits. This isn’t easy, but it gives you a solid place to stand. There is no need to apologize for being less than other antiracists. After all, your aim is larger: not simply pointing out examples of racism, but undermining it at its source.
This is the path of the anti-race antiracist.
When I first heard Greg Thomas use this term, I was both inspired and intrigued. How can we combat racism if we aren’t willing to talk about race?
Race as Topic versus Race as Classification
We can start by clearing up a common misunderstanding. When people hear the phrase “anti-race,” they often think this means opposition to discussing how police violence, wealth inequality, and the criminal justice system affect some groups more than others. This interpretation is understandable, because it follows from one of the most common ways we use the word “race.” When people say “We need to talk about race,” they are using “race” to represent a catch-all umbrella of topics related to racism, discrimination, skin color, affirmative action, and police violence. They don’t want to talk about whether “black” and “white” people have meaningful genetic differences. They want to discuss health disparities, redlining, or the debate about removing Confederate statues. I call this Race as Topic.
If you are an anti-race antiracist, you support Race as Topic. You may not agree that racism is the sole or even major cause of these social problems. But you recognize that it plays a role (varying in size depending on the problem) and are committed to discussing it.
What the anti-race antiracist opposes is racial essentialism, or what I call Race as Classification. Here we are using “race” to represent a system for classifying human beings into distinct categories like “black” and “white,” each of which claims to capture a group’s biology, character, and other essential attributes. Race as Classification was created to justify slavery, has no genetic basis, and is at the root of racism.
The anti-race antiracist says yes to Race as Topic and no to Race as Classification.
Yes to Race as Topic. It’s important to discuss racial bias, racial inequality, and racial injustice.
No to Race as Classification. It’s not helpful to view people as members of a biological race. Human beings are complex creatures who differ in culture and ancestry, but not biological race.
By Amiel Handelsman
In part two, Amiel goes deeper into his argument by discussing how deracialization relates to culture and ancestry as well as the many benefits of becoming “an anti-race antiracist.”