“Radical” as in “to the roots.”
The progressive internet community has been talking about racism, specifically what its like being on the white side of the racial divides. Here’s my thought: the appropriately radical (“to the roots”) solution to the problem of race and white privilege should begin with the understanding that what we call “race” has no basis in biology. Race is not biological; it’s a social construction developed through a particular (and particularly nasty) history.
This is explained in detail in the American Anthropological Association Statement on “Race,” which everyone should read –
http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm
As far as biology is concerned, careful analysis and common sense both demonstrate that humans cannot be divided up into a discrete number of distinct groups based on genes or appearance or any other physical characteristic. (What “race” is someone like Tiger Woods?) Human physical diversity is not a bunch of categories, but a big ‘smear’ of difference with every position in the field bleeding into those around it.
On the socio-historical side, the point is the ideas and practices of “race” were developed by Europeans and Americans to classify people who looked different and then to subjugate, use, and abuse those deemed “other.” (This is why honest, moral people cannot agree that America is as unambiguously “great” as many Americans reflexively believe – America (our borders, economy, and social order) was built on racism, specifically on the racist domination and subjugation of American Indians, Africans, and meztisos.)
Unfortunately, just because race does not exist in biology does not mean at this point that race is not real. We have made it real and embedded it in our society and our selves. But the hopeful point is that as a social construction, we can do something about race and its place in our society – through an honest, moral discussion (including something like apologies from those of us who are “white” – specifically, acknowledgments of understanding and regret that we ‘white’ people have benefitted so much from the invention of race) we can work together to get humanity beyond the white-power-imposed nightmare of race.
