Cook: The difference between skin color, race and racism

Since so many of us are talking about Rachel Dolezal’s racial fakery in Spokane, Wash., it’s also important to talk about this:

Race does not exist.

Not biologically.

Not physiologically.

Not genetically.

From a scientific standpoint, race does not exist any more than a flat Earth.

“Race is a concept that was invented to categorize the perceived biological, social and cultural differences between human groups,” said Harvard professor Evelynn Hammonds. “Race is a human invention.”

In 2003, Hammonds was part of the extraordinary PBS documentary, “Race: The Power of an Illusion.” What she said is not new. Scientists long ago debunked the notion of race as a legitimate way we can define one another. (Sadly, I didn’t hear this until my 30s. My hunch is that most Americans haven’t either.)

“Skin color really is only skin deep,” the documentary stated. “The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone’s skin color doesn’t necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.”

Yes, there are countless shades of skin color. So what? (Look at your arm. How many shades darker must you be to become black? How many shades lighter to be white? There is no answer. We’re not Crayons.)

Yes, a sub-Saharan man will have dramatically darker skin than a Swede. But for that, we have melanin, latitude and generations of evolution to thank, not some ingrained and inherent difference between human beings, as if skin color were some outward expression of some inward difference.

“Are the people who we call black more like each other than they are like people who we call white, genetically speaking?” said microbiologist Pilar Ossorio. “The answer is no.”

Yes, a Taiwanese woman will appear physically different to us than an Eskimo. Or a Cajun. Or a Cuban. But those physical differences cannot be defined by race.

“Under the skin, we really are effectively the same,” said the late Stephen Jay Gould, author and paleontologist. “And we get fooled, because some of the visual differences are quite noticeable.”

Please don’t interpret this column as a plea for colorblindness.

Even though race is a scientific myth, we have made it a cultural and societal reality. Within the world of science, whiteness and blackness may have little meaning, yet within the world of the ghetto, prison, classroom and boardroom, there is no greater line of demarcation in America than skin color.

“Black, white and brown are merely skin colors,” PBS said. “But we attach to them meanings and assumptions, even laws, that create enduring social inequality.”

It began during the Colonial years.

“In 1619, when the first Africans arrived in Virginia, religion and wealth, not physical appearance, defined status. Blackness and whiteness were not yet clear categories of identity,” PBS stated.

Yet color was soon introduced as a form of social control. By creating a racial caste system, poor whites began to associate themselves with rich whites, as opposed to other poor (read: enslaved) blacks. Like being on the high end of a see-saw, the introduction of race gave whites a measure of superiority, which, by definition, could only exist alongside black inferiority.

“Colony by colony, new laws made slavery permanent,” according to PBS. “For the first time, the word ‘white’, rather than ‘Christian’ or ‘Englishmen’ began appearing in colonial statues.”

By believing in the idea of race, white America now had a legitimate justification for slavery and oppression. As we grabbed tightly to the idea of democracy and natural rights – soon making it our national narrative – we had to have some excuse for our system of slave labor.

Our excuse was race. Since blacks are inferior, we told ourselves, then slavery is acceptable.

“Blacknesss and slavery went together,” said anthropologist Audrey Smedley. That gave the white American the idea that Africans were a different kind of people.”

So began our warped racial history, all of it built upon make-believe, all of it with very real, often catastrophic, consequences. With one eye, we have to see race for what it is: a social construction. With the other, we have to see how the fiction of race led to the violent reality of racism.

Then, and only then, can we begin talking about equality.

“It is time, at least, to ask the right question,” said professor Alan Goodman. “This question is not whether race is real, but in what ways do we make it a reality?”

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.